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Home Page Critique by the Experts This entry was posted on 9/20/2006 7:33 AM and is filed under Customization. (While the information in this article is still relevant, the web site used as an example is no longer available on the Internet.) I asked our marketing team to review and critique my home page at www.domain-horse.com. While I was doing some good things with my page, I was also missing the ‘marketing boat’ so to speak. Here’s what they had to say: Question: My goal is to reach out to the equestrian population, educate them on how and why they need to be online and sell them the tools. What can I change on my home page to help achieve that goal? Answer: Your primary goal is to make money through your horse niche…right? If so, you may have your message backwards. Instead of ‘The Internet Source for Horse Lovers,’ try ‘The Horse Lovers Guide to the Internet’ and then alter your site accordingly, giving more space to your sales information and toning down the horse angle. Don't let your theme or personal interests outshine your business. Make your best products/offers the obvious focal point of your site. Fill in the space with your other products and whatever space is left over can be used to 'color' your site with a specific theme. Question: Does the site effectively target my niche? Answer: Yes! Question: Do I provide enough content? Answer: In fact, there’s too much content. By including everything on your home page, you’ve left too little room to emphasize your moneymakers. There’s simply too much information. Suggestion: Take full advantage of the space above the fold in general and more specifically in the ‘golden triangle.’ Get your offers up there and make them specific to your audience (i.e. .COMs just $9.95 – Put your passion for horses on the ‘Net!... Quick Shopping Cart – From $13.95 – the easy way to sell your horse-related wares on the Internet…etc.) Note: I’ve attached an image of my old home page so you can compare the layout now to what I had before. The ‘golden triangle’ is noted on that image. Question: Could I position my salable products more effectively on the page?
Answer: Yes. Your products should be clearly labeled as such in one section, while the horse-specific information should be grouped together in another. Each should have different headers to differentiate them. As your site exists now, everything looks too similar. Suggestion: Move ‘Horse Clinic,’ ‘Getting Online,’ ‘Links to Horse Sites’ and ‘Favorite Books’ to either a sidebar or remove them from the home page altogether. As you know, people read left-top to right-bottom, so be sure to have the most important information on the left. Suggestion: A quick fix would be to swap the 6-in-1 column (and information below) and horse clinics column (and information below) and make the 6-In-1 wider than the other. Move the non-essential elements (newsletter sign-up, survey, banner) out of your header. Use the space to establish your name/brand, your purpose (selling domains/services) and maybe some tie-in/welcome copy -- something like "Saddle up with everything you need to tame the Web!” (brief description of products and services, and why a customers needs them). Note: I chose to keep my newsletter sign up in the header because I’m still trying to build my customer/contact base so gather email addresses via my newsletter is very important to me. Also, it was recommended that I move my survey link. I removed it completely from the site. My main goal is to sell products. Asking horse-related questions isn’t going to give me any information to help me sell more. I could include a field where the customer could enter they email and/or phone number if they would like further information about getting online, but I don’t have the time for that kind of personal service right now. So, I removed it altogether. Question: Colors, backgrounds, images - what works, what doesn't? Answer: The overall theme and color scheme work nicely. For horse-lovers, your site is inviting, and the colors work for both horses and Internet products. Headers are clean and easy to read – they just need to be prioritized and grouped differently. Pictures are nice when they relate to the content next to it (like the horse clinics); consider pictures for the products you're selling to help draw attention. Suggestion: Maybe some blues would help coordinate better with the product landing pages. Right now, these pages looks disjointed from the landing page content. Question: What could I improve on?
Answer: ‘Breeders,’ ‘Trainers,’ ‘Riders,’ etc., do not inherently tell me what they are. Suggestion: Create a 'Special Feature' area (maybe above the 6-In-1 area) as another sort of 'product' and have a ‘Horse Breeders start here’ link or something similar. Question: Are affiliate links (multiple rev stream initiative) properly places, or could they be positioned better? Answer: Your navigation gets buried under all of the ads. Additionally, animation in the ads distracts from your content. Suggestion: Remove ads altogether from the top and have them in only one area on the site (example, in the right sidebar, roughly the size of the ‘equestrian cupid.com’ ad). Text ads that are in the top area can be the same size as the Google ads and also placed in the right sidebar. Suggestion; It works well to have the Google search and ads grouped in the right side bar. You need to get the search in that area and clearly group them together. And there you have it – straight from our marketing team. I hope you found some ideas to test out on your own custom pages. Good luck! Stace CommentsDisplay comments as (Linear | Threaded)
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