Clay Harper, Small Business Performance Expert, Infusionsoft
Clay Harper is an Infusionsoft employee of 3+ years, with experience in a variety of roles all having one common theme- helping entrepreneurs. He’s made it a point to stick around in customer facing roles because solving problems is one of his passions. And I’ll be the first to add that he’s darn good at it too. He’s got a level-headed, no-nonsense approach that really resonates with lots of folks. In addition to his passion for helping small businesses, Clay is an accomplished traveler, business owner, and professional beekeeper (For real). Anyway, I asked him to write, and here’s the awesome outcome.
3 Tips to Improve Your Website’s Homepage
“What do you think of my website?” is a question I am frequently asked by my consulting clients. Whether these entrepreneurs are do-it-yourselfers who made their own wordpress site or they paid thousands to a web designer to get it done, they all want to know if their website’s homepage is making a good impression.
Tell me truly… If you had a consistently underperforming employee, wouldn’t you fire them? Surely, you’d let them go? With great gusto you would!
Your website’s homepage is no different and it has three jobs that it must accomplish! Your homepage must:
1. Welcome and inform visitors about your business
2. Persuade to engage with your website
3. Obtain an email address/phone number
Homepages that accomplish this start on the right footing with customers, get visitors to interact more with their site and convert more visitors into email addresses, phone numbers and ultimately sales.
Welcome and Inform:
I believe it was Tolstoy who penned that “All happy websites are alike, but that each unhappy website is unhappy in its own way.” If you look at enough websites you notice that the good ones tend to have white backgrounds, use non-primary colors, and are tightly organized. They show rather than tell and they are judicious in their use of stock photography.
Your website is the face of your business so it needs to be unique to you, but realize people have already figured out how to make a good website. You aren’t going to suddenly invent a new way to do it. Look at competitors and emulate those doing it well.
The colors, style and layout you choose greatly influence how people think about you. This is doubly true for new visitors to your website that find you organically or from your advertising efforts.
Keep your writing punchy and to the point and be sure to include more than one “call to action”. Remember that people tend to skip paragraphs longer than 4 sentences long. It is generally more effective to show than to tell, so use graphics (and video) when possible.
Take advantage of the natural way people tend to scan or read through web pages. In English, people read left to right top to bottom but they always look at things exactly that way. For more on this check out this resource. Most modern themes for websites apply these patterns into their design so you should too.
It can be difficult to evaluate your own website. Have a trusted, web savvy person take a look and ponder on their advice. Lastly I don’t always use boring stock photography… but when I do I prefer ones that have Vince Vaughn in it.
Persuade them to click deeper into your website
Your homepage’s second job is to get people to dive deeper into your website. Your homepage is the most trafficked page because it’s the first or second page that people visit. A good homepage has links and buttons that are persuasive to different segments in your target market.
Not everyone who hits your website is the same. Each person has different priorities and interests (like a snowflake). You want your homepage to educate and offer a virtual potpourri of interests so that the visitor can choose the one that most interests them. Self-segmentation!
Most homepages should be a filtering page where visitors can see a variety of options and click the one they like best. This means visitors to your secondary pages are prepared and ready to consume targeted content and click on calls to action.
Convert Visitors into Email Addresses and/or Phone Numbers
Finally your homepage must convert your visitors into email addresses. Conversion is the most important job for your website and your copy should be geared toward that end. Most websites convert visitors into email addresses using a web form to give away free valuable content in exchange for that email address.
Once the visitor (now a shiny new lead!) submits that email address you will need to deliver what you promised and follow up with an amazing nurture sequence of emails to persuade them to purchase. This is where email automation takes over and Infusionsoft (or whichever tool you use) springs into action.
I’ve been focusing on email addresses but the same is true for phone numbers. Just realize that people more closely guard their phone number as an email rarely interrupts dinner.
Often businesses will choose to have a more generic lead capture featured on their homepage, since most visitors hit that page, so an offer with broad appeal can be more effective. They save their more specific lead magnets for the individual pages of their website where they are most effective.
A homepage that welcomes, persuades visitors to dig deeper, and captures email addresses will bring you quality leads who are more likely to purchase. So take a look at your website. How does it stack up?Do you need to have a hard conversation with your website about it’s future with the company?
Creating a beautiful, high-converting website that you can be proud of is definitely some work, but having a website that educates, engages and is in-tune with your marketing is invaluable. Take action now!
A few weeks ago I participated in the first Mastermind Panel, hosted by my friend Jordan Hatch. It was basically a strategy session where Jordan, Paul Sokol, Nathan Paris and I dissected some campaigns, made recommendations and explored different campaign building strategies. If you missed this one, you can check out the recording here.
(It was a bunch of fun, and we’ll certainly do it again. If you’re interested you should sign up here to be notified for the next one.)
Anyway, after the mastermind panel I received an email from a Michael Rogan (A friend and Infusionsoft employee) who said that while listening to us strategize he had a big “Ah-ha” moment.
You know, the type where you finally connect the dots and realize that Leah Remini on King of Queens was also Stacey Carosi from that one weird season of Saved By the Bell where they all worked at a beach resort.
Anyway, his ah-ha moment can be boiled down to this:
Notes are for humans, tags are for computers.
I think Nathan said it on the call, but it resonated with Michael, and then it stuck with me when I read his follow up email.
The reason this is so important is because there are a handful of issues in the Infusionsoft community that all tie back to tags.
You see, lots of the other CRM or email marketing platforms out there operate with what are called lists. Infusionsoft doesn’t use lists, it uses tags.
But those tags can also be used to trigger automation. They can also be used as criteria for your reports. Or for your searches. And can be applied and removed automatically when someone clicks a link (or doens’t click a link).
They’re all over the place. I like the quote “Tags are like a swiss army knife. They can do a lot of things, but you have to be careful with them.”
But just because a swiss army knife can open a bottle of wine, doesn’t mean it’s the easiest way to open wine. And just because a swiss army knife has a blade doesn’t mean you should cut your steak with it when you have a steak knife.
Just because a tag can be used for something, doesn’t mean it should be.
I hear people say all the time that their tags are a mess. I hear people complaining that they have too many tags, or that their tags are repetitive, or confusing. So I want to set a few things straight:
There is no tag limit. So there isn’t an official “too many” number. I’ve seen people with a few hundred tags, and I’ve seen people with 10K+.
What matters is whether or not the tags are carrying meaningful information.
If they’re redundant, or if they don’t mean anything at all, then yeah, you might want to audit your tags and trim it down. So, there are plenty of philosophies on tags, and strategies for organizing them out there, and in fact that’ll probably be a whole course of it’s own some day (here’s a good post on tags for the meantime).
I think a big part of the confusion surrounding tags is that people don’t fully understand what their other options are, so they rely on tags when they could have easily used something else.
This brings me to notes. Notes, and note templates are a remarkably valuable way for recording something that happened offline. They’re perfect for denoting something that took place as part of a process online, or even recording a specific action that took place online. You can personalize the note and add context to it as you’re using it. You can automate the application of a note, to create a time and date stamped record that something happened.
If you need to manually start a campaign process, you could use a tag to achieve a goal. Or you could use a note. (Here’s an example of a campaign I think everyone should be using, and it starts with a note)
The beauty of using a note is it allows you to not only record what happened, but also add additional details about the interaction so you can reference them down the road.
Here are the key distinctions:
Notes can be applied more than once, and maintain a record of each time it was used.
Both can be used to achieve goals.
Both can be applied manually by a human, or as an automated step in a sequence.
Notes can be customized to add details from your conversation, or context around why it was applied.
Tags achieve multiple goals in more than one campaign.
With Infusionsoft there tend to be multiple ways to do most things. But the more you understand, the easier it’ll be to choose the best tool for your particular needs. I’m not saying that you shouldn’t use tags, just that you should use them judiciously.
BONUS: Recently I had someone ask about the difference between legacy notes in the templates section, and the notes we create in the campaign builder. So I created this video to help clear up how both work.
In a previous post, we had Coach Cameron Roberts outline the first four of his tips toward building a 6 figure coaching, training or consulting business. These tips are valuable for small businesses of all kind, but as Cameron has outlined, he’s dialed in to a niche within a niche, and has proven the strategies for specific business models.
The 7 Steps for Creating a 6 Figure Coaching, Consulting or Training Business in 6 Months or Less (Part 2)
Step 5 – Solve Big Problems
As a coach, consultant or trainer you are paid in direct proportion to the value you deliver to the marketplace. This value is the problems you solve.
Solve bigger problems and you can charge more in coaching, consulting and training fees.
Ask yourself these questions about your ideal clients:
What are their fears?
What are their frustrations?
What are their deepest desires?
What are their wants?
What causes them stress?
What keeps them up at night?
Then once you answer these questions get busy in creating product offerings around them to present to all your future prospects.
Nothing will build your coaching, consulting or training business faster than your ability to solve your prospects’ and customers’ biggest problems!
Step 6 – Compete to Win
An old sports coach once told me “2nd place is the first loser” – and while that may seem a bit hardcore, or not politically correct in today’s “everyone is a winner” society – it’s not too far from the truth of real life.
Think about the Olympics.
There’s 8 athletes in a swimming race final.
The difference between 1st and 8th in some races are fractions of a second.
The first place winner gets a gold medal and returns home to TV interviews, new sponsorship deals, and lots of publicity.
But what about 8th place who finished 0.50 of a second behind 1st place?
I mean they are the 8th fastest person in the world… certainly that’s worth something right?
Realistically we all know they don’t get the same sponsorship deals and opportunities.
In your coaching, consulting and training business – you’ve got to compete to win.
Business these days is “hyper-compeitive”.
Your competition is no longer the other coach or consultant in your neighbourhood, town or city.
Your competition is all the other consultants worldwide getting the attention of your prospecting clients.
This is a game you must play to win.
Plan to dominate.
Play hard.
Get up early.
Stay up late.
Never give up.
Get up, Dress up and Show up and you’ll go up!
Compete to win.
Step 7 – Be Sales Focused
Invest 20% to 40% of your working week “on” your coaching, consulting and training business rather than “in” your business.
Consultants and coaches tend to be great technicians – this is what makes them great consultants. But it can also make them lousy business owners!
As a business owner you must Master Sales!
Create a “Sales Focused” coaching, consulting or training business.
Have a look at your current prices and put them up 10% to 20% straight away.
Stop charging “per hour” and start charging “per package” or “per month” for your services.
Make a list of the different revenue streams you could create more sales from within the next 6 months.
And stop dropping your pants when it comes to your fees when you sense an objection from a prospective client.
There’s nothing that will damage your credibility more than backing down on your fees to get a prospect over the line. When’s the last time you seen a heart surgeon negotiate their fees to their patient on the table about to get operated on?
It never happens right – and if you’re great at what you do, it shouldn’t happen in your business either.
So invest 20% to 40% of your weekly business timetable working “on” your business and always keep a sales focus!
Here’s to your success – good luck with building your 6 figure coaching, consulting and training business in the next 6 months or less!
Regards,
Coach Cameron Roberts
Contact: Cameron Roberts Australasia’s Leading Sales Coach and Digital Marketing Consultant Web: https://coachcameronroberts.com/ Follow Cameron on Twitter: @CoachCameron
Your homepage’s second job is to get people to dive deeper into your website. Your homepage is the most trafficked page because it’s the first or second page that people visit. A good homepage has links and buttons that are persuasive to different segments in your target market.
Once the visitor (now a shiny new lead!) submits that email address you will need to deliver what you promised and follow up with an amazing nurture sequence of emails to persuade them to purchase. This is where email automation takes over and Infusionsoft (or whichever tool you use) springs into action.
