Most small businesses, startups and product companies fail due to a lack of interest. It’s not because their products are bad or don’t solve any problems, it’s simply because they couldn't get people interested in what they had to offer..
As a business owner, one of your primary responsibilities is to clearly articulate the problems that your product solves. If people don’t understand what you are offering or why they should buy it, then all of your marketing efforts will be wasted.
What is the job of your website?
Your website's main job is to show your potential customers the value of your service or product by explaining how you will fix the problems of your customer.
Our customers don’t want to buy more products they want to buy transformation. You need to show how you will make their lives better if you want to make more sales from your website.
Unfortunately, too many websites fail with this sole mission...
Ask yourself is your website easy to understand? Would your grandmother easily get what you are offering on your website? Especially your homepage. Take a look at your homepage and see does it answer these 3 questions
- Who is it for?
- What problem does it solve?
- What action to take next? book a call, sign up?
If your website is not doing all 3 of these things then you are potentially confusing and losing a lot of customers. Why? Because if the answer to these 3 questions is not immediately apparent, then you will have lost the majority of your hard-earned visitors in a matter of seconds.
According to Donald Millar the author of story brands. The human brain today is overloaded with too much stimulus; it relies a lot on the subconscious mind to make many of our important decisions based on 2 things:
- If a product/service or person can be associated with our survival, then we pay attention. If not it will be ignored.
- The brain is hardwired to save energy. It must be easy to understand said product or service or we will ignore it.
The psychology of your website
Your brain's number one goal is to survive. With so much visual stimulation going around us all the time competing for attention, your brain needs a filter system to priorities things. It uses “the lizard brain” to do just this. If your brain deems something unnecessary to our survival, it will be ignored!
Not only that it must be easy to understand or it will be ignored
“The key to growing our business is that you must associate your products and services with the survival of your potential customers, or their brains are designed to ignore you” Donald Miller
Now think about your offering!
Have you articulated the problem your service or product solves in a way that your customer will connect it to their survival? Have you described the solution you offer concisely and clearly so that makes it is super simple to understand?
Recently I spoke with a telecommunications company about their website, The home page contained mind-numbing text like
As a managed service provider (msp) we offer world-class implementation services, technical support, monitoring and management for products and services, hardware and software issues and can implement managed security, disaster recovery options, infrastructure management, etc.
Does this make any sense?
Can you even bother to try and understand this statement, I know I can't?
This is such a common mistake that you see on websites, Trying to be clever or smart instead of being clear!
Clarity
Clarity is much more important! The best websites are the ones that are the easiest to understand
Many websites tend to just talk about their product, who they are, their history, etc. they never mention the problem that their product solves and they use too much industry jargon.
I don't know how many times I have studied a website for a potential client and after 10 mins, I still had no idea what service they offered. Ok, I may not be the smartest of people, but it is my job is to help people with their marketing and I do look at a lot of websites!
Believe me, nobody likes to feel stupid, especially potential customers. If the first feeling a customer feels when they come to your website is one of confusion, you will have lost them
Can you imagine how boring it is to read about some solution without know the problem it solved? That is way most websites are confusing
It’s impossible to appreciate any answer if you don’t know what the question is.
Unfortunately, this is happens all to often
Waffling on about our services, listing all the features and yet never addressing the most important information, What problem do you solve.
If you want to sell more, the most basic strategy is to clearly state the problem your solution solves in a very clear and concise manner! It will help greatly
Sean Honan