According to a statement released by Boost Mobile, McNeil was practicing on The Midway at the Texas Motor Speedway when he crashed. He was taken by CareFlight to a local hospital, where he was pronounced dead.

Lucas Mirtl, McNeil’s longtime friend and agent at LM Action Sports Management, confirmed McNeil’s death on Sunday and said he’s waiting for more details about the accident. “I’m heartbroken, I don’t know what else to say,” Mirtl said. “Give me a call in a few days when I have more information and have had a chance to process everything.”

McNeil, known to his friends and fans as “Jumpin’ Jimmy” and “McNeil The Real Deal,” had been competing in motocross events since 1987 and made his X Games debut in 2005. He lived in Phoenix, Ariz. and was a constant presence on the FMX competition circuit, including the Red Bull X-Fighters, Dew Tour, and International Freestyle Motocross Association events. He was even better known amongst FMX fans for his performances on the Nuclear Cowboyz tour and standout parts in videos like Powerband Films’ On The Pipe 5.

“Jim was truly the nicest rider I have ever filmed and didn’t have a bad bone in his body,” says Jay Schweitzer, director of the On The Pipe films. “Jim truly put the ‘real’ in McNeil The Real Deal.”

A post on the FreestyleMX.com Facebook page Sunday read: “Today we mourn the loss of Jim McNeil and remember the happiness he brought us all. You will never be forgotten because you were AND still are the Real Deal. We love you buddy.”

By Colin Bane
ESPN.com

Catherine & Glen from Flavio Scorsato on Vimeo.

Well we just finished wrapping this bad boy and we are more than happy with the end result! We incorporated a Carbon Fiber inlay into the hood which was an after thought that was probably the coolest addition to this outlandish vehicle. . . Here’s some more pics!

Interesting music video for the new song “Barbara Streisand” by Duck Sauce. (Duck Sauce is a group made of up of two amazing DJs – A-Trak and Armand Van Helden.) We here at BCG love all music types and love to share. . .

Generally, the eye-catching ads are mostly the ones with witty taglines that are easy and fun to remember. As much as the colors of the images and fonts being used are important to make it easy on the eyes, the idea actually has to be unique and simple enough to be separated from other commercials.

Photo credit: Randy Harris

The same principle applies to any website. Though a user won’t necessarily be passing by your site at 65 mph, there is a certain bounce rate — visitors who leave your site shortly after entering it. For many websites, these rates are much too high. This poses a very similar challenge to those who design billboards. You have a very short amount of time to capture your audience’s attention and to keep it for long. With that in mind, here are some principles for developing billboard-style Web designs.

Creative and Unique

An important piece to the billboard website puzzle is creative and unique design. This can be intertwined within the other principles, and when done effectively, can be the sole reason for viewers to dig deeper into your site.

Hey Indy
Creative and fun, heyindy.com breaks the mold of an ordinary, plain and boring website. Complete with customized illustrations, drawings and playful typography, each page engages users, making them feel comfortable on the site. Notice how well the illustration on the top fits with the tagline of the site. Hey Indy creates websites, illustrations and animations and uses the “mixtape” metaphor to attract client’s attention. The site is not obtrusive, but inviting instead. A very personal, attractive design.

Dropr
This online service uses a nice typographic poster with playful typography on the front page to explain what it does. The design is attractive and inviting, although a plain simple text message could have worked just as well to deliver the message to the visitors. The interesting part are the animated clouds on the left side with colorful water drops. Very nice use of metaphor contained in the title of the service. An original and unique design.

TVLCORPs
Interested yet? Though the tagline shown on the web design below does not really say what this company does, the layout is creative and compelling; the strong, vivid contrast is more than enough to turn some heads. Notice how “UX/UI” stands out on the site, focusing the visitor’s attention on the ‘services’ section of the page.

{ ro:newmedia }
Sometimes it’s a good idea to risk an unusual design approach — be it exaggerated typography, striking color combinations or unusual design layouts. The latter is the case in point for ro:newmedia’s website. The layout is very unusual and original, and therefore memorable. Colorful large spinning circles look like an overlay of the site layout and appear vividly against the dark background. A downside: the font size of the text on the page could be a bit larger.

Pixelmator
Much different than the standard, pasted screenshot, Pixelmator works the sleek, elegant interface of their application directly into the design of their page.

Relogik
What makes this particular site effective is its ability to draw the eye to the name of the product or service they are showcasing. In this case, it works well to give the company name an afterthought as well as making the product more prominent.

Made My Day
One more test to run is to assume how much impact a particular site has on a reader, if they were to take a quick glance and look away. Ask yourself: If you were to carry out your day from that point, what were you to still remember about that particular site? The large orange circle elegantly integrated into this composition does an excellent job of leaving a style for returning visitors to remember.

Compelling Headlines

A good design only goes as far as the content it contains. For this reason, it’s vital to go beyond average with your copy text. If you’ve seen a billboard advertisement or two, you may remember the tag lines featured on them. Short and to the point, they’re meant to get you to remember a certain brand.

Many large corporations don’t even use ad copy, but rely solely on their logo and identity to remain effective. One has even gone as far as making their billboard a working sundial in this respect. Though we should all aspire to having a brand of our own this influential, it’s recommended that you stick to clear and powerful copy text along with your design to help capture your readers. Here are some examples of compelling headlines:

Ryan & Sofia
Ryan and Sofia combine hand-drawn design elements with a compelling headline, all supported by a very informal, emotional language and choice of layout. The message is strong and clear, and therefore very appealing.

Comwerks Interactive
This design agency uses a clear and simple language to communicate the purpose of the website. Cute illustrations make a website look less formal and much more engaging. The purpose is clear and the client list immediately proves that the design agency indeed builds cool stuff. A downside: the text on the images in the slideshow would benefit from not being embedded in the images.

Camera+
Clear, contrasting colors only add to the effectiveness of the headline given on this website. In a clear and elegant manner, a reader is quickly able to glance at this website and know its purpose.

Just Dot
Sticking to the billboard clarity, Just Dot provides a clever design and tagline to attract readers. Along with a creative chalkboard theme, this site features neat and clean navigation to help guide readers through the site.

Jeroen Homan
In clear and impacting typography, this site screams out its purpose distinctly. In today’s fast-lane crowd of web-surfers, such clear and impacting titles are a must-have for a captivating and inviting website. This of course, is the case as long as the amount of content allows for this.

DBA Products
An important part of capturing your reader’s attention is in engaging in a conversation. When one reads, “Think before you write” a first reaction is to wonder about what is actually meant by that phrase. Firstly, attention is captured. Secondly, a reader eye is lead to the bottom left corner where they can view a video to learn more.

Clever and Poignant

Not every billboard is meant to be humorous, however, almost all strive in some way to get a point across in a not-so-ordinary fashion. Consider the last few advertisements you’ve seen. If they were selling toothpaste, did the ad simply state “Buy this Toothpaste” or was there something creative and direct to get you to remember that particular brand?

In Web design, the same principle can be applied. With the hundreds, if not thousands, of websites we’re exposed to overall, trends can be seen which are all too often followed. But because the Web is ever changing, simply following trends can lead to a site becoming outdated the moment it’s published.

How can this be avoided? Once again, we can look back at billboard advertisements. What makes many of them effective is their ability to deliver something creative, or other than what the average person was expecting to see.

Tea Round
Complete with high-quality images, Tea Round’s website captures attention, while incorporating a creative tagline.

Spring: Supporting Biodiversity
This particular tagline is effective because it engages you with a question. Notice how the question is not “Do you support biodiversity?” but rather “What will you do to support biodiversity?” which places the reader in a position to feel as though they need to take action!

Tapbots
Another element to creating memorable billboard-style web designs, is the product or service itself. Short and snappy names are just as, if not more important, than the tagline. “Calcbot” is much easier to say and much more memorable than something like “Calculator Application for iPhone.”

Pointy
Featuring a vibrant color scheme and typestyle, Pointy successfully merges creative typography with a compelling and challenging headline. Along with the headline is a clear next action for the reader to take: “Let’s talk”.

Powerfully Branded

Though it’s already been touched a bit thus far, branding is another important piece to powerful Web design which deserves further attention. As with the toothpaste example, a billboard’s purpose may in the end be to generate sales, but just as important is the building of the brand the company is advertising. After all, you can get dozens of different brands of toothpaste, just as there are a multitude of of websites out there, so how is one among the crowd to be remembered? Building a brand through a Web design is the very mark or entity visitors remember you by.

Nike®
Showing the importance of subtle repetition, Nike® combines a creative display of their shoes, while giving viewers multiple views of their logo.

McCafé®
With every cup featuring the McDonald’s® and McCafé® logo, a viewer can be grabbed by the quality of the product, while remembering the brand correlating to it.

Coca-Cola®
The Coca-Cola&reg website is a billboard in action. Complete with the clean logo and bottle, with the clear and simple tagline, the brand is very easy to remember.

What Does a Brand Have to do with a Website Anyway?

Even if the website you’re developing doesn’t have the sole purpose of making money, a brand is still very important. Brands are essential for goading visitors to come back time and time again. Consider some of the recent advertisements you’ve seen. If there is a company you know and love, would you say you’re much more apt to spend time looking at that advertisement, as oppose to the dozens of others you’ve never seen before, or the ones that don’t interest you? The same applies for websites.

Eye-catching, yet tactful

There are countless sites on the web that will undoubtedly catch your attention, but only for the worse. Poor, outdated design, or a heap of flashing animated gifs will only increase your bounce-rate. Appealing sites achieve a balance between capturing reader’s attention and providing an adequate amount of useful information. Something to keep in mind: the design is a key piece of your website, but if it distracts away from the aimed content, it no longer serves its purpose!

Megumi
With jaw-dropping elegance and simplicity, this web design effectively brands their name, gives a brief tour, all while keeping the design clean and clear.

MailChimp
MailChimp’s website design is bold and clean, and it sticks to a consistent color scheme. Bright, complimenting colors are used while making the main content readable.

Row to the Pole
Still retaining a subdued and clean typestyle and color scheme, this site is still able to feature a commanding headline. Communication, clarity, and balanced design are all utilized exceptionally on this layout.

Clean, Simple and Straight to the point

Of course, one of the options is also as simple as simplicity. Not to say we cannot be creative in our delivery, but a saturation of text and images, especially on a home page, can motivate our viewers to click that back button! Here we’ll take a look at some good billboard-style websites that have captured the essence of simplicity to attract readers:

Less
Less has a clean and well-designed interface. Complete with a clever tagline, this application shows you a screenshot of exactly what they’re offering to you. It doesn’t get much clearer than this.

Courier Mac App
Complete with a well crafted icon, Courier clearly depicts their application with cool, soft colors, yet elegantly displaying the showcased application. The catchy subtitle also assists with remembering the name. Something to take note of as well is the fact that the “download” and “purchase” buttons are clearly displayed at the top of the page.

We Are Omazing
With a simplistic approach, this site integrates the imagery and style into the tagline. Branding is in effect as a memorable name is complimented with readable design.

Clarity and Contrast

Pivotal to any design, good contrast is a must. While subtle typefaces and graphics have their place in design, strong contrast is important to quickly direct a reader’s attention or get them to remember something particular. If viewers have to hunt around for what you do or what you offer – more than likely they will not stick around for long. Make it easy for your readers to know what you’re about from the very beginning.

Charles Elena
Don’t be afraid to go big with your text. This site sports an effectively large Sans-Serif font to grab the attention of its readers and to get them to remember what they do. The design isn’t necessarily strong and vivid, but the message is communicated very clearly.

Live Books
There are many different features listed on Live Book’s website, but one thing that’s executed exceptionally well is its clarity. There’s no mystery here, you know exactly what they offer.

Conclusion

In an age where advertisements saturate our market, it becomes all the more visible of the need for creative and effective design. As we’ve explored here, good design goes beyond making things look nice, or following trends, but rather effectively capturing the audience of those whom we wish to view the site. In the end, what action viewers do, or do not take, can come down to the finest details of the decisions made by the Web developer.

The new headquarters of the Lance Armstrong Foundation is a project to fill your eyes. A restoration made in a former warehouse in Texas, bringing new life to the building and the neighborhood of Austin.

Are already memorable all actions and movements made by the foundation, and it was only fair that people who work there helping others have a cute and cozy space. The industrial aspect mixed with wood everywhere created a modern and clean enviroment, and how the areas were distributed shows a certain informality and freedom, perhaps a characteristic of the foundation.

The renovated facility, project by Lake Flato Architects, provides office space, meeting rooms, dining facilities, an in-house gymnasium, open-air courtyard, and parking for the staff of 62. Future plans may call for adding a community-based cancer-support program to provide direct services to uninsured and underinsured East Austin residents. Achieved LEED Gold certification.

Photography by Hester + Hardaway

Photography by Hester + Hardaway

Photography by Hester + Hardaway

Photography by Hester + Hardaway

Photography by Hester + Hardaway

Photography by Hester + Hardaway

After 10 years of leasing space in a corporate office building, the Lance Armstrong Foundation found its permanent home in the 1950s Gulf Coast Paper Co. warehouse in East Austin, an underserved community in the process of revitalization. The design breathes new life and energy into both the building and neighborhood.

Photography by Hester + Hardaway

Photography by Hester + Hardaway

Photography by Hester + Hardaway

Photography by Hester + Hardaway

Photography by Hester + Hardaway

Photography by Hester + Hardaway

Photography by Hester + Hardaway

Gymkhana events are time and/or speed events in an automobile. These can feature obstacles such as cones, tires, and barrels. The driver must maneuver through a predetermined “track” performing many different driving techniques. What separates gymkhana from traditional autocross events is that the gymkhana requires drivers to perform reversals, 180 degree spins, 360 degree spins, parking boxes, figure 8s and other advanced skills. Drifting is also encouraged where helpful or necessary. Essentially, a gymkhana is any event featuring a starting point, a finish line and some sort of “obstacle” to get through, around, or by, all within a time limit.

The crew at DC Shoes (Ken Block) and many others have created what some believe to be some of the best driving on the planet as well as some of the coolest marketing known to date. We here at BCG love everything that has to do with motorsports and had to share this killer footage. . .

Essentially, your copy must achieve two goals:

1. Establish trust and
2. Convince visitors that your product is right for them.

Potential customers cannot see or touch the product since it’s not physically there in front of them. This is why it’s important that your copy anticipates the needs of your visitors while convincing them that your company can be trusted to provide excellent products. Persuasion and creating trust are difficult things to do with words alone; yet, they are still achievable.

You must establish the right tone, a mix between informative and engaging, while showcasing your product’s usability, practicality and benefits. If the copy on your website makes sense, it follows that your products and services will meet your customers’ needs. In this article, we’ll discuss some techniques that will hopefully help you learn how to sell more products and create distinctive, appealing copy.

Formatting

E-commerce websites should usually opt for a combination of bullets and paragraph form. When 79% scan the page² versus read word-for-word, bullets effectively communicate key product details and benefits. Paragraphs add color and texture to your products, eliciting a deeper emotional response.

³

Running Warehouse³ uses both bullet points and a short paragraph to describe the product. Notice that a paragraph format is used for a general description, which in this case required more than a few words for its explanation. Quick facts about the product are listed in bullets, allowing the customer to gather information quicker than in paragraph form.

Basics of Good E-Commerce Copywriting

To keep your writing as simple and readable as possible, think about these rules while you write and proofread your copy.

Avoid long sentences

Long sentences are usually difficult to digest and therefore inappropriate for persuading your audience. To shorten sentences, avoid pointless modifiers and break up independent clauses into two separate sentences. Avoid wordy phrases such as “for the purpose of” when “for” will do, and refrain from peppering your copy with too many adjectives and adverbs.

Avoid jargon and clichés

Achieve clarity. Clichés are cheesy, unoriginal and usually only distract your readers. Using jargon that visitors may not know will result in confusion. If someone doesn’t understand something about your product, he or she certainly won’t take the risk to buy it. Remember the only goal of your website is to convince visitors to buy your product, so leave out extraneous, flowery language that won’t help customers decide.

Speak simply

Your writing should be easily understood. There’s no reason to use complex words in product descriptions. You are going for simplicity, not trying to impress your readers with your vocabulary. Using large words will either sound like you’re trying too hard or lead to confusion.

Active voice

Write in active voice. This means you should lead with the noun that is doing the action. Active voice is clearer and makes it easier to persuade your visitors to buy your products.

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Apple⁴ provides a good example of clear and crisp copy. On their MacBook Pro product page, they make sure technical product features are easily understood. Their processors “boost performance up to 50%” and the aluminum enclosure is “thin, light and durable.”

Avoid Common Mistakes

Many mistakes are easy to make but simple to avoid. Make sure your website always achieves its potential by avoiding these common mistakes.

Nothing to say

The most common mistake is to have no copy on product pages. Without copy, you lose a vital mode of expressing your product and building trust. The lift in conversion rates and search traffic are always palpable.

Inconsistent tone

It’s common for one person to write homepage copy and another person to write product descriptions, for example. With different writers and no defined tone of voice, this tends to lead to inconsistency. Your homepage, FAQs and “About”-page should all be written with the same tone. This is also imperative in the checkout pages and in error messages deployed on your site.

Exaggeration

Don’t exaggerate in order to make the product more desirable; this will cost your website authenticity and trust. Always use logically coherent arguments when explaining the benefits and applications of your product. It’s OK to exaggerate the emotional response to a product, but not the product itself. Even if you increase sales through misrepresentation, chargebacks, returns and negative reviews will eradicate any gains.

Ignore convention

With wording on buttons and links, it can be tempting to get creative but this is unlikely to be a good idea. Consumers have inbuilt notions of how to shop from their collective experience across thousands of websites. Stick with “contact us”, “add to basket” and factual, descriptive anchor text to link to product pages. From the experiments I’ve seen, the result is either indistinguishable or negative when creative wording is employed.

Forget to localize

Everyone has heard an example of translation gone wrong. Pepsi’s slogan “come alive with the Pepsi generation” became “Pepsi brings back your ancestors from the grave” to a Chinese audience. Without cultural sensitivity, copy fails.

American and British consumers have different expectations yet are often presented with the same copy. British people view American advertising as too aggressive, or at least that’s the conventional wisdom. So, some retailers believe American copy should be decaffeinated for a British audience. If you are unable to write different copy for different cultures speaking the same language, write copy that is compatible for everyone. Many retailers fail to even consider localization when writing their copy.

Establish Trust

One of the most important things your website needs to do is establish trust. Customers are wary to spend money and risk not receiving what they expect in return.

Flawless copy

The first way to establish trust is the most obvious; that is, to have flawless copy. Grammar and spelling mistakes make you look careless and incompetent. If you can’t put the time into flawless copy, visitors won’t invest time and money into your products.

State the obvious

Be clear when explaining payment, shipping and return processes — do not be afraid to state the obvious. If a customer is uncertain about any of these details they won’t buy your product. It’s that simple. Customers do not want to waste time on wondering whether payment and shipping will be carried out in accordance to their expectations. Keep things straight and clear: actual shipping costs and payment conditions shouldn’t be displayed in tiny font sizes nor be clarified using extra asterisks or footnotes.

A Forrester study showed that 20% of people have abandoned a purchase because shipping costs were unclear, so make sure your terms are easily understandable even when they aren’t a selling point. Free shipping has such profoundly positive results that it’s almost always worth apportioning the costs elsewhere and having minimum order requirements where necessary. For a more detailed look, read the article How the Offer of ‘Free Shipping’ Affects On-line Shopping⁵.

⁶

For one company that wants their policies easily understood, check out Zappos⁶. The shoe retailer won’t let you get far without discovering their return and shipping policies. For Zappos, this approach serves two purposes:

1. Ensuring visitors understand their policies, creating trust and confidence and
2. Communicating unique selling points of shopping with Zappos, including their 24/7 customer service and free 365 day return policy.

Make sure any error messages are clear and to the point. Simply explain what the problem is and what they need to do to fix it.

Above and Beyond the Basics

Your copy needs to strike the right balance in tone between informative and engaging. To do this, good sales copy will explain details about the product and will explain why each detail matters to the customer.

⁷

For example, the product description⁷ for this Under Armour HeatGear work-out shirt describes in bullet points what each characteristic of the shirt means to someone who is using it. Under Armour doesn’t just say the product has a “new ergonomic fit” because what does that mean? Instead it says, “new ergonomic fit adds to an overall comfort by reducing abrasion in high impact areas.” Ergonomic fit probably won’t convince someone to buy this shirt, but overall comfort and reducing abrasion will.

It’s important to keep product descriptions straightforward and primarily informative. This doesn’t mean your copy should be boring; it should be positive and inspiring, which will draw readers in. But be careful about how enthusiastic your copy sounds. You want to pique visitors’ interest, but you don’t want to overwhelm them. Make sure informative facts about your products and company are sprinkled throughout.

⁸

Dyson, which makes vacuums, achieves this well on their homepage, which briefly describes a few of their products and what makes them special in comparison to other vacuums. You can see how they weave the informative in with the creative⁸: “Other machines are still designed to need replacement bags, belts and filters. Over five years, the maintenance costs are up to $267. With Dyson vacuums there are no bags, belts or filters to buy. So they don’t cost a dime to maintain.” Combining informative and engaging copy will keep visitors on your site and convince them to buy your product. Also, notice the vivid and strong product images on the page. They strongly support the copy, providing a very detailed, useful and attractive impression to the customers.

⁹
Source: OfficeMax Customer Reviews at Bizrate⁹

During the research phase, copywriters should read reviews written by your customers and your competitors’ customers. This can be a great way to travel into the mind of your target audience.

Copywriters should work with marketers, developers and designers to increase conversion rates by performing split and multivariate testing. It’s possible to do this for free using Google Website Optimizer¹⁰. On a large website, this may seem like an untenable task but there are ways to do this efficiently:

• Start with the highest selling products moving in descending order.
• Test the pages all visitors experience — checkout, FAQ, delivery.
• Template copy — perform tests on the copy appearing on all product pages.

SEO: Outranking the Competition

To achieve the most from your e-commerce copy, SEO should be intertwined into the structure of your website with each page having target keywords.

Homepage: Widget Shop and Widgets
Category pages: Wooden Widgets and Metal Widgets
Brand pages: Peter’s Widgets and Sally’s Widgets
Product pages: Peter’s Blue XX1 Widget and Sally’s Red YY2 Widget

Do not use manufacturer’s copy. Individual category, brand and product pages should have unique text. Work with your copywriter to craft a message around each page.

If you have affiliates, provide them with alternative copy or change your own. Through giving them alternative copy, both you and your affiliates can rank for different keyword combinations.

Keyword research and SEO copywriting is a sophisticated process and it can be difficult to find copywriters able to do the task. Look for someone who understands the interrelationship between a keyword’s competitiveness, revenue potential and its relevancy to your website. A skilled SEO copywriter will know how to incorporate primary and ancillary keywords into your copy without destroying your message or credibility. It’s common to have a copywriter work from an SEO’s keyword research rather than have them perform keyword research themselves.

Summary

Most e-commerce websites have no copy on product pages. Alternatively, they have manufacturers’ copy that doesn’t match their tone of voice and that Google considers duplicate content. That’s why the right e-commerce copywriting strategy makes a big difference — it’s possible to increase search traffic by over 50% and conversion rates by over 30% on most websites.

Create a unique tone of voice that matches your brand and that’s persuasive to your audience. Whatever your tone, though, simplicity and readability are vital. It’s important to build trust. You should be informative and creative, explaining to your audience what makes you and your products special. From testing conversion rates to incorporating SEO, there’s also a scientific element to e-commerce copywriting. But, ultimately, the best copy comes from the most persuasive ideas.

Dare to be different, skate GFH!