Hi Nigel,


Products (or hotnews, quick links,...) should be dynamically integrated on
the first page.  That doesn't mean some company information shouldn't be
there, but it works best in the form of a good layout (image building, first
impression), a slogan (that explains who you are - example "Computer
services and spares for UK business" although I'd replace 'UK business' with
something else - maybe just 'UK computer services and spares'), and maybe
some extracts of testimonials (that link to the full testimonial page).

We've done some official research on this changing the first page every now
and then and keeping logs of sales, pageviews,...  Results were not very
surprising.  We used four different entry pages:

- 'ugly' intro page, stating company info and catagolue hidden behind a
button
- 'nice' intro page, stating company info and catagolue hidden behind a
button
- 'ugly' intro page, stating products, hotnews and quicklinks
- 'nice' intro page, stating products, hotnews and quicklinks

In terms of sales made for our particular testcase, here is the ranking:

- 'nice' intro page, stating products, hotnews and quicklinks (100%)
- 'nice' intro page, stating company info and catagolue hidden behind a
button (58%)
- 'ugly' intro page, stating products, hotnews and quicklinks (51%)
- 'ugly' intro page, stating company info and catagolue hidden behind a
button (32%)

I don't now any absolute figures (was not responsible for the calculation),
but see how the more attractive version was making more sales.  Do mind
there was a huge difference between 'nice' and 'ugly', so places 2 and 3
could get swapped easily with just a small difference.  Needless to say this
is an average taken over several tries and several months.

We also did tests on advertising effectiveness and order procedure, no
surprise, these were the results:

- Impulse moment is very important.  When someone sees and advertisement
with a specific article of interest, the chance is larger that he will buy
it when it just takes for example two clicks to actually do so.
- Checkout procedure is very important.  Most sales were made when people
were able to just fill in their details and address and pay as the package
arrives (rembours).  We were planning to do tests on also entering prefered
delivery time, but these were postponed.  There was a slight increase in
rejected packages (impulse moment again), but in this case the added sales
were plenty more than enough to cope with these costs.

Don't know any more results, because these were specifically design-related
and I adapted the pages to reflect our testing case.

All in all, I'm of the opinion your boss is wrong, although it's very comon
for them.  For him, company ego is very important, as well as company
history.  I guess he's emotionally very involved with the company, maybe
even set it up and probably tells stories about past successes.  Well sorry
to tell but that won't make new customers unless the customer went through
the same things.  If he's still in doubt, tell him you'd easily prove it to
him but you'd need a marketing specialist and consultant.  But better save
the money.  Putting products (and swap them regularly) on the front page is
really the way to go.

One other thing: before buying people will search the web for reviews of
specific products regularly.  Offering links to reviews would be very good
if it's applicable.

A lot of text, but it's all just what everybody knows I think.  Don't waste
people's time with long texts like this ;) on your website.  Offer them
to-the-point info.  Most people are not visiting the website to look at the
company history (well maybe just once okay...).  It's a matter of putting
the milk near the cat.  It won't say no.


- Kayjey -
www.fiatcoupe.net

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