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30 Minute Redesign #101: Inner Rapport

Today I’m going to be redesigning Inner Rapport’s website. Inner Rapport is a Colchester based hypnotherapist service.

The Original Design:

You can see the original site design below:

You can check out the original website here: Inner Rapport

First Impressions: Strengths

Every site has some merits, and the good impressions I made here are these:

Helpful Intro Paragraph

One of the main mistakes I see people making is not clearly explaining the purpose of their website, usually in the form an introductory paragraph or welcome area.

Inner Rapport actually does this fairly well, not only specifying the services provided, but the specific locations, and some personal details about their hypnotherapist.

Displays Personality and Credibility

It’s great to see a website that isn’t totally faceless. Inner Rapport use a prominent picture of their hypnotherapist Steve Drury that helps portray personality and the sense that this is a real organization with real people.

They also do well to establish credibility, including several hypnotherapist achievement/organization logos on the page as well as mentioning Steve’s credentials. All of these points establish trust with the audience, which is key to generating business.

Consistency

Inner Rapport has fairly good design consistency, which helps set the visitor at ease and appears professional.

They use a limited range of fonts and colors throughout the site. Many sites I work with use too great a variety of fonts, colors and other design elements, which makes the site appear disorganized and sporadic.

First Impressions: Weaknesses

Of course no website is perfect, and our site’s often make negative first impressions upon readers without us even realizing! Here are the negative first impressions I received from this site:

Too Much Homepage Text

The main problem I have with the current site is the sheer amount of homepage text. It’s overwhelming and makes me want to leave the page rather than read it.

This is a common problem – people want to squeeze every bit of content they can onto the homepage.

Inner Rapport need to narrow their focus and make their homepage content more concise. Draw people further into the site’s subpages if they want to learn every specific deal of how you work (and not many will).

I also found it really confusing how you had a nav bar of about 4 items within your main text body. It was confusing if these were multiply calls to action, or a second menu, or both?

Generic Splash Image

The homepage image for Inner Rapport feels really generic, and doesn’t really help explain what makes them different, or really what services they provide at all.

Worse than this, it also pushes down the key content, meaning that all the important stuff (key info, credibility signs, photos of the founder etc…) is pushed below the fold.

No Clear Call to Action

Considering how much homepage content there is there isn’t really a clear call to action.

It’s all well and good to draw in your visitors with great copy, but you need to give them a push in the right direction. Whether this is to ‘read more’ or ‘make a booking’ is up to you, but something needs to stand out in that body text to make your users take action.

My Redesign Proposal

You can see my redesign proposal below:

Let’s look at some of my aims for the redesign:

Reduced the Amount of Content

To start, I removed the huge amount of homepage content, reducing it to what was necessary.

I found that in the intro paragraph on the current site many points are actually repeated, or entirely unnecessary. By having a more direct, concise intro paragraph the purpose of the site is clearer, and the amount of text is less likely to push new visitors away.

I Moved Key Content Further Up The Page

By removing the large generic photo heading the current site I was able to move the key content up above the fold.

Things like a clear intro paragraph and a proper area for credibility triggers should really help conversions.

I Used Prominent Calls to Action

There are some great features on this site so it’s only fair that you should be capitalizing on them!

I included bold call to action buttons to draw people further into your site and encourage more business. These should convert far better than the plain mass of text you currently have.

Suggest Your Own Site for a Redesign

You can have the chance to have your website redesigned in next weeks post. All you need to do is leave a comment to this post with your website address and why you think it needs a redesign.

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