Writing for Somebody Who Has Already Decided

The reader nobody writes for

Site content is almost entirely persuasion: why this matters, why us, what we offer, what customers say.

All of that is aimed at somebody still deciding, which is the right audience for most pages.

The reader who has decided has different questions, and the site usually has nothing for them: what happens now, how long until somebody responds, what will I need, what will this actually cost, and what could go wrong.

They contact you anyway, and they arrive uncertain, which produces a longer first conversation and occasionally a customer who changes their mind between deciding and starting.

What they want to know

• What happens after they get in touch.
• How soon somebody responds.
• What to have ready for the first conversation.
• What it will cost, including extras.
• How payment works and when.
• What could change once work begins.

The third is the one that shortens everything. A customer who arrives with measurements, photographs, and a rough date has removed a whole exchange from the process.

The what happens next page

The single most useful late-stage page and one most sites lack.

Set out the sequence: you get in touch, we respond within this time, we do this, then this, then work starts.

Give rough timings for each step, since the uncertainty is about duration more than about order.

Say who does each thing and who they will be dealing with.

Say what happens if something is found that changes the job, which is the fear underneath most hesitation about starting.

That page also does work for you, since a customer who has read it does not ring to ask any of it.

Tell them what to bring

A small page that improves the quality of every enquiry that reads it.

Measurements, photographs, the age of the thing, what has been done before, and whether there is access.

Say plainly that having those ready means a quote in a day rather than a visit next week, which gives the reader a reason to bother.

Link it from the contact page and from the form itself, since that is where somebody is at the moment it is relevant.

Businesses that do this find enquiries arrive with photographs attached unprompted, which is the largest single improvement available to most quoting processes.

A worked example

A business had a site of service pages, an about page, and a contact form.

Enquiries arrived with almost no information, so every one required two or three exchanges before anything could be quoted.

They added two pages: what happens after you get in touch, with timings, and what to have ready, with a short list and an explanation of why it speeds things up.

They linked both from the contact page and the form.

Within two months most enquiries arrived with photographs and measurements, and the time from enquiry to quote fell from about a week to about a day.

The enquiry volume was unchanged, and the work required to handle each one dropped substantially.

Money, stated before it is asked

The subject a decided customer most wants clarified and most hesitates to raise.

Say when payment is due, what deposit is required, what forms of payment you take, and whether there is anything payable before work starts.

Explain how variations are handled: what happens if the job turns out to be larger, who authorises it, and whether they will be told before the cost is incurred.

That last point resolves the specific fear people have about trades, which is a bill larger than the quote with no conversation in between.

Stating your policy plainly is more reassuring than any promise about honesty, because it is checkable.

The pages that keep working after the sale

Worth adding, since the decided reader becomes a customer and then has different questions again.

Aftercare: what to do, what to avoid, when to expect maintenance.

What is covered by any guarantee and for how long, and how to make a claim.

How to get hold of somebody if something is wrong, which is the page a customer looks for at the worst possible moment.

Those reduce calls, prevent avoidable problems, and are the content most likely to be sent by one customer to another.

They also cost nothing to write, since the information is what you tell every customer verbally already.

Where these pages go

Since they should not compete with the persuasive content.

Link them from the contact page, the enquiry form, and the foot of each service page, which are the points where somebody has decided.

They do not belong in the main navigation for most businesses, since a first-time visitor does not need them yet.

Send them in your reply to an enquiry as well, which is when they are most useful and where they save the most time.

A short line in the acknowledgement email pointing at what happens next does more than the page sitting unlinked.

The counter-case

Not every business has a process worth describing.

Where somebody rings, you attend, and you charge, a page describing that is longer than the process and adds nothing.

Publishing detailed process and payment terms also constrains you, and a business that varies its approach by customer may not want to commit publicly.

And late-stage pages do nothing for a business whose problem is that nobody is deciding in the first place.

Write them once the enquiries exist, keep them practical, and link them where somebody has already chosen.

What to write

1. What happens after they get in touch, with timings.
2. What to have ready, and why it helps them.
3. When payment is due and in what form.
4. How variations are authorised.
5. Aftercare and what any guarantee covers.
6. How to reach somebody if it goes wrong.
7. Link them from the contact page and your reply.

Step two returns the most immediately, since an enquiry arriving with photographs and measurements removes several exchanges from every job.

Making the next step easy is covered in booking a time instead of sending a message.

Frequently asked questions

West Coast Media Solutions Inc. provides web design, web development, hosting, digital marketing, and business consulting to organisations across Canada, drawing on more than twenty-five years in the field.