Before you jump into a website redesign project, start with a little inspiration.

Here at HubSpot, we’ve created several resources that can assist you during the website design or redesign process (like this Excel workbook, and this SEO guide). But we also recognize that even if you’re seriously considering a website redesign, you might not be ready to get into the nitty gritty of the process right away.

Maybe you’ve identified some issues with your site’s current design, but are still contemplating how you should correct those issues.

Or maybe your intern has finally convinced you that your company’s 2005-era website looks a bit outdated, but now you’re at a loss as to what direction you should take the site stylistically.

Or, you know, maybe you’re not considering a website redesign, but want to kill some time looking at a bunch of beautiful homepages. That’s okay too!

Whatever the case, this is the resource for you: How to Design a Website: 5 Brilliant Homepage Designs to Get You Started. In this free lookbook, you can explore homepage designs from businesses all over the world in several different industries, including: 

• Agency & Studio
• Entertainment
• Food & Drink
• Nonprofit
• Software & Tech
• Ecommerce & Retail

Here are a few examples:

So go on, download this free ebook and get inspired.

Of course, we couldn’t collect every brilliant homepage design out there, so if you have other examples you’d like to share, let us know in the comments section below! 

Editor’s Note: This post was originally published in March 2015 and has been updated for freshness and comprehensiveness.

Feature image credit: Fieldwork

“Imagine a world where everything moves at super-fast speed. Where answers come in seconds, rather than in minutes, where solving several problems at the same time isn’t fantasy, but a daily reality.

Imagine being able to use your brain to do more in an hour than most people do in a day, every single day.”

That’s how Peter Shankman — entrepreneur, author, and founder of HARO — describes the world of ADD and ADHD on his Faster Than Normal website, podcast, and blog.

I think that the way Peter describes ADD as “fast brain” is perfectly suited to the world of marketing, i.e. having multiple clients; multiple marketing platforms; an array of immediate challenges and decisions; a mass of data and a cohort comprised of other fast thinkers. I thought those in creative professions might appreciate hearing Shankman’s take on ADHD and our digital universe.

I bet there is a very good chance that you, as an online marketer, recognize yourself as a “fast brain.” 

Peter Shankman Discusses ADHD & Marketing

What is ADD/ADHD and how did you decide to dig deep into this subject?

Shankman: I was gifted with ADHD as a condition since birth but I never looked at it as condition … I looked at it as a condition as a kid when I didn’t know what it was. When I was growing up, it was called, “Sit down…you’re disrupting the class” disease.

It wasn’t until my late 20’s that I realized that this faster brain of mine actually had the ability to be used for good. I decided to start my first company at 26 because I was bored working for other people.

I never thought of the downside. I just thought, “Let’s see what happens. If doesn’t work, I’ll do something else.” That mentality of, “Hey, let’s try it.” has been really a cornerstone of the majority of my success of late and all my life really. What I found is that other people with ADHD tend to have that same quality.

About two years ago, I did a webinar talking about my ADHD superpower to help some friends who were in a similar situation. I gave it for free and I thought like 100 people maybe would show up and I had over 8,000 people on the webinar. I realized, “Hey, I’m not alone here. There’s something here.”

So how should a marketer with ADHD use its power in their work?

Shankman: The beauty of creativity is that creativity and ADHD are incredibly tightly related. The best creativity, the best campaigns, the best anything come from people who are able to channel their excess energy into their brains the right away.

I guarantee that agency people who come up with the big ideas probably have ADHD.

However, for advertising work, it’s perfect as long as the agency has the right combination of ADHD and non-ADHD people. If you have all ADHD people, yes you’ll have the greatest ideas in the world, but you’ll never be able to implement. If you have a combination of ADHD or faster brains and non-faster brains you know, the faster brains coming up with the great ideas and the non-faster brains (deeper thinkers) being able to implement. That’s a recipe for complete success.

You’ve said that 40% of the population might have some level of ADHD. How should a marketer approach this market, especially since they now have so many digital devices that add to their world of distraction?

Shankman: The key that the marketer needs to understand is that you have to understand your audience. If you reach out to an ADHD audience in the exact way that they’d like to be reached out to, it’s like their ADHD disappears. For instance, if you’re sending me a 14-paragraph email to try to introduce yourself, I’m not going to read it. If you could send me two lines and it tells me what I need to know, chances are I’m going to want more information. As soon as I want more information, that changes the entire discussion because then I’m actively listening.

It’s never been truer than with this sort of 2.7-second attention deficit squirrel mentality that we’re all in, a marketer needs to understand how her audience and their brain works.

The world of inbound marketing is deep into analytics. How should an inbound marketer use analytics to help them reach the ADHD market?

Shankman: Men lie. Women lie. Children lie. Pets and data are the two things that don’t lie. Listening to your audience and learning from them 24/7 is key. If I could A/B test how I walk to the bus stop, I would. As those of us with ADHD are listening, chances are, we’re already three steps ahead of where we were when you first found us. It’s up to you, the advertiser, to keep up. It’s up to you to know where we’re going, what we want, and what we’ll need when we get there. Do that, and you’ll capture more attention than you’ll know what to do with.

Adapting Marketing Strategies for Distraction

I am sure that many of you digital marketers were perpetually distracted students like me. I was the type of student that was bored and whose grades never matched his potential. After all, I really didn’t want to have to take biology to fulfill my college science prerequisites.

Fortunately, I managed to find my way to art college and eventually to a long career in advertising and digital marketing — the perfect industry for fast brains.

Shankman thinks that 40% of the population has some degree of ADHD. If this is so (and I agree), then we should consider how to bake this important consumer insight into our marketing strategies.

Of course, this isn’t groundbreaking news. We are well aware of the effect of device distraction and content marketing overload. However, I seldom see marketing communications professionals sit their clients down and tell them that they really only have nano-seconds to deliver a sales proposition. I am talking about the critical importance of having an ‘unignorable’ sales proposition — not just an ad tech solution.

You’ve spent months perfecting the script, storyboarding, finding the right talent, shooting, and editing. The end result? A blockbuster brand or product video.

With all that time invested, you can’t stop at just embedding the video on a homepage or sharing it on social media and hoping someone watches.

While great content is bound to be found, it’s also important to be proactive about gaining the attention of and educating prospects and those unfamiliar with your brand. Running a series of YouTube ads is one way to make sure more of your target audience finds the video content you’ve produced. And with new formats and tracking capabilities, you can also use this information to report on its ROI.

The thing is, advertising on YouTube is very different from running a PPC or paid social campaign. There are specific creative constraints and a ton of options for this platform, and you need a base knowledge before you even scope out your next video project to make the most of the paid possibilities.

What’s New With YouTube Advertising

In January 2017, Google announced it would make changes to AdWords to allow advertisers to reach more viewers on YouTube — especially across mobile devices, where 50% of YouTube views take place. Among the changes it rolled out, possibly the biggest announcement was that advertisers will soon be able to target viewers based on their Google search history, in addition to their viewing behaviors YouTube was already targeting.

Marketers can now target ads at people who recently searched for a certain product or service to target the video ads they’ll be served on the platform. If the content of a video ad is closely related to a search the viewer has been researching, they might be more likely to watch the entire ad or click through the ad to the website.

Keywords are relatively less expensive to target on YouTube than in traditional Google Search: Views cost an average of $0.06 per click on YouTube, compared to the average Google Search cost per click, which is estimated to be between $1-2. When YouTube targeting includes search history, it may be a more cost-effective way to target your audience with a more engaging form of content — video.

The 2 Types of YouTube Video Ads

TrueView ads are the standard video ad type on YouTube. Advertisers only pay for TrueView ads when viewers watch or interact with their ad (for example, by clicking on a call-to-action), and videos can be easily customized to share a variety of content.

Advertisers only pay when a user watches the ad for at least 30 seconds or until the end of the video or if the viewer takes an action, such as clicking on a call-to-action. YouTube requires that skippable TrueView ads be 12-60 seconds in length and that non-skippable TrueView ads be 15-30 seconds in length.

There are two types of TrueView ads:

In-Display Ads

In-display YouTube ads show up on the YouTube homepage, search results pages, and as related videos on YouTube video watch pages.

These ads appeared after performing a YouTube search:

This display ad appears as a related video on the right-hand video sidebar:

Once a user clicks on the ad, the destination video page features a spot on the right-hand column where a companion banner display ad will appear.

In-Stream Ads

TrueView in-stream ads play before someone watches the video they’ve selected on YouTube. Viewers sometimes have the option to skip the ad after watching it for five seconds. You can also make them play anywhere in the Google Display Network (GDN) — or sites that purchased Google video ad space.

In-stream ads let marketers customize video ads with different CTAs and overlay text, as highlighted in the skippable in-stream ad example below from Grammarly.

Here’s what another skippable in-stream ad from Wix looks like. In this example, there’s another CTA from Wix on top of the right-hand video menu display:

Some in-stream ads are non-skippable and can play before, mid-roll, or after the main video. Here’s an example of a non-skippable video ad before the main content on YouTube:

There are also non-skippable, mid-roll video ads, which appear midway through a YouTube video that’s 10 minutes or longer in length.

Source: PC Daily Tips

With TrueView, advertisers can gain a ton of information about the performance of their ads for optimization and testing purposes. AdWords provides data about completed views, partial views, if the video drives channel subscriptions, clickthrough rates on CTAs, views sourced from a user sharing the content, and views on the brand’s other content that can be attributed to a person initially viewing a video ad. These actions help advertisers better understand the full value of their video ad spend and where to allocate budget to increase results.

How to Set Up & Launch a YouTube Video Advertising Campaign

Once you’ve created a marketing video you want to advertise on YouTube, it’s time to create your video ad campaign. (If you haven’t made a video yet, here’s how to get started with Animoto or Wistia, along with a few great examples.) Then, upload your video to YouTube.

Now, you’re ready to set up your advertising campaign. First, go to your Google AdWords account to set up your campaign.

Campaign Type

Tap the drop-down menu on the right-hand side of the red “+ Campaign” button on your Google AdWords homepage and select “video.”

Campaign Name

Enter a name for your campaign, and make sure Video has been chosen from the Type drop-down menu.

Video Ad Format

Select “In-stream or video discovery ads” to ensure your video ad will be in TrueView format (in the style of the examples outlined above).

Budget

Set your budget per day. You can also select a delivery method — either the standard delivery, which shows ads evenly during the day, or accelerated delivery, which drives views as quickly as possible. The latter would be useful if you want to capitalize on a trend or news item relevant to your brand’s video.

Networks

Decide where you want your ad to appear.

• YouTube Search: Your video ad will appear in results for searches and will appear on the YouTube home page, channel pages, and video pages.
• YouTube Videos: This runs TrueView ads that can appear in-display ads or in-stream ads. With this option, you can choose for your video ad to appear before or around videos shown across the Google Display Network.

You should create separate campaigns for YouTube Search and YouTube Video as this will help you to better track performance metrics. These ads are served to people performing very different activities and require a different amount of commitment from the viewer, so it’s best to monitor performance separately.

Locations

Define the location of users whom you want the ad to be shown to. You can also exclude certain locations.

Language, Device & Mobile Bidding

AdWords will let you specify the operating system, device, and carrier for more advanced targeting. This is especially useful for mobile app ads, and there’s an option to increase or decrease your bid based on if the video ad is shown to someone on a mobile device.

Advanced Settings

With the advanced settings section, you can set begin and end dates for your campaign, create a custom schedule for when your video ad should be shown, and limit the daily impressions and views for users. This all helps you to get the most return for your ad spend.

Creating the Video Ad Creative

Name your ad group, and then insert the YouTube link for the video you would like to run the ad for. You will then choose whether you want this to run as an in-stream ad or an in-display ad.

For in-display, you’ll need to include a title and short description, which is entered on two separate lines. Note: Titles are limited to 25 characters, and the description lines are limited to 35 characters each.

In-stream ads provide you with the option to overlap a display URL on top of the video. You should use a vanity URL that directs to another final URL to make it more memorable. You can include advanced URL tracking options. In addition, a companion banner made from images from your video will appear on the right side of the video ad.

Bidding

You’ll then determine the max price you will pay for each view, which you can adjust to increase the number of projected views your video may receive.

Targeting

Finally, you can further define the audience you would like the video to be shown — options include gender, age, and parental status. You can also target individuals by their interests, such as beauty mavens, cooking enthusiasts, horror movie fans, etc. Try running multiple campaigns to target different groups of users to discover who is most engaged, rather than including everyone you want to target in one campaign.

Advanced Targeting

You can also target individuals by keywords, topics, or websites where you would like your video ad to appear. Keyword targeting with in-display ads can be a powerful tool for finding individuals who are looking for a visual answer to a question. Be sure to do your research, and try testing out different groups of keywords to see which leads to more views, clicks, or conversions.

Additionally, you can use AdWords video ads to remarket to people who have been in contact with your brand already. This can help you to re-engage those who are already familiar with your brand.

Linking Your Account

You should link your AdWords account to the YouTube channel where the video is hosted if you haven’t already. You can also click “finish” to begin running your video ad campaign.

10 Tips for Optimizing Your AdWords for Video Ads

Launching a video ad campaign is a great step, but there are some things you should set up prior to starting to pay for views to make the most of your budget and to see the highest return for your client.

1) Define your metrics and goals.

When analyzing the results, there are four main categories of metrics you can track for each video. These are located under the “column” drop-down in your campaigns interface.

Views

Under the “views” category, you can better understand what percentage of the ad people viewed and understand how the ad drove earned views or views on your brand’s other videos.

Audience

This category can be used to track likes and shares for each video ad.

Branding

The view rate should signal if the creative and message are interesting or entertaining enough for people to watch the ad. By increasing your view-through rate (VTR), you will lower your cost per view.

Conversions

Conversions will help you better understand if your ad is driving leads and returning a high ROI for your brand.

Depending on the goals for the brand, you should determine a few goals based on these metrics and formalize a plan for optimizing creative and trying different targeting criteria to improve results. Your goals should also determine the type of content you will feature in the ad — some metrics are better for branding goals and others will drive leads and conversions.

2) Track low performing placements.

If you’re running in-display ads that will appear across the Google Display Network, you can review where the ad has appeared in by navigating to Video Targeting > Placements > Where ads were shown > Display network from your Google AdWords Campaigns dashboard. Review this list to see if any particular sites are contributing to poor performance for your desired metrics. Exclude these sites from your ad campaign moving forward to increase your average CPV.

3) Use a custom thumbnail image.

Design or use a high-quality still image from the video to entice a viewer to click on your video. Remember, this image needs to be legible by users on different devices, including mobile. If your image contains a person, make sure he or she is looking into the camera. If you are featuring a product, make sure the background isn’t distracting. 

4) Drive people to buy with cards.

A YouTube card is teased with a small “i” symbol, which the viewer can click to expand. You can time this appearance so only users engaged with the video and content will see the notification.

With cards, you can feature a product related to or featured in the video to drive product purchases. You can also use cards to drive fundraising donations, traffic to a URL, or traffic to other videos as shown in the example below from Refinery29. Each format will allow you to customize the card with text, images, and other options.

5) Create calls-to-actions.

When promoting a video on YouTube, you can include call-to-action overlays that link to a URL. You could link to a landing page, product page, information page, career page … whatever you’d like. You could also send people to a favorable report or interview featuring the brand.

Adobe highlights one of its live videos using a call-to-action overlay:

6) Create a YouTube end slate.

Create an end screen to drive subscribers to your channel, promote your social networks, or increase interest in your brand. If someone has watched a video until the end, it’s a good sign they enjoy your content and might be interested in subscribing to your channel for future updates. The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon‘s end slate uses this screen to drive subscribers and social media fans while also highlighting other interesting topics its host has featured. Once you build the image, you will be able to annotate the end screen in YouTube’s video editor.

7) Use negative remarketing.

If you are running a campaign for a longer period of time and want to only attract new users to a brand, consider creating a list of people who your ad will not be shown to. When viewing your AdWords Campaign screen, select “Shared library” on the lower left sidebar. Then select “Video remarketing” and “+ Remarketing List”. You can stretch your campaign budget and target only unique users by selecting to not show your video ad to someone who has previously viewed the specific video, who has visited your YouTube channel, or shared, liked, or commented on any of your videos on your channel.

8) Use close captioning to cater to viewer’s needs and wants.

This tip applies to all YouTube videos — but it’s a general best practice that’s not followed by many brands. Include a quality video transcription you’ve generated and approved. Only user-uploaded transcriptions are indexed by Google because YouTube’s automatic captioning can be less than reliable. Depending on your target audience, you may also want to include transcriptions in various other languages. You can also offer users the option to download or visit a site page with the full transcription in your video description.

9) Qualify viewers.

Sometimes, your ad will be seen by people who have no interest in your product. Encourage them to skip the ad if the content isn’t relevant so you don’t have to pay for the view and they don’t waste their time watching irrelevant advertising.

10) Consider making your ad longer.

When it comes to TrueView ads, if the ad is under 30 seconds, you pay only if a viewer watches until the end. If the ad is longer than 30 seconds, you pay if the viewer watches it for at least 30 seconds. In both cases, you pay if the viewer interacts with your ad before it’s over. Consider this when you are coming up with ideas for content for the ad. You may want to put messaging at a certain point so uninterested viewers can skip the ad, or you might provide special offers towards the end of the video.

The Future of Video is Bright

We’ve told you before: Video content is a must-have part of your content strategy. This is even truer now that YouTube lets marketers target users based on their search histories. YouTube advertising is more targeted than ever, and it’s less competitive real estate than the world of Google Search because video content is newer to the content scene and less popular than blog posts.

Stay tuned for more from us about how to make great video ads for YouTube and social media, and where we think YouTube is headed next.

Editor’s Note: This post was originally published in October 2015 and has been updated for freshness, accuracy, and comprehensiveness.