Enhancing your web site’s visual appeal and structure through evidence led design can have a significant impact on customer engagement and ultimately conversion to sales and/or leads.
As one of the UK’s leading visual identification service for cats and dogs, the company has built-up corporate relationships with major animal re-homing charities [...]]]> Web site makeover

Enhancing your web site’s visual appeal and structure through evidence led design can have a significant impact on customer engagement and ultimately conversion to sales and/or leads.
As one of the UK’s leading visual identification service for cats and dogs, the company has built-up corporate relationships with major animal re-homing charities – including The Dogs Trust and Wood Green – which includes a first year subscription to the service with every animal they re-home. While this strategy continues to deliver strong year 1 business, renewal rates via the web site have proved extremely low compared to other less cost-effective channels.

Additionally the company is aiming to expand their corporate relationships and recently came to feel that the site did little to support their pitches. Pipstone Online Solutions were therefore engaged to review the branding of the site as well as the home page structure to encourage more renewals.

Dull and lifeless, the old site did little to inspire visitors – reflecting in poor customer retention rates.?
As well as being visually unappealing, our immediate observation was that the homepage failed to adequately describe the core service the company offered and featured confusing navigation making usability a key issue.
Equally the company’s brand presence was weak and amateurish which for corporates and consumers – for whom the point of renewal would be their first encounter with the brand – did little to inspire confidence, enthusiasm and a sense of value.
Our Response
As a first step to overcoming this we set to work on a visual overhaul of the company?s home page and primary navigation addressing each of the issues identified in our initial design audit.

 
Bright and vibrant, our new visual design delivers greater visual impact and brand presence with a clear value statement taking centre stage.
Shifting the dominant colour from red to blue not only provides a friendlier, fresher user experience but also allows the brand’s red to be used as an ‘accent’ colour – directing the user’s attention as required to improve usability and click-thru rates.
Greater visual prominence is given to ‘calls to action’ – ie: ‘Buy Now’ and ‘Renew Membership’ etc. – while being set into a new visual footer which further supports the selling process with customer testimonials and a simple ticker displaying the number of pets the service has safely returned to customers – vital proof of service value which was simply missing from the old site.
Return on Investment
After just two weeks Google Analytics (embedded in the site) already demonstrate a measurable return on investment with a clear shift in user click-thrus away from random browsing to the website’s key calls to action and a 218% increase in the average time users spend on the site.
Crucially however, click-share for the home page’s ‘Renew Membership’ action has instantly increased from 5.1% to 25% demonstrating that the site’s users are now able to immediately identify the path they need to take to renew their account and are more confident to take that step.

Thereafter a substantial increase in visitor numbers has been measured on the first renewals information page and 185% increase in users clicking through to the buying process itself.

We are now working with the company to deliver a revised renewal process which we expect to double conversion rates thereby achieving the client’s medium term objectives within the first 90 days of our engagement and delivering sustainable growth through improved customer retention.

These metrics were compiled on 07 July 2011.

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