Usable Words

When a potential customer is in a desperate situation, you need to let them know you can help.

Clearly.

And quickly.

If you can be the first person they hear this from, they become the easiest kind of person to convert into an actual customer. They won’t compare you to your competitors. They won’t baulk at the ridiculous price you charge for an emergency service. They just want the pain to go away.

…OK, all that’s pretty much common sense, right? But if it’s common-sense advice, why don’t people build their websites around it?

Here’s an example. I’ve been working with this one client. Let’s just say they’re a dentist. (They’re not a dentist. But I don’t want their competitors Googling this post and stealing my common-sense advice amazing copywriting secrets, and for my purposes they’re a bit like a dentist, so let’s pretend.)

Now, dentists have two kinds of customers. Well, more than two, but permit me to simplify. They have the kind of customer who can make an appointment in a week’s or a month’s time – the kind who is obediently attending their six-monthly checkup, or having their teeth whitened, or whatever.

Then there’s the kind of customer who needs an appointment right now. This customer has a toothache, and will pay absolutely anything to make it go away.

Well, here’s what I found when I looked at my client’s competitors’ websites: all of these “dentists” have an emergency service. They will actually come out to your place 24 hours a day, seven days a week, and fix your toothache. (If only real dentists did that!)

But none of them – at least none of the ones I looked at – so much as mentions this service on their home page! Instead, the home pages were all (the equivalent of) “porcelain veneers this” and “gold fillings that” – services that are money-spinners for the dentists, sure, but not services you want to have to scroll through when you are in screaming agony and just want to know if someone can help.

So, my advice to the client? “Mention your emergency service in big letters right at the top of your home page. Put it in your meta description too. Give people your phone number, and tell them to call you any time. That way, when someone with a horrible toothache Googles up a dentist, they’ll immediately know you want to hear from them. (SEO permitting, of course.)”

Turns out this client’s web developer had already suggested the same thing (smart fellow!), so I can’t actually take credit for the idea, but that doesn’t matter. A good idea is a good idea. Of course, it might mean these clients get a lot more calls at 3 in the morning from desperate people, but they assure me they’re up for that!

[Update: And here, courtesy of my email inbox, is an actual dentist who definitely gets it.]

Image: trialsanderrors

How do you handle rejection?

If your answer is along the lines of “I curl up into a ball and whimper”, it’s probably just as well you can’t see what happens when people look at your website or see it listed in search engines. Because most of the time they take one look, shrug their shoulders and go “Next!”.

It’s a truism that web users have short attention spans. Perhaps this is exaggerated sometimes. But when it comes to searching for a product or service and “shortlisting” a few possible websites, you really do only have a few seconds to convince someone that they really, really need you.

So what can you do to make sure they make the right decision? read more >

Here is a handout [PDF link] I used for a presentation at BNI last week. It’s a quick 3-point check for the front page of a business website. Pretty basic stuff, but it’s amazing how many sites fail it.

Image: foundphotoslj