If youโve just read the previous blog post about Packaging Your Services to grab attention, now you can learn about the 2nd ingredient of P6 – presenting your practice areas and services on your website.
The first thing you need to know about any services oriented website is that it site needs to be CLEAN AND INTUITIVE. People need to be able to very quickly know what you do and like what they see before they either worry about figuring out how good you are or worse, leave the site.
I think of this moment of encounter as a test of whether that visitor will decide to stay or leave (i.e. bounce). That decision moment happens fast โ ย so fast, the person does not even realize a decision is being made.
Whatโs In It For Me? (WIIFM)
Will your visitor stay, or bounce?ย The Bounce Moment occurs in the lizard part of your brain โ the instinctive part of your brain that has existed and has been evolving since the creation of man. This part of your brain NEEDS TO KNOW โwhat this page is offering to do for meโ โ what marketers call the โwhatโs in it for meโ syndrome.
Winning The 6 Second War
When we create a commercial website for a client, one of our initial discussions concerns what we want to happen at that moment of encounter when a person first lands on any page of the website weโve built. We think we have less than 6 seconds.
First-time visitors donโt need to know if your web page is good or bad at this point. They just need to know what the offer is that they see โ and on some primal level โif it is safe to even be on this page.โ
There is a lot of crossover between packaging and presenting an offer because once you have figured out what you want your clients want to hear (in regards to what services you offer), you have to find ways to get this message across in ways that it will be received.
And because of the โengagement momentโ concept, youโve got just a few seconds to sustain a connection with visitors to your website.
If you are an employment attorney, then your โengagement momentโ has to convey quite simply the idea that you do employment law โ and explain a little bit what that means in plain enough terms that people can quickly grasp the gist of what you do before they start the process of trusting you and digging deeper to first get to know you.
Getting back to our example, at this moment of encounter stage, your law firm website could also highlight that you represent the employers and NOT employees.
What Most People Misunderstand About โPresentingโ Online
- Timing is critical. You canโt throw a plate of spaghetti at someone and expect them to find the one noodle that meets their needs. Your messaging needs to come in stages so that you can coax people, step by step, through your brand value ecosystem.
- Itโs not necessarily what you say, but how you say it that matters even more.
- This is why images and videos are so powerful because they can transform any message into something more โpresentable.โ
Think of your website as a very shiny container that has to attract and keep someoneโs attention in such a way that your value propositions (i.e. your services) can be conveyed before someone leaves the site.
Who are these people we have to target with our offers?
We can more formally address audience targeting by continuing with our P6 recipe and looking at the 3rd ingredient which is PEOPLE.
See the next post on engaging the right people with P6 marketing.