A website should do four things:  It should tell your story in a believable way and it should turn web surfers into friends, friends into customers and customers into storytellers. Sites that don’t have a clear idea of how to achieve this are wasting money and time.

Tell a believable story
The purpose of you website is to start a conversation around who you are. The best type of talking on a site is storytelling. Develop a product worth talking about and start telling your story in such a way that it is worth retelling.The personality of your site should be expressed in the story you want to tell. Your site should show who you are; the fastest, the cheapest, the most exclusive, the most methodical, the most flexible – whatever you want to communicate. Choose a tone for your site that matches the big story you want to tell about your business. Question: What (truthful) story can I tell to persuade someone to do what I want them to do? 

Turn web surfers into friends
A web page has a second function. It should move the people who are moved by your story to take a first small step. If a person is new to your site you want them to change from strangers (people you know nothing about) to friends (people who trust you enough that you may talk to them). Say, for example, you want people to subscribe to your monthly newsletter. What part of your story do you need to tell first-time visitors to persuade them to give up their anonymity?

Turn friends into customers
A good website gets the largest percentage of people that come to the site to do what you as business wants them to do. That could be to buy something, ask for a quotation, find answers for themselves or visit your online storeroom. Start viewing your site as a series of steps that guide strangers to become friends and friends to become ‘doing’ customers. Figure out what would be the shortest way to enable friends to do what you want them to do. For example: Click here and buy, send a mail to someone, ask for a quotation. What you want is for someone to understand your story and then lift his or her hand and say:  “I want to!” When your landing page tells your story and your second-level page asks permission to talk to someone, this second page should make it clear (without saying so) what the sensible thing is to do - where to click.

Turn customers into storytellers
Lastly, you want to make it very easy for customers to spread the word on your behalf. You want people who found your services helpful to tell as many people as possible. And you want to make it easy for them to do this. So here are two questions to ponder on: How can I reward friends that spread our story? And, how can I assist them to retell our story correctly? Enabling your best customers to tell their friends about your business is a very profitable business model indeed.
 
Nico uses his creative skills and conceptual thinking to develop people’s ideas, create powerful communication tools and empower leaders.  For examples of his illustrations – see this newsletter. Contact Nico at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .