During our series of site conversion articles we've looked at how graphics can show exquisite luxury, how an association can sell a huge number of travel agents and how a newsletter’s graphics can sell itself to different markets. This time we’re looking at streamlining. Our subject is Ramblers Worldwide, and although their product is undoubtedly first rate, we feel that their home page suffers from a matter of trying to say too much. 

It is a common problem for companies that have a lot to offer and enthusiastically feel that they need to let the world know everything right up front. 

However sometimes, especially when there is a lot to offer, it helps to try to focus on a few main issues in order to make the message and the navigation much clearer.     

The main difficulty with the homepage is the sheer number of distracting buttons, links and texts banners on the homepage. We’ve cut these down – some we feel are unnecessary, while others would fit better on actual product pages. Although the main page body looks a lot shorter, we’ve actually achieved an impressive amount of space saving without losing much content. The number of categories on the homepage is exactly the same number, but by putting them in pairs and reducing the amount of text for each, we’ve achieved the same information with a lot less scrolling. People don’t want to read that much text on a homepage anyway, and having so many different topics is also something of an SEO nightmare as the search engines struggle to figure out what the page is about.

As I mentioned above, there’s no obvious way of looking for browsing what you want. Sure, there’s a search box but that relies on you having an exact idea, and browsing is a little too vague. Most people want to look for their holidays either by type (which have been left down the middle – their most popular areas) or by destination. We’ve allowed visitors to browse through the continents of the world through the navigation bar on the left, meaning they won’t get lost. After sorting out the main navigation (destinations down the left, activities down the middle), we have sorted the remaining list by their importance. The less vital banners have been pushed to the bottom, though you will note there’s one area we’ve made distinctly more prominent – the calls to action…

To the company’s credit, they are clearly aware of the benefits of offering a call-back and newsletter sign up service to try and boost their site conversions. Unfortunately, they’ve buried the functionality like the world’s smallest needle at London’s biggest haystack convention. We’ve moved the phone number to the top of the page, and made it as easy as possible to get a call back and to sign up to the newsletter by making the whole process on the home page. Previously, you had to click through and fill out a form. Less fuss equals more signups!

Finally, we noticed that in the ‘recommended holidays section’ there were precisely 9 highlighted. Knowing the internet’s love of ‘top 10 lists’ we made this a feature at the bottom of the page – not the most important thing, but a nice bonus for those who have read the outlines of categories but are still undecided. Oh, and because we don’t know the product, number 10 is a placeholder for the time being!

The site has some excellent content, but with a confusing and overwhelming homepage like this, much of it is lost on potential customers. We’ve concentrated on three areas to keep the homepage simple: making it obvious what the website sells, improving the navigation and calls to action to boost site conversion. With these changes implemented, we’re confident that the company would see more focused traffic travelling through their website, which can only lead to a boost in sales.