Do websites need to look pretty or even symmetric in order to generate revenue?

My marketing guy still insists they do. He has been telling me for the past two years that he can hardly get himself to look at a particular website because it is so ugly. 

But I still think that most consumers, whether of legal services or otherwise are clever people. They are not ‘naturally’ attracted to ‘pretty’. What actually attracts them is an ‘attraction’ and an attraction can sometimes be very ugly indeed.

 Here is an interesting article which carries the title:

 4 “Ugly” Sites that Make Millions (and What We Can Learn from Them)

http://blog.kissmetrics.com/ugly-websites/

  Yair Cohen

The Internet Law Centre

Social media lawyers

Tags: lawyer, lawyers, marketing, media, social

Views: 264

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EditorPermalink Reply by Richard Pettet on July 30, 2011 at 11:23
Cheers for this Yair. A pretty website with no content will not get you highly ranked and wont keep clients on your site. Same with a flash based site. Also, on the Alexa topic, people place a lot of importance on a good Alexa ranking but it is almost entirely meaningless in my experience. Alexa, or any other site that claims to know how many hits your site gets, simply don't have the actual data to truly know. It's good guess work at best.
Permalink Reply by Yair Cohen on July 30, 2011 at 16:23

Alexa really is a marketing  project (or a smoke screen) where some of world’s greatest information marketers offer their  SEO/membership subscription products. I remember being introduced to it a few years ago by Perry Marshall who in one way or another was involved in this project. Alexa is an incredibly well packaged product (which interestingly breaks many conventional marketing ‘rules’)  which by itself, as you said is meaningless.  The data is not worth anything.  What is important , in Alexa’s  case is I not what it is but what people believe it is.  

Permalink Reply by Amanda Noble-Simmons on August 5, 2011 at 13:19

No they dont neccesarily have to be pretty to generate revenue, but then is that their purpose? I would say they are there to portray the brand, if it looks cheap or is lacking in up-to-date information it will send out the wrong message, if it is top end check out www.slaughterandmay.com it can present a picture of quality, professionalism and reliability.

Permalink Reply by FeeSynergyUK on August 22, 2011 at 14:21

My hope is that our website at FeeSynergyUK having a very restrictive "call to action" opportunity, concentrates on the core competence of the business without frills. Because we have been advised to look for this call to action model, it necessarily is a bit light on supportive information: Almost a classic "squeeze" page, welcoming contact and allowing us to then discuss service / benefit elements. It does, however, rely on potential customers making the first contact and my experience proves that when its new - it`s treated with caution. Thanks Mike@

Permalink Reply by Yair Cohen on August 22, 2011 at 15:01

Mike, what is the address of your website?

Permalink Reply by FeeSynergyUK on August 22, 2011 at 15:03

www.feesynergyuk.com

 

Don't say I didn't warn you :-)

Yair Cohen said:

Mike, what is the address of your website?

Permalink Reply by FeeSynergyUK on August 22, 2011 at 15:24

Hi Ralph, Thanks for those observations: They were exactly mine, namley the dearth of info on the principals.

I have wrung out of my web team the codes to add content and will be doing so shortly. All very well the call to action but I think the onus should be on the provider of services not to just sit it out awaiting the call and yes, I personally would feel more affinity to a team if I could picture them or knew who they were.

Watch out for the mugshots, it aint Pretty but will it be Ugly?

Thanks, Mike (one in the middle)

Ralph Anderson said:

A classic "squeeze" page indeed! It is quite good because saying just the key points for a service can be the only thing you need to do. Ultimately it depends on what the service is, but if it is fairly straightforward then you wouldn't need much. However, it might be worth adding more details on who you are (the directors and team) so that prospects have a name to refer to.

Regards,

Ralph

FeeSynergyUK said:

My hope is that our website at FeeSynergyUK having a very restrictive "call to action" opportunity, concentrates on the core competence of the business without frills. Because we have been advised to look for this call to action model, it necessarily is a bit light on supportive information: Almost a classic "squeeze" page, welcoming contact and allowing us to then discuss service / benefit elements. It does, however, rely on potential customers making the first contact and my experience proves that when its new - it`s treated with caution. Thanks Mike@

Attachments:
Permalink Reply by Yair Cohen on August 22, 2011 at 15:24

I like it. I really do. Straight to the point no BS.

Now, to solve your other issue try moving ‘why feesynergy uk’ down and instead put at the front a talk about the concerns your potential clients might have not with their finances but rather with trusting you enough to give you a call. (if you were them, what would have  stopped you from picking up the phone? I don't know your company but considering the industry generally, perhaps you will be concerned about subjecting yourself to hard sales; perhaps you had bad experience in the past with a similar company.

In other words, discover all the stereotypes about your own industry and disassociate yourself from each and every one of them.  Your clients will then give you an opportunity to prove to them that you are indeed different.

You don't need to tell your clients that they need money. They already know this. What they really want to know is why they should give you their business.

As for Ralph comment, squeeze page is a squeeze page. If you start adding links and unnecessary information you will probably start looking like everyone else. People don't care who the directors are. At this stage they only want to know that they can trust you with a phone call.

(sorry Ralph…)

Permalink Reply by FeeSynergyUK on August 22, 2011 at 15:38

Well, I've devised a facebook fan page at www.facebook.com/FeeSynergyUK but this seems to be very much in the infancy. I appear to be writing on a wall whose key to the door hasn't been found yet. As you would imagine I'm under attack from many quarters - in the van being the LawGazette who wish to relieve me of quite a few thousand pounds for a campaign with them. More directly, I'm a subsriber to Warp Media to mine our own database for emarketing (we have a mature finance company) and I'm busy around North Mids / Yorkshire on accreditation meetings, inhabiting the twilight zone of the 7.00am business network breakfast rubber bacon rounds. And, getting a few referrals to boot.

 

Regards Mike

Ralph Anderson said:

Yair,

You are right to point out that they want to know if they can trust you with a phone call, but if they don't know who they are even ringing then how can they start to trust you?

 

Mike,

If the onus is on you to avoid sitting around awaiting a call, what marketing to do you do? I note you are on Twitter, and you have a press release on the website, but do you do anything else?

 

Ralph

Yair Cohen said:

I like it. I really do. Straight to the point no BS.

Now, to solve your other issue try moving ‘why feesynergy uk’ down and instead put at the front a talk about the concerns your potential clients might have not with their finances but rather with trusting you enough to give you a call. (if you were them, what would have  stopped you from picking up the phone? I don't know your company but considering the industry generally, perhaps you will be concerned about subjecting yourself to hard sales; perhaps you had bad experience in the past with a similar company.

In other words, discover all the stereotypes about your own industry and disassociate yourself from each and every one of them.  Your clients will then give you an opportunity to prove to them that you are indeed different.

You don't need to tell your clients that they need money. They already know this. What they really want to know is why they should give you their business.

As for Ralph comment, squeeze page is a squeeze page. If you start adding links and unnecessary information you will probably start looking like everyone else. People don't care who the directors are. At this stage they only want to know that they can trust you with a phone call.

(sorry Ralph…)

Permalink Reply by Yair Cohen on August 22, 2011 at 15:40



Yair Cohen said:

I like it. I really do. Straight to the point no BS.

Now, to solve your other issue try moving ‘why feesynergy uk’ down and instead put at the front a talk about the concerns your potential clients might have not with their finances but rather with trusting you enough to give you a call. (if you were them, what would have  stopped you from picking up the phone? I don't know your company but considering the industry generally, perhaps you will be concerned about subjecting yourself to hard sales; perhaps you had bad experience in the past with a similar company.

In other words, discover all the stereotypes about your own industry and disassociate yourself from each and every one of them.  Your clients will then give you an opportunity to prove to them that you are indeed different.

You don't need to tell your clients that they need money. They already know this. What they really want to know is why they should give you their business.

As for Ralph comment, squeeze page is a squeeze page. If you start adding links and unnecessary information you will probably start looking like everyone else. People don't care who the directors are. At this stage they only want to know that they can trust you with a phone call.

(sorry Ralph…)

Permalink Reply by Yair Cohen on August 22, 2011 at 15:42

Trust me Ralph. At this stage they don't care about directors. You have 10 seconds to make a good impression. Once you made your good impression the last thing you want them to do is to leave your website and start looking up the directors. You want them to focus on picking up the phone and not on anything else.

Yair

Permalink Reply by FeeSynergyUK on August 22, 2011 at 16:07

I have attended a BNI some while ago and haven't repeated it since. No reflection upon the institution and its members but other, more low intensity events have proved more fruitful. Pitching up with ones own finance company alone in these straightened times is often enough to have a trail of business owners in your wake, we're just adding a division of unsecured finance (albeit with the indemnity prevalent in Fee Finance markets) to the portfolio.

Having been a Luddite for decades, I have decided to examine all aspects of social media and whilst writing blog notes on a scattergun approach has borne fruit, I realised that If I could share them to a common page then a volume of content would be gathered. Having bought into the theory of promoting a facebook fan page ( needing 25 "likes" to get your vanity renaming option, I begged and scraped peoples support to get this far) and now refer it for a collection of my ramblings - hopefully they will paint a picture of what we do. I am however supremely conscious of trying to avoid out and out selling pitches and must admit to falling short on a few occasions thus far. I am a perfect reflection of my companies social media posts: inexperienced but learning fast.

 

Thanks Mike

Ralph Anderson said:

That sounds like the unmistakeable tones of BNI or 4N - am I right?! Sounds like it keeps you fairly busy, but may I ask what has prompted the Facebook page?

 

Ralph

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