Building your startup’s first website? Start here.
Two incredible resources to make your customer the hero, and then keep them scrolling on your site.
If you’re building your startup’s first website, you want to read How to Write Your Landing Page from Demand Curve and Building a StoryBrand by Donald Miller
Their advice, combined, is this:
- Your company isn’t the hero, your customer is.
- Convince visitors to keep scrolling “below the fold.”
At Alpaca, our website needed to convince parents to buy a subscription to send supplies and teacher appreciation to their school monthly.
It’s a new way for parents to buy (teacher support via subscription?!), so we knew we’d need to convince them quickly to stick around.
How to Write Your Landing Page from Demand Curve saved the day:
“If your above the fold is confusing or uninteresting, visitors bounce. This happens because of weak messaging or weak design.”
Their playbook shows before-and-after rewrites of website copy & design. Gold. Specifically, this little exercise helped us tons:
- What bad alternative do people use now?
Bake sales, wishlists
2. How is your product better?
Teacher-curated, ships monthly, easy
3. Now turn it into an action statement — that’s your value prop.
Send your teachers supplies and delight!
Next up: Building a Story Brand. The key message:
- Great brands place the customer in the center of the spotlight, the hero of the story.
- The company isn’t the hero, the company is the GUIDE who helps the customer do amazing things.
That simple idea took us from
“Alpaca is an amazing company that sends supplies and teacher appreciation to your school every month. All you have to do is subscribe!”
to
“Send your teachers a monthly subscription of gear, goodies, and gratitude. Your teachers will thank you!”
These two resources are a regular part of the design and copy toolsets at Alpaca.
When we’re writing and reviewing copy for landing pages and emails, we ask, always, “who’s the hero here?” and “is this clear and compelling enough for our reader to keep scrolling?”
