The Starting Idea

CASE STUDY

The Starting Idea is an online business magazine website and community which helps busy entrepreneurs rapidly scale their businesses online with innovative marketing strategies.

Team

Abhik Shome
Weronika Wysocka

Scope of Project

Brand Strategy
Messaging
Web Design
Identity System Design
Motion Graphics
Content Marketing
Copywriting

Brief

Create an online magazine website that conveys the message of business growth while building trust and authority towards the Starting Idea brand.

The main purpose of the website will be to convert its site visitors into subscribers for Growth Club (The Starting Idea e-mail newsletter).

The site will include interviews with top international online entrepreneurs, long-form strategy based content, and infographics. It should also include conversion-powered lead capture forms and be integrated with a newsletter service.

Challenge

To avoid the trap of cluttered content which most information based magazine sites fall into. Enhancing the ease of consumption was critical, all the while making the site more conversion-driven.

Another challenge was to properly highlight the authority and credibility of the magazine so that the site visitors know from the get-go that this information comes from a high authority source.

The load time of the existing time was slow (16.3 seconds). The site speed needed a boost.

Finally, the site was not completely mobile responsive. We needed to make the site experience mobile optimized.

Outcome

We designed the site to be value-driven, with an uncluttered organization of content into specific categories. We adopted a sleek modern look with a lot of white space to drive home a clean uncluttered experience where the user’s readability is enhanced.

Made a CRO powered website which converts site visitors into leads – List building is important if not paramount for a content site, so we created instant attention-grabbing lead capture forms, in the form of pop up forms, countdown timers, gamified widgets, exit intent forms, etc.

We made sure that the site experience is great and completely fine-tuned for a great mobile experience along with its original desktop version.

We optimized the on-page SEO of the site and increased its speed by implementing website caching, Gzip compression, and serving scaled images.

Results

We took a website that had difficult navigation, slow speed, cluttered appearance, a dull home page, and gave it a complete facelift to build an authority site that ranks no.1 on search engines and converts visitors into leads.

Improved the design language

We adopted a sleek modern look with a lot of white space to drive home a clean uncluttered experience where the user’s readability is enhanced.

We used green as the primary color as it is associated with progress and action (which perfectly connects with the site’s theme).

We used black and white as our secondary colors to keep the site look clean and accentuate the effect of green.

We used the typeface Futura as it is geometric, clean, and adds versatility to the content.

COLOR

RGB 0,0,0
CMYK 75,68,67,90
HEX #000000

RGB 11,157,39
CMYK 84,11,100,2
HEX #0b9d27

RGB 255,255,255
CMYK 0,0,0,0
HEX #ffffff

TYPEFACE

Improved User Experience

The major layout change we did made the site cleaner and organized. This resulted in a 22% reduction in bounce rate.

This means users come to the website, and stay around longer, browsing through other pages and information, rather than leaving right away.

Traffic Growth

A major focus was to get more traffic on the site. By doing in-depth research on the target audience and the competitors of The Starting Idea, we were able to craft the message addressed towards their exact needs.

In total, we increased traffic by 2000% and users by 1484% compared to last year.

Organized Structure

Search engines love a well-organized site architecture.

By complying with search engine needs, we were to able to win over SEO and rank on search engines.

Lightning Fast Page Speed

We increased the site speed from 16.13 seconds to 6.77 seconds. We achieved this by leveraging browser caching, implementing GZip compression, and serving scaled images.

Used CRO To Increase number of Subscribers and Leads

We implemented CRO by using exit-intent popups, countdown timers, gamified widgets, and conversion focused copy giving valuable content upgrades addressing the target audience’s specific pain points.

This lead to a dramatic increase in site visitors converting into leads and subscribers to The Starting Idea newsletter. The site doubled its entire conversions in just 1 month and even got 100 subscribers in 2 days.

Mobile Responsiveness

Most people these days look for info on their phones and tablets. The Starting Idea is a resource site for busy entrepreneurs to get actionable information fast. So, the site had to be mobile optimized. We wanted to make sure that people who land on the site get a high-quality mobile experience.

Used gamification strategies to engage visitors and sell more products

We used Nir Eyal’s Hooked strategy by implementing gamified pop-up widgets on the site.

We created “spin a wheel” and “scratch and win” pop-ups and offered variable ranges of discount for one of the site’s products that could only be unlocked when the visitor signs up for the site.

These pop-ups used the power of variable rewards by creating suspense and excitement for site visitors and enticed them to sign up so they can unlock their discount.

Used viral tools to grow organic reach

We used viral content upgrade tools to make the site go viral organically.

We did this by creating “Viral Thank You Pages” where a specific product could be unlocked if the user committed to sharing the site’s content on various social media channels.

This is a great way to make your product/offer will go viral without spending money on expensive ads.

Built Authority and Credibility

We used the HSTOC method on the homepage of the site to build authority and credibility for the site.

The HSTOC method involves – Headline – Social Proof – Testimonials – Offer – Call-to-action.

We listed the various mainstream media credibility the team had gathered along with testimonials from subscribers to power up the authority and credibility.

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