How we created the new site FirstDEDIC

About six months ago it became obvious: our site is the place where we lose customers. Then we decided to change something. In the article below, I will tell how we (the company's marketing department) started with a simple “updating several pages of the site”, and finished with a “cardinal restructuring”, describe what we did, how long it took, and most importantly, why it was all.

So why we decided to update the site?

1 reason: the purpose of the site

The first thing we did was to clearly define the purpose of the FirstDEDIC site:

Rent dedicated servers for rent

And then they asked the question: “ What pages of our site help users to buy our services? "
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As it turned out, practical none. Yes, they tell search robots about our services, but they set out what dedicated servers are, but none of them knew how to SELL services ...

2 reason: Convenience of our customers

After analyzing the sales funnel, we noticed that we have quite a lot of users who click the “Order” button, but not all of them buy services as a result.

Then we decided to test this process and asked the focus group to order a server from us. And you know what? Buy our services was not so simple:

1 barrier:
After clicking the “Order” button, the registration was opened in a yet unfamiliar to the user BILLmanager system. “I'm on another site,” people thought and left.

Fig.1 - Registration form on the old site

2 barriers:
Server order wizard.
To get to the payment you had to go through 7 !!! Forms with a choice of server options.

Fig.2 - Forms for selecting server parameters.

How do you think, how many “lived to the end”?

This is a very useful practice - periodically buy something from your site and see how fast the service is activated, what problems arise.

Guided by these two reasons and a number of identified “gags”, we set to work.

How we made the site work for us

“What pages of our site help users buy our services?”

This question has become a kind of “face control” for each existing page. Entities that did not “control” and were not led to the purchase of services were considered redundant.

Ideally, our site should work like this:

Fig.3 - A tentative scheme of work firstdedic.ru

Thus, we have simplified the site by six pages. The most difficult decision for us was the rejection of the main page. We argued for a long time why it was needed and finally decided that all its functions (the story, what we do and what services we have) will take up the banner on the server rental page.

Information pages with contacts, terms of use and news have long held a precarious position; there was a great desire to get rid of them, leaving only the sales department phone. Still, we decided to leave them - for organizations, the press, questions of abuse.

And do you see these pages when buying?

During the first week we approved the structure of the new site:

Fig. 4 - Structure of the site FirstDEDIC

After the structure of the site, we began to form each page separately. We literally “shook up” all the existing pages: we wrote a simple and understandable text about our services, removed unnecessary text, added pictures and calls to action.

Each employee presented information in his own way:

Fig.5 - Prototypes of new pages of the site

How we achieved user convenience

Often, people need completely non-standard server configurations for their tasks. That is why we decided to add a new product to our site: server configurator.

Configurator target:
Quickly help a person navigate how much the server he needs will cost and place an order.

There were no special problems with the design of the configurator: we drew buttons with server parameters. To make it more fun and clearer - add a picture of the server being collected:

Fig. 6 - Server configurator prototype.

But in real life, to implement the idea, I had to purchase a bunch of equipment and components for servers and debug the server building process in the data center. Only the Xeon Supermicro servers were selected for sale. We found out from suppliers which processors are the most popular, and purchased them.

Ready-made configurations will also remain in our product range for those customers for whom installation speed is important.

After we decided to choose the server, we went to the add. parameters (backups, administration, IP ...). Frankly, the idea we podcherpnuli on the Apple site:

Fig. 7 - Selection ext. server settings.

The registration form was also brought to the site, and the number of fields was reduced. The client is sent to the billing system only for making a payment, about which we warn him: “Now you will be redirected to the billing system to pay for the server”.


Fig.8 - New registration form.

Of course, at every stage of the order we hung counters Metrics and Analytics - to follow where we have problems in design and logic.

Site design

There was no question of choosing a designer for the site, because we have long been working with a proven person who lives in our city and understands us very well.
One of the main conditions was to save our character Dedka. An article about how we created Dedkov several years ago.

Three weeks after sending the TZ, we received the first layouts of the main one, edited the comments and immediately began to work on the layout: it was necessary to launch the site before summer: summer for hosting half-dead season in sales.

So they worked: the designer will give the page, and we will immediately put it in the layout.

Fig.9 - Amendments to the design of pages.

Results:

We started work on January 13, 2014 and finished on May 11, 2014.
It took more than a month at the design stage and in the middle of February we handed over the TK to the designer.
And the whole work was spent 4 months.

In fact, 5 people worked on the site:
2 marketers (texts, prototypes, design comments)
1 designer
1 manager (integration with BILLmanager, life-giving pills)
1 web developer

Now the site is launched with 10 pages. In addition, there are 3 landing page (Game servers, servers for 1C, servers for Forex) and all sorts of trivia ...

We have indicators of conversion of the old site (the ratio of the number of visitors to the number of new customers who paid for our services). With the help of the new site, we plan to increase this figure by one and a half (at least) times. Will it work with us? I will add the answer to this article in 2 months.

UPD: So, as I promised, I attach the conversion statistics from the site for the last months to the article. This is the statistics of clicking the Order button on the fare selection page.
I’ll say right away that Direct (Direct Calls) traffic type is excluded from statistics because during the summer there was some kind of strange attack on our site: people (or bots) came in from the USA and immediately left the page, which greatly increased traffic to the site and bounce rate.


Statistics from the old site FirstDEDIC from March 1 to April 31, 2014


Statistics for the new site FirstDEDIC from June 1 to August 31, 2014

As you can see, the indicators have really improved, the overall conversion is almost two and a half times. It is difficult to say that only the site played a role in this, we also greatly improved contextual advertising and worked with other traffic sources. Again, the comparison is quite approximate, since now the second stage of the server order appeared on our website - the choice of add. parameters. His statistics are as follows:


Statistics for the new site FirstDEDIC from June 1 to August 31, 2014. Step 2 - select add. parameters.

I would like to draw attention to the statistics of the configurator of tariffs for Dedik She is certainly impressive. Best of all, the average price of a server ordered from the configurator is higher than the server ordered from a list of ready servers.


For comparison: the old version of the site and the new version .

PS We would be very grateful for the feedback on the new site. By its convenience for work and perception.