Choosing a Web Copywriter or Designer...
Isn't Like Buying a Car —

Unless...

• You Don't Care If Your Competitors Eat Your Lunch ...
• You Prefer To Look Like Everyone Else, and ...
  
• You Want To Be Just As Ineffective As They Are—

Smart Business Owners Know ...

The Copywriter's Skill Makes or Breaks
Your Website's Effectiveness

But ...

Ineffective Site Architecture ...
Problems In Site Usability ...
Or the Wrong Approach To Graphic Design—
Can Turn A Copywriting Masterpiece ...
Into Complete Disaster!

Let Me Protect You With My Skills—

In the last third of a century, I've interviewed hundreds of business owners about their businesses. The've told me about their experiences — how they got into business ... how they run their businesses ... and many other things.

During that same time period, I've interviewed thousands of consumers about their aspirations ... their frustrations ... and what they're looking for in life.

And I've learned a few very important things.

Let me clue you in on some pertinent facts...

A Look At Business Owners...
How you think has a lot to do with how well you thrive in business. Are you making any of these business-killing mistakes?

• Far too many small-business owners — like consumers — live life backwards. Among owners of larger businesses it's less prevalent, but still there.
• Many don't know how and don't bother to learn how to evaluate the market potential for a given business before they start or buy it. Then they're surprised when it doesn't produce because they picked an unprofitable or unproductive market segment.
• They choose a business or product category they like, not knowing for sure what customers really want — then hope they make it.
• A lot of them don't have a clue what real people are actually looking for. They don't understand consumer buying habits.
• Some really don't much care. Their attitude is: "this is what we have — take it or leave it" — and it shows.
• Far too many don't understand the relationship between revenue, overhead, inventory turns per year, gross profit margin, and bottom-line net profit.
• If they have a web site, it's based on what they like — not what visitors, prospects, and customers really need and want.
• They don't know how — or don't know where to learn how — to position their business properly against their competition.
• Some don't want to compete. They just run their business like a garage sale.
• They design their own advertising, or give the job to someone else who also doesn't understand their customers' wants, needs, and desires.
• They're more interested in "saving money" than maximizing profit or profit potential.
• When times are tight, they cut back on marketing — and on developing new products or product offerings — both of which are critical to business survival, competitiveness, and growth.

Example:
A few weeks before I first created this page, I was talking with a business owner. One of their customers had complained to me about their clumsy website and suggested I contact them to see if they'd like to consider making it friendlier and easier for visitors to use.

The owner's reaction?

"Yeah, we've had complaints from other customers too — but we like it just fine the way it is."

Would you want to do business with someone that indifferent about their customers?

How do you rank when your customers look at you or your site?

A Look At Consumers...
Many, if not most consumers — customers of the businesses we just discussed — have similarly screwy thinking:

• They work at jobs based on what they like to do or find pleasure in, rather than how well those jobs can meet their economic needs.
• They don't expend significant effort to improve their productivity or earning potential. Watching TV is easier.
• They expect their employer to provide "benefits" instead of improving their own ability to earn — thereby becoming able to support themselves — at a higher level.
• They avoid and resist change and personal improvement as if they were fatal, incurable plagues — rather than the key to survival and prosperity.
• They're more concerned about where they'll go for their next vacation than about planning for retirement or being prepared for emergencies or economic downturns.
• They spend money they don't have on things they really don't need, loading themselves with consumer debt.
  The cost of paying interest on that debt then prevents future purchases, which, in turn, causes severe economic downturns — just as I've predicted for over 20 years — that finally erupted in 2008.
• They don't have a clue about how business works or where their income comes from — i.e., from their employer's customers.
• They look more for cheap prices than long-term dependability or durability in what they buy.
• They are woefully illiterate about economics, the correct role of government in their lives, and what determines their income.
  They don't understand that their income is determined by the value others place on what they do for those employers.
• The majority are easy pickings for slick advertisers...
• To say nothing of politicians seeking to exploit and enslave them.
• When times get tough they look for help from government and employers instead of becoming more self-reliant themselves.

That, my friend, describes a lot of the people you're probably trying to turn into productive customers.

Begin With The End In Mind

If you're one of the few who went into business forward instead of backwards, congratulations! If you aren't, turn around, and join us as I take you on a journey forward to show you how an effective, strategic website or any other effective business communication comes into existence.

Whether you hire someone to build your site or you create your own, the practices below are essential if you want a successful result. Violate any of these, and your conversion rates will tank. ... Guaranteed.

Steven Covey, a world-famous business consultant, wrote a book many years ago titled Seven Habits of Highly Effective People. I recommend reading it.

I won't go into all of the habits, but the first two are essential:

1: Think Win-Win.
To succeed in business, and to have an effective website, you must put your customer's interests up front and center.

Just as your business showroom or reception area serves to draw your prospect's interest by displaying your wares or your capabilities, likewise your website exists to clearly demonstrate your ability to solve your prospective customer's problem or fill his or her specific need.

That means you focus your web content on creating opportunities for transactions to occur — balancing them in such a way that your customer wins by getting something that is of greater value to him or her than the value of the money you receive in exchange. You arrange it so you get paid well for giving good value — while being very careful to ensure that the customer also always gets great value.

And that is the primary purpose of business. It provides a means whereby people can truly be of service to others. And by giving service, we all prosper more.

2: Begin With the End in Mind.
Here is where most businesses and web developers blow it. They are so focused on making the site into some sort of artistic or verbal masterpiece that they fail to pay attention to what they're supposed to be doing in the first place — making a sale, getting a visitor to initiate an action, or accomplishing some other definite purpose.

And that definite purpose behind the strategy being implemented on the site must always be focused on the visitor — the prospect — the customer.

What a concept! Giving people what they actually want — not what you want them to want because that's what you happen to like.

Building A Site

Here's where the rubber meets the road.

Your website isn't about you. ... It isn't about what you make. ... It isn't about what you sell. ... It isn't about what you do.

It isn't about your "mission" — or your "mission statement" ... which most web users I talk to tell me they hate and definitely don't want to see.

It isn't about your desire to be "the best provider of the best customer service on planet earth that is far better than even your competitor's absolutely best potential!!!"

[That last one is a reasonable paraphrase of an actual website by a competitor of one of my clients — including the three exclamation points.]

It's all about your visitor. It's all about what your visitor wants. What your visitor needs. About solving your visitor's concern. Your visitor's problem. It absolutely is not about you.

Step 1: Know Your Prospect

So if your website is about your visitor — your prospect — that leads to a burning question:

Who is your target audience? What does your target visitor or prospect need or want? What is his or her problem that needs solving?

Until you know that, you don't know your audience.

Until you know that, you can't build a strategic, effective website.

Step 2: Create the Correct Message
For Reaching That Prospect

The message you create has to match the needs and wants of the prospect. It is never about you. And it has to be crafted correctly to have the right effect on your prospect's thinking — without being manipulative ... without any trace of dishonesty ... and entirely on the prospect's terms.

If you don't meet those requirements, your visitor leaves and moves on to the next site that might have a better solution...

Step 3: Select the Correct Spokesperson
To Communicate With That Prospect

Then you have to have the right person communicating that message. It might be you ... or an employee ... or someone else. It must be someone who can help establish your prospect's confidence and trust in your message.

Approaches to this step vary widely. — It depends on the audience. — It depends on the nature of your business. — It depends on lots of things.

No one approach works in all situations.

Step 4: Communicate Your Message
In the Right Way

Few guys propose marriage to that special lady by showing up in dirty work clothes with an empty lunch bucket for her to fill. Most of those making up the fairer half of humanity prefer something a bit more romantic. ... No — a lot more romantic.

Likewise, there's a right way to come into your prospect's consciousness. And it's usually not by colliding with their current thoughts like a high-speed freight train smashing into a small car at a railroad crossing.

You can be certain your message won't be accepted if you don't do this one right.

Step 5: And Communicate It
At the Right Time

Communication occurs when the prospect is in the mood to be receptive to your message. Just as a frazzled mother isn't ready to listen to your pitch when the baby's fussing, hungry, and needs a bath — don't expect to barge into your prospect's mind with a message totally unrelated to what the prospect is ready to hear.

However, if you're there to take care of baby, feed and bathe him while she takes a nice ... long ... soak ... in a luxurious ... warm ... bubble bath, you just might find her very receptive to your message — especially if you're her husband ... and baby's father.

So don't come on like a telemarketer jangling the phone when your prospect's in the middle of an intimate dinner and wants some quiet family time after a hard day at the office. That's a good way to flush your chances right down the sewer.

So What Does This All Mean
For Your Website Content and Design?

Several implications are inherent in these five steps:

• Every website design must be unique — with its own purpose ... its own audience ... its own characteristics ... its own writing style ... its own design.
• You have to know and identify your audience very well if you're going to be effective.
• You may need to do at least some, if not extensive, split testing of content on your website to discover what works best for your audience — or conduct formal audience studies to get better actual user data.
• Every page on every site has to fit a specific purpose within the strategy for that specific site.
• Some space may need to be devoted purely to credibility issues — depending on the type of business ... the style of business operation ... methods of interacting with customers, etc.
• To properly position a business, every business website must exhibit its own personality — which makes comparison with other sites in order to mimic them strategically unwise.

That's why I am always reluctant to send people to look at other sites I or others designed. Each site has its own purpose, and most people who want to "shop sites" to see what they like are not professionally trained enough to know which sites are good and which ones stink.

There's Danger In What You Think You "Like"

It's fascinating to observe the reaction of people who "like" a specific site until I start showing them the problems and marketing mistakes in the site's design. Once they realize the seriousness of some of those mistakes, their opinion of the site quickly changes to dislike.

If I'm negotiating a project with a prospective client, I may send them to look at a specific page or specific parts of a site to get a feel for how I handle certain situations or specific challenges.

But I do it only after I explain what I want them to look for to help them make a valid decision.

The Risk In Looking At Other Sites for Ideas
Or to Get An Opinion of the Writer You're Hiring

All really good writers who create direct-response copy (junk mail) are voraciously interested in reading other writer's copy when they see it. They're looking for ideas and methods they can imitate (without breaking any copyright laws or plagiarizing) and make their copy easier to write while also making it more effective.

But there's a huge risk in doing that. If the copy looks good and you use ideas from it, you could be shooting yourself in the foot if the copy was a test piece and it bombed in the marketplace.

An Ethics Question...

A huge ethical dilemma arises too:

Suppose I have a prospective client who is considering having me develop a website for him. Knowing he is not an expert on website architecture and design issues — and he also is not an expert copywriter — I let him look at a site I developed, and compare it with a site he likes that was developed by someone else.

Based on his opinions and current thinking, he decides he likes the other site better than mine and chooses the other developer for the project.

If I know the website I designed is better and more effective than the other, am I being honest by allowing him to choose on the basis of his own opinion without at least educating him carefully about what to look for — assuming he'll let me?

No!

My Obligation to the Prospective Client...

In fact, I'm doing him a huge disservice, plus I'm being actively dishonest by not helping him make a better decision than he is currently equipped to make. I have a moral obligation to help him make the best decision possible for his business.

If you were considering surgery for a medical condition, asking the surgeon about his experience would be entirely proper. But what sensible patient would ask a surgeon to see other work he's performed before committing to the operation? — Or ask an attorney to see a copy of a court brief before hiring him? It makes no sense.

So How Do You Find Safety
When Choosing a Copywriter and Designer?

I have no inclination nor need to hide my work. I'm good at what I do and I know it. You can't work as hard as I have for as many years as I have without learning a thing or two.

And you develop very strong opinions along the way.

But when I work with a client to plan a new website or to rework an existing one, I start with the five steps above, and carefully craft the message to meet the client's business needs.

And like a good attorney, if the client wants to do something a certain way and I think it's unwise, we'll have to work our way through it. I am not willing to let my client injure his or her business by making choices that might hinder the effectiveness of his or her website, or any other business communications without first making him or her aware of why I think it should be done differently.

Then, if the client wants it done their way, they can make the final call. It's their money. But they'll make the decision with all the facts in hand, so it's not a decision made on their opinion alone.

My only interest is in having your business look as good and work as well as I can help make it. I'm your advocate. My job is to help you present your case as effectively as it can be presented ... so you'll be able to retain as much success and profit as your business is able to produce.

And when that happens, we both win.

Call (970) 667-6736 now
to schedule a professional consultation for your website.