Chapter 7: Thrust
Putting it All Together to Get Where You Want to Go.
Learning objectives:
- Recap all the essential components of a web engine.
- Learn the steps to take action towards achieving your web goals today.
Congratulations, Pilot
Congratulations on making it this far! I hope that you feel like you've learned a lot about the modern web and have a solid idea of what your approach vector should be when thinking about your business's website and strategic goals.
Where Do You Want to Go?
Before you do anything more, you should decide specifically where you want to go. What are your goals for your business and what are the things that your web engine should be designed to help you accomplish? Every business has completely different goals. What are yours?
Tip: For best results, begin with the end in mind.
Before you go, I want to wrap up with an overview of the concepts that we learned about in this guide and talk about how you can use all of this information to reach your goals.
For each of the concepts, I’ve asked some specific questions. Take some time to think about your answers to these questions and write them out on a sheet of paper. Let this be a thought exercise about what you actually need your website to do. It will also benefit you when you take the next step toward getting your perfect web engine - finding a developer.
Remember, you will likely hire a web developer, and they should do a lot of design work, but ultimately, it’s your responsibility as the business owner to make sure that your website is a success. You need to fully understand what it is that the web can do for you and how exactly your website is accomplishing your goals.
What Your Website Actually Does
We learned that even on the modern web, your site will be really good at one thing: transmitting information from point A to point B. This simple concept is the foundation for all of web marketing. And just like a powerful Jet Engine, whose sole purpose is to make the airplane fly, your web engine is an automated sales funnel that can be engineered to get your customers to do very specific things.
Question: What information is critical to get from my brain to my customer’s brain in order to get them buy in to my value proposition? Put another way, if you could write a message to all of your most important, fire-hot leads to get them to buy in, and you could use any specific wording, phrases, images, graphics, videos- any information you wanted, what would that message say?
The Air Intake
We learned that the first step towards your web engine’s success is getting people to visit the site. Just like a jet engine pulling in air, we need people to power our machine and get where we want to go.
Questions:
• Who is my ideal customer?
• What do they look like and where do they hang out on the web?
• How will I get them to visit my website?
The Compressor
We learned the importance of the first impression of your web engine. Just like the air in a jet engine needs compressed before any power can be generated, it’s essential to impress your customers and get them to stay on your site. Getting people to the site is critical, but it’s not enough on its own. We need to build a very particular user experience for our visitors. This is done by constructing a user-friendly interface that relays all of the important information.
Questions:
• What is the first thing I want my potential customers to know when they enter my site?
• If I have 10 seconds to make an impression on a customer, what do I want them to think of my brand?
• How will I convey this message in an instant with my website?
• What images, copy or other information are powerful and accomplish my first impression properly?
• Which of these things will be most important for my ideal customer?
The Jet Fuel
We learned that getting customers to the site and impressing them are important factors to achieve sales, but it’s not enough to do just that before expecting them to buy. The real jet fuel - the component of your web engine that will make the largest impact - is expert content. Just like in a jet engine, without jet fuel, you go nowhere.
Questions:
• What is my expertise?
• What are things in my field that I know that are uncommon or that every customer should know before buying my product?
• What ways will I display evidence of my expertise?
• Which format will resonate most with my ideal customer demographic – video, articles, images, audio?
• Which format will I be able to consistently produce with my current budget and time I am willing to commit?
• What is my plan for getting the expertise out of my head and onto the web consistently?
Adding a Spark
We learned that, just like a spark in a jet engine, it doesn’t take much to ignite some seriously powerful motion if we have done the previous steps correctly. They are the groundwork that let calls to action be simple and effective.
Question:
• What is the ultimate action that I wish every customer would take?
• What is simple and non-committal enough of a call to action that I know anyone interested in my value proposition would take?
• How will I want these calls to action implemented on my website?
Controlling your Machinery
We learned that even when your web machine is designed and built, it will likely fall short of perfect when it comes to pulling in customers and getting them to take action. That’s why you want to monitor your sites performance details and leverage the data to make high value changes in performance.
Questions:
• What are the important metrics that I will want to keep on my radar?
• How will I collect this data?
• How often will I monitor this data?
• Who will analyze the data?
• What am I willing to spend time and money on in order to optimize the web machine?
• How will I implement the changes based on the data?
Let's Jet: Some Next Steps
That’s all there is! Now you have to take your great ideas and get them built out in real life.
Find yourself a developer and discuss what you have learned with them, your plan, and how you can achieve the answers to the questions above with your website.
We'd love to be your developer, but we don't have to be. We understand how important it is to find the right fit, and so we have put together a guide for how to find the right developer for your business. If you need some tips on finding the best web developer for you and your business, check out our article on the topic here.
Tip: If you need some help with any of this, Call Hyperion. We love this stuff!
We hope this guide has been informative and that you are able to use it to really knock your website out of the park and achieve your goals, wealth building or otherwise. We will keep this guide up to date, and will stick around for any questions at: Jacob@hyperionweb.dev.
Stay tuned and happy flying!
