What kind of image do you want to present to your customers? Do you want to be viewed as a legitimate business owner offering a legitimate product or service? Or, do you want to be seen as a company who cuts corners on the important things?
Whether you know it or not, the image you display to your potential customers is probably the most important element of your business.
When you need to get your car repaired, do you hire a fry cook to do the job? When you are looking to build a home, do you hire a janitor to complete the task?
Certainly, you would not. So, why would your customers trust their money with a website that looks like it was built by a teenager or a grade school student?
Image Is Everything
I know that when a website is new and unproven, it is hard to bolster enough confidence to pay a web designer a few hundred dollars to build an attractive storefront for a website. But, the webmaster that refuses to spend that money and decides against learning how to design an attractive website themselves, will be running the risk of closing their website a year later, with their business concept still unproven.
The best product does not always win the race for market supremacy. For proof, take a look at the Beta recording system. It produced a better picture quality than the VCR recording system. Yet, we all owned VCR’s and we did not own Beta Recorders.
Beyond needing to build a website with an attractive and professional layout, the website that is intended to succeed must also have professional content on the site.
Poorly written content that fails to address the concerns of website visitors is bound to fail. Once again, a webmaster who seeks true success must be willing to either pay for professional content or design their own.
Consumers Buy Products And Services From Competent Business Owners
Competence is in the eye of the beholder.
The business owner may know deep in his or her heart that they are among the most competent in their industry, but if they cannot express that competence in their copy, the consumer will not be able to see the truth.
People will define a person by the way they see that person. And, if the person has done a poor job of demonstrating their competence, then the consumer will be hard pressed to see that person as anything but incompetent.
I know lots of smart webmasters who have terrible websites and terrible sales. I also know many stupid webmasters with fantastic websites, who are making money hand over fist.
Yes, this Internet world does level the playing field just a bit. It allows the best in the industry to look like dopes, while the dopes look like geniuses!
One might argue that the dope is not a dope after all, because he or she was smart enough to hire the right smart people to work for them on their behalf.
Professional Content Drives Sales
If you are writing or hiring someone to write content for you, then you should strive to make your content the best it can be.
If you are writing informational pieces to attract attention to your website, you should work hard to make sure that it is smart and well-written. People pay attention to those people whom they trust, and it is hard to trust someone who writes sloppy copy.
If you are writing sales copy for your website, or hiring a professional to write sales copy for you, you must remember that the entire point of sales copy is to sell products and services.
Well-written and professional sales copy will create more sales than any other factor on your website. Some professional sales copywriters demand some pretty big paychecks from their customers, and in most cases, their rates are well deserved.
Sales copywriters don’t just look at scoring a big fat paycheck for themselves. Instead, they generally look at how many dollars they can add to your bottom line. I know of one copywriter whose sales copy has sold over $17.3 million in products. If this lone copywriter could write one sales page for you that could generate $50,000 or half a million in sales for your website this year, how much would his work be worth to you?
I am sure that the copywriter’s work will be worth at least as much as the copywriter asks for his or her services.
It Is A Number’s Game
The difference that a professional sales copywriter could make for your site is clear. If your sales copy will generate an average conversion rate of 2% and the $5 per word copywriter’s copy will generate an 8% conversion rate, then the professional will increase your sales by 400%!
You do the math. Calculate the amount of your average sale. Then figure out how many units you currently sell through your website. Once you have these numbers in hand, multiple your current units sold by four, and then multiply that by the amount of your average sale. This new number will be the equivalent of what your future sales could be, if you hired that professional sales copywriter to write your copy for you.
Does your new estimated sales number for the year justify the expense of hiring a professional copywriter to write the sales copy for your website? Few business owners could argue that a professional copywriter would not be worth the amount of money the copywriter is asking for his or her time and skill.
At The End Of The Day…
At the end of the day, it is about how much money your website earns for you and your family. But then, one might argue that there is a much deeper meaning at stake: How badly do you want to leave the 9-to-5 “rat race” behind, so that you can become self-employed and self-sufficient?
There are three elements to a professional image: 1) attractive design, 2) smartly-written instructional content, and 3) professional sales copy. Each of these three elements work hand-in-hand to generate sales at your website.
If you are serious about making it on your own as a successful online business, then you need to take whatever steps are necessary to make sure that your website serves each of these three elements in the best way that it can.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR Steve Crawford believes in finding a way to get what you want in life. To get a massive library full of professional instructional content that you can use to generate leads and sales, visit the site:http://my-secret-articles.com Send email to: admin@thenakedmarketer.com
