In today’s blog—I’m gonna break down what you can learn about website design & marketing from The Chronicles of Narnia.
You’ll learn:
- Why your website needs to be clear & easy to navigate 🌂
- When & when not to use jargon in your website copy ❄️
- How unnecessary info can make your website confusing 📚
- Why you shouldn’t take Turkish delight from The White Witch 🍮
(Never watched Narnia before or need a refresh? Click here, here & here for the summaries.)
(PSA for this newsletter, I’ll be focusing on the Disney Narnia trilogy & not the BBC versions because I haven’t seen them 😊)
Let’s start with the marketing & launch for The Chronicles of Narnia.
Based on the book series The Chronicles of Narnia written by C.S. Lewis—The Lion, The Witch & the Wardrobe (the first movie in the unintentional trilogy) premiered in December 2005—followed by Prince Caspian in May 2008 & Voyage of the Dawn Treader in December 2010.
C.S. Lewis, who wrote The Chronicles of Narnia, didn’t think a movie could do the books justice. But judging by the fact that the first movie is the 55th highest-grossing movie ever made, his predictions turned out to be wrong. Especially when you consider that some of the movies Narnia went against were Star Wars & Harry Potter at the box office.
And it’s just like how you can get in your head too much when it comes to creating content or packaging offers—when really you should be listening to what your clients are asking for.
The Lion, The Witch & The Wardrobe premiered in December, which makes sense for a movie with a mostly winter story. The movie was promoted heavily on the Disney Channel with behind-the-scenes footage of getting the Narnia characters, like Mr. Tumnus, into makeup and wardrobe for filming.
Now unlike the beginning of The Lion, The Witch & the Wardrobe, when Lucy first enters Narnia…
Your website visitors aren’t going to be curious when browsing your pages—instead, they’re gonna want the info to be easy to find & understand.
Right after first arriving in Narnia Lucy meets Mr. Tumnus, a faun—during their conversation, Lucy says that she walked into Narnia from the wardrobe in the spare room. But Mr. Tumnus mishears her & thinks she said that she came from the city of Spare Oom in the land of War Drobe.
And it made me think of how…
Sometimes your ideal clients need to hear things more than once before it’ll click in their minds what you’re *actually* saying.
While it’s up for debate whether someone needs to hear something three or seven times—it’s pretty safe to say it’s more than once.
That’s why things like call to actions need to be repeated on your website, instead of just once.
It also reminded me of how…
You need to use words that your ideal clients will easily understand on your website.
Now on one hand this means you need to avoid jargon—but on the other hand, this might mean you need to include jargon
As an example let’s say you’re a Pinterest manager who mentors other Pinterest managers. Your ideal client in this case is probably gonna know what a click-thru rate, idea pin, Merchant Program, etc. is if you mention those things.
BUT if you’re a Pinterest manager who works with business owners—mentioning those terms might confuse your audience depending on how much knowledge they have of the Pinterest platform.
^^^ Just like how Lucy doesn’t know what Narnia is when she first arrives.
While The Lion, The Witch & the Wardrobe stayed fairly true to the book, fast forward to Prince Caspian & Voyage of the Dawn Treader—and the creative choices caused both movies to be less like the books they’re based on.
For Prince Caspian they chose to make it darker & more action-packed, adding additional battle scenes to the story. And while Voyage of the Dawn kept closer to the tone & magical feel of the first movie, the plot veered away from the book with changes to the storyline.
So even though Prince Caspian in particular is a great movie & it was promoted with lots of merch (i.e. action figures, Monopoly game, etc.)—it wasn’t what the fans wanted so it underperformed at the box office because of it.
^^^ This is another reminder of why you should listen to what your audience wants.
Here are some notable quotes & plot points from the scripts of Narnia that can help you with your website design & marketing.
Quote: The White Witch: “It’s a lovely place, my house. I’m sure you’d like it. There are whole rooms full of Turkish delight.”
Business Lesson: Much like Edmund being tempted with Turkish Delight, some gurus are gonna try to tempt sell you things that won’t *actually* help you grow your business. Like that Pinterest course I’ve mentioned before that was worthless.
^^^ The best way to avoid purchasing something like this is to ask business friends what they think about the offer you want to buy is worth or not. Because even though testimonials are great you know someone’s only gonna show the best reviews on their website AND you have no idea how old those testimonials are—aka. the product might have been great in 2019 but it’s not applicable now.
Quote: Susan Pevensie: “Why are they all staring at us?” Lucy Pevensie: “Maybe they think you look funny.”
Business Lesson: “59% of people prefer browsing “beautiful & well-designed” websites than basic ones”—aka. if you think people think your website looks ugly—they probably do.
^^^ And you’ll see that reflected in your website analytics—affecting your conversion & bounce rates specifically.
Quote: Edmund Pevensie: “There once was a boy called Eustace, who read books full of facts that were useless.”
Business Lesson: Unlike Eustace Clarence Scrubb, MOST PEOPLE who visit your website aren’t going to stick around to read more info than what’s going to help them fix the problem you help solve. <<< This is particularly important to remember on your about page—which should be more about how you can help someone & less about you.
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