Stop Selling Web Design Features to Your Clients, and Do This Instead

Read the full episode transcript below:

00:28 David Blackmon: Welcome to another episode of WP The Podcast, i’m David Blackmon.

00:35 Tim Strifler: And i’m Tim Strifler

00:38 David Blackmon: When you’re selling a website to a new customer it’s not about web design features you want to do this thing instead. Tim and i teach this in one of our courses, we’re going to share a little bit of knowledge here, we’re not going to dive deep obviously and teach everything that we do in our course because we’d be here until you know next year. Because we have a lot of awesome amazing stuff in the course that we do teach, but one thing that i’ve noticed over the years with web designers is especially if they’re new web designers, and even if they’re seasoned web professionals, some of them never really picked this information up. You know, they think that the best thing to do when selling and closing the clients is to impress them with the great graphic design and all of the bells and whistles on a website. And guess what? At the end of the day, a that may close and convert some people, but it’s not going to going to have a very high average, because business owners are smart and they care about one thing. They care about conversion. They are in business to make money and they want to know what you can do to help them close more customers, bring more dollars into their business bottom line. So some of the things we’re going to talk about today are some of the things that you can do to enhance that instead of going the other route. I could talk all day, so i’m going to have to intentionally stop myself to let Tim get a word in edgewise, otherwise i’m gonna take away all the good stuff and then we’ll have nothing to talk about.

02:30 Tim Strifler:  Yeah, so before we get to how to do that, i’m gonna talk about why obviously David mentioned having uh being able to, if you’re just selling features you might convert some people. You’re not gonna convert everyone. Business owners are smart, so in addition to that uh you’re gonna be able to be a lot more competitive against your competition. So for example, if a business owner is getting two three four five bids, for a new website which they often do. If four out of the five are selling bells and whistles features, design right, a pretty a pretty website. And then you come along and you show them how your website that you build for them is going to help make them more money and help get them more phone calls more leads more sales whatever it is. Whatever the goal is of the website. Um they’re gonna choose you all day long right? Because if they’re comparing five different web designers, and say you are selling features and bells and whistles and design and all that stuff just like everyone else, well then they’re gonna start looking at okay well who’s the cheapest, and who’s who has the best portfolio the best design and stuff like that. But if you’re selling conversion, and you’re selling results, it doesn’t matter if you’re even twice as much as the other people. They’re going to look at you and be like that is an investment, that’s not an expense and so that’s why you want to do this. And then obviously it’s going to help them too. They’re going to have much more success than just a pretty website with some cool bells and whistles. So David will talk about kind of how to do that and yeah we’ll go from there.

04:21 David Blackmon: And i won’t talk about specific steps that you want to take and stuff, although there are some things that you can do. But i really want to focus on the psychology behind it to kind of reinforce what Tim already started talking about. So um you know, we’ll use the same five people as an example. You got four of them that are out there you know, trying to impress them with their portfolio and their their client base. And they may have landed one big whale and stuff and or they may have landed a couple of big whales you know, for whatever reason. But i can guarantee you that if you can help this customer understand a few things on the psychological standpoint, and this isn’t about. You going in there and using psychology on them you knowing and understanding at your core. The value of this what we’re going to talk about is going to be game changer for the business, and they’re going to know it. They’re going to know it because they will have gotten the four other people who have basically talked about the same thing. So sales is not a terribly difficult thing, you want to help them on you want to help them understand the value of what it is that you can do for them. So site architecture is super duper important, it’s not about just design. Design will help that, but you need to understand site architecture. What happens when a user comes to that website, what do you want them to do, you want to dictate all of that stuff. And that really matters. You want to completely understand the goal of the business. Well if the business is to get phone calls because they want to schedule appointments, if the business is to make sales right on the website, all of this stuff matters. And if you can help them understand, help that business see that you understand that and how you’re going to help walk them through that process, you’re going to close a lot more sales as opposed to going in there and showing them a fancy website you know. Because guess what? They see fancy websites all day long, but if you go in there and you find out what their goals are, and then you turn around and you tell them how you’re going to achieve those goals and the steps that you’re actually going to take is going to be huge. So Tim and i have a course you know, that teach web design professionals how to go from zero to six figures a year in revenue and this is probably the meatiest part of our course. It’s the part of our course where a lot of our students have really really gotten a lot of value from it and stuff. And Tim and i will we’ll do role playing, we’ll walk you through the process and stuff. And um and it’s really really good i feel like i’m staticky right now for some reason all of a sudden my mic started going staticky but i apologize maybe it’s super excited about this stuff, or maybe i’m just talking too much.

07:46 Tim Strifler:  Yeah. No i completely agree Dave, and that’s awesome um one thing i’ll add uh kind of a side benefit of selling this way, and kind of building websites this way instead of building pretty websites with cool features is, when you present the website to the client they’re not going to be nitpicking all the little details, right? When you present a pretty website with a lot of cool features they’re looking at every single little design, every single little piece of functionality. And they’re nitpicking, and they’re wanting this to change and change this and blah blah blah because they’re essentially critiquing a work of art, right? But if you are creating websites based on their goals and you’re selling results instead of bells and whistles and design, well then when you present it to the client and say hey because you told me that you your main goal is that you want to get more people filling out your lead form and getting in your crm, we built everything towards that goal. Right there, and you walk them through, and you show them that uh you know, this is here for this reason, and you can see it points them here and blah blah they’re going to be like wow that’s amazing. I could see how that would accomplish my goal i can’t wait to get this thing live. They’re not going to be saying, well i really think this button here should be bigger or i really think that you should have had a better stock image or whatever, because that stuff doesn’t matter. What matters is conversions and results.

09:19 David Blackmon: That’s right, and if you’re watching on YouTube, you’ll have to come over and see the little um dance that i did for, you know representing that we want. More youtube watchers by golly so come come come subscribe to our YouTube channel, like our video, comment. It helps people find us more people find our awesome WordPress podcast. All right, tomorrow we’re going to talk about should you add social media login options for your WordPress website. Tim until tomorrow we’ll see you then.

09:56 Tim Strifler: Take care, bye.

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