Are you an expert, consultant or entrepreneur who is unhappy with your current personal brand site? If so, here is one Influencer website makeover story that you could learn from.
Sachit Gupta is an entrepreneur dedicated to showing podcasters, authors and experts how to grow their audience and make a living from their art. Through his proven processes and mentorship, Sachit takes entrepreneurs to the next level by unlocking hidden profit centers in their businesses.
Like you, Sachit already had a business website but he knew it needed an overhaul. He needed it to be more effective in terms of generating leads, establishing his credibility, and selling his services and programs.
But for a long time, it remained the way it was. Sachit said:
Building a personal brand site is something I’ve wanted to do for a long time but never really got around to doing, because:
- I wasn’t sure what to put on there. I didn’t know how to construct the foundation of a really good personal brand site.
- If you’ve ever done a website project, you know that managing developers, designers, writing copy and managing the entire process is really frustrating and complicated.
- I do client work so I never really have the time to manage the whole process.
So his personal brand site didn't get done for a long time. Fortunately, Sachit stumbled upon Influex.
But at first, he was very skeptical…
When I first saw the offer from Influex, I thought it was too good to be true because they offered to handle everything: design, development, giving you instructions on what copy they need, even helping you on how to get photographs… It was like this one-stop-shop thing. I thought it was a crazy offer.
So I thought maybe this offer is by some new company who didn’t know what they’re doing.
But when I went to their site and saw their portfolio… holy crap! They work with the best like Mike Dillard, Frank Kern, Yanik Silver…so they knew what they were talking about.
It was a crazy offer so it was a no brainer to jump into it.
Here are a few things showing what we did for Sachit’s site and how you too could apply the same principles to your personal brand site makeover.
#1: Create a Stunning Homepage that Conveys What You Do and Who You Serve—Within 5 Seconds
Why 5 seconds? Because research shows that most users will click away if they don't establish your site's relevance within that time.
Remember that when prospects land on your homepage, the main questions in their minds are: “what's in this for ME? Why should I pay attention to this? How can this person solve MY problems?”
So when you get your homepage designed, the first thing you must establish is relevance. Fail to do this and you'll be looking at high bounce rates (bounce rate is the percentage of site visitors who click away from the site after viewing only one page).
A well-designed homepage helps build trust and credibility right from the get-go. Just like the way you dress, the way your site looks speaks volumes about you, and this is one subconscious (but powerful) way how your prospects judge whether you're worth their attention or not.
Sachit's old homepage had decent copy, but the design looked plain. It used an image that looked generic – one that gave off a stock photography vibe to it. The design also failed to strongly reinforce what was being conveyed by the copy.
Another important thing is to spare users from having to think more than they have to. A common crime amateur designers/web developers do is to complicate stuff. In effect, the page gets muddled with superfluous elements and the core message gets lost or buried.
We humans are cognitive misers, so make your homepage simple and easy to understand. Aim for clarity more rather than trying to look cool or sounding clever or worse, pretending to be someone you're not.
#2: Use Well-crafted Stories to Bond with Your Audience on a Deeper Level
Our brains are hardwired to process stories. Just like our instinct for languages, we have an innate drive to hear stories and tell stories. When you have a story to tell, people of all ages are prone to engage and listen.
Want to get your prospects to understand how you can help them without making them feel sold to? Tell them the stories of your best clients.
The best stories are usually about people who want something (a goal) or they have problems that they feel they're ill-equipped to deal with. At its most basic form, a story's main ingredients are: character(s) + obstacle(s) + resolution + transformation.
When you tell your clients' stories, a common mistake is to try to make yourself the hero of the story. But if you want to create a deeper impact in your prospects' minds, make them or your clients the heroes of the stories instead. Then position yourself as the guide who steps in to help them deal with their problems, show them the way and help them get what they want.
Making your clients and prospects the heroes in your story doesn't necessarily mean you don't talk about yourself at all. In fact, many people value knowing things about you that are outside of what you do professionally.
Case in point: Sachit's site gave very little information about him…
If you want to create an opportunity to bond with your audience on an emotional level, share some things about your personal life as well. This invites your audience to identify with you in a way that goes deeper than just the professional level.
#3: Use Powerful Calls to Action
You know what site visitors want from you when they click through and visit your site?
They want you to take them somewhere. Are you creating a worthy experience?
Don't expect people to think for themselves. Guide them.
Know your prospects well enough that you're able to anticipate what information they need and at what stage in the process they'll be looking for what information.
So lead your site visitors from one stage to the next in their journey with you. Then, tell them what to do and what's next after that.
Make every call to action clear and compelling.
#4: Grow your List and Generate Leads!
People will rarely buy from you or hire you within the first interaction with your brand/site.
That is why it's essential you capture their contact details so you can keep the conversation going and build the relationship over time. You can do this by emailing them useful information and follow up messages.
Your email list can be one of your most powerful business assets, so one of your website's top 3 goals should be to build a list of high-quality, highly-qualified prospects.
#5: Make Your Offers Clear
After explaining what you do and who you do it for, don’t shy away from selling!
Here you'll see how Sachit's old site described the value he could offer, but it didn't clarify what the prospects could invest in to make their desired transformation happen. (There wasn't even a call to action right where he explained what he could do for prospects.)
Don't leave your readers guessing. Make your offers clear. Show them what they can get, what options are available to them, how they'll get it, how you'll deliver the value they want and when, and what their investment is going to be.
#6: Follow a Proven Process
The whole point of redesigning your personal brand site is to transform it from a mere brochure to an effective marketing tool that sets you apart from the competition, helps you build trust and authority with your tribe, and generates targeted leads for your business.
Influex has a proven, tested process for making all that happen.
As Sachit shared:
I didn’t know what pages to put on there, and I didn’t know what information needed to be on each page. But by working with Influex and by going through their processes, those became clear.
So if you work with Influex, don’t skip any of the processes because you’ll just end up hurting yourself.
Sachit adds:
What I really loved about my experience working with Influex was the team took control of the entire process.
I remember from the moment I made the payment, they laid out exactly:
“Here’s what you need to do, here’s what we need from you, here’s how everything’s gonna work…”
If you hire someone and they have a process and they tell you exactly what’s gonna happen, it just makes you feel you’re in good hands. And that was how I felt from start to finish.
Redesigning a site is a creative process. Due to its nature, it can be messy, unpredictable, and, given the conflicting preferences and tastes of those involved, the process could even be confusing at times.
They really care about their work. I could tell that from the very start.
A great example is when we were working on my 404 Page or my Contact Page. I expected them to do one or two designs and I just pick one. But no, we ended up doing many revisions – for a page that most people wouldn’t even really think about!
For the Home Page, About Page and all the important pages, we went through multiple rounds of revisions and they were always happy to do it as long as I was clear about what I wanted.
That just showed that they cared and wanted to create something beautiful and that’s exactly what they did and delivered on what they promised.
Here’s what Sachit has to say about his experience after he decided to get his site redesigned:
Redesigning your personal brand site could be a long and stressful process. But it doesn't have to be so if you have an experienced and competent team working with you. We'll let Sachit have the final word:
If you’re someone who’s looking to build your personal brand site, you have two choices:
One is you try and do it yourself.
In which case, you’ll need to figure out what exactly goes where.
Then you need to find a designer. Then you need to find a developer. You’ll need someone to write the copy and then you’ll probably need a Project Manager to manage everything and everyone.
And you do all that while running your own business!
That’s just too stressful!
So either you do that or just work with Influex and they handle everything from start to finish and in the end they deliver a good product and that’s what matters.
So yes, I highly recommend you work with them!
If you want to see more of the personal brand sites that we have created for other influencers, check out our portfolio.
And if you're ready to have your personal brand site redesigned by our team, simply fill out the application form here. You will be asked to book your Alignment Assessment call with Dmitriy to see if we are a good fit.
