They just would substitute the main picture and change text, my guess is it took them an hour to build the entire websites. The problem with this is that it’s not only boring, it’s also not a good business practice at your charging people for a new website, but giving them re-used websites.
Have you ever noticed when you are designing a website, you have a tendency to fall back on what worked in the past for you? Does it get to the point where all your sites start to look the same? I call this the “Mike Brady Syndrome”. If you remember, in The Brady Bunch Movie, Mike, an architect was failing to sell designs as they all looked like his one successful project: The Brady house. He designed a gas station, and it was the Brady House with gas pumps, he then designed a restaurant, again exactly the same. He couldn’t understand why he couldn’t sell a design, as he was too close to it to see the forest through the trees.
The point is, we all get stale and it can be challenging to come up with new designs. For me, I don’t have the option of repeated trips back to the drawing board, so I tend to have at least 2 other designers create a mockup along with myself. This allows my clients to have really good choices and the end result tends to be something special. As my company develops sites for small businesses, this type of service is pretty rare, and I am proud of that. Now if I were strictly a designer I may not be able to do this, but since I also develop and ultimately manage the sites, it is my best interest to create something special, even if the design phase can be quite costly. I also try to rotate in new freelancers to create designs, as using the same few ends up back with Brady Houses.
So let me ask you this, if you are a designer, you need to get inspiration to avoid the syndrome I mentioned. Where do you go for that inspiration? Websites? A walk in nature? I would love to hear. I am sure those pulling their hair out would like to know as well.
Over and above everything we do in web design and web development, the call to action is by far the most important. Others would point to search engine optimization. This of course is important, as you need to get them to your website. BUT, if f they get to your site and you have no clear call to action, your site will flounder.
So what is a call to action? Dictionary.com defines it as: “the implicit or explicit suggestion contained in a marketer’s content in an advertising banner or Web site copy”. In the early day of the internet, this was usually, a “Click Here” link. We have gotten away from that a bit, though click here is still pretty common and clients often still like to use the phrase. Now good call to actions can be in the form of a graphical element, (button, banner, graphic), a link, or other ways to get visitors to take the desired next step. This could be to make a purchase (if this is a product) , call you (as with service providers), or click on a link to be contacted or to get you to the page they need you to see.
Now, in this particular case, the call to action is designed to get visitors to fill out a form for a free review. The program which is guaranteed to save restaurants money is a good one, but if no one signs up, no one reaps the benefit and the company fails. My design team came up with a great strategy, where your eye is drawn to the call to action. The main graphical element, which will be a jquey fade between 4 slides will end with a powerful message urging them to fill out the form and pointing them below to the form. Below the image fade is a quick explanation of the program, which is actually a “challenge”. To the right of that is the actual form. Now even the header image background in the explanation is actually an arrow pointing you to the form. So all the elements work in concert to get the visitor to the call to action. (When this launches, I will add a link here to illustrate my point).
