In today’s blog—I’m gonna break down what you can learn about website design & marketing from National Treasure.
You’ll learn:
- Why December can be the perfect or worst time to sell an offer 🎄
- The reason why making your about page all about you doesn’t work 🔍
- That lack of clarity on your website will = less conversions 💻
- How to steal the Declaration of Independence 🇺🇲
(Never watched National Treasure before or need a refresh? Click here, here & here for the summaries.)
Let’s start with the marketing & launch for National Treasure.
National Treasure premiered in November 2004—following a sequel, National Treasure 2: Book of Secrets in December 2007 & a short-lived series, National Treasure: Edge of History in December 2022.
Now usually I point out how it’s weird to release a Christmas or winter-themed movie at the end of the year—BUT sometimes going against statistics CAN work if you do it right.
The important thing is to remember when you doing promos for your business, whether it’s a big launch with all the bells & whistles or a one-off soft sell email…
You need to pay attention to when YOUR audience is more likely to buy.
For example—if you sell anything handmade, like a watercolor painting or crocheted plushies, you’re probably more likely to sell something around Christmas time because your audience is looking for gifts to give.
On the flip side if you’re selling a course about marketing with LinkedIn, December’s probably not going to be the month your audience is going to care about marketing their business—because they’re in holiday mode.
While the beginning of the first movie opens kind of slow for an adventure movie—it works because the story is kind of mystery-ish (I mean, the whole plot is basically one big riddle), BUT this is the exact opposite of what you should do on your website.
You’re going to lose potential ideal clients if your website isn’t clear.
Here are a few ways quick you can make your website more clear:
- Keep your header (top of your website) links to a minimum, 5-7 max.
- Use logical names for your website pages, i.e Blog > Journal.
- Add white space around all text, images, etc. so that it’s easier to skim your website.
- And I’m pretty sure you’re not doing this but, don’t add a bunch of code to make the cursor on you site a unique shape. Please & thank you!
^^^ Basically if your website requires a multi-artifact treasure map to find something—you’re doing it wrong.
The intro scene to the movie also acts as a mini family history lesson for the main character Ben Gates—which is exactly what you want to avoid on your website about page, because…
Your about page should be all about how you can help your ideal clients–not all about you.
^^^ Which is why (even though they’re popular on some of the big-name websites) you shouldn’t have a timeline going all the way back to 1832 over all your achievements for the last 15 years. Because in MOST cases no one is going to care.
What your ideal client is gonna care about instead is—how you can solve their problem, whether your values align, the testimonials past clients have given you, etc.
Here are some notable quotes & plot points from the scripts of National Treasure that can help you with your website design & marketing.
Quote: Riley Poole: “Did none of you read my book? The eagle clutching a scroll? Why did nobody read my book-”
Business Lesson: Unlike books (which most people read all of the words) only about 20% of your website copy is going to be read. Now that doesn’t mean that it’s not important—it just means you need to arrange your website copy in a way that’s easy to skim. So that someone’s more likely to read the important info in your headlines & still understand your message without having to read the paragraphs.
Quote: Ben Gates: “I’m gonna steal The Declaration of Independence.” & “I’m gonna kidnap the President of the United States.”
Business Lesson: I couldn’t come up with analogy for this one—but I also couldn’t not include these quotes because it’s the heart of the movie *shrug* please enjoy this GIF of Nic Cage anyway lol
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