Forums: Discussions for entrepreneurs and small business.

My business partner and I like to joke that we can`t think outside of the box because we are too far inside of the box. We value any feedback in regard to our website:

http://www.smartstagers.com

SMART Stagers is a home staging and training company. Our business model has three different focuses:

1. We offer Home Staging services. Home staging is preparing a home that is for sale so that it presents at its best and will appeal to a broad range of buyers.

2. Last year, we developed a training program for staging. This services trains others how to stage homes and start their own business.

3. We designed a program for Real Estate Professionals, that enables them to offer Staging as part of their list of services at an affordable price.

I`ve written all the content and have designed the site. I have a webmaster who puts it all together for us. I bulldozed the site 3 months ago and created what you see today. The revamping did result in an increase in our search engine rankings (though not on google).

Our problems are:

Potential trainees are visiting the site, but not buying the training program. We are concerned that our copywriting isn`t inticing enough. We are currently considering running a "special" on the cost of the program.

Customers are not finding us through the website. or once they are there they don`t buy.

We have been keeping busy working through our Real Estate contacts and refferals, but I really want this site to work for us and the other stagers that we will train. I can`t help feeling that I am missing the boat somewhere.

Any imput will be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,

Cari

 

 

 

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Cari Pilon SMART Stagers SMART - Sell More Area Real Estate Today www.SMARTStagers.com

Don`t feel bad ... we do web stuff for a living and found the hardest site we ever developed was our own!

Which program are you trying to push?
I`m asking because the training box was 3 page clicks down for me.

Can you find a nice big quote or stat for the front? Like "staging sells your home for $20K more on average!" or some customer quote like "My house wasn`t selling until I contacted SMART Stagers. And then I got $20K over asking price!" (I don`t know, just completely making these up.) Appeal to what your customers want - do they want to sell the house for more, sell house faster, what?

Also ... where are you marketing the site? Search engines aren`t the best place to find good leads. Maybe you can draw some people in with some content?

I wrote an article on copywriting. It has some of the information you seek.

http://www.startupnation.com/pages/community/forum_posts.asp ?TID=3637&TPN=1

In my opinion, your copywriting isn`t too bad. It`s certainly much better than most. However ... if the page isn`t working all that well ... you might have a clarity problem. There`s a lot of information on the landing page.

 

 

Specific copy evaluation.

1. There is a lot of information on the landing page. This isn`t necessarily bad but you have to remember: information competes with information. What do you want the customer to remember, realize, believe? When I look at your page, I don`t know what to remember. To what should I pay attention? The design isn`t bad by any means. But there are a lot of words and so forth.

2. You actually seem to almost understand the concept of what you offer -vs- what you do. What you do is unimportant to a customer. What you offer is very important. Staging obviously offers the chance to sell a house faster, for a higher asking price. Why not use a heading such as:

"Want to sell your house faster without reducing your asking price?"

That seems to nicely encapsulate what you "offer". It`s not perfect but you might start with that idea and take it somewhere great.

"Home Staging is just SMART". This is what you think. But it`s more or less generic. What does this say to someone? That home staging is SMART? Who cares if it`s smart ... why not focus on selling faster without reducing the asking price. Now that`s SMART.

"Sell More Area Real Estate Today". This is an idea, which I call a dot. Yet you fail to connect your product ... staging ... to increased sales. There are many such dots on your landing page and many of them are disconnected. Great copywriting needs to start with one or two dots and connect and communicate ... with total clarity ... how these dots deliver a benefit. As a thought exercise, complete the following:

1. Get a sheet of paper.
2. Draw two dots.
3. Write the concept beside the first dot: Sell More Real Estate.
4. Write the concept beside the second dot: Staging
5. Draw a line between the dots.
6. On that line write copy that actually connects the dots. Make sure its clear and credible!!

"Staging is producing an atmosphere that will warrant your
asking price and get your home sold." This is backwards and again unconnected. How about "Empty houses take longer to sell."

3. Pricing. Your prices seem reasonable to me. I don`t know ... but I can imagine that staging is really a lot of work. Probably it involves moving a lot of furniture and stuff into, and out of, a house in a short time. Yes. Lots of work. Still. Still you might want to read a book about pricing strategy.

4. In your post you describe a business model that has three different focuses. This is fine although not recommended ... but you need separate copywriting for each. Umbrella copywriting simply dilutes your message and confuses people. Are you selling to realtors, home owners, or all of the above. If so, you need a separate page for each. If you mean "our business model has three different revenue lines", well that`s a different story entirely. Three revenue lines if fine, assuming you can execute each service equally well.

5. Your site is refreshingly free of cliches and worn out ideas. This is very good ... actually it`s excellent. You really did a great job at least with creating original language.

NHG also had some great copy suggestions/ideas.

I have been having a lot of "ton of bricks" moments lately - where suddenly things hit me. Thank you NHG for the "Where are you marketing your site?" question - because the truth is, while we have (paid per click Google, marketing materials etc.) we haven`t done enough.

Ton of bricks =  market the site more aggressively

CookieMonster, thank you too for your analysis. I had actually read and printed out your article last night. Grabbed my pen and started to rewrite my website again and thought maybe I would have you all look at it before I drive my webmaster nuts.

I`d like to follow up with some questions if I may...

When you say -

1. There is a lot of information on the landing page. This isn`t necessarily bad but you have to remember: information competes with information. What do you want the customer to remember, realize, believe? When I look at your page, I don`t know what to remember. To what should I pay attention? The design isn`t bad by any means. But there are a lot of words and so forth.

This is the page I like least. My efforts are to try to fill this page with "rich content" and "keywords" (according to the search engine articles I`ve read). So would your advice be to keep the design and content but use less words? I agree with you that I need a more eye grabbing headline. I chose "Home Staging is just SMART!" because of the company name. Does that make a difference in your assesment - or no - because if you didn`t catch it - no one else will either?

Thanks again,

Cari

 

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Cari Pilon SMART Stagers SMART - Sell More Area Real Estate Today www.SMARTStagers.com

Hi Cari,

As Cookie Monster suggested, you just have to much stuff going on. For the consumer who lands on your website looking for Home Staging, they would have to believe they`re in the wrong place...at first look, it appears your site is PRIMARILY targeted to Real Estate Agents and for those who are wanting to become Stagers (a home biz).

The logo is a bit misleading to `consumers` Sell More Area Real Estate Today.

The type of language would make one believe this is for `Realtors/Agents.

I would suggest making the site primarily targeted towards the consumer...and sprinkling the other content you have concerning Realtors into the site navigation menu...

An alternative would be to have 2 sites altogether, one for agents and the other for consumers. I`m sorry my review isn`t as detailed as I like it to be, I know I have about 3 minutes before my wife calls me up for dinner so I`m rushing...but I`ll add to it later.

Anyhow, I took your existing page and made a sample page with some ideal content targeting `home owners`. Ignore the layout, as I simply snatched it from you....The code is off because I didn`t have time to correct what you had:

Let me know your thoughts....

http://www.hippomarketing.com/staging/

I would probably suggest you have a more cleaner and professional looking design...for the type of service you`re offering, presentation is important.

You`ll notice in my sample, I didn`t put the `big promise headline` at the top. Why? Most people might miss it to look at the photos first. When a person gets to a site, photos like whats here will naturally grab their eyes first....thus the reason I put the "BIG PROMISE" headline under the photos

http://www.hippomarketing.com/staging/

I`ll show you the opposite later....with the headline at the top, and photos under the BIG PROMISE.

By collecting their names and email address at the bottom, this will allow you to continue to market to these people on an automatic and ongoing basis. I`ll explain in detail later.

Hope this helps.

Cartess Ross

To answer your question.

The landing page on your site is designed to accomplish one thing:

Communicate ... with total clarity ... position, product/service, purpose.

Ideally the copywriting should persuade the visitor to take action ... which would potentially be inspired by a specific call to action, as I believe Cartess discussed in a previous post.

Marketing is about fantastic communication, it`s about clarity. Ideally within 4 seconds of visiting your site, I should know what you offer and why it is relevant to me. Yes. Four seconds. It`s SO easy to hit the Back button. So relevance is really critical. It`s all that matters, actually. A great exercise is to watch someone surf through your site. Several people in fact. Watch and keep your mouth very tightly closed. And listen to what they say. These people should be random if possible ... not family or friends. Afterwards, ask the tester to describe your product or service. If you`re married, maybe ask you husband`s colleagues, or if you`re not married, ask the bartender or server. Give them $20. Best money you ever spent. When someone can look at your site, and tell you 4 seconds later, what you`re offering... that`s a good place.

I don`t know very much about SEO or how to construct a site that is attractive to search engines. There may be other considerations in this respect. But first and foremost, in my opinion, are the human visitors.

Here`s the landing page of a site I`m working on in terms of copywriting:

http://www.scenomics.com/

[It`s not finished but look at the communication style. That`s a super simple, clean approach for a really complex product. Less words but real, honest communication. I guess you don`t have to necessarily reduce the word count ... but you need to make sure that every single word is useful. Once you reach relevance and are communicating clearly ... don`t add any more text. That`s the point at which text becomes competitive.]

Ideally the heading conveys the "offer". This should be very, very clear.

People might read the rest of the information *if* the offer is compelling and relevant. And if you have a lot of information, people are likely to remember less. Or they might not remember the right thing. Hence I favor a more minimal approach on a landing page. [I`m also more of a minimalist in general. But this is not always the right approach either.]

I really don`t want to run at the mouth, but ... a question.

1. Why are you marketing? A great question for you to answer.

Are you marketing to increase awareness? To increase sales? Both? In my opinion, the purpose of marketing is to help the business owner learn to make good decisions: it can help you create the right products, it can help communicate effectively. It can shape your business favorably.

Promotion is not marketing. If you want to raise awareness, you can promote your business, which may or may not involve much marketing. If sales are the issue, then you might need to learn how to ask for someone`s business if you don`t already know how.

Do I have a point? I hope so.

Lots of successful businesses are run on product development and sales ... with minimal marketing. In those cases, the only "marketing" activity is promotion. While this is sort of an archaic model, it works fantastically for a lot of companies. What I`ve talked about today is marketing ... but promotion and sales are equally important. So depending on your situation and experience, about which I know nothing, you might want to develop a three pronged strategy.

1. Communicate clearly.
2. Promote consistently.
3. Ask for the business.

[With the idea that marketing has given you the tools to make enough of the right decisions. Make enough of the right decisions, with product strategy and communication strategy, and you have a receptive customer. When you ask a receptive customer for the business, they say yes. Now, if you want the customer to bang on your door and say "when can you show up and stage my house?", you`ll need a different strategy. If that is what you want, you`ll need an incredible value proposition and razor sharp marketing. This is a bit more complex and probably relies on word of mouth more than anything.]

That is SUCH an excellent statement...and one of those "obvious so it isn`t obvious" things.

First thing I noticed is all the italics. They`re supposed to be for emphasis, not for ordinary content. So I "felt" as if I was supposed to be urgently reading the entire page. When I did, I realized it`s not that urgent.

Second thing was the lack of any border space to the right of the graphic with the roses on the landing page. The text was so crowded up against the image, it was unprofessional, and that detracts from the site. Big thing? Lots of people would say no. But are you professional? Not from what I "felt" seeing the site.

You`re going for a feeling, not intellect. Coookiemonster`s and Cartess` posts haven`t been as blatant as they might, but good copywriting isn`t about logic and value. It`s about raw lust, desire, passionate wanting, and heat. To accomplish that, one can use fear or desire.

"Home staging is just Smart!" Excellent....I`ll make a note of that next time I want to feel smart.
Okay...this was a rapid-fire "slam" into each sentence. It allowed for zero "interpretation" as a reader approaching text. Is that a valid method of critique? Is it "too much parsing?" Well, ask yourself this:

Have you told me anything at all concrete, that would apply to ME (What`s in it for me?) in this paragraph? Look at all the "How will you do this" indicators? Is that worth knowing or thinking about in a 1-paragraph lead?

Remember, you`ve got 4 seconds to capture my attention and build up a fire of emotional lust for your product! IF I`m already looking for a home stager, and I`ve perused ten or twenty sites so far, how does this paragraph stand out from all the rest and "tickle my fancy?" :-)

You should at least answer the questions: What is home staging? How much money will you get if you use it?

So lemme axt you....does this sentence strike awe and fascination into your heart and liver? :-)

Suppose you`d been abducted by Really Bad Guys, and faced torture and pain until you died a horrible death. The only thing you could maybe do to convince them to let you go is to persuade them that all of humanity would survive if you lived. And they ask you, `Okay...convince us that home staging is worthy and we`ll forgoe the torture and pain.`

...........and you give them the above sentence.

Maybe you could have some similar-value or similar-type house pictures, with the dollar amounts they sold for? House Left sold for $200K without home staging. House Right, looks the same, sold for $250K with home staging.

Click each picture, and you get a collage of the inside house while it was up for sale. House Left looks like drab. House Right used your services.

Where are the click-links I want to see, to play with, to move me into the site? How come there`s that roses picture anyway....why is it there? Does it mean something? How come when I click on it, nothing happens?

Where`s the "customer journey," and where is the "call(s) to action?"

Before-After pictures work, as long as they`re clearly not image-edited or use other perceptual tricks. People are savvy to that kind of thing.