But before I get into reason why it's so different, it's important to understand a little about company's culture.

Gardner+Lang's (G+L) Managing Director, Chris Lang is a big believer in "give and you shall receive" mentality. In fact, that's one of reasons his business is so unique. He isn't in business of selling real estate or managing commercial property. Instead, he takes focus of working with affluent investors to help them increase their property wealth.

The Gardner+Lang positioning statement sums it up perfectly. It says, ""Helping High Net Worth Clients Acquire, Manage and Market their Investment Properties ... For Maximum Return"

CHALLENGE

Chris' previous website was created a number of years ago and was looking a little dated. What's more, it really didn't capture uniqueness of his company's services. Not only that, Chris sends out an excellent e-Bulletin each month, but problem he was having was that he wasn't achieving many subscriptions online.

Chris approached us to re-engineer his content, revamp his copy and re-design HTML portion of his website so it achieved three outcomes:

1. is rich in content so it built a relationship with prospective clients: 2. it generates a larger amount of traffic by way of search engines; 3. and also maximises number of email leads they generated.

RESULTS

1. Ease of Use

The previous website already had some really good content, however some of it was buried within website so it was difficult to access. The new website includes additional articles, and with existing content, we ensured that a number of sub-pages were visible from home page so people can easily find all information that interests them.

2. Maximising initial interest

Previously, headline for website was simply their company "tag line" or positioning statement which said "Helping High Net Worth Clients Acquire, Manage and Market their Investment Properties ... For Maximum Return". Whilst this headline promoted some very strong benefits, we decided to use a headline that was shorter, sharper and drilled deeper to hit core hot button of investors.

The following headline was decided upon "Interested in quadrupling your property wealth in as little as 5 years?"

As you can see, this headline is shorter and more benefit oriented plus it offers a specific outcome, but main element is that it's use as a question adds a curiosity element and makes people want to

3. Maximising length of stay on site

To increase length of time people spend on website we featured a number of key articles from previous editions of G+L e-Bulletins. These articles are featured as teasers featuring two or three paragraphs of each article, then to read more, people need to subscribe to their e-Bulletin. Once they have subscribed they can then access full article.

The purpose of teaser format was to capture as many email addresses as possible.

4. Enquiry generating mechanisms

As I deleted guestbook entry I thought of gall of person who left it (besides cowardice of leaving a message with no return email address). This is my creation, my web site - who has right to tell me what colors or navigation scheme or for that matter, anything else (unsolicited).

I believe that many web sites (especially professional ones) have become exceptionally boring and uninteresting. They are cookie-cut from a common mold based upon "user testing". Perhaps you've seen these tests, perhaps not.

What they say is a person's eye wanders from upper left down to center of screen. So most important thing needs to be in upper left, and navigation should be down left. Colors need to be bland and uninteresting - black on white is best. And blah blah blah. Ho hum, it all looks same.

People are not created same. Every single one of us is an individual, with our own unique desires, needs, likes, dislikes, viewpoints, or whatever else you want to call it. Why should our web sites all be same?

Perhaps it makes sense in world of business for all web sites to look like Amazon or Yahoo, but if you widen your horizons does it really make sense anywhere else? Is your home page describing your personal life and your cat any better if it looks like someone else's site? Did that make it better somehow?

Are web sites really better if they include same collection of links? The same news headlines and same guestbook styles? The same bland colors, navigation bars in same place and a few select fonts? Is this good? Is this what we really want from web?

Even with your standard small business sites, do you really think that someone wants to surf to your site to find that it looks just like all other sites? Does this make them care about your product any more?

So what should you do when you create a web site? If you want to win most of awards offered by such places as "awardsites.com", then you probably want to create a bland site with perfect HTML, excellent navigation, pages that all match wonderfully and consistently from page to page. You want to spend your time making sure your site matches common idea of "good", and if you can do that you can win awards. Your site will look like any other site (bland and uninteresting), but you will win awards.

On other hand, if you are an individual with your own brain, your own artistic sense and your own strength of character and will, then perhaps you want to create something that YOU like, something that your visitors may also enjoy. Anyone can create a site that wins awards (it's actually very easy, just follow instructions in your coloring book and remember to draw perfectly within lines) - only a true artist or simply an individual can create a site which tells a story using their own interesting and unique style.