#1 Website Audit That Changes Everything
You’ve put together your mood board, picked your favorite colors, your favorite photos, your favorite personal story, and you’ve released the most beautiful website you’ve ever laid eyes on.
You go to bed with butterflies in your stomach, and eagerly wake up the next morning expecting a boatload of new inquiries. You log onto your email and…crickets.
So why aren’t you bringing in the leads? It seems like you checked all the boxes. Beautiful design? Check. Promoting your story? Check. Selling your products or services? Check.
In the era of personal branding and being recognized as the face of your business, we often fall into the trap that our website is made for us. It’s ours, right? A labor of love that is the conduit for all our hopes and dreams to succeed.
But the truth is that your website is not for you. It’s for your readers.
If you want to have a website that gets results – like shares, signups and sales – then you have to write copy that is all about the customer journey.
The #1 Website Audit That Changes Everything
To understand your website from a consumer’s perspective, there’s one main element that helps to ensure your website is written for them, and not for you.
To perform this audit, click into the home page of your site and start reading.
Now I want you to tally how many times you use the word “I”.
Phew. Was it a high number?
Now I want you to tally how many times you use the word “you”.
Is it more or less? Who is the actual focus of your site? Are you talking all about you? Or are you talking all about your reader?
Personal branding is booming, and I still agree that people buy people. But what a consumer really wants is for your copy to identify with their plight. To deeply connect with them. And if it doesn’t? Your conversions will suffer.
In all the content of your site, especially the About page, you need to keep it all about the reader and then how you can help that reader. Your ideal client should always be the focus.
How To Fix it
Before you start deleting every mention of “I” from your site, there is a time and place for this pronoun. 
Your website is definitely a place to talk about yourself, your experience, and your credentials. But it should only be in the context of how all that can help your readers.
Evaluate each section of copy to see what the focus is on. Here are three ways that you can address your ideal client on your website right now:
1. Talk to that person about why they should bother reading your site
Does the beginning of your website emotionally connect with your readers? Does it capture their attention, and immediately let them identify with you?
For example, with a recent website, here is the first section of copy:
“When you struggle with weight and nutrition, it’s not just the food choices that affect your life. It’s the judgment from others on a body you don’t understand. It’s the emotional drainage from dealing with friends or family members who just tell you to stop eating so much, or to go on a diet.”
With this copy, we are immediately identifying a struggle that your reader deals with and describing it in a way that connects to them emotionally. If this is their story, they are definitely going to keep scrolling down the page.
2. Talk about the problems you solve
Now that you have enticed your audience to keep reading, let’s dig a little deeper into the problems they are facing.
We can do this like this:
“As a food coach who has been through it all, I understand the challenges you face on a daily basis. Maybe you switch from diet to diet without any results, or maybe those cravings all stem from an emotional center that needs to be restored.”
3. Talk about how you can help
Now that you have spoken to the needs and challenges of your readers, you can step toward introducing your solution.
“I believe that life is not all about a diet. It is not about trying to fit into sample size clothing, or denying yourself every last carb and gram of sugar.
It’s about finding the individual lifestyle that gives you energy, happiness and leaves you feeling great. I know how hard it can be to lose weight or stick to a nutrition plan.
I’ve been there too, and that’s why I’m here to share my story and help you establish a healthy relationship with food.”
You can follow all these steps, and write a website that powerfully and emotionally connects with your readers (which is the first step down the path to meaningful conversions!). Or, you can have me do all this for you. Don’t let one more client bounce away from your page without feeling engaged, and let’s start crafting compelling copy!