⌚ Timecodes: 00:00 Introduction 00:52 The headline 02:34 The hero shot 04:23 What is Ahrefs anyway? 05:35 Tools descriptions 07:47 Please, don’t sign up 10:00 Introverts at Ahrefs 11:14 Customer Testimonials 12:12 The footer
Love the new design, but ... how do I get to see it without logging out, #tim30? While logged in, every attempt at going to the homepage redirects me to the dashboard. Normally very helpful! Now... Ah well guess another browser will do the trick.
I'd still say you need an SEO guy to make the proper use of Ahrefs tool. An Ok level SEO guy + Ahrefs tool = Killer Strategy, thats what I mean. Sharpest sword in the hand of a man who doesnt know how to fight, means a little. So don't stop hiring SEOs - on behalf of the SEO Community :) Once again, great video by Tim. Thank you again for your awesome tool and very responsive customer service too!
well.. we definitely not looking to put SEOs out of jobs with our tools and content :) But we want more people to DIY their SEO to a certain level, and only hire professionals when their website gets too large or they run into advanced issues with it.
Hey Tim. Question: which company websites you like the most (let's start with 3)? Doesn't count Ahrefs. Doesn't matter if it's copywriting or a great design. #Tim30
Thanks for the details, Tim! The page feels great to use, can't wait to see the others you're probably planning to redesign soon! :) I do have a question for #TIM30 though: would you recommend a startup with a similar business model such as Ahrefs focus more on building a rock-solid homepage and rely on that to convert, less than any product-centric landing pages, or the other way around, given identical traffic and composition on all pages? And why?
hey Viorel.. the answer to that question is obviously "it depends." Generally, if you drive any paid traffic to your product - you should be using dedicated landing pages, which you can easily tweak and optimise. And if your homepage mainly gets branded traffic (like ours) I'd rather focus it on educating people about your company/product, rather than trying to convert them. Because they're very likely to convert anyway, given that they come from branded searches.
I've always been on the fence about putting a bottom-of-the-funnel call to action right on the homepage, like your "Start a 7-Day Trial for $7" button. I feel like most people would need to browse at least a FEW more pages first before they're ready to go do that. And you even talk yourself about discouraging people from signing up until they do a little more self-education first. So why did you want to keep that "Sign up" call to action right in your homepage banner? Also, we're working on a redesign for our own website at www.clearpivot.com right now. I'd love to discuss it with you and get your feedback! #Tim30
well that's the thing! BEFORE people land on our homepage they have already consumed quite a bit of our content already. I mean that is true for MOST people that land on our homepage, and for those who aren't yet very familiar with Ahrefs - we have that "don't sign up for a trial" thingy, encouraging them to do a bit more research before they sign up
Love Ahrefs, this video shows how you must tread your own path rather than a template when creating any material that reflects your company. I particularly like the reasoning for removing the screenshots and speaking to people like me was music to my ears #TIM30
Hey #Tim30 , great vid and new fresh home page. Currently I am running a content website that has exploded with traffic during COVID which is great to see. However, I am looking for a way to grow the website so when this all passes, I can ideally be sitting in the same spot. Cheers
Whenever the designer makes an intelligent suggestion, you're saying "our designer just decided this..." It doesn't seem like you're trying to understand why the designer made that suggestion and actively working to support his point of view. If you hadn't guessed, designer here. Would love to chat about communicating more productively with designers. #TIM30
That is a very strange comment to be honest. Even slightly insulting. As a person responsible for the end result I was obviously looking to understand and weigh every suggestion/decision of every person involved in the process. Yes, "our designers decided this.." but it doesn't mean that mindlessly accepted whatever decision was suggested.
@@ahrefspodcast It's your designer who should feel insulted. He's helping you do something that you cannot. It would be better to speak about colleagues as equals - you clearly consider yourself higher than him by saying 'I'm responsible'. That's not true. You both are. It's very irritating for designers when 'talkers' and 'thinkers' claim their work. He actually built the thing, not you. By saying 'he just decided this', it sounds like you disagreed with the decision but conceded anyway just to keep him happy.
Hi Tim, thank you once again for these videos. Like always, it was very comprehensive. I am wondering if your intention to redesign the home page may not be getting more leads primarily (which btw are more or less the same as you mentioned compared to your previous design), then why the $33,115 spend? And that too with 3 copy writing agencies just to show ‘who you are’. I mean, it is a time-consuming process and a lot of money. You have copy writers in house as well. Cheers #TIM30
thanks for the question! The 33k spend and all the work and thought process that went into our homepage was for the sake of LONG TERM BENEFITS. So year, we're not looking to improve signups by using more persuasive copywriting and having more CTA buttons. Our goal is to use homepage to better explain people who we are and what we can help them with. We're hoping to form a better bond with our new and existing customers by doing that. Hope that makes sense
Awesome video. Launching a new b2b saas biz and I’ll be removing the top 3 blogs from our homepage after watching this! Not as confident in our content as AHREFS are just yet 😉 Fingers crossed I can have a quick chat with Tim! #TIM30
Tim, new design looks great and I like how you and your team have organized those testimonials by role/category. Since you mention Junior marketers in above section and to make the page more well-rounded, I would include a few reviews from interns, digital specialists, and/or affiliates just starting out who are finding it useful. #Tim30
Very interesting and I find the approach to the new title refreshing. I'd be interested to know if your approach would be different if your business offered two services streams which are complementary to each other, but the client and messaging is significantly different. You could try and be everything to everyone, but it would end up being a long title and probably have the opposite effect. Yet a short succinct title would ultimately end up focusing on one of the client bases over the other, potentially losing out to the second stream customer base. Example a dance studio that also offers non dance related fitness classes. #TIM30
Tim, I was extremely surprised to learn that you don't measure ahrefs home page conversion rate. Besides that, for the most part I'm a fan of the new design. If I had any critique it'd be the bright blue background. It's not the easiest on the eyes. Otherwise, I've already taken notes for a redesign I'm working on for a client of mine. I like and appreciate the way you think, and agree very much with your philosophies. It's very similar to how I think about design and even SEO. You build a tremendous amount of trust with each customer before they're even a customer. Thanks for the great video. To be honest, it's the first SaaS Marketing Vlog video I've watched. I'll be back for more. #TIM30
Thanks a lot for your comment, Michael! Yeah, we don't want to obsess about the conversion rate of our homepage. I mean we can 10x our conversion rate if we remove our $7 trial and make it free, right? So other then focusing on these "intermediary" metric we just monitor our monthly growth rate and quality of our product.
⌚ Timecodes:
00:00 Introduction
00:52 The headline
02:34 The hero shot
04:23 What is Ahrefs anyway?
05:35 Tools descriptions
07:47 Please, don’t sign up
10:00 Introverts at Ahrefs
11:14 Customer Testimonials
12:12 The footer
I learned so much from watching this video, I think I need to do a homepage redesign too! #tim30
lol.. Glad the episode was useful for you, Matthew! :)
Love the new design, but ... how do I get to see it without logging out, #tim30? While logged in, every attempt at going to the homepage redirects me to the dashboard. Normally very helpful! Now... Ah well guess another browser will do the trick.
Can you try logging in via incognito mode? #tim30
yeah, every browser has "open new tab in incognito mode" button :) "Shift Command N" is the hotkey for Chrome on Mac :)
I'd still say you need an SEO guy to make the proper use of Ahrefs tool. An Ok level SEO guy + Ahrefs tool = Killer Strategy, thats what I mean.
Sharpest sword in the hand of a man who doesnt know how to fight, means a little.
So don't stop hiring SEOs - on behalf of the SEO Community :)
Once again, great video by Tim. Thank you again for your awesome tool and very responsive customer service too!
well.. we definitely not looking to put SEOs out of jobs with our tools and content :) But we want more people to DIY their SEO to a certain level, and only hire professionals when their website gets too large or they run into advanced issues with it.
Hey Tim. Question: which company websites you like the most (let's start with 3)? Doesn't count Ahrefs. Doesn't matter if it's copywriting or a great design. #Tim30
great question :) I like basecamp.com/ and www.hubspot.com/ And I'm sure you can see the influence of both these homepages on ours :)
@@ahrefspodcast I like Basecamp's website design too!
Thanks for the details, Tim! The page feels great to use, can't wait to see the others you're probably planning to redesign soon! :)
I do have a question for #TIM30 though: would you recommend a startup with a similar business model such as Ahrefs focus more on building a rock-solid homepage and rely on that to convert, less than any product-centric landing pages, or the other way around, given identical traffic and composition on all pages? And why?
hey Viorel.. the answer to that question is obviously "it depends." Generally, if you drive any paid traffic to your product - you should be using dedicated landing pages, which you can easily tweak and optimise. And if your homepage mainly gets branded traffic (like ours) I'd rather focus it on educating people about your company/product, rather than trying to convert them. Because they're very likely to convert anyway, given that they come from branded searches.
@@ahrefspodcast Yeah, makes sense, that was our approach so far as well. Thank you!
My list of ideas is blowing up after watching your videos. Keep it up Tim! #tim30
That's awesome, and thanks! :)
I've always been on the fence about putting a bottom-of-the-funnel call to action right on the homepage, like your "Start a 7-Day Trial for $7" button. I feel like most people would need to browse at least a FEW more pages first before they're ready to go do that. And you even talk yourself about discouraging people from signing up until they do a little more self-education first. So why did you want to keep that "Sign up" call to action right in your homepage banner?
Also, we're working on a redesign for our own website at www.clearpivot.com right now. I'd love to discuss it with you and get your feedback! #Tim30
well that's the thing! BEFORE people land on our homepage they have already consumed quite a bit of our content already. I mean that is true for MOST people that land on our homepage, and for those who aren't yet very familiar with Ahrefs - we have that "don't sign up for a trial" thingy, encouraging them to do a bit more research before they sign up
Love Ahrefs, this video shows how you must tread your own path rather than a template when creating any material that reflects your company. I particularly like the reasoning for removing the screenshots and speaking to people like me was music to my ears #TIM30
thanks for your kind words, Michelle :)
Gold! Thank you, Tim. Keep these videos coming :).
PS: how do I join your team 🤭?
we don't have job openings in our marketing team as of today, sorry :)
Hey #Tim30 , great vid and new fresh home page. Currently I am running a content website that has exploded with traffic during COVID which is great to see. However, I am looking for a way to grow the website so when this all passes, I can ideally be sitting in the same spot. Cheers
Congratulations, Lewis! You've won a 30 minute Skype call :) Please email george.dolgikh@ahrefs.com for details
Whenever the designer makes an intelligent suggestion, you're saying "our designer just decided this..." It doesn't seem like you're trying to understand why the designer made that suggestion and actively working to support his point of view. If you hadn't guessed, designer here. Would love to chat about communicating more productively with designers. #TIM30
That is a very strange comment to be honest. Even slightly insulting. As a person responsible for the end result I was obviously looking to understand and weigh every suggestion/decision of every person involved in the process. Yes, "our designers decided this.." but it doesn't mean that mindlessly accepted whatever decision was suggested.
@@ahrefspodcast It's your designer who should feel insulted. He's helping you do something that you cannot. It would be better to speak about colleagues as equals - you clearly consider yourself higher than him by saying 'I'm responsible'. That's not true. You both are. It's very irritating for designers when 'talkers' and 'thinkers' claim their work. He actually built the thing, not you. By saying 'he just decided this', it sounds like you disagreed with the decision but conceded anyway just to keep him happy.
Very interesting since we bootstrap a saas company as well (since 10 years). I'd love to call. If you want to call to germany let me know. #TIM30
Hi Tim, thank you once again for these videos. Like always, it was very comprehensive. I am wondering if your intention to redesign the home page may not be getting more leads primarily (which btw are more or less the same as you mentioned compared to your previous design), then why the $33,115 spend? And that too with 3 copy writing agencies just to show ‘who you are’. I mean, it is a time-consuming process and a lot of money. You have copy writers in house as well. Cheers #TIM30
thanks for the question! The 33k spend and all the work and thought process that went into our homepage was for the sake of LONG TERM BENEFITS. So year, we're not looking to improve signups by using more persuasive copywriting and having more CTA buttons. Our goal is to use homepage to better explain people who we are and what we can help them with. We're hoping to form a better bond with our new and existing customers by doing that. Hope that makes sense
Awesome video. Launching a new b2b saas biz and I’ll be removing the top 3 blogs from our homepage after watching this! Not as confident in our content as AHREFS are just yet 😉 Fingers crossed I can have a quick chat with Tim! #TIM30
you might want to keep links to your blog articles on your homepage because it tells Google that they are important and helps them rank better ;)
Tim, new design looks great and I like how you and your team have organized those testimonials by role/category. Since you mention Junior marketers in above section and to make the page more well-rounded, I would include a few reviews from interns, digital specialists, and/or affiliates just starting out who are finding it useful. #Tim30
thanks, Mike. Yeah, we could have introduced more categories.. but that could have diluted people's attention. :)
Very interesting and I find the approach to the new title refreshing. I'd be interested to know if your approach would be different if your business offered two services streams which are complementary to each other, but the client and messaging is significantly different. You could try and be everything to everyone, but it would end up being a long title and probably have the opposite effect. Yet a short succinct title would ultimately end up focusing on one of the client bases over the other, potentially losing out to the second stream customer base. Example a dance studio that also offers non dance related fitness classes. #TIM30
good question.. I'm not sure how our homepage would have looked like if we were to offer two separate services. Sorry for not having an answer for you
AHREFS is really a great piece of software engineering. And I really love this new design. This design is really beautifully crafted. Amazing Craft!
thanks, mate! :)
Tim, I was extremely surprised to learn that you don't measure ahrefs home page conversion rate. Besides that, for the most part I'm a fan of the new design. If I had any critique it'd be the bright blue background. It's not the easiest on the eyes. Otherwise, I've already taken notes for a redesign I'm working on for a client of mine. I like and appreciate the way you think, and agree very much with your philosophies. It's very similar to how I think about design and even SEO. You build a tremendous amount of trust with each customer before they're even a customer.
Thanks for the great video. To be honest, it's the first SaaS Marketing Vlog video I've watched. I'll be back for more.
#TIM30
Thanks a lot for your comment, Michael! Yeah, we don't want to obsess about the conversion rate of our homepage. I mean we can 10x our conversion rate if we remove our $7 trial and make it free, right? So other then focusing on these "intermediary" metric we just monitor our monthly growth rate and quality of our product.
I like and respect that. I'm sure I speak on behalf of many of your customers when I say that it makes me feel good about supporting ahrefs.
Sorry ahrefs, as long as you don't have an app, i can not take you serious.
ok :)