Introduction

[00:00:00]
>> Hello, and welcome to this course on creating compelling websites, websites that convert and encourage people to take action. My name is Paul Boag, and over the next few hours, we're gonna explore exactly what is involved in creating a compelling website. And I'm hoping you're gonna join me on this journey.

[00:00:22]
And the idea is that what we're gonna get into are techniques and approaches we can use without having to resort to things like dark patterns. So we're gonna explore all these different subject areas over the next few hours, or maybe hopefully apply some of those techniques to various websites so you can actually see these techniques in action.

[00:00:46]
But let me start off by talking a little bit about myself and my background and why I'm doing this particular workshop. So I've worked in digital since about 1994, which means that I have years of experience of doing all kinds of different aspects of the web design process.

[00:01:06]
So when I started out, I would do the whole thing from designs to code to even writing the content. But over the years, I've come to specialize in user experience design and in particular conversion rate optimisation, encouraging people to take action on the websites. But I was noticing an annoying trend, which I'm sure you've noticed yourself, which are websites that become increasingly manipulative in the way that they encourage you to take action.

[00:01:37]
And that really made me deeply uncomfortable. Because what I strongly believe that you can actually create a compelling website without having to resort to those kinds of techniques, and I ended up writing a book on it called Click. And Click basically proposes an approach to creating compelling websites that doesn't involve that kind of manipulation.

[00:02:01]
And so that is essentially what we're gonna be looking at over the next few hours. We're gonna look at how to go about doing that, and exactly what is involved in creating a compelling website. So very loosely, this is gonna be our agenda for the coming hours. We're gonna start off by looking at the four pillars to conversion.

[00:02:24]
So these are kind of very practical psychological elements of our personality that we can use in order to encourage people to take action. Now, you might immediately be worried that I'm starting to use psychology to encourage people to take action, doesn't that sound a lot like manipulation? Well, you'll find out that actually that isn't the case, and I'll explain why.

[00:02:50]
Then we're gonna look at how to create a compelling offering. So how to take whatever it is that you're looking to promote and structure it in such a way that's actually compelling to people, that is something that they want to take part in. And then after that, we're gonna move into looking at design and how design can shape our perception of a product and service and also can guide us around the various content in order to understand what the product and service can offer us.

[00:03:24]
And then finally, we're gonna look at how to go about optimising a website in order to encourage conversion. So that's the basic plan for the day. Now, as you can tell, this is covering a lot of different areas. We're gonna be talking about copywriting. We're gonna be talking about marketing.

[00:03:41]
We're gonna be talking about user interface design. We're gonna to be talking about broader UX design, and we're even gonna to be touching on development a little bit as well. So there's a huge amount of different skill sets that are required in order to create a compelling website.

[00:03:58]
Fortunately, you don't need to be an expert in all of these areas, you only need to understand the basics in each of them in order to be able to start creating a compelling website. Really, the techniques that I'm gonna be sharing apply to pretty much any website. I've worked on very small mom and pop businesses over the years, all the way up to working with international brands like Puma, or Doctors Without Borders, those kinds of people.

[00:04:27]
And actually, it works on pretty much any sector. So whether you're a charity looking to increase donations, or you're trying to encourage people to sign up to your SAS App, or whether you're selling products on an e-commerce site, whatever the case, these techniques are gonna help. So I hope you're as excited as I am about getting into all of this.

[00:04:48]
And let's begin then by looking at those four psychological pillars to conversion and how they're critical to your success in encouraging people to take action.
>> Someone has mentioned the nudge theory when you reference psychology.
>> Yeah, we're gonna talk about nudging people to take action to some extent, but that we're also gonna explore a whole load of things about how our brains work and how we have different systems that make decisions.

[00:05:19]
And yeah, we're gonna get into that. But the nudge book is an excellent book that I highly recommend. If you get into this kind of thing a little bit more, you wanna learn a little bit more about all of these areas, then that's a really good book to read.

[00:05:31]
There's another one that I absolutely love, called thinking fast, thinking slow, that you guys might wanna check out as well.