Have you ever gone to a website that is full of good information, but you aren't motivated to do business with the company? Why do you think this happens?
One explanation is that the company's website is what I call feature-driven. What I mean by this is that the company concentrates so much on giving you information about what they do or describe the products they sell, that it's like reading a parts catalog. (Which is fine if you want your website to read like a parts catalog, but I can guarantee you that you're going to make very few sales or generate very few leads.)
Company Centric
Unfortunately, many companies make the mistake of wanting to talk about what they do, their mission statement, and how many awards they have won. They sincerely think that this information is important to their customer because it is important to them.
Or a company gives you all the details about their services or products and expects you, the potential customer, to use this information to make a decision to do business with them.
This type of approach on a website is detrimental because the marketing message is from the viewpoint of the company, and is not looking at the situation from the viewpoint of the customer.
Benefits Please
The customers are looking for benefits. When they come to your website, they typically are trying to solve a problem and are looking for answers. So, yes they certainly do need the features information, but they'll be getting that information on all the other websites that are in competition with your website.
How you stand out, or differentiate yourself, from the crowd of millions of websites is to present a marketing message that is benefit driven. Tell your potential customer how they can benefit by using your product or service. Be specific and don't assume they will be able to figure things out by themselves.
"Don't make me think," is one of my favorite sayings about customer behavior online. Your potential customers need information that makes it easy for them to make a decision as to whether they should stay on your website or click off in search of more information. They don't want to take the time to read through a detailed description of a product or service unless it is immediately obvious to them how they will benefit from this product or service.
Emotional Thinking
The biggest problem with a feature-driven website is that you are not creating an emotional connection with your potential customer. People aren't typically logical when they make a purchase, they are emotional. Logic doesn't sell the product, emotion does.
In fact, there's a new book out called "Predictably Irrational" by Dan Ariely that talks about how people make different decisions about the same situation depending on whether they are thinking rationally or emotionally. Participants were asked the same question in a "cold, rational" state and again when they were emotional. Their answers changed dramatically.
Use Bullet Lists
A simple approach to this problem is to use a headline of "Features" with a bulleted list of important features customers would want to know about, and another headline of "Benefits" with a bulleted list of the benefits the customer will receive by using your product or service. An excellent example of this approach is the website www.FreshBooks.com.
Use Video
Putting video on a home page is really hot right now. I could write a whole article about using video on your website, but let me say that it is the best way to easily promote the benefits of your product or service. Because people are drawn to motion and sound, they will automatically click the video and be engaged immediately by the person in the video.
Two good examples of using video to promote the benefits of a company's service and product can be found at www.ToolsToLife.com and www.OCShephard.com. Take a look at both these sites and you'll see how powerful it is to use video on a website.
Integrated Approach
Another technique often seen on websites is to integrate the features and benefits into a paragraph format that tells the story. For instance, if you were a service provider, one sentence can explain the different features of what you offer and then in the following sentence or paragraph explain the benefits to your customer.
An example of this integrated approach can be found at http://soft-source.com/PAGES/Fulfillment.html. Notice how the company talks about what it offers (the features) and then it talks about how this is advantageous for the customer (the benefits.)
Conclusion
To make a sale on a website or generate a lead on a website, you have to have an emotional connection with your potential customer. A simple exercise to improve your website is to take a piece of paper and make a list of all the features of your product or service and then right next to the feature, write the benefit. Use this information to improve your website and make it the marketing tool that it should be.
Recent Comments