“What You Don’t Know About How To Create Copy For The Front Page Of Your Web Store Could Hurt You”
Jim and Stew discuss this week’s group challenge in this new podcast episode. This lesson is designed for every entrepreneur who wants to create copy for the front page of your web “store” and sell more from your website without having to struggle for days and weeks trying to figure out what to put on that front page.
Secret #1 – Headlines Matter Most
Secret #2 – Who Are You In One Sentence?
Secret #3 – Treat All Products Links As Mini Classified Ads
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The Transcript
Jim: Hey everybody, and welcome back to the Sales Copywriting and Content Marketing Hacks Podcast with Jim Edwards and…
Stew: Stew Smith.
Jim: And today we’re going to be talking about something that Stew wants to talk about, not what I want to talk about. It’s what Stew wants today. So today, that’s true. I asked you what should we talk about? So we’re going to talk about what you don’t know about how to create copy for the front page of your web store could hurt you. And so in this new podcast episode, we’re going to be talking about how every entrepreneur who wants to create copy for the front page of your web store, how you can sell more from your website without having to struggle for days and weeks trying to figure out what to put on the front page. Now, why are we talking about this, Stew?
Stew: Well, first of all, I mean, I think it’s probably the most important thing…
Jim: No, no, no, no, no, no, no. What is the selfish motivation today? Why we’re talking about this?
Stew: Well, once again you asked me what we should talk about. And this is my project this week: is to work on my sales copy on all my pages that have the most views.
Jim: Okay. The most traffic
Stew: and think about where typically people are going to find you first on the page that says blank, blank.com, right? Not Hashtag or or whatnot forward slash you know, fine. They may find you that way with an article that you created, but most of the time they’re going to find you with your main page.
Jim: Right.
Stew: Go straight to it. So yeah, and that’s the..
Jim: I just wanted everybody to understand the selfish motivation at work here. We’re not doing anything altruistic to help the folks. This is all about Stew. And this is just, you guys are coming along for the ride.
Stew: I will say this though. Uh, you know when I, when you gave me the idea, you know, cause I was just going to as do all the sales copy on all my products. When you gave you the idea to take a look at what pages are getting the most views and start there. I was like yeah, that makes sense. And my number one page is my dotcom page.
Jim: The front page.
Stew: Okay. Cool.
Jim: So, we’re actually going to talk about three different, three different secrets or three different tips to… Stew doesn’t like tips. So we’re going to do secrets. And then we’re just going to have kind of a little discussion here and try and wrap this up in about 20 minutes.
So secret number one is that your headlines matter the most. And I think what most people do on a little ecommerce store is they don’t think about the main, or a big ecommerce store… any kind of ecommerce store… They don’t think about the main page having some sort of a headline. And/or the headline is real generic cause they’re trying to be all encompassing for everybody.
But if we think about what the topic… what the purpose is of that headline on that main page when someone comes to the main page of your ecom site, the main purpose is to let them know that they’re in the right place. And that there’s something here for them.
So you’ve got to hook them. You can’t just say, “Hey, welcome to Mortar Snerds Doughnut shop.”
Well, okay, that doesn’t really help me. But if you say something like… in your case with tactical fitness, it’s know how to pass your next PT test, even if you’re not ready. Or how to… you know… we help military, police, and firefighter candidates who want to qualify for a stringent (this might not be the right word, but I’m just going to try and get it out) or rigorous tactical fitness professions, including passing…. or not even passing, but acing the required physical fitness tests.
Stew: Sure.
Jim: Something like that, that to go, oh, okay.
Stew: That’s the headline?
Jim: Yeah.
Stew: That sounds like a paragraph. What’s the difference?
Jim: No, it’s not a paragraph. It’s, I mean a headline. It’s not a headline like in a newspaper. Here’s the difference between headlines online and headlines in newspapers.
Stew: That’s what I wanted you to explain,
Jim: Headlines are short, but a headline on the web, it can be longer. It can be a couple, three lines. And here’s the thing. When someone’s interested in the topic (and we talked about this in a previous episode: the difference between sales copy and content) the line between that super, super blurred.
If someone is in danger of losing their job in the military, police, or firefighter, or they have their dream of serving in one of those professions; and those dreams revolve around being able to pass a run, ruck, swim, pull, push, sit, you know, whatever the fitness test is, that’s not sales copy.
That’s not a, “Oh my goodness, this person has a paragraph at the top of there. I can’t even look at this website now cause it’s not a proper headline.”
Stew: Gotcha.
Jim: They’re going to, I’m not going to have… I’m not talking to you… I’m not saying you, but when I’m saying I think is they see that it’s like, “Oh crap, I’m in the right place.”
Stew: And I mean, in all fairness, my, I guess my headline is just a banner that says Stew Smith fitness.
Jim: Right, right, right. And then underneath you kind of have a paragraph that has elements of a headline in it, but it’s also… it’s pretty long. I mean even that it doesn’t work as a headline. So it’s kind of like you’re half pregnant. And then as far as that picture you have up there though, that is really impressive, but it’s taking up a lot of space before people actually get down to the thing.
So what you might think about doing because that pic… I mean… the picture I’m referencing guys is a picture of Stew leading PT with 800 potential candidates coming to the Naval Academy.
Stew: Yes.
Jim: And it’s really cool. It’s like Stew all sweaty and up on a platform and sea of kids that he’s tortured. I mean that he’s helping to, you know, maximize their physical potential.
Stew: Yes. I am their first exposure to military style fitness. And I take that, I take that very seriously.
Jim: You should.
Stew: And I want them to enjoy it and remember who I a…
Jim: And go home and buy my book.
So that picture might actually work cool as a watermarked image in the background.
Stew: Okay.
Jim: So that you, I mean just something to think about.
So the other thing on that, you got to understand what that headline is that people don’t know who you are. 90% of the traffic that’s going to show up to that site doesn’t know who you are. And the people who do know who you are aren’t going to read that headline anyway because they’re going to look at a specific product. Honest to God.
Stew: Yeah, you’re right.
Jim: So your headline needs to work with both hot and, or excuse me, warm and cold traffic. And I don’t remember if we’ve talked about this before: but basically there’s three types of traffic online. There’s hot, warm, and cold.
Hot traffic is people know who you are and they know the name of your product or products.
Warm traffic is these people know there’s a solution out there somewhere, but they don’t know where it is. They don’t know who you are yet.
And then cold traffic is people who don’t know that there’s a solution. They just know that they have a problem.
Stew: Right.
Jim: So if you can have a headline that works for warm and cold traffic at the same time, that comes in really handy. I’m going to give you guys a formula that you can use. And the formula is how to benefit without pain. Example, I’m just going to try and think of it… You know, how to pass your next PT test even if you… how to past your next PT test in the next two weeks, even if you failed your most recent test. Something like that maybe won’t be the perfect headline for this page.
But adding the “even if you’ve never” or “even if you’re not ready”, so that when I told you before, we help military, police, and firefighter qualify for strenuous training and assessment programs… Even if you’re not ready right now or even if you’re… you know what I mean? Even if you don’t meet the standard, even if you are…. Anyway, you see what I’m saying.
So I don’t want to belabor that. The big thing is you got to have a cool headline on that page. And most people neglect it or they have…the other thing they do is they put a big logo at the top. They start trying to do branding.
Stew: Yes.
Jim: Nobody cares about your branding, especially if they don’t know who you are. And if they do know who you are, you already have built your brand with them.
So brand is actually bullshit. You need to… if you’re going to have a logo, have it real small. And if you’re going to have a graphic, make it real small. The biggest thing people should be seeing is that self serving headline at the top.
Stew: All right, cool.
Jim: Secret number two is can you explain to people, especially people who don’t know who you are, who you are and what you do and how you help them in a single sentence?
That is kind of what you’re trying to do on your site right now with that little mini paragraph where you’re trying to get that… that’s a smart thing to do. You’re trying to get that thought across of what you do in a single thought, in a way that makes them go, “Okay, I’m in the right place.”
So for FunnelScripts, my one sentence explanation is, “I help funnel hackers just like you go from blank screen to moneymaking sales messages and compelling content at the click of a button – no experience required.”
That’s my one sentence, what I do and that at least hooks them in. So they’re like, “What? Yeah, that’s, yeah. Okay, I got ya.”
We actually have in The Jim Edwards Method as part of The Jim Edwards Method, we have Easy Online Wizards. And inside of Easy Online Wizards, we have the “What I Do in One Sentence Wizard” that we recently ran Stew through. And we came up with some pretty cool ones.
Stew: Wanna hear my favorite?
Jim: Sure. Yeah. I’d love to.
Stew: “If Chuck Norris did tactical fitness, he’d asked Stew Smith for help.”
Jim: I think that that in your… in the right, in the right circumstances, especially with people who already know who you are, you could use that on Instagram to get a crap ton of traffic.
Stew: Yeah, I think so.
Jim: The point is though, we came up with some of them… I’ll just give you an example… Just going to pull this, “I take military, law enforcement, and firefighter candidates who have no clue about tactical fitness from zero to qualifying for service in tactical professions.” Okay, it says at the click of the mouse, that’s not good. Or “I help struggling military, law enforcement, and firefighter candidates to get to and through intense tactical assessment and selection programs.”
There you go right there that says what you do.
Stew: I like that a lot. Yup. MMM.
Jim: So anyway…
Stew: Yeah
Jim: That’s the second thing. Those are examples, but you need to be able to do that. That’s the second thing. And I think it’s critical, especially when you’ve got a store with, with so many different things in it. Hopefully they’re all related. You need to be able to tell people in one sentence what you do and why they’re in the right spot.
Stew: I love it.
Jim: The third secret for doing copy for, and again we’re just talking about the main page of your ecommerce site, that you need to understand that when you have all of those products listed, each one of those is like a mini classified ad. Your only purpose of listing all those things is to have people click through to the page that gives them more information. You’re not going to do the majority of your sales just based on a picture and one little thing.
Yes, I know you can have a buy now button with them and yes, one person in a thousand will click on it and buy and add it to cart. We’re not worried about sound in one person at a thousand. We’re worried about selling the 999 out of a thousand. And the way 999,000 out of a thousand people do it is they click on it to go to the page to get more information.
So if that’s the case, then you’re really… what you’re trying to do is sell people on clicking through. So if you, hopefully the titles of your products have benefits built into them. If you’re doing ebooks and things like that, then that’s really easy to do. If you’re selling widgets than it might not be as easy, but you can have a picture that’s compelling. Remember your picture can have text in it, especially if it’s on your website, you make the rules.
It’s not like it just has to be the picture of the product or something. You need to view the listing, that little thing, you know, usually three across or four cross or whatever. Each one of those is a classified ad. So you have a picture, you have a title, and you have a little bit of text, and you have a link. So use those to your advantage. Have a benefit in your little text, have a better call to action than just click. If all you can do is click here, then click here. But it’s designed to understand that the purpose of those listings on the front is to get people to click over to the page.
So cool headline, graphic, call to action.
So before I do the big takeaways, Stew, any thoughts?
Stew: No, I’m all ears Jim. I am sucking this up.
Jim: So, so here are the big takeaways from today’s sales copy podcast. All right. You got to have a great headline that works with the big main audience on the front page of your site. So understand that you gotta you go broad, but it’s still got to work for your specific audience.
It can’t be so broad that your audience won’t resonate with it. So remember that formula that I gave you: how to benefit without pain. That’s a good starting point. Okay.
You need to get the idea of who you are and what you do across to them. Super, super fast, preferably in one sentence. Now you can also, by the way, if you’re talking about formatting on your website, this can be the sub headline on your website. So the big headline is the one we just talked about.
Stew: Yep.
Jim: Then the sub headline or the first paragraph needs to be that one sentence thing: the what you do in one sentence.
And then the third thing you need to do is treat all your listings like they are classified ads, all the listings on that front page.
So the, the big idea here is that you can create copy for the front page of your web store without having to struggle for days and weeks trying to figure out what to put on that front page.
If you just remember these three secrets and if you’re an entrepreneur who is serious about wanting to turbocharge this process, just take one minute and you can go and sign up for our free Facebook group, the Sales Copywriting Content Marketing Hacks with Jim Edwards and Stew Smith. And it’s free. You just go to TheJimEdwardsMethod.com/group.
And this is gonna make it easy for you to create, not only copy for the front page of your web store without having to struggle for days or weeks or months trying to figure it out. But we have great discussions about all things sales copy and content marketing, and you’ll really love it. And it’s free for right now. And if you don’t sign up, you hate money.
Stew: Yeah. And we do it too. You know, I, I am listening to Jim like a student right now. And I have a to do list to update all my sales copy. So it’s
Jim: Awesome.
Stew: It’s a goal. So find a goal and get on it.
Jim: So we will see you guys next time on the Sales Copywriting and Content Marketing Hacks podcast with Jim Edwards and
Stew: Stew Smith. Let’s do this.
Jim: Bye Bye everybody.
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