Throughout the ecommerce coaching I've been recieving through the Rich Jerk Organization, I've been told that a fresh way of doing something as simple as a product description can set you apart enough from your competitors that you might find yourself developing a healthy niche presence and then using this beach head for further launch points to second, third, fourth, fifth, ad infinitum, different streams of income. I was warned not to just cut and paste product descriptions out of suppliers catalogs and recycle it on my site. I admit that in an interest to get a great variety of products online, I have done just this on some of the pages. Now my task is to go back and add the storyline to the product page. I had thought about how I might make the product page something worth visiting and reading and I took that instruction literally. I told a story. With characters, using the product being sold in some dangerous, action-packed setting, using the product the way Bond uses Q gadgets to save his button. An interesting thing started happening the more I wrote more "vignettes" in the life and world of Julian Ian Bond, private intelligence agent. An "OVERstoryline" began to emerge. A common theme was appearing. Julian Bond was on a mission to find a teenage girl that had disappeared in Aruba while partying on spring break. The chase leads to a shadowy, local branch of a global and ancient cult that is running the Scottish Highlands from their lodge on the shores of Loch Ness.This cult knows the real identity of Nessie. They worship this "goddess of the abyss" and make sacrifices to her. Living human sacrifices. The missing girl has been sold for slaughter... The act of getting creative with my product pages has now compelled me to tackle a parallel project: writing the first Julian Bond Thriller called "Rousing Leviathan." I've created a companion website dedicated to announcing the coming publication of this first novel -- my first independent novel since I wrote four novels for Gold Eagle Books in 98/99. Visit some of my pages and you'll encounter the tactic at work. Visit the Julian Bond site and read the first chapter of the upcoming novel. But when you need a compelling, interesting product page: tell a story. Feature the product for sale on your page in the story, where the product actually plays a supporting role in the storyline of the scene. Get creative and be ready to suddenly explore other business possibilities as the result of this exercise. You might end up writing a novel as well. |
