We received a telephone call from Paul Gandy, Managing Director of Worldwide Shipping & Air Freight Ltd.

“Our conversion rates are down and we have been told by our marketing consultants that it is because of our website. Can you help?”

Upon review it was apparent that a major redesign was necessary.

We need to do a detailed analysis of Paul’s site and we need to see what the competition is doing. Why is www.worldfreight.co.uk under performing and what are the reasons why others in the industry are performing well?

The site (hereafter to referred to as Worldwide) had been built up over a number of years and contained a massive amount of content. Good for the search engines I hear you say and you would be right. However not so good for the visitor.

The home page had three areas all pointing to the same large containers of content. It was all very complicated and confusing for the first time visitor to the site.

For us it was apparent that the site needed deconstructing and putting back together in a simple, easy to read and easy to navigate manner. There was much to commend the content but it needed to be found!

We also concluded that the site needed to be ready to do business as soon as someone arrived. There are many successful sites that facilitate business immediately without trying to describe their history and a list of ancillary services. Ebay is the prime example. You are searching for a product and you don’t care about Ebay at all.So EBay gives you what you need.  Airline websites are another example where all you are doing is finding out whether or not you can get to a certain place at a certain time for a certain price. Does anyone know if they are flying on a Boeing 737? Do they care even?

The most important ingredient in any site is that the visitor can find his way around easily. We concluded that it was unnecessary to duplicate the service descriptions for the consumer and the business client. They are very similar. So we grouped the services under four simple titles. International Shipping, National Shipping, Commercial and Specialist shipping. From there we spent quite a while in diverting content to its new home. This would help later in the design of the site and it is a bit like decorating. The more preparation you put in at this stage the easier the task becomes when you come to paint!

This is where we earn our corn. How shall we create a site that will be sufficiently visually stimulating to the extent it helps to improve the visitor experience and increase the conversion rate that Paul was seeking?

We understood the site was to be accessed by both commercial and domestic clients and probably by both genders in equal quantities. We felt then that the site needed to be brighter and fresher than a standard commercial corporate site. Understanding the target market gave us this latitude.

We wanted to emulate a feeling of the great travel posters of the 1920s and 30s but with a slightly modern twist. We decided to animate the images with movement. This can sometimes be controversial as excessive motion on a site can cause irritation with some visitors. However we felt it justifiable as Worldwide’s business was all about transportation and movement of goods.

All this design work was being carried out within the confines of Worldwide’s brand which had not altered much over some years. Branding and continuity are happy bedfellows but there comes a time when a new look can have a major impact upon a company’s service offering. Broaching this with Paul soon enlightened us as to his openness on the subject and we soon set to work on creating an image which would fit with the website theme and one which would continue for years alongside other guises. 

After putting the site together we discuss the final design and build with Paul again as we have throughout the project.We believe this design will work. We have decluttered and made the site as easy to read and as intuitive for the visitor as possible. It is all about getting the visitor to that all important quote form.

Now we have to test the site and retest it before we go live. Will it work as well as we hope?

We go live. We know it works on all relevant platforms. It works on mobiles with its responsive design. All we have to do is wait for Worldwide Shipping to put it into operation and tell us how successful it is. We wait less than three weeks to receive an email from Paul. BINGO! You can see his satisfaction on our testimonials page. It was a pleasure working with Worldwide and we look forward to the next one. Hopefully it may be you.