Evan Carmichael reviews Above Ground Unlimited's fundraising website and finds it looks unprofessional with bright colors and unclear messaging. He recommends a visual overhaul, a one-sentence value proposition, moving client logos like AT&T higher on the page, and adding a short video introduction to build credibility.
Chapters
Hi, I'm Evan Carmichael. Welcome to another edition of Ask Evan. In today's episode, I'm going to answer a question from one of my readers, Nate, who asked me to check out his website. He wrote me an email, "Can you provide guidance for my fundraising business? How do I get more customers, clients? I want to use my homepage for promotion." How should I bring people to my website? Give something for free. Nate. So Nate, let's take a quick look at your site and hopefully we can give you some advice. So agunni.com, let's see what it is. Oh, it's probably agunyork.com. Okay, so here it is. AGU, Above Ground Unlimited. So the first thing I look at at this website is it needs a massive design overhaul. I've got things screaming at me, spring summer sale, new dresses, new watches. That doesn't look very professional, and from the email it sounded like you had a professional business. I'm seeing some names of clients, I guess, who you've helped out. So this is okay, but this is kind of screaming at me, and I think you can have a much better design. And if you have professional clients coming to you, they want to see that they're working with a professional organization. It doesn't have to cost much. You can do a simple WordPress Backend, you can get a free design or really cheap design for $50, $100, and it'll look way, way, way better. You might want to work on the logo a little bit too to make it look just a little bit more professional. Keep the same style, but just, just make it look— maybe make it look a little nicer. I'm sure you have an awesome service, you do great fundraising, and it's recognizing what you're really good at and what you're not good at, so design side of things may be a weakness that you could have somebody come in and help you out with. And just looking at this website, first, from the first glance, I don't really know what you do. If you didn't tell me you did fundraising, I come to this site and see Above Ground Unlimited, and then I see this thing flashing at me about new dresses and new watches. So I'm assuming you're selling dresses and watches, but I didn't really get the sense that you're a fundraising company. So, you know, it might help to have a one-sentence description as well as to what you do so that when people come to the website, it's really clear what you do. I'm assuming you use these products to then, you know, support fundraising campaigns. So having a sentence like that that clearly explains what you do, you know, you're helping organizations raise funds through the sale of unique products or something like that, so that for people coming to your site, if they're potential customers for you or media or partners. In one sentence, they quickly understand what it is that you do and they can see if it's going to be a potential fit for them, if they want to learn more or not. Okay, so definitely have an action sentence under here to help explain what you do. Um, here you talk a little bit about— so funding is critical to conduct a successful community service campaign. Encourage clients to engage as much of the community as possible. Knowing successful fundraising opens doors to reach a more diverse audience and increase the funding potential. I still don't know what you do here. I'm still kind of confused. I'm assuming you're selling these products for fundraising, but I'm still not sure. Again, you want to be very clear as to what you do. Again, it looks like you have some great events that you put on with AT&T and Mary Kay. These are brand names, so the design of your site and the positioning doesn't match up with your client base. So that, that's my main concern here. So going down, so here, this is great. So you've got Michael Bloomberg, Mayor of New York City, who's pictured with you. This is great. Like, I'd move this up higher. I'm assuming you did some kind of fundraising project with New York City, so that'd be great to highlight. Same with these things down here. So AT&T, National Baptist Convention, you know, you have some, some logos here that people would probably recognize. That I want to put up. Mary Kay. So the challenge here is you might see this site and it looks so bad that then people may not scroll. And you've got some great stuff down here with the picture and the logos that show that you are a professional organization. I think your design is really hurting you. So again, I'd look at a WordPress backend, which is cheap, you can update it yourself. Or if you have more funds, you can go and get a custom website designed. But I'd definitely take that as the next step. If I maybe click on the about page, you see what else is here. That's some— okay, so it was like crazy yellow on yellow, but then, you know, this is a little bit more legible. So, mission of Above Ground Unlimited: to assist in providing creative new fundraising ideas for our clients. Okay, that's not bad. So this, this should have been on the homepage somewhere for me to quickly understand, or cut-down version up here for me to quickly understand. Consulting with the client, we analyze their needs, pay attention to details, recommend ways of resolving the fundraising goals. Okay, and then our products are domestic and global. So make the connection here somewhere that you're providing fundraising by selling these products. That would be helpful. I think, you know, it's obviously understood to you that that's what you do, but for an outsider, I would connect the products that you're selling with fundraising initiatives. So your products are designed to enhance your clients' values and goals with each fundraising event, ethical business practices, and grounded Yeah, okay, this is good. I like this a lot better. If you just made that one connection with the products and the fundraising, I think it'd be a lot easier for people to understand. And I'd, you know, again, move that somewhere on the homepage and make it clear under, you know, your name everywhere that it's— this is what you do. Scrolling down, letter from CEO, great. Testimonials, these are great too. You know, so this is a little bit hard to to read if it's so much text altogether. I would probably split this up a little bit more, try to put some logos in here again. So, you know, AT&T, like, this gets lost in the middle here. So I make that bigger. You know, if you have people actually writing in with some testimonials, that's awesome. You know, if you can get a picture of them, that'd be great. The date is something you might want to think about. So, you know, the first one you have shows from 2010. Well, I'm sitting here now, it's, it's 2012, we're almost halfway through the year, and I see there's nothing kind of new. So you may want to think about taking off the date on some of these. But this is great, this is great. Again, space this out a little bit more and put some pictures. I think that's going to be your biggest issue here, is just fixing up the design and changing the position around a little bit. So when people are coming to your site, they are going to clearly understand what you do and have a quick way to be able to contact you and know if it's going to be right for them or not. One thing you might also want to consider is doing a video. You look like a nice guy, you got a nice smile here. People love video. I witnessed it myself creating these YouTube videos. If you did a quick video introduction of yourself and your business and maybe some of the results that you've had, That could be a great way for people to quickly understand again what you do and be able to contact you. So hopefully that helps. There's probably a lot more we can go into, but I don't want the video to get too, too long. If you guys like the video and you want to see more like this, please give it a thumbs up below. It makes me want to do more of these videos for you. And if you have any thoughts about this website, Above Ground Unlimited, or if you have a question or want me to review your site, please leave a comment underneath and I look forward to reading those as they come in. So thank you, and we'll see you on the next episode.
