Your Website Isn’t About You
Are you turning off potential customers without even knowing it? One of the most common mistakes businesses make with their website is assuming that it’s all about them. There’s a big problem with this approach: the customer cares about finding a solution to their problems, not about you.
Why does this happen? We believe there are two main reasons:
All “About Us”
Here’s the first: it’s so tempting to talk about ourselves.
Open the average website and you’ll see a company telling you what they do. Scroll down a bit and you’ll see a list of services maybe something about a product with its many features and benefits. There’s usually an About Us page, ready to tell you the company’s life story.
You see this type of content everywhere you look, but what does it do for you?
Does it leave you with the impression that the business has a deep understanding of your problems?
Are solutions presented that speak directly to your problems?
Usually not.
A Look Only an Owner Could Love
The second reason has to do with how your site looks. Does your website design meet your needs, or does it meet the needs of your customers? Every web designer has heard the words “I don’t like the way this looks” from a customer. This seems perfectly reasonable. A customer should get a look they want, something they can be happy with, right? They’re paying the bill after all.
Not so fast! Your website isn’t about you, remember? A website needs to appeal to its audience in order to be effective, and its owner often isn’t in that audience. A good web designer’s primary goal should be the creation of a website that speaks and looks good to its intended audience.
What can you do about it?
Write “You” Focused Content
Consider the differences between these two paragraphs:
“We are a full-service web design company. We do everything you need to get your business online and running! From design to creation and hosting, we take care of it all.”
“Have you ever thought to yourself ‘I need more customers’ or ‘I’m frustrated with my website’? Are you tired of dealing with Do-It-Yourself solutions? We help businesses like yours solve those problems.”
The first paragraph could be found on any typical web designer’s site. That style is so common that you may have found yourself correctly guessing the next sentence. That is, if you even bothered to read it!
The second paragraph speaks to a business’s target audience. It talks about specific problems they are facing, and starts to build a connection with them. By shifting the focus to speak directly about a customer’s problems, you position yourself as having the expertise and the solutions that will fulfill their needs. You’ve made their visit about solving their problems, not giving them the same generic content they’ve seen so many times before.
Think of the Customer
We tend to do and create the things that we ourselves like. If you like the color blue for example, you may find that your website reflects that. What if that choice was causing you to miss out on catching your visitor’s eye with a more attention-grabbing color like red? A sales page may look very long to you, but it could be just right to a visitor who has objections before buying.
When you are designing your website, its important to recognize and differentiate between your personal preferences and what will appeal to your visitors. Ask yourself “am I making it this way because I like it, or because its what my customers want to see?” Your website isn’t about you, its about serving the needs of your customer.