‘Winning Websites for Small Businesses’ - a new handbook for New Zealand businesses

I have just finished writing a brand-new handbook for New Zealand businesses, called “Winning Websites for Small Businesses”.

I don’t believe there’s any other publication in New Zealand quite like this handbook because it’s aimed specifically at the unique needs of the New Zealand marketplace.

If you have a website for your business and it’s not getting you the amount of visitors, leads, or sales that you wish it was - this handbook has been written for you!

I’ve basically tried to summarise everything I know about website design and selling on the Internet, in a user-friendly way that is easy for the ordinary business person to understand.

This handbook is not about website design in the ordinary sense. It is about how to build a website that SELLS - and there’s a big difference

If you are keen to find out more about this handbook (and if you’re a New Zealand business that has a website, then you should be) then go to www.winningwebsites.co.nz.

Why Susan Boyle is like a good landing page

By Amanda MacArthur from Mequoda Daily

Test your landing pages, because 9 times out of 10, snap judgments will prove you wrong

In case you haven’t heard, Susan Boyle is the unlikely star of Britain’s Got Talent, a televised talent show over in the UK .

On April 11th, Susan Boyle’s audition was aired, a beautiful rendition of “I Dreamed a Dream” from the musical “Les Miserables”.

Since then, the video has been uploaded to YouTube and has been viewed over 42 million times.

The charm of Susan Boyle, next to her incredible voice, is her appearance. When Susan first walked on that stage, she was a little goofy, the judges didn’t take her seriously, and neither did the audience. But when she started singing, the laughter stopped. That’s what you call results.

Now, there’s been all kind of jabber in the blogs and on TV about Susan changing her look. As it turns out, her fans don’t want her to change. Susan has started getting her eyebrows done, and shopping for new outfits.

Not to say Susan is losing that special charm, but put simply, the audience liked the underdog.

This is what inspired me to write a post that compared the lovely Susan Boyle to—yes, a landing page.

Why? Because the underdog landing page surprises people too. You need to test a landing page in order to discover what results it will bring. You can’t give it to your best designer and say “make this look pretty”.

When we A/B split our landing pages, the “less pretty” version tends to win, almost every time.

Here’s where my Susan Boyle comparison to a landing page comes in.

1. Good landing pages captivate readers with a story

Great products seldom stand on their own or sell themselves without someone creating a story. A great landing page is a sales letter that begins with a story that heightens desire for the product and prompts a purchase decision.

Read more

Need more cashflow?

If you want to learn one new skill that will grow your business faster than anything else, it’s this.

Learn to write persuasive sales copy.

This is by far the most powerful and effective component of any effective marketing system - on the Internet or anywhere else.

Writing sales copy comes more naturally to some people than others. If you’re a natural salesperson, you will find it much easier. In fact, writing sales copy is totally different from other forms of writing. You don’t need to be a literary genius. You just need to know how to use simple words effectively to sell.

Take a look at the words on your website now. To be honest, do they really grab you and make you want to buy? Probably not, if your site is like 95% of others out there.

Writing persuasive sales copy takes practice and a certain amount of natural flair. But even if you’re not a natural copy writer, you can still learn a few simple techniques that will transform your writing to a point where it will work relatively well in converting prospects into buyers.

The ’so what’ method of writing powerful sales copy

This is a technique I learned from one of the masters of Web copywriting, Joe Robson. Ask the question after every statement you make: “So what?” In other words, put yourself in your prospective customer’s place and ask, what’s in it for them? Offer them some real benefits.

Write a sentence. Then ask: “So what?” If the sentence isn’t focused towards your reader’s needs and interests, change it!

To business owners who want to sell more on the Internet

Since 2004 I have been helping people to sell online. I specialise in writing hype-free sales copy that works powerfully to build trust. And because my low-key style of sales copy is believeable, it causes customers to respond.

In fact, one of my clients tells me his website is on track to turn over more than $12m during 2009. And he expects to be selling $100m worth of products online within three years.

These kind of results make me feel both excited and humble. On the one hand, it’s immensely satisfying to see that my hard work has paid off so well for my clients. But I also realise that I am working alongside some amazingly talented entrepreneurs and marketers, and it’s their marketing brains, in combination with mine, which have achieved such results.

Hardly anybody is paying enough attention to the WORDS on their websites

This week, a business owner contacted me because he was spending a large amount on Google advertising and getting virutally no response from his website. He wanted me to redesign his site.

I had a look at his website and immediately told him not to waste his money getting it redesigned. The site looked fine as it was. The main reason for his poor response was very clear to me.

At the top of his home page, the ‘headline’ read:

Welcome to (company name)

Yawn … click away. The truth is, unless your website headline grabs your visitor’s attention, 80% of them won’t read any further.

I suggested the first thing he should try is a new headline. We came up with a few headlines and decided to test them for a couple of days each, while continuing to run the same Google ads.

We put the first new headline up, and he emailed me excitedly the next day to say he had got 7 leads off the site that day. (That might not seem like a huge number but he had previously been lucky to get 1 lead per day - and each lead in his industry is potentially worth quite a bit of money).

The second day, we added an exclamation mark after the headline, to test it. This resulted in 8 leads the next day!

This is a classic example of the power of WORDS in selling online. Most business owners don’t understand this. As a result, the number of inquiries and sales coming in off their websites is abysmal. Read more …

The secret of selling anything (and everything)

People today are bombarded with advertising. If you’re in business trying to sell anything, you face a real battle to cut through the hundreds of other voices competing for your customer’s attention.

Consumers today are also highly sceptical of anything that looks like it’s trying to SELL them something. They want to see rock solid PROOF of your claims. Otherwise, they’ll laugh in your face.

As the recession bites, we are entering an age of scepticism, like we’ve never seen it before. So what does this mean for you, as a business needing to advertise?

It means, first and foremost, everything you say must be BELIEVABLE. You need to back it up with proof, proof and more proof.

It means, when you are writing your website (or any other advertising) you need to focus squarely on your strongest proof elements. That is, your most persuasive and impressive credentials.

This includes:

• your strongest case histories
• endorsements
• testimonials
• “reasons why” you offer better results and solutions
• success stories
• proven outcomes
• your expert status and areas of specialisation
• your reputation within your industry.

If you write all of this with a spirit of candour and integrity, you can just about guarantee your advertising will be a winner! With all these proof elements you have outlined, your most commonly encountered enemy, scepticism, is largely swept aside.

Find out what your customers want … and help them get it!

The great motivational speaker and author, Zig Ziglar, has said, “You can get anything you want in life if you help enough other people get what they want.” Ignoring this simple insight is the most common cause of marketing failure. Over and over again, otherwise sharp marketers launch a product because they want to sell it, not because anyone wants to buy it.

The secret to success in marketing is to look through the other end of the telescope - not the lens of what you want to sell, but the lens of what people want to buy.

One of the most inspiring books on selling (on the Internet or anywhere else) is Harry Browne’s “The Secret of Selling Anything: A road map to success for the salesman who is not aggressive, who is not a ’smooth talker’ and who is not an extrovert.”

Harry Browne wrote this gem of a book in the 1960s but it wasn’t published until after his death in 2006, by his widow, Pamela. The book is available at www.harrybrowne.org

Browne was a brilliant salesman, who discovered what he calls an “almost effortless” way to sell anything.

His secret is similar to that of Dale Carnegie, author of How to Win Friends and Influence People, who said, “The only way to influence someone is to find out what they want, and show them how to get it.”

Browne puts the same idea this way: “The secret of success is: Find out what people want and help them get it!

“This is the way you separate yourself from the mass of people who just ‘get by.’ This is how you make sure that your services are always in demand. This is how you command a high price in the market-place, by making sure that what you’re offering is what people really want …”

The basic rule is, don’t start selling until you know what the buyer wants to buy.  Find out what people want, and give it to them! It’s so much easier.

That’s why knowing your market is so important

If you are already selling a product or service offline and you want to move online, you will have a foundation already on which to discover the needs and wants of your market.

You can talk with your current customers and find out what’s most important to them. You can ask your top salespeople what works best for them.

When you move onto the Internet, you can use split-tests and multiple versions of Google ads,  each built around different benefits, and scientifically measure which achieves the best results.

How To Write Your Website In 60 Minutes

Dont be daunted at the prospect of writing your website copy. Here’s a simple outline that shows you how to compile the framework for a successful business website - and it shouldn’t take more than 60 minutes.

If you’re like most small business owners, the prospect of writing your website fills you with dread. You don’t know where to start and you’re not sure what to write. Or perhaps you already have a website and you’re wondering whether it’s really working to build your business.

Well, here’s some good news. Follow the simple steps below and you’ll have laid the groundwork for an effective business website that will not only turn visitors into customers but will also rank well with the search engines. And you can achieve this in just 60 minutes - maybe less.

The reason for a 60-minute time limit is that it forces you to focus on the key aspects of your business. Of course, in 60 minutes you won’t be able to write everything you’ll ever want to include on your website. But you will have the basic information that your customers need to do business with you. And you’ll have a website that’s already way ahead of most small business sites in terms of effectiveness.

Step 1

So let’s start. The first step - and one that most people overlook - is to think about the words and phrases a potential customer would enter into a search engine to find your site. Website designers and copywriters usually call these “keywords”.

For example, if you’re a dentist in Christchurch, you might come up with “dentist Christchurch NZ” plus other phrases such as “dental services”, “cosmetic dentistry” and any other field of dentistry that you specialise in.

Take a few minutes to think about these key phrases, as they apply to your business. Imagine you are searching for your business in a search engine. What words would you enter? Remember, people tend to enter phrases of two or three words into search engines, rather than single words.

Once you have selected three or four key phrases, these will become the foundation of your website content. This should only take 5 to 10 minutes. It is a vital step that most businesses neglect when writing their websites.

You will need to keep this list of phrases in front of you as you write your pages, and make sure your keywords are on every page.

Step 2

Now it’s time to start writing your home page. The first step is the headline, which must catch the attention of your readers immediately, otherwise they may click away without reading further.

Your headline should contain your most important key phrase. It may be as simple as “Bill Gummer, Dentist, Christchurch, New Zealand”.  But don’t just put your company name in the headline. It must tell the reader exactly what your business is about. So, another five minutes to write your headline (you can always tweak it later).

Step 3

The next step is to write two or three sub-headings. These must tell the reader what your product or services can do for them. For example, continuing the dentist theme, you might say: “Are you looking for a dentist who will ensure you feel no pain during your treatment?” Or: “Top quality dentistry at an affordable price”.  Or: “Cosmetic dentistry is our speciality”.

Okay, so far you’ve spent about 20 minutes and you have a main headline and two or three sub-headings. These are what most visitors to your site will read first. Only later will they get to the copy between the headings. This is why you focus first on the headlines. 

Step 4

Now it’s time to write the main copy for your home page. Imagine you are chatting one-to-one with your potential client. Tell them why they should choose your business over someone else.

Refer to your list of keywords as you write, and try to use at least one of them in each paragraph, with the most important phrase in the opening paragraph. Your home page doesn’t have to be long.  About 250 words is enough at this stage, to get across the essential facts.

Make sure you include vital information such as your contact details, street address and opening hours on your home page. You should be able to complete this in 10 minutes. Total time elapsed, 30 minutes.

Step 5

Next, you’ll need to write a page about your products or services. Start by making a list. This should only take two or three minutes. Then, take each item on then list and say a bit about it. Again, remember you a talking one-to-one with your reader, so don’t be too formal, but try to weave your keywords into your copy.

This is the page where you should also include prices, if appropriate. If you get stuck for words here, don’t worry. You can come back later. But at least you now have the basic framework of your page. Later, you can expand this page with more details. Don’t spend more than 10 minutes on this page.

Step 6

Next, write a page called ‘About Us’, or something similar. If you’re a one-person business, this can be similar to your curriculum vitae. If you’re a larger business, it will include the history of the company and its main achievements.

Again, don’t take too long over this. Just jot down the key facts, which should only take a few minutes. You should include photos of yourself and your staff on this page, too.

Step 7

Next, write a page called ‘projects’  or ‘clients’  or ‘portfolio’ or something similar, which outlines projects you have done. Make a list at this stage, without worrying too much about filling in the details. Again, try to work in your keywords.

If you’re a well-established business, this list may be quite long and you can break it up later into several pages.

Step 8

Next, write a page called ‘Frequently Asked Questions’ or ‘Questions and Answers’. This doesn’t have to be long. Think of the top three or four questions related to your business. Make sure one of these includes your prices. This should take another 10 minutes.

Step 9

Finally, write a page with all your contact details. This should take two or three minutes at most.

Step 10

Make sure you spell-check your copy. Read it through a final time and check for grammar. Double check that your main keywords appear on every page. Now, you have the framework for a basic six-page website, which not only tells your potential customers the vital information they need to know about your business but also is well placed to rank on the search engines.

You really can do this in 60 minutes. If you feel you need professional help to take your website copy a step further, you at least have the basic framework that a professional copywriter can polish up into really sharp sales copy.

Make Your Website Sell

Hundreds of new business websites are springing up every week. The owners of these sites are full of optimism that their venture into e-commerce will transform their business by bringing in new customers and boosting their sales.

But the reality is that most websites fail abysmally as sales tools. Why? Because the owners of these sites have spent a lot of money creating fancy graphics but paid little attention to the words on the site. And it’s the words on websites that sell. Your fancy graphics might entertain your potential customers but they won’t make the sale.

Take a look at many of the websites out there in cyberspace. They are full of spelling mistakes, poor grammar and cumbersome text that makes you want to do only one thing…click your mouse button and move to something else.

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