Tear apart my consulting page | Hacker News Reader

Tear apart my consulting page

5 pointsgk119 comments

Marketing sucks. It's ambiguous, it lags, its results are questionable, it suffers from too much bullshit, and it's full of quasi-professionals.

I created a single-page site[0] to promote my consulting biz, and tried to cut through all the nonsense. But I want you to rip it apart so I can improve it.

[0] http://www.gkogan.co

What's your first impression? Would you recommend me to a friend? Does it wreak of BS? Is the value proposition clear, or confusing? What questions come to mind? Let me know!

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Looks good in general, here are some potential improvements:

* You can safely drop "I'm a conversion optimization consultant." The sentence that follows is more powerful and easier to understand.

* "How I can help." – titles should not end in periods. This one as well as "Happy clients." can optionally end with a colon. There are a couple places in the text where punctuation is also incorrect, you should re-check it against English rules.

* "Conversion Optimization" should be to the left of "Funnel Tracking & Analysis" because it's simpler, IMHO.

* The bullets under "Funnel Tracking & Analysis" don't really say much about how it brings money, just what it is.

* On Chrome in OS X with standard settings, "Funnel Tracking & Analysis" is split into two lines. Layout looks a bit broken because of that.

* "How can I help?" assumes that the client knows the answer to that question. Don't intimidate them, either drop or rephrase this.

* Why no email? You can add it using javascript, and the vast majority of spam bots won't see it (google how to do that properly).

Awesome, thank you for taking the time to write that, Nikita! All things going on to-do list.

About the "Funnel Tracking & Analysis" title... I'd love to simplify that to just "Funnel Analysis." Would that lose too much meaning?

You welcome! I think "Funnel Analysis" is better. Tracking is kinda implied in the whole conversion / funnel optimization thing, and presumably the value is in analysis & optimization, not tracking per se, so that's what should be in the title.

My first impression was {CRINGE}, to be blunt.

You seem talented-- and you asked people to tear you apart-- so let's see if you mean it. Let me give you about $1,000 in free work.

1. The first thing you need to understand is what you're up against. No one has ever explained the obstacles a consulting company is up against better than the first 52 words in McGraw-Hill's "Man in the chair" ad.

This 1958 ad has repeatedly won in "Best business ad ever" votes. It's here: http://bit.ly/165CAuy

Print that out and put it where you can see it.

2. I had to break out the machete to cut through the jargon. Other than "Bottom line: You'll get more customers and lower your cost per acquisition." this takes work to read. The man in the chair won't read it.

Make it simpler. You're assuming customers know what a funnel is? On what basis?

3. I can't click on anything relating to and see who you are? An "About" Page (or section would be nice, but I need a LinkedIn page at minimum.

4. Same goes for the two people giving you references. I want to click on the photos and go to the LinkedIn pages so I can see who they are.

And I absolutely have to be able to view the but the company website-- not just to see if THEY'RE any good, but to see if YOU are. Your work is there, right? I can see it and be overwhelmed by the quality of your work, can't I?

5. You put the link to your Twitter page and blog (where prospects can read your insights for free) at the BOTTOM of the page? Seriously?

6. I hate Flash, but even Jakob Nielsen has colors other than black and white. A logo would be nice, too.

7. I don't need to have your address and cell number, but can I know what country you're in? A state and city would be even better.

8. People argue about this, but since I have 11 of my 12 points from this, I'll say it: If I don't have any idea of how much you cost, I'll probably pass.

You don't have to put a rate sheet on the page, but it would be nice to know if you charge $5, $50, 5500, $5,000 or $50,000, so I don't waste both of our times.

Amazing. This is why I asked to be torn up! Thanks for doing that -- lots of useful points there.

Most of those are quick fixes (adding rates, adding location, etc), but obviously I have some work to do on the language (your #2). I'm trying to balance between being specific about what I do and writing in very simple language. I'll keep looking for that golden middle ground.

Thanks for the kind words.

Language is relative-- it depends on who you want to sell to. For marketing professionals, you use one set of words. For CEOs, you use another. For engineers who think marketing and selling is a lot less important than technology, you use yet another.

The choices you make to appeal to each group will turn off the others to some degree, so it gets back to "Who, in your opinion, is that man in the chair?"

Because you say "Startup" at the top, it suggests you're looking for companies with less than 10 people, pretty much all of whom code, who have decided that they need to make money selling but aren't ready to hire fulltime marketing people.

I could drill down quite a lot more on the issues, but I charge for stuff like that. Three other things could be quick fixes but could go a lot deeper:

1. The color(s) you add to a site determine the emotional reaction people have to you.

2. People will look at your references and assume that, if THEIR company isn't in more or less comparable to those two, they don't need you yet. Who references are can be just as important as what they say.

3. Rates are less important that "How long does this take?" If I know a project takes 8-16 hours, I don't have to know your bill rate to say "I can probably afford Greg." If you say it takes 13 weeks, that's something else.

Fantastic. Ignore what I said, think more about rufusjones advice. The idea of using time as a proxy for cost is brilliant and the idea of using references not for what they say but who they are is also stonking.

btw - I cannot track down a Rufus jones online who seems to be doing what you do - have you a online home?

> btw - I cannot track down a Rufus jones online who seems to be doing what you do - have you a online home?

I second that - giving advice like you've done, you're doing yourself out of work by not posting contact details.

Figuring out who the 'man in the chair' is is the hardest thing I've ever had to do for my consulting business. Still trying.

I tried looking as well, so I can thank him by his first name, but not luck yet.

Thanks again. This gives me more to think about, which will help not just with the copy but with my sales process, too.

I am reading this from the perspective of an early stage startup: Biggest need for a start up is (typically) proving their business model and understanding how far it can go in terms of market size. Speak to that directly. Explain how you can much more quickly validate or invalidate their current approach.

Am not so interested in optimization than having someone that understands my business and can push us to get the right message to the right customer. You recommendation from Steve expresses that well, I'd suggest to emphasize that more in your copy.

Thanks for that! I wonder whether start-ups in your position are more hesitant to pay for consulting, since they're still (relatively) new.

Would you hire a consultant at the stage you're in to help you validate/invalidate your approach? Not trying to pitch you, just want to get your point of view.

Sure, startups will pay for consulting. Most valuable thing at a startup is time. If you can convince a company that you can validate their current approach faster than they can by themselves it's a great value proposition.

Fewer fields in the contact form - I mean why have a textbox? I am contacting you about conversion optimisation surely? Just grab my email or even better have a mailto: so I can say hi

remove full stops from h2

add full stops to li (personal annoyances)

What if my startup has no funnel? What if I have no traffic to optimise? these seem lie bigger issues for l

Thank you, Paul!

The headline fullstops are really catching a lot of flak. ;) They're gone now.

> What if my startup has no funnel?

Do you mean if the conversion process does not have a funnel, or if they're just not tracking it yet?

> What if I have no traffic to optimise?

Good question. As I see it, going from 0 traffic to 1,000 is a whole different beast than going from 1,000 to 10,000. The former often requires not just optimization but marketing from the ground up, branding, product development, and so on... All of which can easily turn into a full-time job for one or more people.

Looks good to me. The only thing I'd add or change is probably not even huge, but rather than testimonials some concrete and brief case studies with the kinds of numbers that your work affected would be more compelling.

That's a good suggestion. Going straight to the to-do list.

  > Marketing sucks.

So why are you going into the business of it?

I meant that the process of marketing usually sucks. I want to make it easier for people, and that's why I'm offering marketing consulting.

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