Restaurants are good at avoiding this.
Restaurants draw your attention to food items that have the best return for the restaurant.
Have you ever been to a Dennys? Denny's customer journeys are on their menus and likely why you order whatever is in the big picture.
Let me ask: Is your website doing the same for you?
Websites are a salesperson at your business, they should build as your customer goes through the site and make sure that every single person who visits your website is ready to convert. I often run into websites that don't build on information but are instead flat.
Imagine a state map without any actual direction and telling your customer to get from their location to somewhere on the map, yes they can see how to get there, but it's going to take some mental work and with a website, you have 45 seconds to convert, we should not leave any work for the customer. But if you have a buyer's journey on your website, I should be able to go from your marketing to your website. In turn, the website journey should build on the information I learned in marketing. As I continue through your website there should be places where I can step off the customer journey and convert, because everyone will have a different spot where they are convinced. But the overall journey should be clear and straightforward.
The Wikipedia “rabbit hole” is the perfect example of how I want to build content on my site. Each article that I'm reading leads me to want to read more …and more …and more, until it's 3:00 AM, and I'm still on your site trying to learn how to speak French.
Founders are typically obsessed with their product and have a bit of a product dump with a bunch of metrics that tell me the kind of shit that gets them excited about their product but mean nothing to me. The reality is that founders need to be talking to me about my problems.
I often use the expression of a cork salesman who is so obsessed with the aerodynamics and the material they make their corks out of. But completely forget to ask their customers if they have a hole in their boat. Your website should be asking me consistently if I have a hole in my boat and then the site should elaborate and ask me if I have somewhere to be in my boat over the next two days. Then the site should give me some information about what could happen if I don't plug that hole. I should see other boaters' logos I recognize in the area. Throughout the site and nearing the bottom I should see a call to action to book with you, to talk about buying a custom-made cork.
I talk a lot about content that isn't exactly a sales pitch for your product but rather just relative content that your customers would want to know. Continuing my example of a cork salesman… to increase the feeling of a Wikipedia “rabbit hole” my resources should talk about the types of fishing that need to happen throughout the year, fishing trends, and the top 10 oars for 2024. Content doesn't have to consistently be focused on corks.
You've become profitable, and it's time to step back and build that buyer journey through your site. Unless you want your customers to be lost on your flat website, and potentially bounce.
"Is my website...flat?.... A journey in website design."
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