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salt-volk · 2 years ago

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people invest in dappervolk because investing in dappervolk is only of the only ways to genuinely improve it, and as hard as it is for some of yall to beleive probably, some people actually see the potential in it and want to see it succeed. to improve, they need to hire more staff, especially more people who can code site features and shit. more money = better budget for staff and other improvements.

we're in the middle of a pandemic recession and all of this shit. i dont think the staff are as rolling in cash balling living large wasting all the sweet sweet dv money as much as some of yall think they are. boycotting dappervolk literally wouldnt do shit, itd just make the site shut down.

i find it impossible to beleive that anji is raking in mad cash, holding off on all these amazing updates JUST to spite everyone. some yall act like its so so so super easy and simple to make the site better and she already 100% has the means and capability and all the resources to have these features coded and all this stuff done that she could easily implement at any moment, but for some reason refuses to and acts against her best interest.. why???? just out of sheer hatred for the userbase?? like as if she's just here to siphon money waiting for it to fail and laughing at all of us manically as we plea for improvements that she could easily add instantly but just wont because shes sadistic or??

put yourself in her perspective for a moment and think why that would even make sense. i know its easy to have a shallow view of peopel from afar that are just on the internet and you dont know them but seriously like seriously just sit down and really try to consider the daily life of this person of managing a site on your own and having it be your baby project and all of this and why you would deliberately make it suck for no fucking reaosn just to be a spiteful bitch or something. why you would hold off on improvements you could easily make. also if it was a scam all about the money youd want to improve the site because the more users you have the more people you can scam. their user retention rate sucks ass right now and thats not helpful even from a purely business standpoint.

improvements aren't not happening JUST because anjis a stubborn ass who only cares about money $$ and is sabotaging part of her own lifes work for no fucking reason, improvements are probably not happening because they dont have the means to practically do them at the moment, there are difficulties like lack of staff or experience behind the scenes, or they are actually planning to but improvements just take a while. and none of that is going to be remedied by having even less money

plus they have actually made decent improvements the past while i think we can get so focused on the negative including me i love to be a hateful bitter bitch lmao but even i have to give them some credit like theyre obviously trying even if its late even if its imperfect, theyre trying to make it work and doing okay actually in some regards

like i get it i totalyl fucking get it, parts of dappervolk genuiney suck butt ass and i understand frustration with how long and slow corrections have been and how the focus is off and it feels like theyre not listening all of that shit, but i get tired of this kind of disingenuous interpretation i see so much where people start making assumptions and shit that dont even make any sense. and for the recorda ive never spent money on the site im not rich im not a custom roller, maybe ive just worked on too many shitty creative ventures with inexperienced young artists and epic fail staff and all of that so im empathizing too much from personal experience lmao, but its just you can absolutely get trapped in that shit trying to save a sinking ship and i think assuming the worst intentions behind the scenes is inaccurate. especially the frequent money leechy allegations

havent yall at least worked on a smaller scale shitfail project in college like that? even if you dont know the cost of servers and hiring professionals and what its like working with directionless management on stuff with deadlines or the general public and all, yall can probably empathize in some way.

anyway i'm drunk rambling lmaooo but i just so serisously feel like boycotting is so meaningless like this isnt disney or some big corporation, its not like they have all the resources and means to improve stuff but just dont, theyre not a million dollar venture cutting corners to profit, boycotting wont suddenly make them reallocate the resources theyve been skimping on. this is like basically a single person with barely any staff probably trying to maintain a project that keeps getting away from them and scope creep and blah blah blah and probably also has their own personal life shit going on and boycotting the site will do nothing but just make the site fail completely.

lthe root problem is not them having the means and ability to improve but simpley choosing not to because they hate listening to user feedback, the root problem is them not having the means in the first place. you take away the money, it doesnt suddenly bestow them with better means for improvement, if anyting it gives them less. like boycotting sounds good as a surface measure and an initial reaciton and can work for the big walmart bastards with the money and power to enact change fuck all of them by the way, but dv is so small i sincerely dont think itd affect anything but just kill dappervolk completely. weird idea in practice, wont have intended effect.

tldr i dont think anji is just a money scamming stubborn asshole those insinuations always scratch at me, also i dont think dappervolk has as much resources as some of yall think. boycott wont fix the problem will just make it worse. good night everybody also fuck 3s forest i still hate dailies lol

#balancing #market #positive #reply #staff #submission #mod yoshi

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piccolina-mina · 3 years ago

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Our girl is thriving this season, but what the fuck is this Wyatt plot? I need your thinks about this one. I just knew you'd be six posts in on this by now. HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

*sighs* For fk's sake, nonny. I don't even like talking about it because I get ranty.

What do you want me to say? Honestly, everything you can imagine I would feel about this, you're probably right. Because you know, I'm that b*tch always getting ranty about racism and stuff.

In short, I hate it. I think it's unnecessary, tone-deaf, random, pointless, lowkey offensive, and illogical. I legitimately find it triggering AF. And it doesn't make sense.

It's Unnecessary. There is a fraction of a chance that it will connect to something more significant, but even if that's the case, I'm confident that end result or connection could've taken place without this random reform racist Wyatt storyline. This series has struggled enough as it is properly utilizing all of its primary characters as well as providing them with decent screentime and arcs. It literally makes no sense to spend any of that time that could be used elsewhere on primary characters on a recurring guest star.

This isn't actually about Rosa, it's about Wyatt. Following up on the previous point, this specific arc caters to Wyatt. Revolves around Wyatt. Rosa is just a passive participant and vessel for this Wyatt storyline. So again, the arc itself is about a recurring character. At least when they did something similarly bringing back Cam to siphon time and arcs away from its main cast they found ways to implement it better and tied her to multiple main characters, so it wasn't a total waste.

The intended Wyatt/Rosa parallel is illogical. I know what they're intending to do with this storyline, drawing parallels between Rosa's experience coming back from the dead after ten years and trying to make sense of that and atone for things before and having this second chance to make things right and go down the right path and so forth and Wyatt losing his memory and his racist ways and having to reconcile with who he was to who he can be and all of that. I understand the concept they're trying to sell. It just doesn't work. Rosa's addiction is not equivalent to Wyatt's racism and violence. Her mental illness isn't either. It's dangerous to invite the comparasions with this storyline.

It's not successful redemption. True redemption is Wyatt knowing and remembering his actions and then trying to atone for them. It's not the convenience of amnesia wiping out his memory only giving him distance from his actions rather than really facing up to them. Because of the amnesia, to Wyatt, it's like he's hearing about another person. It's a cop out. He doesn't Actually have to do the work to redeem himself or atone or learn or grow. IF we're supposed to compare it to Rosa, she knew what she did and remembers and knows how she hurt her loved ones or whatever and she's actively trying to make amends for that as part of her program... a program that Wyatt isn't working or anything BTW.

They've contradicted themselves too much and are rewriting their own work and thus twisting everything up just to make this storyline work and it still doesn't. The timeline is all fkd up... what they established already all of it..The Longs were racist before Kate's death. Kate was racist. To suggest that a 10+ amnesiac blackout clean slates and erases all of Wyatt's racism is just wrong. As in it literally doesn't even make any sense. That is not how the amnesia works but they keep playing both sides of it trying to make it work. To sell us what they're claiming, he would have to have ALL of his memories wiped and have forgotten who he was completely.

Wyatt is behaving like he's shocked by racism in this town but they're also trying to argue that he was born into it. Wyatt was surrounded by racists and his friends come from racist families but he's acting like the very concept of him ever being ingratiated in it is some huge surprise. Wyatt looks affronted by things like Confederate flags. Wyatt being steeped in and surrounded by racism predates his amnesia period.

Kyle mentioned that line about Wyatt putting Whites Only on water fountains, and it sounded like a school prank. It also sounded like something Kyle was reminding Rosa of as if she was alive when that incident happened. Therefore, Wyatt was doing racist stuff before she died. Kyle would've been out of school by then so how else would he know that or why would he bother retaining it?

IF Wyatt and Rosa really were friends before (which holy retcon), then it makes no real sense that he would get psychopathically angry about his "friend" who does drugs getting into a car accident with his sister who does drugs. He would've mourned them both not jumped to severe racism and violence. But both he and Jasmine's family (who are MIA for all of this) did that... jumped to racism. So was Wyatt indoctrinated by his family or indoctrinated by message boards and shit? And if Wyatt and Rosa were friends than why was Kate such a racist bitch to Rosa?

They're backdrafting history JUST to make this storyline that we don't need with a character who isn't even a main one to work.

By not actually addressing that Wyatt has to unlearn racism and giving him an out through amnesia, there is the very realistic issue of that latent racism to come out at any given time. What happens when he's drunk? What happens when he's really angry at a POC?

Tying Wyatt's redemption with his clear affection for Rosa is again dangerous and irresponsible. I know we would all like to think that love is the way and through love it can heal racism, but that puts the responsibility on the disenfranchised person to be "lovable." Because if Wyatt WAS friends with Rosa once then that means the second Rosa did something unlovable she was just another *insert racist slur of choosing* right? It means that there's a possibility that if his feelings for Rosa dwindle or things go sideways in some way there's a chance that he could revert back to those racist ways. Loving Rosa(linda) and pinning all of his wanting to be better on her because of her makes his actively learning to be anti-racist conditional. Right now he's not doing this for him. He's doing it because of Rosa.

This entire storyline has placed the burden of forgiveness on Rosa, his victim. Without him ever having to actually make amends. It's this turn the other cheek BS that means there's nothing too big or harmful that can't result in forgiveness. It relies on Rosa and all that she represents to extend an inhumane level of mercy and grace to their tormentor and oppressor that was never once extended to them. It's such a consistent and problematic thing projected on disenfranchised parties that ONLY benefits the majority and makes them feel good. It's a narrative of meeting someone halfway when the playing field was uneven and the minorities are in actuality doing more work and making a longer trek. Halfway and meeting in the middle only works if both sides were even. They are not. It's the reaching across the aisle both sidesms when one side was clearly and actively more harmful than the other and than calling that peace and equity. It is not.

This storyline was meant to scintillate some viewers with this "what if" notion and teach others a meaningful lesson or be this poorly thought out gateway to exploring a complex storyline but it came at the expense of other demographics who actively have to deal with racist crap. And because of their problematic approach what is simply "just entertainment" to some who has the luxury of not having to think about it beyond that, is just gross and insanely triggering and uncomfortable to others. The others who deal with the reality of the subject at hand.

They wrote themselves into a corner with Wyatt so trying to dig him out of that no matter the cost or logic is absurd. This storyline could've worked better if Wyatt's racism didn't also include conscious, constant, extreme violence. But they spent all of this time making Wyatt the face of violent racism and now are trying to redeem him with no real effort. He wasn't just using slurs or making microaggressions. He wasn't some insensitive or aloof white person. He is a murderer. He has killed people. He technically murdered Liz in cold-blood. He knew she was in the crashdown when he shot up the place. The lights were still on. He beat up Arturo so badly he nearly killed him well after his friends even stopped. He attacked and intended to kill Rosa. And his handiwork was a constant thing, enough for Jenna to comment on it. And now we're supposed to ignore all of that because he has amnesia and has puppy dog eyes?

The fact that we can entertain (and for some succeed) Wyatt in all of his hot white dudeness' redemption after everything he has done slips into the inherent racism of society in the first place and is enraging. Because systemically and culturally and inherently society will bend over backwards to find a way to absolve a hot white guy no matter his actions. Flint and Noah couldn't get this type of redemption... So their intended storyline about evolving from racism STILL plays into the racist structures set up in society.

And because some people like it, there's this slippery territory of NO everyone who genuinely enjoys this aren't racist for enjoying it. But yes, this entire storyline and how it is playing out is at the very least racially insensitive.

In order for this storyline to work they would actually have to show Wyatt doing the work. They don't have enough time to dedicate to such a delicate storyline. It's been a C and D filler storyline with 45 second to a minute scenes. That's not enough time to explore this properly. We would've needed to see Wyatt returning home from the hospital. We would've needed to see Wyatt with his friends and it not feeling right and his discomfort. We would've needed to see Wyatt going through his yearbook and googling himself and the horror and disgust he felt. We would need to see this through his eyes. But we didn't have the time for that and we wouldn't have anyway because he's not a main character. We only get Wyatt through Rosa's eyes and they haven't even dedicated enough time to that for it to work. Rosa isn't conflicted at all. She didn't struggle to forgive him. She was reduced to a school girl with a crush and an insane level of grace and they just threw that at us with no buildup whatsoever. I don't know where Rosa's head is and how she got to this to place. Not really. And the only thing working about this is the chemistry between two actors who are allegedly dating so of course there's chemistry.

It literally feels like another instance of a favorite actor being shoehorned into a storyline just for the hell of it. Just because they didn't want to let Dylan go or something. Just to give him something else to do.

#anti wyatt long #rnm salt #roswell new mexico #rnm ask

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little-miss-dwarf · 6 years ago

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13.11.18

So it’s like half eleven and a Tuesday night - but who needs sleep? ...Me on a morning, but this is night-time-me and night-time-me doesn’t care about morning-me’s feelings.

As I’m sure future me remembers, Halloween over the holidays didn’t go so well. I thought I looked pretty good actually, maybe even pretty for once. My hair suited the veil that I’d picked up in boots, my makeup went well, the stitches tattoo around my neck and wrists looked cool, my cobweb tights were amazing and they didn’t rip. I liked the way I could pull my long coat (the ‘grim reaper’ one) in at the waist, and my skirt went out a bit as well so it made like an hourglass and gave the impression I had a decent body shape.

It was awkward when I first got there - like really awkward - but I got used to it after a while and I just remember LW shaving his legs in P’s floor whilst she did AJ’s hooker makeup and then everyone pouring fake blood over their faces, dripping down their necks and smudged all over their arms. We all looked amazing and I was having fun. We went out then, and we got to the cemetery but everyone agreed it’d be disrespectful to go in there so we headed into town.

On the way into town was where we got egged. They only threw a few of them, but they pelted them from across the street so they had to use quite a bit of force. Me being the idiot I am, had to be the one that was hit... I knew it would be me. It covered my face and one side of my hair and splattered all over my coat too... it was dripping. It was fucking humiliating... I ended up in the McDonald’s disabled toilet scraping dried egg off my face with HM.

AD’s dad rescued me from **** later on... after LW and P’s bf ran through the fountains in their boxers and they pulled out the smirnoff and carling. My phone was on 3%, Halloween isn’t a safe night to be out and I didn’t wanna get drunk in public at night where I’m vulnerable. I’m honestly so fucking grateful they came out to get me... thank you so much...

We went to two firework displays this year. One was at ****** Cricket club and they didn’t but the safety barriers far back enough so the fireworks were so close it was probably a health and safety risk. I could taste the fireworks, and I’m not actually joking some bits landed on my face and in my mouth. AD bought a lightsaber and was fighting my siblings tho so that was funny.

We also went to the one at ******** and managed to get a really good spot considering we got there a couple minutes before they started. They were good but I always end up thinking about how much they cost and where that money could be better spent. Fireworks just don’t feel the same anymore.

Coming back to school after the half term has been alright I suppose. I’m not dead yet. I suppose I’m actually getting back on top of things again. Says the person who’s left their chemistry homework for tomorrow morning. ANYWAY. I’m trying to keep up in art. I spent an entire night organising my sketchbook since I’ve been putting it off. I’m really pleased with it. I need to make a list of things I wanna buy for my project tho, including actual glue (to please AD) and lots of string.

I did really shit in my Biology and Physics tests yesterday because I completely forgot to revise... like at all. I know, with a few keywords I have quite a good memory when it comes to tests but I’m still not gonna do great at all. I’m also pretty shit at Physics. I don’t understand half of it, thanks Mr G.

Me AD and AL went to watch the RSC Comedy of Errors tonight with my mum and AD’s dad and honestly it was amazing. They’re so confident, like in the way they speak and swift in the way they move. They have so much energy. It looks like so much fun, and I imagine it is but I know it’s a lot of hard work too. I loved the way they had the people who weren’t acting doing music in the background and when the guy playing Antiphulus and Dromio of Syracuse stepped down to take some of the kids monster much and haribos on the front row.

Can’t believe AD missed the guy fortnite dancing at the end tho. He was the same guy who decided to sing part of his lines in the tune of “Keke, do you love me” much to our amusement and my mums confusion. There was also a bit where you could tell they were over exaggerating what they’re supposed to do and improvising because the girl playing Adrianna was laughing. Antiphulus and Dromio of Syracuse were amazing - not to mention I liked their accents a lot.

Anyway. I’m on medication now, but it’s only 10mg a day so it’s not really gonna do anything. I know she was rabbiting on about “you have to actually try to implement CBT strategies too”. I know, but the medication should help me be able to do that. If it’s not then it’s not. Mom wants them to increase the dose because I’m... eXTRA dePRESSED :D

Things are difficult at the moment, but I’m trying... I’m far too aware of everything that I’m doing... it’s really humiliating. Not to mention, I just... hate my body... so fucking much. Hopefully no will be seeing it for a while... unfortunately I have to though... everyday.

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echelonlab-blog · 7 years ago

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Bound By Ink -- Chapter 51

Disclaimer: Fiction.

Warnings: None

Tagging: @hazeleyedleto @msroxyblog @letojokerownsme @miss-shannanigans @snewsome756 @maliciousalishious @nikkitasevoli@meghan12151977@sanellv@ambolton@bradlea23@spillinginkwithlove@alexis7215@dezmarz@pezziecoyote@whoistheprettiest@avaj99@iridescxntsolitude@pheenixpeterson@guccilowell@blondiefrommars@rowen1976@phoebehalliwell1984@thathipstaninja@darthjokerisyourfather@letsbemybatman @prettymisc@lylabell2013@mandyglam@pandaliciouz@just-me-obsessing@echelon-1969@carolinapb-me@marilyndioncre

Reckless Ink was closed on Mondays. Exceptions were sometimes made for prescheduled appointments and special events, but it was generally the one day of the week you could be sure everyone had off. Of course it was the one that Nadia chose when concocting her brilliant plan.

Nine a.m. found the entire crew of us – Shannon, Jayce, and me, and Nadia, Curtis, Rick, and Thor... even Jen and Avery who only worked part-time, assembled at Mark's door with coffee, donuts and cleaning implements in hand. Mark answered our knock still in his pajamas, rubbing sleepily at his eyes, and I felt a strong tug of nostalgia-fueled affection at the sight of him. We had shared a lot together, and maybe this Stephanie episode wasn't his proudest moment, but I would always love Mark. He was, underneath everything, one of the most decent people I had ever known and it was his good example that was part of the reason Jayce was the wonderful kid he was. Mark had learned a hard lesson in an ugly way. I was glad to be part of helping him pick up the pieces.

“What is all this?” Mark asked he scratched his beard and looked at the group of us assembled on his porch.

“Your friends,” Nadia explained. “We're here to help you get back on your feet. That's what friends do.”

We pushed past him and started setting things up, and I got my first real look at the damage Stephanie had caused, well the physical damage anyway. I could see Mark had done some picking up but that did nothing to disguise the spray paint on the walls or the missing equipment or smashed cabinets. I wondered if she had trashed the backyard too. This beach house had been Mark's dream, he had talked about getting a place since Jayce was small, one with lots of wood and windows, a bedroom with a view of the ocean, and a big patio he could barbeque on while having some beers and listening to the surf. We had come to view the house together three years ago, and while I was standing in that bedroom, the one with the beautiful view of the ocean, the one that was Mark's dream, I had realized that I didn't share that dream with him anymore. We had filed for divorce a month later and the next day he went back and made an offer on this place. This was the house where I realized our marriage was over. It had always made me a little sad every time I stepped inside it. Now I just felt angry and cheated on Mark's behalf. This was his dream, and nothing about it seemed to go right. It didn't seem fair.

“You guys don't have to do this,” he protested as Nadia started directing people, pressing a cup of coffee into Mark's hand before fishing out the breakfast she had brought for him.

“Of course we don't boss,” Thor said. “And you didn't have to let me take those three weeks off with pay when my daughter was born and in the NICU with that infection.”

“And you didn't have to let me use your car to go take my finals after mine dropped its transmission,” Jen added.

“And you didn't have to bail my ass out of jail after that DUI and then sit me down and make me understand how much the drinking was fucking up my life,” Curtis pointed out. I gave him a hug. That was a particularly ugly point in Curtis's life that he had put well behind him and he didn't like to bring it up.

“And you didn't have to keep forgiving me every time I fucked up either, but somehow you always did. Still do. And I think you should know how grateful for that I am.” Nadia gave him a big hug and I think if Mark was the blushing type he would have. “You've done so much for everyone else. Let us do this thing for you now.”

Mark nodded and quickly excused himself, stepping out of the big French doors in his living room to go stand on his patio and presumably regain his composure. I gave him a minute before stepping out to join him.

“You okay there, Bossman?” I asked him, using a nickname I hadn't invoked since we had been married.

Mark nodded but I could see he was still choked up. “I don't deserve this. Not after the way I behaved. Not after the way I abandoned Jayce.”

“Hey....” I placed my palm against his back, rubbing in circles. “We all fuck up eventually. Yours was a long time coming so I guess it got to be super epic. Jayce may still be mad but he will forgive you eventually. It's going to be okay. We've got you.”

“Thanks. I don't deserve your forgiveness either but … “ he shook his head. “Thanks anyway.”

We spent the morning just sorting and cleaning out broken things, making a list of what was damaged or had just disappeared altogether. After stopping for sandwiches we got back to work, the gang dividing into teams to tackle different repainting projects. I watched Shannon setting up power tools in the backyard as he prepared to cut wood to repair the built-ins in the dining room that had been smashed to splinters by Stephanie's exit. Damn, that man could look hot doing anything. I watched him for a few minutes, a satisfied smile on my face. When I looked up I saw Mark, who had also paused from pulling some broken baseboards up to watch Nadia painting one dining room wall. She looked adorable in overalls, with a bandanna covering her braids and a smudge of paint on her cheek, and the sort of dazed look Mark was giving her was probably the same one I had just been wearing as I watched Shannon bending over that sawhorse. I couldn't help but chuckle. He was moving right along.

By the time we were ready for dinner, the bulk of the work had been done and I was pretty proud of our little crew. Nadia grabbed her phone to order something to eat.

“At least let me buy everyone dinner,” Mark told her, trying to reach for her phone.

“Nuh-uh,” Nadia said, quickly turning away from him. “This is part of the surprise.” She had an extra large grin on her face as she told whoever was on the other end of the call that it was dinner time. I wondered what that was about, she hadn't shared anything with me beyond our cleanup plans.

A few minutes later Jeff, the guy that lived next door to Nadia and usually babysat her dogs showed up, getting out of his work truck with a big box in his arms and Banjo and Buckley, Nadia's two beloved Keeshonds bounding after him. The giant dark nosed balls of fluff spotted their mama and came dashing across the yard, nearly knocking her over in their enthusiasm. She giggled as she sank down to pet them, and it was almost like seeing a completely different Nadia, an unguarded version of her that was simply in the moment rather than calculating how to survive the next blow that life was going to deal her. I had gotten to know her quite a bit better recently and I was realizing how desperately she needed just one person to stay in her life. It was no small wonder she had thrown herself into repairing these relationships after screwing up so badly, when a lot of people would have run away in shame. We were all she had.

Jeff sat the box down on the dining room table and the smell of grilled meat products immediately filled the space, overwhelming the odor of new paint and freshly cut wood. He exchanged a few words with Thor and then he and Curtis headed back out to the truck, unlocking the back and disappearing inside. A few moments later they reemerged from its interior, carrying a gigantic sofa between them. I recognized it at once. It was the one that had previously sat in my mother's living room.

“What is going on?” Mark asked.

Nadia beamed. “I've been calling around for the last few days, finding things to replace what got broken or stolen. We took up a collection and we didn't have much, but a lot of people gave us things they weren't using anymore either. We'll have you set up as good as new before you go to bed. On your new bed,” she finished with a giggle. I was really impressed. She had gone all out for Mark. Especially if she somehow talked Barbara out of that steamship of a sofa she had been so fond of.

Mark stood in stunned silence shaking his head and trying to look stoic as the guys filed past him with item after item, refilling his house and repairing what damage they could. I could tell he was deeply moved by all of this, no matter how neutral he tried to keep his expression. When Nadia started digging through the box to set out dinner his resolve broke and he threw his arms around her, hugging her tightly while she spluttered until she gave in and hugged him back too. The hopeful look on her face filled in any additional blanks. I had to get these two together somehow. They needed each other.

#shannon leto fanfiction #shannon leto fic #30 seconds to mars fanfiction #30STM #Bound By Ink

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kjt-lawyers · 3 years ago

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How Our Website Conversion Strategy Increased Business Inquiries by 37%

Having a website that doesn’t convert is a little like having a bucket with a hole in it. Do you keep filling it up while the water’s pouring out — or do you fix the hole then add water? In other words, do you channel your budget into attracting people who are “pouring” through without taking action, or do you fine-tune your website so it’s appealing enough for them to stick around?

Our recommendation? Optimize the conversion rate of your website, before you spend on increasing your traffic to it.

Here’s a web design statistic to bear in mind: you have 50 milliseconds to make a good first impression. If your site’s too slow, or unattractive, or the wording isn’t clear, they’ll bounce faster than you can say “leaky bucket”. Which is a shame, because you’ve put lots of effort into designing a beautiful product page and About Us, and people just aren’t getting to see it.

As a digital web design and conversion agency in Melbourne, Australia, we’ve been helping our customers optimize their websites for over 10 years, but it wasn’t until mid-2019 that we decided to turn the tables and take a look at our own site.

As it turned out, we had a bit of a leaky bucket situation of our own: while our traffic was good and conversions were okay, there was definitely room for improvement.

In this article, I’m going to talk a little more about conversions: what they are, why they matter, and how they help your business. I’ll then share how I made lots of little tweaks that cumulatively led to my business attracting a higher tier of customers, more inquiries, plus over $780,000 worth of new sales opportunities within the first 26 weeks of making some of those changes. Let’s get into it!

What is conversion?

Your conversion rate is a figure that represents the percentage of visitors who come to your site and take the desired action, e.g. subscribing to your newsletter, booking a demo, purchasing a product, and so on.

Conversions come in all shapes and sizes, depending on what your website does. If you sell a product, making a sale would be your primary goal (aka a macro-conversion). If you run, say, a tour company or media outlet, then subscribing or booking a consultation might be your primary goal.

If your visitor isn’t quite ready to make a purchase or book a consultation, they might take an intermediary step — like signing up to your free newsletter, or following you on social media. This is what’s known as a micro-conversion: a little step that leads towards (hopefully) a bigger one.

A quick recap

A conversion can apply to any number of actions — from making a purchase, to following on social media.

Macro-conversions are those we usually associate with sales: a phone call, an email, or a trip to the checkout. These happen when the customer has done their research and is ready to leap in with a purchase. If you picture the classic conversion funnel, they’re already at the bottom.

Micro-conversions, on the other hand, are small steps that lead toward a sale. They’re not the ultimate win, but they’re a step in the right direction.

Most sites and apps have multiple conversion goals, each with its own conversion rate.

Micro-conversions vs. macro-conversions: which is better?

The short answer? Both. Ideally, you want micro- and macro-conversions to be happening all the time so you have a continual flow of customers working their way through your sales funnel. If you have neither, then your website is behaving like a leaky bucket.

Here are two common issues that seem like good things, but ultimately lead to problems:

High web traffic (good thing) but no micro- or macro-conversions (bad thing — leaky bucket alert)

High web traffic (good thing) plenty of micro-conversions (good thing), but no macro conversions (bad thing)

A lot of businesses spend heaps of money making sure their employees work efficiently, but less of the budget goes into what is actually one of your best marketing tools: your website.

Spending money on marketing will always be a good thing. Getting customers to your site means more eyes on your business — but when your website doesn’t convert visitors into sales, that’s when you’re wasting your marketing dollars. When it comes to conversion rate statistics, one of the biggest eye-openers I read was this: the average user’s attention span has dropped from 12 to a mere 7 seconds. That’s how long you’ve got to impress before they bail — so you’d better make sure your website is fast, clear, and attractive.

Our problem

Our phone wasn’t ringing as much as we’d have liked, despite spending plenty of dollars on SEO and Adwords. We looked into our analytics and realized traffic wasn’t an issue: a decent number of people were visiting our site, but too few were taking action — i.e. inquiring. Here’s where some of our issues lay:

Our site wasn’t as fast as it could have been (anything with a load time of two seconds or over is considered slow. Ours was hovering around 5-6, and that was having a negative impact on conversions).

Our CTA conversions were low (people weren’t clicking — or they were dropping off because the CTA wasn’t where it needed to be).

We were relying on guesswork for some of our design decisions — which meant we had no way of measuring what worked, and what didn’t.

In general, things were good but not great. Or in other words, there was room for improvement.

What we did to fix it

Improving your site’s conversions isn’t a one-size-fits all thing — which means what works for one person might not work for you. It’s a gradual journey of trying different things out and building up successes over time. We knew this having worked on hundreds of client websites over the years, so we went into our own redesign with this in mind. Here are some of the steps we took that had an impact.

We decided to improve our site

First of all, we decided to fix our company website. This sounds like an obvious one, but how many times have you thought “I’ll do this really important thing”, then never gotten round to it. Or rushed ahead in excitement, made a few tweaks yourself, then let your efforts grind to a halt because other things took precedence?

This is an all-too-common problem when you run a business and things are just… okay. Often there’s no real drive to fix things and we fall back into doing what seems more pressing: selling, talking to customers, and running the business.

Deciding you want to improve your site’s conversions starts with a decision that involves you and everyone else in the company, and that’s what we did. We got the design and analytics experts involved. We invested time and money into the project, which made it feel substantial. We even made EDMs to announce the site launch (like the one below) to let everyone know what we’d been up to. In short, we made it feel like an event.

We got to know our users

There are many different types of user: some are ready to buy, some are just doing some window shopping. Knowing what type of person visits your site will help you create something that caters to their needs.

We looked at our analytics data and discovered visitors to our site were a bit of both, but tended to be more ready to buy than not. This meant we needed to focus on getting macro-conversions — in other words, make our site geared towards sales — while not overlooking the visitors doing some initial research. For those users, we implemented a blog as a way to improve our SEO, educate leads, and build up our reputation.

User insight can also help you shape the feel of your site. We discovered that the marketing managers we were targeting at the time were predominantly women, and that certain images and colours resonated better among that specific demographic. We didn’t go for the (obvious pictures of the team or our offices), instead relying on data and the psychology of attraction to delve into the mind of the users.

We improved site speed

Sending visitors to good sites with bad speeds erodes trust and sends them running. Multiple studies show that site speed matters when it comes to conversion rates. It’s one of the top SEO ranking factors, and a big factor when it comes to user experience: pages that load in under a second convert around 2.5 times higher than pages taking five seconds or more.

We built our website for speed. Moz has a great guide on page speed best practices, and from that list, we did the following things:

We optimized images.

We managed our own caching.

We compressed our files.

We improved page load times (Moz has another great article about how to speed up time to first Byte). A good web page load time is considered to be anything under two seconds — which we achieved.

In addition, we also customized our own hosting to make our site faster.

We introduced more tracking

As well as making our site faster, we introduced a lot more tracking. That allowed us to refine our content, our messaging, the structure of the site, and so on, which continually adds to the conversion.

We used Google Optimize to run A/B tests across a variety of things to understand how people interacted with our site. Here are some of the tweaks we made that had a positive impact:

Social proofing can be a really effective tool if used correctly, so we added some stats to our landing page copy.

Google Analytics showed us visitors were reaching certain pages and not knowing quite where to go next, so we added CTAs that used active language. So instead of saying, “If you’d like to find out more, let us know'', we said “Get a quote”, along with two options for getting in touch.

We spent an entire month testing four words on our homepage. We actually failed (the words didn’t have a positive impact), but it allowed us to test our hypothesis. We did small tweaks and tests like this all over the site.

We used heat mapping to see where visitors were clicking, and which words caught their eye. With this data, we knew where to place buttons and key messaging.

We looked into user behavior

Understanding your visitor is always a good place to start, and there are two ways to go about this:

Quantitative research (numbers and data-based research)

Qualitative research (people-based research)

We did a mixture of both.

For the quantitative research, we used Google Analytics, Google Optimize, and Hotjar to get an in-depth, numbers-based look at how people were interacting with our site.

Heat-mapping software shows how people click and scroll through a page. Hot spots indicate places where people naturally gravitate.

We could see where people were coming into our site (which pages they landed on first), what channel brought them there, which features they were engaging with, how long they spent on each page, and where they abandoned the site.

For the qualitative research, we focused primarily on interviews.

We asked customers what they thought about certain CTAs (whether they worked or not, and why).

We made messaging changes and asked customers and suppliers whether they made sense.

We invited a psychologist into the office and asked them what they thought about our design.

What we learned

We found out our design was good, but our CTAs weren’t quite hitting the mark. For example, one CTA only gave the reader the option to call. But, as one of our interviewees pointed out, not everyone likes using the phone — so we added an email address.

We were intentional but ad hoc about our asking process. This worked for us — but you might want to be a bit more formal about your approach (Moz has a great practical guide to conducting qualitative usability testing if you’re after a more in-depth look).

The results

Combined, these minor tweaks had a mighty impact. There’s a big difference in how our site looks and how we rank. The bottom line: after the rebuild, we got more work, and the business did much better. Here are some of the gains we’ve seen over the past two years.

Our site speed increased: we managed to achieve a load time of around 500-600 ms.

Our dwell time increased by 73%, going from 1.5 to 2.5 minutes.

We received four-times more inquiries by email and phone.

Our organic traffic increased despite us not channeling more funds into PPC ads.

We also realized our clients were bigger, paying on average 2.5 times more for jobs: in mid-2018, our average cost-per-job was $8,000. Now, it’s $17,000.

Our client brand names became more recognizable, household names — including two of Australia’s top universities, and a well-known manufacturing/production brand.

Within the first 26 weeks, we got over $770,000 worth of sales opportunities (if we’d accepted every job that came our way).

Our prospects began asking to work with us, rather than us having to persuade them to give us the business.

We started getting higher quality inquiries — warmer leads who had more intent to buy.

Some practical changes you can make to improve your website conversions

When it comes to website changes, it’s important to remember that what works for one person might not work for you.

We’ve used site speed boosters for our clients before and gotten really great results. At other times, we’ve tried it and it just broke the website. This is why it’s so important to measure as you go, use what works for your individual needs, and remember that “failures” are just as helpful as wins.

Below are some tips — some of which we did on our own site, others are things we’ve done for others.

Tip number 1: Get stronger hosting that allows you to consider things like CDNs. Hiring a developer should always be your top choice, but it’s not always possible to have that luxury. In this instance, we recommend considering CDNs, and depending on the build of your site, paying for tools like NitroPack which can help with caching and compression for faster site speeds.

Tip number 2: Focus your time. Identify top landing pages with Moz Pro and channel your efforts in these places as a priority. Use the 80/20 principle and put your attention on the 20% that gets you 80% of your success.

Tip number 3: Run A/B tests using Google Optimize to test various hypotheses and ideas (Moz has a really handy guide for running split tests using Google). Don’t be afraid of the results — failures can help confirm that what you are currently doing right. You can also access some in-depth data about your site’s performance in Google Lighthouse.

Tip number 4: Trial various messages in Google Ads (as a way of testing targeted messaging). Google provides many keyword suggestions on trending words and phrases that are worth considering.

Tip number 5: Combine qualitative and quantitative research to get to know how your users interact with your site — and keep testing on an ongoing basis.

Tip number 6: Don’t get too hung up on charts going up, or figures turning orange: do what works for you. If adding a video to your homepage slows it down a little but has an overall positive effect on your conversion, then it’s worth the tradeoff.

Tip number 7: Prioritize the needs of your target customers and focus every build and design choice around them.

Recommended tools

Nitropack: speed up your site if you’ve not built it for speed from the beginning.

Google Optimize: run A/B tests

HotJar: see how people use your site via heat mapping and behaviour analytics.

Pingdom / GTMetrix: measure site speed (both is better if you want to make sure you meet everyone’s requirements).

Google Analytics: find drop-off points, track conversion, A/B test, set goals.

Qualaroo: poll your visitors while they are on your site with a popup window.

Google Consumer Surveys: create a survey, Google recruits the participants and provides results and analysis.

Moz Pro: Identify top landing pages when you connect this tool to your Google Analytics profile to create custom reports.

How to keep your conversion rates high

Treat your website like your car. Regular little tweaks to keep it purring, occasional deeper inspections to make sure there are no problems lurking just out of sight. Here’s what we do:

We look at Google Analytics monthly. It helps to understand what’s working, and what’s not.

We use goal tracking in GA to keep things moving in the right direction.

We use Pingdom's free service to monitor the availability and response time of our site.

We regularly ask people what they think about the site and its messaging (keeping the qualitative research coming in).

Conclusion

Spending money on marketing is a good thing, but when you don’t have a good conversion rate, that’s when your website’s behaving like a leaky bucket. Your website is one of your strongest sales tools, so it really does pay to make sure it’s working at peak performance.

I’ve shared a few of my favorite tools and techniques, but above all, my one bit of advice is to consider your own requirements. You can improve your site speed if you remove all tags and keep it plain. But that’s not what you want: it’s finding the balance between creativity and performance, and that will always depend on what’s important.

For us as a design agency, we need a site that’s beautiful and creative. Yes, having a moving background on our homepage slows it down a little bit, but it improves our conversions overall.

The bottom line: Consider your unique users, and make sure your website is in line with the goals of whoever you’re speaking with.

We can do all we want to please Google, but when it comes to sales and leads, it means more to have a higher converting and more effective website. We did well in inquiries (actual phone calls and email leads) despite a rapid increase in site performance requirements from Google. This only comes down to one thing: having a site customer conversion framework that’s effective.

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xaydungtruonggia · 3 years ago