Website Structure

Your website is the hub of all of your marketing and sales efforts, even if you have products placed in other physical and online stores. This is because your website (and your physical store, if you have one) is the only store you own. Third-party sellers and platforms are unlikely to prioritize selling your products, so you must prioritize your website for a quality selling experience.

Note: If your business is not large enough to support a website, you can start by selling through Amazon, Etsy, eBay, Jet, or local brick-and-mortar stores, but we recommend you proceed with caution on these options. They are good options when beginning your business to ensure market fit and aid in brand discovery, but they should not be seen as long-term solutions if you want your business to grow. The reason is, again, you do not own these platforms and it’s hard to control sales on a platform you don’t own. However, these platforms are good options to consider in addition to your website (see Product Placement in Purchasing Opportunities).

Your website must be designed and organized with the customer experience in mind. The goal is to make it easy for your prospects and customers to purchase from you. To do so, you must include clear calls to action on every page. We recommend focusing on one main call to action throughout your website, such as purchasing or learning more about your primary product. Your website must also focus on the benefits of your product as well as the pain points they are resolving for your customers.

Tip: Do not focus on features or the products themselves. Your customers likely do not care about features or your product. They care about what your product can do for them and how it will resolve a pain point of theirs, so promote that. Promote the benefits of your product.

Promote the benefits of your product on your homepage. Make your benefits clear here. Include an image of your product. Better yet, if you can, include a video that teases your product with the primary benefit prominently showcased.

If you have one product, your website will be very simple with only a few pages. If you have multiple products, your website will be a bit more complex, but it still needs to be easy to navigate with clear calls to action or your prospect will get lost and not convert to a paying customer.

If you have multiple products, you will want a product list page before your prospects reach your individual product pages. From there, prospects can review all of your products at a glance before clicking on each individual product page for more details.

Tip: Design all of your pages with mobile in mind. Most customers will view your product on mobile at some point in the buying process, whether they choose to make a purchase on mobile or not, so be sure they can quickly and easily view all product information and your calls to action clearly on every page.

The most important pages of your website are your product pages. Clear the clutter and be sure to have only one product per product page. You can have multiple sizes and color options on one page, but be sure that each product has its own page. This helps your prospects focus on that one product before making a purchase decision.

On each individual product page, you should get down to the nitty-gritty. Include clear product images from all angles, a video of the product (if you have one), reviews of the product (if you have any), product specifications (make sure they make sense to your audience, not just your product development team), product benefits, helpful product descriptions, clear pricing, and a clear call to action to purchase. Be sure there is plenty of white space around the product photos so your prospects can focus on the products themselves.

Tip: Use your product images with transparent backgrounds so your product pages have a lot of white space. (Remember, transparent background = white background on your website.) You can also showcase images with backgrounds and models, and we encourage that you do that, too, but make your featured (i.e. first) product images have clear backgrounds so your prospects can view the products alone before they see the products in real life.

Overall, you want to create an easy buying experience throughout your website. So design it with your audience in mind and have many people test it before you launch.