1. Eliminates user risk (30 day free trial)
2. Illuminates Instant gratification and minimizes usage friction (sign up in 60 seconds)
3. FInishes with strong call to action

Every sentence provides valuable information to the user, and together they walk her through a mental process of justifying and then finally going through with the signup. Justify first, then ask for the action.

What else could they experiment with?

1. Case study style testimonials near the signup buttons. They use these thoroughly on the main page, but the extra push could be useful near the point of action.
2. Video demo?
3. Reference the already sizeable userbase – humans love joining a tribe of like minds.
4. Test an additional signup box at the bottom of the page.

Unrelated bonus link: Craig Newmark on growth and monetization (also via SVN).

But after seeing their ad on Bloglines, I decided to see what that newsletter entailed these past 6 weeks and added a cursory website perusal on top.

I soon noticed Gaiam could do

… More Than 5 Painfully Easy Things To Rapidly Enrich More Lives.

There’s a splash of email marketing, a dose of SEO, and a hint of conversion optimization. Like usual, you’re mileage may vary, but I’d be willing to bet your sales increase when you realize

Full of robots your email list is not.

So why treat me like one? Do you see any variation in these promos?

That’s about 6 weeks of straight up discounting, indicating 2 things:

1. Gaiam’s email marketing druid doesn’t want me paying full price ever
2. No one notified her that information-based emails garner more eyes and sales than straight hucking

But discounts are cool, si?

Which is why with great haste I opened that 16th discount offer, permitted gmail to display images (hassle), clicked the information-famished banner, and feasted my hungry eyes upon

… The homepage (?)

No targeting whatsoever.

Hopefully because that particular discount expired.

Other promos took me to better targeted pages, but I sense a chance to standardize the practice.

An extremely unscientific test reveals banner ads are also (un)supported with untargeted squeeze pages, though PPC pages appear somewhat more tenderly loved.

Some say you’ll win some and lose some, but Gaiam could easily be winning more here. And just like landing pages, URL structures ideally

… Work for you, not against you.

1. Many URLs begin with /category which needlessly dilutes them
2. In addition to length and distance from home page, not all URLs contain meaningful keywords 
3. Also looks like there are multiple URLs for the same product

As I was cruising this site, I began to wonder

Who are these shepherds of enrichment?

It was hard as hell to find out.

Hidden in the footer, the About Us left me with more questions than answers and reeks of corporate compost. I still don’t know who you people are.

I can’t help but believe Gaiam to be filled with delightful souls carrying forward a compelling story. But we may never know.

Or maybe we will. And that’s the beauty of web marketing – all of this CAN be done, measured, and built upon in a matter of hours. 

And maybe they’ll sign up for twitter, too, where they can connect up with troves of yoga loving and life enriching cats around the world. If they go that far, might as well prominently display it on their blog, right below a newsletter sign up form. 

Gaiam: keep rocking. We need you. For more ideas, here’s more.

(PS – Still working on the best way to insert screen shots and link to larger images. Sorry for that.)

I’ve been pondering this since speaking with one of the Powered Green founders and have a few big and small ideas. We’ll walk through this vexing question in the context of Powered Green, but first we need…

The Background

Powered Green allows you to offset the carbon emissions your laptop produces over its lifetime in an extremely easy and feel-good way. You pay them 16 bones and they send you a slick emblem along with offsetting the emissions for you. The full story is here.

The initiative was started by two dudes while still in college, so it’s a story ripe with authenticity and just waiting to pick up serious steam.

So…

How do We Tweak Their Site to Boost Sales, Increase Credibility, and Develop a Rabid Following?

Identify the intimate details of your targets.

I’m riffing here under the assumption that they have 3 main targets: buyers, press, and companies like Dell who might license this. 

How might we satisfy the press?

They have separate pages for Founders, Vision, etc. Throw all that on one page my friends and let me click that About Us link!

One page should show who you are, what you do, and why you do it. Scrolling to read more will win over clicking every time.

A company like Dell would probably want to license this or pull them in for a consulting role of sorts. They’re going to want to know Powered Green has a full turn-key solution.

In that regard, why not create a new page specifically aimed at Dell and explain how they have every single step of this process covered and why going with Powered Green is the easiest way to go. Show Dell that all they need to do is write PG a big check and BAM! they’ve gone green.

For the buyers, it’s all about…

The front page.

1. It’s too short and doesn’t explain how this product actually works. Like the press page, the idea here is to build momentum without having to click. I’d take the entire How It Works page and throw it at the bottom of the current home page. Blow their minds right on the first page and let it crescendo with a purchase right then and there.
2. The energy counter image on the top right is completely sweet. It gives me a tangible idea of the cause I’m joining when I buy. My tweak here is to add a button near the laptops powered number to “add your laptop to the mix” or “eliminate YOUR emissions” or something along those lines. Putting a call to action right next to that number could be a powerful interaction piece.
   
3. The 1st three bullet points never mention ME. What does this initiative do for ME? While focusing on the cause and the group aspect is important, you want at least one of those bullets explicitly showing me what I get out of this. Remember WIIFM on the radio? What’s In It For Me.
4. As I understand it, they’ve just received some nice press coverage. Highlight that loud and clear on the front page… or every page. Endorsements rule. I would also add in some customer testimonials that focus on how they felt after they bought. Help the prospect envision how good it would feel to green their laptop.

Now, a few global ideas.

Become my leader.

How about adding an email opt-in box to every page? Put it on a green background and include an image for maximum eyeballs.

The pull here could be a tip of the week on easy ways to eliminate your personal carbon footprint. Become the green leader of laptop lovers. This begets maintaining constant engagement with their followers as well as allows them to make constant offers (affiliate or otherwise) that would be good for cash flow and/or vendor relationship development.

Aweber or 1shoppingcart makes this easy and fairly cheap, unfortunately not as cheap as…

Video Love.

This site is begging for a video. Record some testimonials, put together a few clips to explain the mission, and give the founders some face time. 2 – 3 minutes max and you could explain the story and let your visitors begin building a connection with the real people behind this.

But before doing that, I’d first ask…

The strategy questions.

They’ll have to make a strategy decision here: how to expand? Stick with computers, expand to electronics, or go for complete personal carbon-emission elimination?

I see a great opportunity here to slowly build a following of users who want to eliminate their personal carbon foot print.

How about an emblem to eliminate my TV’s waste? And how about my stereo, blow dryer, website, and Spring Break road trip? Every week could see a new tip followed by a relevant offer. The upside is unlimited.

It might be too early to think of expansion, but maybe not. They’ll need to decide for themselves, but that doesn’t mean they shouldn’t begin building their list now.

Most of these tweaks could be done by tomorrow and could significantly boost the website’s sales and influence. The tweaks themselves won’t take them to 1,000,000 powered laptops, but once the story goes viral, they sure could help.

What would YOU do?