The day is finally here. We are incredibly excited about last week’s launch of our new website. It’s light years ahead of where we started, and I specifically want to call out the guys from Fresh Tilled Soil who were able to work with a seemingly impossible deadline and create something we’re insanely happy with. We still have a lot of work to do to make it better, but now is a good time to catch our breath.
Our new homepage. Now with 100% more sliding-image-ness!
As a startup, we’re constantly experimenting to maximize conversions to meet our goal: get people to try our SaaS data management product. (See what I did there?)
Since we released the paid version of our product in February, we’ve been trying everything and learning a lot. There’s no panacea, no cure for everything, but the changes we make are based on what we’ve picked up from experience. People from reddit hate clever marketing language, don’t watch videos, and want you to lay out exactly what features your app offers. Visitors coming from facebook are apt to sign up for the free trial, but they’re in a hurry. If they don’t get an activation email from us immediately, they’re off doing something else.
People that are trying to find software to do an internal permissions audit have a concrete pain that has to be solved as soon as possible. They’ll visit a few pages, they’ll give a real phone number, and they will compare your product to your competitors. Contrast that with someone that is flirting with the idea of introducing a data governance policy at their company, but is just doing the research to see if it’s viable. One wants quick, clear information to solve a problem. The other wants to collect some data to find out whether the idea is feasible, not which vendor they should pick.
Both are valid leads deserving attention. You have to have a balancing act, giving them the chance to choose how much information they need.
There are a couple of reasons that led us to redesign the site.
1. Just because it looks cool doesn’t mean it works well - Though we are a little biased, we love the look and feel of our app. The background is black, and it makes all the other sections really pop out. When we tried to replicate that look and feel on our web site, it didn’t really work. We heard many complaints about the site being hard to read, so we changed the design to address what we were hearing.
2. People didn’t know what to do next - I think that’s a problem that a lot of startups have. You spend so much time and energy designing and creating content that you fail to think from the perspective of a brand new visitor that knows nothing about you. We’ve tried to make it easy to answer one question that every visitor to every we page asks: “What do I do next?”
3. Everyone wants to know your price - I’ve heard this a million times and had the same feeling myself: “So, now you have me on your site. I’ve checked out a few pages, and I’m intrigued. Now how much does it cost? Wait…..really? You don’t list your pricing? I’m out.”
4. People want to scan, not click - Though I’m a huge fan of videos, they’re not always the most effective way to explain your product. Sometimes people don’t have speakers, other times they’re on a mobile device that doesn’t support flash video. So we put together a “feature tour” page that covers most of what we show in our videos on a single page.
5. Handle objections up front - We’re not doing this well yet, but we’re taking steps in the right direction. Our app is a software as a service application that helps IT managers handle the access and usage of unstructured data. Though it wasn’t a conscious decision, we rarely even mentioned the term “SaaS” on our old site. We’re changing that. There are some companies that simply cannot use a SaaS offering, so we don’t want to waste their time trying out Aprigo NINJA.
6. Build with SEO in mind - This is huge, and people here are sick of me talking about SEO, but constructing your site with search engines in mind is immensely important. You can build the slickest, prettiest web site in the universe, but if no one can find it, what good is it?
7. Give visitors options to contact you - Some people hate the phone. Others love it. And since you don’t know the individual personality of the person checking out your site, give them options to get in touch with you. Our options:
- Send an email
- Request a call from a sales rep
- Call us
- Use our live chat feature (hosted by Olark)
- Request a pricing quote
- Talk to us on twitter, linkedin, or facebook
- Use our support forums on GetSatisfaction
You could also send smoke signals, a passenger pigeon, a nicely written letter, or any other way you’d like to contact us. If we’re lucky enough to have people that want to contact us, they can use whatever method they prefer.
Summary
It’s only been a few days since the relaunch, and we’re already finding things to improve. The site is in no way perfect, and we’re going to continue to find ways to make it better. But we’ve learned a lot, and hope this post is helpful.
PS- I know what you’re thinking: this blog is ugly. You’re right. That’s what we’re working on now.
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