Episode summary
Welcome to Site Submissions!
In this series, we dive into your websites and explore their demand generation potential.
We'll break down your messaging, design, user experience (UX), and functionality, highlighting what works and what could be improved.
Phil, with over 13 years of real-world experience in B2B websites, will give you practical recommendations based on research and experience.
In our first Site Submissions episode, we're taking a close look at the abstrakt.ai website.
Watch the video to see our analysis.
Episode transcript
Hello and welcome to this Websites Decoded Site Submission, where we take your websites and look at what we would suggest to improve their demand generation potential.
This time we have Abstrakt AI, very kindly submitted by Clare Dobson. Let's take a look and see what we found.
Homepage analysis
Okay, straight away we see some nice things when we arrive on this website. There's plenty of white space around the content. There's a nice horizontal navigation that's familiar and intuitive to me.
Across the top, we've got differentiated, contrasting calls to action. So I know what's primary and what's secondary.
We've got a glimpse of the software in the header image, which is always really good, and we've got some very nice, very strong proof indicators too.
But what would I suggest to improve the demand generation potential of this website?
Homepage hero section
When it comes to demand generation, the contents of this hero section are really important. While ready on day one is a nice line, it's more of a strap line than a value proposition, and it doesn't convey a lot of information about what's on offer on this site.
So my first recommendation would be to replace that probably with something like this subtitle. This text clearly explains what's on offer, who it's for, and what problem it solves, so it makes a stronger H1 title for the home page.
I then suggest supporting it with messages that we actually find over here in the animation. 'Automated playbooks and scripts and real-time recommended responses' make really nice supporting points for that updated title.
In terms of the image, we're almost there. We can see the software, although it's a little hard to make out. But the animation isn't adding any value, I don't think, and it will be distracting visitors from reading the information that's on the page.
That's what animation and movement can so often do. So I would be testing this with a version of the animation that stops after one or two loops of the playthrough, or simply with a static version, with or without the embellishments, to see what performs best in terms of conversions at an overall site level.
When it comes to calls to action in the hero section, they're actually pretty hard to get right. They rarely get as much engagement as calls to action in the hero section or elsewhere on the page.
But to not have one feels like a waste to a lot of people. So I can understand why we see one here. The problem with the call to action here is the CTA language 'let's do this' and could mean anything and therefore kind of means nothing.
So buyers really don't know what to expect when they submit their email address and click that button. So I think they're less likely to do it at all in most cases.
In my experience, that leads to another form with an email address pre-populated, which feels a bit like bait and switch. That's not what happens in this case. But nevertheless, I think that's what buyers might be expecting.
So one study, a test, a relatively small one, actually found that website conversion overall was higher, 31% higher, when there was no call to action in the hero section. So I would be inclined to test it without anything there and see if it has a positive impact.
If not, or if committed to having a call to action, I would simply have a request, a demo button and or a button linking to the product tour to take buyers to pages where they know what to expect.
When it comes to the social proof indicators, we've got some really strong ones here, but I don't think it'll be clear to all buyers that the stars are G2 stars. So they might look at those with a little bit of suspicion and wonder where those ratings are coming from and if they're real.
So I'd be putting the G2 logo alongside those stars or grouping them more clearly with the G2 badges to make it clear that's where they're from. As we scroll down, we see some logos of companies that are using the product.
That's always good. I might be inclined to tweak the headline to indicate just how these teams are using this software and what I'm joining them doing on it, as opposed to just joining them.
As we scroll down, we get to a piece of content I really like, which is how does it work?
Other homepage sections
I think a lot of B2B businesses could benefit from explaining how their innovative or differentiated or novel solution actually delivers the promise that they're making. So I really like seeing that here.
This video, however, probably isn't doing a great job of supporting that really good copy. A number of reasons.
One, it's more of an educational piece of content, or at least that's how it appears to me. So it's kind of ideal at a different point in the research and buying journey, it's a recorded meeting, meaning I've got to watch it at full screen, really, to be able to see what's contained within.
And I'm like most buyers watching with my volume off. And so since there are no built-in captions or subtitles, which is often the case with YouTube embedded videos, I'm most likely not going to watch it through and I'm not going to get a lot of value from it.
I'd be looking here for a more targeted animated explainer or a piece of video that supports how it works message with captions embedded or with subtitles turned on, so that buyers without their volume up can get the content they need in a quick and easy way. Either that or just have an illustration that supports the how it works message.
One other thing I noticed, and UX, improvements to websites can sometimes be big and sometimes they could be small. I noticed as I was browsing this website that the sheer amount of movement in these buttons kind of stopped me in my tracks and I found myself interacting with the button over and over again to see the movement instead of clicking it to go and see where it leads me.
So I think it might be wise to simplify these buttons, reduce the amount of movement that goes on when people hover, and see if it gets more people clicking and going where you want them to go.
As we scroll down, we continue to see nice content well presented. We've got results, we've got use cases, and we've got testimonials from customers, really strong content type. Of course, one issue with how these are presented across the site is the line length. So, we can't read text this long without frequently having to start over due to the long line length, meaning I and potentially some other visitors are not actually reading these statements to see what incredible value these customers have got from the tool.
So, I'd be reorganising how this is presented, changing the layout of the text versus the photograph and the name and title so that the line length was constrained and I could read it really easily while I'm skimming the page.
Footer analysis
And then when we get to the bottom of the website, we see a good footer with useful relevant links and we see one of these rather tricky, again, call to action modules.
Now, this is another place where I think we all struggle to know how to conclude our page and we wonder what to put there. And we end up quite often sort of contriving a call to action, something like this.
Buyers typically don't engage with them in this position. And again, I'd be inclined to suggest just leaving it out so that people can get to the bottom of the page, get to ways to contact you, get to ways to navigate through the site, and don't waste their attention and the space on a call to action that they're unlikely to engage with.
As we continue to navigate through the site, we see the good things continue and some of the room for improvement continue too.
Product tour page
So, on the product tour page here, the header is nice. However, the scrolling text is just like a slider in a home page design, really distracting and really diluting in terms of the key message that we're trying to across.
So I'd be removing that scrolling text and picking a single strong message to showcase. Here we've got good software screenshots that are very easy to see, so that's excellent. And we've got a call to action, which is a demo call to action, but with the language we've seen before, which is 'See Abstrakt in action', that's not terribly clear.
I don't think it's going to increase the amount that buyers want to click on it. If it's a demo that's on offer, I would call it a demo everywhere so that buyers know what to expect when they click on CTA.
Buyers respond best to specific and authentic calls to action, in our experience.
We scroll down the page, we continue to see good content well presented. We've got the line length issue again with the testimonials.
Definitely think that's worth addressing site-wide and everything else is looking pretty good.
As we go down here, we've got the troublesome end of page CTA section. Again, once more, I wouldn't bother, I would just get straight to the footer and to letting people continue their journey.
Request a demo page
Now, one of the key pages, of course, is the requested demo page. This is in pretty good shape, but I think, again, what people see above the fold is worth optimising because they're really not going to spend a lot of time probably scrolling through this to see what's below.
So when I see this book, a demo page, I think there's room to explain a little bit more about what this demo will look like or be like, or what will be on offer. There's room for more copy.
And while we've got the G2 badges, which are the symbols of proof coming from G2 themselves, I'd like to see the social proof. So the stars of reviews from G2 and maybe a customer testimonial here above the fold.
One company I saw actually found that including social proof in and alongside their conversion form, increased conversions by 68%, which is quite impressive.
So I'd like to see those there they are below. But again, I don't think people are going to scroll to consume this content as much as make a decision based on what's seen here.
Abstrakt.ai Site Submission Summary
From a content point of view, this site's in very good shape.
The one thing that's perhaps missing is, of course, pricing. B2B buyers like it when pricing is transparent and they can calculate their own cost of implementing and using a new solution.
But that aside, if Abstrakt were to implement some or all of the recommendations I'm making, or test their impact, I believe that they would receive more buyers arriving on the website, staying, consuming the content and going on to request that all important demo.