“Australia’s No. 1 Online Sex Toy Store…”

“Australia’s #1 Adult Retailer”

“#1 Sex Shop In AU”

These are just three headline examples I’ve seen online Australian sex toy shops use. All similar and making the same claim. This headline annoys the hell out of me and causes my bullshit flag to start flapping. 

Let’s look at this realistically

Not everyone can be number one. One company. Uno shop. Someone, will have the data and analytics backing up the claim that they are, indeed, Australia’s number one sex shop.

Everyone else should stop putting SEO first. That’s worse. Why are you writing for the bots? You should write for your number one priority: your very human customer. Stop being so weak. Unimaginative. Lazy. And cliché.

Unless you can get specific and state what you’re ranking number one for, in my opinion it’s a wishy-washy USP that’s unlikely to earn much trust.

Think about your customer’s shopping habits

Buying an intimate item is a very personal experience for consumers. Many will do their research. They’ll spend time reading reviews, thinking about price, and maybe even contact retailers with questions. By the time they’ve done all this they’ll have visited multiple websites within the same industry.

Seeing site after site leading with the number one sex shop claim is:

And likely to raise suspicion. Surely, someone’s fibbing about their top spot status.

Better alternatives to the ‘number one sex shop’ claim

Homepage headlines are your company’s chance to shine. It’s where you make your first impression. While everyone else trots out the same lazy message, finding an easy-to substantiate differentiator means you’re more likely to stay front of mind.

Here’s a few ideas you can use, but the key finding the interesting quality you offer, that your competitors aren’t (or at least aren’t currently shouting about).

Cheap delivery and free returns

Cheap or free delivery and returns is an eye-catching ecommerce offer. Especially if someone’s sitting on the fence about buying and postage costs push the whole transaction over their budget. Although the mark-up on adult industry products isn’t huge, if you can make an offer on this service it could help you stand out.

Speaking of returns…

If you’re a ‘stack ’em high’ kind of outfit, can you say something about the number of products you stock? Like, ‘Hundreds of vibrators’, ‘More masturbators than you can shake a [whatever] at’, ‘Lots of lube for all types of sex’, ‘New products added weekly.’ That kinda thing.

Avoid superlatives you can’t substantiate, like ‘The largest collection of…’ or ‘More vibes than any other…’ That kind of messaging lands you back in the BS boat. If your range is more selective, then that’s your differentiator. You’ve got a ‘handpicked’ or ‘bespoke’ collection.

Customer service

This is an obvious one for bricks and mortar stores to achieve, but for online sex shops are you doing everything you can to provide excellent customer service and support?

Is having an online sales assistant from 9-5 an option? You could then shout about this.

How about providing customer support on social media? Or using articles and email newsletters? Do this well and there’s no reason why you couldn’t build up your USP over time so it’s, “We’ve answered over 1,000 sex toy questions — why wouldn’t you trust buying from us?”

Great customer service can then lead to positive reviews. Monitoring the number of three, four, or five-star reviews should be possible on your commerce platform. If not, make an account for your online store using a trusted review site. There’s no reason why you can’t then say “Happy reviews from over [insert your magic number] customers.”

Final thought on being ‘Australia’s favourite’

Saying “Australia’s favourite” is only marginally better because realistically it’s possible to have many favourites. But still, I believe there are better options.

How’s your homepage headline?

Getting your homepage headline right can be hard. Tinkering with it until you communicate your non-cliché USP with the best combination of words is part of the fun.

Struggling to identify your unique selling point? I can help nut-out what makes you different and how we can package that for your homepage headline. Start the ball rolling. Send me a quick message.