Content Marketing Today

Need to Turn Web Visitors into Buyers? You Can Learn A Lot from the SomethingCreativeInc.com Website

Way too many advertising agency and marketing company websites make it way too difficult to understand why you should use them.

In many cases, it may be that they are not web savvy and that they have been talked into a wild and weird flash opening. As we have pointed out with many examples in the past, this kind of misbegotten eye candy is likely to drive visitors away before they ever get a look at the great work being done by the company.

I found one marketing company site that does most everything correctly. But, the one thing they do wrong does diminish the site’s overall effectiveness. Happily, you can learn from both the good and the bad.

Smack in the middle of the country–Kansas City– you will find Something Creative Inc. After reviewing the portfolio they make available on their website, it’s obvious that they do some great stuff. But, one of the best things they do is make it really easy to learn exactly what they do to drill down to specific capabilities.

Here’s what they do right:

• When you go to their site, it loads quickly with no distracting animated graphics.
• They have a fun logo that incorporates the lightbulb symbol for ideas. You certainly get the impression that this would be an enjoyable company to partner with.
• Their website is simple and straightforward. You can learn a lot about what they do and why you should use them on the homepage. They give you just enough narrative to intrigue you and to induce you to to explore the site further. This is how they put it:How can we help? Are you looking for a Kansas City-based website designer to create a high-quality website or expand your internet marketing efforts? Are you searching for someone in the Kansas City area to design a new logo or corporate brand identity? Maybe you’re looking for an experienced marketer around Kansas City to help you generate and execute an integrated marketing plan so your company and your family never have to worry about a slow month…
  Well, we do all of those things and then some. And while you’re here, you might as well look around. If you can’t find what you are looking for, or don’t know what to look for, give us a call. We’d be happy to point you in the right direction. [More about Something Creative, Inc.]
• In that opening statement, they provide live links to match your interests as you read.
• they provide hyperlinked bullet points to absolutely everything they do. So you’re just a click away from getting into specifics. The click takes you to a page that explains a particular capability briefly, but offers you the opportunity to drill down still further if you’re interested. On that same page, you still see the menu of individual capability items that you can continue to pursue.
• When they show a featured project (also on the homepage), they actually begin with a case study description and then invite you to continue to the next page to read more.
• You can easily scroll through their portfolio of work. For each sample they give a brief explanation of the challenge faced and the solution provided. And, in the case of websites, you can then click to go directly to the website to showcase.

The one thing they do wrong

Something Creative does almost everything right on their website with one exception. When you go to the portfolio page, you see three categories of work: interactive, print design, and corporate identity. Unfortunately you cannot click on any of those terms to go directly to that specific type of marketing work.

Although they do offer an appealing visual grid of thumbnails of their work, it’s impossible to know which of the categories those thumbnails fit. It would have been simple to make each of those areas of work–such as “interactive”–a clickable link taking you to an individual portfolio page.

The are two important lessons from this website are:

• when your website makes it easy to figure out how you can help solve your visitors’ problems, you have a good shot at turning them into customers.
• whenever you make it difficult for visitors to learn what they need to know about you, you risk losing them to another site–and another competitor.