Applying web design to business goals is a serious business.
A few weeks ago — through the hard work and formidable talent of Rafal Tomal (our Lead Designer) — we launched a redesign of copyblogger.com.
There’s been a good bit of discussion around it, and a lot of good questions.
What’s changed? Why did we change it? And the big one — how is it all working out for the business?
Let’s answer those questions, and a lot more about the business end of design, right now …
In this episode Brian, Sonia, and I discuss:
- Why redesign the site now? Why do it at all?
- The 3 major goals of the Copyblogger redesign
- Specific conversion stats, including one that hit 92%
- How to think about design as it relates to business
- The specific thinking behind each element of the design
- The evolution of Copyblogger from blog to multi-million dollar business
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The Show Notes:
- Internet Marketing for Smart People Course (free)
- The New Copyblogger.com
- The Copyblogger Blog
- Designing with Genesis
- We left the building with Girl Talk …
About the Author: Robert Bruce is Copyblogger Media’s copywriter and resident recluse.
Rafal killed it with the latest design!
Glad to hear you guys discuss this, I had a few questions that got answered, good stuff.
What gave IMFSP the 90% boost – the placement under the post, or the placement on the homepage? I couldn’t quite understand that.
On the homepage. We switched from under post to the homepage and got a 92% increase in opt-ins.
wowser. That is huge.
Looks pretty clean. Nice to hear about the traffic funnel difference. We’ve been penciling out a redesign for about six months now. Same thing, bringing the brand back to center and then funneling to the product/service sites.
The new design is absolutely wonderful ! Brilliant work !
Love the clean look of the home page.
Suggestions:
Consider having your Design, Traffic and Conversion boxes expand on rollovers to make it even cleaner.
No body copy or video? What happened to engage?
The 4 tiers are disengaging. I would think the course signup and tutorials would work better on a sidebar.
New article scroll is awesome.
Joe
Nice work. The site loads extremely quickly. Glad to hear its meeting its design goals.
Darren
Wow, I recently changed to the Streamline Theme and grappled with plenty of the things you just discussed (of course I had all of those discussions/debates in my own head). I need to thank “Gardner”, as you call him, and the StudioPress team for the design.
I have always run into real-estate-website-gurus who did not approve of my “education approach”, but the blog has really helped support my business engaging actual customers. Then it is up to me to sell their homes or help them buy one. To date, 46% of my closed sales originated from my blog.
Great show, as always. I’m glad you pointed out a few strategies behind the design.
As a graphic designer, I would probably did a few things differently but that would be only my point of view. You, as great marketers and copywriters, know your audience very well and gave me some tips how to make this design really working. That’s the point here… Create a nice looking base website and then tweak it again and again to improve the conversion. I’ve learned a lot while redesigning the Copyblogger site.
As Brian said, I’m too shy to say anything publicly, so forget about it
Oh, we’ll see about that RT. I’ve got your Skype man, how’s your February looking
Very helpful interview. Thanks for sharing the thinking behind the new design and navigation. The explanation about the tiny social icons made complete sense and as well as guiding me in some impending redesign has dispelled a recent dilemma for me about whether to advise one of my clients to have the big, bold social icons in their new site design on which they asked me to comment.
Would you care to share the name of the font you use for Copyblogger? And does it come standard with the Genesis framework? Very attractive and readable – of course you know that
.
The font used on the home page is called “Rokkitt”. It doesn’t come with the Genesis framework but it’s available for free on Google Web Fonts: http://www.google.com/webfonts#QuickUsePlace:quickUse/Family:Rokkitt
The sample Genesis child theme (http://www.studiopress.com/releases/sample-theme.htm) has already a code to load Google web fonts. You just have to replace the font name.
Thanks Rafal, much appreciated.
Change can be good, especially if it proceeds according to a rationale plan. Copyblogger has a huge following and worth doing it right.
I trully like the new design. It’s very clean. I think simple works better than advanced designs.
I was one of the 3 people who kept refreshing the page on the first day. I’m glad you removed some of the jQuery slicks and content on the home page. It’s now both revolutionary and palatable.
Great show! You’ve nailed Derek’s accent.
When you say in this podcast you “had a different view of what a theme should be,” what is your view on what a theme should be?
Have you talked or written about this before? If so, can you share the link?
Thanks!
My view is the Genesis Framework / child theme approach.
But why Genesis? How is it different from others?
Sorry, I’m new.
Just read the info on your site, didn’t realize it was your product.
You have a wonderful team to work with,glad you redesigned and yes please share whats your view on what a theme should be.
Thanks for sharing the strategy behind that copyblogger. It helped us learn more about it.
Guys, well done on the redesign – I think your goal to move from ‘a blog that products’ to ‘a business powered by a blog’ has been achieved beautifully.
I’m a big Copyblogger fan and have been following your evolution for a while. Your success has been amazing. It shows what’s possible on the internet.
That was meant to say ‘a blog that *sells* products’..opps
This seems to be the way things are done these days, as far as website design is concerned.
The emphasis seems to be on clear, easy to navigate site pages, minus the clutter.
The 90% plus opt in increase due to changing the opt in box position from under posts, to the home page, is quite remarkable.
Also, going by memory, the new site theme choice does look better. This option seems to look much clearer.
My favorite part was the Derek Halpern impression.
This would have been even better as a webinar with visuals.