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8 Comments

Looking for tips on how to make my website look better

Hey there!

I would like to ask you guys for some advice about my website's design.
So just a quick note about the site, it's an e-learning platform where I am currently hosting 3 courses of mine.
I have these courses on Udemy but now I am looking into hosting them on my own website and drive traffic to it.

I am using Teachable which is a platform that helps you host your courses and you can link your own domain to the website so that it looks authentic.

For now, I am using the "basic plan" which is around 40 bucks a month. This plan allows me to start hosting my courses and also start selling them.

The other plans they have are a bit more expensive for me (at least for now).

With this plan, I don't have a lot of room when it comes to design. I can add different sections to a page. Each section can have very limited options. For example, one section can have a video, another can have one large image, another can have text with image, another can have only text,...

So I am looking for advice on how can I make my pages look better with these limited options in mind.

For example, this is the main page : aifee.co

I am sure that by choosing good looking images and the right colors, I can make it look better. For now it doesn't look good to me.

So any advice about:

  • Images I should use.
  • Colors I should use.
  • How to organize sections...

Would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks in advance!

  1. 3

    I will go against the grain here and say that based on my experience, design is not the most important thing, you need to get a few basic things right, and you are good to go. I will get to the design part in a moment.

    But I think you need to focus on your sales copy/content to drive your audience to buy. Right now, your copy is a little too "Me" focused when it should be customer-focused. A simple way to check this is to compare the number of "you" to "I" on the page. There is 1 "you" on the page, and it is in the email consent section. While there are 7 "I"s on the homepage. You might want to switch focus and tell your reader what is in it for them.

    You are also missing a few confidence-building measures. Your site does not have testimonials, nor does it have a count of how many people have attended your course. A lot of people do not want to be the first to try something. And a solid testimonial can help you sell. It is like how when you see a line outside a restaurant waiting to get in. You assume the restaurant is excellent. You want to convey that for your course and site.

    You also need to talk about why your course is different from other courses from a reader's perspective. Or you might want to put your most popular course up top, assuming it is in huge demand and people constantly have the problem you are addressing in the course.

    Take a look at GoRails(I am sure there are other excellent examples out there, but this is one I have used and know, so I am just using it here). Chris runs it, and he even did an AMA recently on here. See how his opening statement talks about 50k people already there. You can see that idea on many a site. Check out Basecamp, and just below the "Give Basecamp a Try" button, they talk about 4000 companies signing up just last week. That is a HUGE confidence boost. Even if you do not have a vast customer base, you want to put something there.

    GoRails might have become a little big now. But even in the past, the homepage pitched the courses and the community size. Check out this version from 2017

    So to summarize, you might want to look at

    1. Getting real customer testimonials
    2. Focus on the benefits of your course for the reader
    3. List what makes you different from other courses

    Now coming to the design part. It is straightforward. Just remember the acronym CRAP
    C - Contrast
    R - Repetition
    A - Alignment
    P - Position

    You have to focus on Alignment first to make your website stronger. The rest can wait.

    Basically, look at Gorails. Everything is aligned, the text, the logo to text etc.

    imgur

    On your site, the top logo is not aligned with anything below it. And your text is center-aligned, left-aligned text is a lot stronger than centered text. Your logos(Keras, tensorflow etc) are not aligned, make it a 4x4 matrix.

    That should get you started. You can improve the looks later.

    Hope that helps. Let me know if you need any help. Always happy to help.

    1. 1

      Thanks a lot for the feedback @pras2018 !

      Few questions.

      What I showed you is the main page, should I mention all the courses in this main page or should I just talk about how the platform itself will be beneficial for the customer? I only have 3 courses.

      Each course has its own sales copy (ex : https://www.aifee.co/p/train-deploy-image-recognition-deep-learning-models), should the main page (aifee.co) also be a sales copy?

      I don't know what you're using to access the site, but when you use a mobile phone, I think the text looks better when it's centered. Do you think that the text should be on the left even though many people will access it using their phones? For Gorails I think they built the site themselves so they can control how it looks on different platforms, which is not the case for me. I can't control how it looks on different platforms (mobile, PC,..)

      One last question. Regarding the sales copy that I put the link to above, what things should be added to it apart from the students count?

      I have those courses hosted on Udemy and I have more than 3000 students and maybe around 800 of them are paying customers. I am thinking of adding this count but I don't want to mention Udemy anywhere.

      1. 1

        3000 students and maybe around 800

        Wow! That is awesome. You want that kind of info up top. You do not have to mention Udemy. You can word it as "800 people bought one of our courses in the last X months" or maybe something more tied into the goals of your readers "more than 500 people got a job in AI after completing our course."

        I am not sure how easy it is to get testimonials from your students on Udemy, but you might want to see if you can get some.

        should I mention all the courses in this main page or should I just talk about how the platform itself will be beneficial for the customer?

        You might have to experiment here. Maybe, to begin with, you can list all and then as your catalog grows, you can show important ones.

        Each course has its own sales copy

        I noticed the course pages. I think there are a lot of exciting possibilities there. You might want to do a tease, show them what they are going to build. So if it is image identification, show the output right at the top or maybe make a site that allows them to try it out. Or maybe give a real-world example and tell them they can build the same thing. I remember a training course that showed you how to build Airbnb/Insta etc from scratch did pretty well.

        When starting out, I look at other popular sites in the field I am working on and blindly copy the traits I like. Then over time, experiment to see what works and what does not.

        You can experiment with long-form copy for your course page. Maybe you can copy

        https://justjavascript.com/

        But again, test. Long-form copy sometimes works, sometimes does not. And that course page is a whole different story. You might need a slightly different approach for your course pages compared to your homepage.

        should the main page (aifee.co) also be a sales copy?

        I think it should sell. You need to convince people to stay and browse your content.

        I don't know what you're using to access the site

        I am looking at it on a PC. Centered text might look better, but it is harder to read, especially for larger bodies of text. So titles and subtext can be centered. But you might want to left-align para. Here is an article I found off google that explains alignment. Have a look and make a call on it. But like I said, the design is secondary, and you do not have to worry too much about it right now.

        PS: I think you should check out other course creator pages. There are a lot out there. And copy things from there. For example, have a look at https://writeofpassage.school/. I follow him and his courses get full even though they are on the expensive side. So you might want to copy aspects from there, like the money-back guarantee might work for you too, especially in the beginning to build trust.

        1. 1

          Thanks a lot @pras2018! I appreciate all the tips and resources. They will be very helpful!
          I ll try to implement the important ones soon!

  2. 2

    First impression: it looks dull. Dull green, dull grey. Could you make it a bit bolder?

    How the web site looks now

    How the web site might look with bolder colours

    Second impression: I didn't immediately know what you're selling or who you're selling it to. Could you update your headline so that your target audience immediately knows they're in the right place?

    I've changed the headline to: "The fast way to learn AI for everyone and everything". You don't need to spell out "Artificial Intelligence" (your customers already knows what AI stands for!) and you should replace "fast" with whatever's unique about your courses (what makes them better for your customers than any other courses?)

    Hope that helps... good luck!

    1. 1

      Hey Mark,
      Thanks for the feedback! I can't see the images you've uploaded to show the difference. Can you upload them again please?

      1. 2

        Oh, that’s weird, they’re showing for me, whether I’m logged in or not. You can see them here:

        http://foreverrossland.ca/images/before.png

        http://foreverrossland.ca/images/bolder.png

        1. 1

          Thanks for the images! Bolder looks much better indeed!

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