☕️ Do You Want A Pretty Website Or A Profitable One?
Caffeine made me write this.
Below are some (very caffeinated) thoughts I had on a walk. They define my web design philosophy.
Note: I talk a lot about marketing in this post. I am not a marketing expert—these are simply lessons I've read from the likes of @BowTiedTetra and @BowTiedOpossum. I am in the early stages of testing these ideas myself, so take my writing with a grain of salt.
Remember, this is a caffeine-fueled schizo rant.
(If you want to see me post about the more technical details of building websites, let me know. Also follow @BowTiedWebReapr, he's very solid at web design.)
Some Background
There are two marketing levers: Attention and long-form sales letters.
Attention is fun and it works like a magnet for your business/brand. But the traffic is cheap and moves on quickly.
Long-form sales letters attract and hold the attention of prospects that are primed to buy. A good letter can persuade or dissuade (i.e., qualify) your prospects into becoming your customers.
In the past, long-form sales letters were literal letters—you got them in the mail. Now they show up as emails. Or in spoken-form as a podcast. Or in spoken-visual-form as a video.
Videos are powerful sales letters because they combine the two marketing levers; graphics and animations grab attention, and the sales letter is spoken. Graphics also provide structure (transitions, overlays), which reduces cognitive load.
Scott Adams cites low-cognitive load as a hallmark of good writing. Short words are preferred to long words. Sentences are declarative and straightforward. Sentences are action-oriented.
Bad: The ball, which was red, was thrown by the boy.
Good: The boy threw the red ball.
Web Design Philosophy
A well-designed website acts as a collection of sales letters that, like videos, use both marketing levers. By following visual design principles, you guide the reader's attention and reduce cognitive load by breaking up large sections of text.
Each webpage is its own sales letter. This is obvious with service/product pages and blog posts. It is also the case with the landing page. The landing page is a long-form sales letter. Each section must come in a logical sequence. Information must be carefully balanced with attention, and with interactivity (e.g., clicking a button to engage the reader—this is a form of buy-in).
This is why you never hop into VSCode or Wordpress and start building a website.
Websites are first written, then they are designed, and only then are they built with code or with a page builder.
Websites are more powerful marketing tools than videos because you can add researched keywords and internal links to your writing to boost SEO. Your call-to-action's (CTAs) are buttons that lead the reader to the next step in your funnel. Clicking the button is the action. Simple.
The catch?
Text-heavy websites are often ugly and unreadable. It takes a real professional to design a content site to be both engaging and informative. You will need to either pay a professional or specifically search for content-based website templates and buy a couple.
Autist Note: Open up Chrome Dev Tools (⌘+⌥+J) on that template you’re eyeing and replace a text field (often a <p> tag) with your writing. Do your autistic words flow effortlessly? If yes, buy.
There is no getting around this. Work your W2 or whatever you do for money (I deal crack, personally) until you have a few hundred saved up. Buy what you need, then put all of your energy into becoming the best copywriter you can be.
Then, you turn the money printer on.
(I'm still working on this last step myself.)