How Your Value Proposition Defines Your Website’s Success

Posted on December 14, 2021 by harborcapitalgroupinc

How Your Value Proposition Defines Your Website’s Success

Visitors come to your website because they have a specific problem that needs to be solved.

But, visitors will only give you about 8 seconds before deciding if they will stay and read more.

If they stay, you have about 125 words to convince them that your company has the best solution to their problem.

They will probably not read on or even scan the page if they are not confident. They will move on and probably never come back again.

Tell your value proposition story quickly.

Years ago, we were taught to start with the problem and then offer the solution.

But think about it. Your visitors already know the problem, so they are at your website.

They are searching for the answer to their problem.

You need to convince them immediately that your value proposition solves their problem.

Tell them why you can solve their problem.

Tell prospects what you do and how you solve their problem

Why your solution is superior to your competition.

Your value proposition needs to compel them to read your entire story.

They will most likely move on without a clear, targeted value proposition.

Most people look at multiple companies before deciding to move forward.

To show you how few companies have a compelling value proposition,

marketingexperiments.com states that only 2.2% of businesses have a compelling value proposition.

You must also tell your value proposition story quickly at the top of your website.

Very few websites have a value proposition, and even fewer have it at the top of their website.

Check out your competitor’s websites and see how many have a value proposition and what you see as your competition.

Remember, your website is about what they want to hear, not what you want to tell them.

Here are the basics you will want to include:

Headline. The headline tells the reader your value proposition in one sentence, no more than two sentences.
Yes, it’s only one sentence, but you will have to write it many times to get it perfect and make it attention-getting.
Next, write a short explanation of the critical elements of your value proposition in two or three sentences. Remember, you have to be able to deliver what you promise.
Then, add up to three features, benefits, or unique differences you offer. Individual bullet points are an excellent way to highlight these benefits.
A positive image, if possible. You know, of course, it’s worth a thousand words :).

Here are the basics you will want to include:

Headline. The headline tells the reader your value proposition in one sentence, no more than two sentences.
Yes, it’s only one sentence, but you must write it many times to get it perfect and make it attention-getting.
Next, write a short explanation of the critical elements of your value proposition in two or three sentences. Remember, you have to be able to deliver what you promise.
Then, add up to three features, benefits, or unique differences you offer. Individual bullet points are an excellent way to highlight these benefits.
A positive image, if possible. You know, of course, it’s worth a thousand words :).

I am sure you will consider many more questions to examine as you define your value proposition. To NeilPatel.com, Google cares about how long people spend reading your webpage. If visitors spend time on your page, you got it right.

Conclusion

Your value proposition is critical. You will be in a class all your own if you have a compelling value proposition.

You will want to get it “perfect,” which will take some time.

It may only take a few minutes to write, but it will take many tries to perfect it.

To get started, ask yourself these questions.

Why does the potential client want to solve this problem? I
Is there no workaround?
How is the problem affecting their business?
Why haven’t they been able to solve it already? How can you solve the problem?
What outcome and benefits result from your solution? Here are the basics you will want to include:

P.S. I would love to hear how the development of your value proposition went and how successful you have been since you implemented it. Go to our website and let us know. Your story may inspire and help others (and us) try to improve their value proposition.

PPS. You might want to check out this blog post as well. Transform Your Competitive Market Into an Uncontested Market. Click Here

How To Turn Your Website Into A Selling Machine

Posted on October 22, 2020 by harborcapitalgroupinc

Unless you are an eCommerce company, entrepreneurs want their website to make the company look “professional.” That’s great, but websites are the number one selling tool that most companies have, so they should be used by everyone to sell its products and services. It can both look “professional” and sell our products and services.

For starters, you need to look at your website’s structure to make sure you have structured a persuasive story. Following is a website structure that will guide you to a successful website.

According to Yoast, Site structure refers to how you organize your website’s content. A website often consists of content on a variety of related topics. The site structure deals with how this content is grouped, linked, and presented to the visitor. If you structure your website well, it will benefit from this structure; users will find their way more easily, and Google can better index your website.

Layout each section on paper first, so you don’t have to make any changes later during and after development. There are nine sections in this discussion. Colors and images are fine, and you need to use them, but it’s words that sell.

Don MIllier, author and CEO of storybrand.com, has a simple, straightforward way to look at your website, making sense and is easy to use. Look at your website and compare it to this list,

1 Header

First impressions are important. The first 10 seconds the customer lands on your page are the most critical. They decide to stay or leave. Others say 20 seconds is what you have or the first 100 words.

Don’t be cute or clever. Be simple, clear. You need to answer three questions; first, what do you offer? How will it make the customer’s life better? What do they need to do to buy it? This is where you get your CTA.

Don’t be passive-aggressive aggressive with CTA. like “learn more.” The customer needs something to accept or reject. You can even have two CTA‘s in the header. Images are good and happy people are hard to beat. But, if you sell cakes, show great cakes.

2 The Problem or Situation

This is the failure section. Stories love tension. Most stories start with a character who wants something. Then challenges are placed between the character and what the character wants. The closing of the distance makes the story work—a positive scene, followed by a negative scene.

What is the cost of not doing business with you? What is not having a clear, powerful messaging costing you? How many customers can’t hear your offer in the sea of marketing noise? Your lack of clarity may already be costing you a great deal?.

If there are no stakes in the story, there is no story. How about the pains of losing to competition, not reaching potential, confusion, lost business, missed opportunities, wasted time.

But a little bit of this goes a long way. Maybe show a box with a logo and a sentence or so telling about some pains. Maybe underneath the box, three columns with some points that you want to make.

4 Value proposition

It is a good idea to put this section after stakes position after negotiation; stories love the contrast. Contrasting scenes work well. What value will the customer receive if they do business with you? Tell customers everything they get: can they save money, save time, reduce risk, get quality, simplify their life.

Be specific. The visual. Maybe a box again with 123 and the different points that you want to make. It would be best if you had a headline on top of the visual; otherwise, people won’t read it.

5 The guide

Provide an incredible return on their investment. Focus on the customer, Lose sleep over your customer’s success.

The Guide is an empathetic and authoritative person to help the customer get where he wants to be. He understands their challenge and helps people achieve it.

A couple of ways to show this are testimonials, logos of companies you’ve worked with. A simple statistic, many people you’ve helped tons of people for example

Don’t overdo authority. Make sure you don’t use too much authority and not enough empathy. Three testimonials will show both. Keep testimonials short and to the point.

The same is true for overcoming objections, involving problems, solving problems, adding value. Keep testimonials short; statistics is another way. Show the years you’ve been in business, awards you’ve received, and clients you have served.

5 The Plan

This tells customers the path they need to take to buy the product or service. It may not be obvious to them how to do it. Use three steps. Keep the plan visibly simple.

6 The Explanatory paragraph

Most people don’t stay on the website because there are too many useless words at the top. With this structure, they are already hooked by the time they get here.

This is where the SEO comes from. This explanatory paragraph needs to follow the story outline. One, identify who your customer wants to become, two identify what they want, three, define the problem setting them back, four, position you as their guide, five, share a plan they can use to solve the problem, which includes your product—six calls to action.

Another option. Overcome your client’s objections. List the top five reasons or excuses why they don’t want to work with you. Craft a sentence or two to overcome each objection. Note you can do both of these on the same page.

7 Videos

Videos are becoming very popular. Many sites have them now, and you will need to look at them as a quick way to get your message across quickly and with impact. A

8 Price choices

If you have several price options, you will want to put them after giving them enough information that visitors could make a buying decision.

9 Other Information

All of the above information may not be enough for everyone. Some will want to know more. Here is where this information goes. Those very interested will continue to read on, but most will have exited by this point. They could come back another time, however. Also, some people will have questions, and this is the place to answer those questions in either narrative format or even a list of questions and answers.

Conclusion

You want a professional-looking site, but you also need a website that delivers a sales message. This structure will help you get both. You don’t have to go one through nine; you can vary the order depending on your message. However, you need to start with a problem and the solution to get the visitor to spend any time looking at your story.\

Does your website have a readable structure? What improvement could you make?

How To Build Your E-mail List

Posted on February 7, 2020 by harborcapitalgroupinc

Encourage visitors who visit your website to signup for your email list and make it easy for them to sign up.

In today’s market, you must build trust before converting prospects into customers.

One way to do that is with popup displays on one or more pages on your website.

It’s easy to do. You can do it yourself, and it’s very inexpensive,

You can use popup displays in many ways to capture names and email addresses.

A/B testing of messages, product or service value propositions, and more.

The email signups can even go automatically into your mail program (for example, Constant Contact or MailChimp).

You can also get a lot of analytical information from the program.

I use OptinMonster, and this information comes from them.

Following are some basic things to think about when designing your program,

1 Create a clear, very visible call to action (e.g., email address)

2 Personalize your popups (friendly tone and referral source if you know it, or special segment if the source was targeted).

3 Offer an irresistible incentive (special white paper, informative blog, special price, etc.)

4 Use a design that stands out (but it should also blend into your site because it is your offer, not some company’s advertisement.

5 Create popups for desktop and mobile (design for platform-specific campaigns

for mobile users are limited to touch controls, bandwidth, and certain SEO rules).

Also, a lot of mobile users are having negative ideas about ads in general on their mobile dev\ic,

6, Use exit attempts to capture abandoning visitors before they leave (you can convert

an additional 2-4% of visitors into email subscribers. (OptinMonster lets you use a mouse to track movement toward the exit

and gives you another chance to get them to pull the trigger on your call to action.

For example, you might have to offer something different,

a discount, a case study, or something else the prospect would value.

7 Show your popup ad at the end of your web page or post.

Give the visitor plenty of time to evaluate the information on your website.

The popup is often limited to appearing too quickly before the visitor has time to see what you are offering.

8 Keep your request noticeable with a floating bar.

Some popup ads are designed to be floating bars that are always visible

but not hindering their ability to digest the information on your website,

But, when they are ready, the opportunity to signup is there.

9 Build a dedicated landing page with a full-screen email popup landing page.

You can use large popup ads as landing pages and rotate different messages for testing purposes,

or with additional information in an attempt to turn them into a customer,

10 Create friendly slide-in requests.

They don’t appear until the visitor has viewed some of your content.

You can determine how long to wait (maximum number of pixels or seconds)

11 Use a welcome gate on your home page.

This full-page ad covers the content before the visitor sees what you are offering

and some gates actually switch the visitor to another page.

Make sure your welcome gate does not switch you to another page as Google will

penalize your SEO ranking for this. OptinMonster’s welcome gate keeps the visitor on your page,

12 Ask for visitor feedback.

You can also use popup ads to gather information.

You can direct the visitor to your contact page or create a popup to ask a question or take a survey.

13 Use progressive profiling,

like just asking for their email address and later ask for

additional information when they are more comfortable with you and your website.

14 Create a plan for new subscribers

A Send a welcome email series (these emails get 85% higher opens), so send several,

B, Send information during the onboarding process to help customers get acclimated and learn more about the benefits of your product or service.

C. Segmenting your list. Personalized emails will get you much higher transaction rates, but you must segment your list.

Depending on your needs and marketing strategy, there are many different kinds of popup designs and many different ways to use them.

Ask yourself how you could use these popup ads, and if interested,

put a plan together to use them effectively. Preparing and developing your materials (blogs, newsletters, white papers, etc.) takes some time.

Good luck. Let me know how this process worked.

Are Search Engines Missing Your Website?

Posted on December 20, 2019 by harborcapitalgroupinc

Some people have been saying that SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is dead or at least no longer relevant to the current World Wide Web landscape. Believe it or not, the idea of the ineffectiveness of SEO has been going on all across the web for many years now, and it still creates quite an intense debate among website builders and business owners alike.

Major search engines such as Google and Bing are continually updating their search algorithms, so to say that SEO has changed quite a bit over the years is an obvious understatement. Despite the doubts, many websites or businesses continue to practice various methods of optimizations to increase online visibility and thrive. On the other hand, some who have tried implementing well-known tricks and techniques to acquire top spots in search engine results gain no benefit at all. Now, this begs the question about the specific practices those naysayers did.

SEO is not math; while it does involve a lot of calculations, the practices do not follow the same formula all the time. When search engines change their algorithms, websites must also implement different optimization methods to stay relevant. Failure to keep up with the changes will render your website invisible.

SEO is not dead. It just evolves and gets better.

When it comes to digital marketing, especially increasing website traffic, you cannot afford to rely merely on links and keywords. While they are still essential parts of today’s SEO practices, there are just many more methods (and therefore works) required to obtain results within reasonable measure. Instead of just focusing on keywords and link-building efforts, today’s version of SEO demands constant attempts on your part of providing real values for visitors, such as user-friendly interface, relevancy to search queries, and useful, informative contents. A strong online presence is also the result of seamless integration with social media (and sometimes) advertising strategies. Having only one or two of those elements will not yield the results you need.

Every algorithm update aims to make the Internet better, more useful, and more effective for those searchers. When people say that SEO is no longer relevant, useful, or even dead, they most likely refer to specific optimization techniques that are now considered obsolete. SEO failed them because they used outdated methods.

Dead SEO Techniques

Older websites probably used the following methods to gain popularity. Still, you cannot merely follow their footsteps because some of those methods are now ineffective (or even bad) for website development. A few examples of dead SEO techniques:

All-out link building

Link building is an important part of SEO, both in the past and present. The most significant difference is that the old method did not care about the sources of the links. You could build or create as many links as you can, and almost certainly, your website would start to rank much higher. In many cases, people made dozens of sites and linked the contents heavily.

In today’s SEO, link quantity is no longer a reliable indicator of a good website. Other authoritative domains will link to an accurate, informative website. If your contents are fresh, well-written, and useful, it is not impossible to get linked by more popular sites.

Aiming for a high number of keywords

Targeting specific keywords remains an effective method to increase page rank, although, in the old days, there was an entirely different approach to that. It used to be that having more content target the same keyword was enough to gain more online exposure, but then search engines knew that it was a bad idea to rank websites based on the number of content they have. Some search engines do not rank an entire website, only individual pages. The new approach is to write a longer post and target multiple keywords instead.

Keywords Overuse

When you have tons of keywords within a single post used to be a great idea, all you needed to do was cramp as many keywords as possible in a relatively short post to reach sufficient keyword density. Search engines now despise the practice.

Appropriately implemented, SEO can do wonders for your website. Some of the most effective methods right now are as follows.

Page readability: not only does the interface need to be user-friendly and easy to navigate, but the contents have to be human-readable. People demand informative content relevant to their search queries, delivered on a website that is pleasing to the eyes in an instant. User experience and value of materials play crucial roles in today’s SEO landscape.

Topic and keywords: a combination of text- and keywords-focused content is preferable. You can use Google Trends to look for recent popular search queries and related keywords. Focus on trending search with low-competition keywords if possible.

Let’s not forget about the marketing efforts. You must be willing to (slowly) promote your websites to gain popularity. Part of modern SEO is to integrate sites or your profile with social media, online communities, and relevant Internet forums. Be active and promote your ideas throughout the web; now and then, you can create a thread or give answers to others’ questions and link them to one of your pages.

What you need to know about Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

Posted on December 20, 2019 by harborcapitalgroupinc

We are now live in a world where people Google before they shop, visit Yelp before hiring services and use social media to get informed about the latest discounts from local retailers. Some even rely on YouTube or Instagram to get a glimpse of the products they consider buying.

Regardless of the business niche, you need a website to establish a presence in the virtual world and therefore stay ahead of the increasingly competitive market. Whether you are a retailer, contractor, consultant, or offering services of any sort, having no website is just as bad as giving away customers to your competitors. It doesn’t even matter if you run a small startup or a bigger sized company.

But having-a-website-alone is enough to attract visitors and customers; bear in mind that your competitors also have websites of their own. Your website must be optimized in terms of security, layout, performance, keywords, links (both inbound and outbound), and of course contents. You need to implement Search Engine Optimization (SEO), which refers to the practice of increasing traffic to your website. There is a large variety of SEO software you can use to generate a website analysis report you can use to plan and execute your optimization strategy.

Why SEO?

By now, every business owner knows that a website is like an online representative of the company, ready to welcome customers any day anytime. It is the place where customers and partners can learn more about the company as well as its products in a convenient manner. People can even place an order via the Internet on the website from the comfort of home.

One thing to remember is that having a website does not guarantee you will gain more customers. Just because your company has a website, it does not necessarily mean you will generate more sales in an instant. You can only make money if customers are at your storefront, or visit your website to buy what you’re selling. The following are some of the things you can do to improve your chances of attracting visitors and converting them into loyal customers.

SEO Basics

Creating a website is the first step to establish an online presence, and thankfully it is quite easy. You don’t have to be a computer or software engineer to get the job done. There are free domains, free hosting services, and free templates you can use to see if the website can run as intended; if not, you can always try again without spending a dime. While free options are available, the premium ones are almost always miles better for business purposes. A website is a powerful marketing tool, and that is why you want to have it built and optimized by professionals. In addition to using a useful (and relevant) domain and reputable hosting service, you also need thorough and complete website optimization practices, including but not limited to the following.

On-page SEO: there is nothing complicated about this step. All you need to do is to make sure that you use the right title for every page, the right keywords relevant to the title, human-readable contents, useful Meta descriptions, quick loading time, and the likes. On-page SEO is about making the website function as it should.

Off-page SEO: the more challenging part is the off-page optimization. It involves more sophisticated techniques to acquire quality backlinks (links directed to your website/content) from the more authoritative sites, social media integration, guest blogging, and brand popularity, among others. The purpose of off-page optimization is to build a better reputation and make the website more authoritative.

Internal linking: make it a priority to link a post to another on your website. The goal is to tell search engines that all your contents are relevant to each other. It also promotes the idea that visitors will remain engaged with the website because it provides detailed information about a particular topic. Visitors will stay longer on the site, improving your chances of converting them into customers.

Key-phrase instead of keywords: while keywords are most likely inevitable, you may also want to target key-phrases. You use more words to target a specific idea and insert the same phrase several times in a longer post. Longtail key-phrases (consisting of at least three words) are traditionally seldom-used, which means you don’t have to compete with more websites. Search engines prefer key-phrases to keywords because key-phrases give more specific information.

Reinforced website security: search engines are more eager to index secure websites with “https” as opposed to “Http” in their addresses. HTTPS features an SSL certificate to indicate an encrypted connection to the site. Your information is secured as well as the visitors’. If your website is also an online shop, secure online transaction processing is a must.

Fast loading speed: minimize the use of large-sized multimedia files such as videos and images on every page, or at least compress them to the smallest size possible without adversely affect view quality. Another excellent method is to use a dedicated server rather than a “shared” one. Switching to a “lighter” theme and enabling browser caching also help. Mobile-friendly: search engines have now moved to prioritize mobile-friendly websites in their indexing processes. Every day, more people are using smartphones to access the web, so it makes no sense to skip this step. Being mobile-friendly means your website will work the same way across devices of multiple platforms.

Last but not least, you need good SEO software to perform detailed analytics of website performance. Based on the analysis, the software may offer suggestions on how to fix errors and increase online visibility.