One of the phenomenons I see very often when working with businesses is where a huge amount of the budget is spent on the product or service, and just a tiny amount on design, branding, and very importantly, marketing & PR, let alone quality design & marketing. Using that free $100 Google Adwords certificate we get for any number of reasons is not a way to gauge digital marketing effectiveness 🙂
Here we will focus our RockFish Group client Puget Sound Express, a whale watching & wildlife tour outfit out of Port Townsend and Edmonds, WA, who after creating a new web design, content flow, and content changes, saw an increase in sales and across nearly all positive metrics in the website’s analytics.
The mastermind behind the content was Keven Elliff, a Jefferson County Washington based digital marketing expert who we work with as much as possible.
Puget Sound Express saw user engagement with their website content increase by more than 30%, with 50% more visitors making a purchase. Over 60% of the content didn’t change at all.
This is fairly unprecedented, and we don’t claim that we are the only reason. Surely other economic, weather and other marketing strategies went into play here (PSE does a fair amount of print and online display advertising), and their reputation and tours are stellar. Cause ya gotta have a good product or service still.
The point is, by redesigning the website to heavily focus on clicking “Book Now,” engagement and sales increased. In a sense, this is less about the aesthetics then the functionality. That said, looks do matter. Design is not just about making something look good, that’s why it isn’t art. Design is business, it’s communication, it’s purposeful. And it takes good design to guide a user. And, I’m ok with starting sentences with “and” even though I learned in junior high it’s a no no.
Whether you work with us or another firm, please consider saving a fair amount of your budget for design, branding, web development and digital marketing. If you throw in some good PR and a great (doesn’t have to be the best!) product or service, you have a recipe for true success.
