Website Design Blog from Brian Terry

Just as I mentioned earlier it’s all about keeping things visually simple and not being tempted to use header panels containing lots of images and lots of text.

Images can be a great way to enhance the emotion within any kind of writing, you only have to look at the front cover of any newspaper to see this. What I would suggest trying out in this case where you want to heighten the emotional value of your web copy is to place small relevant thumbnail images within your web copy in places where you need to pull the eye and emphasise a core message.

Very few people are using images like this within their direct response websites which is a shame because pictures represent a great way of enhancing the emotion behind the messages you’re communicating to your readers.

In one word.. YES!

List en in on todays message where I explain things in more detail…

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Not so long ago marketers began removing header panels from their website as a test to see if their sales pages converted more visitors into customers. In most cases these test confirmed to them that sales were better when no header panel was used.

Here’s the problem as I see it…

There is often an inconsistency between the messages communicated in the header panel and with the headline at the top of the page.

Also, when people arrive at a sales page with a header panel containing a visual and verbal message in addition to a strong headline at the top of the actual sales letter there is probably a mismatch of ideas. This had the effect bombarding people with too many different versions of the same messages to take in at one time. The net result is more people just click away, again this just goes back to simplicity, as people’s attention span online is extremely short.

This is why I believe websites with just a headline at the top of the page are generally converting better. When someone arrives all they have to do is read one headline and that’s it, so if the headline is strong enough they’ll go on to reading the main sale letter and hopefully respond to whatever is offered.

However, here’s where the problem lies… As more people are creating header panel free websites these websites are all looking the same. So what you might gain in conversions on one hand, eventually you could loose out as you’ll never be able to visually separate yourself from everyone else with pages that look just the same as yours. Do you see the dilemma?

It’s been proven that people take in things visually before they read a single word, after all the phrase “a picture is worth a thousand words” wasn’t said for nothing.

The solution is to create website design s with header panels that follow the lead of and support the sales letter, the sales letter always, always, always drives the visual elements.

This is why it’s so important to hire an experience website designer who understands this and why in-experienced website designers always fall foul when it comes to creating graphics for direct response driven website like this.

I’ve been considering if I should give this a go for a while now then something happened that made me go right ahead and put my plan into action…

Just a moment ago I created a very interesting new kind of “unblockable” popup through a great online service I recently discovered called “Advanced Popups“.

Do you want to see what I’ve done? You might find this interesting as it could be a great way of increasing the number of subscribers you get (when done in the right way).

This is a marketing test I’m going to perform for the launch of the PixelstoProfits.com website. If you’re reading this sometime into the future and the popup has gone… you’ll know it didn’t work out as well as I had hoped.

Just go here now and you can take a sneak peak view at what I’m cooking up for PixelstoProfits.

If you’d like to try this yourself just go here now…

Let me know what you think!

In my experience I would say that this largely depends on who your target audience is and what it is you’re selling .

For example, if your website is selling an ebook on lawn care you would get a better response to shades of green than you would if you used shades of red. Your choice of colour is mostly just common sense. A great way of confirming your choice is simply take a look at the colours of 10 other websites selling a similar product. This will then give you a great idea about what colours are working the best in that particular market place.

If you’re selling anything to a business market I recommend using more subdued colours like blue, green and possibly red if you careful with it’s use. Again I would just pay attention to a cross section of other websites selling or offering something similar, just to get a good feel for what works within that market place.

Here’s a great piece of free online software you can use that helps you to create colour schemes for your website once you’ve found the colours to use:

color.pixelstoprofits.com

Check this out, cover your tracks with this simple idea…

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In a few weeks time Pixels to Profits will be launched and comletely replace Ebookwow.com. Pixels to Profits promises to better, bigger and deliver much more value than I was previously able to with Ebookwow.com.

In a way it’ll be sad to see Ebookwow.com go as I’ve run it since 2002 but things must move on, grow and expand and Pixels to Profits will do exactly that taking things to a whole newer brighter, better level.