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SUMMARY:
Your checkout flow. The categories on your blog. The template for your website. As you’ll read in this article, the marketers that don’t take these website elements for granted, that strive to find the best way to execute these elements of their website, can garner significant results. Read on for examples from software, auto parts, and apparel companies. |
This article was originally published in the MarketingSherpa email newsletter.
Steel Seal was looking to revamp its website and hired MECLABS Institute to re-envision the web design. The team identified the website’s checkout flow as an area of opportunity. The total checkout flow contained six steps.
Creative Sample #1: Checkout flow for original (control) automotive parts website
After evaluating what information was necessary to both communicate to and collect from the customer, the team was able to condense the checkout flow into only two steps in a redesigned version of the website.
Creative Sample #2: Checkout flow for new (treatment) automotive parts website
The team set up an experiment to determine which website and checkout flow would be more effective. The treatment – the two-step flow – generated a 54% relative increase in conversion.
You can learn more about this experiment, and see other web design experiments, in The End of Web Design: Don’t design for the web, design for the mind from MarketingExperiments (MarketingSherpa’s sister publication).
The team at Wistia redesigned the video-software company’s blog homepage.
The team wanted to simplify the design and make it easier for visitors to navigate through and find new content. They also wanted to provide a more curated content experience with room to promote content they hand-selected versus just having a feed of recent posts. Finally, they wanted to shine more of a light on video content to keep visitors engaged with different mediums.
Creative Sample #3: Original blog homepage for software company
To accomplish these goals, the category tags were moved to the top of the page, allowing visitors to easily navigate to a specific content category.
Creative Sample #4: Category tags on new blog homepage for software company
A dedicated “Editor’s picks” was added to the carousel with content that frequently changes based on what’s trending.
Creative Sample #5: “Editor’s picks” on new blog homepage for software company
A dedicated video area was added to highlight and showcase video content; video posts are indicated with a video icon and the video is previewed in the thumbnail with a mouse hover.
Creative Sample #6: Top videos section on blog homepage for software company
Creative Sample #7: Full new blog homepage for software company
Prioritizing the category tags increased traffic to those pages. The marketing (23% increase in traffic), Wistia culture (22% increase), and production (17% increase) categories have experienced the greatest lift.
Additionally, the team noticed a lift in both traffic to featured posts and views for featured videos when evaluating the data for one month before and one month after the new blog homepage’s fall launch. The percentages varied per post, ranging from a 2% lift to a 256% lift:
“My advice to other marketers is to clearly identify your goals in advance and work collaboratively with other experts on your team to reach those objectives. Talking through what we really wanted to accomplish through a refresh helped guide the design team on the decisions they made with specific design elements. Working collaboratively ultimately resulted in a much better end product than if one team or the other took the lead,” said Meisha Bochicchio, Content Marketing Manager, Wistia.
The previous website design for Black n Bianco was created with a generic pre-made template. “It lacked relevance to our brand. We wanted to create a design that would showcase our brand personality and style,” said Lisa Chu, Business Owner, Black n Bianco.
The templated design had a completely different layout structure when viewed on tablets and smartphones.
Creative Sample #8: Previous website design for apparel company
The team wanted to move away from the generic template and create a website design that matched the apparel company’s products. Everything on the website was completely overhauled – the fonts, layouts, colors, banners and product detail pages. “We chose a modern approach to our fonts and banner styles. It's clean, simple and easy to view with a hint of playfulness that represents our brand,” Chu said.
They also created an eye-catching section dedicated to the brand’s Instagram posts. New customers could easily view the brand’s social media posts while satisfied customers could share their experience.
In addition, the website structure was changed so it would have a seamless transition from desktop to tablets and smartphones.
Creative Sample #9: New website design for apparel company
“Researching my industry allowed me to spot a pattern. All successful websites shared a common trait. They all had an original style that represented their brand. They may share similar layouts but the colors, fonts, banners and designs were consistent with their products and brand,” Chu said.
After launching the website redesign, the team gathered data for a few months. “Comparing our sales data and customer engagement we saw a pretty huge spike. Customers were not only looking at more pages, but they were buying more products,” Chu said.
Average order value increased from $55 to $68 and conversion rate increased from 2.8% on average to 3.2%.
“Every industry is unique so research will be essential to create a website design that is effective and relevant,” Chu advised.
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