Photo by Editor B.

By Bob Walsh

It has to be one of the most asked startup questions: How do I build my web site right? There’s no one right answer, but there are a number of things that if not done mean you don’t get the prize. Here are my top three to chew on:

State your Unique Selling Proposition (USP)

 This is a must have. In one or two sentences, you need to spell out precisely why what you are selling is worth the readers’ money and time, in a way they understand. Your USP is not your features, it’s not even your benefits. It is why your prospective customer should spend another half-second at your site to learn your features and benefits.

Another way of saying this is, “AAA is a BBB that unlike XXX lets you do CCC [choice of adjectives], by doing DDD.” Where AAA is your product name, BBB is what kind of product or service it is, XXX is your competition (an actual product or more general “straw man”) and DDD is your primary differentiator.

State your Price

 Don’t be coy, don’t make me guess, don’t make me email you, don’t bury it. You have a solution - great. How much? Without knowing the cost, it is impossible to assess whether your solution fits me.

Show me

 I need to see, not just read, about what you are selling. Why? Because if what you are selling looks attractive, professional, reasonable, I’m prepared to go further in judging what you are selling. If on the other hand, what you’re selling does not look attractive, or isn’t there to be visually assessed, it’s game over and you have just lost the chance of a sale.

Here’s an example of the above in action from RescueTime.

• They state their Unique Selling Proposition center stage. “Ridiculously Easy Time Management & Analytics” This up front statement means if you were looking for a CRM, you’re free to move on. But if you’re interested in time management, read on.
• They back it up. RescueTime goes on to back up that USP with their top 3 benefits - Effortless Time Tracking, Beat Interruption Overload and Compare Your Productivity. Furthermore - and this is critical - they start the process of backing up what they claim right below each of these benefits. By backing up their claims immediately, they build credibility.
• They state the price. Free for the basic individual plan, then up to $120/mo. for a 30 person team.
• They show you what it looks like, and what they show looks professional, attractive and seems well suited to the problem. First, they show you just a bit of feature to back up each of their top 3 benefits; then they have two well-done tours.

You could do a lot worse than studying how RescueTime, step by step, idea by idea, presents its case to its prospective customers.

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Disclosure: Tony Wright, founder of RescueTime, is one of my clients.