Before I built ProLuxe, before I had a brand or a process or a site that looked like anything, I had one client and one problem. They needed leads fast.
The website was already there. An established agency had built it years before and the owner had been running it ever since. I wasn't there to redesign anything. I was there to make it work. So I rewrote the copy to have a flow that would move a visitor toward booking. I swapped out some stock images and video to match the direction we were going. The spacing was off. Things weren't centered. It was the kind of site you would scroll past if you were judging by looks alone.
We ran a Google Ad campaign to drive traffic to what I believed was a high converting page despite how it looked. 40 out of 49 leads converted to customers. The lifetime value of those customers came out to $20,000.
That was the first lesson.
You can go look at the site right now. It is still live at topdogks.com. It is still converting. The design is still terrible by any conventional standard. But the copy speaks directly to the person looking for that service and the path from landing on the page to booking is clear. That combination is worth more than any visual treatment you can put on top of it.
Copy that speaks to one specific person. Not a general audience, not everyone in the city, one person with one problem looking for one solution. When someone reads your site and feels like it was written for them, they book. When they feel like it was written for everyone, they leave.
Convenience. The fewer steps between a visitor landing on your page and confirming an appointment, the more of them you keep. Every extra click, every form field that doesn't need to be there, every phone call you're asking them to make is a reason to close the tab.
Information in the right order. A visitor needs to know what you do, that you do it in their area, that other people trust you, and how to book. In that order. Everything else is secondary.
Fair question.
The easy answer is that I build websites for a living and it would look bad if mine looked bad. That part is true.
The real answer is more specific. Every business owner I have talked to, without exception, has told me they want a site that looks professional and high quality. That is what they are walking in the door asking for. So I built a site that stops them in their tracks visually because that is the language that gets their attention.
But the reason a prospect actually picks up the phone and books a review is not the design. It is the copy. It is the order the information sits in. It is the fact that there is one thing they are being asked to do on every page and the path to doing it is clear.
The design gets you in the door. The copy closes it.
I also know I don't have this perfectly figured out. I have software tracking every click and scroll on my site right now so I can see exactly where people drop off and where I need to improve. The site is a machine I am still tuning, not a finished product I handed off and walked away from.
That is the honest version of why design matters less than everyone thinks and why I still care about it anyway.
Before I built ProLuxe, before I had a brand or a process or a site that looked like anything, I had one client and one problem. They needed leads fast.
The website was already there. An established agency had built it years before and the owner had been running it ever since. I wasn't there to redesign anything. I was there to make it work. So I rewrote the copy to have a flow that would move a visitor toward booking. I swapped out some stock images and video to match the direction we were going. The spacing was off. Things weren't centered. It was the kind of site you would scroll past if you were judging by looks alone.
We ran a Google Ad campaign to drive traffic to what I believed was a high converting page despite how it looked. 40 out of 49 leads converted to customers. The lifetime value of those customers came out to $20,000.
That was the first lesson.
You can go look at the site right now. It is still live at topdogks.com. It is still converting. The design is still terrible by any conventional standard. But the copy speaks directly to the person looking for that service and the path from landing on the page to booking is clear. That combination is worth more than any visual treatment you can put on top of it.
Copy that speaks to one specific person. Not a general audience, not everyone in the city, one person with one problem looking for one solution. When someone reads your site and feels like it was written for them, they book. When they feel like it was written for everyone, they leave.
Convenience. The fewer steps between a visitor landing on your page and confirming an appointment, the more of them you keep. Every extra click, every form field that doesn't need to be there, every phone call you're asking them to make is a reason to close the tab.
Information in the right order. A visitor needs to know what you do, that you do it in their area, that other people trust you, and how to book. In that order. Everything else is secondary.
Fair question.
The easy answer is that I build websites for a living and it would look bad if mine looked bad. That part is true.
The real answer is more specific. Every business owner I have talked to, without exception, has told me they want a site that looks professional and high quality. That is what they are walking in the door asking for. So I built a site that stops them in their tracks visually because that is the language that gets their attention.
But the reason a prospect actually picks up the phone and books a review is not the design. It is the copy. It is the order the information sits in. It is the fact that there is one thing they are being asked to do on every page and the path to doing it is clear.
The design gets you in the door. The copy closes it.
I also know I don't have this perfectly figured out. I have software tracking every click and scroll on my site right now so I can see exactly where people drop off and where I need to improve. The site is a machine I am still tuning, not a finished product I handed off and walked away from.
That is the honest version of why design matters less than everyone thinks and why I still care about it anyway.