StoryBrand Website Examples

StoryBrand Website Examples

The Consultant and the IT Company

What do StoryBrand websites look like?

and even more importantly...

Do StoryBrand websites really work?

Chances are you are here because you are doing a bit of research and want to know if the StoryBrand website template is the format that's best for your business.

You’ve probably read StoryBrand reviews and the extraordinary claims--many businesses are seeing double, triple, and even quadruple revenue growth! While I hope this ends up being your businesses’ story, I’d probably run from someone making too-good-to-be-true claims like that.

But before you run off, take a second to look at what StoryBrand is trying to sell: Clarity

The minimum outcome of a business or organization that applies the StoryBrand principles to their website includes:

1. Their website and brand message will be easy to understand.
2. Their website will be simple and easy for their customers to interact with.
3. Their website will be built to convert. Following the StoryBrand framework websites are designed to get customers to respond and engage.  
4. Their website will be way different from their competitors. (Most websites are full of noise!) 😫 

The importance of differentiating from the competition can’t be overstated. When finished with your StoryBrand website and then looking at everyone else’s website, you will glow with pride, knowing your website was built with intention and purpose. Every single element will make sense and every piece of clutter and noise will be removed.

I’m excited for this journey you are about to go on!  

Today we are going to look at two businesses: Margie Bastolla Facilitations and Dominion Tech Computer Services. 

Margie Bastolla Facilitations is run by Margie Bastolla. She works with huge organizations helping their teams of auditors issue clear and impactful audit reports. Margie has a heart for helping auditors’ work become more meaningful by writing reports that actually connect with stakeholders promoting positive change. Big Big Story created the StoryBrand message and designed and developed the website for auditreportwriting.com.   

Dominion Tech Computer Services is an information and technology company that helps businesses get acceleration by their IT, instead of frustration. Their StoryBrand message was brought to life by SwitchStance Marketing. SwitchStance wrote all their content and wire-framed their website. Echo Clarity also does design work and a whole lot more. 

So let’s look at their websites and see StoryBrand principles come to life!  

“Above the fold”

“Above the fold” is what is seen when a page is loaded before someone starts to scroll. “Above the fold” is the most important part of a website because this is where a browser decides to stay, start clicking around on your site, or start scrolling -- or they decide to leave. You better capture their attention fast! Studies show you have 5 - 8 seconds to grab their attention.

Both these websites do great with “Above the fold”.  

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The Navigation Bar has few options.  

What you will end up seeing with good StoryBranded websites is there are very few options in the navigation bar. Many businesses fill this up with an insane amount of clickable links. This goes against the main thing StoryBrand is about: Clarity.

When a navigation bar is full of options, the customer gets super confused about what they are supposed to do. To do business with these guys, am I supposed to click on “learn more,” “contact,” “about,” “services,” “blog,” “testimonials,” “biography,” “stories,” or “fun cat videos”?

Go to almost any company website and you will see the navigation bar is cluttered with options. A good StoryBrand website will only have the most important options in the navigation bar and no more. If a link is not super important, place it in the footer of your website.  

Dominion Tech has a bit more complexity to the number of pages on their website, however they did the work to organize these pages into a few categories, so when a customer hops on their website they aren’t overwhelmed by lots and lots of options. 

When a website’s navigation bar is super cluttered,  the user ends up getting confused about how simple it should be to do business with you! And that really should be the goal of your website. Make your website easier to navigate and maneuver than your competition and you might start seeing those 2x and 3x returns we talked about earlier.

When they are confused there is a high chance they won’t click on the right option (the one that makes you more money or gets them to your real message).

I’d encourage you to look critically at every item in your navigation bar and evaluate how important that link is to move your customer to action. If they can find that info easily somewhere else, get rid of it!

Margie Bastolla and Dominion Tech do a wonderful job with their nav bars.

The website headers and subheaders communicate simply and clearly

I love the headers and subheaders for both of these websites! A good header and subheader should quickly communicate:

1. What problems the organization solves - If you can’t identify the problem your customer is facing it’s going to be hard to convince them to buy from you or connect with you.

and

2. What the organization does to solve the problem - If you can’t communicate quickly how you solve the customer’s problem, they will disengage because they won’t be able to see how you can help them.  

I don’t have to spend too much time figuring out that Margie Bastolla Facilitations helps my team of auditors write better audit reports. But even more than that, Margie Bastolla makes it so my audit reports actually make a difference. 

And Dominion Tech solves my IT problems. But even more than that, Dominion Tech makes it so my IT problems aren’t a distraction from me running my business. 

Your website header does the heavy lifting for the effectiveness of your website. You get this wrong, getting your potential clients to engage in the rest of your website could be difficult.  

Many headers on websites shoot to be clever and end up sacrificing clear. It’s awesome to have both clever and clear, but if you have to pick one, go for clear!

Next, what these StoryBranded websites do great at...

The call to action is clear.

What you will notice about a good StoryBrand website is a clear call to action button, such as: “Schedule a Call” for Margie Bastolla and “Call Us” for Dominion Tech. 

With both of these calls to action you know exactly what’s going to happen when you click on those buttons. A clear call to action needs to have a strong action verb. “Schedule” and “Call” are super clear to the customer the action that is expected of them.

Visually, the primary call to action button on your website should be a color in your brand color that clearly stands out. Make this button big and bright and obvious.

Many websites will use “View our work” or “Learn More” as the primary call to action along with the ever popular “Get Started” and “Contact.” None of these are bad buttons to have on your website. They are just bad calls to action. By themselves they have an element of uncertainty. The customer doesn’t know what’s behind the click.

A good primary call to action should communicate clearly what’s happening. When you click “schedule” you know you will be pulling out your calendar. When you click “call” you know you will be calling. When you click “buy now” you know you will be making a purchase. 

But when I click “Learn More” I’m not totally sure what I’m going to learn. Or with “View our work” I have no idea what I’m about to see. “Get started” can be super scary! What am I starting? And with “Contact” I have no idea what will happen to that email I send. All of these have an element of uncertainty.

Good StoryBranded websites will have one clear call to action all over their website letting the customer know, “There is one successful outcome while you are on this website. You will not be confused one bit what you should be doing to begin business with us!”

It’s crazy how many websites I’ve looked at require me to click 3 or 4 pages deep before I find some sort of contact button halfway down the page. These companies often seem super great and I’m sure have some stellar people working for them. I just wish they wouldn’t make it so difficult to work with them!    

They show great images of success. 

Lastly both these websites display pictures of happy people. When building your website you want to pick images that display an aspirational identity for your potential clients. 

There is actual science behind why smiles sell. Far too often low performing websites show images of their building, their own people, or even their product. When they need to be thinking about how they can show images of their potential customers lives in a better state because they chose to do business with that company. 

As you can see, a lot happens “above the fold.” This is where 90% of the hard work happens when trying to create high converting websites.

Three resources to help with your StoryBrand website:

1. As you know there is a lot to creating a website that works for you and not against you. It all begins with a BrandScript to lay out our core message. Read about how we've approached creating a BrandScript for some of our clients.
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2. Next, take a look at these two before and after StoryBrand website examples: FemXAdvisor and Whitehouse Management Group.
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3. Last schedule a free 10 Minute Teardown to get a review of how you can up your website game.

Before you leave... do StoryBrand websites really work?

A week after launching Margie Bastolla’s website she came back with this report: “I’ve just been invited to speak at a roundtable of chief audit executives! I referred them to my new StoryBranded website, developed by Big Big Story, and believe that’s what landed me the speaking job!” 

Margie’s business has been growing ever since! 

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Looking to dive deeper? Check out these articles: 

StoryBrand Website Example For Financial Advisors (Before & After)

‍3 Message that Must Go On Your Website

Two Things that Kill Your Website Conversion Rate 

StoryBrand Website Examples

StoryBrand Website Example (FemXAdvisor)

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BigBigStory helps businesses grow with a clear marketing strategy combined with building a killer website. If you are looking to boost your marketing efforts contact us today. 

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