Is Your Website’s Story Relevant?
We’re in 2017 now. Brick and mortar stores are shuttering their doors, and with the latest wave of K-Mart and Sears closures, it’s hard to believe these traditional retailers even have any stores left to close. And still, every quarter, like clockwork, another wave of stores finds its doors locked for good and laying off its staff. Meanwhile, Amazon continues to grow its market share with its same-day shipping and vast array of products to choose from. So the question is, why are some businesses on the brink of bankruptcy while others have successfully evolved and thrived in the face of change?
The answer is simple: they lost sight of the story.
Simply put, they stopped seeing the message of what their customer wanted. In this case, a convenient shopping experience, a place to get everything they wanted quickly – the Sears, the JC Penneys, and soon to be the Macy’s of this world (if they don’t adjust quickly) are quickly losing the story and the plotline, and that’s the core of what makes a business thrive.
Tell a Story that Connects With People
The obvious premise underlying the examples listed above is that consumers are favoring online shopping versus traditional brick and mortar retailing. This is certainly not true for every industry (people still love to eat at a great restaurant), but it does underscore the chaotic and rapidly changing business landscape organizations are facing today. Given that e-commerce is so heavily favored now, the website is the store, and businesses only get one shot (one website) at making it perfect.
This is where the message that the company puts out is the most crucial. A company’s website needs to be more than just a list of products it sells. In fact, it needs to be more than just a list of products and product descriptions. It needs to be a fully immersive experience. The more a customer enjoys his or her experience in a physical store makes it more likely for them to purchase that store’s product – the website is no different. The digital environment you create needs to be engaging, and you can only do that by connecting.
How Should a Business Create a Story?
A business needs to create a story much like any other archetypal story you’ve ever read in literature. It needs to have the following elements:
1. A protagonist or problem (or alternatively an opportunity that awaits)
2. A hero or solution (your business and your product)
3. The action and buildup (this is the actual experience your service will give them)
4. The climax and resolution (this is the sale, the purchase that completes the customer’s story)
At this point I’m sure you’re noticing an interesting caveat – how does the sale of the product (the climax) come before the actual solution (which they receive after they purchase your product)? This is because you have to simulate and stimulate the customer’s value experience before they ever make a purchase. Virtual reality experiences are becoming incredibly skillful at this, but the current e-commerce world is no different.
So do the smart thing: create a strong simulation for your customers and get them to that climax so that they can make a purchase.
E-Commerce and Messaging
Now that you have the rough idea down, how do you actually go about this on a technical level? You simply have to have an artistic vision for what your story represents, and then visualize this for the customer. You can do this with photographs, videos, even good wording arrangement (so long as it’s not too excessive) can all do a great job of this.
The point here is to keep the story always in mind, and to eliminate words and factors that don’t contribute to the story. Reduce the clutter in your site, and build it with a functionality in mind: to tell a story that ends in a sale.
We’ll be releasing more content soon on the technical side of executing a story, so stay tuned.
Dmitri Sedykin, Editor
Frontier American Business Journal
