Moved to Wordpress

fisicx

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It's the wrong theme for your business.

All I see is a big long page of text, there are no images, not stats, not testimonials or case studies not are there any calls to action.

The homepage doesn't need the hero image, It needs 3 boxes one for each service. Followinf this with some stats and then some case studies/testimonials.

Put the form on every page along with your contact details.

But it's mainly just page after page of very boring text.
 
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@fisicx is right, this is totally the wrong theme or it has been executed in the wrong way.

Plus, your site uses the same one-liners as every other energy company or energy broker.

Where is the personality? Where is the unique angle or clever wording?

There's reason why Bulb Energy are doing so well and it's because they talk to people like people.

Utilities companies and the surrounding services are just dull (sorry, but they are). You need to jump off the page and capture someone's attention in 2 seconds. The way to do that is with a visually engaging image and an awesome elevator pitch.

Also, people buy into people, especially when it's energy, financial services or a B2B service. They want to know you are real people who they can trust. Put you face on the website!

If you go down the route of 'we'll save you money' then you are really a commodity business - a.k.a ten a penny!

As a potential customer, I want to know:
  • Why should I do business with you over someone else?
  • What make's your service unique?
  • Do you address my pains and annoyances?
  • Can I trust you?
  • Who are you?
  • What is your track record?
  • What are your customer's saying?
  • Do you have anything I can relate to?
  • What is the story behind your business? Did you start your business to solve a particular problem?
This all needs to come across so I can tick the boxes on my list.

Of course, the website needs to work and needs to work on mobile because that is where many people will be doing their research.

An important point is that YOUR HOMEPAGE IS NOT A SALES PAGE. It's a hook to get people into your site. If you try to sell too hard on your homepage then people will leave.

It's probably worth having a chat with @fisicx over the phone to see how he can help on the design front.

Matt
 
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But it's mainly just page after page of very boring text.

That's the trouble with @fisicx - never says what he means :)

Typical, might just go back to the old site and start from there.

The first plan was to recreate it in Wordpress and then improve it, but Wordpress makes some things a real pain, especially when you're used to html.
 
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fisicx

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Just choose a different theme and get some images on the page.

That would be a good start.
 
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fisicx

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God, I hate choosing pictures, annoys me all day.
Which is why you get someone to help with the site. In the same way I would get someone to help with my energy bills.

Or just use the images from your existing site and use the column block to line them up on the homepage.

I agree WordPress can be a steep leaning curve but once you understand how it works it becomes a real doddle.

And you can do lots of clever things which still allow you to switch themes during testing. For example, this is a little test I'm working on right now that could even work for you: https://testblog.co.uk/multistep/
 
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gpietersz

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    If I'm a small business and paying £70 a month for my electricity is your service for me?

    The old site has separate enquiry links for those spending more and less than £10k, which does not directly answer the question but gives a hint.

    Personally I think "if it ain't broken don't fix it". What are you trying to achieve?
     
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    The old website was generally described as being "dated" and "designed by a 14 year old", the idea was/is to move it to Wordpress, modernise the design and improve it.

    So far, it's moved to Wordpress. Not convinced the design is better or that Wordpress is actually an improvement.

    It seems like a lot of code/resources to achieve the same thing.

    @fisicx is taking a look "behind the scenes" and will hopefully be able to move it in the right direction.

    If not I may just uninstall WordPress and put the old site back.
     
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    gpietersz

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    The old website was generally described as being "dated" and "designed by a 14 year old",

    By whom?

    Sites that look rubbish can be successful - look at Craigslist, for example. You customers care about what you offer, not how pretty your site is.

    One of the biggest problems I come across is people messing things up because they design a site to appeal to the CEO, or the owner's friends rather than their visitors.

    Even after @fisicx improves it (I am sure he will), I would suggest you set up some form of A/B testing of the new vs old sites and see which actually performs better in terms of conversions. Solid data is better than even the most educated guesswork.
     
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    saythisinstead.co.uk

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    Old site or new site are both focussed on what YOU do
    and display NOTHING of what will benefit the customer.

    What are the pitfalls when looking for a new supplier?
    Tell the story.

    What makes YOUR approach the best solution for me?
    Tell the story.

    Is unit rate the most important factor when choosing a supplier?
    Tell the story.

    As someone said elsewhere....there is no personality.

    Hope that helps
     
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    gpietersz

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    @Michael Beaumont Wordpress (or anything else) may or may not be a good tool for solving a particular problem. It is just a tool. Not one I am fond of myself (not self-hosted, anyway) but if it works for you, fine. You can always stick a cache in front to speed a site up - especially if its a site you .

    Personally, in this case, I prefer the old site, but that is because of design, usability and content rather than the tool used. I am not entirely clear why @NickGrogan decided to move though.
     
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    Abused Wordpress some more and now it looks like the old site but is running on WordPress, which if you hack around with it, will do what it's told. I think I was being too nice before.

    It uses https://underscores.me/ theme, which is really basic, no flowery stuff at all.

    This makes changing things across the site easier than Dreamweaver as I don't need to remember to upload all the pages/scripts that I've changed.

    Content on main pages is being rewritten, the design is changing daily.
     
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