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Your website is probably your greatest asset for making sales — it’s the only thing working for you 24/7/365. But, to make sure it’s actually helping you turn visitors into customers, your website has to address these five questions that every visitor asks.
The better you answer these questions (the more clear you are), the stronger your marketing will be and the less work you’ll have to put in to earn sales.
What is your website’s job?
Your website’s job is to move your target customer one or more stages further along the buying journey.
Those stages and that journey can look different for everyone, but you typically want to turn a viewer into a sales conversation, a purchase, or some other conversion.
Answering the five questions listed below will help you guide viewers along that path to conversion.
What happens when your website does its job?
You’ll make more money. Customers will have a better experience with you. They’ll get answers to their questions, find exactly what they’re looking for, and have no more objections to taking the next step in working with you or buying from you.
To create those great experiences, you have to know your target customer, and you have to answer the five questions.
Note: Answering these questions on your website helps you turn your target customers from visitors into paying customers. It will also tell people who are not your targets that you are not an ideal fit for them. All of this is good.
1. What do you do?
The first thing people are looking for when they land on your website is a clear indicator they’re in the right place. They want to know that the link they clicked on is in fact the thing they were looking for and expecting.
How to Answer: Give a clear description of exactly what you offer, without any jargon, and without trying to sound creative or fancy. Just tell people what you offer, and provide a visual to make it even easier for them to understand what you do.
Not sure how to say what you do clearly and simply, without jargon? Ask your existing customers or fans to describe what you do, and use that language on your website.
If you think your company does too much to cover it all, or if what you do is too complex to explain it clearly and concisely, then you have a messaging problem. This is something I can help with — just reach out to [email protected].
2. What does it cost?
Once people know they’re in the right place, they want to know if your product or service is in budget, or if it’s in the range of what they’re used to paying for similar things.
As a potential customer, I cannot make a buying decision until I know roughly what this is going to cost me. If it’s not in my range, I’m out.
This is good for you. The last thing you need to spend time on is working leads through the sales process who can never afford you.
All of this is why it’s so important to show pricing on your website.
How to Answer: Put transparent pricing on your website, either on a pricing page or (for single page sites) at the bottom of your landing page. Have a clear menu item to “pricing.”
Pricing too complex to give a flat rate? You may have a packaging problem. You should at least be able to show the component parts that go into your pricing so viewers can ballpark costs without talking to you first. Afraid your pricing will scare people off? You’re probably targeting the wrong customers.
Can you still run a profitable business without showing your pricing on your website? Yes. But you’re intentionally saying “no” to more sales.
3. What does it look like?
The same is true whether you’re selling sweaters or software — people want to see a product before they buy it.
How to Answer: If you have physical products, show pictures and videos of them. If it’s software, screenshots, illustrations, and demos go a long way. Maybe even offer a free trial. If you provide services, show the steps you’ll take in your process and the end result of working with you.
Everyone wants to reduce risk and ensure they’ll have a good experience before they pay you. Showing them what they’re getting solves this and moves them one step closer to becoming your customer.
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4. Do you have this one particular feature?
Every buyer has a list of “requirements for use” that must be met before they purchase.
Before you buy a pair of pants, for instance, you check that they’re the right size, length, color, fit, and have the right number of pockets. Before you buy software, you go through the features list to see if it can do exactly what you need.
More advanced companies may have these requirements specified and written down, but I wouldn’t count on it. Normally this is just a mental list, and you’ll have to understand your customers very well to address this properly.
How to Answer: Provide a product details section on your product pages, a features page for your software, thorough documentation as needed (depending on your audience), and list what people are getting for their subscription purchase on your “pricing” page.
5. How do I take the next step?
You bring people to your website, you give them all this information, and now you have to answer “so what?” What conversion step do you need those website visitors to take?
Tell them!
How to Answer: Explicitly tell customers what steps to take to move forward in your sales process. You need to understand your target customers’ buying patterns to know the best step, or whether there should be multiple options, but you should consider:
Buy now
Schedule a demo
Start a free trial
Call or text us
Start a chat to answer your questions
Anyone interested in working with you or buying from you needs to know how to do it. Otherwise you’re leaving tons of opportunities on the table.
How does this all play out in the customer journey?
Back in my Text Request days, we did a lot of website heat mapping and session tracking, and there was a pretty clear and consistent path users took.
They’d hit our homepage or landing page, view the description and the image above the fold, then go to our pricing page to check both the cost and the features they’d get for each subscription.
Then they’d view our demo page looking for visuals, then deep dive into some our of features pages, then go back to pricing. If we met their needs, then they’d start to purchase or contact us.
The way we increased purchases and other conversions was by more clearly and quickly answering these five questions I’ve covered above. Doing so directly leads people down the path to purchase.
You can — and should — do the same for your own website.
Hi, I’m Kenneth Burke. 👋 As a Marketing VP, I led our bootstrapped startup from $0 to $20M and an acquisition. Now I help startup founders achieve product-market fit, so you can remove the guesswork from growth.
I post stories, advice, and frameworks weekly here on #BurkeBits, and share content more often across LinkedIn, TikTok, YouTube, and Instagram. If that sounds interesting, subscribe, email me at [email protected] with your current challenge, and share this with another builder.