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#AskSimon 6

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“The conscious mind thinks it’s the Oval Office, when in reality it’s the press office.” Jonathan Haidt

“Hi Simon, this is Duncan from Dublin, I‘d love to hear you take on websites. There are so many around, and many look the same… How can I improve the way my website looks and feels?”

You will get a short version (3 steps) and a long version (5 steps) on how to improve your website. 

Imagine you are a restaurant, and from the outside it looks like you are closed.
Maybe the lights are low, or the jackets of your guests hang in the wrong place, or something else you didn’t notice. The signal you send is: “I am not welcome here”. But you spend hours a day making the menu card better, because you care so much… [1:11]

If you are familiar with the Business Accelerator or the Sprint University then you know that we advice to spend less than 1000 euro in your website and to keep it simple until you are on level 3 of the entrepreneurial freedom levels. [1:48]

The Four Levels of Entrepreneurial Freedom: [2:18]

1 You have a job.

2 You have a business.

3 You have a consistent, reliable and repeatable business that works while you sleep.

4 You have a consistent, reliable and repeatable business that works without you while you are on a 4 weeks vacation.

If you are on level 1-2 do only the short version and do spend less than 1000 euro on your website.
If you are on level 3-4, it’s time to level up. Do the long version of this and may take up to 2-10K to do it. 

Your website might be full of great content, but do visitors FEEL when they read it?

Is the message that’s coming across REALLY the one you want to give? 

Your entrance is your website. If you don’t have one, stop reading and get cranking. If you have one, play a little game with me.

I have 3 steps to improve your website that will catapult your website’s attractiveness with some small tweaks. This is the short version. I will add also the long version at the end of this. 

SHORT VERSION (3 STEPS)

1 EMOTION CHECK [3:19]

Look at your website WITHOUT reading the words, let just the images and colors speak. How do you FEEL? What are the emotional signals you get?

a) Is this the emotional state you want to share?

b) What is the emotional state you want to share?

2. CONTENT CHECK [4:44]

c) What do we say about our impact?

d) What do we say about the kinds of people we exist to serve?

e) What do we say about our level of professionalism? 

f) For every answer you gave, add one or more Proofs to your site.
(For example, if you say your impact is to decrease costs by 10% add a screenshot of a client posting about the discount on your Facebook Group). 

3. EXAMPLE CHECK [7:04]
This week, we are doing exactly this exercise for our website.
First insights: The dark colors are not what we want the emotional signal to be!
Improvement ideas: 

What do we say about our impact?

We can share the tangible impact much more. (Proof: 78% hit more deadlines, 82% are proud of their impact, 74% increase time-to-market, 89% gain higher profit margins.)

We can show that it is fun to have us around

 (Proof: Workshop Pics)

What do we say about the kinds of people we exist to serve?

We love sprinting and can make it more clear (Our Love wall)

What do we say about our level of professionalism?

We are methodical (Here are our Tools)

We are trustable (Here’s our Team and how we spread the Love)

LONG VERSION (5 STEPS) [7:30]

Now the long version is to do this plus the customer journey map. 

I only recommend this if you are on level 3 or 4 and have 2k…

STEP ONE [8:03]

Go strategysprints.com/tools and download the template: Customer Journey.

STEP TWO [8:21]

Define the one most critical moment of the client (usually it the closing moment).

STEP THREE [8:47]
What happens right before the critical moment?

What can be improved?

STEP FOUR [9:16]
What happens right after it? What do they get right now?

What can be improved? What could have been even better?

STEP FIVE [10:13]
Complete the journey accordingly.

Sprint Mindset: Limit the time you think about, start creating a first intervention, do it, and this Friday, measure the outcome.

See you next week!

Keep Rolling

Simon Severino, CEO Strategy Sprints GmbH

P.S. We have a lot of great tools and love to share them!