You have most of the pages you need
If you're a product company, I know you have a homepage, a pricing page and even a contact page. But I bet there are some pages missing from your site. That's what I want to address right now. And to be honest, they're the most important pages after those three I just mentioned.
I just finished watching the March Madness Final Four games. I was wondering what I would write about. I was reading over my topics list and nothing was standing out to me. And then it happened.
I looked at one of the browser windows I had open. It was for a friend who was asking about email deliverability and what service to use for transactional emails. You likely knows the big names – SendGrid, Mailgun, Postmark, etc.
I went to go close it, and my mouse moved over the navigation. That's when it rolled over one of the menu items – Product – and I saw a set of pages in the menu. And suddenly I knew what I had to write about.
But before I started this post I went to look over my whole blog, because I have talked about this so much I couldn't believe I hadn't already written about it.
So without wasting any more of your time. What are the pages missing from your site?
I call them the VS pages
When I write VS, I mean versus. In other words, the pages missing from your site are direct comparison pages.
If you go look at Postmark, under Products, you'll see that they have comparison pages with all their direct competitors (or who they define as their competitors).
Take a look:
But they're not the only ones that do this.
One of my favorite examples is ConvertKit. They do it in their footer, but they list several of their competitors.
Take a look at some of theirs:
One of the strongest benefits of this approach is that you know customers are already asking for this information. Every time someone is considering you, they want to know how you compare to others. So you might as well be direct and specific about it.
But even more importantly, you get to decide the basis of the comparison. And you don't get that if you let some other blogger write their own comparisons (like I do whenever I compare any products).
How to build your Comparison page
The first thing I would tell you is that you're not just going to create a feature list and show what you do and what they don't do. That may be part of it, but if you jump to that, you've missed the most essential part.
First, you must not only position yourself but de-position your competition.
- 7-Up wasn't just another soda. They were the UN-Cola.
- Fiji Water wasn't just another bottled water. It was “untouched by man” – suggesting the others were manipulated and not pure.
Look at how Postmark highlights the comparison with SendGrid (potentially the most well-known of its competitors).
With SendGrid you'll need to pay extra for an upgraded plan with “prioritized support” for “premier” customers. At Postmark, we give everyone great support, and quickly too. Our average time to first response is under two hours. That's hours, not days. There's no extra charge for premium support.
From https://postmarkapp.com/compare/sendgrid-alternative
This is before they get into feature comparisons.
Second, you must highlight your target market and why your product is a better fit.
When ConvertKit positions themselves against their most well-known competitor, Mailchimp, they don't try to compete for the same customer. Instead they position themselves as the solution you choose after you exceed what Mailchimp can offer you.
Notice how they use a customer testimonial to pull this off wonderfully.
I outgrew MailChimp's features the minute I got serious about growing my email list. After switching to ConvertKit, I not only have the ability to deliver multiple lead magnets, but I can also follow up with those subscribers based on their interests, converting more of them into paying customers.
From https://convertkit.com/vs/mailchimp
The emphasis is my own. But you see it, right?
Then you get create that comparison grid.
I think this is often why these pages are missing from most product sites. Doing deep competitive analysis is work. And it requires that you keep doing it because once you publish the difference, your competitors could start working to improve things.
My product managers at Nexcess do a deep dive on features and pricing at least 4-6 times a year.
The last step? Invite people to switch.
You're not done building these missing pages if you haven't taken the last step, and that's to invite people to make the change. ConvertKit offers free migrations. Postmark has a migration guide.
But both of them, and others who create these versus pages, know that the call to action (CTA) is to make a switch. And that's the last part of the page.
There's no reason these pages should be missing from your site
Yes, these pages take some time. They're work to create. But other than your homepage, your pricing page, and your contact page, I'm not sure there are any other pages that will do more to help convert customers than these comparison pages.