Marketing on Internet Road 

A USP ("Unique Selling Proposition") is a reason why a customer would do business with you.  Most sales people know that if they do not get the USP across to the customer, the customer probably won’t buy.  Once they do manage to have the customer understand what makes them different, the path to the purchase is by far easier. If sales people know that it is so important in order to get the sale, then why would you not have your USP on your website?

When dealing with "Conversion Architecture" and aiming to design the website in the best way to convert the visitors into customers, the USP is one of the main cornerstones that should be considered and outlined properly.

On a website the USP is even more important as it is harder to differentiate between competitors. 
When a customer or a prospect visits your website, he/she is deciding whether or not to do business with you.  It is therefore important to display your unique selling proposition so that it is visible upon entering your website.
 
Your USP will allow your customers to really understand why they should be doing business with you and not with your competition. Furthermore, if you are engaged in Search Engine Marketing strategies such as Pay-per-Click, you are probably stating a USP on your ads (if not - you should). Clearly stating the USP on your landing page and your site in general will help your prospects to "follow the scent" of the ad, get more assurance on your offering and better tendency to do business with you.

There are three critical factors to a USP:

• The unique selling proposition is true and you actually can deliver on what you promise.
• The unique selling proposition separates you from your competitors as they do not offer this feature, or do not do it as well as you do.
• The unique selling proposition is valued by the customer as something they want or need.  

You should probably have more then one unique selling proposition but try to limit the number that you display on the home page of your website to the most important ones.  You can present the others as sort of supporting arguments to the main USP as well as in different pages of the site.

To sum up, a USP is what make you different from your competitors. Because it’s so important in sales and therefore also a websites success, make sure to prominently present it correctly on your website.

WSI E-Services conducted a while ago a workshop on Conversion Architecture, where the importance of the USP was outlined as one on the main elements. You can find the details and the workshop's presentation on our page for Conversion Architecture Workshop.