A real estate coaching website with e-commerce and sales letter copywriting for conversions

A sales website for a B2B service provider, made to show value and product worthiness

The first order of business with this B2B web design, was improving the communicative aspects of the real estate coaching services. The old site was almost hiding the credibility and validity of hiring the coach. As I began interviewing the client during a discovery session to plan this website project, I learned that the company had not only been in business for a long time, but also had a lot of success, big-name clients and incredible testimonials to show for it. And, in that process, I also learned that this person had a wonderful story to tell. If he could do it, others could do it too. He had done and achieved everything he was teaching. And I definitely wanted that to work for him on this website, too. None of that was being demonstrated. In fact, I don’t think the client realized how amazing their resume was! It took some digging to find these quality points during our conversations.

The other thing about this client was that they were right up the alley of information product sales. While some ‘landing page style’ or ‘sales letter’ websites on the web can seem tacky, and super salesy in a ‘cheesy’ way, I knew that they could also be effective. However, I wanted to do this in a ‘classy’ way for this client. The tactic of the sales letter website was exactly what he needed for a service-based product of his kind (i.e. high price tag, with an even higher return on investment). In those cases, copywriting needs to do justice to the value of what is being sold. And so, long-form copy is ok, and most often preferable. And, let’s not forget, sales coaching is in the business of sales. So being a little ‘salesy’ is ok! The audience may identify with it more easily, in my opinion.

But when you write long copy, you have to keep the reader engaged. How do you do that, apart from the good copywriting skill itself? With great web design to go along with it! Dividing up the sections, introducing headlines with calls-to-action (CTAs) and dispelling myths in creative ways were all done on this site. The idea was this: if we can take away all the fears and doubts, we can take away all the reasons to not buy this product. That takes time. So, the copywriting and web page design had to keep the reader ‘hooked’ until they realized this purchase decision would be a good one for them. The sales pages would start with a large hero section to introduce the service with a large benefit-based headline. It would also, optionally, show a photo of the business coach, to make it look animated. Large typography was used. And we even designed little houses as the ‘bullets’ for list styles. We created ‘box’ designs where some content could go in green, blue or yellow boxes, to highlight those items on the page. In between, several ‘get started now’ buttons were included, for readers who’d be ready to buy without reading further (using different CTA wording on the buttons, of course).

One favourite part of this website that many people comment on is the home page section dispels myths of real estate. This was part of the ‘remove the reasons not to buy’ strategy that I wanted to employ. We knew that many real estate agents had false beliefs about working in the industry. And, the coaching service itself may not seem like a ‘need’ for many real estate agents. So that perception needed to be solved. Removing it could mean putting sales leads into a different mindset about the product being offered by this B2B consultant website.

I worked with the designer on this site to get something creative going for this ‘myths and truths’ section. To make it interactive, I wrote out the ‘myth’ and then used an expand/collapse feature to show the ‘truth.’ The design was such that visual cues were included, like the red ‘X’ mark and a green ‘check’ mark for the myth and truth. It also showed an image of the coach on each ‘truth’, as if to make it seem like he is speaking to the reader.

Apart from the emphasis on copywriting for conversion, this B2B website also included an e-commerce area to sell information products this client had made. They were downloadable audio products and books. And, we even included a subscription payment option for buyers to join group coaching sessions, like a ‘membership’ site (but without many membership site features that weren’t needed in this case, and would only have complicated things unnecessarily).

Other design features to ‘theme’ the site, making it relevant to the real estate industry, were inclusions of houses in a row (which were also used as a horizontal rule divider design). I also had the idea of setting up a sidebar subpage menu that would look like a typical real estate ‘for sale’ sign (or at least the silhouette of one).

Some password-protected pages were set up and designed for past sign-ups of an information series of webinars. These were set up to be easy to navigate, with downloads to go with each audio or video seminar.

Web development and design features for this business coach’s website:

• Responsive, custom WordPress web development using the Genesis framework. Design included a home page, flexible interior page design, and e-commerce pages (product archives, single product page, product navigation widgets, cart and checkout form design, account area design, purchase e-mail designs).
• Added functionality with Advanced Custom Fields and WooCommerce. WooCommerce extensions were also set up for this site, for features including: subscription payments, Amazon s3 downloads for digital products, Stripe payment gateway.
• SVG-based logos and iconography for high-density displays (such as for retina displays on modern devices). This way images would not appear blurry, and could scale up as needed without losing quality.
• Newsletter sign up integration with Aweber forms. Calls-to-action and downloadable PDFs were designed and used on the site, too.
• Custom widget designs, with flexible options for CSS display styles.
• In-content box designs, to help divide content with new background colours.
• Custom list style designs with custom icons as ‘bullets.’
• Custom horizontal rule designs, using row houses, to create differentiation in the body content area of a page.
• Typography and style guides to direct the future cases of content needs on the site.
• Easy-to-use site navigation elements, as well as ‘contact me now’ visuals on each page.
• Full content architecture and content strategy as part of the website planning process. Full copywriting service also provided.

Accolades from the client:

I hired Joyce as my WordPress web developer and search engine optimization specialist. I wanted to work with someone Canadian, who had the business acumen to take our online presence to a level where it could really represent who we are. Our old site was just not doing justice to our value, credentials or expertise. Joyce changed that for us with a complete overhaul of our entire website strategy.

On our first call, Joyce explained online marketing concepts and ideas that I was impressed with. She also was able to easily point out where the weaknesses were with our current (old) website. She could answer all my questions.

When I hired Joyce, I was even more impressed with the level of detail and depth of analysis that she goes into when carrying out her work. The breadth and scope of how far she will go to do things ‘right’ is vast. She doesn’t leave any stone unturned, if she can find it. I knew she was doing things right because she asked me questions about my site that other people had never asked me before, when I hired them to do the same job.

I can honestly say the best thing about working with Joyce is that I trust her. And I’ve never had that feeling with anyone that I’ve hired to do this before.

After she launched our new site, and re-wrote all our content, we noticed more people getting in touch. We also had compliments on our website. It is so much easier to find information now. I believe she did a really good job, and I would recommend her services to anyone who needs a website, copywriting or any e-marketing.

Gloria Keith

Customer Support and Admin Manager, Bruce Keith Coaching and Seminars

Other work done for this client:

I did nearly all the copywriting on this website, excluding the copywriting of products for sale and downloadable incentives. Copywriting tasks included:

• Bio writing
• Product sales writing
• B2B service writing
• Home page and web copy writing

To get the e-mail material and downloadable products and incentives to match the new site design, I also helped design PDF documents for this client.

This client hired me for ongoing SEO, until they chose to retire.