Online, first impressions count. When landing on your website, customers take just seconds to decide whether to look around or hit the ‘back’ button, returning to the search engine and jumping to your competitor’s site. If your website is badly designed, poorly worded or just plain confusing, it could be losing you money. This short seminar will help you to make your website work harder for your business. User experience expert, Barnie Mills from Crafted will explore what makes a successful website, helping you to boost enquiries and improve online sales. Looking at design and content , the session will outline helpful tweaks to boost the performance of your existing site and the considerations for creating one from scratch.

1. Crafted
SEMINAR
IS YOUR WEBSITE
LOSING YOU MONEY?

2. Barnie Mills
Head of Design
verb [ with obj ]
exercise skill in making (something):
he crafted the chair lovingly | (as adj. crafted) :
a beautifully crafted object.

3. What the next 35 minutes are about
• Using design to engage users and increase site conversion
• Quite a lot of common sense
• Some tools to check the results
• Hopefully, a way to remember everything…

5. • Somewhere easy to find and to get to
• Somewhere that your date will be comfortable with
• Somewhere that suits the occasion
1. Choose a venue

6. Where are they from?
Where they come from should dictate where they go?
Source Medium
Google organic/cpc/referral
Bing organic/cpc
Facebook referral
Google shopping cpc
Yahoo organic/referral
Outlook direct

7. The homepage
(Arranging to meet under the clock at Waterloo Station)
• Easy to offer a wide range of options
• Expectation is not as clearly defined
• Harder to plan in advance
Image by Elliott Brown “ell-r-brown” (Flickr)

8. Landing pages
(Arranging to meet at the cinema)
• Expectation is predefined
• We have a much better idea
of what is going to happen
Photo: ScypaxPictures, www.flickr.com

9. I want one of these!
They’re fancy!

13. • Fairly self-explanatory - fashionably late won’t work
2. Turn up on time

14. Page load
We could have failed before we’ve started
Every second loading =
0.65 increase in bounce rate!

15. Mobile
The pre-date traffic jam!
• Consider image use
• Consider what is really important

16. No, you can’t just ignore it!
20% of adults
own a tablet
Mobile Operators
Association (MOA) and
YouGov
Over half of
Britain owns
a smartphone
(Ofcom)

17. • People form an opinion of others within 30 seconds
• First impressions are hard to reverse!
3. Make a good first impression

18. Online it is even more important…
The average
time spent on
a webpage is
25
seconds
On average,
visitors only
read around
20%
of content
One in five
visitors leave
a site within
5
seconds

19. The 5 second rule

20. Image by Daniel Oines “dno1967b” (Flickr)

21. Am I in the right place?
• Is the core message obvious?
• Can I see a reference to
what I’m looking for?

22. Am I interested?
• Does it meet my expectations
at first glance?
• Do I care / empathise in any way?

23. Do I trust you?
• Is the site well presented
• Does the site look professional
• Can I see any evidence that the
site is trustworthy?
Image by Tattoo_Lover “tattoos-nu” (Flickr)

24. What next?
• Is there a clear call to action?
• Is there an obvious way
to explore the site further?

25. A quick 5 second example…

27. www.wiggle.co.uk
• What activities does this site cater for?
• What are 3 of the company’s USPs?

29. Passing the 5 second test…

30. Dress appropriately!
Image from allfancydress.com

32. Dealing with devices
• How will your content display?
• How will users interact (touchscreens)?

33. So which device should I target?
• 40+ Android devices launched last year
• We can’t be certain of the page size anymore

40. Breakpoint 1

41. Breakpoint 1

42. Breakpoint 1

43. Breakpoint 1

44. Breakpoint 2

45. Breakpoint 2

46. Breakpoint 2

47. Breakpoint 3

48. Breakpoint 3

49. Breakpoint 3

50. Breakpoint 4

51. Breakpoint 4

52. Breakpoint 4

53. Breakpoint 4

54. Breakpoint 4

56. Responsive web design
• Adapts to suit screen size
• Agnostic to device (in the most part)
• A single site to maintain
• A single set of analytics
• Google recommends responsive for mobile

57. Trust marks

60. Clear Calls to action

61. Calls to action (CTAs)
What is a call to action?
(I probably flash and play the theme
from The Apprentice every 30 seconds)

62. Call us today
0800 123 456

65. The easy wins…
• BIG
• PROMINENT
• ISOLATED
• AFFORDANCE (its form describes its function)
• COMFORT
( I struggled with a clever acronym!)

68. Bringing it all together.
The over-achiever…

70. • Quality conversation
• Be interesting & relevant
• Empathise
4. Build trust, build the relationship

71. Clear signals – refining CTAs
Good looks will only get you so far…
Learn More
(About what exactly?
It is a bit vague)

72. Try ‘Blind Date’ Free
60 second sign up
(What have I go to lose?)
An improvement…

73. However…
for most of us having
a clear, concise call
to action simply isn’t
enough on its own.

74. The art of conversation

75. • build trust
• build empathy
• build desire
Your content should…

77. • Consider related subjects
• Be interesting
• Be relevant
Don’t just talk about yourself

79. Social proof.
What do other people think?

82. Design patterns.
Clear signals again

83. Not quite!
Image: Flickr, IrishFireside

87. Anti-patterns
The awkward handshake or unexpected hug!
• ’Click here’
• ’Tiny targets’
• Beware the ‘Novel Notion’
(the designers shame!)

88. A time and a place for innovation
• Don’t re-invent the wheel
• Be consistent in your approach
• Avoid the ‘awkward handshake!’
Image by Grant Mitchell “anachronism_uk” (Flickr)

89. • It’s difficult to regain lost trust
• Long term relationships reap greater reward
• Always keep trying to improve
• Sometimes a surprise is good
5. You can just as easily lose trust

90. Beyond first conversion
New vs Returning
New
visitors
Returning
visitors

91. Welcome to the club
Newsletters and Accounts

92. Keep in touch

94. Customer benefits
(It’s all for them, honest)
• Membership benefits – offers, promotions
• Faster payment
• Make them feel ‘special’

95. Who really benefits?
• Know your customer
• Target them more efficiently
• Increase customer value

96. Don’t forget old fashioned
customer service!
• Keep your promises
• Keep the human touch
• Give a bit extra
• Just be nice!

97. There is no silver bullet

100. Testing assumptions

101. 40%
Increase in
conversion

102. 55%
Increase in
conversion

103. Testing toolkit

107. Summary

108. Blind date
1. Choose a venue
2. Turn up on time
3. Make a good first impression
4. Build trust, through conversation
5. Remember, it’s very easy to lose trust!

109. Thank you,
any questions?

110. Crafted
SEMINAR
Ipswich Studio
32 Fore Street,
Ipswich, IP4 1JU
T: +44 (0) 1473 322841
E: hello@crafted.co.uk
London Office
Clerkenwell Workshops,
27/31 Clerkenwell Close,
London, EC1R 0AT
T: +44 (0) 20 3393 3852
www.crafted.co.uk

111. Crafted
SEMINAR
Iconography from The Noun Project
iPhone, iPad (Andreas Bjurenborg), Computer, Shopping Cart, Cursor (Brandon Keelean),
Presentation (Joris Hoogendoorn), Coins (Mike Hince), Arrow (P.J. Onori), Earth (Francesco
Paleari), Sun (Olivier Guin), Fire (Diego Naive), Gasoline (Mitchell Geere),
Credits