B Y T O M T O R T O R I C I
Remember looking forward to your company’s latest website redesign, and all the new business it would bring? You paid the web designer’s fee, then waited. And waited. And wondered why your website wasn’t producing inquiries, leads, and sales. Short-term anticipation turned into long-term disappointment.
The sad truth is, that’s a common outcome for small businesses with small website budgets. Web design firms are sometimes better at selling websites to companies than selling the company’s products to customers.
So, are you looking for some clarity, and some ideas about what to do now? You’re in the right place. Let’s dig in.
Three Reasons Why Websites Don’t Bring Results
1. Business Issues: Maybe there’s just not much of a market for your product or service. Or, your business category is overly competitive, perhaps dominated by a few big players. Although this challenge is typically tied to core business decisions, a fresh look at strategic positioning and targeting can help uncover opportunities like underserved niches.
If your business model is solid, the problem may be …
2. Website Traffic Issues: If buyers aren’t landing on your website, that explains why buyers aren’t responding to your website. Search Engine Optimization, a long-term game, offers both opportunities and challenges in getting your site to come up front and center in searches. Social media, paid advertising, content marketing, and off-line prospecting can also drive prospective buyers to your site.
If your website analytics show you’re getting traffic, the problem is likely …
3. Website Messaging Issues: Buyers land on your site, take a quick glance, then hit the Back button. How come? Chances are, the person who built your website either had a design background or a technical background. If you didn’t use a professional marketing writer, then your company’s main marketing tool was likely created without any genuine marketing insight or strategy.
Three Reasons Why Most Website Messaging Fails
1. Opposing Points-of-View: The content of most small business websites is either written by, or reflects the sensibilities of, company insiders. That’s not surprising. The problem is, the typical buyer is coming at things with a very different set of sensibilities, circumstances, and motivations. So the seller’s one chance of ‘connecting’ with the buyer can inadvertently end up as a near-total disconnect.
2. The Company Doesn’t Stand for Anything: Web visitors’ eyes glaze over when plowing through vague promises, superficial boasting, and humdrum “why choose us” bullet points. What they’re really looking for is at least one unique and meaningful benefit or differentiator that makes this an easy choice – on both a logical and emotional level. If you can get online searchers to remember a single notable thing about your service or approach, you’d statistically be above average.
3. The Website Isn’t ‘Skimmable’: These days, you don’t sit and read every word of a web page from top to bottom. You start by visually skimming the page, to see if anything stands out, or makes you curious enough to read further. Smart websites today are built for skimming, with the most important points and benefits in prominent headlines where even ‘skimmers’ can’t miss them.
Three Ways to Upgrade Your Website Messaging
1. Have a Strategic Copywriter or Marketing Consultant complete an analysis and recommendations report of your current company website. This can offer highly useful and even surprising insights into what’s working, what’s not working, and why … from the buyer’s point of view.
2. Plan a strategy meeting with that professional to dig deeper into your company’s advantages, your competitor’s limitations, and your market’s real-world issues, pressures, and circumstances. When you unearth one significant and exclusive core benefit point, refine and polish it to a shine that can’t be ignored … from the buyer’s point of view.
3. Revise or recreate your business website, this time making it skimmer-friendly to draw in people with short attention spans (everyone, these days). Turn your higher-level understanding of customers’ thoughts and feelings into a competitive advantage. And keep reinforcing that one overriding benefit that is irresistible … from the buyer’s point of view.
Does that all make sense? And … are you ready to get started?
Or, will you wait a few more years to see if your website (magically) starts getting the results you had hoped for all along?
I’m Tom Tortorici, a Strategic Copywriter. I offer free initial consults for frustrated businesspeople who now realize their website messaging is inhibiting, rather than enhancing, the opportunities they’re sure are out there. Call me at 404-606-2715, or email me at tom@tomtortorici.com to schedule that introductory phone or Zoom consult. It’s funny, you never know what you might learn in just that one call.
Because we’re all too close to our own businesses and websites to really, truly see them … from the buyer’s point of view.
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About the Author: Tom Tortorici is an Atlanta copywriter and web content writer who helps companies make a genuine connection with their audience. His classes and conference presentations have focused on how writing, strategy and design can work together to grab attention and interest even among readers with short attention spans. In addition to working directly with businesses, Tom regularly partners with web designers and marketing agencies.
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Tom Tortorici Inc. | Tom@TomTortorici.com | 770-934-7861 | 3101 Rockaway Rd | Atlanta GA 30341
