3 Things Every Web Page Must Do for Success (Part 2)

This is the second article in a series on What 3 Things Every Web Page must do for Success. In the first article, I talked about how to Describe What is on the Page, an often overlooked task that every web page should do to successfully communicate. In this 2nd part, I’m going to talk about how to communicate why this page or content is valuable.

2) Communicate why this is valuable. (Why)

Communicating the primary value of what’s on the page is probably the toughest part of design. We all have some sense of what is valuable about our offering, but do we really know what gets other people interested enough to take action? Do we know what actual, real-world value proposition works best?

There are many ways to communicate value. You can state clearly what the benefits are, hoping people share the same view of the world. If you’re designing a simple page with a single action on it, this is relatively straight-forward. But, if this is a page selling something, or a page explaining something new, this task quickly becomes a tougher case of prioritization and focus. You need to be able to prioritize the benefits of your product in the same way that your viewers would, or otherwise the message you’re sending won’t align with the one they’re hearing.

Focus on Problems

The key is to focus on your potential customer’s problems. What are they trying to accomplish and what hurdles currently get in their way?

I recently wrote about how two companies, Apple and Google, focus with laser-like precision on a single, primary benefit of the Chrome Browser and iPad, respectively. Google emphasizes speed in a big way with the Chrome browser. Apple emphasizes ease-of-use in all of their iPad marketing material.

Social Influence

You can also use social influence to suggest that others are already getting value from your product or service. The notion of social proof is powerful: the mere fact of others doing something suggests that it is worth doing. This is why we tend to gravitate toward crowded restaurants and popular movies…we offload a bit of decision-making to people who have already been there. It doesn’t work all of the time, only most of the time.

Twitter’s homepage is an good example of designing for social proof. You quickly get the sense that there are other people using the service and enjoying it.

Benefits vs. Features

It’s long been known to focus on benefits over features for most products. People ultimately adopt new products and tools because of the benefits they themselves receive, not the features the product has. Features are merely a means to an end. So paint a better picture of the future than your competitors and you’ll have an easier time convincing potential customers to consider you.

Position Appropriately

You can also use a myriad of different positioning tactics to present your offer to your viewers. One of the most common is by positioning your offering as a solution to a known problem. If you’re trying to interest people in a mobile phone, for example, you could talk about the pain people are feeling with their current phone. If you’re trying to sell software, position it as an easier alternative to existing, hard-to-use software. If you’re selling healthy breakfast food, position it in opposition to the sugary offerings of others. A great resource for this type of positioning is the classic book: Positioning, the Battle for your Mind by Al Ries and Jack Trout. Each of these ways of communicating benefits shares something in common: they present a positive future to the viewer, something better than their current situation. They describe the value in terms of how the viewer’s life will be better, faster, or easier.

One exception to this is when users are already in a flow, a set of screens presented in sequence. If your users are within a flow (such as a sign-up flow) you don’t need to repeat the value proposition on each page. If they made it to the 2nd screen, we can generally assume they know what the first screen said. They’ve already agreed to the deal, so to speak, and we don’t have to reiterate what it is. At this point restating the primary value proposition would be a distraction from what they are trying to do. At these points focus on making the task as easy as possible and keep distractions to an absolute minimum.

Message Testing

Thankfully, there are easy ways to test the “why” of your web page. At Performable we constantly do A/B testing to find out which messages are resonating with people best. The results are often surprising at first but after a while it becomes apparent why they turned out the way they did…it almost always comes down to being able to answer the question “Why is this valuable to me?” better or faster. One interesting part of this is that our first guess is almost never the right one…whether it be design or copy our first pass almost always under-performs the eventual best idea. This keeps us coming back to core principles of design, such as those I’ve listed here.

Original Article