Most valuable writing lesson ever.

“Nobody wants to read your shit.

Let me repeat that. Nobody–not even your dog or your mother–has the slightest interest in your commercial for Rice Krispies or Delco batteries or Preparation H. Nor does anybody care about your one-act play, your Facebook page or your new sesame chicken joint at Canal and Tchopotoulis.

It isn’t that people are mean or cruel. They’re just busy.

Nobody wants to read your shit.

There’s a phenomenon in advertising called Client’s Disease. Every client is in love with his own product. The mistake he makes is believing that, because he loves it, everyone else will too.

They won’t. The market doesn’t know what you’re selling and doesn’t care. Your potential customers are so busy dealing with the rest of their lives, they haven’t got a spare second to give to your product/work of art/business, no matter how worthy or how much you love it.”

Every online copywriter – no scratch that – every writer, marketer, advertiser, business owner, and entrepreneur should go read this post in its entirety.

This very powerfully states what Future Now has long taught: prospective customers are task oriented – they have lives and they are not on your Website because they are interested in you, or your company, or how you’d like to “position” yourselves within the industry.  Your online visitors have a problem and they are really only interested in whether or not you have a viable solution.

Once you understand that, you can move away from we-we copy in order to focus on providing visitors with:

• Ongoing visual and text assurances that they’ve come to the right place to find their solution – i.e., provide good scent.

• Copy that speaks to them about what matters to them.  Establish empathy with WHY they need your solution.  Figure out what has driven them to need your product or service, and make sure you address those felt emotional needs as well as ALL of their lingering, sales-killing questions and doubts.

• Pathways/links that allow each visitor to choose their own path, to either take the express train to grabbing what they need and converting, or to drill down to richer content on those elements where they need to assure themselves that you are, in fact, selling a real solution to their specific problem.

Nobody wants to read your copy.  But if they’ve voluntarily come to your Website in search of a solution, chances are good they will scan, skim, and yes, even read copy that addresses their task at hand.

The difficult part is often the task of separating out “your sh**” from the copy that’s actually needed to address visitors’ concerns.  Hiring outsiders often helps with this.  Personas are also extraordinarily helpful.  And so are the guidelines outlined in Steven Pressfield’s post – go read them!

And then go kick some online marketing a**

P.S.  If the name Steven Pressfield seems familiar, you may have read his (highly recommended) non-fiction book, The War of Art.  Or possibly his extremely popular historical fiction (also recommended).

[Editors Note:  The author of this article is now blogging at jeffsextonwrites.com]

What I love most about this list is the way it segregates into sub-components or elaborations on Future Now’s  three questions that are the basis of Persuasion Architecture:

1) Who is coming to the site?

2) What is it they are trying to accomplish?

3) What action do we want them to take, and how do we ensure this matches up with what they are trying to accomplish?  In other words, what do they need to know/feel/believe in order to confidently take that action?

Separating out Seth’s List

Here’s how I see Seth’s list falling into those categories:

1) Who is coming to the site?

• Who are we trying to please? If it’s the boss, what does she want? Is impressing a certain kind of person important? Which kind?
• Who are we trying to reach? Is it everyone? Our customers? A certain kind of prospect?
• What are the sites that this group has demonstrated they enjoy interacting with?
• Do people find the site via word of mouth? Are they looking to answer a specific question?
• Will the site need to be universally accessible? Do issues of disability or language or browser come into it?

2) What is it they are trying to accomplish?

• “If it’s the boss [that we are trying to please], what does she want?”
• “Are they looking to answer a specific question?
• Does showing up in the search engines matter? If so, for what terms? At what cost? Will we be willing to compromise any of the things above in order to achieve this goal?

3) What action do we want them to take…what do they need to know/feel/believe in order to confidently take that action?

• What is the goal of the site?
• In other words, when it’s working great, what specific outcomes will occur?
• Are we trying to close sales?
• Are we telling a story?
• Are we earning permission to follow up?
• Are we hoping that people will watch or learn?
• Do we need people to spread the word using various social media tools?
• Are we building a tribe of people who will use the site to connect with each other?
• Is there ongoing news and updates that need to be presented to people?
• Is the site part of a larger suite of places online where people can find out about us, or is this our one sign post?
• Is that information high in bandwidth or just little bits of data?
• Do we want people to call us?
• How many times a month would we like people to come by? For how long?

Operational [and larger] Questions

Yet, while Seth’s persuasive questions are covered within these three categories, there’s a pile of operational questions left over:

• How many people on your team have to be involved? At what level?
• Who needs to update this site? How often?
• How often can we afford to overhaul this site?
• How much money do we have to spend? How much time?

In other words, what will this cost us? A question that opens the door for much larger debate of, do we really need to incur this cost in the first place?  What makes us think we need a redesign?

And that gets us to the question that our own Jeffrey Eisenberg tackled within his free report 7 Big Questions of Highly Effective Online Marketing. For starters he suggests that people interested in redoing their site should ask the big questions first:

• Do we need a redesign, or can we work with what we have?
• Exactly how would a redesigned site better serve our visitors?
• If the best-converting sites are often boring in their design, are we willing to design our site with that in mind?  [in other words, do we have the intellectual integrity to separate out an notional "want" for a prettier/slicker website from a real business need]
• Will we incorporate a scientific testing methodology into our redesign so we can optimize user interactions based on predictions of how our different audience segments will engage with the site? [in other words, are we really serious about redesigning to improve performance?  Serious enough to bake accountability into the very fabric of the redesigned site?]

And if you’re not sure if you need a redesign, perhaps it’s best to take a cold hard look at your current Website in order to:

• Isolate what isn’t working and what is
• Determine whether you need to re-conceive your site because too many elements bog down the original design

On Target as a Precursor and Follow-up to a Website Redo

While Future Now has been involved in hundreds of successful Website redesigns and renovations, Bryan and Jeffrey Eisenberg clearly saw that there were far more sites out there in need of optimization and improvement than full scale redesigns.

And far more Website owners who couldn’t answer the majority of the questions posed in Seth’s post and Jeffrey’s report.

That’s how OnTarget was born.

OnTarget allows Website owners to gain insight into what is and isn’t working with their current site, and provides them with prioritized recommendations to optimize the site, fix the leaks, etc. Think of it as an incremental redesign based on measurable results.

With OnTarget it is only when major persuasive and usability obstacles can’t be surmounted without major retooling, re-skinning, etc. that a site redesign is contemplated.  And in those cases, the business owners are able to answer those critical questions posed by Seth and Jeffrey.

This often means walking away from big redesign projects.  But it always means providing the client with the wisest and best use of his online resources.

[Editors Note:  The author of this article is now blogging at jeffsextonwrites.com]

My friend and brilliant copywriter, Chris Maddock, frequently exhorts his writing students to “Just say the thing.”  This advice is based upon Chris’s extensive experience in what’s working right now for radio ads – and just as importantly,  what’s no longer working for any type of copywriting.

Google and the Internet have trained us to ruthlessly sort for relevance, and we now demand messaging formatted for, and adapted to, rapid sorting.  If visitors can’t get on your website, perform a 7-second scan and immediately see exactly:

• what it is you do,
• what your offering, and
• why they should care,

those visitors will leave.   Basically, you’ve gotta “just say the thing”  (after which of course you still need to go on to close the loopholes, substantiate your claims, provide rich content, etc).  And these web preferences have spilled out onto our demands for traditional media as well.

Great creative enhances the clarity and power of your message…

…But often times, the finished product won’t necessarily “feel” creative.  Non-copywriters will tell you it’s too plain.  No one will be impressed.  Even visitors might not be impressed- yet they’ll convert!

Here’s a perfect example of that:

So first a caveat: this Kodak landing page isn’t perfect.  As an incentive for already established Kodak Gallery members, it’s a strong offer.  But Kodak has left themselves an out/loophole by reserving the right to end the free shipping beta program.  And this kills its ability to draw new members.

Frankly, I don’t want to upload all my photos to their gallery based on the promise of free shipping, only to then have the free shipping yanked away from me.  How much better would it be if they had a free shipping Opt-In program for new and existing members, a program you automatically join with any $12 or higher purchase from their gallery, and a guarantee from Kodak to continue to honor free shipping privileges for all existing members of the program even if they end the program.

Nevertheless, the thing to concentrate on here is how simply they just laid out the deal right in the headline.  The copy just says “the thing” and it’s straight-up about their intentions.  Also, notice how stunningly clear the comparison chart is.  Not fancy, just brilliantly clear in conveying shipping savings available through Kodak Gallery.

And even though no one will remark on what brilliant writing Kodak’s copywriter cranked out, or on how freaking cool the graphic designers chart is, both the copy and the chart are remarkably effective.

The trick is to not let the “plain” style fool you.  Just test it against copy with more snap, crackle and pop.  Test it against a prettier graphic, or against whatever “feels” right to you.  Over time, when clarity consistently wins out in your A/B tests, what “feels” right to you will change – and you’ll start writing much more effective copy.

[Editors Note:  The author of this article is now blogging at jeffsextonwrites.com]

Unanswered questions keep visitors from buying/converting — that’s not theory; it’s a fact!

So why, oh why, would you knowingly allow your persuasive copy to ignore a frequently asked question?  Why would you possibly be content with hiding the answers to your prospective customers’ questions in an FAQ page?  Are you trying to weed out all but the most determined of customers?

While I don’t have confirmed experimental numbers to back this up (yet), common sense says that for every customer willing to search for an answer on an FAQ page, there are dozens more who simply give up on the purchase or look to your competitors for the answer.

So instead of erecting a sign saying, “Beware of persuasive pothole, please drive around this hole by visiting our FAQ page,” and hoping your visitors are motivated and alert enough to navigate such an alternate route, why not simply fix the persuasive gaps in your copy.  Here’s how to do that:

If you currently have a FAQ Page, Here’s What to Do/Check

1) Determine where visitors are most likely to access your FAQ page. Look at your analytics to see where visitors are within their site visit/shopping process when they attempt to look at your FAQ. Do they do this early on in the process or later,  as a last resort?

2) Get a sense of context by going to those identified FAQ access pages.  You’re not just interested in the questions themselves, but in the context in which they are asked, so look at the page in terms of why visitors would be on that page.  Note that a persona-based or scenario-based analysis helps with this.

3) Go to your FAQ page and think about the emotional concerns behind the questions. Here are a few examples taken from actual FAQ pages, along with the emotional concerns that probably underlie those questions:

• Will we have access to the instructor to ask questions during the online ____ course? Translation: “how interactive is this course – how much better is it than just buying a book or a CD  DIY-type course?“  Going one step deeper: “I’m afraid I might not get the support I need to actually improve my skill level — how can you reassure me that your course will help me actually kick ass, rather than being an unused resource that makes me depressed about my own personal suck-factor?”
• How long will a [durable home good] last? Translation: “you’re asking a premium price and presenting yourself as the last ____, I’ll ever need – so what kind of proof do you have/historically, exactly how long will one of these suckers hold out?”
• How do I know that my ____ is working correctly? Translation 1: “You’ve sold me on the theoretical benefits of your fancy schmancy _____, but I still feel like I might be getting suckered, so how can I confirm for myself that your device is really doing what you say before my 30-day refund clock runs out.“  Translation 2: “I know this is crucial to making sure my ____ doesn’t die an early death, so how can I reassure myself that I’m not breaking my very expensive and brand-new _____?”
• What are your return/exchange/warranty policies? Translation: “Hey, idiot, you were too stupid to put any kind of point of action assurance near your buy/add to cart buttons and I’m not about to give you my money without knowing this stuff.”
• What differentiates you from other _____? Translation: “Someone told me I should check you out, but I’m not impressed so far – either you’re oblivious as to how hard you’re making it for me to figure out what you do and why I should do business with you, or you just plain suck; so which is it?”
• What kind of care/cleaning/maintenance does ____ require? Translation: How will this fit into my life?  Will I have to baby this thing?  Can it handle the normal knocks and dings of daily life without falling apart?  In 6 months or 2 years, will I look back on this purchase as a waste?

4) If you have live chat or a published phone number, comb through those records or ask your customer service reps for the questions people ask and where they are on the site when they launch the chat service or call in.  Once you have the list of questions gleened from Live Chat and Phone trasncripts/experience, repeat the process used in #3 by examining the emotions and concerns behind the question. How do those results differ from your FAQ?

5) Address underlying concerns or questions within your regular Website copy. You don’t necessarily have to do it with copy, as pictures, testimonials, videos, user reviews and other site elements can also address these concerns, but make sure the questions get answered.

Are there any excuses for having a FAQ?

Well….yeah.  Sometimes when you really need a “knowledge base” library, but you don’t want to call it that, or when you want to make the hard core geeks in your audience feel better about asking their un-frequently asked questions, a FAQ page can work.  Just make sure you ALWAYS provide links back to sales pages from within your FAQ answers.  Once you’ve answered the visitor’s question, move them back onto a persuasive path.

Oh, and sometimes there are some Q&A’s you might actually want to hide, like in this Microsoft Internet Explorer 8 FAQ – notice the first question ; )

But seriously, realize that an FAQ is basically a junk drawer; you’re shoving stuff there because you haven’t taken the time to find a proper home for it.  You realize this question may come up, but you haven’t figured out where it would come up – do the hard work to uncover the context and emotion behind the question and finding a better place for the answer within your copy becomes relatively easy.

[Editor’s note: The author of this post is now blogging at jeffsextonwrites.com

“Brilliant post. We get this all the time, when designing websites for our clients……..But our clients will often use the line “but my customer understands this terminology, these acronyms, my customer is from a particular niche and they all use this terminology”…….It can be hard to argue this point, the client knows their customer better than us…… Yes usability tests would be a good way to prove to a client this problem, however it can be very difficult to find users who fits the persona.”

Thanks for the comment, Hamish, and I’ve run into that situation a few times myself.  So here are a few strategies for dealing with that which have worked well for me:

In working with the client

• Properly frame the discussion: “So what you are telling me is that if prospective clients come to your site and are not as familiar with these acronyms and terms as your “ideal candidate,” your OK with turning those prospects away and losing the sale?” Ultimately, it’s their site, if they want to only speak to “insiders” and the hard core, then that’s a legitimate business decision, just frame the question in business terms so they can acknowledge the bottom-line costs to such a strategy.

• If the client relents when you ask him the “are you willing to lose the sale” question, suggest that you create and link to early-stage and newbie-friendly material. There is certainly no harm in taking an industry term and giving a fresh nuts-and-bolts analysis of it.  At best you’ll get a chance to demonstrate your expertise; at the least, you’ll get some keyword rich and internally linked content.

• Perform a Marketing Copy Autopsy on a piece of their current collateral.  Pull out all the self-applied labels and adjectives to show them how the jargon is really just covering up a lack of substantive content.  That should open up the client’s eyes, and if the autopsy reveals copy with substance, that’s a good sign that maybe the client is correct in their customer-knowledge assessment.

• Do what Seth Godin suggested in the first place: get a flip cam and interview some past or current client customers.  Don’t just test to see if they know the terms, but ask about the implications involved.   Knowing what a graphics card is isn’t the same thing as knowing why it can be critically important to have a powerful one if you’re looking to play hard core video games.

In crafting the clients Web copy

• Spell out acronyms at least once per main landing page, so if, say, COTS was a heavily used acronym, the site would say Commercial Off-the-shelf Technologies, once in a while, as sort of a reminder or lifeline for the reader.

• Insist that no more than 1-2 terms or acronyms appear in any sentence. The problem is often not just that jargon or acronyms are used, but that they are triple and quadruple stacked on top of each other in complex-compound sentences.  That’s when you end up with something like this: “Drawing on our long-term experience as systems integators, solid relationships with our suppliers, and a commitment to the successful execution of the concept of COTS in mission-critical applications, our reputation — and our customer base — has grown.”  Whew!  Even rough familiarity with the industry terms isn’t enough to save most readers from having their brains “go splat” while reading those kind of sentences.  The more complex and technical the material, the more you need simple sentence structures.

• “Aerate” the text with videos, graphs, and photos that provide a sensory experience of the most important technical terms or acronyms.  Imagine a sidebar or box that shows a COTS case study, complete with before and after pictures of the off-the-shelf consumer item and its new military cousin along with a cost comparison showing the savings involved.  As another example, I suggested showing beam shots of the different power LEDs in my product page critique of BalckDiamond’s Headlamp.

An now for a dissenting opinion.

Legendary copywriter Bob Bly has a well known article titled, “Six Things I know for Sure About Marketing to Engineers.”  Point number five plainly states that:

“5. Engineers are not turned off by jargon—in fact, they like it. Consultants teaching business writing seminars tell us to avoid jargon because it interferes with clear communication.

This certainly is true when trying to communicate technical concepts to lay audiences such as the general public or top management. But jargon can actually enhance communication when appealing to engineers, computer specialists, and other technical audiences.

Why is jargon effective? Because it shows the reader that you speak his language. When you write direct response copy, you want the reader to get the impression you’re like him, don’t you? And doesn’t speaking his language accomplish that?

Actually, engineers are not unique in having their “secret language” for professional communication. People in all fields publicly denounce jargon but privately love it. For instance, who aside from direct marketers has any idea of what a “nixie” is? And why use that term, except to make our work seem special and important?”

As I said, if you are narrowing your focus to a special group of insiders – or at least want to appear that you’re doing that – then an unapologetic use of jargon can work great. But I’d still try to test working in a few of my bulleted strategies

And here’s a little desert video on advertising terms – fair warning, though, George Carlin’s language may not be workplace appropriate:

Click here to view the embedded video.

According to the nifty pie-chart to the right and the related study, because  print newspapers reach people who are actively looking for, or “checking,” ads, they are still a solid advertising medium.  How these people can conclude one thing from the other is utterly beyond me.

While newspapers may be a medium that still draws people  who are actively searching out ads, that hardly means newspapers are a solid advertising medium for most advertisers.

As Social Media Today rightly points out, the idea of “actively looking” basically implies the following scenario:

“To me it says, ‘I want a new job (or car etc), let’s check the ads.’ And sure, newspapers and online will come first when that’s the motivation.

I would simply add 3 things to that analysis:

1) Newspapers and Yellow Pages are inevitably being displaced by the internet. Local, lower-level job listings may remain a stronghold of local newspapers, but other than that, most prospects feel they’re better off starting with a Google search or a quick check of Craig’s List.

2) You might NOT want to attract the more eager scourers of the local paper.  Especially when advertising a job position.  Seriously, would you rather find an applicant who, while still holding down his present job, thought your position perfectly described his strengths, qualifications, personality, and so on, or would you rather get the guy who’s between jobs, is desperately seeking paid work, and who saw your position in the paper?  Might I suggest that radio, blogging, or social networking sites might be a better option for attracting the first type of applicant over the second?

3) Old school, intrusive media muscle still puts the smack-down on newspapers - especially when the radio or TV campaign is followed up by a strong web presence.   Ad-dollar-for-ad-dollar tests show radio providing a 14:1 increase in driving response over newspapers.

Why Radio + Internet kicks butt for regional and local businesses

If you hear a compelling radio message on something for which you’re not yet in the market, but you continue to hear that same offer/UVP/message from the same brand or company, what do you think will happen when you DO come in the market for that product or service?

Do you think you’ll:

• a) search Google using general category terms?

Or

• b) Type in the offer, campaign name, or brand name from those compelling and memorable radio ads?

I’d guess b, and my experience promoting website via radio strongly suggests the same.  If you do a solid job advertise your offer and your company on radio, you will influence what they search on when they’re finally in the market.

So what happens to your competition when people search on your brand name instead of a category term?

With that scenario, your competitors are pretty much screwed right from the starting block! And that’s a traffic driving system most of us can get behind ; )

P.S.  If you’re interested in learning more about this technique, the great Chris Maddock and I will be teaching Writing for Radio and the Internet in Austin on the 25th and 26th.

Sorry about the headline – the 80s flashbacks are getting to me.  Still, I really do “play stupid” as a Website optimizer and online copywriter.  Or at least I play ignorant.

Why?  Because all those terms and concepts you think everyone understands about your business and what you’re selling – well, you’re wrong about them!  Wrong about both the terms themselves and your potential audience.  If you think I’m mistaken, go back and watch the video again.

Or keep reading to see some real website examples. Either way, let me reassure you that way more of your website visitors just fundamentally don’t “get it” than you’d ever suspect.  Either those visitors:

1. have no idea what the industry standard terms you are using mean,
2. don’t really understand the finer distinctions the terms are supposed to represent, or
3. fail to draw the all-important conclusions and emotional implications that you may be basing your persuasive messaging upon.

Any one of those might be enough to kill your chances for a conversion.

And while there are some good reasons to only mention or allude to the “features” in order to hone in on the benefits, there’s also very few excuses* not to provide links, mouse-overs, and early stage content that can guide the perplexed to a better understanding of your industry and your messaging.

How an “idiot” could improve the Black Diamond Home Page

For those of you who haven’t heard of this company before, Black Diamond Equipment makes cutting edge climbing and skiing equipment.  And before we even look at one of their product pages, I suggest you just go to their website and get a feel for how user-friendly (or not) the overall design seems.  Seriously, go there right now.  I’ll wait.

Ok, now ask yourself this:

• Doesn’t it feel as if the company ONLY produces carabiners?  If you didn’t know the company produced headlamps, skis, tents, etc, would you ever think to look for those?
• Did it take you a while to figure out that the pictured carabiners could be clicked on and rotated towards you?  Or was that just intuitively obvious?  What do you think the designers felt about the “obviousness” of this design.
• If you weren’t interested in carabiners and never clicked on the “see all carabiners” link, would you ever have gotten to the pages dealing with other equipment?
• What do you think is keeping them from simply using a persistent top navigation scheme?
• Do you think “playing an idiot” for a day would help these guys out?

Idiot-Proofing Product Pages 101

Now let’s compare a product page on the Black Diamond site with one for the same product taken from backcountry.com.  We’ll start with a product page for a LED headlamp taken from the Black Diamond site:

What the heck is a “TriplePower LED”?

• Is it 3-times more powerful than a 5mm Nichia LED?
• Is it a 3-watt LED?
• Is it an LED with 3 power settings?

By using this terminology, Black Diamond has achieved the worst of both worlds, not only is the description not enough for a non-light geek to really understand, but neither is it technical enough for a light geek to feel confident in what he is buying.

How about underlining these terms and providing a mouse-over that would show comparisons of the LEDS, their real technical specs, and usage shots, so that an average user could get a sense of the light output and a techie could see the real specs?

And what about the “NRG Rechargable battery”?

• Is it a Lithium-Ion battery?
• Is it Metal Hydride?
• How much does it cost?
• Does it improve or hurt the battery life of the light?
• Can I buy the light already bundled with the battery and it’s charger, etc?

Finally, there’s the “single position switch.”  I’m guessing it’s some sort of rubberized button-looking thing and that you just have to keep clicking it to rotate through all 7 of the modes until you get the one you want.  But wouldn’t it be nice to know for sure:

• That a single position switch = clicky switch, like on a Mag-Light
• What exactly those 7 lighting modes are, and why I’d need that many modes
• Where the button is located?

From the pictures it looks like the “single position switch” might be on the bottom of the light, but assuming that’s the case, wouldn’t it be better to link the term “single position switch” to a mousover of that picture along with an explanation of how the switch functions and what the 7 modes are?

As for backcountry.com’s product page for this same headlamp, the page is too long for me to snap an encompasing screenshot and place it here, but I suggest you go to that page and take a look at all of the content rich resources that are provided, including:

• customer photos of the product in-use,
• user reviews, Q&A’s, and
• some actual, non-bullet-pointed, real copy.

But since we’re focusing on the copy, I’ve cut and pasted it below.  Read it and see how many questions this copy answers that Black Diamond’s bullet points leave unclear:

“The Black Diamond Icon Headlamp uses two different types of LED bulbs to give you ultra-bright lighting when you need it and to save battery power when you don’t. The 3-watt center bulb has three settings for light up to 80 meters. Switch to the four SuperBright LED bulbs to get a 200-hour burn time when a lot of light isn’t necessary. This combination of long-distance lighting and long burn time makes the Black Diamond Icon Headlamp a stand-out choice for everything from backpacking to climbing to night skiing. In fact, it impressed Rock and Ice so much that they gave it their Best In Gear Award.

Bottom Line: The Black Diamond Icon Headlamp provides both bright lighting and long-lasting battery life for days on the trail, the rock, and the snow.”

Even if it’s not perfect, that copy is still much clearer, isn’t it?  And understand this: the majority of what isn’t covered in this copy is covered in the user reviews, Q&A’s, etc.  In fact, I’m convinced that the persuasive power of user reviews has as much to do with previous buyers unintentionally answering other customers’ questions within the reviews as it has to do with the increased credibility of user reviews.

Also, understand that this unexplained-term phenomenon isn’t exclusive to technical products, either; it happens in product descriptions for almost everything.  I could have just as easily used tents and asked what the hell a double-wall tent is and why it should matter to me, and so on.

Reverse “The Curse” with Idiot Exercises

While “The Curse of Knowledge” can be hard to overcome, here are a few** sure-fire techniques to get you started on your journey to idiot-optimized copy:

• Do usability testing.  Get someone outside your industry (go ahead and specify minimum industry knowledge in your user request) and watch them move through your site while recording their questions, thoughts, etc.
• Highlight every industry term, phrase, or concept on your site, write them down on a piece of paper, and start interviewing random people on the street about them, just like the guy did in the video.
• Willfully play the part of a 5 year old and ask repeated why questions regarding your industry terms and concepts.  It’s best to team up with a partner/colleague on this one.  Force each other to come up with answers a 10-year old would understand.

After having done any one, or all, of the 3 strategies, go back and re-evaluate your copy.

P.S.  Hat tip to Seth Godin for finding the video and creating a great blog post around it

* Actually, there’s only one excuse: you’re purposely excluding a general audience in order to tightly focus on a hard-core group.  In that case, go ahead amd talk the lingo without apologies, letting anyone and everyone else catch up if they can.  Just realize that you WILL be alienating visitors and potential customers in order to appeal to that smaller, hard-core group.

** Of course, the best sure-fire method of escaping the curse of knowledge is simply to hire an outside copywriter/consultant/optimization specialist

[Editor’s note: the author of this blog is now blogging at jeffsextonwrites.com

In fact, you may not like the product, either, simply because you’re probably not part of their targeted audience.  So make up your mind now to look past that in order to see the marketing decisions behind both the product and the site.

Let’s start by imagining that you’ve just been challenged to enter the fitness category. Not to sell some machine or piece of equipment, but to sell a workout program.  You can pick any angle of approach you want, and let’s assume you have the wherewithal to find the science or content to make the angle of approach you pick the “real deal.”

What angle of approach would you choose?

And for what audience would you tailor your messaging?

Now, let’s walk through the likely thought process behind the mystery website

• As far as dedicated gym rats go, who really makes up the bulk of that audience? Men.  Younger men, in fact.  I’m guessing, but I’d say probably between the ages of 18-35.

• Why do they work out? The same reason why most people work out, if you ignore the rationalized claims and scratch deeper into their real motivations: they want to look good.  And given this age group, that means looking good to women; they want to attract more chicks.

• Now here’s the million dollar question: how may workout programs are brazen enough to say, “This workout is THE workout for attracting women”? Answer: none.  At least none that I’ve ever come across, until – out of professional curiosity alone, mind you – I clicked on a banner ad for The Adonis Effect.

Now, do I actually like the Website?  No.  I think the cartoon character at the beginning is a huge turnoff.  So is forcing visitors to engage with your “Calculate your Adonis Index” tool before letting them past the splash pages and onto the real sales copy.  Nor do I make any claims for the validity of the statements made on this site or by these entrepreneurs.

What I DO like is the incredibly intelligent approach to marketing a workout program. The last workout program to take such a brazen approach was the infamous buns of steal videotape.  You know, the tape that became a cultural icon, that spawned a 22-tape “of steel” series, and that launched Tamilee Web into fitness icon status?

Always make sure your messaging/copy is On Target

While I don’t think The Adonis Effect will become as high-profile as Buns of Steel (and that might well be a Marketing to Women lesson for you right there), I do think it’ll make a killing off its target audience.  And here’s the take-away lesson from that:

Always make sure your messaging/copy is speaking to the real, deeply felt, emotional needs of the prospective customer.  Crummy writing that’s on target will always beat great writing that’s directed at anything other than the heart of the reader. And of course, that goes for websites as well.

You can ding The Adonis Effect for it’s cheesy Website(s) – along with any number of usability and persuasive faux pas – all you want, but the essential message is on target. And I’d be willing to bet money on their success because of that one factor.

Why Persona-based copy matters – and which copywriting legend would (likely) agree

Back when Holly Buchanan and I used to routinely teach Persuasive Online Copywriting, we’d have the class write a short piece of copy based on a standard demographic/target-audience profile, then we’d replace that crappy (but typical) marketing profile with personas and have the students re-write their copy.

Invariably, the second pieces of copy blew away the first – not because we had magically turned the students into better writers, but always because the copy went from stereotypical advertising appeals to emotionally on target copy for intended audience.

And you know who else preached this same “On Target” message?  The late Gary Halbert.  Just watch this video and you’ll see exactly what I’m talking about at around the 1:40 mark:

Click here to view the embedded video.

P.S.  Although a public/open session of Persuasive Online Copywriting hasn’t been held in about a year, you can still get the majority of the lessons from that 1-day course by attending Writing for the Radio and Internet at Wizard Academy.  Chris Maddock and I co-teach that 2-day course, with Chris focusing on improving core writing skills while I teach a specific methodology for creating and linking on target web copy.

[Editor's note: the author of this post is now blogging at jeffsextonwrites.com]

I came across this bit o’ trivia while writing my post on Ogilvy’s preferred ad layout.  I found it written up by Robert Rosenthal at Freaking Marketing, who had done the detective work to find and scan in this Pierce-Arrow ad that ran about 25 years before Ogilvy’s Rolls Royce campaign.

If you consider yourself a student of advertising, you’ll want to read Robert’s entire post to get all the historical details, but any copywriter should find it worthwhile to compare the two headlines and analyze the improvements Ogilvy made to his version.

First, let’s look at the two headlines

So here are the two headlines for comparison:

The only sound one can hear in the new Pierce-Arrows is the ticking of the electric clock

vs.

“At 60 miles an hour the loudest noise in this new Rolls Royce comes from the ticking of its electric clock.”

Why the Ogilvy Headline was far more powerful

1) Specificity: The Ogilvy ad gives an actual speed.  Not only are specifics  always more believable than generalities, but in this case, the specific speed makes the reader think that an actual test was conducted to determine this fact.  By comparison, the Pierce-Arrows ad reads like hype.

2) Quote marks:  The quotation marks around the Rolls Royce headline indicate to the casual reader, scanning the page, that this was a remark made by someone, perhaps by a tester or engineer.   And indeed, the subdeck and first bullet point confirm that this is the case.  Again, the Pierce-Arrow headline has none of this credibility-building substantiation.

3) Believability of the claim itself: Notice the change from “only sound” to “loudest noise.”  For the reader, conjuring up a mental image of driving in a car in which the electric clock is actually louder than the engine is relatively easy, whereas the mind rejects the idea of a moving car making absolutely no noise except for that of the clock.  Consequently, the Pierce-Arrow ad practically provokes skepticism and dismissal from the reader.

4) Words fat with emotional associations: the difference between sound and noise may seem subtle, but the emotional connotations are miles apart.  Sound could be anything, and all else being equal, the word alone usually has positive associations.  Noise, on the other hand, is a nuisance.  Tell me I won’t hear a sound in a car, and I’ll think you’re exaggerating or  speaking figuratively – would anybody even want to drive in the kind of sensory deprivation chamber that that would require?  But tell me that the loudest noise in the car comes from a ticking lock, and I’ll want to experience the serenity of such an exquisitely engineered car/cabin that is capable of nullifying the unpleasant noises and nuisances of the road.

Why the Ogilvy Ad was far more modern

In some ways, my comparison is simply not fair since the Pierce-Arrow ad hails from a far less cynical age than the Rolls Royce Ad.  One could suppose that back in the days of the Pierce-Arrow ad, “yeah, sure” and “prove it” probably weren’t the automatic responses to any advertising claim that they are today.

But the transition in audience attitudes wasn’t instantaneous.  In fact, you can already see the need for proof and substantiation by the time Ogilvy’s ad rolls around.  That’s why the Rolls Royce ad:

• Includes engineering and expert testimonials or quotes.
• Provides no less than 12 bullet points of factual copy – facts proving the extreme quality, engineering, and attention to detail that goes into making a Rolls Royce
• Openly states the price of the car without dancing around the subject.

How to apply this to the Web

If you are an online copywriter here’s what you need to ask yourself:

1) Are you doing the research that Ogilvy did in order to come up with powerful headlines?  And once you have that angle of approach, are you anywhere near as careful with your wordsmithing?

2) More importantly, do you think the public has grown any less cynical since the time of that Rolls Royce ad?

3) Most importantly, are you providing more substantiated copy, proof, and pricing information than Ogilvy’s Rolls Royce ad does?  Or are you providing less?

All copywriting stories are “nested.”

In writing copy you inevitably create – at a minimum – one frame of reference: the one between your authorial voice and the reader.

In fact, copywriting teachers often advise aspiring writers to “talk” onto the page as if they’re talking to a best friend, simply because that mental exercise animates that almost invisible frame of reference in the mind of the writer.* Writers who forget that frame of reference tend to produce artificial, corporate-speak copy.

So introducing a story into your conversation with the audience instantly “nests” that story within the larger “narrative” of your copy, one frame of reference within the larger frame in which you’re “speaking” to the prospect.

But most readers are consciously oblivious to this frame-shifting because the nesting often takes place rather quickly.  And also because great copywriters smooth-over or hide the frame switching in much the same way that a film editor cuts between camera angles without drawing attention to the cut.  You don’t consciously realize that your TV show changes camera shots an average of every 4 seconds do you?  Don’t believe it?  Count it out for yourself:

Click here to view the embedded video.

And just as with the TV film cuts so it is with frame switching in copy: once you know what to look for, this technique will start to jump out at you.  Let’s take a look at one of the more famous examples of this written by Martin Conroy:

“On a beautiful late spring afternoon, twenty-five years ago, two young men graduated from the same college. They were very much alike, these two young men. Both had been better than average students, both were personable and both – as young college graduates are – were filled with ambitious dreams for the future.

Recently, these men returned to their college for their 25th reunion.
They were very much alike. Both were happily married. Both had three children. And both, it turned out, had gone to work for the same Midwestern manufacturing company, and were still there.

But there was a difference. One of the men was manager of a small department of that company. The other was its president.

What Made The Difference

Have you ever wondered, as I have, what makes this kind of difference in people’s lives? It isn’t always a native intelligence or talent or dedication. It isn’t that one person wants success and the other doesn’t.

The difference lies in what each person knows and how he or she makes use of that knowledge.

And that is why I am writing to you and to people like you about The Wall Street Journal. For that is the whole purpose of the Journal: To give its readers knowledge – knowledge that they can use in business…”

Did you notice how quickly the nesting took place?

If not, the beginning of this, perhaps the most famous direct mail piece of all time, initiates the story telling frame by starting in storybook fashion, except that instead of “once upon a time,” Martin Conroy starts telling his story with “on a beautiful late spring afternoon.” And with that one phrase Conroy establishes both his authorial voice, speaking to you, and establishes the inner frame of reference – that of the business parable.  Pretty cool huh?

Now recall the important lesson from my previous post on frame-switching:

Emotions created in one frame echo across to the other

So if a story told within your copy is necessarily a nested story, then the emotions created within that inner story will echo across to the sales conversation of the “frame” story, i.e. the rest of the copywriting.

Do you see where this is going?

If not, what’s important to realize here is that a copywriter can say things in story format that he cannot credibly state within regular copy.  Conroy can’t really start his ad with “Hey, if you don’t buy The Wall Street Journal, you’ll never rise above middle management.”  Undoubtedly, that line of copy would have created a firestorm of complaints.

And yet the emotions behind that statement – nay, even more powerful emotions, since they’ve now been given life within the mental image of facing either success or frustration at a college reunion – slide under the radar screen and into the minds of Conroy’s readers under cover of this story.  The nested story emotionally primes the reader within the safe confines of “just a story”, while simultaneously positioning that emotional charge t0 jump across to the rest of the copy.

So when Conroy changes frames by slipping in a direct address to the reader with his first subheading of “What made the difference?” his readers are already emotionally primed to eagerly anticipate and take advantage of this all-important “difference” between the two young men.

This causes many readers to interpret Conroy’s offer that The Wall Street Journal will provide  “knowledge that they can use in business” as ‘the WSJ will help me get the promotions I deserve’  – a conclusion made more powerful because it comes from within the reader and not explicitly from the copy itself.

Yet while just thinking about this technique as presented, in terms of explicit story telling, will cause you to spot scads of examples from famous copywriting ads, you won’t really see how widely the technique is used until you realize that:

Referring to the past = Story Telling

For instance, does anyone really think that John Caples’ brilliant headline, “They laughed when I sat down at the piano,” is any less of an introduction to a nested story than Conroy’s “One fine spring day”?

Or how about this one from Sean D’souza’s Psychotactics Newsletter:

When I first started in business, I’d spend hours in meetings.
 I’d be driving to meetings. I’d be sitting in meetings. And
 then I’d get back to my home-office (I no longer work from
 home). And then have to do the job that the client and I agreed
 upon. And I’d do this six-sometimes seven days a week.
Fifty-two weeks a year.
=====================================
I was too afraid to go on vacation
=====================================
I was afraid that a really big job would come along, just as I was getting on the plane. I’d have nightmares about how the client would call; find me away; give the job to my competition, and then continue to work with the competition.
=====================================
I was living in a bit of a trap
=====================================
And I couldn’t get out. And then I discovered the power of copywriting. That copywriting was more than just copy.  It was control…

Sean establishes his nested story with the simple phrase “When I first started in business” and then goes on to shine a bright light on the sensitive emotionally needs of his audience – without offending them!

Nested storytelling and frame switching are everywhere

• Joe Karbo Frank Schultz used a nested story in his famous “Fluke of Nature” grapefruit ad, which starts with, “I’m a farmer, and the story I tell you is the absolute truth, as incredible as it may seem”

• Joseph Sugarman used it for his first BluBlockers ad, wherein the first subhead reads, “When I put on the pair of glasses what I saw I could not believe.  Nor will you.”  And his first line of copy?  “I am about to tell you a true story.”

• Ogilvy frequently made use of stories within his Schwepes and Hathaway campaigns.

• The old Charles Atlas ads certainly used storytelling, as the ad writer, Charles P. Roman, headlined them with the immortal, “The insult that made a man out of Mac”

• Frank Irving Fletcher created his famous “A $10,000 Mistake” ad as a short form story.  Here’s the entire ad: “A $10,000 Mistake: A client for whom we had copied a necklace of Oriental Pearls, seeing both necklaces before her, said: Well, the resemblance is remarkable, but this is mine! Then she picked ours! Tecla; 398 Fifth Avenue, New York”

• And if you really want to see short form story taken to the realm of art, wherein the whole of Conroy’s WSJ opening is recast in 9 short words, then take a look at this:

Finally, for those of you who stuck with me on this, I offer you a dessert ; )

If you really want to see a master of nested storytelling, just watch any of the Bill Cosby videos available on YouTube and pay attention to how Cosby effortlessly switches from being within the story to talking to the audience directly.  I think this one on “Jeffery” is a great one to start with:

Click here to view the embedded video.

Contrary to common opinion, David Ogilvy didn’t have a preference for long copy.

What he had was an overwhelming bias towards anything that had been proven to work (which included long copy).  Ogilvy’s real, professed preferences were for consumer testing, research-driven techniques, and performance-based advertising in the truest sense of the term.

Based on those things, the conclusion he came to was that messaging and relevance had to have highest priority. Everything else – creativity, design, layout – should be subordinated to the end goal of conveying a salient message in as persuasive a manner as possible. In print, this took the form of what has come to be known as “The Ogilvy Layout.”

Understanding Ogilvy’s Layout and Why it Still Works

There are three main parts to the Ogilvy Layout, with a corresponding and crucial quality for each element:

1. The picture, which should have “story appeal”
2. The headline, which should tie into the “story appeal” of the picture
3. And the body copy, which most be placed in the right relationship to both the picture and the headline as to anticipate the reader’s visual preferences and enhance readability.

I’ve dealt with Story Appeal in previous posts, but let’s talk about headlines before diving into why Ogilvy’s favorite arrangement continues to stand the test of time.

What I’ve Noticed About Ogilvy’s Headlines

In his book, Ogilvy on Advertising, David Ogilvy writes about the importance of captions no less than 4 times, urging the reader to include captions underneath all of their photographs each and ever time.  According to the research Ogilvy cites, 4 times as many readers read captions as body copy and 10 times as many people read headlines as body copy.

So while it may seem obvious that the headline and the main picture (or “hero shot” in today’s lingo) should be related, it also seems that you can grab even more reader-grabbing power for your headlines if you make use of some of the compelling “what’s this picture all about” draw of captions.  Here’s a perfect example of this:

Pretty difficult not to read a bit more about that story, isn’t it?

Let’s Talk Layout and Arrangement

Here’s the thing: because of his attention to research, Ogilvy knew what many online copywriters are still learning:

**People scan and skim first and read second

and they only read IF their scan turns up something worthwhile.**

Now, in magazines, which are mostly read as a diversion, the first thing to get scanned are pictures.  We are visual creatures and pictures typically convey a lot of information (and emotion) fast, so a strong visual is almost always going to be the first thing the eye fixes on when the reader is engaging in general browsing for interest.  Please note, though, that this scanning order changes for task oriented individuals interacting with a website.  People scanning a web page redefine “worthwhile” by relevance to their task, and therefore focus on the headlines first.

Getting back to magazine ads, if the picture is intriguing, the next thing a person will scan is the headline and possibly the caption.  After that, and only after that, the person in question will skim (or read) the body copy.

For emphasis, this is THE order in which an audience will scan a magazine ad/page:

1. Picture first,
2. Headline second,
3. Copy last.

To quote Ogilvy himself:

“Readers look first at the illustration, then at the headline, then at the copy. So put these elements in that order – illustration at the top, headline under the illustration, copy under the headline. If you put the headline above the illustration, you are asking people to scan in an order which does not fit their habit.”

And to paraphrase Steve Krug, don’t make the reader think; it’s just as easy to stop reading or engaging with the ad as it is to expend the extra effort navigating an oh-so-creative-but-against-the-grain layout.

Eye Tracking Heat Maps Prove the Power of Ogilvy’s Layout

The brilliant people over at Think Eye Tracking recently put three different car ads to the test: one Ogilvy-inspired 1-page layout compared to 2 new-school double-trucks (aka 2-page spreads). You can see their blog post about  their tests here, but I’ve also posted the Ogilvy-inspired heat map below. Check it out:

Notice how the headline and body copy receive most of the attention.  The picture draws the eye, but the messaging gets the most time and attention from the viewer/reader.

Unfortunately, a direct comparison of heat maps isn’t possible, because Think Eye Tracking only posted the heat map from the Porsche add and not the ones from the Mercedes and BMW ads.  But they DID give percentages of each ad’s ability to create reader retention of various elements within the ad, including the  call to action.  Assuming that the call to action was made within or at the end of the body copy (a fairly safe assumption), we can see how the ads stack up in terms of getting people to read the copy/pay attention to the messaging:

• Ogilvy Layout/Porsche Ad: 59% of readers noted the call to action
• Mercedes Ad: 29%
• BMW Ad: 11%

The Ogilvy Layout doubled readership of the copy while using half the ad space!

Incidentally, the use of a 1-pager instead of a double-spread was also recommended by Ogilvy, as the double-spread cost much more but didn’t increase readership in proportion to its cost.

And for those of you who read this far, or who doubted Ogivly’s performance-based bias, enjoy this short video of Ogilvy addressing the Direct Marketers of his day:

Click here to view the embedded video.

Just for the record, while I DO draw some distinctions between the online world and old-school direct marketing, I also think that online “marketers” who stray too far from direct marketing principles end up producing websites like this:

www.porsche.co.uk/innerstrength

In case you’re wondering, yes, that is the URL used in the Porsche ad’s call to action.  Just the sort of thing you’d remember after flipping through the ad isn’t it?  Not.

Anyway, go ahead and frustrate yourself by interacting with that “piece of work” for awhile.  You’ll undoubtedly find yourself wishing that the same, sane approach to design and layout had been used in creating the website as had been used in designing the ad.

P.S. I’m not advocating a literal use of the Ogilvy layout to a digital format, but rather an intelligent application of Ogilvy’s subordination of design, creativity, and layout to messaging. More about that in a follow up post…

[Editor's note: the author of this post is now blogging at jeffsextonwrites.com]

Just watch the first 20 seconds of this ad and then pause it (don’t worry, I won’t spoil the ending for you).

Click here to view the embedded video.

Now, how do you feel.  How much emotional punch did the scene carry?

OK.  Now restart the video and watch it through to the end.

****Gratuitous space strategically placed so as to avoid any plot spoilers *****

**** Keep Scrolling *****

****More Gratuitous space  *****

****Almost there ****

So even though the ending scenes were largely repeated from the beginning, now how do you feel?  Don’t the ending scenes have a lot more kick?  Wanna know why?

Here’s what’s going on:

This ad is making ingenious use of what I’d call “frame switching.”

Remember how The Princess Bride made use of an outer story about the sick kid and his grandfather coming to read to him in order to set up the “real” story involving Wesley and Buttercup?  If not, this clip should jog your memory:

Click here to view the embedded video.

So the point is that every time the film switches its frame of reference from the kid and his grandpa to the storybook story (and vice versa), that’s an example of frame switching. Got it?  And here’s why this is important:

Emotions and meaning created in one frame echo across to the other frame

In The Princess Bride, the “Eel-infested waters” scene is a perfect example of that emotional bleed-over.  Just watch the first two minutes or so of this clip:

Click here to view the embedded video.

And this emotional echo involves more than simply a kid getting caught up in a story.  By the end of the movie, the kid’s attitude towards both “kissing scenes” and his grandfather have transformed because of this emotional bleed-over from events that occurred within the inner story.  Check out how the ending scenes are mirror images of the opening scenes, showcasing these changes:

Click here to view the embedded video.

The Yeti Ad uses this same technique

When the Yeti arrives, you have unknowingly switched frames – and it’s the “unknowing” part that makes this even more powerful.  So when the Yeti saves Dave and you feel his relief at being warm and cared for and out of harm’s way, the advertisers are counting on those feelings to bleed-over into the ending frame, setting you up for the ending.

The ending then inflicts mental shock upon you, the viewer, from the realization that the relief and warmth and safety you felt earlier were nothing but hallucinations.  And that shocking contrast between the warmth felt within the inner story and the danger, fear, and coldness you suffer through in the outer “frame” amps up the emotional punch of the final scene – taking it all the way to 11, to draw from another Rob Reiner film.

And what’s especially brilliant about this execution is that the producer switched from day-time in the opening scenes to night time in the inner story, and then bled the night-time (or evening) part over into the final scenes, thereby helping to ensure greater emotional bleed-over.  Plus, for the viewer who has just been violently jarred from the inner story, back into the ending scenes, the realization comes that, not only are you just as bad off as you were at the start of the ad, but now it’s night.

This is why the ending scenes – which differ only slightly from the beginning scenes – feel so much more emotionally powerful.

So what are the copywriting take-aways from this?

Check-out my follow-up article to see for yourself.

And feel free to comment on any specifics you’d like to see covered.

P.S. Hat tip to AdFreek for turning me onto the Yeti Ad.

1) A new technology or application comes out.

2) It actually gives us a reliable signal. Something closely correlated with how things actually are.

3) The technology or application catches on and gradually becomes a social force of its own – or at least a social force amongst early adopters.

4) These next two happen more or less simultaneously:

• It becomes the next big thing and the place where the cool kids hang out
• People begin manipulating the signal to their benefit, thereby destroying the quality of the signal.

5) Either the technology adapts, or people adapt and social conventions adapt, or the “thing” takes a massive nosedive in importance.

A closer look at Step 5

Google is a good example of technology adapting. Say what you want about the peculiarities about page rank and Google’s secret algorithms, people still use Google because it works (that’s why Bing will bomb).  Even still, the plight of the link-rich getting progressively richer while the link-poor get consistently buried has at least partially contributed to the appeal of Twitter’s radical democratization of link juice. You tweet – you got juice! (more on this in a minute)

Blogging is a great example of people and social conventions adapting. Ask people who were blogging circa 2003 and are still at it today – the blogosphere has radically and totally changed. What it takes to succeed as a blogger has radically changed. And while there’s never been a shortage of people looking to declare blogging dead, the experts will tell you that blogging has always managed to evolve and adapt.

And DIGG or Technorati are pretty much an example of the “Thing” taking a nosedive. Honestly, does anyone reflexively check out Technorati anymore? Does anyone care? Of course not. Once getting dugg became an organized team sport, the quality of what appeared on DIGG started to suck, and the jig was up.

Which brings me to Twitter.  While I’m no Twitter expert, in my eyes Twitter quickly became a sort of “reverse Google” and a self-QA-ed version of DIGG. Let me explain:

1. You type your search term into Google and a refined set of results are spit out.  The raw data/pagrank factors, and linkjuice behind those results are invisible to you, effectively hidden behind an algorithm.  You get the results, and if you’re an SEO expert, you have to then interpolate all the behind the curtain stuff.
2. You type a search term into twitter and you see the raw data.  You see people talking about your search term.  It’s all right there for your review.  Except that you now have to abstract out the overall patterns for yourself.
3. Because in Google-land the link-rich often just continually get richer and the link-poor get buried, what you see in Google when you type in most established and competed for search terms represents basically the Web’s “establishment” for those terms.  Usually that’s a good thing.  But when it comes to catching up-and-comers within a more established field, well, then it kinda sucks.
4. With Twitter, your search results are nothing if not an instant snapshot of what’s au courant for that term/field/industry.  It’s literally what people are all a-twitter about.
5. In Google, the paid searches are separated from the organic search results.  Plus it costs money to place them.  In Twitter, it costs you nothing to spam the stream and place your add into the twitter feed of anyone searching on that particular term.  As an example, check out what happened when I searched on iPod from within TweetDeck:
6. Because of all the link sharing on Twitter, it’s also a new-school form of DIGG, except that your personal Twitter reputation is riding on your tweets. Constently tweet and re-tweet crap, and I’ll drop you from my twitter feed. No offense, I just want to keep a high signal to noise ratio.  That way I can reasonably effect to open TweetDeck and find a steady stream of cool stuff, without having to winnow through chaff.

Unfortunately, Twitter is now on Step 4 of my “grand scenario,” as recent offerings and news items have confirmed we are in the midst of several concerted attempts to manipulate Twitter’s signal.

The only question is, what path is twitter likely to follow: Google, Blogs, or DIGG?

Oddly enough, I think the answer is up to us and our own user behavior, which leads me to hope that Twitter will go the way of blogs.

What do you think?

Still, there was an unmistakable cry for more, and being the reader-pleasing whore that I am, well… here are some more innovative billboard ads

So for the copywriters out there, here are a few examples where great copy/message beats clever design and visual puns:

Ouch!  Starbucks can’t be happy with that one.  Doesn’t get much more powerful that that.

And then there’s this:

I love the anti-testimonial on this one.  Compare that to the typical church billboard you might see.

What I love about this one is that it doesn’t focus on making you “aware” of the problem; you’re already aware of the problem, for crying out loud.  It focuses on making you square with your indifference as indicated by your lack of action.  This one probably won’t win any awards, but it IS very likely to spark action by those who read it.

Cheeky Ads: Harnessing the Power of (visual) Scandal

Now compare the previous “power of message and copy” examples to the following billboards and outdoor ads aimed to make maximum use of visual scandal by adding in some plain ol’ scandal into the mix.  Nothing like a hint (or more) of taboo to snag the attention of passers-by.

If you like these ads, I snagged more than a few of them over at billboardom.com and there’s plenty more worth browsing.

[Editor's note: the author of this post is now blogging at jeffsextonwrites.com]

What if the seller told an amusing story about that particular pack of Pokemon cards in the product description – would you bid more based on that?  Do you think others might?

Sounds silly, but based on a real-life incident, one mother collected $103.50 from the top bid (out of 44 other bids) on her pack of Pokemon cards simply because people fell in love with the story she told about how she came to own the cards in the first place.  Nothing changed about this under-7$ pack of cards except for the story.

And now, one of the coolest web projects I’ve seen in a while is attempting to recreate a similar phenomenon with a variety of objects but with a really cool twist – they want the buyer to know that the story behind the object is fake!  Here’s how the project website describes the process:

“The project’s curators purchase objects — for no more than a few dollars — from thrift stores and garage sales.

A participating writer is paired with an object. He or she then writes a fictional story, in any style or voice, about the object. Voila! An unremarkable, castoff thingamajig has suddenly become a “significant” object!

Each significant object is listed for sale on eBay. The s.o. is pictured, but instead of a factual description the s.o.’s newly written fictional story is used. However, care is taken to avoid the impression that the story is a true one; the intent of the project is not to hoax eBay customers. (Doing so would void our test.) The author’s byline will appear with his or her story.

The winning bidder is mailed the significant object, along with a printout of the object’s fictional story. Net proceeds from the sale are given to the respective author. Authors retain all rights to their stories.

The test’s results — photos, original prices and final sale prices, stories — are cataloged on this website. The project’s curators retain the right to use these materials in other venues and media. For example: Maybe we’ll publish a book.”  [emphasis mine]

Go ahead and treat yourself to a few of the objects’ stories, you’ll get sucked in, I promise you.  And what’ll you want to bet that these items end up selling for far more than the “few dollars” paid for them?

How this applies to selling “normal” products online

There is a dangerous assumption that because the public demands more straightforward or honest copy, that the best bet is to simply provide little factoid like bullet points rather than actual, detail-rich product copy. Here’s an example of bullets vs. copy taken from a flip-flop manufacturers website:

So focus in on the first, fourth, and final bullet points, if you would.  What you’ll find are the following facts:

• 1st bullet = 2 piece custom bottom unit mold is an OM exclusive design
• 4th bullet = Super soft Crosslite topsole…
• Last bullet = Croslite is soft, comfortable, lightweight, superior gripping, and odor resistant.

So here’s the question: do you think a little storytelling on the reasoning behind and development of the 2-piece bottom and Crosslite topsole might help increase the perceived value of these flip flops?

Just as an example, here’s what the bottom of the shoe looks like (courtesy of Zappos):

Now, do you think the two piece design might allow the shoe to flex more easily with your foot?  Do you think that might improve the comfort and possibly even eliminate or minimize the annoying flapping sound generated by most flop flops?

What if the company told you that this 2-piece sole was born of extensive gate-testing of 100s of flip-flop designs?

Would you pay more for the flip flop knowing that?

Same thing with Crosslite.  I’m betting a good story about it’s odor fighting properties, especially regarding how and why crosslite can fight foot odor, would also up the sandals perceived value.

As of now, the flip flops go for $35 on the company’s website, and slightly more than that from Zappos.  That’s about $15 cheaper than a pair of Reef Fannings.  Now, I don’t own a pair of Ocean Minded Sea Weeds, but I’d bet they’re roughly comparable to the Reef Fannings in terms of construction, fit, comfort, etc.  And I’d also bet that much of the Fanning’s popularity is tied up in the story behind:

1. Mick Fanning’s input into the design of the flip flop
2. The Fanning-inspired bottle opener embedded into the flip-flop’s sole

Yes, I’m probably simplifying things a bit.  I realize Reef is a bigger brand name than Ocean Minded and that the Fanning flip flops also have Nike-like air cushioning in the heal.  But from where I’m sitting, a good origin’s story just might account for the majority of that 42% increase in asking price.

The difference between increasing an item’s price and increasing its saleability

Will you always be able to charge more because of a good story or great product description?  No.

Sometimes you’ll just sell the item more easily, which usually translates into selling more of that item.  If I’m trying to decide on a pair of flip-flops to buy, there’s a chance that I simply won’t pay the same for a no-name brand than I will for a pair of reefs.  But that I might buy a brand like Ocean Minded’s at a discount as long as I had a reason to trust their quality.  And that’s where the product development stories come in: the stories would increase the sandal’s saleability, if not the actual selling price.

So, rather than only 1 visitor in 50 pulling the trigger on a pair, the right storyline might cause 1 in 5 browsers to buy.  You didn’t increase margins, but you did boost your volume and conversion rate, which is a lot more than industry-standard bullet points can ever claim.

Nothing in the ad itself looks “clickable” – no colored and underlined text, no 3-d lighting effects or button-ish looking objects, etc.

Just a small word bubble from the Pringles guy saying “click.”  And if you scroll over the ad, the bubble grows slightly bigger.  That’s it.  Doesn’t seem like a whole lot to bank on, when the ad really won’t “work” if it’s not clicked on, does it?

But what draws your eye over for that second look is the story appeal of the picture itself.  The guy is clearly proposing and the girl looks… well, apart from her facial expression, she’s got a freakin’ pringles tube on her arm!  What the heck is that all about?

And that’s just it isn’t it?  The picture almost forces you to imagine a scenario which would explain the guy proposing while his fiancee-to-be is greedily grasping at the very last of the Pringles.  Hmmm…

Adding to the effect is the woman’s somewhat ambiguous facial expression.  For the most part it looks as if she’s thrilled and totally blown away by the gesture, but it’s ambiguous enough to cause a bit of nervousness (or sympathy for the poor guy).  I mean, the gal’s not even looking at him. Maybe she’s also wondering who the heck proposes while you’re eating chips?

And all of these story appeal elements allow the subtle “click” invitation to work it’s magic.  Please Mr. Pringles guy, tell me what the heck is going on here, would ya? CLICK.

Ahhh the power of (cheesy) story appeal.

These clients want their conversion rates to improve, but they don’t want to have to change much.  After hearing tales of magical conversion rate lifts from simple tweaks, they look past the hard recommendations and ask that I “do some of that optimization stuff“.

And to be fair, sometimes easy website changes do yield disproportionate conversion rate increases. Sometimes a limiting factor, persuasive gap, or usability flaw can be fixed with something as simple as a new headline, a different color button, a new link, or an added point of action assurance.  One or two small changes and – boom! – you get a huge lift.

Unfortunately, analyzing a Web site will just as likely reveal problems and limiting factors that aren’t so easily changed or tested:

• Going from offering only one crappy, manufacturer-supplied product photo to offering multiple hi-res photos may not sound that hard, but on a Website with, say, more than 40 SKUS, it can be a bear of a job.
• Same thing with installing customer review functionality and then going back to your old customers to incentivize their participation by writing reviews for previously purchased items.
• And same again with the improvement of product description copy.
• Or replacing an outdated, clunky, shopping cart and checkout with a more user friendly system.
• And so on.

All of those improvements represent a lot of work for the client’s web team, but they are some of the more powerful improvements any online retailer could make.  Looking past them to tweak easier-to-change elements of the website would be a mistake. There is no web optimization magic FutureNow (or anyone else) can pull that would create an endless supply of easy changes yielding ever larger results.  Sometimes the big wins require big changes.

And that’s exactly what Bryan Eisenberg meant when he said that it’s already time to start preparing for the Christmas shopping season.  If it will take you several months to implement, test, and tweak the larger more-important changes to your site, that puts you finishing around September – which beats the heck out of tearing your hair out because it’s mid-November and you haven’t gone live with whatever big improvement or change you’re hoping will save Christmas for you.

So c’mon, guys, start implementing that web optimization sh*t now, and you won’t have to explain why your Christmas season went down in flames.

A pitch-man whose fame and success made him the target of more pitches than he ever gave.  Pitches made by desperate inventors looking for him to save them after they’d already mortgaged the house, spent the kids’ college fund, and invested all their life savings trying to bring some gadget to market.  People who showed up saying, “If only you, Billy Mays, would represent me on TV, I know we’d be able to sell my ________”

So what was the one product quality Billy INSISTED on? The one thing a product absolutely had to have if he was going to take on that kind of responsibility?

Demonstrability.

And Billy talks about the importance of demonstrability within the first 23 seconds of this video – the last interview he ever gave.  Watch:

Click here to view the embedded video.

What Billy knew that so many of us forget, is that a conclusion that the audience comes to on their own is a conclusion they’ll believe and act on. No normal advertising claim can achieve that, no matter how much evidence you throw behind it.

SHOW someone an “I can’t freakin’ believe it” demonstration, and they’ll walk away convinced. Try to persuade them with a stack of studies, facts, and figures, and they’ll likely assume you rigged the tests, got your testimonials from all your friends, and “interpreted” the facts with all the abandon of Jim Cramer telling people to hold onto their Bear Stearns stocks 6 days before the bankruptcy filing.

In Web terms, put your Social Security Number on the front page of your website and I’ll be a lot more likely to believe you can also keep me safe from identity theft.  Forgo the demonstration in favor of detailing your 14-step process to keep me safe, and I may not even read it, let alone believe your claim(s).

And, yes, dramatizing the benefit has long been the specialty of the infomercial, whether it was the ginsu knife cutting through the tin can, the sham-wow pulling up spilt coke from a carpet, or, yes, the incredible stain removing feats of oxy-clean.

Click here to view the embedded video.

So the question for you Web copywriters out there is, how can you inject demonstrability into your copy?

And if you can’t fully create demonstrability with copy and static pictures alone, how can you use a little video to bring that info-mercial magic to your sales pages?

And as a warning, this Zappos video is a clear case on how NOT to do it.

Do these guys show the product in action?  No.  Do they show you any parts of the shoe a visitor can’t see from the multiple images Zappos’ site already provides.  No.  So what the hell is the video for again?

How about showing me the guy’s foot in the flip flop, with a close up on the arch support?  How about showing me how flexible (or not) the flip flop is – how much it bends with the foot vs. how hard it slaps up against the heal with each step.  How it fits a narrow/medium/wide foot.  Etc.  Going a few thousand steps further, how about showing me how well the shoe looks after a few months of use?

C’mon, Zappos, why use video if you’re not going to actually SHOW the product in action?  Why use the video if you’re not going to actually help answer more questions than could have been answered with just text and pictures?

Anyway, Billy Mays’s family has my deepest condolences.  And you readers have my sincere wish that you take one of Billy’s last marketing lessons to heart.

So the natural thing to do is trim non-performing words and phrases in order to increase the efficiency of your PPC spend.  And that’s exactly what one client did, except rather than increasing his efficiency, he dropped his sales by 30%.

Why?

Because, depending on what you sell, lots of people buy on their second, third, or umpteenth visit to your site, rather than the first visit.  Those visitors are building confidence in you as they move through their buying process.  But most systems don’t (or can’t) track user behavior over multiple visits.   So when those early and middle buying-stage keywords shown up as non-converters, they get cut.

The shame is that not everyone is able to track the following sales drop off, which may not occur for days, weeks, or months, back to the act of cutting those keywords.

Trading away Dennis Rodman as a Non-performing Player?

Would you trade Dennis Rodman for non-performance?  Of course not, right?  Rodman’s defensive stats alone tell the tale.  At his prime, Dennis was pulling down a truly astonishing 18.7 rebounds per game.  For reference, the previous year’s league leader in rebounds (David Robinson) averaged 13 per game.

But if the only stats you looked at involved scoring, you’d get a different picture. Comparing Rodman’s 8-9 points per game against other star players’ 20 or more points per game, you’d likely have been misled into trading Rodman, only to find yourself wondering why you started losing games and everyone else’s scoring stats went up against your team.

Think of your assisting keywords terms as the Dennis Rodman’s of your PPC campaign, except you’ll get all the assists and none of the off-court shenanigan’s.

There’s plenty of other ways myopic analysis can leading you astray

A recent eConsultancy post discusses how Google’s default window for tracking cookies can distort traffic data.  Left in its default cookie window setting, Google Analytics (GA) will classify visitors as “search”-driven traffic for six months following a single search based click through to your site – regardless of how they got to your site previous to that search or how they might arrive at your site following that search. Here’s an example of how this might skew your results:

Let’s say you’re driving traffic to your site via radio ads and that a listener, after hearing your ad, types your url directly into his browser.  Later, he comes back but this time, he types your business name into Google and clicks through on a displayed search result.  Following that, he visits your site three more times via bookmark or directly typing your URL into his site. That’s a total of 5 visits.

Question: How many of those visits would GA classify as search-driven?

Answer: 4 out of 5.

GA would count the first search-based visit and then all of the remaining 3 visits, despite the fact that the following three visits didn’t use search and may have taken place several months after the initial search.  Multiply that by all your visitors/visits, and you can see how your understanding of what drives traffic to your website might be distorted in favor of search. And under the impression that your traffic was mostly generated by search and not, say, your radio ads, you might be tempted to cut them from your ad spend.   Obviously, the same thing could apply with e-mail campaigns, magazine ads, etc.

Bringing Clarity and Orientation to Web Improvement Efforts

Any experienced Web Analyst or Website Optimizer could extend this list of “gotchas” and “classic mistakes” almost indefinitely.  It’s just not that uncommon for an uncareful analysis of data to lead online marketers either to analysis paralysis or sub-optimal optimization strategies.  Is it any wonder that 70% of businesses collecting wed data fail to act on their analytics data?

Obviously this issue has been central to Bryan and Jeffrey Eisenberg’s Web careers since the beginning.  It’s why they helped found the Web Analytics Association; why they published The Marketer’s Common Sense Guide to eMetrics, Call to Action and Always Be Testing; why they created Persuasion Architecture; and ultimately why they’ve built the OnTarget program.

The central theme amongst all of these issues is bringing clarity and actionable insight to Web improvement and online marketing efforts.  They are all answers to the business owner who feels confused or disoriented by the data he’s given and want’s a clear direction toward more sales/conversions and improved website performance.

So, if you find yourself struggling to make sense of your online marketing data, or frustrated by non- or counter-productive optimization efforts, ask yourself: are you giving credit where it’s deserved?  Or do you need help achieving greater clarity and actionable insight from your optimization efforts?

The difference of course, is that material in the active window is being actively and consciously engaged and evaluated by the Web visitor, who can then slow down and read material that has proven itself relevant, which is obviously not the case for billboards.  This is where the analogy breaks down, and why most  copywriters will slap anyone clueless enough to vomit up the old “People don’t read online” mantra.

But as useful as the analogy is for web pages, it’s far more so for online ads:

• Both are on the periphery of your vision/attention, and therefore both have to present a reason to shift your attention from the task at hand to their message.
• Both want to leave you hungering for more information or more contact with the brand.

So when my recent post on Apple’s Banner Ad Innovation provoked some Ogilvy-inspired comments that compared banner ads to magazine ads, I thought It would be worthwhile to revisit that advertising giant’s advice on billboards (or what he refers to generally as posters).  So here it is:

• It Pays to make your poster a ‘visual scandal’”
• Your poster should deliver you selling promise not only in words, but also pictorially.
• Use the largest possible type
• Make your brand name visible at a long distance
• Use strong, pure colors
• Never use more than three elements in your design

Now, strong colors might be a toss-up, because while they can draw the eye, they also scream “I’m an ad, ignore me.”  And you can take or leave the other bottom four bullets, but the top two are pure gold for banner ads and are exactly what Apple was doing in it’s New York Times banner/skyscraper ad.

1.  A ‘Visual Scandal’ surprises and delights viewers

This surprise and delight factor causes a peripheral eye sweep to become a studied look, gaining you the web visitor’s/driver’s active attention and consideration.  And it does it while leaving those people with a positive emotional response to your brand (as apposed to gaining attention through an annoying, dancing stick figure).  Here’s an example of visual scandal that Ogilvy provided in Ogilvy on Advertising:

And here are some of my personal favorite examples:

Of course, the razor blade, kill bill, and Nike ads are probably better than the Makers Mark and Frozen Mars Bar ad because in those billboards the selling promise is implicit in the visual scandal, thereby following Ogilvy’s second point as well as the first.

Achieving Visual Scandal by Coloring Outside the Lines

Notice how often this idea of visual scandal requires the use of 3-D or “outside the lines” effects.  So how did Apple do this with a banner ad?  They had multiple space ads interacting with each other, extending the ad outside the lines/boundaries of what we are used to.  Take a look:

Achieving Visual Scandal by Visual Pun

Another technique for creating visual scandal is to make creative and unusual use of a boundary, line, or element that is already a part of the environment, creating a visual pun, as these examples do:

This techniques works for a lot more than posters, too:

Story Appeal

Humans use stories to explain deviations from the ordinary.  As Jerome Bruner writes in, Acts of Meaning:

“Stories seem to be designed to give the exceptional behavior meaning in a manner that implicates both an intentional state in the protagonist (a belief or desire) and some canonical element in the culture . . . The function of the story is to find an intentional state that mitigates or at least makes comprehensible a deviation from a canonical cultural pattern.”

So viewers create stories by speculating on the motives of the actors depicted (within a scene or picture); they use their imaginations to fill in the back-story.  Needless to say, you can’t have a story element to your picture/billboard/banner ad unless it contains people, or more precisely, characters.

Just look at the ad Ogilvy used as an example of “story element”:

And here’s what Ogilvy wrote about Story Appeal (and this ad):

“The kind of photographs which work hardest are those which arouse the reader’s curiousity.  He glances at the photograph and says to himself, ‘What goes on heres?’  Then he reads your copy to find out.  Harold Rudolph called this magic element ‘Story Appeal,’ and demonstrated that the more of it you inject into your photographs, the more people look at your advertisements.”

“The eyepatch [in the Hathaway ad] injects the magic element of ’story appeal.‘”

Do you see how the odd characteristic of the Baron Wrangell character made readers curious.  They speculated about his background, purpose in the ad, etc.  And so they read the ad.  In online terms, they’d click through to get the full story on your home page.

For most people this same story appeal now occurs whenever we see the Mac and PC characters – especially when we see them outside the confines of a TV ad.  Viewers know there’s a story to the ad somewhere, and so look closer to find out what it is.

So all you Internet Marketers yearning for a creative renaissance in online advertising, follow Apple’s lead and employ these techniques to their maximum.  Just try to remember that after you’ve surprised and delighted your audience, it will be relevance and scent that will determine whether your ad actually makes the client any money.

[Editor's note: the author of this post is now blogging at jeffsextonwrites.com]

Cost Per Visitor (CPV) – How many advertising, marketing, SEO, etc. dollars do you need to spend to bring in each Website visitor you’re getting.   Don’t look at conversion just yet – it’s your website’s job to convert the visitors; marketing’s job is to get them there in the first place.  So Cost Per Visitor is the best starting point for measuring your return on marketing spend.

Also, feel free to break this down by channel: SEO, e-mail marketing, PPC, conventional media, etc.  Some channels are easier to track than others, but give all of them your best shot.  Now plot your CPV performance from the beginning of the year till now and see how you’re doing.

Revenue Per Visitor (RPV) – Top line revenue is usually easier to calculate and track, so we go with RPV, but if you’ve got the metrics to figure out bottom line Profit Per Visitor, all the better.  So basically you’re looking for how much money you are bringing in per Website visitor, and you’re looking to see how this metric is changing from the beginning of the year until now.

CPV should be decreasing and RPV should be increasing

What to do if these metrics aren’t moving in the right direction:

1. Take a look at your marketing spend. What’s working?  What’s not working?  Look at differing channels, keywords, time of day, etc.  Get accountability from the tactics you are using to drive traffic.
2. Focus on improving your conversion rate.  Your Website’s conversion rate can act as a lever to both CPV and RPV.  By examine keywords and marketing campaigns in terms of scent and scent trails, you can improve the performance of your campaigns and drive down CPV.  By improving micro-conversions throughout the buying process, you can increase macro-conversions, average order value, repeat customers, etc – thereby improving RPV.  For tools on how to do this, take a look through our archives, read Always Be Testing (or any of our other books), or give us a call.

Feel free to let us know how you’re doing, or to post any questions you have on these metrics and improvement tactics.  We’d love to hear from you.

[Editor's note: the author of this post is now blogging at jeffsextonwrites.com]

About a year ago, Bryan Eisenberg gave an interview talking about Maybe The Best $100 You’ve Ever Spent, essentially raving over the ridiculously cheep rates charged by UserTesting.com.  The always-astute Patrick Sullivan, Jr. of Edit Weapon picked up on this and decided to give UserTesting.com his own personal test and blog post/review.

Now, as a usability expert himself and a usability testing veteran, Edit Weapon’s initial reaction to UserTesting.com was:

“Well this will either put me out of business, cause me to cut my rates by 90%, or make my life 900% easier!“

The reasoning behind the first two reactions is obvious, but I bet me than a few viewers wondered how ultra-cheap (and effective) competition could possibly make Patrick’s life 900% easier?

Answer: because Patrick’s job isn’t primarily to provide user testing, but to help properly task the users and to expertly interpret the results of that testing.  Turns out that actually conducting the tests was just a pre-requisite to these far more important – and less easily commoditized – skills.

So offloading the pain-in-the-butt process of sourcing the testers and running the tests to UserTesting.com has made Patrick’s life a lot easier.  [Note that, in my opinion, that insight into what business Patrick is really in is worth a series of blog posts of its own, but that'll have to wait for another time...]

As Patrick put it in his blog post:

“…anyone can watch a user use a website, but *interpreting* usability tests and making recommendations is the secret sauce to being a kick ass information architect / interaction workflow designer, which of course, I am.”

Now, during that same video post, Patrick offhandedly mentioned that there were a few golden rules and guidelines to tasking users so that their test results would be optimally useful and easy to interpret, but that he’d have to cover these in a follow-up post.

Ever since hearing that I’ve been patiently waiting for Patrick to finally produce that promised follow-up post, until about a month ago when I broke down and offered to help with the post by turning it into a quasi-interview.  So here they are, the Top 6 User Testing Tips as disclosed to me by Edit Weapon:

Top 6 Don’ts for Usability Testing

(With a special thank you to Sue Fischer – Patrick’s IA/Usability/learnability mentor and a human factors consultant who taught Patrick how to task users for usability tests and how to interpret the results.)

1)    Never ask, “What do you think about this?”

First of all, most people will simply give you a polite, rather than bluntly honest answer.  Second of all, you’re not really interested in what they think of an interface/Web design/piece of software; you’re interested in how well and how easily they can USE it.  That’s why it’s called usability testing.

So you always want to put the question in the form of a goal/task.  Tell the user what they want to do with the interface/software; give them an assigned scenario.  This transforms the process into an objective exercise (rather than a subjective opinion) and allows you to watch how the testers go about using your tool.  You can then get a much better idea of how easy or intuitive your interface is, where the friction occurs, etc.

2)    Don’t feed the tester with your question.

As people learn new things they tend to be very literal – especially when it comes to tasking.  If you ask people to accomplish a task and you use the exact words or phrases that are actually ON the interface labels, you’ll wind up with a false impression of how usable your interface is.

For example, if you ask a tester to “Compose an e-mail” and the button for writing a new e-mail is actually labeled “compose e-mail,” the tester will simply match the phrases up rather than thinking organically in terms of what they’re trying to accomplish and then figuring out the interface. This is “leading the tester” by “feeding” him/her information with your questions.

So you want to ensure that you ask question using terms that are not directly on the interface labels.  Use synonyms.  Don’t make your tasks so easy that the tester simply has to match up terms.  Going a step further, if most users won’t think of a task in terms of multiple steps, but your interface requires multiple steps, don’t break your tasking down into steps to match the interface.  Write the question or task in the way that most users would think of it within a given scenario.

3)    Don’t let users be the designers.

When you get goal-oriented tasks, each user will have different levels at which they learn the interface and pick it up, and some users will do crazy things.  So some users will offer suggestions.  Don’t take those suggestions literally or at face value.  You’re looking for what users DO more than what they say.  This is similar to the rule against not asking users what they “think” of an interface.

4)    Don’t let the statistics fool you.

If you’ve done 20 tests in a row and, let’s say, 5 out of 20 were failures, but as you’ve been working on it and creating new iterations, the last 5 tests went extremely smoothly, you’ve got a good design.  You need to think of the results in terms of being 5 for 5 rather than 15 for 20.

This also applies to individual tasks within a test.  If users find some minor tasks are more difficult to accomplish than operating the really commonly-used features, don’t let those “usability problems” count anywhere near as much as your successes with the main functions of your interface.

Basically, not everything can be a big red button in the middle of the screen.  You have to balance things out and sometimes a few items are a bit more difficult to find and there’s really no perfect solution for a multiple use interface.

5)    Don’t get discouraged.

Your expectations are usually going to be high prior to the first test.  You’ll wonder how people aren’t seeing what they are supposed to see.  So user testing can be a humbling experience.

That’s why it’s usually best to test and tweak your interface in iterations.  You can’t design perfectly from the get-go because you are too much inside the bottle as the designer.  But as you alternate insight generated from testing with new and improved interface iterations, you’ll find the magic if you’re willing to hang in there.

6.    Don’t try to test too much at once.

You’ll get easier to analyze results if you limit your tasks to just 2-3.  And at UserTesting.com’s prices, it’s not a big deal if you end up running additional tests instead of adding more tasks to the same test.

But wait, there’s more… Patrick also walked me through how these principles played out when used to evaluate Jigsaw Health’s landing page for Magnesium Supplements.  Catch the walk-through on our next follow-up post.

Any tips, tricks or traps you want to share?

[Editor's note: the author of this post is now blogging at jeffsextonwrites.com]

But as the ROI figures attest, the ads worked.  And they worked because:

1) The animated movement made them almost impossible to ignore.

This is important because online visitors are practically hardwired to ignore banners and right-hand columns in order to focus on Active Window content.  So most static banner ads are assiduously ignored.  Right-hand column ads can work, but you’d better have a very targeted audience and contextually relevant ad

2) The appeal of the offer was incredibly broad – if you owned a home, you were a potential target.

As annoying as the LowerMyBills ads were, they worked because they had a relevant offer to the vast majority of viewers.  Obviously, you can have a narrower appeal if you also narrow the placement and context of your ad, but the laws of relevancy still apply.

So why do I bring this all up?  Because it appears as if Apple has figured out how to make animated banner ads un-ignorable AND enjoyable (rather than annoying).  Check out this post on Apple’s latest banner and sky-scraper ad combo on the New York Times.

P.S. And for all the Apple fans out there, here’s more news on the highly anticpated Apple Tablet computer

In my last post, I made use of a brick and mortar analogy to the current online behavior of some e-commerce Websites, and even recommended the use of those analogies when analyzing online persuasion strategies.

And since at least a few readers responded positively to the idea, I thought I’d share one of Get Elastic’s videos  dramatizing exactly one of those analogies, as well as sharing a link to their whole series.

So welcome to The Crazy, Messed-up World of E-commerce!

And if you haven’t already bookmarked Get Elastic’s blog, go ahead and do that now.

Never?

You mean no one has ever blocked the exit and said something like, “Hey, I saw you put that bottle of wine in your cart, why didn’t you buy it?”

It sounds funny until you realize that most online remarketing services offer to do exactly that to your website visitors.  They’ll pester them with e-mails, pop-ups, and phone calls should they have the bad fortune of visiting your site, adding something to your shopping cart, and then not buying it.

Why would otherwise sane e-tailers revert to such uncivil, gorilla-like tactics?  Really bad assumptions about both human nature and the nature of online shopping.  They simply haven’t compared what they’re doing to that kind of offline analogy.  So here are the bad assumptions, along with a few suggestions on how to correct them and what to do instead:

Assumption #1: Everyone is a late stage buyer

Related assumptions: Everyone who puts something in your shopping cart has a full-blown intent to purchase that item, and it was just chance or a shopping cart flaw that caused them to “abandon” your cart.  Cart abandonment is caused within the cart itself.

Corrections:

• Lots of people research and comparison-shop before they buy.
• Adding an item to cart is often a means of comparison shopping
• Adding an item to cart is often the only way to get important information for making the buying decision – stuff like shipping costs, whether express delivery is available, gift options etc.
• Most lost sales are caused by a lack of information and persuasion on the product page and the rest of the website – not by the cart itself.

Assumption #2: Long-term effects will parallel short-term gain

Related assumptions: sales that you recover from abusive or annoying tactics are easily tied to increased revenue and therefore are more important than the much-harder-to-measure ill will and annoyance created by those same techniques.  That the successes are as cumulative as the ill will generated.

Corrections:

• “He who would run his business with visible figures alone will soon have neither business nor visible figures to work with.”  -    W. Edwards Deming
• Don’t mistake a lack of hate e-mail or complaints as a lack of passionate response.  Or at the least, find out a way to measure the offense or annoyance you’re causing amongst the visitors who you don’t convert through your remarketing efforts.    If more people are converted than are pissed off, and the converted become repeat buyers, then keep doing what you’re doing.  But have the discipline to find out for sure.
• Pissed off people are a lot more likely to share their experiences than a visitor converted through remarketing tactics.  And even the converted visitor will be less likely to do ANY further early stage shopping from you now that they know what to expect from putting an item in your cart or visiting your checkout page.
• Ask any remarketing service what the longer-term trends for their customers have been.  If they can’t tell you overall impact on their clients conversion rates for periods of at least 1-2 years, you should be very, very suspicious.

Assumption #3:  It never hurts to ask.

Related assumptions: that the mere form of a question /offer renders it impossible to offend visitors’ sensibilities or violate their sense of privacy and online safety.

Corrections:

• Read this Seth Godin post
• Imagine that you had only started to fill out a check-out form, had not ever hit any kind of “submit” or “enter” button before closing out, but now have that website e-mailing and calling you because they pulled the info off of their server in real-time, as you typed it into the form.  How do you feel about that?  Think this thing doesn’t happen?  It does.
• A website forces you to create an account in order to checkout.  You create one.  Then you see that they gouge their customers on shipping charges.  You close out of the process and now you’re receiving spam from that company/website.  Are you EVER likely to do business with them in this or any other lifetime?

So are all automated responses and attempts to “save the sale” a bad idea?

Absolutely not.  Just let your offline sense of what’s appropriate guide you in your applications of this online technology. Pushy sales clerks can kill brick and mortar sales just as easily as over-aggressive re-marketing techniques for the simple reason that human nature doesn’t change just because a person goes online.  In fact, I frequently recommend Why We Buy to Web optimization specialists and online copywriters for exactly this reason.

So to use that offline analogy, let’s say you are looking at a more expensive bottle of wine and that the store owner sees you put it back on the shelf to grab a few other cheaper bottles.

Would it be ok for the clerk to approach you, mention that the bottle you were looking at is one of the best buys he has in the store, guarantee you’ll love it, and offer to give you a discount to get you to try a bottle?   Or for him to show you similar bottles closer to your price range?

As long as the clerk was respectful and took “no” for an answer, there’s no problem with that at all, right?  So how could you do it online?

• You could show special offers on previously-deleted-from-the-cart merchandise during the checkout process
• You could have a button on your product page that says “alert me to any specials or discounts on this product,” and then follow-up with a special e-mail offer AFTER the visitor has given you permission to contact them.
• For completed sales – and completed sales ONLY! – you could send a follow-up e-mail with special deals on previously-deleted-from-the-cart merchandise
• And a few other techniques that I’m sure you’ll come up with yourself if you spend some time thinking about it.  I don’t want to give away all my secrets without exacting any mental work from my readers

All of these things work just as well online as their offline counterparts, which is far more than can be said for most “gorilla” (re)marketing tactics.

P.S.  Before going through all this trouble to remarket, why not make sure you’ve fully optimized your checkout process to begin with?  Bryan Eisenberg’s initial and follow-up blog posts on this are a great place to start.