While working with many websites and on-line stores I noticed two major mistakes most businesses do. Good news – both are easy to correct and doing that can double or even triple your website conversion rate (number of orders or leads received per number of unique visitors).
MISTAKE 1: It’s about me!
The key to designing and building effective websites is to focus on what it is your prospects want your product or service to provide to them. In most cases, they’re searching for a product or service that will solve a problem, overcome a frustration, relieve a fear or remove a concern.
Unfortunately, a typical website’s home page offers so many options that it’s easy for prospects to drop out of your sales process—especially if your site doesn’t contain a specific call to action on that page, if the navigation on the site isn’t clear or if they’re distracted by other offers or content, which is often the case.
A prospect, who arrives on a home page, is often bombarded with information, links, offers, images, service listings, and advertisements—all competing for his or her attention. The original message or offer that compelled this person to visit the site is often lost.
Unfortunately, the vast majority of websites all look alike and do nothing to capture the immediate attention of their ideal client. Most businesses place the name of their company at the top of the site, often accompanied by a brief summary of the business or its owner and many times a picture of the owner is included as well.
That is the WORST thing you can possibly have at the top of your site! Please don’t take this personally, but your prospects don’t care about you! They don’t care about your business. They don’t care that you’re local or national, that you perform both residential and commercial services, that you’re open 24/7, or that your personnel are courteous, experienced and professional. These trite descriptions are called platitudes, and they run rampant in most marketing and advertising. Unfortunately, they do absolutely nothing to move a prospect closer to the sale or —for that matter— to compel him or her to want to know any more about what you sell.
Prospects don’t care that you own a truck or if your company is family-owned and operated. They ONLY care about themselves. What’s in it for ME! If this is the case, then why does almost EVERY business fail to address that concern? Why do most businesses talk about themselves INSTEAD of the prospects?
Recently, I was working with a local organization which sells solar panels to farmers who want to profit from electricity generated from solar power. (If you are interested, it’s the Ontario government’s MicroFIT program to encourage development of renewable energy generation.) I had a heated discussion with their webmaster, who made a home page with a large logo, company mission statement and vision, as well as something like “We are super-green!” which took the whole page and 15 links to different models of the solar panels they sell. He was deeply offended when I stated that this was completely useless information because that company’s target market—farmers—do not care about a company’s vision and mission or if that company is green or blue.
Solution: It’s about them, not you.
In this particular case, all the farmers need is a reliable solar panel array which will generate electricity as soon as sun is up and continue until it’s down. They need it to start again every day for the next 20 years, so they can sell electricity to the government and make money.
What if we create a headline at the top of this website that asks, “Do you own land or buildings and want to use them to generate electricity for profit?” Do you think that question might better grab the attention of a farmer who has been nursing this idea for the last several months? Now, what if we create a subheadline that says, “Find out how to get a guaranteed return on your investment.”
I then definitely suggest presenting a one – two minute video that quickly explains and reinforces the points made in the headline and subheadline—along with assurances that the guarantee is real. Next, I suggest backing it up with a compelling offer that says, “Guaranteed profit from solar power generation: Call 1 800 XXX XXXX or fill out the form below for your free site assessment and profit report.”
Which home page will generate more sales?
I challenge you to observe your website’s home page and look for platitudes such as, “Welcome to my store, we are committed to …” or “We are dedicated, professional and nice looking …” or “Best-quality widgets at the lowest prices”, etc. See how you can make your sales presentation about them, not about you.
Hint: Before you put any big claims or headers on your home page, stop and think hard about who your ideal client is, who do you want to sell to and what they would appreciate the best about your product. By the way, it is rare that your product or service will be offered at the lowest price. Note: In my example above, the header, subheader, video and offer will be completely different if your prospect is an off-grid cottage owner who needs electricity to power a house.
Next time, mistake #2
To your success,
Anton Pachkine
http://www.finestshops.com
e-Commerce Management Company
P.S. Do you know anybody who is running or going to open an online store?
Please do them a favor – forward this article to them.
FINESTSHOPS NEWS
For European businesses we now arranged new servers at Rackspace data center in London, UK. If you are targeting mostly European customers in your store, consider switching to our UK servers – your store will load faster for your staff and your visitors from Europe. If you want more information about our European hosting and UK servers, please contact sales 1(800)675-0162 ext.1 or sales@finestshops.com
