Christian Work at Home Moms is a resource site aimed at Stay At Home Moms. Jill Hart is the founder of Christian Work at Home Moms, CWAHM.com and the co-author of So You Want To Be a Work-At-Home Mom (Beacon Hill Press, 2009).
She asked the Sales Rescue Team to take a look at her site so that she could create a clear, compelling message.
“We have so much information and so much to offer, but none of it is getting across because of our busy design. How do we attract advertisers and yet have a calm, clear website? So, I could use some help figuring out how to make my site both user-friendly and ad-friendly.” –Jill
{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
Hi Jill,
Thanks for giving us the opportunity to help. I’ve just spent some time looking around your website and your right, there’s a lot going on! That isn’t a criticism, more an observation. You’ve done a great job of pulling in those sponsors and there’s a lot of information available to your readers.
One thing I noticed, and I may be wrong, but there didn’t seem to be any sponsorship or input from religious organisations on the site, yet your site is Christian Moms. Why is that? I would think a link up there would raise your profile and drive more traffic?
So some feedback on the site. It is difficult to take in all the information and I do think that you’d benefit from a cleaner, less cluttered layout. That isn’t to say that you need to lose ad space, just that you may want to give thoughts to placing ads near relevant articles of info points. The main thing that struck me though is that the way the site reads down the home page reminds me of a blog. So you know where I’m going now right? In your shoes, I would try to clean up the website with a less is more approach on the main pages. I would then run a linked blog where you can continue to place articles, thoughts, notes etc., but also increase your opportunity for not only more advertisements, but ads that will still be in an uncluttered environment and therefore stand out.
You’ve also gone some way to embracing social media with Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn. Your posts and comments can be used to drive traffic to whichever web page of blog article you choose. Your readers can easily find relevant information and articles but I think the main benefit will be to potential advertisers. If I looked at your site today with a view to advertising I’d be concerned that I’d get lost in the noise. In any economic climate we want to ensure that we get the best bang for our buck but that is especially true today.
I would advise you to sell space from 2 perspectives:- The first would be that you have the audience, which is exactly where you are today. A clean site and blog will assure the advertiser that they will be seen. The second is that you have the opportunity to sell ad space and then place targeted links and articles to ensure that those specific ads get exposure. As an advertiser, I’d buy into that.
I hope that’s of help.
Regards,
Andrew Sayers
Acquire Business Consulting
+44 7789 386 990
Hi Jill, I think there’s a lot of positive energy at the site. It feels good and appears that you care about your readers and users.
You have a lot of great content that I believe people would click through and spend some time on. I would echo Andrew’s thoughts and take it a step further: I would lose some of the ads/sponsors and simplify it. The content is why people stay and as they hang around they will discover the links and ads and click through as it stays relevant. What do your traffic stats tell you about where people enter and exit your site? How long do they stay? What’s the bounce rate? I didn’t look at your code yet, but do you have a solid analytics package going? I assume so.
I don’t prefer the instant and immediate popup box asking me to subscribe. I haven’t even been in to check out the site and there’s no trust built yet. I would recommend you change the timing on that. It is duplicating what you already have a bit more quietly there in the first content area.
I like this article page a lot and the bio/photo links. I would highly recommend you make those more prominent. The way you’ve done it inspires trust and energy — and people who come want to get to know you. I’m beating the same drum here again…
This is an iterative process and we’ll look for some of your thoughts and then add to this review.
Thanks. –TJ