Talk to any physical products packaging expert and they will tell you they love the challenge of fitting a marketing message on a box which is sometimes less than 10 square inches.

What sets the good packaging guys apart?  You’d think it was design skills and communication skills.   Everything I’ve seen through working with a large number of companies tells me the top guys win the game before they start writing or designing anything.     I’m talking about TARGETING.

The top guys will tell you the only way to do packaging right is to target specific customer segments with your design and messaging.  Powerful packaging and marketing content is concise and focused and to the point.

So why is unlimited space on your website a curse?

We all have a lot to say about our products or services and all that space lets us be verbose and unfocused.   But the fact is a tiny box on one page of your website might be all the TIME you get from a key part of your website visitors.

So my point is: don’t get fooled by all that space on your website.   Define who you’re targeting and, in the fewest words possible, put across only the information that your target segments need.

Sure, creating new pages and extending pages is easy, but neither of those steps increases the amount of time a visitor gives you to get your value proposition (for them) across.   So think like you’ve got only a small cracker box to get your message across and you’ll find your visitors rewarding you with greater conversions.

People are now holding themselves accountable for what they purchase.    And even more importantly, companies are holding their employees responsible for what they purchase.   The standard is the same — whats the real value of the purchase item?

Most companies we’ve come across in our web strategy practice have incorporated benefit selling into their business strategy.   The problem is that not all benefits are important to all buyers.    And these days people are looking as hard for reasons not to buy as reasons to buy things.

So what’s the trick?  It comes in three parts:

1) Recognizing that benefits have to be presented from the visitor’s angle.   Avoid spending time on things you think are cool about your product.  Focus on what visitors will find is valuable about your offering.

2) Customer Segmenting:  Always an important strategy — now its critical.   Consider the ways that your customers can be divided into sub groups.   But remember, its not about their industry or demographic, its about identifying groups with common pains with respect to your product.   The goals is to be able to create customized messaging that excludes things that are not contributor to the perception of value for each segment.

3) ROI not Convenience: Focus on tangible and important value, not nice-to-haves.   Companies and people alike are working with fewer dollars and higher standards for spending.   Products or services which make their lives easier are no longer on the list for many buyers.    Ensure that your benefits are tied to meaningful and longer term ROI (value) for the buyer.

In the current economy, valuable products with strong benefits will still do well.   Companies which sell them will just have to work that much more precisely to communicate the value to each of their customer segments.

This subject is first big “a-ha” (wide-eyed) moment we have with most of our clients.  Your website isn’t about your company or its products.   Its about your potential customers and their needs.

So what does this all mean?

When companies start to build (or rebuild) their website, they usually draw a site plan map which has the company’s name at the centre.    Big mistake — erase it and put a descriptive title for your key customer segment in the middle.  Then start brainstorming on all the information / content they might need to decide to contact you or buy your product online.

We do this everyday at AftertheNet and it transforms the websites of our clients into client centric lead generation machines.

The funny thing about this paradigm shift is that it isn’t just about content.   That mindset shift makes everything easier in building a new web presence.    Many more ideas and a greater degree of focus come from putting a firm image of your target customers at the centre of yourwebsite planning.

Try it out and tell us what you find.   Of course, we can help since we do this everyday in a variety of industries.