We’re going to start doing a new series on our blog where we examine a website and explore what you & I can learn from it and what you should avoid doing. The first website we’ll examine is GaryVaynerchuk.com, who has an interesting new book out called Crush It!
Gary is a master as branding & communicating and his personal website is a great example of a blog well done. Let’s start from the top:
1. Gary’s last name isn’t easy to pronounce so he has it broken into little chucks to make it easier to say & remember.
2. The navigation system of this website is focused on the most important actions. There are probably 3 types of people that come to Gary’s website. First, people already know who Gary is, love him and want to keep up with what Gary is up to or what he’s thinking. The home page is for them. The second type are people who know who Gary is and wants to work with him. Work with Gary is the page for these people. The third is people who don’t know who Gary is. The About Gary page is made for them. The Keynotes section is really for everyone. It’s really the “Featured Content” of his website… but it also demonstrates to corporate prospects who are might have just stumbled upon Gary’s website through a referral or a link that he can deliver a killer keynote. I like this simplicity.
3, 4, 5, 6, 7 & 8. If you’re a Gary fan, the right side of the page really gives you a number of different ways to connect with Gary.
9. The left side is about sharing what he likes. This is here for a few possible reasons:
i) Gary is generous and wants to share some link love & traffic love with people creating content he likes
ii) It’s an easy way to keep his website fresh without actually doing a ton of work
iii) Gary likes to share.
Most likely the answer is all of the above.
10. Now one thing that I found different about Gary’s blog was that he doesn’t have headlines. This was likely a conscious decision. I’m curious why he did this. The really big benefit to having a headline for a post is that search engines can read it as a relevant link and it helps.
11. A second thing I found that might be improved is that there is no “reviews” link in the section about his book. It might be because he doesn’t expect anyone who hasn’t also bought off on the personality of Gary to buy the book. Regardless, I would add it and test the numbers to see if it made any difference in sales.
12. When reading his blog, one common tool you’ll notice that gary loves is Video. Almost every post Gary puts out has a video. I think it’s great.
