Please review our website - Divorce Actually.

[Drinkwater2]

Hi All,

I'd really appreciate some feedback on both the concept and design of our new website, Divorce Actually.

We hope the Site will be financially beneficial to both those who’ve been through a divorce and those, regrettably, embarking on one. We hope to build a searchable database of previous divorce cases. People starting out down that route can search the database and find similar past cases where the settlement has been approved by a Judge as fair and reasonable. We hope this will keep negotiations on-track and moving forward thereby reducing legal costs.

We started designing the Site two years ago but other commitments made it a slow process. The timing is in no way related to the current lockdown situation.

Unfortunately both Facebook and Twitter blocked us from promoting our posts and tweets after just two weeks on the basis that "we were offering people too much money for too little work" so it must be either a pyramid scheme or a scam. It is neither. We believe it offers some people the opportunity to earn money and others the opportunity to save a fortune.

Thanks in advance.

https://divorceactually.co.uk/

 

[fisicx]

I'm already confused.

Why even have the homepage? Put the form on the homepage and make it simpler. Too many fields for an initial search.

Every search I make has zero results.

And the UX on a phone is really awful. This is the device most people will be using so this should have been the priority over the desktop layout. Try it yourself. Some of the content doesn't even fit on the page.

Why even have the basket top right? It's not a store - it's a DB of settlements. There won't ever be a need for a basket like this (or to login/register).

And it's sloooow. Google scores you 33/100. Mainly because of the theme and all the junk it has to load to get things to work.

And the logo is just yuk.

No contact details - which means you ain't never gonna get my money.

 

[Darren_Ssc]

This is potentially a site people may reference for information but I can't really see why they would stump up £200 for further details? I'm not saying there isn't a monetisation opportunity but this isn't it.

Getting to the point where you have sufficient information for you to become a resource is going to be along process and you may lose motivation very rapidly with no income being generated.

The copy generally needs to much clearer and the text on your blog page is far too small.

 

[Fagin2021]

Take a look at your Terms and Conditions on a mobile (or even a desktop) and you'll see one reason why I don't think anyone will sign up as a buyer or seller. Sorry.
In fairness, I must confess I also said that Garfield the Cat with stick-on suckers for car windows would never catch on.

 

[AllUpHere]

It looks like scam, and not even a clever one. The copy is written to persuade people why the idea is good in principle, not why they should use it.

 

[Drinkwater2]

Thanks for the feedback guys, I'll do some adjusting on the image sizes. I fully appreciate that most people look on their phones, we can see that from Google Analytics. To actually get involved they would need to use a laptop or desktop though. I'll also have to rethink some wording as clearly what we're trying to offer is lost in translation somewhere.

 

[fisicx]

To actually get involved they would need to use a laptop or desktop though.

Why? If most people are using their phones then it has to work on that device.

Or have I understood the whole concept? I thought I paid you to get a ready made settlement where all I had to do was fill in the blanks.

 

[japancool]

No contact details - which means you ain't never gonna get my money.

Mrs. fisicx will be right pleased to hear that!

 

[Drinkwater2]

Thanks again for the feedback. Obviously I'll have to go back to the drawing board regarding the wording on the Site but will respond to the points made. What I actually forgot to ask in the initial post was whether anyone how responded had actually been through a divorce? People who haven't been through one, quite naturally, have no idea how long the process can drag on and how expensive it can get.

The idea is that people anonymise (fully) their Form E documents and the financial order. The numbers are visible but no personal details at all. They do the same with the financial order that has been approved by a Judge. It is these documents that someone purchases from the person who uploaded them into the database. Documents need copying, anonymising and then scanning back to a device to be attached to the database entry. Obviously this can't be done on a phone which is why we were focused on desktop/laptop presentation. We hoped someone who was interested would find it on their phone but would then complete their entry using their laptop etc.
The person who buys a copy of the anonymised documents then has something tangible to put in front of their partner (or their solicitor) and say "look, this has been considered reasonable in the past." Copies of actual documents are carry some weight whereas a piece of paper with some numbers on doesn't.

We don't have any input into the settlement. If people want to work there own out they can use the divorce settlement calculator on the gov.uk website, but the result they get from that hasn't been approved by a Judge so will it persuade a awkward or stubborn partner?

The T & C's were adapted from an ebook template to cover the 14 day cooling off period. Obviously with ebooks, you could buy them, read them during the cooling off period and then ask for your money back. With ebooks, once you've downloaded them your cooling off period expires. Fagin2021, is it the amount of T & C's that you think it the problem or what they say?

Alluphere, appreciate your comments and will look focusing more on why people should use it rather than why it's a good idea. Can I ask why you think it looks like a scam? We've just made the entries in the database up? People pay their money and get rubbish? I'd be interested to hear.

Darren_Ssc. I friend of mine recently got divorced. He owned his own Business (as I did when I got divorced.) I told him what I expected the settlement would be from the start. He wound up in front of a Judge as his wife refused all his offers. A week before his final hearing he upped his offer to her of more cash but it would have to come from future earnings. When the Judge made his awards, she got £150k less than he'd offered her before the hearing. Why didn't her solicitor tell her to "snap his hand off?" Between them they spent nearly £200k on legal advice. He did pay more than I expected but I think that was because he had offered more in the first place. If he could have found a couple of similar cases in the database and gone to his solicitor and said, send these across to them, here's my offer, and if she doesn't accept it I will apply for costs from this moment forwards. I think it would have brought her to her senses and stopped it being a free gamble in her mind. That's why he would have been prepared to spend £1200 on two similar cases, saved a couple of years of his life and reduced the legal costs from £200k to £40k ???? If one of the sets of documents was yours, you'd get paid £444. Almost worth getting a laptop out for?

That's what we're trying to achieve folks. Offering some people the opportunity to earn some money and others the opportunity to save themselves a fortune.

Any feedback still gratefully received. Thanks.

 

[fisicx]

None of that comes across on the site.

Use of a laptop/desktop to do whatever is going to cause you all sorts of grief. Chap I know going through a divorce is in a cheap bedsit and just a mobile phone. That's his sole means of communication.

Anyway, you big problem is still trust. You don't have any contact details on the site nor do have any proof you can deliver. For all we know you are an overseas scammer taking money and giving out made up documents.

And you have built it like an ecommerce site - something it isn't.

And I still haven't managed to find a single document based on my current criteria.

(also been through 2 divorces - neither of which cost me more than £5K in legal fees).

 

[Drinkwater2]

Hi Fisicx,

Ok, take on board your comment that the Site isn't explaining what we hope to achieve and will have a think about the best way forward.

I recognise that the Site not being totally mobile useable is a problem. A buyer could purchase documents using a mobile but a seller can't would need at least a printer/scanner and it would be pretty fiddly.

I understand the World is full of scammers and proving you're not one is a dilemma. Any thoughts on that yourself? The Limited Company is named on the Contact Page which is the only information I was told must be on the Site. Any who is interested could look on Companies House for further information. I just didn't think quoting an address answered any of the "trust" issues.

The Company we used to design the Site said Wordpress was the way forward. If someone purchased some documents (via paypal) they can then download them. Also via Paypal we then forward the Sellers money to them. Is that not Ecommerce?

There are 2 examples shown in the database, we didn't want to open up real records until we had enough to guarantee obscurity by the number of records in the database. If you put the Wife's age at 46 - 50 you will notice that only one record is displayed. Obviously if there were more it would show those only.

Pleased to hear your divorce legal fees weren't crucifying. I had a friend who was a farmer. His wife left him for another woman. He had £250k in his current account when she left. When that had gone in legal fees, suddenly a deal was negotiated! I understand I probably sound very cynical about divorce lawyers, but I've yet to hear of one that tries to get a deal done cost effectively. You wouldn't employ them as a salesperson in your business, it could take years for them to walk in with their first order!

Appreciate your input. Thanks.

 

[fisicx]

I recognise that the Site not being totally mobile useable is a problem. A buyer could purchase documents using a mobile but a seller can't would need at least a printer/scanner and it would be pretty fiddly.

What seller? I thought you had all the documents already?

I understand the World is full of scammers and proving you're not one is a dilemma. Any thoughts on that yourself? The Limited Company is named on the Contact Page which is the only information I was told must be on the Site. Any who is interested could look on Companies House for further information. I just didn't think quoting an address answered any of the "trust" issues.

Full address, telephone number, email, company number on every page. Include case studies showing how having an agreed settlement saved X ££££. Show an example of a settlement document.

Don't be anonymous.

The Company we used to design the Site said Wordpress was the way forward. If someone purchased some documents (via paypal) they can then download them. Also via Paypal we then forward the Sellers money to them. Is that not Ecommerce?

WordPress is just a cheap way to manage content. You only have one product, there is no need for woocommerce, all you need is a payment portal with the options to pay with CC, PayPal, Bitcoin or even BACS. They have use woo because it's free and easy to setup. But it's the wrong way to do things.

People will only ever be on the site because they want what you are offering.

This means you need the form on the homepage. Even better, make it a multistep form when you can filter the details. For example: Do you have your own business Yes/No. Depending on how they answer takes them to the next step. Help ease the way for people who are no doubt already stressed and under pressure.

The buyer is your most important visitor - they will be using a phone. You have to build the site for them.

As an aside, the company that built the site need a kick up the backside. Their efforts give you a google score of 33/100.

 

[Drinkwater2]

Seller - no we don't have the documents. There is (on average) 1400 couples per week finalise their divorces in England and Wales. (The divorce laws are different in Scotland and NI.) It is those people, 7600 of them in the last month we want to attract. The idea is it works like stubhub or viagogo, the only difference is there is no limit to the amount of times they can sell their documents. Once uploaded, they're done. In your case, you spent £5000. Your documents would be priced at £110. You get £71.50 each time they sell. The £38.50 is admin charge which has a VAT element in it. Obviously a large chunk of the remainder goes for advertising.

Take onboard, name address, telephone number etc. Yes, a case study with "what I earned" and "what I saved and how much it speeded the process up" would be great but that's a bit of a "chicken and egg" situation.

Originally we did want the "seller" to populate their own database record but decided that we would do it. Would rather not as it could be time consuming but had to avoid "garbage in, garbage out" scenario.

You clearly know more about website design than most. We thought the design was ok because somewhere we had to explain the concept and thought the pages we had were ok. Obviously not as it appears it isn't at all clear how the Site works, certainly to sellers (the document owners.)

Back to "chicken and egg." At the moment getting sellers is most important. If we can get 500 - 1000 records in the database it could then be tailored to be as user friendly as possible to buyers and make any new sellers do a little bit more work for their money.

 

[The Byre]

1. It does not work at all on a phone - so useless for most prospects.

2. Yes, I've been through a divorce (in Germany) and it was cheap and easy.

3. Looking on a laptop, I still have no idea what it is there for. There does not seem to be a USP or advantage for the person getting or thinking about a divorce. It seems I can look at other people's settlements but what that costs or why I should look at them remain a clouded mystery.

4. As for the texts - I strongly suggest you get the book 'Making Ads Pay' by legendary advertising writer John Caples. At the age of 25, he wrote the most famous ad in the history of humanity and it is still studied by wannabe advertising people to this day.
https://swiped.co/file/they-laughed-when-i-sat-down-at-the-piano-by-john-caples/

5. At the end of the book, he gives a check-list of seven things that an ad (or here a website) must achieve if it is to sell products. Make sure that you comply with all seven!

Good hunting!

 

[fisicx]

Back to "chicken and egg." At the moment getting sellers is most important. If we can get 500 - 1000 records in the database it could then be tailored to be as user friendly as possible to buyers and make any new sellers do a little bit more work for their money.

Pay people for their documents. This will help fill the database.

But finding these sellers is going to cost you a large wodge. The only people looking for a service like this are those getting divorced not those who are already divorced. Which means you need a lot of advertising and a lot of incentives. Don't even think I've kept my settlement. Probably wasn't called a Form E back then.

 

[Drinkwater2]

Hi The Byre,

We understand the limitations of mobile phones, there are quite a few websites that are more cumbersome to use on a mobile than a laptop or desktop. We were working on the basis that someone who was in the midst of an on-going long-winded expensive divorce might be motivated to find a laptop/desktop somewhere if they thought they may be able to progress the job.

Don't know what the laws are in Germany but they may have controls on costs in place. Here it seems to be very different... see

http://www.complaintaboutsolicitors.co.uk/challenge.../
DIVORCE LEGAL FEES ?
Again, with divorce, we think there is often a correlation between the net worth of the client and the fees solicitors impose on them which, if this is the case, its shocking!

There is also an article on the website linked to a Daily Mail article in which a couple worth around £3m blew £920k arguing through solicitors. At what point do solicitor's consciences prick them and they say we need to reach an agreement?

Maybe the Site needs to be aimed specifically at people with an interest in a private limited Company as in every case I'm aware of forensic accountants have been involved and costs have gone through the roof. In my own, I told my solicitor "if they want that they can pay for it." I was told that the cost must be shared or "a Judge may take a dim view of me." It was a waste of money and we never went to a final hearing. We settled on the courtroom steps, I moved £10k and my ex moved £500,000. Her solicitor was quite happy to present a demand from her that included a house that didn't belong to us. Impossible for me to agree to. Would they have forwarded that request on a no-win no-fee basis?

As regards why someone would want to purchase someone's documents, if they're contemplating a divorce might like to get a steer on what a possible outcome could be? Someone in a divorce presents the documents to the other side to keep people realistic and the process progressing. The documents support a claim for costs if the other side refuses to see reason and continues to be unrealistic. Judges don't like to see fortunes wasted arguing unnecessarily through solicitors as ultimately they know it's financially very damaging to an already bad situation. I thought the economics spoke for themselves. Spend £500 to try and prevent another £50,000 in legal fees? I asked a question on a website forum concerning rights to access to the children. There were 16 people who replied and the combined legal bills were £1.2 million.

Thanks for the advice about the book, I'll get it. I have seen videos on youtube about that highlight the effectiveness of painting a picture in someone's head and the solution to the situation is to buy what you're selling. I did think about it but was worried it came over a little "american" if you know what I mean.

Hi Fisicx,

Yes, we thought about buying the documents off people just as you'd buy stock for a shop. It would cost a lot of money to do. If someone's paid £30,000 for their paperwork, what would they want for it? We also thought that the potential of an on-going income would be more appealing than a one-off payment? Yes, most people are delighted the process is finished and only keep their decree absolute and financial order, the rest goes quickly in the bin. We're hoping to attract the people who got the job sorted recently. There are 7,600 of them every month!

Thanks again to both.

 

[Paul Carmen]

This isn't about a website review, although 100% it has to work well on mobile, or you've alienated 65%+ of the potential market. The site needs a redesign with clear info, proper copy and needs to attract sellers and buyers. But you need a plan first...

I don't think you really know your target market, you may think you know what they want, but I'm not sure you do. You also seem to need people to want to sell their details to you for your business model to work, which again I'm not sure they will ever do.

The site is very confusing and I had no idea what it was for and you fail to explain any of it clearly. Living with someone who'd been through a divorce, she would not look for or be aware of the things your site talks about or targets either.

To create this as a successful website and business model, you need to have a marketing plan and proposition that works. This should be based on customer and market research; e.g. how will potential customers find you, what will they look for. Plus, how will you get people to sell you their divorce details?

If, as I suspect based on a quick look at the keywords searched for in Google, there is no one looking for the exact type service your offering, you need a plan fast. That doesn't mean it won't work, but you need to get in front of people looking for cheap options or trying to do this without running up huge legal fees.

At the minute your model sounds like, "tell your lawyer there's a cheap way to do this", when your lawyer actually wants you to spend money on their fees. Plus when I look for solutions on your site, you don't have any....

You actually need to market twice here, as you have no solutions without customer divorce details. As far as I can see you need some serious help here to have any chance of this working, as you first need the divorce data/info available to make this viable, so you need a marketing process and budget to achieve this before you can sell anything. You then need push marketing to make people aware there's a better way than paying huge legal fees, because they don't know this currently.

This requires a lot of marketing to get away, as you either need to rank well for high volume very competitive search terms things like 'online divorce', or you need a big online or TV marketing budget to get people to your site and interested in what you do. I don't know if there is any other business like this already, but it feels like one that's trying to disrupt an industry, that will require substantial backing to get working.

 

[Chawton]

How much response did you experience from the demand side after 2 weeks of Twitter promo? Albeit you got shut down it was at least some exposure; did 2 weeks garner any response?

Only if the answer to that was yes would I look at the supply side. The supply side should be the most straight forward of all really and not arduous, provided you were prepared to do the inputting and could throw £70-100k at it.

How much better is it than the gov.uk system? How much more compelling? That's what you need the real feel for. I suppose it's fair to assume the "reasonable" side has already waved .gov.uk printouts in the belligerent's face and pleaded for sanity to prevail...they could take some persuading to then part with £100's for the prospect of this being thrown back in their face too.

Not saying it's without merit but those are the main barriers as I see them.

Personally I'd lose the pink too for fairly obvious partisan reasons.

 

[Drinkwater2]

Hi Paul,

When I asked people to have a look at the Site I admit I wasn't expecting so people to say it was a poor design. I thought the layout was fine. I know the mobile menu doesn't work in portrait mode but I'll get that sorted, hopefully today.

I do think we know who our target market is, I'm willing to bet that plenty of the members on this Site who have ownership or part ownership of an SME and have been through a divorce would be able to throw some light on the outcome of future divorces for other business owners.

We didn't want divorcees to sell us their details, and it's important to stress it's only the numbers they share, nothing that could ever identify them. We thought that the potential of an on-going income for around 30 minutes work would appeal to a lot of folks. There's enough posts and blogs about "make money on-line" but they're either offering you $14,000 a day without any investment of £2.50 an hour for testing and reviewing products. Someone who makes they're experience available to others on our Site receives a minimum of £71.50 per download and up to a maximum of £444 depending on how drawn out and expensive their divorce was. It seems like a useful sum of money to me? We hoped if we could find a few they would pass it on to others, after all, we all know people who've got divorced.

I know the divorce solicitors want you to run up sizeable bills with them. I should state that we are trying to help people reach a fair settlement cost effectively. Anyone who tries to "con" their partner into settling cheap always runs the risk of the Order being set-aside and being back to square one at a time that may be highly inconvenient for them.

Armed with someone else's "reasonable" settlements, they don't just plonk them on their solicitor's desk and say "I want to make an offer in line with this." Bearing in mind that it is an extremely acrimonious process, in fact there is a bill being discussed in Parliament to remove the necessity of citing a reason to get divorced before a two year separation has elapsed. Not everyone has the option to wait 2 years but the Government is aware that citing a reason often enflames the situation. This leads to a "revenge" mentality and rational reasoning goes out the window. If the person is dealing with someone who is being totally unreasonable and refuses to enter into negotiations whilst maintaining impossible demands, the party who is trying to settle the divorce reasonably walks into their solicitors office and says, "based on these two cases I am prepared to offer this. I want you to send the offer, and these two past settlements to the other half solicitor and say that I'm prepared to negotiate slightly but will be applying for all costs against them if they refuse to start being reasonable." Being unreasonable is no longer a free bet and may prove to be a very expensive choice. That's how an investment of a few hundred stops both parties suffering huge legal bills, as they do today.

Yes, we do need some sellers before we start marketing the site to buyers. We're looking for 500 of them.

Yes, I am trying to disrupt an Industry, and it is an Industry rather than a service. I'd like it on my headstone, "The person who derailed the divorce gravy train."

Hi Chawton,

Yes, response was pretty good with 4% engagement to Facebook Ads and 8% engagement on Twitter posts. It is of course the proverbial searching for a "needle in a haystack." We promoted tweets to 15,000 people and 1200 people engaged and 300 clicking the link to the Site. I estimated that around 40 of the original 15,000 people may have got divorced in the previous 12 months and of those, how many had still got their paperwork?

I can do the £70 but the £100,000 would make me cough a bit!

The gov.uk divorce calculator spreadsheet takes you back on-line to fill in all the fields. It would be a nightmare to try and do it on a mobile device. The main problem with it though is that the answer you get has not been set before a Judge and been approved. It may well be a perfectly reasonable offer but it doesn't have the gravitas of a previous financial order that has been before a Judge and approved as fair and reasonable.

Thanks both for your input.

 

[fisicx]

I do think we know who our target market is, I'm willing to bet that plenty of the members on this Site who have ownership or part ownership of an SME and have been through a divorce would be able to throw some light on the outcome of future divorces for other business owners.

But unless they know you exist or are looking for something like this you will never gain any traction.

Your marketing costs are going to be huge - just getting sellers onboard is going to be tough. I'd have thought £100,000 would be good figure to start with. offering 500 sellers £100 for their settlement document will eat up half of that. Can't see any reason why I'd be interested in giving you my document without some incentive.

I do get what you are trying to do but a cheap and not very good website isn't the way to do this. If you paid more than a couple of hundred for this you were ripped off.

 

[Clinton]

Carpenters have a great motto: Measure 9 times, cut once.

The same applies to choosing a tech / dev partner for a major project. You did not do a proper job with finding the right partner.

But with respect mobile, I take the same approach you do - if visitors want to use my site they can jolly well go find a laptop somewhere. My approach to marketing my business is this: I can't be ars*d.

You're welcome to take that approach as well (though I'm not sure it'll work great for a startup).

Smart tech startups fail fast. They recognise early on when they've screwed up on something and they drop it. You've screwed up with the developer you hired. Bite the bullet and start again and do it properly this time.

Also, to get something like this off the ground will take a lot more than £10K or £20K. Trust me. It's great to have a big vision, but getting people to spend time pulling out financial details from a painful period in their life is a challenge you're underestimating. The "potential" reward of a few quid at some unspecified time in the future is a laugh. That won't work. If you want to build a sufficient initial base of data you're going to have to pay people up front. Lots of money up front. Even then, you'll really, really struggle to get them to disclose the data you need!

 

[Drinkwater2]

Hi Fisicx,

We thought a snipper approach would be better than scattergun. There are plenty of groups on the Internet for divorcees.

I don't think £100 would get them motivated to be honest. Certainly not the people who've done £20k + on legal fees. We understand it isn't going to be easy.

Yes, we obviously got ripped off!

Hi Clinton,

I don't think the type of people we are after only have access to the internet via a mobile phone. I think they will be using a laptop/desktop as well.

I hear loud and clear that people don't rate the layout or functionality of the website, can you point me in the direction of a website that has the layout and functionality we should have used?

I accept there is a resistance to revisit that period of someone's life, we were rather hoping that some bitter and twisted person would think they were getting one over on their ex by recovering their share of the divorce costs.

I understand that it is people's personal information, but let's look at this person.... His age 47, her age 43, equity in marital home £230,000, incomes £45,000 and £26,000, saving and investments £27,000, 2 children aged 8 and 10, length of marriage 11 years. Do you know who it is?

Bearing in mind that in "blurring" the data, the marriage length, his age, her age, the childrens' age could all be correct or +/- 1 year. Information can be adjusted that wouldn't have materially affected the settlement.

It is personal but if I still had my documents I'd be happy to give myself a chance of getting £300 a time. (but then I would say that wouldn't I !!)

 

[fisicx]

I don't think £100 would get them motivated to be honest. Certainly not the people who've done £20k + on legal fees. We understand it isn't going to be easy.)

So how much will you pay for these documents?

I hear loud and clear that people don't rate the layout or functionality of the website, can you point me in the direction of a website that has the layout and functionality we should have used?

Your marketing plan will drive the layout and functionality.

If you advertise on X forum targeting Y people you build a landing page that supports the advert. They already know what to expect so just need to show then the form. When they fill in the form you show the results. If they like what they see and trust you they will pay. It's not rocket science. It's just marketing.

You could split test different formats, spend a couple of grand on some market research, pay for user testing and so on. At the end of they day, you are going to have to spend some cash to get this to work. It doesn't begin with the website. The website comes at the end of all your research and testing.

 

[Drinkwater2]

I shall start by rewording the website taking on board all the comments made hear. I shall also look for target markets as I've said. I only need to find 500 people and I'm up and running. Maybe I'll go to a few bitter and twisted coffee mornings when lockdown's over.

Can you suggest an existing website I can look at to see if I think it would be the right Site layout for us?

Appreciate all your feedback.

 

[The Byre]

We were working on the basis that someone who was in the midst of an on-going long-winded expensive divorce might be motivated to find a laptop/desktop somewhere if they thought they may be able to progress the job.

Ignore what @Clinton wrote - he is dealing with people who are highly motivated to pay/receive seven-figure (or more!) sums for their companies. A different kettle of fish altogether! I would not alienate 65% of my prospects - particularly as divorce is a very private affair and phones are more 'private' than the office computer!

German legal fees were capped back then, so much so that some lawyers struggled to make a living! The fee structures are loser now but the runaway costs of the UK do not apply.

'American' story ads - websites are very much the domain of the American story ad. A website is just a sales catalogue or a print-ad that happens to be online. If we regard it as a print-ad, then it must have a headline, a ten-second pitch under that, it must create desire, it must be believable (testimonials!) it must prove that it is a bargain, whatever you are selling must be easy to buy and there must be a reason to buy it NOW!

But contrary to popular belief, many of those story ads were British and written by people like Drayton Bird and the legendary David Ogilvy (both of whom wrote books that I also recommend - namely 'Sales Letters and emails that Sell' and 'Ogilvy on Advertising').

I have all three books on my desk and I dip into them every day!

Tip for picking a good web-builder - find websites that you envy and seem to come to the top of searches for their genre. "I wish ours was like that!" Make a list and find out who did them. Talk to the people that did them. Failing that (if they are too expensive or whatever) take a print-out to a web-builder of your choice and say "Something like that please!"

You also have to test your ad/website with focus groups and similar devices. Without testing, you are flying blind - no map, no satnav, not even a destination!

But one thing seems to be missing totally from your website - prices and explanations.

Imagine that you are Mrs. Millie Toolie of 17, Oil Drum Lane, Sidcup. Mr. Ignatius Toolie is a nasty and narcissistic, drunken A-hole who farts in bed and you want out! Ignatius Toolie is a plumber and has five staff and you do the books and PAYE for him. The company is worth at least £750k, maybe more and you helped build it up. And then there's the house and the 17 kids . . .

You can hardly start searching for info on the office computer with Ignatius right there in the office with you, so you start looking on your mobile. You need information - how to get a divorce, what will it cost? Where do I start? What sort of settlements are typical?

In other words, your website has to give poor Mrs. Millie Toolie something FIRST! It must do this BEFORE it asks for money. Your website should give her information about how to divorce Ignatius. Making it the go-to source of easily digested information on English (and possibly Scottish) divorce law gives the prospects a reason for engaging with it.

 

[Drinkwater2]

The website would work quite easily for buyers on a mobile although I find things quite difficult to read on a mobile a lot of the time. In the two examples that are visible if you hit the search button the second one down shows a write up of how the divorce progressed. People who give a better write up will sell more as people will think, "that's exactly what's happening to me and the numbers are pretty similar. Prices are shown next to the "Add to basket" button. A buyer receives an email with a download link. They could forward this to their solicitor but I think walking in with a couple of hard copies is preferable.

I watched an American guy on youtube and thought he was very good. I think he was quoting from the book you suggested but it was a persuasive pitch.

I shall show this thread to my Business partner and discuss how we should take it forward. It appears that "get a new website and throw a shitload of cash at it" seems to be the most frequent suggestion!

I knew marketing and getting engagement would be the big issue but thought the website was ok. I've just looked at this website of my mobile and it works fine but it's more fiddly than on my laptop.

The mobile portrait menu issue is fixed now by the way.

Everyone's been very helpful and I never thought I'd get so many people to engage... I just wish the pub was open so I could let all the advice sink in properly!

 

[computerbeing]

Not having a mobile friendly website will greatly affect your Google rankings as well as alienate users. Also as a business model you depend on people providing you with divorce settlement info and it is unlikely that they would want to divulge that information for a relatively small amount. Perhaps rethink the strategy all together in regards to sourcing information.

 

[The Byre]

Chucking cash at a problem seldom works! Lots of research would be my first step, followed by lots of thinking about strategies and market structures.

 

[fisicx]

The website would work quite easily for buyers on a mobile although I find things quite difficult to read on a mobile a lot of the time.

That's because you know what you are selling, are used to the website and what to do and are already in acceptance mode. Show the site to a complete stranger on their phone and you will a totally different response.

I shall show this thread to my Business partner and discuss how we should take it forward. It appears that "get a new website and throw a shitload of cash at it" seems to be the most frequent suggestion!

Nope. The suggestion is to do your market research, spend money getting a corpus of data and then get a new website.

People who give a better write up will sell more as people will think, "that's exactly what's happening to me and the numbers are pretty similar.

The seller page says I just need to anonymise and upload - 10 minutes it says. Are you now saying I need to do some writing as well? That could take me a couple of hours.

How much are you going to pay me for my time? I don;t want jam tomorrow, I need the cash today. And not into a PayPal account - I want a bank transfer.

Note: I can scan to pdf on my phone, don't need a lappy for this.

 

[The Byre]

Here's a great online book on the art/science of selling anything - it's about 100 years old but EVERY tip and sentence is 100% relevant today -

http://scientificadvertising.blogspot.com/2006/02/contents.html

 

[Chawton]

"Chucking" money isn't exactly advisable, however looking at it another way you can actually guarantee to unlock the supply side of it with cash. Clinton and fisicx are quite right with that assessment in my view. That's actually a benefit as it is relatively straightforward and one part of the equation that doesn't require massive strategic thought.

It does require the nascent service to do the grunt work though-inputting and paying for data upfront. The website as it scans currently reads completely as if it were the owner's own ideal scenario:
Supply side puts all the (painful) data in themselves and then rely on an unproven service to be honest and credit them in future when its used
Demand side takes a risk with upfront (and unclear) payment for data it doesn't really know how to assess the value of

It's hard to see how that approach will induce much traction.

The demand side of it is more nuanced and more long term and as the Byre rightly points out, needs to be driven by service and value. With much of the service and value being front-ended, prior to any hope of payment. That's where the real strategic challenges lie.

One further thing to point out; where you're providing "value" in this type of area, while it's likely to be tempting to sound as authoritative and helpful as possible, you'll need to be very careful not to stray into publishing material which could be interpreted as selling anything that's tantamount to legal "advice". All of the general advice/help blog type posts published by solicitors sites, acting as a top-of-funnel into their core professional services are of course bottomed out by professional indemnity insurance.

Ultimately you need to be prepared to shift on absolutely any and all assumptions you may have had, including things as fundamental as where the monetisation lies.

 

[Paul Carmen]

This may seem like we are being harsh, but it is all about customer, market, keyword and product research. Then creating a marketing plan that involves advertising/ranking online. The website, user journeys, landing pages etc are driven by that marketing process.

Get the first bits right to attract sellers and buyers. We do this sort of research all the time for customers, and often what they think is the right approach is driven by their granular knowledge of a part of the process, or their initial idea. Very very often it's not what a customer thinks or looks for at all.

If you have a clear and simple process for each journey, plus a clear and well thought out USP for both, then you can start the site build to deliver your marketing plan and its goals. At the minute you've done it all the other way around. This isn't about what should my site look like, its about what does my customer look like and how do I attract and make it easy for them.

The site is muddled and confusing, plus you don't have a plan to market the business. Saying I just need 500 people to add their details is just wishful thinking. What's the plan to achieve it and how do you make it user friendly so the conversion rate is high?

I'd suspect you'd currently need at least 50,000 visits to get 500 signed up! I can't easily work out your earning structure, it says "As a seller you will receive the same amount every time your documents are purchased starting from £71.50 and going all the way up to £444." When you click on the link it goes into great detail and long copy about pricing your docs and the cost of your divorce. Why?

You need a model that's simple to understand here and sells why they should do this; e.g. you need big traffic and buyers to generate interest, or you need to be paying sellers for their details upfront, with an ongoing percentage fee... at the minute they'd earn nothing as you have no organic traffic and no marketing plan.

 

[Fagin2021]

This is an interesting thread. I confess I have (thankfully) no personal experience of the pain and costs of divorce - though of course, I know a man who has.

I do agree with almost everything negative that has been said about the website - both the content, messaging and design so there's no point in repeating it.

That aside, I have a question regarding your assumption about how this would work...
To paraphrase...you could give these documents to your solicitor as a basis for a settlement, and it might save you a fortune in legal fees.

In my (non-divorce) experience, courts fall over backwards to be fair and reasonable whilst solicitors are only interested in maximising their fees and covering their arses...

"My client thinks this..." that'll be £100 for the letter
"Well my client thinks that.." another £100
"Well my client disagrees.." yet another £100

I - perhaps unfairly - believe that if you gave said documents to your solicitor the response would be "yes, that's all very well but in your case ...blah, blah, blah"

and the other party's solicitor would say to their client..

"yes, that's all very well but in your case ...blah, blah, blah"

You might have guessed that I have a low opinion of the competence and ethics of the average lawyer.

If you get this set up then, down the line, you're going to need some case studies and references to show/prove it works. How will you achieve this with anonymous data ?

 

[Fagin2021]

The concept seems straightforward but the implementation and monetisation is the tricky bit.

Would it be possible to ask family law firms to populate and update your database with anonymous client settlements in return for say, a free or reduced annual subscription to the entire searchable database ?

The monetisation could then come via full subscriptions from non-contributing law firms, limited subscriptions from individuals and on-site advertising from lawyers.

Just a thought.

 

[Chawton]

You've hit on how easy it would be to unlock the supply side. I'm not sure how cost effective it'd be to have the firms inputting themselves, but clearly you'd target them as the source (with all suitable permissions obtained/incentives paid).

The demand side is where it succeeds or fails. The fact that the court generally retains a lot of discretion in divorce law (for which read unpredictability), goes to the whole issue of the usefulness and proposition value of the settlement documents in the first place.

That's where the OP needs to drill down, research and narrow his target greatly. It's questionable how useful the service would be to an acrimonious divorce which is heading to the courts come what may. It may however have some very clear benefit to couples who are trying to work together as reasonably and co-operatively as possible to actively avoid the expense of a formal legal dispute. Whether and how many of these people would shell out for documents to achieve this is an unknown. All sorts of price points might need to be tested.

Conversely as you say it's possible it might fly as a subscription service for lawyers if it gives them some easy data to justify their several hundred £ an hour rate...even if that data it isn't particularly persuasive to the outcome of a case. For that you'd need to speak to lots of divorce lawyers.

That's where the real strategic effort needs to be focussed though rather than building a site that merely suits the OP's purposes. And certainly it all needs to come before the website is re-designed.

 

[Clinton]

In my (non-divorce) experience, courts fall over backwards to be fair and reasonable ...

The divorce courts are very, very different.

Yes, yes, they claim to be very fair, of course they would!

And when you read finance related information on divorce lawyers' websites - and books written by lawyers on the issue - they all talk about how fair the courts are. Would you expect them to say differently?

Given how much you trust lawyers, and given that their first duty and responsibility is to the court and not the person paying the fees, you can safely assume that they are talking through their collective asses.

I have had many male clients who suffered unfairly at the hands of divorce courts, and women who have benefited unfairly, I have come to the conclusion that divorce courts have a definite pro-woman bias.

There are several articles online claiming to have examined the question of bias in divorce courts and almost all have concluded that there is no bias. I have read many of these articles and I can usually see immediately where they've twisted stats or selectively quoted stuff so they could come to the conclusion of no bias.

I do not believe for a second that the divorce courts are fair.

 

[Drinkwater2]

Guys,

Really appreciate your input. I've just spent over 2 hours replying to all the points made since I last posted. I then pressed post and because it had taken so long it told me I needed to log in again. I logged in and the whole lot had disappeared. It said something about saved to "drafts" when I started typing this message. I'll see if I can find it otherwise I'll have to do it again tomorrow.

Cheers and have a good evening.

 

[Drinkwater2]

Not having a mobile friendly website will greatly affect your Google rankings as well as alienate users. Also as a business model you depend on people providing you with divorce settlement info and it is unlikely that they would want to divulge that information for a relatively small amount. Perhaps rethink the strategy all together in regards to sourcing information.

Hi Computerbeing,

This morning I registered as a buyer, did a search, selected a document, paid for it and then downloaded the zip file, opened it and read the pdf's inside. I don't think the process could be made any easier from that side.
From the sellers side, they have to send an email with a zip file of pdf's attached. They could ask their solicitor to send them an email with them attached and forward that but we'd rather they carried out the anonymisation themselves first.
I really don't see how either process can be made any easier, it's just fiddly, like a lot of websites, when you try and do it on a small screen.

I really don't think we're talking about a small amount of money. We think someone's documents are worth 1/100th of their legal fees so that they're attractive to a buyer. If someone's spent £10,000 on legal advice, they receive £100 every time they help someone. With 1400 new divorces started per week and peoples' financial circumstances falling into a fairly narrow band of options, I think it represents a very real chance of earning someone a useful amount of money.

Moneysavingexpert.com suggests ways to make money on-line, the top 5 are: -

Watch videos, play games and earn
Online survey sites
Get paid to Google
Earn hard cash for fun tasks, eg, watching videos
Enter contests as a cash-boosting hobby

The most any pay is about £30 per month and they would take hours and hours of your time to do that.

I'd prefer to do 30 minutes work and be good to go ad infinitum.

 

[fisicx]

You are familiar with the website. You know how it works. Give it to a complete stranger and ask them to test.

There may well be 1400 divorces every week but none of those will be looking to monetise. You are going to have to spend cash on marketing and offer financial incentives to sellers.

 

[Drinkwater2]

That's because you know what you are selling, are used to the website and what to do and are already in acceptance mode. Show the site to a complete stranger on their phone and you will a totally different response.

Point taken but I still can't see how it can be made any simpler.

I'm not sure what market research can be done on a larger scale. People get divorced at all ages and after varying lengths of marriage. The only thing I can see that they're likely to have in common is that in the majority of cases, they can no longer stand the sight of the person they married.

Yes, that's true. The very basic details would take 10 minutes but a more comprehensive narrative of their divorce journey would take longer. That's us being very naughty and breaking their workload down into smaller pieces. After they've sent their documents we intended to email them and say that a better write up would improve their prospects of selling.

How much did you're divorce cost you? On a sale by sale basis you will receive 1/100th of your costs each time. (Capped at £444 for anyone whose spent up to and in excess of £44,000 on legals.)
Giving people cash upfront isn't a realistic option for us if we want to get 500 people in the database before making it searchable. How much would you want upfront?

We decided to use PayPal so we didn't have to ask anyone for their bank details. Firstly we didn't want to deter people concerned that we'd empty their bank account and secondly, they would have to reveal their real name which we don't need or want either.

That's very good news although I suspect that will be beyond most people.