Section 2 – Website & Landing Page Content (60 Marks)
- Difference between the two sites /what will you do different. (8 Marks)
Landing Page / Website
The difference between a website and a landing page is the purpose they achieve and the target market we are trying to reach. Websites are like car dealership showrooms; they’re well-designed spaces that allow you to explore categorized sections of cars with placards detailing the trim, performance, and pricing. You can freely move around the area and recheck places you have questions about.
Marshall, A. (2022, May 18). The incredible shrinking car dealership. WIRED. https://www.wired.com/story/car-dealers-electric-charging-smaller-online-shopping/
As seen in the image, the dealership itself acts as the website home page, almost like a “hub”; from here, you have access to the whole website and with our analogy that would mean the whole showroom. Each car in the showroom would act as a subdomain or “page” of the website where the consumer can freely browse to their liking. If a consumer sees a piece of content they like or a “car,” they will go up to it to get more information on the model, performance, and package. This would be like clicking on a page and viewing the more detailed content it has within it.
On the other hand, landing pages are like seeing an OOH (Out Of Home) advertisement or flyer that catches the consumer’s eye while they are out. The ad has a catchy headline with a clear call to action that urges the consumer to visit the dealership to check out its promotion. This “landing page” doesn’t allow you to walk around or look at multiple categorized cars. It’s focused on one “goal,” which is to convert the consumer as quickly as possible with the least distractions.
Now, for Dry Culture, the website is the virtual storefront focused on exploration, which provides visitors with an overview of the brand, its values, and the products it offers. The reasoning behind a home page is to educate and inform visitors about what they have to offer and to build trust and credibility. The website will cater to a large audience of potential customers; these might include consumers in the early stages of the buying funnel as they are just researching backpack options or our target audiences, which are adventure enthusiasts, Urban explorers and commuters. In contrast, the landing page serves a specific and focused purpose: our marketing campaign and promotion “What’s in your bag” #WIYB. It’s a stand-alone web page created to drive conversions or actions from visitors; in our case, it will be to gain email subscribers to retarget later. The landing page highly targets our audiences’ using keywords and phrases that our audience will understand. The scope of the website and landing page are drastically different; with the website, there is typically more than one page, each serving a specific function that provides information on different aspects of the brand. The website will cover many topics and cater to a wide audience. The landing page will serve a specific purpose, which, in our case, will be grabbing consumers’ emails while offering them another entry into the draw to win a bag. The landing page will be laser-focused on this goal and specifically tailored to the campaign.
What we are doing differently
Website content approach:
What we will be doing differently from each site is displaying the information; with the Dry Culture website, we will display the brand story, mission, products to offer, and values of Dry Culture. Our plan for the website is to educate and engage the website visitors. As the brand is new, we want to make sure we target the pain points website viewers have and address them. Some pain points on our website would be:
- Pain Point: Lack of brand recognition once on-site could lead to hesitancy in engaging while purchasing.
- Fix: To overcome this, we will include clear messaging and a compelling brand story communicating values, mission, and USP.
- Pain Point: The website has limited social proof and testimonials, which could lead to hesitation in purchasing.
- Fix: Showing user-generated content or nano influencers using the backpacks on the site will fix this pain point.
- Pain Point: Limited Customer Support: with this being a brand-new business, having customer support available to answer essential questions a website visitor may have is super important.
- Fix: We will include a form that provides clear contact information and use a plugin that allows for chat support that can answer any questions the website visitor may have.
The top priority will be addressing these pain points through our website for Dry Culture. We also want to make the navigation as easy as possible for website viewers and guide them through the buyer funnel to make a purchase.
Landing Page content approach:
Our landing page will be message-focused, emphasizing the campaign’s unique value proposition: submitting your email address and some information will give you an extra chance to win a free dry culture backpack. We will highlight this to capture the consumer’s attention and prompt them to act. Using a landing page for this campaign will optimize conversion rates compared to the website. This is because we only have one action on the landing page. There won’t be any distractions for the consumer; unlike a website, the conversion rate will be higher as the consumer being sent to the landing page already knows what they are getting, which would be “another chance at winning the bag.” We will meet the consumers’ expectations and guide them through the offer. We will be gathering consumers through social media platforms like TikTok, Instagram and Facebook that will grow these accounts and if the consumer wants another chance at winning, the backpack will be sent to our landing page.
This image shows how our landing page will function for our campaign and the guidelines we will set to make the consumer take action on our offer. Some of the pain points we are looking out for with our landing page would be:
- Pain Point: Form Complexity: If our landing page asks too much from the consumer, it may deter them from completing it and following through the buyer’s funnel.
- Fix: Make sure we write the form in plain language and use pictures to guide the consumers through the form.
- Pain Point: Lack of personalization and relevance: Users will be more likely to convert if the offer is personalized and tailored, as 71% of consumers expect personalization post-COVID. (The Value of Getting Personalization Right&Mdash;or Wrong&Mdash;Is Multiplying, 2021)
- Fix: Ensuring the campaign aligns with our target audience’s wants and that the landing page speaks directly to the consumer will solve this pain point.
In summary, our website content approach will prioritize depth, engagement and educating the consumer on what the backpacks do and their USP. As well as understanding Dry Culture and its offerings. Our content on the landing page will prioritize clarity, persuasion, and conversion optimization to drive action and maximize the campaign it’s supporting.
4 key differences in the approach on site content and structure (12 marks)
The four key differences would be purpose and target market, content approach, navigation, and design of the overall site; each of these elements plays a critical role in shaping UX (User Experience) and achieving two separate marketing objectives we have which would be a general sales website with background information on Dry Culture and a landing page that will be a hub for our advertising efforts.
Purpose & Target Market:
Website:
Dry Culture’s website will serve as a digital storefront platform showcasing its backpack line and future products and drops. We will communicate the mission and values Dry Culture holds to cement the purpose further and hone the website for the target audience. The purpose is massive for a website, and besides products and services, the purpose a website holds is 52% of what consumers want to see on a website. We will be taking this in stride and raising the opportunity for Dry Culture to take a percentage of profits and put it towards less fortunate kids in Windsor to provide them with backpacks and outdoor gear.
Our About Us page will be a huge part of our website because Dry Culture is a newer brand; we want consumers who come to the site to trust us enough to complete the buyer’s funnel. We will ensure our website is for the consumer, not just the product. A recent report by BBMG states that 73% of people care about the company, not just the product when purchasing. (Wolf, 2017) With this, we connect with our target audience and provide them with a solution to their problem. We aren’t just going to shove the product in their face.
Landing Page:
In contrast, our landing page will have a singular purpose and that will be to capture the attention of the consumer and prompt the potential customers into taking action. In our case we want them to sign up for our email list (community newsletter) our landing page purpose isn’t to give the consumer information on Dry Cultures’ mission or values we want the least amount of distraction on the landing page and having an “About Us” tab would cause the consumer to get confused and not follow through with the actions we want them to do.
Navigation:
Website:
We will be approaching the navigation of Dry Culture’s website extensively as consumers don’t want to figure out how the website works, they need to be gilded with proper structure and pages, and we want to make sure they make sense to avoid bounces from the website. We are going to streamline the navigation as 37% of users get annoyed when websites have complex and over-complicated navigation and sub-tabs.
According to a research study done by Cludo they found that 43% of users go directly to the search bar as soon as they arrive on a website. (Cludo, 2023) This is the new trend marketers are seeing in consumers where personalization is over everything else; with the popularity of Amazon, Facebook, and YouTube, they all have something in common that’s getting away from complex navigation and letting the search bar play a larger role within website navigation.
Landing Page:
On the other hand, our landing page won’t have a navigation option as our purpose with the landing page is to meet the consumers at the bottom of the buyer’s funnel to convert them. We drive consumers toward the targeted action we want them to take, so our landing page’s navigation portion will reflect that. It’ll be a single page which states what we want them to do.
Content Approach:
Website:
We are going to approach and aim the content on the website to inform visitors about the brand’s ethos (culture) as well as product features, the mission they intend to follow, as well as the product descriptions and educational resources, as a proposal to Dry Culture we are suggesting for their website a blog section that showcases the travels the backpack has been on with the owner’s, these blogs would be titled as the locations the backpack has been in and the content would be describing how the bags hold up, this idea could be taken a step further and be opened up to the community where it’s showcasing community adventures with the bag. We will also consider donating a small promotion of proceeds from the backpacks to local Windsor adventurers. This will include Dry Culture backpacks and outdoor gear (think of Tim’s Camp for inspiration and scale). We want community-focused content to be the website’s main star since the web page’s goal is to be exploratory.
Landing Page:
Our approach to the landing page features concise and persuasive copy written in F-pattern and plain language; we also are using the inverse pyramid method when it comes to our content on the landing page, as it’s only going to be one post that is converting the consumer. The website’s content is more exploratory as our landing page content will focus on the more direct sales with our promotion we will be running with “what’s in your bag.” Since we have only 15 seconds to keep the user on the landing page based on data collected from Time (Haile, 2014) We need to ensure the page we create keeps the users’ attention and decreases the bonce rates.
Design/Mobile Optimization:
Website:
Our website and landing page will include responsive design and branding elements that feel cohesive to website visitors. Our design and UI will take top priority, as 94% of first impressions on a website are due to its design (Yanush, 2024). Focusing on the design elements will increase our website conversion rates by up to 200% (Balkhi, 2024), which is a statistic that can’t be ignored. We will focus on ensuring the design stays focused on telling a story and optimizing the product section to make sales. An important note is how big mobile is when it comes to the digital space and websites; gone is the age where consumers search on computers and laptops to shop, and more and more consumers are choosing to shop on a mobile device which makes up 66.88% of traffic going to websites. (Similarweb, 2024)
Similarweb. (2024, April 1). Mobile vs. Desktop vs. Tablet Traffic Market Share. Similarweb. https://www.similarweb.com/platforms/
Us ignoring the mobile market for this project would mean we risk losing revenue and customer loyalty. Sale conversions on computers are still higher than mobile with desktop bringing in a total of 5.06% while mobile is 2.49%. (eCommerce Device Usage Statistics, n.d.) We are still including mobile optimization into our approach as a consumer could find Dry Culture on a mobile device and then move to a desktop to make the conversion.
Landing Page:
The design of our landing page is going to be optimized to eliminate distractions and guide in visitors to our desired conversion point which would be their email and other segmentation information we need. We will be using F-pattern and plain language to keep the user on our landing page and will stay consistent in communicating our value proposition which would be to get an extra chance at winning one of the Dry Culture backpacks. We will convey the benefits having this product will have on the consumer’s active lifestyle and fine tune keywords to help in SEO efforts. The CTA button will be changed on our landing page compared to our website as on the landing page there will only be one. This will be for a chance to win the bag; on our website we will have multiple calls to action that won’t be as important and will lead to different areas of the site. We will place the CTA strategically to encourage visitor engagement and prompt the user to take our desired action which would be signing up for our form.
After Revision
Home Page
Brief Overview
The overview for our new revised homepage for Dry Culture is a hub for the website. We focused on making the design user-centric and made it feel less like we were trying to sell them something. We added the search bar and used creative visual tricks to resonate with the target audience. We created clear sections on the home page for SEO and used keywords based on what Dry Culture already had set up. We also made the Stories and mission a considerable part of the site for social proof and community building. These will build trust and loyalty, resulting in a conversion in the sales funnel for a consumer to buy the backpack. (Karpis, 2021) We included cross-channel marketing within the homepage that links back to Dry Cultures blogs and social media accounts. We also changed the names of the colours to give them a border appeal to consumers using keywords like “sleek.” and “Classic.” It helps the consumer visualize the colour more.
Store Page
Brief Overview
With our store page, we wanted to personalize and give the consumers full control over how they shop.Drybage left, we have product categories and search tools that help consumers easily find what they want. This will directly impact the bounce rates as the consumers won’t confused as to where items are located. Dry Culture also has a sale going with their dry bags so we made sure to include that into the new website with easy-to-see “sale” signs.Drybag’sre easy to see and capture the attention of the audience to drive sales. This standard e-commerce strategy will boost Dry Culture’s short-term revenue. With the store page and home page, we made sure to stay consistent without with the branding and user experience. Consumers are used to things, and most don’t enjoy change (EP 4: Consumers Don’t Want to Change, so Why Are They – IFT.org, 2021). This is why our site structure is consistent and follows what other websites are doing. We aren’t trying to reinvent the wheel; we are trying to perfect it. We made sure to structure our product page to streamline the buying process and make it as easy as possible.
Product Page
Brief Overview
Once clicking on a product, you are sent to our brand-new product page template; this page can be adjusted to any product Dry Culture will have in the future. On the top of the page, it uses breadcrumbs to allow the consumer to trace back their past step, enhancing the website’s usability. Outside of the product page, we only ensured that essential information on the backpack, like water resistance and durability, was given. We discussed the features in a consumer-friendly way to attract a broader audience. Once on this page, we give all the information a consumer would need to justify buying a backpack and completing the sales funnel. We make sharing the product with friends, including social media buttons, easy. This will increase the brand’s visibility and organically market it. We make sure to show multiple images of the product, so the consumer knows what they are buying.
About Us Page
Brief Overview
This page and its content will explain in more depth the reasoning and justifications for how Dry Culture came to be. It aims to share the history and the people behind the brand who make it possible. This will increase credibility and trustworthiness among consumers. This page also emphasizes what the brand values, as the narrative will align with the products as adventurous and passionate about the outdoors, which will resonate with our target audience with similar interests. This page is also made to differentiate itself from the competitors and other backpacking brands. The competitors might sell the same products but won’t have the same brand story or background as Dry Culture. We are trying to provoke emotions within the consumer, a robust decision-making process that will complete the buyer’s funnel.
Our Mission Page
Brief Overview
This page aims to reinforce the brand’s purpose. We did this by sharing their narrative on social impact and explaining the local organizations Dry Culture supports. This will be effective in our millennial and Gen Z market as they tend to favour brands with strong corporate responsibility. (Aziz, 2023) We are social engineering consumers to suggest by buying from us; they also support other causes. It ties into the emotional well-being of the consumer. The About Us and Mission pages justify why our website focuses on the consumer first and not the product. Our landing page is focused on generating sales, being the last section in the buyer’s funnel to complete the transaction we want email lists. We also talk about the outdoors in this section and how a percentage of proceeds will go towards local Windsor kids by supplying them with backpacks and outdoor equipment.
Blog Page
Brief Overview
The blog page is for content and SEO purposes. The blog posts cover a wide range of topics related to our main goal and website style; we are creating content based on the relevance of what users search for within the outdoors and backpacks. This content also adds value beyond Dry Culture, just selling backpacks. We are positing Dry Culture as a thought leader in the outdoor and travel space. With the SEO side of this, regularly updated blog content with relevant keywords to our niche will improve the website SERPs. We can also share some of Dry Cultures’ personalities through the blog post, which we wouldn’t be able to do if it were just a product page. We will include CTAs at the end of each blog that will guide the consumer into doing an action we want them to perform, either by buying our backpacks or another product related to what Dry Culture is doing.
Contact Us Page
Brief Overview
This page aims to connect the consumer with the business. We recommend Dry Culture use a plug-in that makes segmenting and dealing with the customer service side easier. This will include a chat section permanently anchored in the corner of the page. The consumer can ask questions and get answers back, and if it’s a question related to shipping or purchasing that needs to be addressed, it will route them to the Contact Us page. Through this page, we can also gather customer insights and data as our contact form will collect feedback and consumer questions. Local SEO benefits from Contact Us pages and all the information listed and can be used for schema. This will help Google use our information in rich boxes on SERPS. Possible lead generation comes from contact forms if it is compiled under CASL law. We can use consumer data in retargeting campaigns later.
Home Page
Home Page Rational
The approach we went with for the home page was a hero image that was able to embody what Dry Culture is all about. Since it’s the first pano image on the website, we wanted to make sure it hit the emotions of excitement and adventure. The immediate product listing with images was to hook the consumer right when they scolded down with visual interest and decision-making cues. After the product images, it goes into a full pano of what the backpack does best. It doesn’t overcomplicate listing the advantages, though. Since a broader audience is on the home page the content is in simple language and directly states the benefits without going overboard. The testimonials under it leverage social proof and build trust. Moving down the page to the blog posts, they are there for the SEO continent and to show the consumer Dry Culture knows what they are doing in their area of business; the blog posts also provide value to the interests of the consumers. The newsletter in the footer is our CTA on the page that converts web traffic into leads we can use to retarget consumers later.
Goals:
The goals we had for the home page were to:
- Establish Dry Cultures brand identity.
- Drive engagement through the featured products and pano product images.
- Build credibility through the “about us” and “mission” sections.
- Educate visitors in outdoor expertise by strategically placing blog posts.
- The newsletter CTA to capture leads, resulting in a marketing list.
Store Page
Store Page Rational
The approach and content we created on the product category page were to display the list of backpacks and future products Dry Culture might add later. We also wanted intuitive sorting options on the website to decrease consumer bounce rates. This will also directly benefit UX. The product page wasn’t made to hold information about the products themselves, as we wanted the consumer to funnel them into the specific product pages to give in-depth information. Since the website is more exploratory, we wanted the consumers not to get stressed with the amount of information that was displayed, so we restricted it to the product pages. This product page was designed with one word in mind, simplicity and ease of access.
Goals:
The goals we had for the store page were to:
- Promote product discovery ad navigation to improve the overall shopping experience the consumer is going to have.
- Educate the consumer without going overboard with an informational dump of content.
- Encourage and promote the exploration of the products, leading the consumer to make a more informed purchase decision.
Dry Bags Page
Dry Bags Rational
Our approach for this product detail page was to give the consumer all the information they needed. This page explained to our target audience that this product is worth it to them. We displayed all the critical information necessary to make an informed purchase decision. Another part of the approach we wanted to do was to have lots of detailed shots of the bags to give a comprehensive view of the overall product. We also made a section to suggest other products that the consumer would like to add a more dynamic touch to the page. This will guide the consumer to browse and buy more of our products.
Goals:
The goals we had for the product detail page were to:
- Convert visitors into customers by providing them with enough information.
- Increase average order value by dynamically displaying related products to the consumer.
- Strengthen the overall brand-customer relationship by reminding the consumer of Dry Culture’s values and story.
About Us Page
About Us Rational
For this page’s approach, we began by opening with an emotional appeal statement that connects emotionally with the reader. The opening reflects the moments that led to the creation of Dry Culture and the passion that fuels the brand. For the approach of this page, we also wanted the visuals to be compelling to tell the brand’s story and give an in-depth look into the founders’ lives, especially in topics that relate to the overall website. We also wanted to convey how the brand engages with the local Windsor community to build trust and authority.
Goals:
The goals we had for the About Us page were to:
- Craft a compelling narrative that weaves essential information to make purchase decisions into creative, personalized content.
- Foster a sense of community that motivates website visitors to interact with the brand other than transactional.
- Encourage Exploration, we want visitors to explore the website and through our story telling we would guild them through the funnel to complete a purchase.
Our Mission Page
Our Mission Rational
For the approach of the mission page, we wanted to dive deeper into Dry Cultures community involvement and provide the top of the page with a clear, strong mission statement. This page was one of the pages we needed as a fundamental section of the website, with the overall objective being to increase profits. We wanted to build the website into a community hub of action, and with the mission’s page, we can keep consumers in the loop with what activities Dry Culture is doing to help the community.
Goals:
The goals we had for the Mission page were to:
- Build more emotional bonds with consumers that align with Dry Culture’s mission statement.
- Strengthen brand loyalty with customers and consumers. By resonating with Dry Culture’s beliefs and values, they will be more willing to make a purchase.
- Drive Conversions: although the mission page’s focus isn’t to convert it plays a role in the storytelling on the site by still gilding the visitor with knowledge about the bags that would make them convert.
Our Blog Page
Our Blog Rational
Our approach to the blog post features a diverse array of content that appeals to the target audience and aligns with our brand messaging. Our approach also makes the navigation as easy as possible to understand and use. Engagement is also important to us, so we created areas where readers can interact with the content, like comment sections and share buttons. We also wanted to include a newsletter subscription CTA to capture readers’ data who want more information on outdoor content.
Goals:
The goals we had for the blog page were to:
- Position Dry Culture as an industry thought leader by providing valuable blog content.
- Drive organic traffic to the website through this blog page.
- Fostering a community
- Convert this organic traffic into leads and nurture them into customers.
Contact Us Page
Our Contact Us Rational
The approach with the contact page was to make it as straightforward as possible for the consumer. In doing this, we aim to increase customer satisfaction and reduce consumer frustration. We are going to suggest an idea for a plug-in for the website that creates an AI system that will help consumers with basic questions and resolve the pain point of not having a FAQ page. By listing the business information on the website, we are helping with local SEO efforts. We can also use the contact page as analytical tracking, which we can then use to see consumers’ level of satisfaction and the effectiveness of our website design.
Goals:
The goals we had for the Contact Us page were to:
- Lead Captures: use the form on the contact page to capture leads by collecting the consumer’s data.
- Local SEO optimization: include Dry Culture’s location, hours and a Google embed map to enhance the local SEO efforts.
- Reinforce Brand Availability by conveying the message that Dry Culture is ready and willing to engage with customers at any time of the day and not just during working hours.
Landing Page
Landing Page Copy
Headline:
“WIN A FREE BAG”
Copy:
“Show us #WhatsInYourBag for a chance to win your own Tofino DryBag!”
CTA:
“Subscribe to our newsletter for an additional entry in the #WhatsInYourBag giveaway!”
“Submit”
Landing Page Rational
Our approach with the landing page aligns with our overall campaign, and that’s to Win a free Tofino DryBag. The headline gives this detail perfectly and is benefit-driven for the consumer. It’s meant to capture immediately and convey the value proposition. The subhead line incentivizes the action by saying, “Show us #WhatsInYourBag for a chance to win your own Tofino DryBag!” this subhead line encourages and prompts users to engage with Dry Culture. The hero image of the landing page is of the backpacks with stylized white lines around them to grab attention. The background is darkened to pull the focus to the copy and image. The landing page’s field forms maximize conversion rates as it doesn’t require too much information, so the time investment is low. We also asked how they heard about the giveaway to have social proof of what platform is doing the best with advertisements and content. The point of the landing page is to build out an email list to retarget to later on.
Goals and Desired Results
The goals and desired results we want with the landing page are having the users understand the value proposition as quickly as possible and feel motivated to complete the form due to the clear benefit of winning a backpack from the event. We also want the consumer to engage with the content which would increase talk around Dry Culture on social media platforms. The last goal we would have for the user would be quickly navigating their way through the sign-up process. Our goals on the brand side would be to capture lead information quickly for retargeting. Increasing brand engagement through social media platforms through the hashtag we created. Building out our email subscriber list for our newsletter and gaining data on how users heard about our campaign to focus more on those platforms. By designing the landing page through this approach, we can differentiate between the website and the landing page, as the page’s only focus is the giveaway. We want the consumer to perform the signup action with no distractions. The reasoning behind our targeted approach is based on best practices for landing page conversions. Unlike our website, which is for exploration, our landing page is streamlined to guide the user towards the goal we want them to complete.
Section 2 – Website & Landing Page Content (60 Marks)
Before Revision