If you’ve read the book, building a StoryBrand or been through the course in the Business Made Simple University, you’ve probably noticed that StoryBrand talks a lot about service-based companies, but they don’t talk a lot about E-commerce. So how do you apply StoryBrand to your e-commerce business? In this video, I’m going to tell you what I have learned over my years of being a StoryBrand certified guide and how you can use StoryBrand on your e-commerce website today. My name is Ryan Toth I’m the CEO of ClearBrand. I’m a StoryBrand certified guide, less jump in.
Many of the examples that StoryBrand uses in their book and in their course are first service-based websites, things like coaches, they do use software as a service occasionally, but also big companies where you’re scheduling a call or something, rather than buying a product directly from them. While those are easy examples to use, it does not mean that StoryBrand can’t be used for e-commerce. In fact, my team has worked with e-commerce brands and I’m going to reveal exactly how to apply StoryBrand to your e-commerce website right now. In the e-commerce world you have options. You’re not just selling one product on your homepage. If you are, it’s easy, just do what StoryBrand says, but if you have multiple products, if you sell supplements or you sell skincare products or something else where there’s a range of products on your website and people have options, suddenly StoryBrand kind of gets a little bit confusing there. So what do you do?
First, we’re going to separate your pages into types. You have a homepage, you have category pages, you have product pages. You’re going to approach each type of page, differently.
Product pages, you can basically just apply the StoryBrand framework up top. You are going to have your product image, and that’s where you’re going to have your hero section, the title of your product, then a short description. It’s going to be focused mostly on what it is, how it makes your customer’s lives better. Just like on any other website, you’re going to have the results bar beneath that and then you can go through the typical StoryBrand framework. On your category pages you’ve got options. One option is simply to list the products in that category. Maybe test that out, see how it works, and then compare it to the second option, which is to build a category page like that product page. And what I mean by that is you follow the StoryBrand framework. Then there are two places that you have the option of putting your products. On your category page you’re going to have a typical hero section. You’re going to talk about what this category does and how it makes your life better. Right beneath that you can have your products right there and you can have featured products, you could list all of them if there aren’t too many, um, if there are a lot, what we want to do is reduce the options.
People don’t make decisions when they have a lot of options. Go check out Apple’s website for an example of this, their homepage only has three to five options typically. They offer more things than that, but on their Homepage, they’re featuring the ones that they want you to look at right now by reducing the options. They’re actually increasing conversions. And you can do the same thing on your category page. Now, after you have your products there, you’re going to then below that, start with the problem and then go through the rest of the StoryBrand framework. If you’d like, you can put the products down at the bottom where the call to action would normally be that bottom section on the site. You can have more products, different products, or you can have that feature section. Again.
Here’s an example of this. This is an immune complex from a company called Bulletproof. These folks have incredible marketing. If you’re ever looking for an e-commerce. So we have the title here. Then we have, this is how it makes your life better, powerful immune support, then they have this description that tells you exactly what it is, what it does and how it makes your life better, price, clear, call to action. Now, if we scroll down benefits,
This is what I call the results bar. They are talking about what this does for you. Some of the benefits, some of these differentiators, science backed soy and free, immune support, 1000 milligrams of vitamin C. Now we have some other options here. Then we get into about, this is breaking down the benefits, even more broad based immune support. You’re all in one immunity powerhouse, targeted defense when you need it. This is an incredible example of a product page that works. Now here’s an example of a great category page. This is the honest company. They make excellent products and you can see here we are on the bath and body page. So they tell you the page that you’re on, which is great. And then we’re getting benefits all over the place, clean, conscious, safe, clean, and effective, every single time. Then we have images with option, Shop all bath and body, a video that walks through some of this. Now, if you were going to have a problem section, which these folks don’t, which is okay, especially in e-commerce, but if you’re going to have one, you could put it here or you could put it around here and you would say something like maybe if it was here. If they put the problem section here, they would talk about the toxins that other companies use in their bath and body products and why they’re not in this one.
Now we have made for everyone. Um, we have some of the products in here and some more, this is like success stuff. We’re getting all of these images, these success images that are also pushing you into those specific products. This is more success. Um, you see how it is for babies and things like that. So they’re really leveraging the images to display success here and the text to give you some of those benefits as well. This is a great category page.
Now for your homepage, you have a couple options. One option is to simply use your homepage, to get people off your homepage, get them into a category or product page. So apple is an example of this. Let me actally pull that up. So go back to this screen. Now Apple’s a great example of this. They only have featured products on their homepage. If they have an event, they will feature that here. But this is an example of a homepage that is designed to get you off the homepage. That is the only purpose here. Get off the homepage, click into one of these products.
Here’s an example of a, another great e-commerce website. I wrote this one and StoryBrand featured it in their marketing made simple book. And online course, this text here help your pet thrive, minimal ingredient, pet food with all the nutrients they need without the fillers. Now I typically do not like carousels here, and this is why, you’re in the middle of reading something and it goes away. So they’re featuring a product here. That’s what this is. You can order that product now, or they have shop dog, shop cats. In this case, they’re getting you into a category page, help your dog thrive. Then we have, you can see here an example of their products on this category page, in the middle of this StoryBrand framework to go back to their homepage. And we have, now we’re getting into the problem is your pet experiencing, picky, eating digestive issues, food allergies, and then notice this. They know that they have a lot of options. So they want to help you make a good decision. Again, reducing options is always a great way to go so this is a buyer’s guide. Here we are still in the problem, then we get to why coho wet food is the healthy choice. Now something that I would put here and we originally had here on the website is a button at this point, somebody might want to check in and if they check in and they want to buy now, we don’t want them to have to search for the button. So luckily the header here is sticky so they can click on when the dog’s cash or wellness at any time, I would also on your website suggest having that shop dog, shop cat button here. One more time. Then we get down here and we’ve got success and that’s look at this, the thrive blog, all about success for your pet and for you. So this is another excellent e-commerce website.
One of my favorite things about that last client, the Koha pet food is that they 10 X their investment. That is the kind of growth. And that I want you to see there. You have it quick recap, starting from the purchase point, which is typically on the product page we’re going to StoryBrand that page. If you have category pages, I highly recommend StoryraBnding. Those category pages, focus on success. People want to see how their lives are going to be different. And you saw on the honest company that they use their images for that and their texts reinforced it. Then for your homepage, you have two options. One is a homepage designed to get people off of the homepage, into a product or category page. The other one actually has the StoryBrand framework on it like that Koha pet page. If you were looking for an easy way to upgrade your website, I have two incredible options for you. First, my team can build your website for you. Click the link below this video to set up a call with one of our marketing consultants, to talk about how we can help you grow your business with a better website. The other option, if you want to do your website yourself is we’ve created the clear brand website template. This is a fully prebuilt website with five pages. You get to pick your design. It’s already mobile friendly, it’s optimized for speed. And it comes with a free online course to walk you through how to go from nothing to launching, how to create your website, how to build an edit every single page, how to change out the content, the fonts, the colors, the images, then how to optimize and launch your website so that you make more money. So go upgrade your website, grow your company, and I’ll see you in the next video.
