As a rule of thumb, visitors should be able to visit your website and understand what you offer in seconds. If it takes them longer, you’re losing sales. Make it clear with five tools. How many do you have?

Nicole Schmied

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What do you do and who do you do it for?

A clear tagline that says what you do and who you do it for

You introduce yourself to someone new. After a minute or two the conversations turns to work.

Them: What do you do?

You: I own name/type of business or I’m a doctor/other profession or I do sales for such-and-such.

They ask another question and another until they understand where you’re located and who you serve.

Your website doesn’t have the benefit of small talk with a first-time visitor. If not, your visitor will get lost in the noise or a distraction will pull them away from your page.

Say what you do in easy to understand language:

• We do roofs.
• Your hair will look perfect.
• Get fit with a personal trainer.
• Let us cater your corporate event.
• We teach you how to be a pro in the kitchen.
•  Lease an apartment minutes from the expressway.

If you're like most people, you may feel your business is complicated for this exercise, maybe you have several products or solutions. Which tells me this will be even more helpful to your visitors. 

Try to whittle your core business down to one. (When in doubt, lead with your dominant revenue stream. More on that later.)

Take Action:

Come up with an easy to understand tagline. That's the first thing you need to add or tweak on your website. Extra marketing-points, when you introduce this tagline to your team and all of you adopt it as your new-and-improved answer next time someone asks, ‘what do you do?’

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What You Offer Above The Fold

Prime real estate space​ on your website needs a direct call-to-action

Above the fold comes from the newspaper industry, remember those guys? Your paper was always folded in half and that top half always included the must-know items of the day.  

Today, when someone arrives on your website, everything before they scroll is considered ‘above the fold’. Treat it as prime real estate space and include your most direct offer or call-to-action.

What do you want your visitor to do? 

Do you want them to schedule an appointment, make a reservation, buy now, book today, call -- whatever it is -- be confident they know where to find your offer when they’re ready.​

Take Action:

Create a button and put it just below your one-liner and in your main menu. 

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Show images of people on your website doing very specific things. 

Show customers interacting with your products OR their life after your product or service

A picture a thousand words...yea, we know. *rolls eyes* Stay with me. This is where a lot of your competitors drop-the-website-ball. But not you. I want you to be very specific in the images you choose for your website. 

As humans, we like lots of things. Clothes, sports, cars, jewelry, food, toys and vacations. But nothing gets our attention the way a happy, fulfilled person (or groups) of people do. So yes, for starters I want you to find images with people in them.

But there’s more.

Your next customer wants you to help them transform. They want to envision life with or life after they’ve purchased your product or service. Are they happy, stronger, smarter, skinnier when they wear, drink, eat or use your product? Show it to them.  

You might say, well, I don’t have a product, it’s a service. Services work here too. 

Here’s a few service ideas to get you started:

Maybe you win a court case for them, what does that smile and relief look like outside a courtroom. Capture that! Don’t capture a cold, sterile, scary looking courtroom or office.

Maybe you’re a pediatrician, capture the look of that kiddo when he gets his sticker at the front desk.

Maybe you’re a photographer, and you think, ‘I’m already showing off pictures’. You’re pictures are beautiful but you’re missing out on better pictures for your home page. Improve your sales and the customer experience when you show specific images, like, the fun you have behind the scenes with your client’s, or when grandkid gives Grandma a framed photo.

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Maybe you’re a restaurant, who can capture laughs around your tables. Please quit taking pictures of empty restaurants unless you’re trying to sell me the chairs and silverware. People need to see how memories are made one bite at a time.

(Note: There’s lots to say about taking a great image that works on a website, good lighting, different angles, wider shots, closer shots. Email me if you need resources or a referral to a photographer in your area.)

Take Action:

Update your website with images of people interacting with your product or service. If your budget can't support a photographer,  I love istockphoto.com for affordable, high quality photos you won't see on your competitors site. You could get totally free images on a site like pixabay.com, but I would caution to use them on your blog (like I do) as you'll likely see them on other sites. 

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Win your customers, one bite at a time.

You're writing for a distracted, often mobile customer, break it down for them.

I told you we’d come back to revenue.

Maybe you own a gym and your bread-and-butter I mean, your egg whites-and-avocado comes from your memberships, but you also offer a 30-day training program, pilates classes and a high performance juice bar. As you implement these five suggestions, be sure to protect your dominant revenue stream front and center.

​If you’re a customer with a complicated set of products or solutions for your target customer, I want you to look at your website and tell me, is your dominant source of revenue shining bright like a diamond? Are your highlighting it on your home page? Or is it competing for attention with other products?

One way to a gym owner could do that that is by keeping the one-liner, call-to-action above the fold, but list services below in columns.

Say you have three products called: 30-Days with Dumbbells, Pilates for Professionals, AfterBurn Juice Bar. (I would visit all of these by the way!)

When someone clicks on one of these programs, you’ll want to be ready with features of each listed in a short paragraph of their features and benefits, with you guessed it, your call-to-action in your menu on every page.

While ultra-helpful for your customer, there's hidden benefit for you. When you create separate pages with digestible pieces,  you can use Google Analytics or Adwords to measure and track how these pages are performing and/or converting new members to join. 

Take Action:

Choose one product and identify three key features with a short description. What would be important to your visitor? Cut out anything that isn't. List these on your site AFTER they've scrolled or clicked to another page to learn more.  

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Use copy that converts customers

People come to the internet for two reasons: they want to be entertained or they want to solve a problem.​ Do one or both.

Gone are the days when you could start a long paragraph with how you’ve been in the patio furniture business for 75 years because your Great-Grandpapi was a woodworking prodigy. While the story is an endearing part of your business -- the truth is, where you place that information on your site will impact your sales.

Take Action:

Identify ways your website can communicate at minimum to and about your customer’s life, not Grandpapi's. Answer these seven questions below. Turn your answers into clear, concise statements. Read them aloud. Does it sound too stiff? Try editing some more. Include those edited statements on your site. Later, you could create a section or separate page to showcase the story of lovable Grandpapi, his pictures, and a timeline.

1 What does he or she want? What do they want when they come to your site? To eat, to buy patio furniture, to shop for clothing? What do they want?

2 What’s the problem they’re dealing with? For me, it’s having a new patio, but no seating. I need chairs, before our cookout this weekend. True story.

3 How does this problem make them feel? Currently, I’m scrambling and I'm feeling behind. I don’t want to pick a product that I might regret.

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4 Can you anticipate those feelings and show empathy with your words? Imagine if I found a website that read: ​"Shopping for patio furniture when you want to relax is discombobulating. Enjoy our hassle-free shopping with hundreds of displays and our 30-day You’ll-Love-It-Guarantee." Wow. They get me! I would drive to them right now.

5 Why are you an authority to solve this? Because happy customer testimonials on your site say so. Ask for a customer referrals often. 

6 What’s your call to action? Call now? Book Appointment? Buy Now? Other? Get clear, but brief because it needs to fit on your call-to-action button.

7 What does it look like after they have your product or service in their life? ​Use images and your words to paint a picture for me. Show my family enjoying time outside on a deck or patio, serving each other, laughing, taking a bite while sitting near a gorgeous set of table and chairs.