Your value proposition plays a crucial role in conversion, spelling out to prospective customers why they should buy from you. In a crowded online marketplace it is what makes you stand out from the competition so this is one aspect of your online marketing that it pays to get right.

An effective online value proposition

• Is targeted at a specific customer segment
• Details benefits that are of relevance to that group of customers
• Offers something they cannot get anywhere else – either from your competitors or from you offline
• Clearly answers the question “What’s In It For Me?” in the customer’s mind
• Tells them why they should buy from you
• Can be expressed in 10 words or less

One of the most important advantages of creating distinctive online value propositions for each of your customer segments is that it allows you to provide different messaging and offers by customer type (e.g. Dell‟s offers for small or medium sized businesses vs. home office users). This can greatly increase your success in attracting visitors to your site and converting them to customers once you get them there and for existing customers, up-selling them to higher value products and services.

So how powerful is your online value proposition? And would your prospective customers agree?

There are two specific key factors you need to focus on:

Ensuring that there is a good match between what you have to offer and what the customer wants

If you’ve done your homework right you will know which specific customers you are targeting and what matters most to them.  The more exclusive your offer and the greater the desire of customers for that feature or benefit, the more compelling your proposition will be so focus on just one thing you can do better than anyone else and resist the temptation to craft a catch-all proposition that will appeal to everyone or you will end up with “me-too” statements that appeal to no-one.

If you’re not sure which elements of your offer you should emphasise your web analytics will give you some clues about which  features and benefits prospective customers value most – for example, if you are using pay per click advertising are there any specific trigger words that result in higher click through rates and conversion than others?  Which blog posts get the highest number of comments? Are there specific emails you have sent to your list that have a high click-through rate? If so, what was it about those specific ads/posts/emails that elicited a better response than the rest?

The clarity of your value proposition

If the key unique features of your products and services are buried in a paragraph of waffle they are likely to be skipped over by most visitors. So put your primary value proposition centre stage, broadcast it in a stand-out  headline, banner or a highlight box with  huge arrows pointing to it, use sub-headings bullet points and calls to action and reiterate it all over your site – on your About Us page, in your FAQs and Contact Us page etc. Back it up where possible with third party credentials in the form of endorsements, testimonials, quality marks. And to make sure you get your key message across during those first crucial seconds when a visitor arrives at your site use a simple tag line that conveys the essence of your online brand. If you need an example of how to do this just look at the top of this page where you will see that WOW Consulting’s primary value proposition is that we guarantee your online success.

Listing too many features will dilute your value proposition so it’s essential to identify for your prospective customers the one thing that differentiates your offer from everyone else’s. This doesn’t mean that the other elements of your offer are unimportant but it’s an issue of the relative weight you give to them and recognising that if you want to establish yourself in the mind of your prospect as the best choice you need to demonstrate that you excel in at least one element of value.

Test and test again!

Once you have crafted your online value proposition it’s important to test out its effectiveness. There are two ways of doing this – either using Google’s Website Optimiser tool which allows you to split test different versions of your web pages to see which produces the best conversion or by creating 3 to 5 pay per click ads with variants of your value proposition. The ad with the highest click through rate will identify the proposition that is most appealing to your target customer segments.

Crafting and refining your online value proposition is an iterative process but well worth the effort involved. Get this right and you will have a compelling and well articulated offer that will have customers beating a path to your door!