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Storytelling has been an integral part of human culture since the dawn of time. We both share our stories with the world and embrace the stories of others. In any case, stories shape our perspectives and, therefore, our shared reality. Additionally, a compelling story is provocative and emotionally resonant. Frankly, no one ever remembers a bad or boring story unless it’s to remember how bad or boring it was.
This is especially true when it comes to marketing and website creation. Compelling storytelling in this context is significant in making your brand stand out in the sea of others. An effective brand story will not only improve user engagement but also increase overall brand loyalty and, therefore, conversions.
But how can we create such a narrative for our sites? When I consult with my clients, I always introduce them to the Hero’s Journey framework. In applying this framework to our websites and funnel pages, we take our prospects through narratives that they can resonate with, thus encouraging them to take action with our services.
Related: The hero’s journey is your path to winning customers for life
The Hero’s Journey: A Quick Overview
Popularized by American writer Joseph Campbell, The Hero’s Journey outlines a universal pattern of adventure and transformation in storytelling traditions around the world. This story arc involves a hero who goes on an adventure, faces and overcomes challenges, and returns transformed.
When we apply this framework to our marketing copy and website design, we need to position the site visitor as the hero of the story. From there, your mark is the guide or sage who helps the hero overcome his or her difficulties and catalyzes the transformation.
Apply the hero’s journey to your website
1. The Call to Adventure: Engage visitors immediately
Your website’s homepage should serve as an invitation to adventure, immediately engaging visitors by presenting a relatable challenge or aspiration. Such a challenge could be an important problem facing your target audience, which your brand promises to solve. Capture their interest right from the start by aligning with their initial search intent.
2. Introducing the Hero and Guide: Building a Connection
In the context of your website, the hero is your visitor. Make it clear that you understand their challenges and desires from the beginning. Then, present your brand as a guide, a knowledgeable ally equipped with the wisdom (your services or products) to help them overcome their obstacles. This positioning builds trust and establishes a personal connection with your audience.
3. The journey: mapping the user experience
As you build the different pages of your user experience, consider each page a chapter in the story of the hero you are creating. Map out your website layout to reflect their exploration for answers. Each page should ideally address a challenge they face and how your offerings can address it. You can achieve this by outlining the steps, highlighting the benefits, and presenting testimonials and case studies.
4. Challenges and tests: Demonstrate value
Pointing out the difficulties and obstacles your hero may face is a great way to show that you’re both on the same page (remember, empathy). You can also demonstrate how your product or service provides the necessary solutions, thus underlining the value of your offering and strengthening the emotional connection of the narrative.
5. The transformation: showing success
Make sure your website vividly illustrates the transformation customers experience after using your product or service. Do this by showing before and after scenarios, success stories and testimonials. Visitors need to see the potential of their transformation, as this motivates them to take action.
6. The Return: Encouraging Action
The culmination of the hero’s journey on your website should lead to clear and compelling calls to action (CTAs). Whether it’s making a purchase, signing up for a newsletter or booking a consultation, CTAs are the steps that lead to transformation.
Related: 5 Tips to Increase Your Website Conversions (and Why It Matters)
More principles to maximize engagement and conversions
Beyond the hero’s journey, maximizing engagement relies on presenting our stories in ways that appeal to the site visitor. Now let’s talk about paying attention to design, usability, and overall quality of content. When optimizing our websites, be sure to ask these four questions.
Is it smooth? It often takes a designer’s eye to ensure the right elements are in the right places. However, having an intuitive, uncluttered and easy-to-use website is crucial to increasing conversions. It doesn’t matter how compelling your story is if your website is unusable and unattractive.
Is he slim? We want to ensure our pages are as streamlined as possible, avoiding multiple narratives and redundancies. When directing a user to a CTA, it is ideal to present one CTA at a time. Especially on our landing and funnel pages, showing multiple CTAs at once often leads to confusion and a lack of targeted engagement.
Is it stellar? Combining targeted storytelling with engaging content will inevitably draw potential customers deeper into your brand. Make sure to include vivid images, videos, and engaging text to attract people. Remember, no one remembers a boring story! So, try to be memorable, not banal.
Is it split-testing? Don’t expect your first web pages to be perfect. Continuous split testing is the key to creating a website that converts. Test different aspects of your website to see what engages your audience most. Test everything from your headline text to images, calls to action, or even the website as a whole.
Related: How to “Split Test” Your Website to Better Engage Customers Online
Conclusion
There is undoubtedly an art to telling compelling stories. As with any art form, understanding the basic principles is the key to finding mastery.
Whether you have a personal brand or represent a giant corporation, your narrative influences how the world perceives and welcomes you. By applying the right storytelling principles to your websites, you’ll be sure to not only earn more money, but also create a noteworthy brand.