Your USP: Unique Selling Position

As explained before, what separates a standard website from an e-commerce website is that the USP is deliberately designed during the creation of the site. The USP takes into effect the three Cs and immediately tells the following to a shopper at your website:

• Portrays in consumers' minds a compelling image of what your business will do for them that others cannot

• Gives consumers a distinct reason to buy from your company

• Gives your company a unique advantage over your competition

Advantage, reason, and image are your goals in creating a USP. Your USP creates the framework and lays the foundation for your compelling offer. Here's another reason to have a good USP: It keeps your business pointed in the right direction by helping identify your target audience for marketing. An effective and distinctive USP is specific and measurable, and conveys a customer benefit.

In a way, every organization's website is "selling" something: a product or service, information, membership for profit or nonprofit, or perhaps a political or social position.

So, put your mouse down, take out a pad and pencil, and answer the following questions as simply as you can. You're not creating a corporate mission statement here, so keep your responses simple:

• Why is your business special?

• Why would someone buy from me instead of my competition?

• What can my business provide a consumer that no one else can?

• What's the benefit to the consumer that I can deliver on?

Keep your answers specific and measurable, and show a benefit to the buyer. If you're confused by what you offer your customers, visitors will be, too. FedEx and Dominoes Pizza are great examples: "When it absolutely, positively has to be there overnight" and "Hot, fresh pizza delivered in 30 minutes or less, guaranteedor it's free!"

The Four Ps and Your USP

You need to consider some additional aspects when fleshing out a USP. They're called the four Ps:

• Pricing If you're going to compete on price, don't just say you're the lowest: Say why. For instance, perhaps you can sell at such a low price because of your ability to source product from the closeout industry, and you buy products at pennies on the dollar. Play up this uniqueness in your USP.

• Positioning The Marines are looking for just a few good mennot all men, just a few. This is a great positioning statement because it makes the "business" of the Marines unique and differentiates them among the armed forces. Look for a similar positioning with your business. Perhaps your focus is gender based. Perhaps it's age based. Sell to a unique segment of the population, not to all of it.

• Packaging Consider repackaging a common product that others sell. For instance, consider the iMac. It's just a PC, but look at the packaging. Not only did it sell, but it sold at a premium price! It also had two positioning statements with it: Get on the Internet in 20 minutes! and Think Different!

• Promotion Look at the promotional possibilities of your product or service. Can you tie your product or service with a season or holiday? If so, you can benefit from the promotional activities and mind-share of consumers that already exist at that time of year.

Pulling It All Together

A marketable USP involves properly integrating the three Cs and four Ps, and communicating to customers what you will do for them. All the elements we've discussed, if done well, support each other and deliver a whole greater than the sum of the parts.

The content pages speak to your prospective customers' needs and desires, providing grist for the conversational mill for your site community. There's a bonus to this constantly refreshed content: Search engines find this type of content desirable when listing your website in search results. Content is one of the main criteria that search-engine spiders look for when ranking your site. Content generated especially from the community tends to have fresh text rich in keywords. The community interaction that you provide visitors to your site can help shoppers by allowing them to ask questions, discuss problems, and raise issues that can help you understand the needs of your target audience. This then breeds a kind of loyalty that is beneficial to the success of your business.

If promotion is one of the four Ps that you will use to identify your USP, the content pages of your site should reflect this. Similarly, the market niche you pick should enable shoppers to discuss with other shoppers the pluses and minuses of the product or service that fills that niche.

Above all else, remember that your USP is not about you or your business: It's about your customer. One final thought: Whatever you promise in your USP, be sure you deliver on it. Don't make the mistake of adopting a USP that you can't fulfill.

In the next chapter, we discuss how to storyboard your e-commerce website.