Forums: Discussions for entrepreneurs and small business.

The girl sucks, she looks too young to be a provider of IT solutions. It gives me the image that your company is young. Almost too young.

Plus the site has no strong differentiator, i.e. what makes you a better choice than any of the other thousands of Microsoft Solution Providers?

BTW, congratulations on the 40 under 40 award.

The other thing I don`t understand is why are you looking for business on a website for startups? most of these startups don`t have lots of cash to be spending with a market leader like you. It kind of makes me worry that maybe you achieved all your success by accident, instead of by being smart. Maybe I`m drunk and I am talking out of turn. Please share some of your experiences in how you were able to grow your business so big (if you are still a member of this community)

:-) Way to go Steve... Reality is always a useful thing to keep in mind, I think.

The photo is not the right type...it`s more fitting for a younger audience.  Change the photo to a more realistic representation of your clients--decision makers.  Add more photos throughout the site, your clients logos perhaps.  It needs more imagery.

I agree with the above commentary about the photo of the girl. Perhaps if you moved it to the `about us` section and titled it as one of your customer service representatives, it wouldn`t be so extraneous. But now it has now relevance.

 

Regarding your navigation; having all the links in the upper left hand corner is a rookie move. Eye tracking studies show us that there is a phenomenon called ‘banner blindness’; and people’s eye’s tend to glaze over that part of a site. Also, clicking on your logo should be the link to your homepage – having a link that reads ‘home’ is extraneous and not necessary.

 

Do you know what your conversion rate is? I am assuming that the final goal is to get users to click on the ‘inquire with us’ hyperlink. Since this is your call to action; research shows us that you can raise your conversion rate by changing the hyperlink to a button. Also, you should put this above the fold on all of your pages as well.

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Best Regards,

Victor Wise

I think this thread is dead, the author has not responded in a while

(like many such threads...) ;-)

Here is an interesting report on the effectiveness (actually the ineffectiveness) of having a beautiful female on your webpage. http://www.marketingsherpa.com/article.html?id=30003

Really interesting article, Steve!

If I get it, the model could also be any major attention-getting image. The key is to "drag" the eyes to the photo, then directly in the field of vision, place the "must read" 4-second key point of the site.

well, sort of... if the photo of the "beautiful" person was actually using your product or services and getting a really great benefit from it (i.e. a super big smile, etc) then the phrase "a picture paints a thousand words" would come true.

unfortunately most web designers just use stock photography and don`t really care, and the website owners don`t hold the candle to them to care either, because either they have no knowledge of why they should make the extra effort, and secondly they don`t want to spend the money top get it right. i think the effort to get it right would return so much more profit, then the half effort to just get it done. but trying to get the camera to capture that moment takes skill and skill costs money.

if anyone has seen photos like this, please post some links here so we can get the understanding of how well it works. i`m wondering if a large company like Verizon "gets" it. But alas, I just went to their website (http://www22.verizon.com/) and there is the token beautiful model, staring blankly into space. You can`t tell if she is using a phone, or using the internet, or has just taken some extasy and is higher than my cell phone bill. Does this work to drive conversions? or is the cell phone so popular that it sells itself, and we wouldn`t care if you put a photo of a gorilla holding a banana to it`s ear, it would still convert to sales?