Need help with landing page for charity site, any takers?

March 17, 2009 7:32 AM

Hi guys, I'm helping to run an adwords campaign for Elevyn.com and need help with a landing page.

Currently have one here: http://www.elevyn.com/alt/landing_page.html

Bounce rate is currently at 65% for the landing page.
I'm no expert when it comes to landing pages, and only know the basics.

Does anyone out there have any experience in landing pages and is willing to help out this good cause?

Further Project details here:
http://projects.metafilter.com/1930/Elevyn

posted by friedbeef to computers & internet (11 comments total)

Well, for starters there are no links on the first fold of the website (the area that is seen without scrolling). This leads me to think many people read some of the site and leave cause they don't see a link, and they don't have a purpose to scroll to find those links. It is not immediately clear what the site is about unless you scroll. The top banner is needlessly long, the words are too big, and the wrong ones are highlighted (the word "necklace" needs to be bold, for instance). As well, the descriptive image about the money saved is too big and in the wrong place: you haven't explicitly told the site viewer what they are buying, yet you are already going into phase two of marketing (explaining the pros and cons of your product versus others, etc).

Another factor not contributing to your cause is the hard to find price for each item, despite the fact that the site is boasting how a lot more of the money makes it to the makers. Considering the prices are in my mind pretty low for that type of jewelery, display this on the main page! Something as simple as a spread of images (maybe 3) with price balloons on them is crude but effective. This image should be above the fold, so that the person visiting the site sees the merchandise, sees the low price, and is motivated to continue. THAT's when you sell them on the ethical benefits of it.

The #1 best landing page is one that fits onto the average monitor without scrolling. This limits you in presenting only the core information to start with, which is what users want in deciding whether to continue on the site or not. And ultimately it only benefits that business by presenting more information, such that the people who do click through actually want to buy the necklaces instead of only wanting to see the price.
posted by Meagan at 7:48 AM on March 17, 2009 [1 favorite]

I'm not sure exactly what it is that you're asking for, but my feedback for this page:

- The hand in the banner photo looks kind of gross, and I find it off-putting. Could it be smaller, with more emphasis on another photo?
- If the point is to sell a product (and that *is* your point, really), I want to see the product at the top of the page. Perhaps put the product immediately following the "Quality products..." section? That way, you've got a bit of intro to what you're doing, but your audience can also immediately see the product.
- I'd also rephrase the "Quality products..." header. It's a bit too... earnest. You don't have to try so hard to convince me that it's a quality product, and the "remote regions of Asia" bit is kind of condescending. Same with "Help the poor."
- You don't need to list the most popular items twice.
- Is there a reason the sidebar space isn't being used? I'd rather see the more informational copy there. I'd also scale down the graphics for maker/villager, middlemen, buyer.
- Also? "Maker/villager" should be something like "artist" or "artisan."
- Consider dropping the overly earnest testimonials section. This sort of thing, for me, always inspires exactly the opposite emotion than what is intended: it makes me suspicious, rather than comforted. It makes me wonder why it is that you're trying so hard to convince me that you're not shady. What you might do instead is use stories from those helped, but treat them as graphics throughout the site (when it's more than just this page); you could put a quote on a colored background, with an accompanying photo, for example.

Overall, I like the look of the page and the palette used, and it's clearly an awesome project. I'd suggest taking a close look at your copy -- are you striking the tone you want? You might dig around on the web sites of various big-name nonprofits: CARE International, Habitat for Humanity, etc., for inspiration; they do a good job with striking the "a hand up, not a handout" tone I think you're looking for.
posted by runningwithscissors at 7:53 AM on March 17, 2009 [1 favorite]

The jewelry is great, and the prices are not bad. You should completely switch your focus -- make the product the headline, and the charity mission the below-the-fold backstory. I agree heartily with runningwithscissors about the overly earnest tone -- it makes it seem a bit desperate and needy.
posted by Rock Steady at 8:09 AM on March 17, 2009

Keep the feedback coming guys - EXTREMELY Useful.
posted by friedbeef at 8:20 AM on March 17, 2009

Here's what doesn't exactly inspire confidence in me. On the front page, I see:

If you buy from us, the maker gets 85% of the profits!

Just below that, I see:

In every transaction we do, we are completely transparent, and we will show you the exact amount we take, and the exact amount that gets passed on to the maker.

So then I click on the first item, and on that page it says:

Maker receives 70.2% (USD 6.95) of selling price
Social cause receives 5% (USD 0.50) of selling price

I don't see "the exact amount we take" listed anywhere, and the percentage to the maker is significantly less than 85%. If that's because of the difference between selling price and profits, it seems needlessly confusing.
posted by Combustible Edison Lighthouse at 8:31 AM on March 17, 2009

It is very hard to give feedback here without looking at your AdWords campaign itself. So much of the bounce rate is about poor keyword choice, or poor match of keywords to landing page content.

At the most basic level, directing me to a page with a URL of /alt/landing_page tells me I'm being gamed. Move the page into the root directory and rename the URL to something like popular.html or jewellery.html or whatever works with your campaign

Also agree with the above, the page should be re-ordered:

Check out our most popular items:

Quality products from remote regions of Asia

Help the Poor

How do we do this

Your homepage focuses on products but your landing page focuses on charity. Which is your AdWords campaign aimed at? Fix the page accordingly.

PS: Your search doesn't work :(
posted by DarlingBri at 8:56 AM on March 17, 2009

More thoughts:

- I'm curious -- why is the site called Elevyn? Is there any real reason for it, or is this an attempt to be cute or trendy? I'm concerned that the spelling will be a problem for people as they're trying to type your URL. I keep reading it as Evelyn; I don't know if that's a problem for anyone else.
- Be consistent in your ad copy: use periods when you have sentences, and don't use them when you have sentence fragments. On this page, there's no reason to have a period after "Colors: Light brown and gold," particularly if you don't put a period after "Read more about our raw materials here" -- this sort of thing irks me as a reader.
- Also on this page, under "Our Products," be consistent in listing items as either singular or plural, not both. It looks as if you slipped up when you list "Jewellery Boxes" and "Keychain." Furthermore, it's "Brooches," not "Broochs."
- I agree that the prices should be larger/easier to find on the individual product pages.
- Finally, on elevyn.com, get rid of the cheesy flash icons. It ruins the classy, professional look you have going on otherwise.
posted by runningwithscissors at 9:12 AM on March 17, 2009

I was a bit confused by the graphic about removing the middleman - I mean, isn't your company the middleman?

That is, if you're hooking up buyers and sellers in exchange for fraction of the sales price as a commission; and you're maybe sorting out the shipping (I assume they don't FedEx the single grass bracelet from africa directly to me - or do they?) then you sound like a middleman to me.

I would maybe replace that graphic with a pair of pie charts, one for conventional retail showing whatever the breakdown there is, and one showing (for a $15 item) segments for Paypal ($0.89), other transaction/website running costs ($2.87), Social Cause ($0.75) and Payment to maker ($10.50).
posted by Mike1024 at 9:20 AM on March 17, 2009

The word poor has negative connotations. I'd replace with either needy or disadvantaged. You should check out other sites for help with tone, like feedingamerica.org
posted by damn dirty ape at 9:29 AM on March 17, 2009

I'd suspect that the main reason your bounce rate is so high is that the landing page doesn't bother to link to the main site. (Is the only way to get through to click on one of the "most popular items" links?) (Why are those doubled, by the way?)

But equally important: the design is terribly, completely inappropriate for the message you're trying to put across; this is true both on the landing page and on the main site. At first glance this looks like over-SEO'd snake oil of some kind (to the point where I actually flagged this question as a spam attempt before reading more carefully.)

Lose the powerpoint-ish clip art (the "middlemen" graphic is especially bad, but you've got this junk all over the place) and the late-night-infomercial-speak ("Still not convinced?"); that'll get you most of the way there.

Jeez, I'm clicking through your site more now: Fire your designer. Seriously. At the very least take away his clip-art collection. The graphics are so off-message I can barely stand it. Your logo is great, but everything else about the design looks like you're trying to sell me office productivity tools or, like, amway products or time-share condos or something. When I look at your "about us" page, what I see is "slick and overproduced," not "socially conscious."

(And when I read your "blog" page, that impression solidifies: half the posts are about entrepreneurism and "Impact Point Meetings" and pre-seed funding and how to improve your powerpoint presentation style. Get your bizdev people off the storefront; the site gives me the impression that you're a bunch of suits taking advantage of third-worlders. Which I can only assume is not the image you intend to project.)
posted by ook at 12:04 PM on March 17, 2009 [1 favorite]

For comparison: the now-defunct eziba.com had a mission and business model that was very similar to yours. Compare their design and copy to yours (anything prior to mid-2005, when overstock.com bought out the domain) -- it's all about the art and the artisans, not about how awesome they are at putting together a slide deck. I don't think they did a perfect job, but they at least knew who their potential customers were and did their best to appeal to them. It really doesn't look like you guys put much thought into who you were designing the site for.
posted by ook at 12:34 PM on March 17, 2009