Online shoppers looking for a retailer to help them slap a photo of a new puppy on a coffee cup or create a T-shirt bearing the face of a grandchild shouldn’t turn to myPhotopipe.com. The Internet merchant’s slogan, “No Mugs No T-Shirts,” makes that clear. But that new tagline, along with a redesigned web site, has helped the online digital photo-processing retailer differentiate itself from the Snapfishes and Shutterflys, spurred an increase in traffic and enticed visitors to stay at its web site longer.
MyPhotopipe launched in 2005 and caters to professional and amateur photographers. Early this year, myPhotopipe personnel spent eight weeks redesigning the site, paring down copy, eliminating clutter and changing its color palette to achieve a sleeker and more sophisticated look. It also adopted a new slogan, “No Mugs No T-Shirts,” to distinguish itself from other online photo service retailers.
Three months later, visitors are spending on average about a minute longer on the site—five minutes compared to four, over 16,000 new users have bookmarked the home page and more consumers are stopping by. About 3 million consumers visited myPhotopipe.com in March, a 29% increase from February and nearly double the number of a year ago.
“We call it the iPod effect,” Douglas Keeney, CEO of myPhotopipe.com, Inc., says. “We designed with fewer words and more simple graphics. We looked to cut, cut, cut—cut out everything that wasn’t important.”
On the home page alone, the e-retailer trimmed the word count from more than 700 to fewer than 100. Links on the home page were eliminated as well, going down from more than 60 to about 20. And, the e-retailer simplified navigation. The “view all” link next to the Products & Pricing table on the home page, for example, previously produced a list of about 1,000 items, which Keeney says was overwhelming and prompted many visitors to leave the site. Now, that link directs consumers to a page with simple graphics and about 14 categories. Site abandonment from that page has decreased, Keeney says.
Keeney says myPhotopipe used web design firm Zero Gravity Group for help with the updates, which included changing the color scheme from red and blue to a sleeker white and orange. It also looked to design-oriented e-commerce companies, such as Apple Inc., for inspiration.
As part of its image overhaul, myPhotopipe experimented with a variety of phrases for its Google Adwords paid search advertisements, conducting A/B tests pitting ads with its new slogan such as: “Professional Prints: No Mugs, No T-shirts, Just Five Star Prints” against more traditional copy, such as: “Professional Photo Prints.” Ads with the new slogan generated click-through rates between 8% and 25%--much higher than those of the traditional ads, Keeney says.
“It was a distinct positioning statement,” Keeney says. “Our clients are photographers. They didn’t spend $4,000 on camera equipment to make a mouse pad with someone’s face on it. We want to set ourselves apart.”
Keeney says average order value has increased since the relaunch, adding that repeat customers who in the past purchased a single item are now viewing more pages and adding other products.
“People who would typically come for an 8x10 are now adding a panoramic,” he says. “We’re getting more click-throughs and more cost-efficient click-throughs.”
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