I would like to award prizes (sorry, no fancy statues or red carpets, just my accolades) to 5 websites that I think do it right. I've selected these 5 sites to talk about various aspects of website design. Perhaps you can incorporate some of the same ideas into your site to increase effectiveness and make more sales.
Postaroo.com is a site I would probably never click on if I hadn't heard about it. And it's rare that I pay attention to commercials anyway (… that's why remotes were invented). However, Postaroo had a clever marketing campaign that included teaser commercials less than 5 seconds long that simply had a kangaroo hopping and a “coming soon.” I was intrigued each time I saw it and when they finally announced what they were, I immediately went to their website. Brilliant!
FedWorld.gov is the place to bookmark to begin any federal government search you may have. In spite of excessive red-tape when dealing with bureaucrats, this website is easy to use and well-designed. You might actually be proud of your tax dollars at work effectively, here.
MediaBistro.com is not a site that many people would visit, simply because it is fairly niche-oriented. But it looks good and collects together all kinds of resources into one page. If you fall into their niche, it's definitely a central hub you can go to time and time again. Can you be that site for your niche?
WebEx.com may be well-known to you as a premiere provider for e-learning solutions. What I like about this site is that the site is very well-designed and it gives all kinds of valuable information for people looking for information, but the three things they want people to do are front and center and so clearly marked that you can't miss them. Is your call-to-action as clear as theirs?
National Geographic has a lot of content it needs to put on its front page. What I like about this site better than (for example) Amazon.com is that nearly all of the important stuff shows up on the screen rather than requiring excessive scrolling. On Amazon, which also posts a lot of front-page content, the excessive scrolling can get annoying. I usually click off before I get to the bottom. Does your key information show up without scrolling?
