Use images to tell your story…

Last week I posted about dominating a niche, and showed this same candy bar picture. Not only do I like how Salazon focuses on a niche, but I love how they use images, not words, to draw you in.

When I stood in front of a slew of choices of chocolate bars, this one caught my attention. Everything else looked roughly the same to me, and I’m just like you. I have too much noise coming at me and I have to constantly make little decisions. All. The. Time. Each decision is relatively insignificant – this bar or that one – but they add up to the point of wearing you out. There’s just so many choices now for anything you do, or anything you buy, or anywhere you go (psychologist Barry Schwartz calls this the “Paradox of Choice” in this cool TED talk).

When somebody makes it easy for me to make a choice, I appreciate it. These folks made it easy because they were bold enough to tell their story through an image. They know only a limited audience would like the picture, but they also know the type of people who will ultimately be their long term, loyal customers are the type of people who will see that picture and immediately make the choice to by the bar.

But even more importantly, they allowed me to not have to read. To not have to think. To just see and buy. And for that I am grateful, and it’s something we do our best to accomplish at Schedulefly as well. It’s why our web site uses lots of pictures and images and logos. When the type of person who will ultimately become our long term, loyal customer (a restaurant owner/GM/manager who fosters a fun culture and likes to keep things simple) decides to start looking for a restaurant staff scheduling solution, we want to be the Salazon of the options they see. They’ll see lots of web sites offering a solution for them, and they’ll all list lots of features and use lots of words. It will be hard to distinguish between them. They’ll have to think. They’ll get frustrated.

But then they will see our site. And they’ll know right away…

Wil