How I DIY Blog

The previous tour section wasn’t working.

Analytics reports showed that visitors to the three page tour would either:

• View the first page and exit the site
• Get to the second page and exit the site
• Or get to the second page, go back to the first, and then exit the site

The point being that no one was reaching the sign up form.  Not cool.

In retrospect, I think there were four main problems with the tour:

1. No Page Title

Nothing shouted that these pages were a tour. This was especially bone-headed since new visitors coming to the site through our ads were sent directly to the tour.

2. No Page Numbers

Visitors couldn’t tell if the tour lasted two pages or twenty and there was no way to easily jump between pages. If a visitor had known there was only one page remaining, would they have clicked through? I bet most would.

3. No Obvious Sign Up Link

Huge mistake. If the point of your tour is to give visitors an overview of your site and (more importantly) entice them to sign up, you might want to have a prominent sign up link on every single page of that tour.

4. It was Boring

The first page was fine – in fact, the new “Share Your Projects” section is very similar to the old tour page #1 – but everything after that was horrible.  I think it was a case of trying too hard to sell the site.

So, the redesign had to be easy to navigate, include sign up links, and (most importantly) be interesting.

The results:

I think he redesign addresses most problems we had with the old tour.

First, the tour is now a single page; which means there is no room for fluff, only the most important information remains, and there are fewer chances for visitors to get distracted.

To get our message through quickly we start with a brief description of the site and what it offers, then move into a more detailed description of how projects work. The graphic and descriptions were pulled directly from the first page of the old tour. They work well here.

Finally, we added two sign up links; one at the top of the page for anyone interested right off the bat, and another at the bottom for anyone who makes it that far.

The one downside I see is because of its brevity, the tour doesn’t detail all the site offers. But really, how interested would you be to learn that you could comment on things! or create a profile page! ? My guess is not very.

There’s still work to be done, like adding a more eye-catching graphic and some orange sign up buttons, but for now I hope you guys like the changes!