Archive for December, 2004
Map Scent Trails That Lead to Better Conversion
I’ve been pretty giddy about research uncovering the patterns users follow while searching on the Internet. One of the more popular information-foraging theories that’s currently being proven confirms what we’ve known for quite sometime.
As early as 2001, a Xerox Palo Alto Research study indicated humans track information in a similar fashion to the way animals follow a scent. According to an article on the study:
People… engage in what [Dr. Ed Chi] calls “hub-and-spoke” surfing: They begin at the center, and they follow a trail based on its information scent…. If the scent is sufficiently strong, the surfer will continue to go on that trail. But if the trail is weak, they go back to the hub. “People repeat this process until they’re satisfied,” Chi said.
Knowing how people hunt and sniff around for info is certainly useful, but that usefulness is limited until you determine more about what a person is sniffing for.
Continue reading my column at CLickZ…
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Written by:Bryan Eisenberg
Online Conversion Rates and Beyond
I know it’s been a while, they keep Persuasion Architects particularly busy this time a year.
As important as conversion rates are to companies, there are many important considerations and optimizations that can be made AFTER conversion.
If the visitor experience after conversion is important to you, you need to know about Mal Watlington. His speciality is helping companies optimize their internal sales processes and remove the barriers that prevent their employees from achieving success. He is a frequent public speaker at national industry conferences, and has run workshops on organizational performance improvement in the US, Europe and Australia.
He’s our kinda people, that’s why we recently recommended his services to one of our B2B clients who needed help dealing with all the incoming lead flow from the increase they say after Persuasion Architecture.
Check out Mal’s Blog Online Conversion and Beyond.
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Written by:Persuasion Architects
Fuzzy Customer Focus
We just finished tallying the results for our “2004 Online Retail Study for Customer Focused Excellence.” The study attempts to benchmark retailer’s Web sites using the least subjective criteria possible, such as payment option availability, shipping time estimates, length and ease of checkout processes, product descriptions, image views, and so on. The study doesn’t measure the entire user experience and purposely ignores some of e-tail sites’ more subjective attributes, such as price points, ease of locating products, and brand strength.
Mystery shoppers were instructed to identify a product for purchase. Then, they searched and scored each site for 45 data points in 13 categories. Each data point was given a weighted score, for a total of 100 points. The more data points a site scored, the higher its customer-focused excellence rating.
I have to confess some shock at this year’s findings. With the exception of Amazon.com, there were no repeat winners among the top 12 retailers. Consumer electronics seller Crutchfield.com is perched atop the 2004 list with an 80 percent customer-focused excellence score. Last year’s top performer, Lands’ End, didn’t even rank in the top 12 this year; its score dipped from 81 percent in 2003 to 65 percent.
Continue reading my column at ClickZ…
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Written by:Bryan Eisenberg
Let IT Solve IT Problems, Not Marketing Problems
There’s a problem plaguing far too many companies in our technology-driven age. Simply put, the IT department is affecting critical decisions in departments such as marketing/sales.
We’ve seen it time and again. CEOs, marketing VPs, sales managers, and other powerful, intelligent people turn into quivering Jell-O heads around the tech-savvy and oh-so-knowledgeable IT department.
What does this have to do with marketing and return on investment (ROI) on the Internet?
More than you might imagine.
Playing off the technological ineptitude of department heads in sales or marketing, IT departments make decisions that directly influence customer behavior on a site. But knowing codes, protocols, software, and all those other high-tech thingamabobs doesn’t qualify the IT department to create persuasive sites.
Don’t place blame on the IT department, though; the responsibility lies solely with the marketing department. And the solution is simple: Get the best out of your IT department by educating yourself about technical processes.
Continue reading my column at ClickZ…
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Written by:Bryan Eisenberg
When You Create Personas, Stay Clear of Stereotypes
Don’t get caught in the “stereotype trap” when you create personas for your Web site’s persuasive architecture
You sell aromatherapy products. Are all your visitors nature-loving women who are vegetarians, do yoga, mediate, promote world peace and wear Birkenstocks?
You sell football packages for a satellite service. Are all your visitors blue collar, couch-potato-type, middle-aged guys who drink beer, eat potato chips, have medium to minimal IQ and brag about the size of their TVs?
Careful … you may be falling into the stereotype trap. It’s not hard to do; stereotypes are embedded in our culture. And in some ways, they have their value. But when you do business online, you don’t undertake transactions with stereotypes any more than you undertake transactions with a single generic composite of your audience.
Read the rest of this article.
Read the entire newsletter: Volume 102
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Written by:The Grok
