This page is always being worked on and upgraded. So, make sure to bookmark or save this link somewhere and always come back to keep learning more about everything that makes a website sell!
Thank you for reading this page. This page is a thorough overview of everything I learned about the things you can do to increase the selling power of your website.
Every concept and/or suggestion on this page if implemented will increase the selling power of your website. The more concepts/suggestion you implemented, the more selling power your website will have.
You can see this as a point system if you like. The more concepts/suggestions you implemented, the more points your website gets. More points = more selling power. Some concepts/suggestions may be more powerful than others, so some suggestions may boost your selling power with more points than others.
Selling Concepts
These following are general concepts about what makes a website sell. Note, these are just concepts or ideas, but understanding them will give you an good understanding of what makes a website sell. After these I will offer suggestions that can implement these concepts on your website.
- 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 visits 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 subhead lines, 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.
- 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 as many categories/subcategories is very important. Just make sure you don’t break it down too many times because then it becomes annoying.
- User Experience: 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 only focuses on that objective, nothing else. 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.
- Personalization/trust/authenticity: 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 conversating face to face), are good ways to personalize your website. The more real and authentic a website feels, the more they will trust you.
- 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.
- Interactivity: If you can make a person interact with you website is some way, you can definitely increase the selling potential of your website. You do this by implementing opt-in forms. An example of a good opt in form is a form that ask several questions to determine what is the right product/service for your visitor. An opt-in form like this does 3 things: makes people stay on your website longer, makes them feel invested, and makes them morecinterested in your product(s) or service(s).
- Time invested: People tend to be more committed to something the more time they invest on something. So the longer you can make people stay on your website, the more likely the will buy and/or choose you over your competitors.
- Keeping up with times: The world in general is always changing. Those who keep up with trends are the ones that will more likely succeed in business. Right now videos are what people prefer to consume as content. Having more video content on your website can boost the selling power of your website. Be in the lookout for trends. The faster you hop on the trend wagon, the more successful you will be.
Capture and Keep Their Attention
The more you capture a person’s attention and the longer you keep it, the more likely they become customers/leads. If a person invests more time doing something, they will feel more committed to it and even obligated to finishing the task. Plus, the more information a person consumes during a visit on your website, the more opportunity you have to sell them on your product/service/idea. Think about this. Imagine a person visits a website and stays around for 5-10 minutes looking at information around vs a person who just visits a website for a minute and then leaves. Which website you think will more likely have an impact on the person? Which website would they revisit again? Which website will more likely make the sale? The following are some techniques to capture and keep attention:
- Does your webpage have a headline/subhead line that stops them dead in their tracks?: The headline on a website sets the tone for the rest of the website. The headline is also a great opportunity to grab or hook the visitor’s attention and make them interested on reading the rest of the website. That is, if you have a good headline.
- Design the text on your website for scanning: When people visit and view your website, they don’t read, they scan. Basically, what scanning is when scroll through your website and try to get the gist of it by quickly reading through it and jumping around whatever gets their attention. But you don’t want people to just scan your information you actually want them to read it. Because the more people read, the more likely they get turn into a customer/lead. Use headlines/subhead lines, bold text, underlines, bigger font sizes, indentation/spacing and any other mechanism to catch people’s attention and guide their focus to important selling information.
- First sentence and first paragraph: After the headline/subhead line, the first sentence/paragraph are going to be the next most important thing. You want the first sentence to be an opening question or thought-provoking question/statement to get your visitor even more interested in what you have to say. And you want your first paragraph to be so good, they’d want to read the second paragraph.
- Use the water slide technique: Ever been to a really big waterslide? Once you go down that waterslide, there is no way of stopping till you get to the end. The waterslide technique is a copywriting/persuasive concept where you write your content like it was a waterslide. Basically, what you do is make the reader want to read the second sentence in your copy/text after reading the first sentence. Then you make the reader want to read the third sentence after reading the second sentence. Now, what is the job of the third sentence? Yup, to get the person to read the fourth sentence. Like this you are creating a waterslide in a sense. This idea of a waterslide forces you to write in such a way where you think of better ways to make sentences interesting, so the reader doesn’t get bored or annoyed and stops reading. Note, the waterslide technique will never come out as a perfect waterslide where the person literally reads everything you write (if you accomplish that, great!). The goal is to get the reader to read as much as possible, because the more they read, the more they are likely to turn into customers/leads.
- Avoid distracting elements: You only want one thing to happen when a person lands on your website, and that is for them to click on your call to action. Anything that takes away their focus from that is distraction you want to avoid. Unnecessary words, images, videos, or any content that makes them think of something else is a big no no.
Make it Easy to Consume
What is the best way to eat an elephant? One bite at a time. Breaking a big idea into smaller and simpler parts will make it easier and more likely for people to consume. If the mind is overwhelmed in anyway, the chances of it wandering away or forgetting increase. No one wants to come to your website and have to think or work to understand something. So, make things as easy to consume as possible.
- Rule of one for selling pages: There is this idea/concept in copywriting/persuasion called the rule of one. Basically, the rule of one state that a message will have a much bigger impact on a person if you only talk about 1 all-encompassing idea in your message. If you talk about more than one idea, your message will be weaker. Use the rule of one to make separate pages for each product/service/idea in your business. If your business has many products/services/ideas, then grouped them under one all-encompassing category and make a page for that. As long as each page is about 1 all-encompassing idea, the rule of 1 will work in your favor.
- Break up walls of text: Imagine entering a website and then seeing a big wall of text or several walls of text. That can be a discouraging sight! Breaking walls of text into smaller block makes it more encouraging to read. Plus, it’s easier for the mind to grasp information if it’s given in bite size chunks. You should also design text for scanning which will help people want to consume your website information (Look at point number 2, Design the text on your website for scanning, on Capture and Keep Their Attention).
- 1 idea/concept per paragraph: Continuing on the point on top, the best way to break down information online is to put 1 idea in one paragraph. The mind consumes information better if it is fed one thing at a time. This is especially important on the internet where people are impatient and in a hurry. If the mind feels overwhelmed in any way, the likelihood of a person ditching your website goes up.
- Make long sentences shorter: We all have seen long sentences that almost look like a paragraph. Having long sentences like that is unnecessary because we’re not trying to write a professional paper or impress a professor. What we’re trying to do is sell, making stuff simple and easy to consume is what sells. The beauty about sales and having your own website is that you don’t have to follow any grammatical rules. As long as stuff is readable and persuasive, it works. So, make sentences shorter. Break a big sentence into 2 or 3 smaller sentences. The more periods, the better. People love consuming information one small bite at a time.
- Avoid unnecessary words / get straight to the point: You know how annoying it is when a website does not get straight to the point. People now in days don’t want to read much and want to know the gist of things fast. So, give it to them fast. Also make sure you are not using way too many words when explaining things. There is so much content on websites that can be reduced significantly. The more unnecessary words you take out on your website while still getting the point across, the better.
- Space everything out throughout website to avoid clutter: When a lot of stuff is thrown at a person’s face at once, it can overwhelm the person. When a person gets overwhelmed, they will either leave or click/focus on whatever gets their attention first. If you make room to breathe by giving enough space to elements throughout the website, people will more likely take their time and look at everything (or most of the stuff) on your website.
Guide Them to The Sale
- Have a call to action on each page: A call to action is basically an action you want a person to take after they visit one of the pages in your website. A call to action can be something like calling your business number, sending you an email, submitting a form with information about your visitor, getting a quote, buying a product (or adding it to the cart), your blog post, etc. A call to action can be even as simple as getting a person to read a blog post. Every page must have a call to action if you want your visitor to do something because of your website. And that call to action has to be on every page, not just the home page, or the sign-up page, or the contact me page, etc.
- Make the call to action very clear and evident: On top of making sure every page has a call to action, you want that call to action to be very clear/obvious and you want it to stand out like a sore thumb. Things that are much more obvious and stand out make it much more likely for people to click on them.
- Make call to action text/wording actionable:
- Have a list of the most important pages people can read at the end of each page: Whenever a person finishes reading a page, don’t let them just wander off wherever they choose. Instead, present a list of links they can visit. These lists of links should be your highest selling/persuasive pages or related pages to the topics they are reading. Remember, you control the flow.
Design to Sell
- Symmetry/balance: 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.
- Font-size and line height of your website typography: Having the right font, 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 they will buy or turn into a lead. The size and line-height of font depends on the audience you’re reaching. The older the audience, the bigger the font-size. I suggest you go online to see what font size best suits your audience. Generally, though, font-size should be 16 points on mobile and 20 on full screen.
User Experience
- Every page should have a name: People love to switch tabs a lot or get distracted doing other stuff. If they come back to your page and they don’t remember what they were reading, then what do you think they’re going to do?
- Stick to conventions: When you visit a website, where do you expect the logo, the nav bar, and the footer to be at? If you’re not new to the internet, you typically know where these elements can be found. Positions your elements on the same spot if you want your website easy to grasp. That is unless you are trying to do something super creative, and your business is all about creativity. But if it’s not, then it’s best to make the person think about things the least amount possible and focus their attention to the core of your sales message.
- Use visual hierarchies to signify what’s important and group related information together:
- Make it obvious what’s clickable: There have been many times I have visited a website and clicked on stuff that I thought was clickable. I have also clicked on stuff I thought was not clickable but was actually a link. This might not be such a huge deal, but you never know. You don’t want to risk people not clicking on something because it was not obvious that it can be clicked. Plus, if you make things super obvious that they can be clicked (like making the font-size bigger for links with an underline), the chances of them being clicked goes higher.
- Break down website structure into as many categories as possible, but not too many:
- Use breadcrumbs to show users where they are:
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 within 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 question/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.
- 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.
- 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 or your staff/employees talking about your business, people will value and trust you more, which leads to more sales/leads.
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 whether they will continue reading and remember you. So, place the most important/impactful content of top.
Copywriting/Persuasion
The words on your website, whether they’re in text or spoken (in video/audio), are perhaps the most important
- Focus on your potential customers first:
- Start with the problem first, then options, and lastly solution:
- Features and benefits: