Homepage Design
"We needed a modern, easy-to-use website."
Objectives
- Replace outdated old fashioned website.
- To showcase our kitchens & encourage engagement with client.
- To increase the growth of the business & implement new marketing activities.
Results
- The new website has played a big role in increasing the average order value.
- It’s also opened up the demographic of their target market. They now attract many younger clients, as well as their older audience.
The Early Stages Of The Website Redesign
Husband and wife team, Julian & Priscilla Bayliss contacted me looking for help with their bespoke kitchen company, Cotswold Kitchens.
They asked me to help increase the growth of their bespoke kitchen business and implement new digital marketing activities.
As with every website, the audience is the most important element. Without them, your website is limited. So when I initially spoke to Julian and Priscilla, it was crucial that we identified their ideal customer and found out the customer’s specific problems.
"The new website is wonderful and looks fantastic on mobile too. It’s completely different from our competitors which is an additional bonus."
Content Is King
Opening Up To A Wider Market
If the website could show that Cotswold Kitchens could solve the visitor’s problems in the first moments of their visit, then this was half the battle.
Ask anyone what they’re looking for in a new kitchen, and most would it say it needs to look beautiful in their home and be easy to use.
For any kitchen design or bathroom design company to be credible, those same qualities of beauty and ease-of-use need to be found in the website as well.
The problem with Cotswold Kitchen’s old website was that it looked tired and outdated. Visitors saw an old fashioned kitchen company selling old fashioned kitchens. By today’s standards it wasn’t beautiful or easy-to-use and it certainly wasn’t mobile friendly.
When their old website was created it did the job, but to fulfil Cotswold Kitchen’s ambitions, their website needed to do more. It had to change to open up the business to a wider market. Not only that but this was a huge opportunity to increase their average order value.
Content Is King
Increasing Average Order Value
When designing the new Cotswold Kitchens website, the job of instilling trust and credibility was a crucial element. Without it, the visitor will be going to your competitor’s website sooner rather than later.
The more trust you can build, the more likely they will choose you over your competition.
This trust and credibility plays a crucial role throughout the marketing and sales process, from a click on a Google ad, to browsing the website, all the way through to visiting the showroom, closing the sale and signing off the kitchen design and installation.
The more trust and credibility there is throughout the whole process, the more likely your customer will pay higher prices for the higher value that you’ve conveyed. A higher average order value across all of your sales.
Building Trust & Credibility
- A professional, premium look to their website
- Using their website to strengthen their brand.
- Showing trust factors at the top of every page and throughout the website
Find out more about how we used trust factors below.
How we built trust on every page
The top of every page on a website is a very important space, the website header. This space is a huge opportunity and if it’s designed correctly the eye will naturally gravitate to it.There must be a balance however, because too much content will mean that it all blurs into one, it won’t then draw the eye and could actually have the opposite effect.
Here are some of the key trust factors we included at the top of every page:
- Award Winning Designers
- Showrooms that are open throughout the week
- A clear phone number to call
- Royal Appointment Seal on kitchen furniture
- Kitchen featured on BBC
When we found out that one of their kitchens had been featured on the BBC, we understandably wanted to make the most of this trust building opportunity.When visiting the Cotswold Kitchens website, if you touch/click the BBC logo at the top, a pop up will appear which then shows the video. A fantastic example of building trust and credibility.
There are many other ways that we built trust and credibility throughout the Cotswold Kitchens website, including video and standard text testimonials. Here are some ideas:
- Testimonials & Reviews
- Awards & Recognition
- Places you’ve been featured
- The numbers of kitchens or bathrooms you’ve designed
- Shout about it if you have a big following on Facebook/Twitter/Pinterest
- Trust Seals & Accreditations
- World class web design
- A blog that produces quality content
Don’t hide the important content
In recent years, many websites, especially those that have very visual products, have followed a fashion of having extremely large photos taking up a huge amount of space at the top of the home page.The visible space near the top of your home page (before you scroll) is very important real estate. With Cotswold Kitchens, we purposefully chose to strike a balance between beautiful kitchen photos and conveying the value of their service.
If visitors don’t see something they like in those first moments, even before they scroll, then they’ll leave your site. Don’t just show them pretty photos of your product, you need to clearly convey your unique value proposition too.
Conveying your Value
Here’s the messaging that we used in a prominent place at the top of the homepage to convey value to the visitor, along with beautiful kitchen photos.
Don’t bury your key value messages ‘below the fold’. Replacing them with one or more large photos of a kitchen for example, is a very risky strategy.
Yes it shows off your beautiful products, but it doesn’t convey your value proposition.
You need to show your website visitors the benefits that stand you out from your competitors, the competitors who just show lots of photos of beautiful kitchens and not much else.