How Home Inventors Stay Ahead: Structured Website Design

“What should I be doing while MAKO is working on my invention?” This is one of the most common questions we receive when we provide product design services to our clients. Because while our teams are hard at work, you might be wondering what else you could be doing to set your product business up for success. One avenue some inventors should consider is their branding. In fact, we recently talked about our client Dhérèse and her incredible approach to branding. Today, we’re going to continue that conversation by providing website help for inventors by walking you through Dhérèse’s brand new website!

In this blog, we’re going to focus here on the homepage. Because your homepage is where most of your audience will get funneled before they see the other parts of your website. If they don’t follow your social media or see your ads on a regular basis, the homepage is often their first impression of your brand. And as you know, a bad first impression is irreparable.

Website Help for Inventors | A Case Study of Dhérèse’s New Website

A great homepage, and the rest of your website, start with the basics. It needs to load quickly and it needs to be optimized for websites, tablets and mobile devices.

Beyond that, however, you need to think about what is your objective for the homepage. Is it purely to educate viewers or do you want to drive sales? When we’re providing website help for inventors, it’s usually the latter. Simply put, to help drive sales. And Hubspot provides a great infographic to help you achieve just that. And below, we’re going to follow the key points of their infographic to understand why Dhérèse’s homepage is so successful when you’re thinking about creating a product website of your own.

• Beautiful hero shot: Viewers are greeted with an incredible shot of Dhérèse’s product, the Ring Keeper. In the first scroll, there’s also a headline and sub-headline telling the visitor precisely what the Ring Keeper does.
• CTA (Call-to-Action): Within the first scroll is also the “Shop Now” button to encourage visitors to make a purchase. Near the bottom, she even includes secondary CTAs, such as the invitation to sign up for her newsletter. That way she can retain the interest of potential customers who are not ready to make a purchase yet.
• Generous use of images: A picture is worth a thousand words as they say. Not just renders, but professionally taken photographs that showcase the quality, beauty and benefits of the Ring Keeper.
• Benefits and Features: Inventors looking for website help should pay special attention to this one. Dhérèse went a step further than what other product companies do. Rather than just describing the features in words or listing out the types of materials used in the product, she provided real-life use cases for the product. In addition, she paired those cases with visuals to clearly showcase how seamless and easy the product is to use. This is a powerful marketing technique!
• Reviews: Near the end of the homepage, Dhérèse includes a couple of reviews as a way to build trust with potential customers. Especially for those who are interested in your product but have never seen or heard about it before.
• Resources and Content: Another way to build trust is through content marketing by providing salient resources to draw and retain users to their website. Dhérèse is starting to do this with her blog and by providing a photo gallery to show visitors just how beautiful this product is.
• User-friendly navigation: A simple header at the top including a shopping cart. There’s also a nice added touch of the search bar! Best practice is to actually have the navigation bar visible on every page. That way viewers can easily find what their looking for.

Inventors ready to get website help? Better check Dhérèse’s new website here.

About: MAKO Design + Invent is the original firm providing world-class consumer product development services tailored to startups, small manufacturers, and inventors. Simply put, we are the leading one-stop-shop for developing your physical product from idea to store shelves, all in a high-quality, cost-effective, and timely manner. We operate as one powerhouse 30-person product design team spread across 4 offices to serve you (Austin, Miami, San Francisco, & Toronto). We have full-stack in-house industrial design, mechanical engineering, electrical engineering, patent referral, prototyping, and manufacturing services. To assist our startup and inventor clients, in addition to above, we help with business strategy, product strategy, marketing, and sales/distribution for all consumer product categories. Also, our founder Kevin Mako hosts The Product Startup Podcast, the industry's leading hardware podcast. Check it out for tips, interviews, and best practices for hardware startups, inventors, and product developers. Click HERE to learn more about MAKO Design + Invent!