How FairMeasures.Com Grew Content and Training Sales by Changing Its Home Page

CHALLANGE
FairMeasures.com, an already successful content-rich site featuring “everything you ever want to know about employment law issues” wanted to increase for-fee content sales and site-generated sales leads for their $3,000+ training seminars.

CAMPAIGN
The site hired outside expert, Philippa Gamse to help them redesign the topmost pages most visitors entered by. “The previous version was a typical publisher site -- the home page said this is who we are, this is what we do, we train your managers, we have a newsletter, we sell books and tapes, etc. But your web site should be your market, not about you. There are two sets of people in the site’s market, employers and employees. So, now instead of talking about itself, the homepage is split in two parts to match these markets’ interests. On the employer side it says, ‘Prevent law suits’ and on the employee side it says, ‘Know Your Rights.’ The content is exactly the same underneath these pages, but it’s repositioned on top to be about them, not us.”

Gamse stresses, “The redesign is absolutely not an end, it’s a beginning. Now we look over visitor logs constantly to find out what is appealing to them and how we can continue to make the site better. We also have a growing database that we’ll test campaigns to.” Gamse is also continuing with online PR, including soliciting links from sites such as traffic powerhouse About.com

RESULTS
Before the redesign the site attracted about 14,000 monthly unique visitors with an average visit of 12 minutes (note, this is very good for a privately-run niche site without a Huge marketing budget.) After launching the redesign, “within the first week the site had more sales response than it did in the entire previous year” and a BusinessWeek editor wrote a rave review of the site.

NOTES
Even though the site’s instructions for content buyers were rewritten to be explicitly easy and clear, “people still want to call up and talk about it.” So, don’t count on cutting back your customer service department anytime soon.

COST
Depending on the scope of the project, Gamse charges $10,000-$15,000 for an in-depth site evaluation including detailed strategic business, redesign and marketing plans. Many clients then choose to keep her on board to help them with execution and online PR for a reasonable monthly retainer. The site also used a Web designer’s services for its new home page.

Contacts:
Philippa Gamse,
http://www.CyberSpeaker.com
(831) 465-0317
email: pgamse@CyberSpeaker.com