Nailing Your Squarespace Website's Messaging: How to Effectively Communicate Your Services
What does your business do and why should people choose you?
Answering this question may seem pretty straightforward, but it is one that organizations, no matter the size, have a hard time getting right.
If you are talking with someone in person, you are afforded a little more wiggle room to explain your business offering and benefits.
When it comes to your website and corresponding campaigns, you have less time to get your point across, and it is vital to get this piece of messaging clear and concise.
Before we dig in, let's discuss how your website shows up in Google results.
When a website launches, Google spiders crawl the website to gain context and clues around the website's subject matter. Google wants to provide the best result to people making a search query and wants to know if your website is a good match.
Google spiders, however, don't see a website the same way humans do. Where we see images and fonts and colours, google sees code.
Humans are pretty good at putting together context clues. We can see an image paired with a clever slogan and maybe make sense of what a business offers. Google, on the other hand, struggles with this a bit.
For example, if a realtor uses a picture of a beautiful condo with the phrase "you'll love it here" on their website, a human might know what this means.
Google, however, may not and therefore will be less likely to surface your website in results to people searching for realtors or condos.
When you use an image it is always important to provide an “alt tag” and “alt text” to help provide context to visually impaired readers, and also to tell Google what the image is. You and I may see a picture of a beautiful condo, but unless labelled properly, google doesn’t know what the image is.
The content and keywords that make up your website are still important to Google. To rank higher, some people overuse keywords- often referred to as keyword stuffing, a black hat SEO technique. Here, the line of thought is that Google will be more likely to surface your website in search results.
Google cares about quality and customer experience.
This tactic falls apart because reading spammy website copy is not enjoyable.
Have you ever come across a blog that says something like, “we are Vancouver’s premier personal trainers. We offer personal training to Vancouverites in the Vancouver area. Our personal training services in Vancouver etc. etc.”
If you have, you know it sucks. Low-quality, spammy blogging is an attempt to gain some SEO through keyword stuffing.
Google knows this experience sucks, and that is why keyword stuffing will hurt you, and Google will be less likely to surface your website.
Content quality is an important factor in UX (user experience), and user experience is an essential factor for SEO.
Remember, Google wants to provide the best result to someone making a search query. If your website provides a horrible experience (be it through low-quality content, low page speed, or poor mobile experience), Google will be less likely to surface your website.
The Blink Test
If someone is trying to find an answer to a question or looking for a service, and you are fortunate enough to show up in their search results, you have a very limited amount of time to show them your value. They want to know they have arrived in the right destination almost immediately. The majority of people will read the headline on a page but very few will go on to read the first paragraph.
You need to craft a headline that tells google what it is you do and also emotionally resonates with your audience.
You only have a few seconds (hence blink tests) to communicate your value prop to your potential customer and tell your reader how you can solve their problem or stand out above the competition.
Now that we have talked about how search engines work, and the importance of crafting a message that resonates with your audience, let’s dig into communicating your value
Communicating your value
Before we can get into the nitty-gritty, take a moment to state what you do, why you exist, and why people should choose you. Take a moment to reflect on the questions below.
What does your small business do?
What is your purpose?
What makes you unique?
Defining your service value prop.
Defining your value proposition
Your value proposition summarizes what you do, clearly states your benefits, and why someone should choose you over your competitors.
It may be tempting to make a laundry list of what you do better, but the value prop isn't about you. It's about your customer and how you can best solve their problem.
Nailing a concise and clear value prop is difficult, but it will help you in so many ways. Your value prop (or a variation of it) is something you will likely use at nearly every other touchpoint on your marketing journey. For example, it will be something that will make its way onto marketing collateral and across digital campaigns.
It can also serve as a beacon. When you are considering other brand components such as your tone, your imagery, your marketing channels, and so on, you'll want to reflect on this foundational piece and ask yourself, "does this marketing tactic or decision align with our value proposition?"
Take a moment to get clear on your why. Why should your product or service matter to potential clients? This practice isn't so much about what you do, but why it matters.
value proposition worksheet.
Communicating your why
Remember, people buy the camera, but ultimately they want to capture memories and exercise their creativity. An easy way to determine your product benefits from the lens of a consumer is to start high level and drill down by asking yourself "why."
Communicating your why worksheet
Let's use popular camera features for this example.
Feature: Excellent self timer
Why does it matter?
Can reduce camera shake
More flexibility to include yourself in photos
Why does that matter?
More options for photo styles & low light imagery
Can include yourself in family photographs
And, why does that matter?
Opportunity for creativity and capturing the perfect shot
Capture lasting memories of you with friends & family
Looking at this example, you can see that communicating the value here isn’t necessarily about the speed of the self timer, but rather appealing to the reason WHY that might matter for someone.
To access blank worksheets that help you move through this exercise, visit the resources section.
Communicating your value through web design & digital marketing
Once you have solidified your value prop, you’ll find it is not only used on your website but also across your digital marketing efforts. It is best practice to create continuity between your website landing pages (conversion-focused pages that you send paid traffic to) and your ad copy.
You can learn more about conversion focused web design here, and creating landing pages here.
Doing so provides a better user experience as it makes it clear right away that someone has arrived at the correct destination. Because this provides a better user experience, it helps with your quality score when running Google Ads. Why is this important? Quality score influences how often your ads show and how much they cost.
Circling back to where we started, defining what your small business does and why someone should choose you is an essential foundational marketing piece.
