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The Awareness Stage of the Funnel ... Where It All Begins

how do you design fans? And welcome back, like I said, I want to take a few minutes and discuss these different stages of the buying cycle of the sales funnel and how they particularly relate to good web design that's going to ultimately appeal and engage your website visitors remember Your website visitors are all going to progress through these four different core stages of the buying cycle and you have to design your pages that will appeal and not deter people regardless of what stage of the buying cycle there in. So let's spend a few minutes talking about awareness that very first stage awareness is a, is a commodity in very, very short supply in a way it's, it's almost easier to convert visitors once they're in the desire or interest stages because they're already kind of in your zone, they understand what you offer, they understand the value that that that your product and services will have to them. Whereas awareness, you have to really grab attention. We're bombarded with with ...

ads and different things going on in our lives. Um to an incredible extent. Nowadays we see hundreds, if not thousands of ads every single day. So in a way that this stage of awareness, it's the most crucial that you design your landing page properly within the context of giving yourself the greatest opportunity to capture the attention, even if it's just momentary, even if it's just gonna take a minute to express to your website visitors what it is you sell, it's really important that you're able to design your landing pages in an effective way to capture the attention. So you could provide awareness of your products and services. And I prepared a couple of slides, we're gonna I'm gonna begin to show you some actual practical things that you could do on your landing pages um with regards to awareness and obviously these are concepts that are essential to all types of good design and web pages, but there particularly important as it relates to awareness. And by the time we're done with this lecture, you're gonna have some some practical tips that you can start implementing right away. So that's that's pretty exciting stuff. So let me just open up the presentation. Ok, So as you can see awareness right, where it all begins, we have on the right hand side, our level of commitment, uh, the level of commercial commitment where people are getting into the awareness stage and as you can see, it's very low, right? So out of all the different stages in the buyer cycle the level of commitment that your user currently has, it's going to be the lowest in the awareness stage or getting into the, getting into the awareness stage when you're spreading awareness, you need to start thinking about this concept of permission marketing, right? We're you're not being flashy or gaudy or trying to interrupt or disrupt the daily schedule of your website visitors, you want to be thinking about trading free value for attention, trading value for attention, that's a very, very powerful concept. People are not always going to be ready to, to open themselves up, open their minds up to your product and services at any given time. One of the most powerful ways of trade attention is by offering things of value for free. You offer a case study for free, you offer a Youtube instructional video for free, you offer free consultation, you offer an e book, right? These are things that people could, could download, could interact with, could engage with on their own time in bed home at night, you know, in the comfort of their own particular schedules and as a result in that interaction, you get brand awareness. So anything that's gaudy or flashy, those are types of things that completely detract from awareness. It completely turns visitors off. Anything that's screaming at your visitors turns visitors off, right? So you want to make sure that things are done with a sense of calm and stillness. We're gonna talk about that in a second. New new visitors, like we said, there are very low on commitment and they're looking for reassurances, clarity. They're the primary thing a new visitor is looking for is that you are legit, they're not interested in being scammed, they're not interested in being sold. They are essentially looking for a sense of quality clarity in the message. They don't want to think too much about what you offer. You have to do it in a very succinct way. This goes back to our very first lecture. This most important concept concept and web design and good design is clarity. Um, and those are the types of things that will ultimately increase commitment as they continue on through the buying cycle. One of the things we're gonna talk about once again, once we get to the chapter on transactional insurance assurances are things like logos of partnerships or client logos or your shipping policies or your refund policies, right? These are things that that give customers an immediate sense of trust and that's what the people are really looking for in this awareness stage. If you can't clearly communicate what you offer and the value it provides your customers. Remember going back to the five second test again, what do you offer and what value does it provide your customers? There's never gonna be any interest, right? So you have to make sure and you have to start thinking about your headlines, your sub headlines, the clarity in which you're giving over your your message. These are all types of things that are gonna help increase a sense of awareness. People will be open to giving you some attention and then you'll be able to kind of work them your or your landing pages and the rest of the content on your landing pages will start being able to work them through the rest of the stages in the funnel and here's an interesting quote from Herbert a Simon, what information consumes is rather obvious. It consumes the attention of its recipients. Hence a wealth of information creates a poverty of attention and the need to allocate that attention efficiently among the over abundance of information sources that consume it. So this is a beautifully, beautifully succinct and elegant way of saying that the more information that we're exposed to, the less attention we have to split between all these different sources of information. And if you if you recall this idea of attention ratio in web design where we said fewer links on the page that detract from that primary conversion action, it's the same concept here. People have so many different quote unquote links in their life. So many different things that they can spend their time on in their life that you have a very, very small slight window of opportunity and when they come to your site, you got to do the best you can in the clearest most efficiently in the most efficient way possible for your website visitors stop streaming and be still write your page. Like we said, it should evoke a sense of calmness and stillness over over doing the motion, the background, videos, things that are strolling things that are flashy. They, this is not my opinion. They statistically will deter your visitors away, especially at this early stage where getting their attention is so important. It's almost counterintuitive. You might think that things that are flashy and overly bold will help. No, it turns them away. A sense of common sense of stillness is what's gonna ultimately increase your conversion rate. Not every limit on your page needs emphasis, right? The more different things you emphasize equally, the less attention your primary call to action is going to get and the lower your conversion rate is going to be think very strategically about what's the most important element on your pages and which elements should get the most visual emphasis. That's a very important factor as well. Once again, no gaudy or flashy visuals or overly bold color schemes unless it's done in a very tasteful and very in a very professionally designed way. Make things easy to find. If people cannot find it easily, might as well not exist. People are not going to look, they're not going to, especially in this stage where they're where they're just becoming aware of what you offer. People are not going to work hard to become aware of what you offer. We said that if you remember, people might work hard once they desire what you sell to buy it from you, then people might work hard, but no one's going to work hard to figure out what it is you sell. Here's an image of a landing page of quite a big company. Um, and it's, it's quite interesting. This is a bad landing page, right? It might be professionally designed, but let's just take a look here, we have this hero section which has a big Call to Action and then we have another section, which is this, which is given the same weight. That font size is the same size. The Call to Action is the same size. We go down the third section, there's a big, there's a big background video with another equally large and emphasized headline and call to action button and yet again, another equally large headline and call to action button. Okay, so this is an example of a page that's too busy. It feels chaotic. It feels like the the owners of the website are like yelling at you. It's like, it's, it's like it's a bit of a turn off. It was just too much if if I, if I have been sold on this company or even if even if I'm in the market for this service, then this might be okay. But the problem is first time visitors who are just becoming aware of what it is you offer, this is not okay because this is going to create confusion. There's a sense of chaos and it's going to turn people away. Let's contrast that with this. Look at the beauty of this page, it's calm. It's still oftentimes people feel that that a communist and design represents an unprofessional designer or an unprofessional put together landing page or it looks too much like a template. Don't worry about any of that. Any of that stuff. You're much better every time erring on the side of calmness and stillness than erring on the side of stuffing too much information and too much chaos into a page like we saw in the previous example. This is a beautiful headline and not distracting background pattern, something that looks very professional. Um, the information is laid out with a clear sense of hierarchy, right? We've all seen pages like this. These are the types of pages that will motivate visitors to actually give their attention to the company. Your website is not a candy store, right? And your visitors are in kids, a kid in a candy store loves the chaos. They want everything. They want to grab it every ill they want to try every single candy. That's not what your visitors are, who are making a mature decision to give their attention to learn more about your products and services what you sell is not that exciting, especially when they don't know about it yet. Um, so too many things to click on it creates unnecessary distraction, ruthlessly edit your copy, ruthlessly edit the options you're giving users on the landing page. Not every single sentence should end with a button. I I can't tell you how frustrating is when I seek websites where there's 35 buttons that will lead to the same call to action on any given page. Right? Give the user a little bit of credit that they'll click the button when they find it if they want to click the button, any emphasis on a secondary conversion action will automatically detract attention from your primary conversion action. So each page, that's something we've said before. Each page needs to have just one primary conversion goal in mind. It should have the most visual emphasis, it should be promoted in the visual hierarchy and the secondary conversion actions should be smaller, less weighted and they should be in support of the primary primary conversion action. Any supporting copy has to be relevant has to be relatable. It has to has to connect with the person on a psychological, emotional level. And of course, like we just said, the primary the primary conversion goal is your most valuable and it should have the most prominent one more thing. And I'll show you another cool example, we just met stop talking so freaking much blah blah blah, This is something which is important. And I see web designers do this all the time. They think that their readers want to read everything, they have to say it's not true, right, generating awareness, It's about capturing attention quickly and effectively and clearly and succinctly. It's not about writing hyperbole in jargon, You like it. You think it's great. You think, you know, your readers want to want to read everything that you have to write about your product and services, but they don't. And as Stephen King says, when he talks about the formula for rewriting his novels, it's it's the original manuscript -10%, every single time, going through three or four different rewrites. And it's hard, it's painful, right? These are things that you've written once again and you have to admit your baby is ugly. Um it's it's just the truth. You have to be short and sweet and clear with your text. No long paragraphs we're gonna talk about in the lecture and one of the lectures in chapter two about how people don't read. They scan and that's gonna be an important thing to remember. Uncluttered the elements of your page using whitespace, padding margins give things give your elements room to breathe and it gives readability to your content. I'm gonna show you an example of what that looks like in a second. Very clear headlines and sub headlines, every single page. People have to know where they are on the web. Don't make people think about where they are on your website, clear headlines and sub headlines. What is this page about? Very quickly? Very easily. The user should be able to know what is this page about and clearly defined action block, where that call to action primarily resides. Sometimes they're off to the right of the page, they might be a button embedded somewhere else. You're always going to have an action block. An area on the page where you want the eye to be drawn to and that should be clearly defined and we're gonna talk about action blocks more in the future in future lectures. Now, take a look at this, this really, really great website, this is the hero section of a website called wealth Simple. Now, let's just talk about how these all these different elements will help a user lend their attention to what wealth Simple offers. It's Uncluttered. Look at the design, right? It's breathing. It's it's calm, nothing's busy. I don't get a sense of chaos. It's it's it's it's just nice and pleasant to look at. There's a clear call to action, right? Get started. There's another get started, but in the upper right hand corner, it's clear the secondary conversion action of see how it works. Is supporting They know that people who watch the video will be more likely to click the primary call to action, supporting the primary call to action. There's a clear headline, right? It does not get clearer than this simple automated investing. If you can't figure out in five seconds what they do, then that's a problem because that's a fantastic headline. They're supportive visuals. The visuals support the idea of investment banking in a simple and effective way, but they're not busy. They're not flashy, they're not gaudy, they're not in your face, intuitive navigation, there's not 100 different links at the top, there's just a few basic links and once again, if you're if you're nervous at that, a simple page that looks like this is, is representative of a small company and and and unprofessional designers think again, because this is a big successful company further down on this exact same homepage where they trying to bring users further into the buying funnel, moving from the awareness, awareness into the interest and desire stages. And let's just take a look at the elements how beautifully there laid out over here. There's lots of white space, right? Notice all the green shading over there, that's the white space around the elements. The different blocks have room to breathe. There's sensible options to your users. These are all done in a personal way. It's time I grew out of my savings account, we're upgrading our one bedroom to a two car garage. These are talking they're relatable. They're relatable to the person and they're giving people different options, how they want to learn more about the company right there, sensible, clear but relatable options. It's it's fantastic. Relatable imagery, right? These images don't look like your your your classic stock photos. They're not overly bold or in your face or too chaotic. The images serve to give these elements more room to breathe. They create more separation between the text and the calls to action inside these other blocks. But once again, these images are are subdued and they're relatable and they make sense. And they and they add they complement the design. They don't detract from the design. They don't confuse the user and they don't make it difficult for the user to find what to do next. Right? That's a beautiful use of imagery over here. Primary and secondary calls to action in each action block. Once the user finds which one of these relatable scenarios relate to him as they relate to this product and service automated simple investing. There's a primary secondary call to action. I could choose to learn more about that persona that they described. Or I could just begin right away and get in touch and begin the automated investing process through wealth simple. So it's, you know, we take away all these different elements that we just spoke about and then we have the page nice and clean again, you could see the calmness in the stillness and how when a person lands on this page, it's just pleasant to look at and they have a much greater chance of actually giving their attention and entering into the awareness stage. So now you are armed with with a number of different practical approaches to help your visitors actually give their attention So you can give them awareness in the next lecture, we're gonna talk about interest, encouraging your users to find out more about your products to learn more about the particulars of what you offer, the value of what you offer and some of the components in in website design and landing page design that's gonna help you bring users from awareness into interest and then from interest in to desire. So thank you very much for watching this one, and we'll see you guys very soon in the very next lesson.