How effective is your website? More specifically, how effective is it at moving visitors towards your conversion goals?
​There are countless factors that will determine the answer to that question. In today's website review, you'll discover two of these factors: specificity and contrast. As you'll see, both of these are "underlying" factors that can affect your website in many ways.
By understanding the principles of specificity and contrast, you can improve the design, messaging, content and more on your site.​
More...
Links & Resources
The website we were reviewing today was Chic Divas of Travel. Here are some useful posts that tie in with the comments I made about the site.​
- Learn more about why homepage sliders are always a bad choice.
- The Big 3 Conversion Killers - includes more about text on background images.
- More about why generic titles are bad for your site (and what to do about it).
Do you have any questions about the points made in the video? And what will you do to increase specificity and contrast on your site?
Let us know by leaving a comment below!​
As usual some really great insights Shane.
Thank you, Mark!
Blog page would not even load for me. However, why would you even want a blog page? the site is showing what seems like all the posts below that slider anyway. There is also no real navigation and as a visitor looking for a specific holiday type, that’s a link I would be looking for. I.e Adventure holiday, honymoon, Relaxing place to stay. I know people say an image can say a thousand words, but a good textual link can say the exact words that will get me to follow it.
Thanks for your comment, Steven!
Those are some good points, yes. Especially about image vs. text. An image may be worth a thousand words but only if it’s the right image, in the right place.
Nice new header (menu) .. Is it theme or created by plugins?
Thanks!
It’s a custom build, for the moment. But of course, we will be creating features that allow users to create something similar using our tools. You can think of this as the beta version. 🙂
Am I missing something here Shane? This page does not seem to have a video – just a short description starting with: “How effective is your website?….” – and ending with: “Let us know by leaving a comment below!​”
Hi Michael,
It’s at the very top of the page, above the title. If you can’t see it, maybe try a hard refresh on the page (Ctrl + F5).
The big question I have is how do you create ONE headline on the home page for a site that’s catering to so many different market segments? I come up against this when dealing with service businesses like massage therapists, for example.
That’s a very important question.
First, we need to examine this on the business level: a very common mistake is to try and appeal to everyone. This applies to a business, a product etc. An important question to ask is: should my business have this many different offers for this many people in the first place?
Sometimes, the answer is yes, but sometimes, the best thing to do is to simplify and focus on a core group instead of trying to create something for everyone.
If you do arrive at the conclusion that diverse offerings are important for the business, then the question becomes: how do the different sub-groups of people that these products are made for arrive on my site and what’s the best way for them to navigate towards the right solution for them?
You can see an example of a possible approach on this very website. Our homepage and our navigation menu are made to make our different offers easy to understand and access for visitors.
Hi
Yes. Speaking about pictures sizes, sometimes is an issue for me. When I go to WordPress, they have three different images sizes to set up- small, medium and large. When I go to thrive themes, the theme optimizes the size by itself and when I share the blog on Facebook, the size image sometimes is bad for them. What is the right picture size in orden to comply the requirements of all them? Maybe you can suggest me a link to learn about it.
Thank you for this blog, I am going to follow your suggestions about specificity and contrast.
Thanks for the tips
Glad you enjoyed them, Alesandre!
Also, at the 5:03 min. mark, regarding the title of that section –
‘Our Product of Service’…… is actually grammatically incorrect.
It should simply either be – ‘Our Product’ or – ‘Our Service’
Or even – ‘Our Product and Services’
Not – Our Product of Service.
Maybe this is being too particular, but I’m a stickler for such things that can be a reflection of the site owner’s command of English, or lack thereof. In other words – ‘credibility’
But that’s just me. 🙂
Thanks for your comment, Mark!
While it is nitpicking, I agree that details like this are important to make a good impression.
What a pity you didn’t do a makeover. That would have been compelling.
It’s not my site. And doing a whole makeover would increase the scope of a review quite dramatically.
It’s something I’m open to doing, but it’s not easy to arrange. 🙂
Thank you, Shane!
Glad you liked it, Maureen!
Your videos always present info I never saw any place else. Thank you!
I’m very happy to hear that, Ali!
I agree with all your points. How can I submit my landing page for review? 😀
Hello Ambrose,
You can submit your site on this page.
Always wonderful to hear all your videos and such great advice.
Thank you, Sedelia!
Brilliant once again Shane thank you for sharing your knowledge on this stuff.
Thanks for your comment, Jason! Glad you liked this website review. 🙂
Thank you for the advice. Very useful and right timing as I just started to work on an update on our website.
Your menu is also great. Love to see it in the future updates of the themes / plugins.
Thanks, Adam!
We will be adding a feature to create such menus in the future, yes. 🙂
Hi Shane, I took 2 words from this video/post.Specificity & Contrast.
You might not advertise it but you are a very Good copywriter.
I noticed some design changes today on the blog.The menu element and i think font is a little bigger than usual and it Looks really good.
It just came to my mind, what is the theme you are using on this blog?
Thank you, Mike!
The theme used here is the Ignition theme, but we’ve heavily modified it over the years. We keep experimenting with things on this site, which is why it’s always changing in small ways. 🙂
Nice share.
Plain slider background images (eg light blue with white text on it) would even be better.
Thanks for your comment!
I’d say no sliders at all would be even better. But background images can work with text overlays, the images just have to be chosen well.
Always wonderful to hear all your videos and such great advice.
Thank you, Lara!
You’ve covered this in previous videos but I think it is particularly relevant for this site as I really don’t know what it is trying to achieve!
Am I booking a holiday or looking at a business op.
In either case there’s no call to action whatsoever on the home page and clicking the Learn More buttons just scrolls down to the blog posts.
I’m guessing this is a site under construction. If so, my advice would be to focus on just one thing and go live with that and that alone. Maybe even as simple as collecting an email address at this stage – at least visitors can be contacted again – currently anyone visiting will be lost forever. Add the extras (different types of holidays / bus.op.) when there is a complete funnel / process towards the call to action.
One other point – some of the blog posts (at least the tiles – I’ve not read them) appear totally irrelevant to the site content. e.g. Does your income affect your health? // Being a healthier U
Good comments, Mark! Thanks for your input!
I often say to companies that ask me for advice about ‘one pager’ websites: It is nice to scroll, but often difficult to get people’s attention, because people are fascinated of ‘how nice it slides’ and how great the images look… But do they understand what you do? And second most important: do you get the to take the action you want?
Great example to this same matter: Looks nice but is not effective.
Thanks for your comment, Tom! Yeah, fancy stuff can end up distracting from your content. Another reason why I prefer simple, straight forward layouts.
My website have high bounce rate. Content seems to be ok, but layout and colours are not grerat.
Hello Shane, thanks for share this video!
Thanks for the very good tips.
I like your theme! Where do you sell it?
Great Insight
Thanks! Another value content.
Shane great, I loved the video thank you!
I had doubt about slider, now I am sure that I will not use it in my projects…Thank you for you video
Glad to know we converted you to the light side. 😉
Muito bacana, conteúdo de muita importancia, obrigado por compartilhar.
Thank you, Curso!