New Self Sufficiency Website increases traffic and engagement
Self Sufficient Me
Having previously experienced negative outcomes with prior developers, Mark spent some time before contacting GO Creative. His prerequisite prior to engaging GO Creative was that he wanted a developer who understood his passion for self sufficiency and possessed the creativity to bring his ideas to life. Previous developers lacked this vision, instead simply offering generic templates that lacked inspiration and customisation.
As Mark’s business model relies completely on affiliate commissions, his new website needed to present a professional, experienced and welcoming persona. This sensibility would give bloggers, affiliates and sponsors the confidence to promote his website and increase his followers, revenue and profits. Essentially, Mark wanted more traffic to his website which in itself, would help to improve his rankings in the search engines as well as his revenue.
Today, Self Sufficient Me is a colourful and professional website that presents a compelling message driven by Mark’s passion for sustainability. The menus are easy to access and navigate, his YouTube channel is visible immediately, and his posts are front and centre on the home page.
Following the launch of his new website, Mark enthused about the attention to detail and the positive collaboration he received from the GO Creative team. He was also extremely impressed with the sudden increase in traffic and engagement with his new website.
“The enhancements and changes (from my previous website) have been a game changer and already engagement/traffic has increased dramatically”.
– Mark Valencia, Self Sufficient Me
Goals
Mark’s brief for his new website was that it needed to perfectly reflect his passion for self sustainable living. It also needed to be contemporary, colourful and engaging, linking directly with his YouTube channel and presenting his posts so that they could be easily accessed by his followers. Since Mark’s revenue relied on affiliate commissions he needed a professional website that would instil confidence in his followers, encouraging them to trust his opinions of various products that he recommends in his blog posts.
While there appeared to be a number of goals for Mark’s new website, the overriding aim was to increase traffic, which itself, would lead to higher affiliate earnings. This was then broken down into three small and specific goals:
- Increase search engine visibility.
- Maximise conversions.
- Showcase posts and YouTube links.
Solutions
The main reason that Self Sufficient Me needed a new website was that it wasn’t receiving enough traffic. This lack in traffic had a knock-on effect, reducing visitors and followers, resulting in a lack of revenue and profits from affiliate commissions. This meant that the new website needed to be more visible to search engines, so that people searching for information on sustainability and self sufficient lifestyles could more easily locate Mark’s website.
The solution was to design a website that was search engine friendly with an easy to navigate menu system and prominent links to the related YouTube channel, videos and podcasts. The site also presents Mark’s extensive collection of blog posts on the home page, enabling followers to quickly select posts to view. Overall, the design is contemporary, fresh, colourful and professional.
1. Increased search engine visibility
Mark’s new website was optimised for search engines with a defined menu structure and easy to use navigation. He had already amassed a large number of quality backlinks due to his affiliate business model, so with that already in hand, the GO Creative team focussed on making sure that his new website was super-fast. Speed optimisation was one of the crucial factors in Mark’s new website because it’s one of Google’s ranking factors.
However, since Mark’s website was quite large in terms of the amount of content (given his proclivity with blogging), poor speed was not only impacting user experience and conversion rates, but also affecting the crawl rate of search bots. This in turn, reflects poorly on rankings. The GO Creative team, therefore, ensured the following processes were optimised to maximise speed:
- CSS, HTML and JavaScript files were compressed and optimised.
- Redirects were minimised.
- Render blocking JavaScripts were omitted wherever possible.
- Images were compressed and optimised.
2. Maximising conversions
For Mark’s website, conversions meant that followers would click on a link in one of his blog posts and purchase a product on a vendor’s page, such as Amazon or eBay. The design of his new website and the presentation of his content were key to increasing these conversions, given that his posts were already extensive in number and well written.
Therefore the GO Creative team collaborated heavily with Mark to design a website that now reflects his passion for self sufficiency, resulting in a professional, colourful and contemporary design that complements and promotes his ideas. To help further maximise conversions, there is an easy to use menu system and clear links to his media channels. To enhance the trust factor for his website, the hero image on the home page includes an up to date image of Mark with his well-recognised “thumbs up” pose.
When focusing on conversions we considered:
- A fresh new design.
- Prominently displayed posts.
- Clear links to social media channels.
- Personalised images.
3. Showcasing posts and social media links
Since Mark’s business model relies heavily on affiliate earnings, he needed a seamless integration between his website and his YouTube channel, as well as with his other social media sites and podcasts. This was a key component of Mark’s new website and was one of his priorities.
This integration was easily achieved by the GO Creative team by including a visual link to one of his YouTube videos in the hero image on the home page. A link to his podcasts was included in the top horizontal menu along with links to his other social media sites.
Considerations for this component of the project were:
- Links to Mark’s YouTube channel prominently displayed in the hero image.
- Links to his podcasts and social media pages added to the top menu system.
Results
Mark now has a fresh, professional and very welcoming website that clearly showcases his love for self sufficiency. High resolution images have been used throughout the site and his posts are prominently collated and showcased on the home page. With prominent positioning of his social media channels, Mark has recently enjoyed a significant uptick in traffic and engagement on his website.
Conclusions
Following the launch of his newly designed website, Mark is highly enthused with the results. He recently stated that what he wanted was not just a good web developer, but a company with staff who were creators and thinkers that could best showcase his ideas and passion.
“I needed constructive input from an outsiders point of view as to how my new Website should be themed and constructed in order to match my business as a YouTuber. GO Creative designed my website with features curated to my particular business that I would never have thought of otherwise. Definitely, give GO Creative a go! I’m so glad I did.”
