VisionFriendly.com Blog

Website Marketing Through A Well Crafted Message

I know, I know, good sales copy on a website, this is un-heard of.  People don’t read on the Internet, they are simply looking for the next bug-eyed groundhog – right?

This is a common misconception, the fact is that people are looking for whatever it is you are offering.   They want to find you quickly, be assured that you do what you say and that you do it well.  The difference is that people “read” very differently when they are at a computer or mobile device.  You typically have a matter of seconds to get your message across rather than the slightly longer attention span you get if your customer is reading a brochure.  All the more reason to invest time in crafting your message into a concise 4 points that you need to get Mr. Customer to understand before clicking on the next search result.

1. An emotionally compelling idea – one big, unifying concept that pulls the sales argument together and (usually) expresses the product’s USP (unique selling proposition)
2.  A promise of irresistible benefits — how the product will help the prospect
3. Proof of every claim made in the package
4. Loads of credibility — for the product, the guru behind it, and the company selling the product

These are the 4 principals that Michael Masterson supports for any sales copy, but they become especially important for standing out among the crowd of competitors online.  

• So get your site designed by a professional to establish credibility in the countless details that a custom website design will offer.
• Test your design on friends and family during the construction process by only showing the site design for 10 seconds max and then ask them what they noticed, or what tag lines stood out.
• Make sure that every page has as concise of a message as you can present and then a clear instruction of what you want the prospect to do next.  Ask them for their business.

There is very little point in driving traffic to a website with poor design or message, and there is no point in having a terrific website design if no one finds it. 

Design  |  Marketing  |  SEO  – VisionFriendly.com

The Difficulties of Content Generation

One of the hardest task, I imagine for any design company is getting copy from their clients.  The project starts out of the gate at a full sprint as logos, color schemes and button styles all get created revised and approved then the site has it’s empty shell and it is time to fill in the blanks with relevant blocks of copy that are tailored for both the human visitor and for the search engine spider.  Suddenly the project will grind to a screeching halt.

One of the methods that we’ve found useful for helping our customers understand what needs to be written without presenting it as an overwhelming mountain of work for them is that we will break it up into bite sized chunks’ that we sometimes even ask for one at a time.  This keeps some momentum and keeps from the customer feeling like we’ve left them adrift.

Here are some samples of the outlines we give for the more common pages that we find difficulty generating content for:

Home page:
This page should give an overview of who you are, what you do, why you do it and how you do it better.  Generally the best way to get your message across on the home page is with short sentences and bullets that support the graphics on the page that really tell the story of what you do.  Visitors have a very short attention span especially on the first page of a site and so these quick ideas should be the only text on the home page outside of the call to action telling them to “Buy today” or “Call Us Now!”

Services:
This page should really be more of a quick list than anything especially if you offer a large variety of services.  People click this page because they want to be sure that you do X, Y, or Z and so you should confirm that for them without adding a lot of excess info.  A brief sentence or two about each service is good enough and then if you want to describe each one we should add detail pages further inside the website (these detail pages can then be added later if time is a factor).

About Us:
This page should have 3-4 paragraphs that talk about your business’s unique identity.  Maybe start with a paragraph talking about your company history, a little info about the staff, work environment or general information about what you do.  Then move on to talking about what makes your business different than the next guy, things like the quality of your work, quickness of response, lowest prices, philosophy, or anything else that your competition can’t match – you should point out to the visitor.  Then wrap it all up by simply asking your customer to call or fill out the form or whatever it is you want them to do at the end of the day to make the next step in building a relationship with your company.

Privacy Policy:
This page usually can be copied and then modified from pseudo-standards out there which cover the basics of how you handle the information that customers submit to your site.  In some cases it can get rather involved and legal assistance may be required, but for most businesses a basic overview of the fact that you aren’t going to sell them up the river is sufficient.

Website content flow will, of course, vary for each company but the above guidelines do apply for a majority of the sites out there and when you see websites that don’t write their copy in this fashion it shows by a muddled message that leaves no brand impact for the visitor leaving the site.  Your website is not doing it’s job if your visitors walk away not knowing what your message is.

More to come on this one in future posts…