Hello community.

I currently represent a reputable company in the industry of corporate time management productivity training.

The focus of training is creating & teaching systems to helps clients accomplish work on (or ahead of) schedule while reducing stress.

This includes

• organize workspaces
• manage paper, files, & email
• limit distractions
• Prioritize tasks & schedules

This company has a good history of satisfied clients from offline marketing efforts. Converting unfamiliar visitors online, however, has been more difficult.

This is an area I am now trying to address. I would appreciate your time in assessing the site and relaying any immediate weaknesses you see in the copy or design.

KOS time management

The primary service pages are:
1. seminars/training
2. organizing

The primary goal of the site is to generate a phone call requesting service or more info. The secondary goal is newsletter signups and/or pdf training summary download.

My copywriting skills are at the novice level and I am seeking resources to improve them significantly.

If you require any more information, please don't hesitate to ask.

Thank you!
Kevin

I don't know how good you are with time management (part of it reads like a memory improvement course) but asking responders to read through all those pages, plus the PDF? If you have a course on how to develop the cojones to ask for stuff for free, you'll have a winner.

In any event, the site is basic brochureware -- not exactly unknown on the web but not effective. Trouble is, I don't know where I am on the site, what to do on most pages, or where to go given one of several points of arrival.

To draw comparisons, it's like someone from the cleaning crew "organized" the office. To a cursory look, all would seem organized and look good -- but there is no underlying system.

The site design is fairly good looking. However, it's not really designed for a purpose other than an extended "open for business" sign. Should you perform a user test I think you'd be shocked to learn the number of site visitors who don't notice the navigation or the white underlined text, "time management seminars," "office organizing" and "productivity consulting" are really clickable links. The "Monthly Newsletter" signup box is not particularly compelling.

Also, it's hard for the user to understand where they are, where they've already been, and what page to go to next. In basic web design, this is called "information scent."

Users -- potential customers -- are sent on a scavenger hunt for information and to figure out why they should do business with you. It's almost like a sales person who stutters, each page almost looks like it could be just about ready to nearly get to the point .....and then you have to go to another page.

The site needs help in three dimensions: Design, Information, Copy and Marketing. Add basics like navigation which clearly signals to the user what's clickable and what's not: Make navigation elements more "buttonlike." Develop a Unique Selling Proposition to do something more than explain what business you're in. Right now the site reads like it was developed in a competitive vacuum, imagine the user has visited four time management sites before yours. (You need to stop the surfing user and, in no uncertain terms, show them they have found what they are looking for).

On the basic marketing and copywriting front I think you would be disturbed and shocked at the number of visitors who never complete the scavenger hunt of figuring out why they should do business with you. Consolidate pages with the assumption each page must start and complete a single objective. If you want the user to download a PDF report, then give the reader everything they need on that singular page. If the objectives are to generate a call or newsletter signup, have a clear call to action.

In other words, the site design should work under the assumption that once the user leaves that one page without taking a specific action you've lost them. It doesn't.

This goes for the PDF report as well. It's more of a generic flyer than an effective sales piece. My instincts tell me every single page suffers from "image consciousness." Rightly or wrongly, I get the impression of a marked disdain for anything which might hint at base commerce. As a famous and highly effective copywriter remarked, the site needs to commit "image suicide" so it can get over itself and accomplish something.

There are far too many symptoms -- far too many individual elements needing rework -- to not look for a root cause. I suspect the site suffers from terminal image consciousness and won't change until the root cause is addressed. The design needs a good dose of business effectiveness. Do what tests prove works, not what "looks proper."

Related Reading:

Never Get Involved in a Land War in Asia (or Build a Website for No Reason) Common to the brochureware site is to put up a site to "have a site." That's not a purpose or reason ...it's an excuse.

Information Foraging: Why Google Makes People Leave Your Site Faster This is a basic tutorial about what navigation is for, and why -- when you don't understand the reason why behind site navigation -- people leave.

USP 911: The Intensive Care Clinic for USPs There's no USP -- you need to develop one. Currently the site is okay ...if you were the only one doing what you do. Check out the advice in this critique.

How To Ignite Customer Desire With Benefit-Rich Copy I know, I know, those are supposed to be benefits. Productivity is a little too abstract, a little too generic. If I'm really 25% more productive, I'm the envy of the office because I get to leave at 5 -- and get the highest pay raises and performance reviews.

How to Find the “Selling Story” Buried in Your Business Find a compelling story in your business. Take a productivity increase from ten to twenty-five percent and make it into something more tangible, bottom-line, credible and real.

Write Better White Papers With Irresistible "Pass Around Factor" As I suggested, make every web page your "onesheet," make the downloadable report a white paper.

What Would Direct Response Graphic Design Look Like? Um ...how about a nice, before and after of -- oh I dunno -- an organized office or cubical?! I sometimes wonder if I haven't stumbled into a parallel dimension where the real purpose of web design is to find an excuse to try out PhotoShop and Dreamweaver.

John, your response is very insightful and informative - thank you.

I am considering landing pages during the site redesign. Single pages for seminars & organizing services. This would place the focus on copywriting, reducing other factors perhaps acting as barriers to successful communication.

Do you see any value in this?


Thanks again,
Kevin

Going back to the "root cause" there are too many variables to say. You would have to do a mockup or outright redesign that the client approves.

It is always possible the client will veto any but the most superficial changes. Another unknown variable is the copywriter.

One thing a copywriter can bring to the site is headlines which also work as page titles so you at least know where you are on the site. Page layout is really awful for readability -- headlines are all but impossible to target, text is isolated in a pseudo header above the headline ...it's just bad design. Also too many of the testimonials are about how good the speech was, you want testimonials applauding results, not talk.

The final thing which strikes me is there is no central theme or "hook." Love it or hate it, "The 4-Hour Work Week" has a direct response hook to it this site doesn't.