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Your Web Presence & Sales Page

Lesson 14 from: Create Digital Products That Sell While You Sleep

April Bowles-Olin

Your Web Presence & Sales Page

Lesson 14 from: Create Digital Products That Sell While You Sleep

April Bowles-Olin

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Lesson Info

14. Your Web Presence & Sales Page

Lesson Info

Your Web Presence & Sales Page

Let's, talk a little bit about your web president because this is a big deal, and I can't tell you how many times I've had people come to me and they say, I just don't know what's working, I thought this product I know it's really great. I have a lot of confidence in it. I know it can help people or I know that people want this. People tell me that they want stuff like this all the time, but it's not selling now go to their website on the web site doesn't look very nice, and this is a problem for a few reasons. One of the main problems is that you have to instill trust in people before they're going to give you their money. And if your website doesn't look professional, if it doesn't look trustworthy, if people don't feel like she's got her stuff together, then they're not going to give you their money, so everything else you do is kind of for not and that stinks. I mean, some people can sell things with websites that don't look so great, but most of the time no and I have seen it over...

and over and over again, where somebody will improve their website, they're selling the same exact thing and sales skyrocket and it's because people have to trust you. It could make or break the success of your digital and information products and first impressions matter so even if you have this really great product if people come to your site and within five seconds they're like no I don't like this website I don't like the design this doesn't connect with me it doesn't look very nice they're gone forever or maybe they'll come back in three months in check in again but they're going for at least a little while you've lost a sale that you could have really had yes yeah um I'm sorry jackie come my concern is so much a subjective like sometimes I'll talk to one from the like the sight is the most beautiful sight I've seen in my life on then I go to the same time like not so much not my style so is it just a matter of your ideal customers will like what you like as long as you hit the basic things that are clean you have to worry about everyone liking it yeah exactly if you go tio my sight heart may block dot com it's very girly it's very wins the coal it's very fun but if that's not you you're automatically not the right person for her and she doesn't amazing job of bringing the right people to her brand getting the right people in her courses and that's why her courses are so successful is also the community inside of them the right people and you want the right people. So if some people say this isn't for me, but all of your target market look, I love your side so much that's what you want? Absolutely, and if you don't have a lot of confidence in your sight, if you're feeling like I can't invest and a web designer and I don't have the skills to do it myself, one of my suggestions would be to sell on another platform and have a blogger so selling another site, like at sea or creative market, where it's, very easy to set up a shop, looks very, it looks, it looks kind of branded, it looks very professional, has a very clean feel, and people trust it because they buy on that side over and over and over again. So if you feel like, oh, I was just wondering about, do you think that there's any? Do you have any tips or suggestions about multiple sites like, is there too many places you could be? Yes, okay, I would suggest keeping everything on one site if you can, and if it makes sense, if they're completely different businesses and they don't have any relation, put them on separate sites otherwise, try to keep as much, and one place is possible, because we'll talk about the reasons why you won't do that in just a little bit and why it would make sense to have things on a couple of different sites but it can get very confusing and then people don't know where to tell other people to find you because you have so many websites and they can't remember it off the top of their head like everybody knows blacksburg belle dot com that's where you go so if someone were to recommend me they would know to send them there you want to have a sight like that where people know exactly where to send people um just to follow up though on that like I know I've seen that there's a lot of what is it called where you basically have the digital images like zazzle or place like that where you can have a shop and then people can put your image is right onto an iphone case or something like that so then maybe you have an etsy store and then maybe you still have a a thousand presents something different marketplaces totally five that's what I'm totally fine yeah yeah yeah yeah that's completely fine you're probably gonna have one that you send people to the most for instance, angie from angie makes she sells on creative market but she sends everyone to her website she doesn't promote creative market she promotes her own website where you can get her products but there are also lots of people who find her products on creative market and buy them there, so you're probably gonna have one place where you send the most people, teo and I would say on that home place have the links to where they confine the other stuff in case they want to unless you're selling the same thing on your website. So andy is selling the exact same things on her website, so she's going to keep people there as much as possible, but if you have different products in different places, I would have links to where people can find it and send everybody to that home base. So if you feel really overwhelmed, start with a blogger, I suggest a self hosted wordpress blawg just because it's so easy to customize, you can add a shop to it later. You don't have tio make it crazy insane with all the bells and whistles you can start with something that is very simple and it'll work for you pick a simple while design theme, so if you are not confident in your design skills, pick a theme that most represents what you want you're brando look like a resource is angie make she makes beautiful themes another one is blue chic b l u c h I c that's another one that has some really pretty steamed I paid when I first started out I didn't have the money for a web designer I paid someone seventy five dollars to create a really nice opt in because I knew that that was important to get people to opt in to my email list and it rose the amount of people that rose adding to my email list after I had somebody professionally designed it was insane had the same amount of traffic but a lot more people signing up for my email so also if you have a small budget pick and choose what you want to use it for and a website design can run anywhere from a few hundred dollars tio five thousand dollars or more it really depends on what you want it depends on who you want to work with all of those factors come into place I suggest that if you want to hire a web designer contact three or five who you really like their design style ask them for quote, let them know exactly what you're looking for and see what works you uh I'm just thinking of the incentives to the often or the big banana so the, uh captain tio get the email people signing out your newsletter could you not have it evident on your site but when they will I guess maybe maintain the question myself I'm wondering if when you send them thank you so much for signing up then you have a surprise a gift for them like a pdf download I mean you can do that but more people are going to sign up if they know what they're getting I was thinking that through as I was asking it because you want to give them a little sort of hint of when I get yeah okay and we'll talk about some more email newsletter tips in the fourth segment in this session so I would say if you want to hire a web designer and you have no budget for it whatsoever start setting aside a percentage of your sales even five percent or ten percent will really add up over time and if you can't do that, do a couple of dollars every time you get a sale compile a list of the web designers you like to work with and email them tio often they'll do a free consultation so that you can see if they're the right fit for you they will give you an estimate and pick one that you seen think that is the best fit ask him about availability because you may have to wait three months to a year before they will have an opening so if you don't have the budget port right away it's okay because lots of times you will put down a deposit and then you will pay the rest of the money either when you start the work or when you finish the work so saturday, keeping in mind how much more how much more money you need to make put down the deposit and save the rest during week period and this is a really important thing to consider is everywhere you sell and mark it matters so your etsy shop your facebook page or twitter page or instagram your pinterest because you never know where people are going to find you and I can't tell you how many times I've thought about buying from someone and then I see something else of theirs usually it's their blawg and I think it was really unprofessional I don't know if I'm actually going to purchase this or not and I'll probably favorite it I'll probably say I'll come back to it later maybe, but it gives me this feeling like if they don't have everything together, then I'm not really sure this is the right person to buy from so you never know and again first impressions matter so you want wherever they find you online, they think yes, this is the person for me I'm going to show you some examples I'm gonna show you all of where you confined my online so if you've never been her web site you can see right now that it's very branded this is an image of her website heart made blawg dot com and then you're going to see how closely it relates to her etsy shop right so you can see that the branding really matches then this is my carly's dot com and the reason she has this set up is because so many people don't search for her by heart made block dot com they search for my carly's dot com so this is one of those instances where you would want to have another site that sound where you're sending people all the time but it's kind of your home base and from here you can find everything else it kind of it shuffles through images and so you can find where she is online so when people search for my carly's dot com they're going to come up with her thing instead of something that's like this you are all does not exist the same thing happens with me and I just have it so it redirects yes so rather than having a landing you could do that paige both options work really? Well, I have the same thing I have I believe I have april bulls dot com and april boles olen dot com I believe and they both a redirect to blacks for belle okay, this is her life is messy boot camp sales paige how cute is that hair durable? Very branded matches everything this is her facebook page as you can see everything looks like it goes together you're not going to land on one of her pages and think this is twitter she uses that signature pink that she uses over and over again so even if you're not going to do something crazy with your twitter page just doing this makes it look nice and complete and branded and working with everything else this is her instagram you guys can see right that everything works together really, really well that's what you want this is the do so let's talk about some of the ones that don't a dark background with light fought because it hurts your eyes and people aren't going to stay there as long they're not going to read a cz long people it's just hard on the eyes music that automatically plays oh my gosh, I can't tell you how many times I've been to a website and then the music pops up and I'm like, get me out of here right now so no plus people are looking at your stuff and coffee shops or at work so you know what your music playing unless you're a musician that's the only time that would be a good idea huge chunks of text and you might not think about this at first, but when you're looking online huge chunks of text our turn off their overwhelming to people like I can't get through this this looks insane so just break it up much more than you would if you were, for instance, writing a book so where you wouldn't normally break up the paragraph, break it up anyways to side bars or cluttered sidebars? And by the way, there is a website checklist in the workbooks, so you guys don't have to frantically write down all of this stuff you can go through at the end of the segment and make sure that you are checking up all the boxes so you don't want to sidebars air cluttered side bars, and the main reason is that everybody sees your side bars. You want that to be prime real estate on ly the things you want people to get distracted by. So your products, your shop, your opt in those were the things that you want to put on your side bar lists, archives lists of, like I got this sunshine award, things like that get those off your side bar, lack of sharing buttons. Oh, my gosh, do you know how many times that I did a block tour for this particular course? And fifty five? There were fifty five block post that were written and I read every single one and there were so many times that I wanted to share a block post and there weren't social sharing buttons, and I just didn't have the time to go through and link things out myself because I was preparing for this course and because I was reading fifty five post so if they weren't there, it just didn't happen. Otherwise, I would have been sharing it to my audience lack of contact information. This one also drives me crazy. People want to find you and they want to be ableto ask you questions, they want to ask you questions about your products. They want to ask you questions about working with you, they want to ask you questions about can I interview you? Can I feature you on my website? And if they can't figure out how to contact you pretty quickly, they're going to leave and go to somebody else. I've done this so many times, and in fact, when I was putting together a case study for this course, the e book case studies, I couldn't find contact information for some of the entrepreneurs that I was thinking about interviewing and finally I would give up after like, ten minutes. I would say I can't spend any more time on this, and I was seriously looking on every page that they had. I was looking for contact information, so make it really clear a lack of shop or buy or in float by and fill buttons so people can't figure out how to buy from you if you don't have anything set up yet, it's ok, but if people can't figure out how to buy from you that's a problem because this is a business so you always want to make it clear where people confined the stuff that they come by an unattractive or hidden often so I shouldn't have to scroll down the page to find how I can sign up for email newsletter you want it to be right there prominent getting as many people signed up this possible and we'll talk about why a little bit later more than two to three fonts and colors and this isn't always something that you have to abide by you saw my eyesight and she has a lot of colors but she is a designer she knows how to make the colors work and then she has specific ones that she uses for every single thing like that pink color that you saw most of the time you only want to have two or three fonts two or three colors and then they're going to become kind of this branding image and when people see those phones and colors together they're automatically going to think of your business so that's another reason that you want to do that so that your website doesn't look insane and so that people start to think about those things together as your business and overall unappealing to your target market that's the most important thing so let's start to talk about sales stages everybody's favorite topic one of the things you want to keep in mind for sales page is that you want teo I know that people are going to skim scan and scroll it not everyone is going to read it word for word most people first they're gonna skim what they see then they're gonna scroll and scan so what matters are the pictures in the headlines because if the headlines get them interested enough they're going to read the rest especially if you have a long sales page you've got to have very prominent headlines and they have tio prevail curiosity get people interested benefits are more important than features you need both of them but you want to have both of them people want to know what they're getting so for instance, for marketing for creatives you're going to know how many pages it is what's included but the benefits are much more important the fact that you are going to learn how to market your business all in one place you're going to improve your sales which means more freedom it means a lot of other things that are more important people when they're buying than just the features it's not about you it's about them if you keep this in mind you're going to have a much better sales paige everything should be about what's going to connect to them of course you wanna have wire the right person for it but that's about them as well so that they'll trust you so that they'll want to buy from you talking about you in the first paragraph why you created the product or anything like that that's one of the big mistakes so if you say I created this because and I used to do that, I mean, this mistake before it's, not as if these aren't mistakes that people make all the time. However you want to connect with your audience of right away with your dream customer, she needs to know that this is the right place for her, that she connects with the language that you're talking to her that's what, you wanna have a right away and then again not breaking up big chunks of text, you want to use the list and bullets and highlighted sections and pictures break up that tax to make it more manageable, make it so that when people scroll through it, they don't feel like it. Sometimes it is a block, but so they don't feel like, oh my gosh is going to take me an hour to read it instead, it feels like they can get through it and of course, using language that doesn't connect with your ideal customer that's one of the biggest ones you guys have questions do we have questions from you guys? And then we'll ask any viewers amanda from amanda creek creative dot com um okay, so there's different sales pages for different items that was my first question. And then the second is, if you have, like, a sidebar, should that not be on your sales page? That's my second course? Yes. Yeah, I mean it's not the worst thing in the world. If it's there, if that's the way that's. The only way you know how to create pages on your site, it's not the worst thing ever to have your sidebar there, but the less anything that doesn't relate to that product, the better you want to keep people on that page. I set up all of my sales pages as a landing page so that there's nothing else there. It's just about that any other questions so far teach good stuff. Dot com and my question relates, teo, the length of a sales paige I know that's a typical question, but I generally like to err on the side of minimal and shorter sales pages. I don't sure if there's like a standard length that there needs to be for the sales page are your thoughts about that? I would say as the price increase, the sales page needs increase. Okay, because people want more information and need more information before they're going to buy, okay, this is actually something that people ask me a lot, and I never know the answer and obviously unanswered it probably myself because I have approximately zero sales pages on my website, but if you have, like I do and like a lot of people do, multiple streams of revenues have a number of different products. How do you just and some of them I know will exists sort of in the ether and that you will send people to sales pages, but on my website itself, how many sales pages should I have exist? So if someone's exploring with a k writing dot com and they want to know what it is that I do and they're not going tol me and ask me like people have in the past, I do consultations for people one on one, I go and I do workshops into speaking groups, and I write copy for people, so and should I have a different sales page for each of those on my website or okay, a couple options. First one is to have a work with me, paige, and then have a little paragraph about each one and click here for more details, okay, so that they can open up and read more about that one. If that's the one that they're most interested in, I would also have something right on baby on your side bar with a little box image with some text in it. Saying the name of whatever it is like work with me one on one get your copy revamped whatever it is so that they're often you wanna have your products in multiple places on your website okay, cool I'll thank you that's perfect you're still welcome build on your awesome questions so if you have a paragraph on each one under the work with me, hire me paige, click here for more does it then open up a unique girl that corresponds to that specific product or service? What is it another page on your site? It can the way that I have it set up is that it's a landing page on my site? So if I were to have I don't have a work with me page on there, but if I did, it would have let's say the little paragraphs click here for more it would open up into a landing page where there is no side bar doesn't look like my website it looks like that product and you find out information just about that product on there and abi bye here button it like the installations in your time you know it's not it's, not actually it's just blacks for belle dot com backslash whatever the name of the page is, I use and I'll talk about this I'll mention it again, but I use premise buy copy blogger to set up all of my landing pages and I hope that they will offer it they don't still offer it oh knife and art because that made everything so much easier do you have other options? Well I have I have about premise before they took it off the market two specifically for that reason do they have it in a bundle I think you have to do the authority now to get it the authority now so it is concluded in authority okay all right. So if you had a copy blogger dot com check out their different programs and that's inside of one of them but oh that's a knife in the heart because that that helped me so much it's so easy it's just the click of a button and you get this landing page is that like that lead pages that I hear lots of people talking about I think that's what it's called it's not the same thing I mean to say you cannot another big one comes to be that does that hurt? A lot of people reference that one yeah that one works really well especially for webinars and think like that but I bet you can set up all different types of landing pages with it I would I would assume wordpress themes now have the option of picking a full frame and taking the side bar off for individual pages so even if you don't have a plug in like that that creates like a landing page you khun take your side bars off on individual pages yeah, my website allows me to do that but I'm always I wanted to look a specific way and I can do that better with premise but there is the option that you can you can set up pages with one side bar and then you can have another page with two sidebars and you can have one with no sidebars. Yeah, there are lots of themes like that and I want to finish up the segment by showing you guys one of my sales pages and why I decided to do things the way that I did them. So this is the beginning of it six weeks, two more passion filled, unprofitable business and this is a course that I teach first I want teo I like to have an image there at the beginning of the sales page you don't have tio especially if you have a head are that looks really nice you don't have to have an image, but if you sell something in particular that would look pretty as an image so you're an artist or something like that I would have an image of your work definitely so next you will see that I have this set up where I say check all that apply and this is me talking directly to my customers you wonder if there's enough room for you in your business or the world needs another painter potter life coach, jewelry maker blogger or insert your title here. You're overwhelmed by everything you need to do to run your business some days it feels like way too much that you'll never get there, so they're different items that will connect with my I know my dream customer. I know these are the things she's struggling with and it's going to connect with her right away, she's going to check most of these boxes and when she does, if you tracked yes to most or all of the above, you're in the right place take a deep breath, I can help. So this is me trying to connect with them immediately, letting them know that these are the things I'm going to help us and it's gonna be okay, it's in my way of saying it's going to be okay? And then I talk about why I understand what that's like, I get it because I used to be like you overwhelmed but everything I needed to do to build a successful business but hopeful that I could make it happen, and I talk a little bit more about my background and how I want to help you I want to teach you what it takes to build a passion a passion, able and prophet I want teo what it takes to build passion and profit into your business so you can reach your personal and professional goals and then I have a feature section. So this is what you get if you sign up these are the main things, they're not the benefits they are, this is what it is. Basically you get these modules each week you get access to a private facebook group, you can submit your website for critique, I'm goingto have life calls, all that kind of stuff, and then I have a testimonial, I would say put a testimonial pretty quickly up on your sales page, and then this is just why I'm opening up the registration early and that's because I was offering payment plans for this, so this is something you probably wouldn't have there. And then I talk about you'll be joining a group of women with some locals because I know that my ideal customer kind of feels alone in this, and she wants a group of women that get her the understand her, and that will support and encourage her, and that is a big piece of a course like this, and then I go more into the benefits of what you're going to get each week and I love bullet points for this kind of stuff, so if you sell courses or you sell in e book using bullet points for this and provoking curiosity, getting people really interested, getting them to say I want to learn what whatever that is, I want to learn it so for instance, how to dominate your competition by getting to know your ideal customer how to sell to your ideal customer without being sales e I know that these air things that my dream customer theywant to dio and I continue with that I'll call out a couple more of these bullet points how to charge premium prices how did you figure out how to make good of money from your passion? So these are all enticing so these things should really entice the person who's reading it to step teo wanted bhai examples of extremely successful purpose driven sites. Yes, I want examples of this so that I can know how to do it for my business when you should hire a web designer. Why you need to stay in contact with perspective customers how to keep it how to get and keep your perspective customers attention word for word scripts that have landed me features guest post and interviews on popular sites so I am trying to make it really clear about all of the things that you'll learn inside of this course and then I have another testimonial then I start teo talk about the bonuses because when I have a course I've often like tio offer bonuses I liketo overdeliver I like to give people everything that I think that they're going to need to succeed and only to leave any of that stuff out I am very particular about not including more self just to do it but to include stuff that I think is really helpful and bonuses and having a bonus section people feel like they're getting so much more they're more likely to die, so if you do have the option to include something like that, they feel like I'm getting a lot more value for my money and this isn't easier decision for me to make it easier for me to give you my money because I know I'm getting even more than what I'm paying for another testimonial and then I talk about some of those objections that people might have two hundred seventeen ninety seven dollars is a lot of money for me to invest in my business so I tell you why it's a good idea to do it anyways or maybe you're worried about the time commitment I cover that so those big objections that I know my customers going tohave I always want to address those on the sales page then who is this course right for and who's the course wrong for? Because I only want the right people signing up I really dio I don't want you to give me your money if you're not the right person it's not worth it to me it's not worth it to you on dh so I try to make it very clear through all of my copy who it's right for then another testimonial enrolled today and when the payment plan option in all of that good stuff and that is the end of the sales page and as you can tell it's a pretty long sales page, the reason why is the course is three hundred dollars for things where if you would look at my marketing for creative sales paige, you're going to see that it's a lot shorter than this because it's a thirty, dollar investment people don't need a cz much explanation I know with one of the online classes that you did, you did that cute happy hour spree cast and I'm sort of wondering when you decide that you need a q and a kind of scenario and when you don't that's a good question. So for that particular mining, I really love like live calls together because we have this interaction that works very well for us and so I don't offer the q and a live calls for a course like that just because I don't think it's necessary but also because I think it's really good because it's me and my that's, the reason that we do that live call q and a for that because we play off of each other so well and you get the chance to see what it would be like to be on live calls with us in the course. But I think if somebody's buying just for me, they already know if they're going to invest and of course like this, they already know me. They're already a part of my audience, so they know what they're going to get it there by. I want to get one started questioning from online and this comes from kara vincent's and she says when it comes to testimonials, how many should you have compared to how long your sales pages can you ever have too many testimonials? What is a good amount, considering the length of your sales? No, you can never have too many testimonials. What I would do is sprinkle them throughout and then if you have extras, put them at the bottom just back him up because the more testimonials, the better, and I usually put testimonials in places where I think somebody is gonna have an objection, and the testimonial speaks to that specific objection like this is a lot of money. This was worth every single penny I would pay five thousand dollars for this that's, the testimonial I would put there

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Domesticraft
 

OUTSTANDING COURSE! Yes, I yelled that! :) If you are just starting out or you are a seasoned entrepreneur or anywhere in between . . . this course offers tons of good, immediate, put to use RIGHT NOW stuff that will move your biz forward on a firm and well thought out foundation! I bought this course before I saw it, because I am a big fan of April's already and I knew how much work, thought and love that she was putting into this course and she NAILED IT! The price is ridiculously low, she is just "covering her postage" on this one,if that. You would be doing yourself a huge disservice if you did not GRAB THIS COURSE UP at this price . . . it is worth so, so, so much more! I'm feeling kind of guilty already, like I should give her a cut of my profits now! I do know I will send her handcrafted gifts from time to time and tell everyone I know about her and her awesome biz brain. Thank you April, you WAY OVER-DELIVERED, again, and I will make you proud! :) xoxoxo Nancy www.domesticraft.blogspot.com P.S. Thank you too, Creative Live for bringing April back! I know she's got more, so . . . again please! Also, Mayi Carles and a creative cooking course with her about to be launched "Life is Messy Kitchen" cookbook would be HUGE! I would book her now before she turns all Diva after her appearance on Oprah, ya know? Jus' sayin' ;)

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I consider myself so lucky to stumble upon your course, April - you rock! Great training skills, high quality content, professional & down to earth attitude, excellent tips, secrets and real life examples and... I love love love the workbook! I cannot tell you how useful it is; I have many other business trainers who I simply adore but no one so far until you gave me a such comprehensive and practical one for all the steps. Indeed, you do what you preach, you over deliver! Also, the Facebook group is so supportive! Signed: A very happy customer of April! :-). P.S. for all the people who watched this course: I know we all have busy lives but if you feel that April helped you in your efforts, then I think a way to show her that we are grateful is to leave a review for her here, thanks.

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This course has given me so many great ideas of how to turn my abundance of digital ideas into one solid and firm idea. The information, examples & case studies given were priceless. As a stay-at-home mom of 5, homeschooler, wife & photographer; this was perfect for me. I have been trying to think of ways to turn my ideas into an online reality! Now I feel like I am able to move forward with my new business, so that I can gain time freedom to focus on the things that are truly important for me. Thank you April & thank you Creative Live for bringing her in! :)

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