Mint Digital

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.