14 Tactics to Make Your Website Work Harder Right Now: Tactic 7 - Didn’t I Say it Wasn’t About You? (See Tactic 1)

When you’re entertaining guests in your home, do you welcome them at the door, take their coats, ask about their kids, and then offer them a drink? Or do you yank them inside, grab them by the scruff of the neck, and march them over to your favorite piece of art and force them to stare at it for five minutes before saying Hello? Or maybe you stick them in front of your high-output subwoofers and crank up your favorite Pink Floyd album until their ears bleed?

Hopefully you agree that this kind of behavior would cause your guests to be confused, offended, and probably want to head for the door, pronto.

Point is, today’s net shoppers will “arrive at your door” with a fairly clear purpose in mind. To convert those shoppers into prospects, you must subjugate yourself to their needs and desires. That means your website copy doesn’t necessarily speak to you, it speaks to THEM. And your website aesthetic might be ho-hum to you, but it is visually pleasing to THEM

Often you don’t need a total site overhaul to achieve this. Instead, try the following steps, in this order:

1) Instruct a copy editor to comb through your site for a few hours and remove or rewrite any text that is not relevant to the way your target market views the world.

2) Have your designer do the same thing with your graphics and color scheme. Chances are you will be left with a cleaner site that removes the obstacles between you and a sale.

I’ll warn you now: the above actions will hurt quite a bit. But you’ll quickly forget about the pain when your website starts ringing in sales from prospects who feel the love every time they visit.

Still not convinced that you should put your ego aside? Pick up a copy of Seth Godin’s All Marketers are Liars. It makes you realize how silly all that navel gazing really is.