Book digest – “knock knock” by Seth Godin

about

This post is my take away from this book – knock knock (it is available online) by Seth Godin

I found this book from Value Saas Basecamp guide: An Indian founder’s guide to achieve first $10k MRR.

Book digest

What a website does?

Big picture #1: purpose

• Turns a stranger into a friend and a friend into a customer
• Talks in a tone of voice that persuades people to believe the story that you are telling

Big picture #2: what can happen

After someone sees it, it can cause one of these 4 things to happen:

• clicks and goes somewhere you want that person to go
• Clicks and gives you permission to follow up by email or phone
• Clicks and buys something
• Tells a friend either by clicking on or by blogging or phoning or talking

A web page is a step in a process.

A webpage is not a place. A web page is a step in a process. They are supposed to choose a direction and take you to the next step.

Web page are better off being good at one thing.

Eg: Buying traffic:

$1 cost per click

People who land up 20% of then clicks on next step- say free trial- cost $5 per user at this step

After trial the conversion turns out to be – 20% conversion – $100 for a customer.

In the case, pages clearly acts as steps in your conversion funnel.

First big rule:

View your site as a service of steps that go from stranger clicking on an ad, all the way to a satisfied customer telling ten friends. Figure out which step is least efficient, and focus all your energy on making it more efficient. Measure everything.

Another great principle

Like it or not, every page on your site has a ton of voice. That tone must match the expectation of the visitors or they will misunderstand who you are (or worse, flee). Choose a tone that matches or exceeds the tone of your sucessful competitions

The challenging thing here, is that one person’s appropriate vernacular is another person’s trite over-design. There is n o way to predict what the visitor’s worldview is going to be … no way to know what a given person is going to get it.

Principle- you have to choose

You have to choose – you are never going to please everyone, so you should  not ever try. If you do, you will fail at pleasing anyone. Instead, imaging who your very best audience is and go straight for the heart of that group – and ignore everyone else.

Principle – there is nothing just as a home page.

When you send someone to your website, dont send them to your home page. You can have as many entrances to your site as you want – landing pages.

People can land on your landing pages via google search or via ads or via people sharing links.

We are been trained by the engineers to see a website as a pyramid, with a home page at the top and an ever-increasing range of choices as the user digs deeper.

Instead I’d like you to see a website as a series of processes, as different from each other as each customer is different.

Other random points:

Choice is a bad thing – If you give people too many choices,

Contact is a good thing – Give out your contact. With your website you want the conversation to happen.

This is the biggest challenge that most sites face. It takes guts to say,- here is one thing I want you to do. It is much easier to just list every choice. Alas, every choice is no choice.