All The Things That Make a Website Sell

Thank you for reading this page. This page is a thorough overview of everything I have learned about what makes a website sell.

Selling Concepts

• The first view/screen: The first view/screen is what the visitor is exposed to in the first few seconds of landing on your website. The first view is extremely important because it sets the tone for the rest of your website. The first view will also determine how interested a person will be on reading the rest of your website. You want to put extremely persuasive opening headline and content on the first view of your website. You also want to reduce the amount of unnecessary content that takes away spacing for more meaningful content. For example, make sure your brand logo or a picture take up so much space on the first view of your website that it limits the amount of meaninful persuasive content you can put there.
• Consistency: The human mind notices anything that is inconsistent. Anything inconsistent subconsciously makes the human mind not trust it. So you want everything to be consistent on a website. For example, you want every web page to have the same size font, the same colors, even spacing, same tone of voice, etc. If the visitor notices some kind of inconsistency on your website, whether conscious or subconsciously, they will lose some trust. By the way, consistency starts before a person lands on your website. It starts when a person clicks on your website from an ad like facebook, google, a flyer/brochure, business card, word of mouth, etc. You want that outside ad to have consistent messaging and brand image as your own website.
• Simplicity: People are busy and get easily distracted. People are not going to take their time to figure stuff out. And if people get too distracted or annoyed when viewing your website, the likelihood of them leaving is greatly increased. So the best strategy is to keep everything as simple as possible. Simple design, simple vocabulary (no big words that have to make visitors pull up google dictionary tab), simple navigation system, simple everything. Once you make things overcomplicated, you begin to lose attention.
• Readability: A major part of a website is it’s content in text/words. But many people do not read the content of a website word by word, they scan through it. If your website content consist of blocks of text, people will definitely not read much of your content. Your sales/leads consist depends on how much value visitors are able to extract from the content of your website. So you want to make sure you use stuff like subheadlines, bold text, bullet points, indentation, underline words, quotation text, etc. All this stuff helps structure content so it makes stop to read more and easily extract more information for people who are scanning through your website. The more information people extract from your website, the more likely they become customers/leads.
• Usability: Making your website easy to use is extremely important for user experience. This may not be so important for a simple website, but it’s extremely important for a website that uses functionality like booking a meeting/appointment or creating a user profile.
• One Objective per page: Every page on your website should have 1 objective only. This ensures that the objective you intend people to achieve will be more likely to be achieved. If your objective is for people to book an appointment or make a phone call, make sure the page people are on leads them to that objective. This concept hold true for also stuff like blog post. Every blog post should only talk about 1 topic. Copywriting experts call this the rule of 1. The rule of 1 in copywriting states that focusing on one topic or objective is much more persuasive than hpaving several topics/objectives.
• Structure/Navigation: How well organized the structure of a website will determine how well a user can navigate throughout your website. People should be able to easily find what they’re looking for when they land on your website. Therefore breaking a navigation system into categories/subcategories is very important.
• Personalization: The more personal or real a website feels, the more people will trust it. Using real photos of you and/or your business, uploading videos of yourself/business, and using a personal tone of voice on your content (like we’re talking face to face), are good ways to personalize your website.
• Persuasion: There are many ways to say the same message on your website. The goal of a website that sells is to make your messageto be as persuasive as possible. Most websites out there just inform people about their business. A website that sells persuades people about their business.

• Does your webpage have a headline/subheadline?: The headline on a website sets the tone for the rest of the website.

Typography

• The readability of your website typography: Having the right spacing, line height, font-size, etc, is crucial to the readability of your website. The more readable your website is, the more likely people are to read it. The more people read, the more likely the will buy or turn into a lead.
• Use headlines, subheadlines, bold text, bigger font sizes, indentation/spacing as much as possible: People don’t read, they scan. So make sure you’re using methods that are able to guide and focus people on the important content you read.
• Having a video introduction in the home/about page of your website: People seem to prefer or give more emphasis to videos. If your homepage or about page has a video of YOU talking about your business, people will value and trsyt you more, which leads to more sales/leads.
• Real pictures of your business/staff: The more real or personal a website looks, the more they will trust that website. Many websites use stock photos or photos that are downloaded online. People know when a photo is real vs one that is just downloaded from the internet. And photos that are more personal or “real” tend to exude more trust. More trust = more sales/leads.

Design

• Symmetrical design: A website that does not have a symmetrical design (even spacing) may consciously or subconsciously throw someone off. A website with uneven spacing or some kind of imbalance may exude unprofessionalism and distrust. You don’t want in any way exude that kind of vibe.
• Avoid distracting elements: Anything that distracts a visitor from your content is a liability to the sales of your website. Stuff like distracting motion backgrounds, flashy buttons, ads, and anything that creates any noise takes away focusing power from your visitors. And you know how people are now in days, they get easily distracted.

Information that Sells

• Having a FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions) page: A FAQ page is an effective way to instantly answer all your potential clients top questions. People love getting their questions answered quickly and conveniently, so make sure your website has instant access to your FAQ link (should be one of your nav links for sure). The FAQ page is also a good opportunity to provide additional persuasive information.
• Credo technique for about page: There is a concept called “the credo technique”. Basically the credo technique is stating what you and/or your business stands for, no matter what. For example, my business stands on making sure I communicate flawlessly with all my clients. That means I will respond to every client wothin 24hrs, unless I really couldn’t. If I can’t respond, then I will leave a message stating when I could respond. I will never not respond to a client for a long time or leave any quedtion/concern unanswered. That’s part of my credo. You can look at my about page to see everything I stand for. I suggest you do the same for your about page.
• Have a unique selling proposition (USP): What is the one thing that separates your business from the rest? If you don’t have that 1 thing that makes you stand out like a pimple, then people won’t think about you or remember you.

Positioning

• Most impactful/important content above the fold: The first few seconds a visitor lands on your website are the most important because those few seconds will determine weather they will continue reading and remember you. So place the most important/impactful content of top.