In today’s digital landscape we’re surrounded by great experiences that incorporate nuanced ties between design, branding and marketing. While this is true, it’s also pretty fair to say that there are far too many digital marketers who just don’t get this yet that are causing use to drown in downright dreadful online experiences. Hopefully like me you find this incredibly painful (even if you’re one of these folks who just don’t get it!).

While beautiful design can be a great center piece and starting point for users experience with your site and brand, many people truly underestimate the power of simplicity, white space and more importantly transparency in creating a great experience that turns visitors into quality leads and customers.

At the end of the day many people fail in their design because they lack the framework for success in defining what questions their target audience needs addressed. This can vary widely from business to business but I wanted to share an example from my world, home security that I think many people can relate to their business.

What are their questions and what are they looking for?

In my case and most likely any other consumer facing home service model it boils down to 3 things:

• What is their value (how good is there service)?
• What is the cost?
• What equipment do I get?

In this case I’m going to use the query “Jacksonville Home Security” (I live in Jacksonville, FL). In Google this brings me back the regular set of paid, organic and mixed local results. Here’s a quick glance at 2 results that easily showcase how transparency with a guided, methodical approach makes all the difference:

Protect Your Home

While the site looks fairly good lets evaluate it basic on what our visitors are really looking for. They don’t really address their value directly outside of riding on the ADT brand which is fine – they have the added benefit of great branding behind them.

Now they do provide that they have value of saving you some money in providing a “Free” system (you’ll see later on that this is really not a value, almost everybody in the space is providing a free system!) along with an extra $100 off. They also address question three with this in showing the equipment you’ll be getting too.

When it comes to cost, however, I’m left completely in the dark on this without navigating to a separate page. Beyond this their isn’t even a quote option available, I can only get called back. Even when I click the pricing guide, I’ve got to scroll way down to the bottom of the page to even see that plans start at $36.99!

Protect America

Now this one is pretty good, right off the bat I know exactly how much it costs, some of the equipment I’ll be getting and hey I know who GE is – value of the system based off brand!

Outside of this they do some other great things like having the Norton and TRUSTe symbols that scream out “Hey you can trust us”. They even give the option for people to get a quote if they are getting a different type of system. If the person is still not convinced they have more things down the page like customer testimonials that build value along with a lookup of “How Safe is your Neighborhood” that shows you just how bad crime is in your area.

Overall this is an absolutely excellent experience and does a great job of overcoming any objections I have. The design is by no means the Mona Lisa of websites but it doesn’t need to be because its upfront in what the consumer is looking.

Author Bio:

Mike Wilson is a marketing analyst with Safe Choice Security, a Jacksonville Home Security Company providing GE Home Security systems featuring award winning monitoring from Monitronics.