From the category archives:

Web Site Design

Go Explore! with Salop Leisure

by positiveadmin on November 15, 2010

Leading touring caravan, motorhome and holiday home firm, Salop Leisure, know how important strategic marketing is to their success. That’s why they appointed Positive Advertising to create a new graphic identity, website and marketing campaign – to ensure they stay ahead of the market. To say that the UK holiday market is continuing to undergo a revolution is, shall we say, an understatement. Any company operating in this sector must ensure that their branding and web presence are carefully targeted to today’s more demanding buyers – who expect the same (or superior) levels of comfort on holiday as they enjoy at home. Frankly, if you’re still aiming for the Captain Scott ‘pluck and hair-shirt’ market – you’ll go under.

The caravan and holiday home market used to be undemanding. Hardy souls would buy a green box with no mod-cons and find a friendly farmer, with a bit of space between the barn and slurry pit, to park it. The ‘van’ would keep out most of the weather, but none of the local wildlife. Electricity was not even an option. A family of eight would be fed from a two-ring gas hob and evenings would be spent playing Cluedo under the dim, hiss-and-reek of gas mantle lights – which at least masked some of the stench from the uncomfortably close chemical toilet.

Then we all went collectively soft. Today, standard features include double glazing, central heating, showers, fully-fitted kitchens, double bedrooms with en-suite facilities, plasma TV and Wi-Fi.

Forget the slurry pit! People expect Capability Brown landscaped gardens, a panorama of pristine beaches, dramatic seascapes and mountains. They want the convenience of on-site shops, clubs, entertainment, heated indoor swimming pools, gym and sauna. Even campers no longer expect to rough it. Clean, heated toilet and shower blocks, laundrettes and even mains power hook-ups for tents are now routinely provided. The days of the hole-in-the-ground toilet, and washing from a standpipe in the middle of a field, are long gone.

Our experience, and research in this sector, revealed a younger, more aspirational, market for caravan holiday homes, luxury lodges, touring caravans and motorhomes – but they are a more demanding segment than old-school owners. Manufacturers and park owners are already responding to this changing clientele by creating innovative new products and leisure solutions. The leading retailers must do the same.

Marketing to a younger, more affluent and demanding, staycation generation is a real challenge. They are more likely to respond to a lifestyle approach of ’selling the dream’, so we put the dream centre stage with our ‘Go Explore!’ theme.  Stylistically, Go Explore!’ is about bold images, clean layouts and accompanying aspirational copy. The idea is to inspire people to discover the magnificence of the countryside – from the historic Heart of England to the sparse and remote Mid Wales landscapes and the dramatic, safe sandy Mid Wales coast.

All marketing activities were re-aligned to work together and deliver clear messages:

  • Lifestyle
  • Freedom
  • Flexible Breaks
  • A simplified ‘Road to Ownership’ and Finance

salop leisure about us page

The tools we chose covered the full range of traditional marketing techniques and all the powerful new online tools. Central to the whole effort is a new website. A clean, and clear, Go Explore! themed design with a powerful suite of back office utilities – designed to help Salop Leisure gather information and stay in touch with their customers.

The website, www.salopleisure.co.uk keeps all the critical content above the fold. Copy is set to a fairly consistent word count and is keyword loaded – but not packed. Naturally our SEO consultants have checked the structure and content to maximise organic search engine ranking. Most of the necessary information is loaded onto specially shot video. This keeps the word count down, maximises user interest and adds a level of interactivity that Google loves so much.

The front end is deliberately not over-designed. However, there are powerful search engines for people to locate used touring caravans, motorhomes and caravan holiday homes. There is a search facility to help people find a holiday home park that matches their needs exactly – from the Heart of England to Mid Wales Inland and Coastal.

Pristine beaches, dramatic seascapes and mountains, slurry pit – it’s all down to individual choice.

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New Paycare Website & Branding

by positiveadmin on November 14, 2010

For a few years now, we have been looking at the dated graphic identity of one of our most long-standing and valued clients. Finally we were tasked with rebranding Paycare’s print materials: to redesign layout and content in a more modern and cost-effective manner, in order to improve enquiry to conversion rates. The brief also called for a total website revamp. The original identity was created back in the day when Letraset and ‘camera ready artwork’ (ask your dad) were leaving the building and the exciting world of the Apple Mac came swaggering in through the front door. That must explain why we thought, “wow, look we can put graphics and type together – I know let’s stick a couple of apples onto the new Paycare logo”. What can I say, we were young.

Hindsight is a great thing. Remember when you first started out at work; the keenness, how precious the work was to you? Blood sweat, tears, then more tears. Finally your first successful project is complete. Then, many years later, you come across that early work and cringe in embarrassment at the blindingly obvious errors and ham-fisted techniques employed. It’s been a splinter under our collective skins – but at last we have taken a sterile needle and removed the irritation.

Simplicity
We did what we should have done the first time around – embraced simplicity. We reduced the colour palette and introduced modern typography. We finally got rid of the apples and devised a new strapline – replacing the vague ‘Here to help’ with a more specific ‘Everyday Health Cover since 1874’, with it’s reassurance of experience and tradition. We did not abandon graphics altogether. An apple tree and birds feature as visual signifiers throughout. Each is slightly adapted for the product range, so that the Paycare Family policy features nest-building birds, whilst the over 64s policy (Paycare Gold) features owls in the apple tree.

We re-examined every step in the encounter to conversion process and streamlined all paperwork (and online content) to help get prospective customers onto the road to conversion quickly, reducing the amount of work and number of steps required to get there. We changed paper stock, print processes, layout and folding regimes that added clarity, but saved on production costs.

Changes to the Website
Paycare’s initial website, in line with many at the time, has limited functionality. However, the possibilities to operate as a commercial tool were not as common back in the day. In order to compete, it was vital to rebuild the website around the core points, establishing consistency between print materials and online information.

  • We built in the same step-by-step conversion process as in the printed documentation and made the individual policies an easy to understand process, right through to paying online.
  • We de-cluttered and made sure that the website and print materials were integrated in function, design and appearance.
  • We introduced an intermediary service – giving third parties the opportunity to re-sell Paycare products in return for a commission.

As per usual now, SEO consultants crawled the content; keywords were incorporated rather than packed – so the copy amazingly still makes sense to a human reader. Video has been commissioned to cut down on explanatory copy and show visitors how to claim and download information and forms. The new website will be live before the end of the year.

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The value of Targeted Landing Pages

by positiveadmin on November 8, 2010

Our latest ‘must have’ piece of kit ties in to the latest buzz term – Landing Page Optimization. We can now solve a problem that has concerned marketers for some time – the call for action that points to a web address. It may be the home page or a specific product page, but one thing is certain, it won’t be optimised for conversion and that could mean potential lost sales. But now we can stop that from happening with new kit that lets us create targeted landing pages that channel customers into a conversion funnel.

Web pages, by their nature, tend to be static, designed for general consumption with little or no flow to conversion. A back office will give clients dynamic content access to areas like news and product pages – but you can’t make real changes to the placement, colours, visual elements or flow, plant keywords or make the content SEO specific for a particular offer. Trying to vary pages on your site to cope with targeting specific market segments and changing, sometimes short-term offers would tie-up expensive programmers and risk losing the overall consistent look and feel that make a site coherent. It’s not practical either economically, from a branding point of view or even achievable in a tight timescale.

Our solution gives us the facility to create externally hosted, tightly constructed, interactive, content rich landing pages that reach specific market segments – with a specifically targeted offer. Better still we can create a flow through nested pages, channelling viewers into smaller groups, by self-selecting interest, until they arrive at a conversion point (it may be a sale, an enquiry, information or test drive request). They are quick and easy to set up (if you know what you are doing), ready to respond to changing markets and specific offers, and because they are external to your site, they won’t compromise the existing brand integrity.

It increases landing page performance and decreases the resources needed to make it happen, lifting conversion rates. It converts traffic into real business. But the best thing about it is it gives marketers the facility to live test the layout and all the elements of the page. The creation of multiple page variations means each one can be tested, and analyzed, by sending sample customers to the various landing pages and seeing which is the most effective – before going live. That way the ‘hit and miss’ is taken out of the equation.

It qualifies and converts traffic by:

  • Creating & launching targeted landing pages, microsites & conversion paths;
  • Testing alternative landing experiences against one another;
  • Testing alternative text, images and forms within pages;
  • Analyzing performance from click-to-conversion.

Here are our ‘top 10 tips’ for creating high-converting landing pages:

1.    Use landing pages to capture leads

When a viewer is sent to the home page of a website, he or she can “go anywhere, from anywhere.” This puts the burden on the viewer to find the information he or she needs. Instead of placing this burden on a potential customer, use a landing page to offer up only relevant content based on the ad clicked or message that brought them to the site in the first place.

2.    Message match ads & pages

An ad is not complete without its matching landing page, and vice versa. Think of the two as Ant and Dec; one wouldn’t be right without the other. Whatever you promise in an ad, should be directly fulfilled in the landing page. Visitors will “land and leave” if your page doesn’t fulfil the promise – which is why a general web landing page increases the ‘bounce rate’.

3. Simplify

Clutter leads to low conversion rates. Reduce landing page content –provide only what is essential. It’s tempting to include paragraphs of information, your logo, a form, a product shot and so on, but through testing you can learn exactly what you need and what you can leave.

4.    Improve your content and copy

Remember, landing pages are supposed to sell, not inform. Make sure the copy does just that – selling benefits not features.

5.    Check your forms

Don’t drown your users in long forms. Form fields are a good way to collect good user data; however viewers can see the form as a hurdle. Forms can block conversion – unless information gathering is your conversion goal! If you’re looking to generate lots of leads, ask only for a name and email address. For high-quality leads, you’ll need to include more specific form fields. It’s a balancing act between generating leads and maintaining quality. Cut what you can.

6.    Test and test again

To get started, you should probably begin with a few comparison tests. You might test a page with a product image versus a page with a product video. After you find which works best then test small changes on that template and repeat. Then repeat again, refining the landing page until there is no significant improvement in response.

7.    Think beyond one page

Vary the layout, content and design according to the offer and target market segment. Grab your visitor’s attention with conversion-focused experiences. Experiment with pre-conversion segmentation – sending visitors into specific channels, or small micro-sites. Multi-page experiences can be just as conversion-focused as a single page, and they are often a better user experience.

8.    Segment visitors

Web surfers often develop a click rhythm while they’re surfing. Keep them in this rhythm by offering a simple choice on the landing page that filters them into segmented channels. In just one simple click, you are able to filter out unqualified leads, offer specifically targeted information, and gain user information that you might otherwise have to ask for in a form field – that’s because use can measure all the clicks, so visitors are giving you valuable information just by seeing where they have been.

9.    Video, social, widgets

Visitors expect this! They want to see and interact, and it’s really to your benefit to meet this expectation. For many viewers just the fact that you have the confidence to show your product in a video is comforting – even if they may never even bother to watch it.

10.    Personal touch!

Be relevant, targeting boosts conversions. The more personal you can get, the better your chances are for converting clicks into customers.

Landing page optimization is not rocket science, but knowing the science and art behind best practices does help. By using them, Positive Advertising can turn visitors into customers (and track every online and telephone response generated) so you can see the true value of the service. For a practical example look at the JT Hughes example in the Integrating E-mail Marketing and Landing Pages article.

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