Every great business needs a slick website to match. A high-converting site that demonstrates your credibility and compels someone to buy or get in touch can make or break your business. Investing in copywriters, web designers and developers is the route most entrepreneurs take, but what if there was a way to get a lot of the value in a fraction of the time and outlay?
Within an hour you could configure a drag and drop website builder, refresh your brand with an AI graphic design tool and start running Google, Twitter or Facebook ads. But what about the words on the page? How are you going to share the information that customers need in the most effective way?
With a solid understanding of your business and some clever prompting, you can have every element of an impressive homepage live and good to go, ready to test with an audience and assess the results.
Here’s how you assemble the components of an effective homepage, using ChatGPT to create a value proposition, appeal to your ideal customer, speak to their biggest challenges, paint the big picture and add a compelling call to action.
How to prompt ChatGPT to write your website copy
1. Create your value proposition
Everything above the fold of your website, before someone has to scroll down, is prime real estate for buyers. Don’t waste it with confusing messaging and multiple options of where to click. This space has one goal: grab attention. Let someone know they are in the right place and intrigue them to find out more. Make them want to scroll down to follow their curiosity.
To get this effect, you need a value proposition. Here’s the prompt to punch into ChatGPT. “My company works with [target audience] to achieve [the 3 main results you create for customers]. After working with us they feel [the change you create for people]. We are unique because we [ways in which your business is unique]. Create 10 options for value propositions from this information. Each one should speak directly to a member of our target audience and be really compelling, so they want to find out more.”
Here’s an example prompt: “My company works with marketing managers at B2B companies to achieve social media success with a trusted agency partner. After working with us they feel relaxed, assured, and like their marketing is in great hands. We are unique because we hire experts to run our client’s accounts and we speak in their language. Can you create 10 options for value propositions from this information. Each one should speak directly to a member of our target audience and be really compelling, so they want to find out more.
Once you have your options, pick your top 3 and test them out. Share them on social media and see which one resonates the best. You could even run ads to A/B test. Add the winner to your website’s banner to grab attention in the right way, and save the others for further down the page.
2. Appeal to your ideal customer
Too many businesses are vague about who their ideal customer really is. They don’t want to turn work down, so they appeal to everyone. They water down their message and don’t say no. What results is a fluffy offering that tries to be all things to all people, not a clear and strong brand that amasses loyal fans. To build a solid customer base, your customers have to feel like you are the only option for them. They need to see themselves benefitting from your product and service, because you understand their hopes and dreams.
Prompt ChatGPT in the following way. “My company’s customers are [describe your dream customer in terms of demographics, location, interests, life stages and anything else relevant.] They want to achieve [describe what your dream customer is looking to achieve in engaging your services]. Can you give me 6 bullet points that succinctly describe this person, in a way that they would relate to. These six bullet points will sit under the header, ‘Our customers are…’ and must be engaging to people who fit the description provided.”
Here’s an example prompt. My company’s customers are creators and coaches who work with clients each month but want to earn more without being so busy. They want to share their work further and make more impact. They don’t want to be rushing around without time for themselves. They want to generate passive income and attract higher value clients. Can you give me 6 bullet points that succinctly describe this person, in a way that they would relate to. These six bullet points will sit under the header, ‘Our customers are…’ and must be engaging to people who fit the description provided.
Read ChatGPT’s suggestions and check they fit the bill. For edits, keep prompting, asking for the information with a different style, tone or voice according to your brand. When you have finalized the bullet points, add a homepage section with the title, “Who we work with” or “We work with people who…” and add them underneath, in whatever format suits your site, with ticks or similar as check marks.
3. Speak to their biggest challenges
It’s not enough to understand what your dream customers want to achieve. You have to understand their challenges. You have to empathize. You have to demonstrate you know how to alleviate their pains and worries with your product or service. Although you most likely do, you’re probably not communicating it well enough for them to get in touch. That’s where this prompt comes in.
After your value proposition and “who we work with” bullet points, ask ChatGPT to tell you about your target audience’s biggest challenges. “I have described my company’s customers in detail (in my last question). Now, can you explain their three biggest challenges in a way that speaks directly to them, as being things they want to stop experiencing. These three bullet points will go under a sentence that starts, ‘They want to…’.”
Assess the responses that ChatGPT gives and ask for them shorter, punchier, or in a different tone. Read the challenges out loud and think about whether they capture the essence of your target audience’s pains. Edit and regenerate responses as needed and once you’re happy, add this header and the accompanying words to your website homepage.
4. Paint the big picture
Here’s the fun part. You’ve grabbed your reader’s attention, they are fairly sure you work with people like them and they believe you understand their problems. Now is where you paint a picture of what life could look like if they started working with you. They are primed, so appeal to their visionary nature with this next section.
Here’s the prompt. “Now you know about my ideal customer, their biggest challenges and how my company helps them, can you give me a paragraph that starts, ‘Imagine if’ and describe how amazing their life could be with all their problems solved by working with us. Explain how they will feel and the changes they will experience. Speak directly to them in this paragraph.”
What follows will likely be a lengthy paragraph, so prompt ChatGPT further by specifying which parts you like, and ask for it to be edited down. Test this paragraph with a customer; does it accurately describe the effect you had on their life? You could also ask ChatGPT to, “Describe a landscape image that could accompany this paragraph, that would appeal to my target audience member and get them excited to work with my company. It should include the colours [explain your brand’s colour palette] and be in the style of [describe the style of your brand].” Regenerate the response until you’re happy. When you have this description, paste it into Midjourney to generate one or more images that can sit on your homepage.
5. Add a compelling call to action
With the output from ChatGPT so far, your website is set up for success and your ideal customer is hungry for the transformation. The final piece of the puzzle is a clear call to action and social proof. Your site visitors have to feel like other people have achieved this result and they have to be directed to take the next step. This part requires two prompts.
Prompt one, “Now I want my customer to click a button and get in touch. Can you give me 3 options, each fewer than 6 words, of the text that could go on that button? They will use that button to [book a call, make an enquiry, pay a deposit / delete as appropriate] and it has to be compelling and related to the transformation described above.” Once you have these options, add one call to action button in your homepage header, one under the biggest challenges section and one right at the bottom. You could also incorporate these calls to action into some ads to see which most successfully inspires action.
Finally, you need testimonials. The best testimonial comes from a real customer, is accompanied by their name, company name and headshot, and describes a specific and relatable challenge they overcame since working with you. Here’s the prompt for your LLM. “My ideal customer experiences these three main challenges: [paste the challenges from earlier in the chat.] Please can you write a paragraph testimonial for each challenge, from a customer who experienced that exact challenge and no longer experiences it since working with us.”
You will now have three testimonials that can be regenerated and edited with further prompts. Rather than add these testimonials to your site (which is not advised, since they were made up), think of people in your existing customer base who genuinely experienced the transformation described, then email them. Write the email with this prompt. “Can you write an email to my customer, [name], and ask them if I can have a testimonial from them for my homepage, to help more people in the same way. Include testimonial [1, 2 or 3] and ask if they would be happy to put their name to that paragraph or if they would like to make any changes. Say it would be very much appreciated.” When you have the message, email your customers, get their approval, and add the testimonials to your site.
Don’t leave your homepage to chance. Train ChatGPT to write your copy in 5 easy steps, made possible with these specific prompts. Make sure your company’s digital shopfront is perfectly formatted, incredibly appealing and ridiculously relatable to have more enquiries than you know what to do with.
Read the full article here
