Your Product Is Not What You Think It Is

[Peter (IMC)]

In most cases your products are not what they are to you. At least not to your customers. As difficult as it may seem to imagine, your customers look at your product totally different than you do.

You sell paint, your customer buys a new look for his room.
You sell car parts, your customer buys a repaired, improved perfomance or a better looking car.
You sell jewelry, your customer buys a happy wife or girlfriend.

Do you focus on the greatness of your product, or the needs of your customers? The easiest mistake to make is thinking that your product sells it self.

Is your site a catalog or a real online store? How do you present your products? And most importantly, do you know what your customers are really buying?

Investigating the needs of your customers and focusing on it can give you a sales boost beyond your dreams. Give your customers the feeling they´re understood and not only will they be more interested to buy from you, they may even be promoting your store to their friends.

What do you do to understand the needs of your customers?

[markp1980]

Interesting, I guess when you sell a product you think that it will sell itself.

An outsider view of my site / product would be really appreciated.

www.rosesbydesign.co.uk

Do you think we sell it as it should be?

[begabloomers]

Thanks Peter that is a timely reminder to review a site from someone else's perspective.

Testimonials are good but an image also says a lot. So I guess, in answer to Peter, the concept sounds good but the site looks a bit like a catalogue and a little impersonal ( as does mine! ).

I guess that's where an image showing the desired end reult is approriate? e.g. happy mother, or wife etc. etc. receiving the gift - happy because someone has taken the time to personalise the gift.

[Dcrux]

Nope. Nothing wrong. And do you know how I know that? Because there are about twenty thousand sites doing the same thing.

Let's start taking this "outside perspective" thing seriously.

A woman starts a giftbasket service. It does about what you would expect with twenty thousand direct and indirect competitors -- poorly.

So this woman rethought the basic assumptions underlying the product. She redesigned her business and got free TV converage, newspaper coverage, and tremendous word of mouth.

She sells anonymous giftbaskets for employees and relatives to send coworkers a message about breath problems, odor problems, and so on. So one might be mouth wash, floss and chewing gum.

Another woman had gotten tired of throwing out the wilted product from her flower business. She repackaged them as "breakup bouquets," put in boxes of melted chocolates, and made a fortune. Another woman redesigns wedding bands for divorcees into pieces celebrating their new life.

These are just a couple of ideas about people who actually stepped out of the mental straitjacket of their preconceptions about the products they were selling. Each of these have a "that just isn't done" factor. Make a list of all the "if you had been in this business as long as I have..." things. Find out all the "impossibles" which can't be done, but would absolutely crush the competition -- then do it.

If you're working outside the competition's comfort zone, they aren't competitors.

[Feydakin]

Peter hits it right on, again..

In the jewelry business we do not sell gold, platinum, diamonds, or gemstones.. We sell emotion.. We sell that feeling that someone will have when they give, receive, or just look at some special piece of jewelry.. It's one of the few industries I've worked in that actually understands this and works that emotion for everything it's worth..

Anyone can sell price.. In any industry.. But it takes a targetted message to sell an emotion..

[begabloomers]

D'Crux,

yes Peter already has a product that is 'out of the box'. Good on him!

The point i was inarticulately trying to make, is that the moment I go to his front page, within seconds the novelty/uniquness wears off and it looks like any other flower catalogue site ( to me at least ). I began wondering if the service was available in tulips ( my favorite flowers ) etc. that is, he had lost his unique selling point message fairly quickly with me ( and my consumers eyes) and I started looking at it as if it was any florist's home page.

Maybe I have a shorter attention span than the average shopper.

[markp1980]

Thanks for the feedback...

This thread certainly gets us all thinking.

Does anyone have any suggestions for improvements?

Many Thanks

Mark

[Dcrux]

Does anyone have any suggestions for improvements?

Exactly why I wrote that post. And why you won't be following it. Enjoy the comfort zone.

[Peter (IMC)]

Originally Posted by markp1980

Interesting, I guess when you sell a product you think that it will sell itself.

An outsider view of my site / product would be really appreciated.

www.rosesbydesign.co.uk

Do you think we sell it as it should be?

Your home page text:

Want to send flowers ? RosesbyDesign.co.uk is the No.1 alternative online florist for flower delivery with the perfect flowers to send - whatever the occasion. Send personalised roses with your own message or image printed onto the petals to express your feelings, send roses to say thank you, or send roses to let somebody know that you are thinking of them.

You start right away with saying how great your company is,... no need to do that.

Go for what they really want right away, to surprise somebody, and then you can tell about the unique added value you give. But keep emphasizing the "making somebody happy" part. Keep letting this focus come back in all your product pages as well.

If you´re not a great writer, ask for help. This is not difficult but you need the right touch in order to get this done right.

Then you really need to create a whole bunch of pages that don't sell. The testimonials suggested before are a good way, but make sure they´re always accompanied with a picture of the person that received the rose. You can even give an insentive, like send us a photo and your next order is at half price. Maybe that costs you a bit of money, but the value of these photo testimonials is much greater than they cost. Do make sure that the photos are of the person with the rose,.. and not just the rose. You need happy people in there because that´s what your clients are buying,... happiness!

Don't worry about being one of the "20.000+ sites doing the same thing" Your job is 2 fold:

1) Getting visitors
2) Selling online

Getting visitors is irrelevant if you don't sell right. In the end a 5% conversion rate on 100 visitors is a lot better than a 0.5% conversion rate of 500 visitors. And what´s even better,... once you have the selling online done right, the number of visitors to your site will grow naturally, without you having to do anything complicated like link building.

A successful website is promoted mostly by its visitors!

[markp1980]

Thank you very much peter.

The text on our homepage currently is more for seo 'keywords'.

I will come up with an alternative including the 'make someone happy' 'surprise' etc

Will see how it converts.

:-)

Mark

[Peter (IMC)]

The text on our homepage currently is more for seo 'keywords'.

Copy written for a site can be optimized without it becomming "more for seo 'keywords'" In fact that´s not difficult at all. Just often it feels like pleasing a search engine is like pleasing a machine while pleasing a site visitor is everything but pleasing a machine. However, the machine in this case is programmed to behave like a site visitor and can thus be pleased in the same way... :)

Sounds complicated, but the real problem is not writing for the search engines, but writing in general. Being able to write really well is a gift!

[TrafficProducer]

Great Insight

The advertising term comes to mind:-

"Don’t sell the sausage, sell the sizzle,”

...
What does the local shop sell? Newspapers, Milk, sweets…

Yes but they mainly sell convenience. Not having to travel far, etc.

[Mistress Jane]

This was a subject which caught our eyes.

How do you get around it ?

We are the owners of a Gothic Dungeon ... yes ... it's a business too ... if you are narrow minded ... best leave this post alone, and read the next

Been in business for over 5 years with a local, national and international clientele. About a year ago, we opted for the 'puppy dog principle' . You know ... kid asks dad for a puppy .. shop owner says ... "Keep the puppy for the weekend ... and if you don't want it , bring it back !" Yes ... right ?

On our website, we offered potential clients an insight into how we would match their interests to a private sesion with a Mistress or Master. No obligation... it is free , then a follow-up procedure.

We were inundated with requests from all over the world .. most of whom lived more than a 1,000 miles from us. But we whetted their appetites for the real thing. Our ROI is about 25%, with a library of sessions, plus photos to match pretty well all interests.

Moral of the story ... give the potential customer a taste of what they get ... free downloads, free solution to a pressing problem (especially about computers) ... in fact give them a taste of what they are going to get.

Fond regards from sunny Spain
Iron Damsel, Mistress Stiletto and Highlander

"When the going gets tough, the tough beg for mercy"

[thorfjalar]

As I understand it, what this thread is saying to a newbie like me is:
The most obvious subject for a beginners site is to cover someting s/he is already interested in. The problem being that most likely there already exist numerous websites already that cover the subject. The solution, according to this thread, is to find a unique perspective or new way of presentation.

[tomfoolery]

Or - another old Marketing/Copywriting saying: (from a customer's perspective: "Don't tell me about your grass seed, tell me about my beautiful lawn"

I can't tell you how many of my clients have come to me with copy that pushes Features. Even in this day and age. Or with copy that is all "I We I We" instead of "You You You".

Also -

A great book for understanding how to uncover customer needs is Spin Selling, by Neil Rackham. It's sold by a company called Huthwaite (and also available on Amazon). I read it years ago, and still find it to be the best book on the subject:

http://www.spinselling.com.au

Richard

[thorfjalar]

Like:

Don´t tell me about your airline tickets, tell me about my destination?

Don´t tell me about number of pages in a book, tell me how much smarter it will make me?

[dynamics]

Need some help but not allowed to send a private message??!

I'm a member - why am I 'not authorised'?

[dynamics]

This site has lots of broken cookies. The service I'm trying to promote is a fix for broken cookies.

This 'Not Authorized' is typical

Gawd

Brad

[TrafficProducer]

Moral of the story ... give the potential customer a taste of what they get ... free downloads, free solution to a pressing problem (especially about computers) ... in fact give them a taste of what they are going to get.

This is a good point :)

Although I know of some site which list business details for free, not a URL link though... if you want a URL link get out £300+ ,(UK Pounds), cash a year.

One problem with this is that users can not get a true idea of how much Traffic they will get because no link is given for the free listing.