Small Biz Tips
Redesigning www.freecard.com
by Rick
Hendershot, Publisher, Small Biz Tips, May 10, 2004
A few weeks ago I was approached by the owner of
www.freecard.com, Cesar
Crespo, to review his website. Like most of us, Cesar wanted to
get more traffic and figured he needed better Search Engine
placement to get it.
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Free Card Limited has a very innovative product. The Free
Card Business Card Display holds 16 sets of full color
cards, and dispenses them one at a time to interested
shoppers. As far as we can tell, it the the first and only
product of its kind anywhere. Yes, that's right. Anywhere! |
The Free Card concept is very simple. Free Card
Associates create a network of 10, 20 or more
business card displays
placed in high traffic locations. They then offer local
advertisers the opportunity to have
free business cards
distributed to interested consumers.
In designing the new site we tried hard to stay
away from canned templates. In fact we created a unique template
of our own. Cesar has been using the wise old "owl" as a symbol
and that has been carried through in the new site.
The design of this site reflects my own feeling
that modern
web design has become too "machine-generated" — relying too
heavily on anonymous, character-less images, and line after line
of (often very small) text. I prefer designs modeled on
"old-fashioned" print and TV ads that feature dominant images
and minimal text.
That is not to say the text is not
important. In fact, our primary
copywriting objective was
to create tightly focused pages, each with its own very specific
keyword-defined theme. The copy is highly Search Engine
Optimized at the same time as being "hard sell" enough (I think)
to please even the most diehard "copy that sells" advocate.
In fact, it is so
much that way that Cesar commented on more than one occasion
that his non-North American clientele would probably think he
had moved back to Florida. Alas, it is not the case. He is still
suffering through that terrible 25 degree C weather they seem to
have year round in Gibraltar.Have a look at
www.freecard.com, and tell me what you think. |
