How to Sell the Benefits of Using Your Site

A site's ability to attract new visitors is an important part of its success. And once you have new visitors at your home page, you have to convince them to stay! You only have a few seconds to sell the benefits of your site to new visitors.

Here are three tips on getting the message across quickly and clearly.

The Tagline or Unique Selling Proposition (USP)

We instantly associate a phrase next to a logo as the tagline, or USP (Unique Selling Proposition). It should state the single most important benefit that the visitor will gain from using your site. Taglines are used to support your marketing message.

Here are some well-known taglines:

  • "Earth's Biggest Bookstore" - Amazon.com
    Amazon.com's tagline is to let you know that they offer the widest selection of books. Amazon.com used this tagline before they expanded into other product areas.

  • "The Ultimate Driving Machine" - BMW.com
    This tagline says you will get the ultimate driving experience with a BMW.

  • "We Love To See You Smile" - McDonald's
    This tagline says you will smile, after the satisfaction of eating at McDonald's

As you can see, one of the benefits of the tagline is that it doesn't necessarily have to be 'true', in the purest form of the word. Is a BMW really the 'ultimate' driving machine? That's arguable, but ultimately unprovable since it's an opinion.

Here are some tips on constructing your own taglines:

  • Examine other people's taglines to see what makes them work. Then apply that learning to the creation of your tagline
  • Your tagline must be simple, concise, clear, understandable and convey your marketing message
  • Make sure your tagline can be understood by an international audience
  • Include words or phrases that connect with your logo or the visual you are using
  • Use active verbs
  • Once you create a tagline to support your marketing message, stick with it. Don't change it just because you're tired of it. Some of the most well known taglines have been used for years
  • Use a dictionary and thesaurus to find words to use

The Welcome Message

If your Web site is not self-explanatory, you should display a simple welcome message somewhere near the top of your home page.

Your welcome message should be simple, concise, clear, and easily understandable.

It could:

  • promote your site's unique selling proposition, or benefit
  • explain what your Web site is about
  • be a list consisting of three to five bulleted points

The Browser's Title Bar

Display your site's title and tagline in the Web browser's title bar. To do this, simply use the <TITLE> tag in the <HEAD> of each page you create.

When visitors bookmark the Web page, the title will be used as the description of the link in their bookmark or favorites folder.