“I’m the founder and executive director of To Write Well, which offers a wide variety of writing courses online.
“Typically, the market includes professionals (journalists, lawyers, corporate communications officers), who need to improve their voice and style; and hobbyists, who are seeking higher level skills in genre writing and poetry. My faculty offers courses on fiction, non-fiction, creative non-fiction, and poetry.
“My infrastructure is in place, but while it would be easy to blame the economy, it’s more accurate to say I’m missing an essential promotion ingredient. I use Facebook, including Facebook ads. I have a an active blog that automatically tweets, and I have run promotional courses (for free) to select writers to gain word-of-mouth. And yet the seats remain empty.
“In my site trial, I had students from India, Switzerland, Australia and China. The site is designed asynchronously, so all students have access based on their schedules, but interaction is kept moving along on a daily basis.
“What am I doing wrong?”
Hi McKenna,
I just had a peek at your website and I think there are two issues:
1) Your website is bland and generic looking. For people to TRUST you, it needs to look better and more PERSONAL. And, at the very least, you need a better, professionally taken photo of yourself. Such a photo will likely cost in the $300 – $500 range and is worth every penny!!
2) You need more SALES COPY on your sales page. What will people gain from taking your courses? Tell them! Be specific. Give lots of info. Also, SPELL OUT how the classes work. For example, you describe your Nano-special course as a three-week course. But what does that mean? Do they meet or get an email every day? Or once a week. GIVE DETAILS.
I don’t need writing courses, but if I did, I wouldn’t buy from you because your site doesn’t bother to sell!!! I don’t mean to sound harsh — I just want to be specific. I hope this helps you. Best, -daphne
Thank, Daphne! I’m asking for help: specifics are perfect.
By Sales Copy, are you suggesting that the course descriptions be longer in order to provide the details? We describe the classroom in greater detail on the page About Us, but your statement leads me to believe it needs to be on the writing courses page.
We style ourselves as “not just another,” because we are not just a simple email/correspondence school, but a rich, online classroom that promotes student-to-student interaction as well as student-to-faculty.
Thank you for your suggestions. I shall examine the site carefully with your thoughts in mind! ~ McKenna
I agree with Daphne about the need for more details about each course and more persuasive language. Consider the ads you see every day and what makes you buy. It’s generally low on info and high on words and graphics that get your attention and effect you emotionally in some way. One way to add this is with testimonials from satisfied clients even if they were your beta testers.
I don’t agree with her 100% though on needing a professional pic, especially if it’s the average head shot. It really depends a lot on what kind of image you want to project and what you think your audience will respond to. Creative types may be more persuaded by a more creative, or casual look to the photos whereas a business exec might respond better to a more “professional” looking style. What I do think though is that your faculty pics need to be consistent or at least to reflect the genre they specialize in. They’re a little all over the board right now.
I think a big thing for you right now would be to narrow down what you want your image or brand to be and then strive to make the different components work together.
Hope that helps.
Thank you, Cheryl. This helps, along with Daphne’s comments. You’re helping me see the site in a different mode. We’re looking at using that current bio photo, but desaturating the background, so it’s a lower intensity than the photo. From those people who know me, they say that’s by far the most “me” photo. I have a body of professional photos, but they’re all too posed.
We’re also looking to add flash testimonials to the home page and to the writing courses page. Daphne’s comment that we can’t control which page the visitor to the site sees first made sense, so the sales copy needs to be on each page. The brand is important, yes.
Thank you for your help! You’ve given me some good ways to rethink my site.
~ McKenna
Hi again McKenna,
It sounds as though you fear repeating yourself! But when you’re selling via the Internet, you cannot control which door people enter through. It may make more sense to you to have the course info on the “About us” page — but if it doesn’t make sense to your customers, well, you’re going to lose them! Don’t be afraid to REPEAT information on a variety of pages. And for sure, you need it on the writing course page. Give LOTS of information — maybe even include a FAQ.
Re: the photo, I agree with Cheryl that it may not be so important if it’s just an average head shot. But (and here I’m assuming the site is your business — if I’m wrong, just ignore the rest of what I’m going to say) you need to sell YOURSELF as well! And to do that, you want to look GREAT, not just good. Your current picture is good but it can and should be great. Look at Joan’s two pix. Obviously both professionally done. Both are great. You need and deserve the same treatment!
Hope this helps. Best, -d
Hi, again, Daphne. Yes, this makes a great deal of sense, that we can’t control which page they first see when they come to the site, so sales copy needs to be on each page.
The site is indeed part of my business, and my admin assistant has been pushing to sell ME, my expertise, etc.
I’ve begun working with a new website programmer, who will redesign the Writing Courses page for graphical interfaces (rather than just text links).
Yes, this helps a great deal! Thank you!
~ McKenna
Hi, McKenna – I’m from Asheville, too. And while we folks from Western NC embrace our eclectic population of tie-dye meets necktie, gray-hairs and pink-hairs, mohawks and ponytails, (with a big splash of spirituality and quantum physics thrown in), …I’d be concerned that anyone outside of Asheville might balk at the “woo-woo” background of some of your faculty, several of whom focus on the paranormal. IMHO, it just seems inconsistent and less professional than what I was expecting. If paranormal is a special niche, the branding needs to reflect that. Best of luck!
Thank you, Kathi. Yes, paranormal is a niche market — quite an active one. I’m redesigning the Writing Courses page to use graphic icons as the entry to categories, and Writing Paranormal Fiction will become its own category.
Can you be more specific as to what you were expecting in terms of courses?
Thanks!
McKenna —
While I strongly believe in using social media to get in front of a business’ target markets, it is also important to first cover the basics.
I checked out the metatags of your site — and it appears you have none besides the non-keyword-optimized title tag “To Write Well.” A subtitle using keywords along with that title would be very helpful.
And definitely a description metatag using keywords that people might search with to find your site would be very helpful. Plus a few keywords in the keyword metatag would also be a good idea.
Then I noticed that you said you use an automatic system to tweet your blog posts. It is a good idea to check out what those automatic tweets look like.
I personally switched from an automatic tweet for each new blog post to a personal (manual) tweet when I realized that the automatic tweet was not as compelling as I could make a personal tweet.
The truth is that using social media takes time as well as a clear strategy of sharing information with your prospective target markets.
Phyllis Zimbler Miller
http://twitter.com/ZimblerMiller
Thank you, Phyllis! I shall have our site’s metatags updated. We had put together our list of metatags, but we’d not yet gotten them onto the site. Good catch, thank you!
The automatic twitter versus the manual twitter is a good point, too! Thank you!
~ McKenna