There’s this marketer friend of mine, I won’t mention his name other than he became an online millionaire in 2 years, literally starting with nothing except a broken down old PC.
When he first started out he believed website design was important and spent lots of time and money on creating great looking websites. His sales were nothing to write home about, he was just about getting by. But then he realized something… website design was a complete waste of time and money so decided to remove all the graphics from his websites.
Literally overnight his website conversions and profits doubled as every new website he created used virtually no graphics (except maybe a graphical button or 3D cover here and there).
All his websites were literally a white page with a red headline and black text below it. No extra links and no photos or other images (except sometimes a picture of himself). His websites were not exciting, they were not inspiring to look at and truth be told looked like a 10 year old put them together.
Despite this his sales continued to grow and grow.
When I first witnessed what he was doing I couldn’t believe it because my own background and training had been graphic design. I had been to art school and graduated at the top of my class. How could design not help? It was a real mind bender and paradigm changer for me.
Over the years I watched him create these websites in a matter of days, nothing was slowing him down. He churned out one information marketing after another. And his products followed this same rule of a very basic look with no graphics or visual elements.
He had no visual brand identity (unless you could say his basic style was his visual brand), he had nothing to differentiate his websites from others who also didn’t use graphics that much. All his websites headlines were red Tahoma Bold and his sales copy was in Times.
So what was his secret?
What was it that gave him the edge so few others had that turned him into an overnight success?
Was it good, strong sales copy?
That’s all it seemed to be at first. Then I looked closer and there was much more to this than meets the eye.
You see whilst good sales copy is paramount there’s more that’s needed.
It’s a personal brand… it’s you that makes the difference, it’s you that people know, like and trust. And he did this through the power of his copy and most importantly through his absolute mastery of Teleseminars.
But of course success doesn’t happen by accident or by chance, it has to be carefully considered and above all you need a plan. His plan was simple, just as I mentioned to you above and in executing his plan he made me re-think a lot of what I accepted as fact.
His biggest secret to rapid success in my opinion comes down to these 2 things…
- Good advice and training from experts who were already where he wanted to be (his mentors where the most successful in the industry).
- The ability to move fast (he created products, sales letters and host Teleseminars at lightning speed).
As I sit here at my desk creating my own information products and designing my websites I sometimes wish that website design wasn’t so important to me and that I could create products and websites as fast as my millionaire friend.
I still believe that a visual brand identity is important, but the challenge is in creating graphics that not only look good but also sell. When you get the balance right and combine it with other proven direct response strategies the sky really is the limit! Only now after 9 years of trial and error testing can I see the light at the end of my own tunnel and I’ve picked out my dream home in the Swiss Alps 
{ 5 comments… read them below or add one }
I have known several successful internet marketing entrepreneurs who have become successful through developing their own personal brand. Thanks for your submission to The Work at Home Family Carnival.
Interesting concept. I do agree that it is the individual or it is the company behind the website that brings clients and avid web surfers to the website.
The thing is, unless you (the user/surfer) know the force behind the website then the design is a very integral part of the website. A boring looking website with no real knowledge of what or who is behind it can easily turn customers and viewers away, a brightly coloured and well designed website will pull in more casual surfers than a boring site, however again with no real force behind the site it is unlikely the user will remain on the site for extensive periods of time.
Interesting idea and great post.
Thanks for sharing.
I think it’s a combination of good, simple design and optimizing the sites to higher position on various search engines. Great article though, definitely going to look around through some more.
Your website design ideally should cater to the preferences of your visitors. If more online business owners made the effort to ask their visitors what was important to them, they would be able to produce a website design much more effectively and generate more sales as a result. When business owners pay attention to the personalities of their market: the shoppers who are buying their products and services it’s much easier to create a website design that will appeal to them and encourage them to purchase what they have to offer.
Simple design as has google.com and very optimised usefuf content on the web page. Also SEO works and good structure of site – and seccess will be soon.
Design is only first step.