The moment prospects decide to engage with your webpage, they begin to communicate with you — your webpage is a conversation. It is our job as marketers to get into the conversation and speak to those prospects the right way.
When designing a page, choose words and images wisely. The quality of the conversation your webpage fosters determines a prospect’s next steps. Are they confused, looking for clarity and meaning and not finding any on your landing page? These prospects are leaving your page in droves.
The only way to prevent this is to make sure the first few inches of your page clearly communicate your value proposition — the ultimate reason why prospects should stop and engage with you before any other company. This will prevent them from having to make meaning of the page themselves.
In this Quick Win Clinic, Flint McGlaughlin optimizes the Vestian homepage, which does many things right but, ultimately, fails to facilitate strong dialogue with customers due to its lack of a value proposition and confusing images.
Hey, great case study – just looked at their updated version and there’s clearly still plenty more to do.
The headline “Workplace Solutions” is pretty vague and could refer to printers, restroom supplies, furniture supplies, catering supplies, etc.
The sub-headline “We deliver workplace and portfolio services to help the world’s leading companies create dynamic workplaces and mission-critical facilities” isn’t great copywriting either…
“workplace and portfolio services” is again non-descriptive anything containing “world” and “leading” will be a mental auto-switch, to off “dynamic” and “mission-critical” are meaningless jargon
I managed to find some snippets that might work towards building value statements from within the case studies section…
-24hr professional construction teams
-contacts and reputation in the market
-deliver on time
-open-book project cost tracking
-deliver… at a cost 30 to 40 percent below projections -delight clients and build ongoing global relationships -site construction and data center infrastructure -understood the client’s needs, and had the dedication and expertise to get the job done -working long hours… spending almost every weekend on-site -principals were engaged throughout the assignment.
-delivered on time and well under budget.
-The result: an engaging workplace where people are inspired to do their best work.
-commercial real estate professionals
-local market knowledge and tools that give clients a complete perspective to support smart decisions
Making the customer the hero of the story points to making a connection with the client’s procurement team so understanding their needs is paramount; specifically the right combination of value elements that they consider most important.
From other procurement case studies I know that the biggest fear held by people in that position is the fear of making a costly mistake when choosing a supplier.
So it could be approached that the key problem the prospect is facing when selecting a project partner is to “avoid making the wrong choice”
I’ve had a quick blast at new copy to test…
Headline: “on time and under budget” (request a quote from a client for whom that statement is true)
Subheadline: “Make your next commercial real estate project a success by choosing the only global corporate services company to be certified in standards such as ISO 9001, ISO 14001 and OHSAS 18001 – we exist to make your life easier”
Would love to know what you think and if you test it I’d love to know the impact.