Every high-performing website answers four critical questions that visitors are asking themselves:

I like to think of these questions as layers to a cake. If one question is left unanswered, the cake topples. The icing that holds everything together is your social proof. Your design and visuals are the sprinkles.

Websites have layers.

Cakes convert better

A website that answers all four questions is a cake.

Cakes convert better than websites that aren’t cakes.

If your goal is to drive conversions, you should invest in a cake.

Most people don’t have cakes

Most websites aren’t cakes. Most websites are plates of sprinkles.

They look great but they lack substance.

They don’t answer the four questions.

Too many websites are all sprinkles, no cake.

People point at cakes and say "make me one"

People can recognize a cake when they see it.

Oftentimes, they will go to a designer with an example cake and ask, “Can you build me a site like this?”.

And after months of work, revisions, and a significant amount of resources they are presented with a plate of sprinkles.

Why?

Because they didn’t do their part.

Designers don’t make cakes, you do.

It is up to you and your team to construct your cake. It is the designer’s job is to decorate it.

Instead of answering the four questions, you wrote about:

It’s a symptom of a bigger issue

Product-focused copy (vs. value-focused copy) is a symptom, suggesting that you:

Without this information, all you have to talk about is yourself.

Showing symptoms? Do something about it

If you’re trying to grow your business and your website isn’t a cake, you are wasting your limited resources with every person that visits.

Invest in understanding your customers, rewrite your product-focused copy, and convert more customers.

If you are struggling to rewrite your copy: I’ve built a fool-proof copywriting process for people who don’t write copy.

You can get it here.