3. How to create a client magnet website experience

EPISODE 3 OF WHAT WOULD THEY DO? THE CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE PODCAST FOR SMALL BUSINESS OWNERS

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In this episode, I answer a question from web designer Jessica Haines about how to create deeper connections with website visitors through strategic customer experiences.

The listener question:

“As a website designer, I know copy and design are super important, but I’m always looking for fun ways for my clients to connect with their visitors on a deeper level. As a customer experience strategist, how would you approach this for website projects?”

As it turns out, your website is more than a sales tool—it’s an opportunity to build relationships, spark delight, and guide potential clients towards working with you.

This episode is jam-packed with actionable out-of-the-box strategies to personalize your website experience, create moments of surprise and delight, and infuse personality into every page.

What we cover:

Why Your Website Should Be More Than a Sales Page – The importance of treating your website as a relationship-building tool, not just a place to list offers

The Biggest Mistakes Business Owners Make with Their Websites – Common pitfalls to avoid

Infusing Personality and Trust into Your Website Copy – How to stand out in a crowded market by making your messaging feel uniquely you.

Creative Ways to Create a Client Magnet Website Experience – Using interactive elements to make your browsers’ lives easier

Soundbites:

“People want to work with you as a coach, as a service provider, as a course creator, because they value what you have to say. They resonate with how you show up online. So your website needs to encompass all that. It needs to be a collection of your best bits, right? Your best language, your best vibes, your best photos. It really is the starting point for a lasting customer experience and showing up just like everyone else is not going to do you any good.”

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Episode Transcript:

Hey hey and welcome to this next episode of What Would They Do? Today we are looking at all things customer experience for your website and how you can turn it into a connection driving, delight boosting opportunity early on in your interactions with potential customers.

So the question that I received is from my business buddy, Jessica Haynes from Jessica Haynes designs. She happens to be a website designer and was wondering this as a web designer, I know copy and design are super important, but I’m always looking for fun ways for my clients to connect with their visitors on a deeper level. As a customer experience strategist, how would you approach this for website projects?

So, if you are pretty new to my universe, yes, I am a customer experience strategist, but I’m also an audience driven copywriter. So that means I work with a lot of small business owners and online business owners on their web presence. And what I pride myself on and what I find super important is that we cannot just look at our website as the sales driving machine. We really need to treat it as something that goes beyond that, that goes deeper and really organically sells people into our vision, into what we have to say, into us as business owners and service providers well before they jump on a call with us. And how you do that best is by yes, having very specific words on your website, having a well-designed website that looks the part, but also tapping into emotions, into the hormones.

Let’s face it, you know, I’m a copywriter, Jess is a web designer. These are crowded marketplaces and with AI making things seemingly so much easier, the competition has become even harder. And I really think know your website is the opportunity the number one opportunity for you to stand out for the right reasons and really create a remarkable first touch point on the beginning of your customer journey with this potential client. So let’s start before we get into the little delight opportunities and the fun ways to spice up your website. Let’s start with the biggest mistakes I see when it comes to website projects and how they are designed and set up and treated as part of the bigger online business picture. There’s so many websites that follow the same same principles especially in the coaching space where the language they’re using is so generic so same same that it’s really hard to work out what someone does and why they are different to the other hundred coaches that are using the same language of empowering, upleveling and boosting XYZ.

We need to start with a website that has very specific language that really resonates with our audience, but also infuses our personality in it. There’s no point putting on a facade and putting on a mask because you think you have to, and it’s the expected thing to do in your industry and niche if you get lost in the process. People want to work with you as a coach, as a service provider, as a course creator, because they value what you have to say. They resonate with how you show up online. So your website really needs to encompass all that. It needs to be a collection of your best bits, right? Your best language, your best vibes, your best photos. It really is the starting point for hopefully a lasting customer experience and showing up just like everyone else is not going to do you any good. Next up websites often come with a million pages and no clear path to actually get to the destination.

So as tempting as it is to come up with convoluted structures that let you jump through 10 hoops to even get to the sales page. I really believe in the website being a starting point for a conversation. So you don’t want your website to tell people everything, every little detail about your product, unless it is, a high ticket sales program, coaching program that you sell via a sales page. If you are a service provider, you know, give them experience. Give them insights into what it’s like working with you. Give them a starting from price to then get them on a call with you where you can sell them into your zone of genius and talk price in more detail and really on that call get to the bottom of objections etc. Things holding them back that might have been a deal breaker if you communicated those on the website. So really less is more when it comes to websites and making it more about your values, your ways of working, your ways of approaching business is a much smarter move than giving them all the things and overwhelming people while they’re busy skim reading and missing the mark anyway.

A lot of websites have absolutely no personalization and while It might seem hard without again, lavish corporate budgets and you know, conditional content and all these fancy tools. You can absolutely infuse levels of personalization and even your personality into your website. So every visitor feels like they’re treated as an absolutely priceless visit to your website, someone you absolutely want to serve in your business. So what we are going to do this episode is give you some practical ways how you can infuse personalization into your website, how you can touch on the senses and also stand out from all the same sameness out there. Let’s start with the first little tip slash hack slash strategy that I absolutely love and it’s so easy to do yet often is overlooked. So let’s start with your contact.

Often when people reach out to me to work with me on their website copy, I jump over to their contact page, you know, just have a look at how their website is currently looking. And the contact page is just so sad. It is a stock standard form that feels so transactional. It totally lacks personality and really leaves a lot to desire. So inside my projects, particularly for service providers where the contact form really seems to be the first conversation in inverted commerce that you are having with potential customers is really treat your contact form as a two way conversation. rather than just having people drop their email address, their name, et cetera, into the form, I treat it as a conversation. So the contact form becomes interactive. And it really doesn’t start with your name, drop here, email address, et cetera. It, it feels like a journey and like people are actually listening to you on the other side of that form. So have a look at your contact form, whether you can change the format slightly. So it sounds like a conversation. So, hi, I’m Nadine. I have come here from business. know, I work for XYZ company, and I have come here to get help with XYZ. I found you via da da da. And I would love to work with you in this capacity. So this is where you can have a drop down form that, helps you then filter people into your CRM system. But as I mentioned, contact pages are the first conversation you have with your audience. So have a look at your contact form, how you can personalize it and infuse you into it, right? So it feels like they’re actually telling you why they’ve come here, what they’re hoping to achieve and how they found you.

Next up is somewhat controversial. A lot of people are totally against pop-up boxes. I personally love them in my business. I use a tool called ConvertBox, which allows me to grow my list organically. It also helps me to create absolutely bespoke user journeys through my website because we all know what it’s like. We find out about someone, we potentially hear someone speak on a podcast, at a summit, as a guest inside a membership that we are a part of. And we are keen to find out more about them. Usually we land on the homepage and then are left to our own devices, right? We need to navigate our way through the various pages, find out how we potentially can work with you, what the best approach is, and we likely get lost along the way and never actually take action.

So why not use a clever pop-up box on your website that allows people to choose their own adventure via a few questions that you ask them. You can then direct them towards the right offer, the right course, the right membership for their needs. And if you want to take it a step further and grow your list, you can even turn it into a full blown quiz funnel where those little questions that you ask them become the basis of list growth and also segmentation. So you can then target them with specific content and information via email to prime them to be ready for the offer they’re clearly interested in. So pop-up boxes as annoying as they can be if they’re not set up correctly, they can absolutely boost your customer experience and the ease on your website significantly.

So have a think about how you can customize the path through your offers on your website via pop-up boxes to make it super easy for people to find what they’re after because every click that’s unnecessary on your website increases the drop-off rates drastically and loses you potential customers.

Next up is surprise and delight. I’m a huge fan. If you are on my email list, if you have checked out my website, you’ll see it’s super colorful. There’s a dopamine hit around every corner because it works right. especially when we are in the research phase, let’s say I’m looking for a podcast manager as a newbie podcaster. I likely look up at least 10 options and 10 websites that likely all look very similar. If someone can stand out and give me that little dopamine hit along the way, make me smile, give me a little bit of, lighthearted entertainment along the way, they’re definitely going to stand out. So have a think about how you can potentially gamify the browsing experience to infuse that unexpected and help you again be memorable when people consider their options and weigh up their options.

So options here that come to mind is running a scavenger hunt, especially, if you are in the process of rebranding or launching a new website soon, a scavenger hunt where you are hiding, little treasures, people need to find on key pages of your website can be a fun way to not only have people engage with the various offers that you have in your business, but also again, walk away with a smile on their face, potentially get a little discount on one of your offers, which might just be what convinces them to buy from you for the first time. It is a really fun way to engage your audience, create conversations and make sales along the way.

I personally ran a scavenger hunt promotion in late 2023 that was hugely successful, grew my list by hundreds, made me thousands of sales and created so many amazing conversations. And I’ve even turned it into a toolkit, into a self-paced course since to help other people run scavenger hunt promotions as an alternative to seasonal campaigns. So for example, as an alternative to Black Friday sales or as the perfect opportunity to launch your rebrand and announce your brand on your website. There are endless opportunities, but huge fan, as I said, to really gamify the interactions you have with your website browsers.

You can also use this same concept for a one-off dopamine hit without running a promotion or a fancy scavenger hunt. If you have a look through my website. There’s one little hidden treasure there all the time inviting you to click on it. Go and have a look if you’re curious. You might even track it down and it’s hiding a special coupon code, special offer to one of my products. And yeah, it is just, again, a fun way to give people that quick dopamine hit. And last but not least, I would love people to look at their website in a different way. So obviously I mentioned before it needs to have great copy. needs to look fabulous and professional. The photos need to be spot on to really connect and build trust in your brand. But we also need to create a website that connects on an emotional level and evokes emotion when it comes to how we interact with it and leaves us smiling from ear to ear. So that’s where my five senses formula comes in. Every copy project that I work on, every customer experience strategy really keeps those five senses in mind. And when I say five senses, obviously that’s sight, smell, sound, touch and taste. And as much as you’re probably going, how can we incorporate touch into the website? Like it’s online. What do you mean Nadine?

You need to think somewhat creatively, right? Our imagination is amazing. We can imagine touching things and our brain reacts to that imagination, that imagined touch point the same way as it does to physically touching something. Same goes for tasting, sight smell. It still evokes that same emotion and you know, evokes memories that we might have, connected to a taste, a smell.

So how can we evoke those emotions and touch on the five senses on our website? Fun way to do that is using GIFs, for example. we’re interacting more with GIFs than we do with images and static shots. You can use video to again, touch on, you know, the sound side. When it comes to smell, touch and taste, that’s probably where you’re going Nadine, I can’t quite follow you here.

It’s all about using strategic shots. So let’s assume you’re a family photographer, using shots that show families having a family meal together and obviously being in the moment, totally loved up and they’re enjoying a gorgeous, delicious meal together. That works a treat. If you do baby shoots, for example, you could have a gorgeous photo of a baby that smashed a cake and it’s got cake smeared all over the face. If you’re a florist for example you can use language as well to evoke those emotions so you can talk to the scent and really help people imagine what that wedding bouquet looks like that’s going to arrive on their wedding day. If you’re a coach who coaches want to be artists you can really speak to the texture of the paints and of the materials to help people imagine what it’s like to take a particular course and dive into certain materials and certain techniques.

So the sky’s the limit here, but really look at your copy and your imagery as a way to evoke those emotions and connect to, certain areas of the emotional brain to really feel a deeper connection with your website and with you as the business owner where possible. So really there is unlimited opportunities when it comes to the five senses. And last but not least, like one of my favorite things, particularly for photographers, wedding photographers is for example, also embedding a playlist. As a wedding photographer, you would have a very particular vibe as much as, again, wedding photography websites all seem the same. know, they’re encapsulating memories for eternity. They’re using very similar language, very similar imagery often. So have a look how you can potentially stand out by creating a playlist and embedding it on your website that’s going to get your personality across. That’s going to set an expectation for how you’re going to show up, what type of wedding photographer you’re going to be. And it’s organically going to connect your perfect fit couple with you because they just go, my God, this is the photographer we need at our wedding.

There are endless opportunities and it’s one of my favorite parts of copy projects, honestly, coming up with these creative ways to infuse personality but also get the senses involved. Obviously there are so many more things you can do. It all depends on your audience, how you want to connect with them, what industry niche you’re in, what type of offers you have.

Be creative, have fun. And if you take three things away from this episode to really infuse personality and fun factor into your website, you can start with these three questions here. So is your website actually speaking and touching on the five senses? How can you make your imagery more sensual? How can your copy speak to the senses? And how can you evoke more emotions in the way you show up. Secondly, how can you potentially support your audience and fast track that journey to what they’re looking for? How can you potentially create a choose your own adventure experience that points people in the right direction? And if you want to take it that step further, helps you segment your list, add them to your list and also then nurture them be ready to invest in what they were looking for. And then last but not least how can you add one surprise and delight moment in that website experience. It doesn’t have to be a full-blown scavenger hunt but how can you have a little moment of surprise and delight. Use your imagination have a look at potentially what your competition is doing or is not doing so you can stand out and provide a completely different yet remarkable experience.

If you also want to have your burning customer experience question, headache, obstacle answered by me or a special guest expert that I invite onto the show, you can submit your question via the link in the show note, either anonymously or if you would love a shout out in the episode, leave your details and I’ll take care of it.

If you enjoyed this episode I would love you to subscribe, leave a review and share it with all your people so even more so be honest online business owners like you catch on to this interactive podcast concept. Thanks for tuning in and see you in the next episode.