Put yourself in their shoes

Setting up and running a small business requires a whole bunch of skills - some of which you may not have learned - yet!

You’ll need to be able to:

• Strategise
• Plan
• Organise
• Manage the money
• Market
• Purchase the materials your business needs
• Sell
• Write copy
• Negotiate
• Deliver customer service
• Do research
• Understand statistics

… and that’s just for starters.

You have three choices - do everything yourself, hire staff with the necessary skills to do the work or outsource to specialists.

However, the responsibility for getting all of these right is still yours.  And, if you’re not doing it yourself, it means you have to communicate your vision and who you’re providing the services/products to clearly to those who will be doing the work.

This is tough - even for long-established businesses as you have to see your business through the eyes of your customer to really achieve success.  If you don’t know what they want, what their problems are, how your offering helps - removing pain and./or adding gain - how can you educate your staff or suppliers?

As a copywriter it’s the core of every piece of work I do for clients.  Who am I writing for?  Not the business owner - because the content I write isn’t for them, it’s for their potential customer.  If I don’t know who that is the message isn’t going to be on target.  And that applies to every aspect of your business.

Standing in your customer’s shoes

Everything you deliver gets better when you really understand your customer.  In relation to what you can help them with:

• What worries them about the issue?
• How important is this particular issue to them?
• What do they hate doing that your product or service could help with?
• What are the long-term outcomes for them if they carry on with things the way they are now?
• What would be different if they had your solution in place?

To understand your customer you need to get inside their heads and dig about!

The result for you is that everything you offer is highly targeted to their wants - and they get a service nobody else matches.

Do you need an editor?

If you’re writing a book at some point it will need editing.  If you successfully get a contract with a mainstream publisher they will have it edited by their in-house editors, if you’re self-publishing it’s down to you.

It can be tempting to skip this requirement, especially if you’ve been told you write well by readers of your blogs and articles.  However, editing is not about checking your grammar, spelling and punctuation.

There are three aspects of editing:

1: Concept

A good editor will look at the overall concept of the book and will identify how well the book ‘hangs’ on that concept.  They will assess how what you’ve written relates to that concept.  They will make suggestions about what is missing and what needs pruning.

2: Content

On a more detailed level your editor will look at how each part of your book works.  Sometimes they’ll suggest a subject needs further development or your opinion needs to be added or expanded (after all, it is your book and it’s you that makes it unique).  

Often this will be to explain something in more detail or to add examples, case studies, or the reasoning behind something.

They may cut some of the material - for a variety of reasons, either because it doesn’t contribute to the subject under discussion or it’s repeated elsewhere in the book.

An editor will spot ‘waffle’ and sharpen up your prose so it gets your message across in a way that makes it easy to read and understand.

3: Copyediting

Also known as proofreading.  This is the last thing that is done after all the other editing has been done, reviewed by you as the author and any additional work is done and you’re happy with the manuscript.

Checking for missing full stops, wayward apostrophes, typos and incorrect tenses is the final essential stage before your manuscript goes to print.

Typically, you’ll have a different person carrying out this stage to whoever has done the first two - as it needs a fresh pair of eyes that are ONLY looking for polishing the text, not changing it.  It’s a different, but very valuable, skill.

What would happen if you didn’t get your book edited?

It simply wouldn’t be as good.

As the author you’re much too close to your ‘baby’ to be objective.  A good editor can lift your book to a whole new level.  Some writers worry that their work will be altered out of all recognition and will no longer be theirs  but a good editor won’t take your voice away, they’ll simply enhance it.

The challenge for people who are publishing independently is that editing isn’t cheap - or perhaps I should say good editing isn’t cheap.  It does front-load your investment, whereas getting a contract with a mainstream publisher means they carry the costs of cover design, editing and page layout, self-publishing means you have to fund all those yourself.

But bear in mind that you will probably get around 7½% of net on each copy sold by your publisher, while if you self-publish that can be well in excess of 50%.

At the end of the day it’s down to how well you market your book - and you’ll need to do that regardless of how it is published.

Does your home page capture potential clients?

DISCLAIMER:  I’m not a graphic designer - and am in awe of their talent.  I dabbled a bit when I was younger and went to art school for a year, but I wasn’t very good.  So what qualifies me to pontificate about the design of website home pages (or any other page, come to that)?

I’ve spent years studying what stops people reading a perfectly crafted message - and it’s all to do with how the message is presented to them.

You can have an attractive website, with a powerful message and lots of traffic, but find it still isn’t working.  So what is the problem?

There can be many things that dislodge the visitor without them discovering what they need to know to make a decision and contact you.  After all, there was a reason they came to your website - why didn’t they follow through?

Above the fold

The fold is an old newspaper term to indicate what people see at first glance without having to unfold the newspaper.  Old broadsheet newspapers were always in racks folded in half, so only the top half of the page was visible - and when your visitor arrives at your website only the top of your home page is visible.  They have to scroll down to see any more.

What is visible at first glance needs to grab their attention and reassure them that this website is going to deliver the information they are looking for.  That means that the headline needs to be clear and engaging and the image needs to support that message.

Common problems:

• Candyfloss images that have little to do with the core subject or don’t make sense to the visitor (it doesn’t matter if you know what the picture is about, if the reader needs much more information to make sense of it).
• Headlines that don’t mean much as the first point of engagement.
• Moving images that move too quickly for the visitor to digest properly (they can be irritating at best, stressful at worst).
• Call to action buttons - it’s too soon to ask people to get in touch, they need to know a bit more first.
• No phone number visible.  Some people are just looking to get in touch - don’t make it hard for them to contact you.  Put your contact info into your banner, the right-hand end is where most people look for this.
• Menu tabs with obscure names.  Stick to the obvious - people don’t need to have to think about it, so ‘About’ not ‘Who we are’.  Is ‘Work with us’ your recruitment section or an invitation to clients to engage you?  

Below the fold

Another headline helps to keep people engaged - especially if it features a pain or gain that they’re looking for help with.

I always recommend that a home page features a short introduction before inviting people to move to specific pages.  This gives you an opportunity to reassure the reader that they’re in the right place.  It doesn’t have to be long; it can be just a paragraph or two.

This is usually the point where you offer the visitor clickable links to move them to specific pages related to their needs - in other words your products or services in particular categories.

Common problems:

• Dark backgrounds with lighter writing.  This is much harder for the brain to process and reduces comprehension quite a lot.  If you want people to get your message don’t make it difficult for people to read!
• Faint grey text on a white background.  Don’t make people squint to read your message.  90% black is optimum, but no less than 80% black.
• Headlines all in capitals.  Capitals aren’t read as easily as lower case, so big and bold, but sentence case works best.
• Very wide text columns.  If your content is 12 point, aim for a maximum of 100 characters per line.  Reading text with very long lines is uncomfortable on a bigger screen and makes it more likely that people will skip a line or reread the same line.  
• Hyperlinks embedded in text for key pages.  If people are using a smartphone, hitting a small piece of text accurately is harder than a nice big box or button!
• Too many options.  When you’re inviting people to move to another page, don’t give them too many to choose from.  Three or four is usually enough.

What else should be on your home page?

This is personal preference, but my advice would be:

Testimonials:  Make them big enough to read comfortably.  And, if you go for one of those scrolling marquees (where several testimonials flip or slide away) make sure that they stay still long enough for the visitor to read comfortably.

About:  It’s quite common to have the beginning of your About page somewhere below your core offerings.  Typically it will only be the first paragraph or two and usually has an image alongside.  If you’re a consultant or offer any kind of personal service this will be you, if you’re a bigger organisation it might be something relevant to your business - like a storefront or team shot.

Blogs: A blog is a great way to add fresh content and keep your website higher in the search engine’s attention, so it’s handy to remind people of it.  Typically, your last 3 posts with a thumbnail of the image and headline are enough.  Don’t let your web designer add part of the text, the headline should be good enough to draw people in and lots of text just starts to make the page look untidy.

Sign up form: If you have a lead magnet that you offer in exchange for a name and email address, this should feature well up your home page.  If it’s hidden at the foot of the page most people won’t see it.  These days an image of your lead magnet with a button is enough, so the form only appears when someone clicks the button, but it should either be immediately below the fold (usually to the right of the text) or even in the main image above the fold.

Check out your website and see if you can improve your home page to keep your visitor longer and give them what they want quickly and easily.