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GROK Case Study 3: AdZe.com
Lost in Cyber-Space
Welcome
to AdZe.com, a case study that shows how improving your
navigation and helping your customers sail through your site
not only gets them what they want, but gets you what you
want.
Who
Is Adze.com?
AdZe.com
was launched in 1995 by AdZe MiXXe, Astrologer
Extraordinaire. AdZe was an accomplished astrologer and
writer who had a great enthusiasm for the Internet.
Together with his partner and graphic designer, Gwenn
Knapp, they managed to build a wonderful astrology site.
Sadly, he passed away in the summer of 1997. However,
Gwenn and another friend, John Derrickson, joined forces
in 1999, and decided to follow AdZe’s wishes and
maintain the site. They have built the site to over 1,000
pages and close to 1 million pageviews each month (with a
staff of only two!).
Presenting
Challenge
Gwenn
told me that her presenting challenge was to “increase
product sales.” But, as is often the case, there was a
lot more to the story.
GROK
Identified Primary Issues
One
look at her old home page <http://www.adze.com/index-old.html>
and
I was overwhelmed with what I call “Paralysis of
Analysis” - so many choices I couldn’t choose anything
at all.
·
The
home page was way too busy.
·
It
took way too long to load.
·
I
couldn’t figure out where to go next. Major navigation
problem!
Creating
Persuasive Navigation
The key
to driving people where you want them to go is to
understand what they want and where they think they want
to go. In my navigation article <http://www.grokdotcom.com/navigationdesign.htm>
I
discussed many types of navigation. You may want to check
it out to get a good understanding of navigation options.
Here is
what the folks at Future
Now <http://www.futurenowinc.com>
and I did to help
AdZe.com <http://www.adze.com>:
1.
Simple Navigation
- We removed her ‘iconic’ and ‘cryptic’
navigation and turned most of the links into simple
text links that anybody could understand right away.
2.
How Newbies Search
- I’m pretty new to this Earthly horoscope stuff,
but at least I was aware I’m the Martian equivalent
of an Aries, so that’s where I felt I needed to go.
So the “Sun Signs” links needed to be very
obvious. And by the way, Gwenn told me that, according
to her logs, these are the most popular areas of the
site.
3.
They’re Hot! You’re Hot!
- The next most popular area is the celebrity
Horoscopes. I was amazed at how many people actually
follow Madonnas’ stars. (Hey, Gwenn, when do I get
featured there? <grin>) So, we put some of the
most popular celebrity links right below the general
daily horoscopes.
4.
Driving Traffic -
Join me as I surf the new and improved AdZe site. I go
to the home page, see the very familiar (and most
important to me) word ‘Aries’ and I click on it. I
read my horoscope and, as soon as I am done, I see a
“call to action.” It is an invitation for a free
personal daily horoscope based on my birth date, place
and time.
5.
There even are secondary calls to action: a
choice of checking out another sign or seeing how I
would match-up with a mate. I can even fill out a
simple form and get a personalized Cosmic Greeting.
(Made me feel right at home!)
6.
Sales
- Gwenns’ ultimate goal is to upsell from the
free reports to the more advanced reports. Therefore,
she has added a call to action at the bottom of the free
daily personal horoscope which invites users to upgrade
to the more comprehensive suite of reports.
They’ve
Only Just Begun
Gwenn
and John are still redesigning the rest of the pages, but
there are numerous positive results already. The new site
has already seen a 7% increase in overall pageviews,
including a 40% increase for the Sun Signs, 50% for
Madonnas’ Horoscope, and a whopping 95% for the
Celebrity Directory. Along with all of this, sales have (ta
daaaa) doubled! Yup, doubled. And this is just the
beginning. I can’t wait to see the numbers when they’re
finished implementing all the improvements, and neither
can they!
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