Mint Digital

I felt embarrassed reading Knock Knock, Seth Godin’s new book. It says everything we’ve been striving for with Mint Digital but puts it a whole load better.

Two quotes I’ll steal for pitch meetings

‘Like it or not your website has a tone of voice.’

The Mozilla vs BlogBridge example demonstrates this perfectly. BlogBridge doesn’t look like like an successful open source project, it looks like a small business-to-business website.

‘All the cues that people rely on are muted online. There is no touch or smell or location. There is very little sound. So we obsess about subtle cues of typeface or colour or photography. It is hard to overestimate how much these things matter.’

I hope this is true, we sure spend enough time obsessing about these things. It’s strange, because many of the examples in the book are ugly. (I wonder if this is not chance. Direct marketing is the ugliest form of advertising and the mentality Seth is outlining is heavily direct marketing influenced).

But if I am going to pick bones:

Bone 1: The value of choices
Seth says choices are bad, but is it that simple? Choices are empowering. Take them away and users feel out-of-control. Tesco sells good, better, best. Three choices makes the customer feel like she is buying. Not being sold to.

Bone 2: Inverted pyramid structure
Seth suggests that the ‘inverted pyramid’ comes from the engineering mentality of early site designers. I’m not sure it does.

If you meet a prospective client at a networking event, you don’t force him to hear about your unique approach then your clients then your history. You let him choose the flow of the conversation. The ‘inverted pyramid’ is a structure that lets user choose their own path.

Having said that, we are starting on two websites that are going to be much more path-based. (Interestingly both sites are for new businesses. I think we’ve been able to help them simplify their proposition - by considering how to sell it online.) And one of my favourite websites of all time is this very directional one.

Mint’s experience
We’ve been advocating small, focused sites, closely tied to AdWords campaigns - the sort of sites Knock Knock advocates. Often, they just don’t seem to meet the clients’ needs.

Maybe it comes down to the type of client. AdWords isn’t half as effective for a capital allowance consultancy or a qualitive research specialist as it is for an online turf seller (our biggest AdWords’ success to date). And if you are not using AdWords, you’ve got much less idea of what your browsers want - so maybe it makes sense to lay out the information on an ‘inverted pyramid’ platter.

The Click #011

I was wondering: are there online selling techniques that only the large web design firms have mastered?

To help find out, I recruited 4 volunteers, each in an executive-y job, and gave them this brief:

“You work in marketing at a FTSE 100 firm. Your boss wants you to have an initial meeting with a web design firm. Look at the websites of the following 4 big firms… Decide who to call.”

Contrasting reactions

Comments on the ‘about us’ section of Hyperlink Interactive included:

“I’d want to do business with these people. I could trust them.”

“These guys know nothing, nothing about branding. They look like they work out of unit 9 of an industrial estate. Geeks and nerds - I would not use them.”

“These people look like a bunch of [expletive deleted]s.”

On the other 3 sites, evaluations also diverged.

The minimal aesthetic of AKQA turned on two users. But the other two were frightened away - ‘Too trendy’ they shuddered.

Oyster won plaudits from some for getting straight to the point with case studies. But a couple of users were confused. They thought the case study of Orange’s new website was actually a description of a joint service the two firms offered.

Personally, I was most impressed by Agency.com. It delivered a clear message. The inside pages combine text and animation persuasively and with technical excellence. However, not one tester put it top.

Lesson learnt

1. None of the big boys has an all-powerful selling secret.

2. Some things drain goodwill. For example, every single tester felt aggrieved by a link on AKQA’s front page entitled ‘Ideas - Volume One’ that led straight to a ‘Buy Now’ cul-de-sac.

3. You can’t please everyone all the time. Fact-loving Economist readers won’t be wowed by the same pages as style-loving iD readers. First decide who you want to impress. Then work out how to impress them.

4. One thing united the testers. They wanted to see three things: people, clients and case studies. All four sites included such sections but sometimes they were hidden in a neglected corner.

If my abortive quest shows one thing, it is the value of testing. Web users’ reactions are incredibly diverse. Testing early helps you find common ground - and knowing where it is gives you a better chance of hitting it.

Thanks to everyone who made our party special! Thanks for putting up with our play (last one ever, I promise).