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Explain The BENEFITS of your Features
Marketing Distinctions for Maximum Profits

Since your web site is your premier tool to attract and initiate a sale...

Since your web site is often the first impression a potential customers get of your value...

Understand and connect with where your ideal customer is coming from for rapport / relatedness that invites them to become a loyal buyer. This means speaking their language, identifying with their values and priorities. This article will distinguish two different places to come from in the persuasion conversation of sales value -- Benefits and Features.

One of the most vital aspects in developing a successful business web site is writing content that encourages visitors to buy your products. It isn't enough to say that you sell the "best on the Web" or have the "largest selection anywhere." You have to credibly explain to visitors why they need your product and why they should buy it from you. To do this you must use page content to sell the benefits, not the features.

What Is The Difference Between Benefits and Features?
This is so important that entire books have been devoted to answering that question, but we will give you a crash course right here.

FEATURES: Characteristics that physically describe facts of your product / service.

BENEFITS: Describe how the product or service will help the customer solve his problem. Tells the customer what she will gain by using the product.

Both components are important and should be clearly explained on your Web site - just make sure that you understand which one goes where when you create page content. The feature makes the benefit possible but the benefit is the motivation to get the product / service.

In 2007, to reach your customer is to show you understand the benefits they want. When you speak the language of your best prospects, you build a bridge to their wallets because the value of your product of service becomes real to them.

Use Benefits To Educate The Customer
Selling features is an easier task. You refer to the technical specifications and just list them. That's critical information and it may well be all that some customers need. The more technical, engineering oriented or Business-To-Business the customer, the more the technical specifications matter in your web site's presentation.

But consider this: a customer who has already decided to purchase an MP3 player that's bundled with an FM radio and voice recorder. That customer wants to know which specific features differentiate a particular player from the others. That might include such information as:

* Available memory
* Battery life
* Size
* Connectivity to other devices

Selling benefits though, is harder: it requires more knowledge about the product, insight into the targeted customer base, more imagination, and better writing skills.

That's because selling benefits requires a fair amount of customer education. You have to clearly explain why the features enhance the product and the user's experience.

Consider a different customer who has just heard in passing about MP3 players. They are going to want completely different information - at least at first. Your copy should answer their probable questions:

1. Why would I want one?
2. What can I do with it?
3. Why is this one better than the others?

Note that when you answer these three questions, you need to understand and draw upon the product's features, but need to present the information with a slightly different slant.

Customers don't buy something for the thing itself; they buy it for the difference it will make in their life. Since customer buy based on Benefits, not features, emphasize the Benefits of your product or service more than the Features that help give it those Benefits.

Presenting Features and Benefits In Page Content
Here's a sample list of MP3 player features. Compare that list with the accompanying benefits:

So how might you write some page copy that incorporates this information? Here are some actual product descriptions we've selected from different MP3 ads:

Which type of copy is more likely to make you really interested in having one of your own?

Optimize Pages For Features Or Benefits
Web site A give us "just the facts" about the product, while Web site B takes some time to explain how exactly the features make the product more enjoyable or valuable.

All the information is important to the customer, but make sure you know when to discuss the benefits and where on the site to do it.

Discuss benefits on your Web site home page if…

• You offer a single individual service like pet sitting, house moving, or custom wedding cake designs.
• Your online business is an authority site for a broader category topic like a city entertainment directory, organic pet supplies, Asian cooking ingredients, or Brazilian literature.

You're selling your personal services and/or knowledge along with a product or service. Use the benefits discussion to impress potential customers with your site's depth of knowledge, service level, and reliability.

Discuss benefits and features on product pages if you're selling broad categories of products like personal electronics, clothing, winter sports equipment, or restaurant supplies.

In these cases, the home page should contain links to each major product category or each product if there's just a few. On each product home page, discuss the benefits and then prominently display either a list of features or a link to the features or technical specifications page. Some customers will want to jump right to the technical information, so make sure it's easy to find!

Distinguish yourself from competitors with product comparisons and explain why your service is better. If you offer free shipping, hassle-free returns, a toll-free number for questions or technical support, then make sure customers know it. Those are great benefits that aren't always easy to find.

This probably sounds like you have to write a lot of content - and you might. People come to e-commerce and informational Web sites to get information.

'Always do usability testing to make sure that potential customers understand your page copy and like it as much as you do.

Covenant Designs provides business marketing communications that make your ideal customer want to do business with you. Call Covenant Designs at 214-703-0360 and let us prove how valuable we can be to your business' bottom line.

Adapted from an article by Larisa Thomason, Senior Web Analyst