But as with most important things in life, that’s easier said than done.

Fortunately—as with most things in life—much of the mystery can be removed by adopting a system that takes care of the basics. So let me introduce you to my Four Keys for writing clear, shiny copy that affords prospects the perfect view of whatever it is you’re selling.

In this guest article for KISSmetrics, I give you the four practical steps I use to write “magic bullet” copy. Click here to discover them now…

I mean, have you tried cold calling?

The same is true on the web and in email. Although we know we have to convince customers to buy what we’re offering—or we’ll go under—we dread having to write sales copy of any kind.

We loathe getting up in print and schmoozing, conniving, greasing, bamboozling, and doing everything in our power to persuade prospects to click on our call to action buttons. And you know what?

Prospects hate it too

In fact, although there’s nothing they love more than to buy shiny new things, there’s nothing they hate more than to be sold at.

Which is why all those persuasion methods, mental tricks, “hypnotic” techniques, shouting caps, yellow highlighters and other million-dollar secrets you see other marketers using…they don’t really work. Certainly not on savvy prospects looking for high-value products, and with the budgets to buy them.

So what does? In this guest article for KISSmetrics, I explain the closest thing I know to a magic bullet when writing copy: what it really is that prospects want; what it is that convinces them to buy. Click here to learn it now…

I’m interested in becoming a web designer myself (and selling things as you are). I’m dedicating 5-10 hours a day and going through books on xhtml, css, web design standards, etc. If you don’t mind, could you list the steps to get to where you are now (with web design)? I was thinking of learning in this order: html, css, web design standards, adobe cs5 (?), javascript, php(?).

I actually became a web designer largely by accident. It started off as a compulsive need to save text in a format that looked good, and which I could edit without needing a word processor. (Hence my obsession with typography today.) Let me tell you the story. I promise it will be rambling, and contain no subheadings whatsoever; but it will also be interesting and helpful if you’re starting out in web design.

I quickly realized that saving Word documents in HTML format was not the solution to my problem. The first time I opened one of Word’s “HTML” documents, I threw up a little in my mouth, and had nightmares about being buried alive beneath a never-ending mountain of <span> and <font> tags.

So, realizing that HTML was really, really easy to learn, I spent a few hours getting to grips with the basic way that documents are structured, and what all the tags meant.

Then I wanted to style it, so I spent quite a lot of time learning CSS. I think the most tricky thing about CSS is the box model—understanding how browsers actually interpret your code to lay out elements on the page. In fact, this is still the thing I have the most trouble with when I’m designing a complex page, or I’m trying to do something a bit too clever. (A List Apart has a really good article on CSS positioning that I occasionally re-read just to stay sharp.)

Then it was a case of practice. Creating new pages of my own. Deconstructing how other people had done things. Any time I ran into a problem, I tried to find a website that already did what I wanted to do, and I looked at their code to see how they’d done it. That’s the real beauty of the web. People think you’re a genius if you can copy someone else’s code. I’d wager 90% of everything in this site’s markup was originally copied and pasted from someone else’s. That’s the way the web works.

For a while it was static HTML pages, painstakingly styled and tested in Firefox, with no regard whatever for Internet Explorer (since my audience consisted largely of me, that was okay.) But I was really interested in being able to update elements across several pages at once—like changing the navigation for the whole site, without having to edit each page individually.

Which took me to free blog platforms. I cut my teeth on “web design proper” by creating a custom Blogger theme for my then-blog. That was nasty. So nasty, in fact, that after I’d been away from it for a few weeks, I came back and wanted to make a few tweaks…only to realize I’d already lost track of how to do it. It was just too complicated.

So I bought a domain and switched to WordPress. Once again following my copy-and-paste method of learning, I managed to piece together a good enough understanding of JavaScript and PHP to create a theme that used lightboxes to bring up category lists and search boxes and the like. I was always interested in exposing only as much functionality as the reader really needed, and making getting at more features as easy as possible. I suppose that’s where my interest in conversion rate optimization began.

Probably the most significant development for my skills during this time was coming to a rudimentary understanding of the importance of typography—assuming you want people to read your content. Now, the theme I created was by no means an example of best typographical practices. Light text on a dark background and poor leading between the paragraphs are the two most painful mistakes that jump out at me now. I should have stuck to a grid, and I should have stuck with book colors. But the font was at least large enough to be generally legible. Sadly, even this wasn’t really to my credit; I had just learned that you could style font sizes using “x-small”, “medium” etc, and believed this was the better, more future-proof, more accessible way of doing it—and “small” seemed to small to me. (I guess I lose points on typography but gain them back on accessibility.)

By this stage, I was working at a high amateur level. My knowledge was still patchy, but I had a good grasp of the fundamentals of markup and styling. What I really lacked was the kind of polish, the details, that you need to work in design at a professional capacity.

That comes with two things: lots of study, and lots of practice. So when I made the decision to turn my hobby into a job, I made a commitment to both. I started doing design work—mostly my own to begin with—every day; and I started reading as many web design blogs, magazines, articles and so on as I could get my hands on. A List Apart, which I mentioned before, was a great starting point, but there are so many that I couldn’t possibly list them here (many of them I’ve probably forgotten as I have become far more selective in my reading today).

You’ll notice I haven’t made any mention of specific tools; nor of graphic design, which most people seem to think web design is really all about. Here’s why:

What tools you use is irrelevant unless you’re planning to work for someone else. Since I use Linux, I use Gedit for coding, Nautilus for file management, Firefox and Chromium for browser testing, a Windows 7 dual-boot arrangement for testing IE and Safari, and the GIMP for graphic design. If you’re planning to work for someone, I suppose you’ll have to sell out to the man and buy a Mac, because I get the distinct impression that this is a prerequisite of being a “real” designer, artiste or “creative” of any kind. Also some square glasses with arms the size of small construction beams. But if you’re working for yourself, as a highly recommend, you can use whatever the hell you want, and no one is any the wiser.

In regards to graphic design, I believe this is a skill best left till last. Web design is not graphic design. In fact, web design is 95% typography (that’s another site worth reading front to back, btw). So once you’ve learned the basics of styling, markup, and accessibility, what you should be spending every waking moment immersing yourself in is typography—not graphic design.

For my own part, I rarely have a clear idea of what a website will look like, in terms of its visual style. I start with a basic idea of the colors I want to use, and a sense for the kind of thing I want to do (usually from browsing a lot of design galleries and looking at what strikes my fancy). But I don’t even think about that stuff until I’ve worked out what objectives the site is supposed to achieve, what content I need to display to do that, what order I’ll need to display it in, what kind of thought sequence I’ll need to ask users to go through, and so on. Only once that stuff is decided can I begin to think about layout, and only once I’ve got a good idea of layout can I start to ask questions about aesthetics.

Then I just spend time in the GIMP, playing around. That’s really what I do. I start with an idea, I see whether I can do it (I usually can’t), and so I adapt. In the process of screwing up my original idea, I usually come up with something a lot better—as witnessed by this site, for which my original idea was a kind of highway theme, with a road disappearing to the horizon. Wasn’t ever gonna work.

Now, if you’re planning to set out by your lonesome and become a freelancer, there is something else you’re going to have to learn, and that’s marketing. Fortunately, most people are so bad at it—as I discovered—that if you spend only a small amount of time learning the basics you will have a significant leg up. There are many excellent books you can read, but for the most systematic, absorbing, thoroughly excellent treatment I cannot recommend anything other than Drayton Bird’s Commonsense Direct & Digital Marketing.

So that’s how I became a web designer. I became a copywriter through a pretty similar process: seeing a need my design clients had, and taking a stab at filling it. I don’t like to do things by half measure, so I invested in significant amounts of training to get started. Turns out most copywriters are rubbish, so it wasn’t long before I was a lot better than most of them.

In fact, if there’s one takeaway I could offer you to close this piece, it would be to never stop learning. Never stop investing in your own training. Never stop studying. This includes not just reading, but also practice, and even writing articles. You’d be amazed how well writing about your field helps you to understand it better. (And of course it’s just good marketing; it makes you an authority.) Set aside time for study, practice, and writing every day. 99.9% of your competitors will not do this. And so with this one simple technique, you can rapidly become one of the best in your field.

Folio Focus has an article up titled ‘How to Choose a Web Designer’. It talks a lot about using design galleries to find someone experienced, who fits your budget and has the right style and skillset.

But these questions are trivial compared to the important stuff. They’re questions to ask the designer himself after you’ve identified him as a likely candidate.

Here, in five simple steps, is how to actually choose a web designer:–

1. Draw a line vertically down a piece of paper and write “Good” and “Bad” at the top of the columns.
2. Go to the designer’s website.
3. Read the website. Put a tick in the Good column every time you see a term like “business objectives”, “return on investment (ROI)”, “your revenue goals”, “lead generation”, “increase sales” etc. Award six million bonus points if the designer overtly talks about how you need to work with a copywriter to make your site a worthwhile investment. Award 12 million points if he argues the case or draws some kind of useful analogy, like how trying to get customers using an attractive site with lousy copy is like trying to get a date by dressing well but babbling like a retard.
4. Put a cross in the Bad column every time you see a term like “branding”, “beautiful”, “passion”, “making a difference”, “modern”, “clean”, or any other puff word that doesn’t convey a clear benefit to you.
5. Tally up your ticks and crosses. Hire anyone with more of the former than the latter. Good luck!

The checklist explained

Designers who don’t understand that websites are business assets which must achieve specific business objectives, which in turn are tied to revenue goals…are not actually designers at all. They are artists. Giving them your money is not an investment in creating a business asset—it’s a divestment of capital that is never going to come back (let alone with friends).

Beware of “designers” who use industry buzz-words and faddish terms that they obviously believe convey benefits, but which you can’t relate to any discernible value. For example, a designer talking about the importance of “branding” just indicates one (or both) of two things:

• Firstly, that he knows so little about design that he thinks recognizing the importance of branding makes him sound knowledgeable. But of course your website should reflect your brand.
• Secondly, that he knows so little about marketing that he believes brand recognition is important for companies smaller than Amazon and Google. But that’s a lie—brand recognition is of utterly no consequence to small companies with limited audiences, and focusing on it instead of on real traffic- and lead-generation strategies will drive you into the ground.

Similarly, if a designer talks about creating “clean” or “usable” websites, leave immediately and look elsewhere. Imagine if a caterer advertised like that. “We provide clean, edible food.” Outstanding—that’s just what I’m looking for!

The same goes even for terms like “beautiful” or “modern”, where the implied value can at least be vaguely discerned—there’s just nothing interesting about these terms. They are no-brainers. It doesn’t bear mentioning that a web designer will produce something that isn’t ugly or out-dated, does it?

You can be sure anyone who advertises his services in this way understands nothing of importance about marketing or business.

He does not understand setting his own business apart. He does not understand how to present a unique value proposition—that most basic element of selling. And he certainly does not understand what matters to your business. He is just an amateur for whom the low barrier of entry online has presented a unique opportunity.

Sadly, most designers don’t realize they’re amateurs. A lot of them have been in business for years, surviving off witless business owners who believe, as they do, that aesthetics are the key to profits. But there is a saying I once heard from Drayton Bird: some people have 20 years of experience…and some people have one year of experience, repeated 20 times.

Since your website is a marketing platform and a business tool, why on earth would you hire an amateur who has no understanding of marketing or business to create it?

If you liked this article, why not grab the expanded version in PDF format to print or share?

But you know, underneath the thrill of the fight is a good, old-fashioned, honest desire to see the truth win out. So in this article, I don’t mean to pick a fight. I’m just genuinely concerned about all the terrible advice I see on the web. I worry that people who don’t know better will follow it and end up sinking instead of swimming.

Take this piece for example: 8 Tips For Small Business Homepage Design by Stephanie Buck. I don’t know who Stephanie Buck is, since unfortunately there is no author bio. You know, author bios are just for authors. They let you know who you’re reading, so you can judge whether they know what the hell they’re talking about.

Anyway, this article is largely wrong from start to finish. It has some generally good points, but the actual implementations it commends and recommends are…terrible. I’m gonna go through point by point and correct them—so by the time you’re done here, you’ll have eight tips for small business homepage page design that actually work.

1. Start a conversation

Stephanie recommends keeping your homepage simple. “More than anything, your homepage should elicit a positive reaction from your visitors, not confuse them with flash and clutter. Think of your homepage in terms of cities: It should be an Oahu, not a Las Vegas.”

This is true. But you shouldn’t be thinking of your homepage in terms of cities at all. You should be thinking in terms of offices or stores. The homepage is like the reception area of your website. It is where you meet your prospects, welcome them, give them a reason to stay, and then guide them to wherever they want to go. Of course you want a positive reaction—but you want more than that too. A positive reaction can still end with prospects hitting the back button. You need to engage them and give them something to do.

Stephanie says, “The page should communicate your product or service either with a stand-out image or a simple slogan.” No, no, no, and again no! The homepage should communicate your value proposition using headlines and body copy. An image conveys nothing without context in which to understand it—it is just as likely to be misinterpreted as understood correctly.

And do you take slogans seriously when you see them? Of course you don’t. Slogans are mental masturbation. They are entirely about the company that came up with them. Using a slogan to get prospects interested is like a greasy playa at a bar talking in clichés about himself to get a woman interested. Prospects are interested in their problems; not you. You only enter the equation when you tell them how you can solve those problems.

Now, a homepage should have a tagline—a simple, one- or two-sentence explanation of what you do, using language your prospects would use. Put it in your masthead to help orient visitors to your site. If they don’t understand what the site is about, they won’t stick around to find out.

2. Say as much as you need to, then stop

One of the most pervasive myths of usability is that you must not make people scroll. The reality is that users have been quite happy scrolling since 1997. Apparently, however, Stephanie “panics” when the scroll bar on her browser shrinks “faster than light”.

Well, no one is suggesting your homepage should be dozens of pages long. But Stephanie’s advice that, “although your homepage can create opportunities for product promotion or special offers, it should read less like a 20-page Applebee’s menu and more like a classy prix-fixe place card,” is simply misguided. For one thing, a homepage is not like a menu. It is more like a lift letter crossed with a space ad. (In other words, there is no real-world analogy, Stephanie, and you’re just confusing people.) Your navigation is like a menu, and in that regard, yes, the simpler the better. No more than seven main categories. No endlessly-scrolling sidebars. (But it’s also different to a menu; it should use simple, common terms for entries—not the confusing branded names you’ll find in most restaurants!)

For another thing, there is no hard and fast rule about homepage length. You should say just as much as you need to say to enter the conversation your prospect is having in his head—and direct him to the most likely places on the site. You know, the places that will get him to fulfill whatever objectives you have set for the site. The actions he can take that will ultimately produce revenue for you. (Strangely, Stephanie never talks about revenue goals, even though that’s the reason for the site to exist at all.)

3. Display the right offers

Stephanie suggests that “you’ll still need to include the links to relevant information” and that “these tabs are a good place to start: about, product, news. In other words, people need to know what your business is all about, how they can participate and what’s current.”

While I disagree with news—have you ever been tempted to find out what’s new with a company through their website?—an about page and product page are certainly crucial on most business websites. But this advice seems to be more along the lines of: “include navigation on your homepage”.

I think that’s so blindingly obvious that to even say it is insulting. If you don’t have navigation to other pages, people literally cannot go to those pages.

What is more important, however, is calls to action. Prospects want to know what they can do on the site—what actions can they take, and what actions do you want them to take? It’s just a simple psychological fact that prospects don’t want to have to think about using your site. And it’s just another simple psychological fact that unless you ask people to take certain actions, they usually won’t.

Therefore, it’s of extreme importance to work out what actions your prospect is most likely to want to take on your homepage, and how you can use these to start a logical thought sequence that will end in him hitting those revenue-generating goals you’ve already decided on. Remember: your prospect has only just arrived. He doesn’t yet know Jack Squat about you. So asking him to buy something, or to hire you, or to trial something, or to get a quote, is not logical. These actions require far more investment than he’s currently willing to make. You need to take baby steps. In the words of the copywriting legend Eugene Schwartz, you must “gradualize”.

4. Display featured products only if most of your prospects are actually interested in them

Remember that while “photographs that pop off the screen,” as Steph puts it (can I call her Steph?) are big attention-grabbers, attention does not equal action. In fact, very often by stealing your prospect’s attention at the wrong time, or with the wrong element, you sabotage yourself and prevent the action you wanted them to take.

There’s nothing wrong with featuring products on your homepage—if most of the visitors to that page are likely to find them interesting. But don’t feature just one, and don’t feature more than three. That’s basic psychology again. Presenting yes/no choices will always result in some percentage of your prospects choosing no. Presenting more than three choices (four at the very outside) will result in indecision, and no action at all. So if you have a lot of products, and if your analytics software shows that people are interested in going straight into viewing these from your homepage, then pick the top ones from your three most popular categories and display those.

Displaying them above the fold is fine, especially if they’re important. Just make sure they’re not so dominating your copy that they smother the conversation you’re trying to have with your prospect.

5. Make it relevant—to prospects and to your site goals

Steph notes that “many website hosts offer a live feed of your recent posts, or you can make your own widget on Twitter and embed the HTML on your site. That feed will update on your homepage every time you tweet or share.” True enough. But how many prospects care about what you’re saying on Twitter or Facebook? If it doesn’t matter to them, why would you include it? That’s just self-indulgence, which seldom wins anyone over.

More importantly, the more you display on your homepage, the more divided your prospect’s attention is. If a page element is not actively contributing to getting prospects clicking the calls to action that will ultimately generate revenue for you, then that element is actually preventing some clicks by serving as a distraction. So ask yourself how showing a Twitter feed is going to encourage people to start the sequence of action that will lead to your revenue goals. If it won’t—and in the vast majority of cases it won’t—don’t include it on your homepage.

Every page on your site can only fulfill one primary objective. You have to be ruthless in deciding what that objective will be, and then culling elements that are detracting from it. Maybe some visitors will want to see a Twitter feed somewhere. That’s fine. Create a separate page for updates, and let them go there. But for the vast majority of businesses, with the vast majority of prospects, being “current” is simply irrelevant.

6. Create a homepage that strengthens your brand

Steph advises creating a homepage consistent with your brand. That’s not bad advice. Your brand is one of your most valuable assets. Perhaps your most valuable asset, if you listen to Drayton Bird (which I do). It is, in essence, a “package” representing your value proposition. It is what convinces customers to pay twice as much for the same thing. It can see you through a recession. But it can also lead to homepages that are severely compromised—because someone thought that “brand” actually meant “existing print materials”.

You must create your homepage on its own terms. You can’t force it to look like a print ad or flier or business card. You also don’t want to be so uncompromising with color that you use reversed type for your website: light on dark. That would reduce your readership by at least 50%—and people who don’t read don’t buy. You must dig down until you have figured out what your brand really is, and what represents it—and then reflect those elements on the homepage.

What I mean is, a brand isn’t just some graphical element. It is what people feel when they see something that reminds them of you. So if it turns out that what they feel is a sense of quirkiness, it makes no sense to focus your homepage copy on quality, even though quality is doubtless consistent with your brand. Focus on quirkiness. That will reinforce your brand. Furthermore, if it turns out that the way people perceive your brand is not through the colors you use, but through the shape of your logo, there’s no sense in using colors that work well in print but not online. You’re free to adapt. Conversely, if colors are the important thing in people’s minds, rather than shape, you’ll need to get creative with your design so you don’t compromise usability.

7. Avoid any image that doesn’t forcibly convey your value proposition

I said before that your brand is like a package representing your value proposition. That package can be extended, and one of the most effective ways to do that is with images, because human beings are such visual creatures. Steph says that you should make sure your homepage pairs with a compelling image when people link to it (as on Facebook)—the click-through rates will be much better. This is true, to some extent. A logo can work well for this, since it reflects your brand.

But the best kind of image to use is one with story appeal. An image that, when people see it, they think, “What goes on here?” Then they read your copy to find out. Once they’ve read the copy, they clearly understand what is going on, and how it relates to the particular value you offer. And of course, from then on that image conveys that value to them.

If an image does not have story appeal, it must instead demonstrate very clearly something that can’t be better said with copy. It must be self-explanatory. For example, a before-and-after shot works brilliantly for conveying value. So can charts and graphs.

Unfortunately, most websites use all kinds of flashy graphics and images that convey no value whatsoever—let alone unique value. All they do is steal your prospect’s attention away from your copy and reduce readership rates. And as I’ve said, reduced readership means reduced revenue.

8. Be boring. Really boring

Steph’s final advice is to “be quirky”, and she uses the examples of Salt Films, Design of Today and Incredibox. I’m actually linking to them here precisely to show you how completely appalling they are in terms of usability.

Contra Steph’s parting advice to “give the online visitor something to remember”, let me tell you this with certainty: if you break the standard interaction model for a website, your prospects will not interact with it. People will not be frustrated with a website. They will not take the time to try to figure it out. Even if it is a genuinely interesting or funny or enjoyable way to navigate the site, and even if it suits what you’re selling perfectly, most people will hit the back button rather than take the time to even try figuring it out.

Websites that try to be clever sell virtually nothing. If your website is intended to generate revenue, its design must match the conventions your visitors expect it to match. Masthead at the top. Self-explanatory navigation underneath. Image with story appeal below that. Then the headline, entering the conversation in their heads. Then the copy, helping them to understand where they are, what they can do there, and why they should do it. Lastly, the calls to action, asking them to do it. Remember what advertising research guru and direct-response expert David Ogilvy said: “It’s only creative if it sells.”

Unless you’re in a magical new market, you have four obvious options: quality, price, features…or you can hope that some of your prospects don’t notice that anyone exists except you. The proverbial Ostrich Approach. (Interesting side-note: ostriches don’t actually stick their heads in the sand when threatened. Like most animals, they either run away, or kick your head in. Trust me, I’m from Africa.)

Anyway, these four options are all crap because trying to be the best at any of them will probably put you out of business.

In this free special report, I’ll tell you the secret to differentiating yourself in a busy market:

Download Now (it’s free)

If you’re anything like me, you’d probably say: Wait, what? What changes?

So let me tell you. In this guest article for Freelance Folder, I share five website secrets for turning more prospects into clients. Click here to read it now…