About the brand, in context: Sterimar is a high-performing, all-natural sea water nasal spray, present in 80 countries. Grounding itself in the product awareness it had been enjoying for years, Sterimar had finally come up against competitors who started aggressive communication campaigns. Suddenly, there was need for an online presence. Just the way we like it, the client presented thorough market research, so we could make educated choices about what goes on in the website.
The brief: Build an SEO-friendly online presence ASAP, that converts problem-aware bystanders to happy customers. Sterimar’s already doing it in 80 other countries. No pressure. And no A/B testing.
- Run all the testing in Facebook (oh, shush, you CRO expert, I can already hear you disapproving)
- Create a content strategy for the website after the first 3 months in Facebook
- Treat the homepage like a sales page instead of a dispatch
Why we did it like this:
There was no time for classical A/B testing, as we had another 30-40 days until the cold season. Anyone who’s ever used seawater nasal sprays knows all too well why this was critical. So because ain’t nobody got time for that (just this once), we worked the website the other way around.
To begin with, running conversion A/B tests is only relevant when you already have a fair amount of traffic. It wasn’t the case here. This was a completely new website, with new content, new everything. But some tests had to be run nevertheless, hence the testing in Facebook.
To most marketers out there, our posting routine on Sterimar must have felt like a headless chicken running around. Try coffee! Now medical advice! How about cute videos of kids using Sterimar? It has to be a bit puzzling to our kind, but to the audience, it was delightful. We managed something extraordinary.
We went from 600 likes to more than 7000 in 4 months, without investing an arms and a leg in paid posts.
Now the homepage trick
Most online best practices teach you to treat the homepage with care, and rightfully so. This is your chance to make a lasting good impression, your opportunity to start a conversation. Normally, a homepage is this hellhole of SEO and conversion copy, a half-breed that’s trying to *intimately* communicate with 30 different people, because no business wants to miss a customer. We couldn’t flunk it and we weren’t allowed to test anything sooooo we jumped the fences and turned the homepage into a sales page. Which is why it’s so damn long.
For your viewing pleasure, please behold the homepage in all its beauty.
3 age-old copywriting principles have been applied on this particular homepage
- Message hierarchy is key
- Get specific. And stay that way
- Turn your calls to action into calls to value
Message hierarchy can be very easily built if you think of your audience as human. Which can be hard to do, mind you. Most of us think of our audiences as consumerist zombies, ready to shop at the sound of a specific buzzer. But it’s not true. Come on, you know it’s not true.
If you imagine they’re human, then you can easily imagine a conversation with them. Here’s the conversation we imagined:
- Who are you
- What do you do
- Why should I care?
- Am I paranoid or do others care about this too?
- I’m not convinced yet. Tell me how do you do what you say you do?
- Why is it safe for me to believe you?
- Ok, I believe you, now what?
And here’s how we built this conversation into the website.
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