Flexible Failures
- Expertise
- Policies and promises
Then why don't you have several dozen lining the silverware drawers in your kitchen? Instead, your drawers are probably filled like mine with tools suited for specialty jobs. Butter knives, steak knives, the bread knife. Soup spoons, slotted spoons and a ladle. I admit, I'm pretty much a one-fork -- the dinner fork -- kind of guy, but my wife makes us keep dessert forks in the drawer for when company comes over.
Finders Keepers
I'm in a convenience store watching a youngster at the soda station fill his glass by putting in small amounts from eight different spigots. I ask him, "What have you got there?" He says
red bull new era hats, "It's called a Suicide." I grab a glass, thinking I'll give it try. One taste and I understand why it's called a Suicide. I nearly gag.
Suicide Gag
Your website should do one thing really well. Do you know what that is?
- Options
If a doctor buddy told you he did Lasik surgery, performed a nose job and did a knee replacement yesterday, you would wonder how good the results would be. Even if he did the three procedures perfectly, we would prefer to believe three specialists could have done them better.
3. What is relevant? Content on your site is a good thing as long as it's relevant to the topic of the problem your visitor came to solve. For instance, if they came for dress shoes, then laces and polish may also be relevant. Guitars need strings and straps. In addition, your content might include pages for things such as:
- Relevance
When you look at your website through your visitors' eyes and see confusion and frustration
sunglasses outlet, perhaps it's time to consider multiple "one-trick websites". Using multiple websites gives you an opportunity to trade-in flexibility for focus. Each website can now focus on one pain/solution set based on a common goal or topic that your visitors desire. Sticking with one topic per website allows you to quickly establish:
Your company may be capable of solving many problems for your customers, and that's a good thing. However, when a person initiates a web search, they only have one problem on their mind. It's possible they even have a solution in mind, with some idea of which attributes that solution should have. If their problem is they don't have a carving knife for the holiday turkey, they don't want to wade past your corkscrews and can openers to find that. Confused customers don't buy.
Confusion Solution
- Focused specialization
- Credibility
- Experience
You may think your "suicide website" is refreshing and satisfying while your customers may be gagging on it. Consider specializing with several "single-flavor" websites.
One-Trick Training
Goal Focus
Copyright 2009 Paul Johnson.
Our kitchens are proof that we endorse the notion of having the right tool for each job. However, we tend to view our website as the Swiss Army knife. After all, websites are incredibly flexible. We can easily add pages and adjust navigation links to create a boundless array that can accommodate anything. Got a white paper? Put it on the website. Need to take a survey? Use the Web site. Did you just distribute a press release? Post that to the website, too.
Perhaps you own a Swiss Army knife. A marvel of engineering, this clever device packs an array of indispensable tools into a compact and convenient shape that can easily be carried in a pocket. In addition to a sharp and sturdy knife, it's comforting to know we can also access a screwdriver, corkscrew or can opener at a moment's notice.
- Credibility
Perhaps the users of your website -- your potential customers -- aren't as impressed with it as you are. When you fail to quickly give visitors what they need from your website, you fail to establish valuable relationships with potential customers.
Another advantage to creating a one-trick website with a single pain/solution set is that it's easier to rank well in the search engines for relevant terms. If your website is all about carving knives
######## Oakley, it's relatively easy to rank well for turkey carving equipment, turkey carving supplies and turkey carving techniques.
- Relevant resources, such as how-to guides and manuals
Again, I would like to mention that the focus of this article is not how to be a creative artist and express yourself through your music, but solely about how to make music that will eventually lead you to SIGNING A RECORD DEAL.One thing you have to remember when following this method is that "popular" trends change quite often in the music industry. What is popular today might not be popular tomorrow. So, you have to be able to determine when a trend is growing and when a trend is on the verge of extinction, because you don't want to spend 6-12 months creating an album worth of material only to find out that no-one is listening to that sound anymore. For example, if you are creating music in the Rap genre, you don't want to use rap music beats from the 90's, but you want to be sure you are using rap music beats that sound like they were produced in the year 2009!
While there are no hard and fast rules to determine how long a trend will exist, use your better judgment. For example, I will use the Hip-Hop industry and one of its most popular trends of the 2000's. Approximately five years after T-pain exploded onto the scene with his unique use of Auto-tune and the Vocoder, nearly every popular song in the Hip-Hop Genre today in 2009 is incorporating those elements. It has gotten to the point where popular rapper Jay-Z recently released a song titled "Death to Auto-tune." Now this should be a clear indicator to anyone in the Hip-Hop genre that this trend is on the verge of extinction, but soon a new trend will grow in popularity to replace the old and YOU WILL BE READY!
While your corporate website may be your Swiss Army knife for customers who already know you and love you, you'll likely benefit from having additional one-trick websites where each website does one thing really well. Never forget that flexibility can dilute effectiveness. Decide what each of your one-trick websites should enable your customers to do, and then help them do that and nothing else. When you help customers cut to the chase, you'll quickly master the trick of developing valuable new customer relationships.
- Support channels
The value in the Swiss Army knife's flexibility is negated by its lack of focus. While we marvel at the ingenuity of the combination tool, the reality is that we as users prefer the "one-trick ponies" and keep carving knives, can openers and #2 Phillips screwdrivers handy to help us get the real work done.
To get started with a one-trick website, consider the elements of this three-step strategy:
- Understanding of the visitor's problem
You do want a deep site as long as you stay true to a common problem or topic.
1. What's their problem? Get a clear understanding of what pain your customer is trying to eliminate, and what solutions they may already have in mind. Use tools like Wordtracker, Keyword Discovery, and Google's External Keyword Tool to get an idea of what customers are already searching for on the Web. Better yet, talk to some customers and conduct a survey to discover how people with this problem talk about and describe it so you can use their words in your marketing copy.
2. What's your goal? When visitors come to your website, what can you reasonably expect them to do? You may want to design the site to include multiple selling paths to support visitors dealing with different stages of the problem. For instance, for those doing preliminary research your goal may be to get them to download a helpful white paper and give you their email address. For those that have a more pressing need, your selling path may lead them to an on-line transaction via your shopping cart.
These one-trick websites benefit your visitors by allowing them to accomplish what they came for without distraction. Bob Scheinfeld of Ultimate Lifestyle Academy calls these TOT sites; TOT stands for "the one thing". You're focused message makes it easier for prospects to decide to engage with you because we all feel more comfortable using specialists.
red bull new era hats Teach Your Website to Master
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