Your homepage is the online equivalent of a firm, friendly, and personable business handshake. It can be a memorable way for your company to stand out. And one way to do that is with a unique value proposition or a UVP.
Your UVP is a simple, well-thought-out, clear statement that does the following:
- Describes the benefit of your offer
- Shows how you solve your customer’s needs
- Explains what sets you apart from the competition
If you haven’t thought about your UVP yet, it’s probably time to learn more about how to develop and display a UVP that can be your best asset when you’re hoping to edge out among the competition, and turn leads into sales and clients.
What Makes a Good UVP
A good UVP is an introduction to who you are and how you solve problems for your clients. It tells the world (or at least, the people who visit your homepage) about you: The benefits you provide, who you help, and how valuable those benefits can be. Think of it like a brief overview of:
- Who your buyer persona is
- The problems you solve, or the relevancy of what you do
- How your company can uniquely solve these problems better than any other company
Also, your UVP should be a single sentence. It’s easy to get wordy when you are talking about your company because it’s the thing you’re passionate about. But a great UVP; a memorable, impactful UVP is brief, elegant, and to the point.
You want your website visitors to be able to understand your UVP within the first few seconds of visiting your webpage.
I’ve talked before about the importance of concise content, and your UVP should be about as concise as it gets. Your UVP isn’t a blog page or a service page with room for sentences and paragraphs of information: it’s one simple statement on your homepage.
Let that hook the visitors to your website, and they can read more as they explore the rest of your website.
Your UVP should be just that: Yours. You know the things your company rocks at, and the things your company doesn’t do. Forbes has two great pieces of advice when it comes to what makes an effective UVP:
- Know your brand’s purpose
- Know what your company doesn’t do
Your UVP doesn’t have to be everything to every person. It can feel challenging to boil down your superhero problem-solving abilities to one sentence, but once you remember that your UVP doesn’t have to solve every problem, it starts to feel a little easier.
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How to Write a Powerful UVP
The language of your UVP should be your customer’s already-existing language; it joins the conversation they were already having in their mind about the problem they need to solve. How do you discover this? By doing research and actually talking to your customers!
This is no place to include lots of fancy marketing jargon that has a lot of words but really doesn’t say anything. You want your UVP to be approachable and understandable no matter who is reading it, so avoid the temptation to include flashy buzzwords.
Want some examples? Here are a few highly effective, clear UVPs that work well:
Other useful things to keep in mind? A UVP is not a positioning statement or a slogan. A positioning statement might explain that your company is the most popular home meal kit company, or a slogan might sound catchy (“Just do it.”), but those don’t explain how you solve your customers’ problems.
Don’t get me wrong: there’s a place for slogans and positioning statements, but when you are writing your UVP for your homepage, remember that this is the first thing a new client will see. How will you make their world easier?
What Gets Your UVP Noticed
Your UVP shouldn’t just be prominently displayed on your homepage, though that’s important too. The UVP you develop for your brand is like your new company mantra: Everything can, and should, revolve around your UVP. It should appear in all your marketing campaigns, so future customers associate your business with the value only you can provide.
So what does this mean? In addition to being front and center on your homepage, maybe your UVP might look great under your company logo as the header on every webpage. Just make sure it’s brief and doesn’t clutter the screen.
But what’s the best way to show off your UVP on your homepage? Hubspot suggests the following format to display your UVP on your homepage and best capture your visitors’ attention:
- Headline: Describes the end benefit for the customer
- Subheadline: A more detailed explanation of what you offer, and who you offer it to
- 3 Bullet Points: This one is optional, but gives you a place to list all the benefits and features of your company.
- A Visual Element: You can associate your UVP with an image for more impact
A well-crafted UVP can make new clients feel connected to your company; like you understand them and can help them as no other business can. What better way to welcome new visitors to your homepage than by showing them how you can make their daily life easier?
And if your UVP is also an honest, authentic representation of who you are and what your company does for others, it can help you generate business with clients who know who you are, and know what you do best.
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