FutureNow's GrokDotCom / Marketing Optimization Blog » Buying Process

Help the Visitor Choose: Let Her Click to Compare

Melissa Burdon — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 13:00:04 +0000

A lot of companies agree that they have problems with their category pages. Coming into the Holiday Season, it’s incredibly important to think of those things that will help the visitor move through her buying process easily, and improving the customer experience on category pages can have a real impact. Optimizing category pages can prevent “pogo sticking” behavior, reduce bounce rates, and improve overall conversion. Our clients are bold enough to work with us to verify the best of these tactics.

I’ll touch on one that seems to work across the board to help boost conversion: the “click to compare.”

Have you ever come to a category page with an incredibly long list of products, and had a hard time narrowing down your options and choosing one product? Give the visitor the option to check a box next to each product on a category page, and then have her click on a button to compare these chosen products. This not only lets the visitor take note of which products interest her from the long scrolling list, but it also gives her the ability to compare more detailed features that don’t fit in the limited space of a category page.

One of our clients, a seller of home medical supplies, gives their visitors the option to check boxes next to each product they want to compare, and then click a large call to action to “compare checked items.”

This action results in a pop up where visitors are able to compare these chosen product options on a single page in more detail.

If you don’t already offer the visitor the option to compare, help her narrow down her choices and test a version of your site where you allow her to compare her product options.

Happy Testing

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Starting as low as $1000 per month: FutureNow's OnTarget provides on-going expert analysis and prioritized recommendations to improve website conversion rates 40-80% or more. Lead generation and ecommerce versions available.

Cross-post: How to Improve a Product Page, Part 1

Brendan Regan — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 16:59:00 +0000

Today, Ralph Wilson’s internet marketing resource, Web Marketing Today, posted Part 1 in a two-part video interview with our Bryan about concrete ways to improve product pages for higher conversions. In it, Bryan explains how FutureNow took on the product page design of eCommerce heavyweight Land’s End, and shows how you can use layout changes to test the buying path on your own product pages.

If you’re interested in improving your product detail/landing pages and cross-selling, this video (and upcoming Part 2 video) is not to be missed.
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Starting as low as $1000 per month: FutureNow's OnTarget provides on-going expert analysis and prioritized recommendations to improve website conversion rates 40-80% or more. Lead generation and ecommerce versions available.

Are Your Analytics Causing You to Lose 30% of Your Sales?

Jeff Sexton — Tue, 16 Jun 2009 19:14:17 +0000

Most companies measure keyword performance – and especially PPC keyword performance – based on one factor: did that word or phrase bring converting visitors to the site on the visit in which they converted.

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?
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Starting as low as $1000 per month: FutureNow's OnTarget provides on-going expert analysis and prioritized recommendations to improve website conversion rates 40-80% or more. Lead generation and ecommerce versions available.

Can Bad Assumptions Lead to “Gorilla Marketing”?

Jeff Sexton — Mon, 18 May 2009 18:51:15 +0000

In the offline world, have you ever been chased by retail staff because you opted not to buy something at their store?

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.
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Starting as low as $1000 per month: FutureNow's OnTarget provides on-going expert analysis and prioritized recommendations to improve website conversion rates 40-80% or more. Lead generation and ecommerce versions available.

Can your Website Handle the Complexity of your Sale?

Jeff Sexton — Tue, 21 Apr 2009 18:02:36 +0000

As weird as it sounds, it’s the norm for businesses with sales cycles that might be as long as several months to a year and that might involve multiple decision makers and influencers to utterly fail to take these factors into consideration when constructing their website or selecting an analytics package.

In fact, whenever I work with B2B and complex sales clients it’s a sure bet their website won’t:

1) Adequately address the multiple decision-makers and influencers involved in securing the lead

If a sales manager needs to justify a training expense to his CEO and CFO, wouldn’t it help to provide your inside champion with messaging and tools to help him make his (read “your”) case?

It’s usually good to have sections of your website and messaging designed specifically for those secondary decision-makers and influencers that need to sign-off on the decision of your inside champion. As an analogy to the consumer world, would you really want to construct a website that sells engagement rings without providing content and messaging for the prospective fiancee?

2) Have planned (and tracked) conversion points for visitors who are early in the buying process

To keep with the consumer analogy, let’s say you’re considering having a pool put into your back yard. Assuming that one of your local pool suppliers/installers had a website with valuable early and middle stage content, how many times might you visit their website before actually contacting them and becoming a lead?

You might come to them early on when doing preliminary research regarding what type of pool you wanted, what size, shape, depth, etc you should look at, what kind of associated expenses and purchases are involved, etc. Reading this stuff might take 3-5 or even 15 different visits. How would you know if any of these visits are successful? How could you measure or get a handle on your Website’s influence on such a buyer?I’d normally suggest having a goal for these types of visitors. Maybe it’s downloading a pool planning or pools for dummies report/PDF. Maybe it’s playing with an interactive pool builder or pool cost calculator. Whatever it is, having a trackable (and helpful) event for these early stage buyers helps to track your Website’s success in attracting and engaging

Moving to the middle stage of the buying process, you might touch the site again when you are closer to buying and constructing a short list of potential contractors/installers. This time you might drill down into why you should do business with them and not someone else, reading up on their installation timelines, the skill of their install crew, etc.You may or may not feel like filling out a lead form at this point. But a valuable and well-merchandised free download titled something like, “10 Questions to Ask Any Pool Contractor,” might look far more attractive to you – especially if you only had to provide a name and e-mail (rather than the lead forms more detailed info requests) to get it.

And then at the late stage of your buying process you might look at the site a third time to fill out the form or get the phone number to actually buy the pool. What a waste if the pool website only had the lead form as a conversion point, without ever providing (let alone tracking) any of the early and middle stage downloads and conversion events. Questions would go unanswered, and prospective buyers would go unengaged / go somewhere else.

Needless to say, the exact same patterns of behavior occur for B2B sites as well. And yet most B2B sites don’t have defined content and conversion points for their early and middle stage visitors. Your prospective leads are going to go somewhere to get their questions answered, shouldn’t it be on your website not your competitors?

3) Have metrics/analytics capable of tracking visitor behavior over multiple visits.

While early and middle stage conversion points help a Web analyst/website optimizer get a better handle on a sites overall success in engaging early and middle stage buyers, it still leaves them guessing at the big picture, simply because they can’t track a lead generation or sale all the way back to that prospect’s first visit to the Website. This can be crucial for gauging the real success of a PPC campaign. Key words that might look unprofitable (because they target earlier stage buyers) might be spectacularly profitable – but only after the 8th (or 20th) visit to the site. Unfortunately, if you can’t track visitor behavior over multiple visits, it’s difficult to get a handle on real – vs. false- measures of keyword performance.

While I love, love, love Google Analytics / Google Ad Words, this is exactly one of these tools shortcomings. And it’s one reason that we insist that our OnTarget clients install our software in addition to GA/GWO: OnTarget can bracket visitor behavior through keyword entry and track individual visit behavior over multiple visits. It’s a wish-list come true for us Future Now Persuasion Architects and can be a positive boon for our On Target clients.

So there you have it: start matching your B2B and complex sale website to the real complexity of your sale. I’ll be writing follow-up posts with exercises and steps on how to do this, but in the meantime, would it be too forward of me to suggest you sign up for On Target?
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Starting as low as $1000 per month: FutureNow's OnTarget provides on-going expert analysis and prioritized recommendations to improve website conversion rates 40-80% or more. Lead generation and ecommerce versions available.

Does Online Browsing Bend the Laws of Scent and Relevance?

Jeff Sexton — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 11:31:49 +0000

So your friend shows you this book he can’t stop raving about. After giving it the old dust-cover/random-flip-through examination, you pretty much decide to buy it.

Now, when you arrive at amazon.com, my question is: are you at all interested in the book recommendations that Amazon has for you?

Absolutely not, right? Or at least not yet.

You came to buy a specific book. You’ve already got a task in mind and browsing random books aint it. You’ll likely blow past any and all call-outs, recommendations, and other assorted distractions until you’ve found the book you came to buy.

And if Amazon ends up not having the book in stock, you’ll go elsewhere.

But AFTER you’ve found the book you wanted, recommendations are welcomed. At that point you’ll actually pay attention to other books Amazon recommends and bundles with your searched-for book.   You’ll even look at what other Amazon shoppers eventually bought after viewing your friend’s book.

Task Orientation Defines Scent

This Amazon thought experiment exemplifies the task-orientation common to most online visitors.

Visitors arrive at your site with a goal in mind. They already have a task, and your website either helps them accomplish that task or it gets dumped. And that goes for every page on your site – either it contains the content the visitor wants, or it provides a link to it, or the visitor leaves.

But what about people just wanting to browse?

This is a question posed to me in a recent comment. As the commenter put it:

“… when I’m browsing through Amazon – with no other goal than to pass the time – I get converted to buy stuff all the time.

‘People who bought x also bought Y’ And if the book or cd Y is something I’ve been interested in – it triggers a purchase.”

His point was that browsing is a task-less online activity that eliminates the importance of scent.

And it’s an interesting question/thought. To answer it, I’ll first have to distinguish between early stage shopping and true browsing.

Early Stage Buying vs. True Browsing

In the early stage of the buying process, the visitor is aware of an itch he’d like to scratch, but isn’t quite sure exactly what purchase will best scratch that itch. Let’s say our shopper is vaguely aware of wanting to get in shape, and is kind of wanting to do Yoga. But he’s not sure if he wants to do Yoga in a dedicated studio, or take classes in a more general, multi-purpose gym, or just buy some tapes for home workouts.

This Yoga shopper is still task oriented – it’s just that the task is researching rather than buying. And a home-workout themed website or Yoga Studio website that helped her do the research stands a far better chance of getting her business than a Website exclusively focused on late stage buyers.

This is one reason we highly recommend catering to early stage buyers and developing a content strategy for them. And for more info on how to do that effectively, check out David Young’s excellent video series: Hunting for Early Bird Persuasion

Browsing is different. Browsing means the shopper isn’t even clearly aware of a product desire yet. They’re not even focused on research. If asked, the shopper couldn’t even describe the itch they’re looking to scratch.   And yet, they could buy if presented with the right product.

Browsers are still task-oriented

Despite appearances, browsing isn’t task-free. Even though a specific object hasn’t (yet) catalyzed their free-floating desire, browsing visitors are still driven by desire.

Browsers are seeking novelty and possibility: the possibility of finding something different and better than they’d have imagined.   Browsers are as goal-oriented as any other shopper – just with different goals.

And as is true with every goal-oriented shopper, any website that fails to deliver on those goals gets dumped. In fact, most shoppers only browse on sites that have already proved themselves capable of delivering novel products.

People browse Amazon.com not because it presents them with recommendations on the home page, but because Amazon masterfully presents them with interesting possibilities of new books that are similar to and possibly even remarkably better than books we’re already impressed with. This is why the commenter I quoted from recalled the ‘People who bought x also bought Y’ quote rather than a “view Amazon recommendations” quote.

So how does a site plan to deliver on this search for novelty and cooler-than-expected items?

What it takes to be a browsing-friendly Website

Apart from bargain-priced rotating-inventory sites like bluefly, overstock.com or woot.com, the top three e-tailers most noted for browsing-friendly design are:

Amazon

Zappos

iTunes

Here’s what they have in common:

They sell “impulse-buy-friendly” and “most-people-own-a-bunch” items. Think about it: books, music, and shoes are all things we buy a lot of AND things we buy on impulse. So each of these sites have a lot of repeat visits/visitors AND a fair chance at luring visitors into impulse buys.

They make it easy to sample the items in stock. iTunes lets you actually listen to the song. Amazon lets you read the dust cover, table of contents, and a few passages from the book. Most reviews also give you a flavor of the book. Zappos gives you the best product photography to be found and provides expedited shipping both ways, which is a way to eliminate the pain and friction of customers trying on and “sampling” the shoes.

They routinely get new items in stock and make it a point to stock huge inventories. If browsers want novelty, it helps to be able to provide it, both with new stuff and with stuff I’ve never heard of before. Amazon.com has all sorts of weird titles I’d never find at my local Barnes & Noble or even imagine existed. Same thing with iTunes and Zappos. Browsing shoppers know that novelty is only a click away.

They have solid user reviews set-up. Amazon and Zappos make up for limited sampling through user reviews, making it no coincidence that they have the best and most solidly established review communities on the Web. iTunes lags behind the others when it comes to reviews, but makes up for by better sampling, lower average price point, and better than average recommendations.

They make it easy to sort by regular categories AND by loose associations. Amazon let’s me see cool webs of connections between books, and look at user generated lists. Zappos provides great filtered navigation options, so that I can not only sort by black men’s dress shoes, but also by black cap-toe lace up oxfords that cost between $100 and $150. And many of the revues compare shoes, even to the point of recommending alternatives. iTunes allows users to sort music by genre, decade, and browse with the aid of since-you-bought-that-you’ll-like-this recommendations. For even better filtered, or faceted, sorting, check out this Get Elastic article as well as their thoughts on using user filtering and sorting preferences to personalize visitors shopping experience.

They’ve eliminated or greatly reduced buying friction. I can buy shoes on Zappos and get them next day or by 2nd day for free shipping. With Amazon prime, I get 1-Click buying, and free 2nd-day shipping. iTunes allows me to enjoy my music within seconds of buying. And I know I’ll never have a problem with billing or customer service with these e-tailers. There’s simply no friction to buying and a good bit of near-instant gratification – important factors for inspiring impulse buys.
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Starting as low as $1000 per month: FutureNow's OnTarget provides on-going expert analysis and prioritized recommendations to improve website conversion rates 40-80% or more. Lead generation and ecommerce versions available.

The Diagnosis? Buying Stage Schizophrenia

Brendan Regan — Wed, 18 Feb 2009 13:25:00 +0000

Every visitor comes to your site in their own personal “buying stage.” The buying stage is a wide spectrum, but we generally break it into Early, Middle, and Late stages:

Early means that the visitor has a problem, and is looking for a solution. They may not know who you are, or that your product/service solves their problem.

Middle means that they have an intention to buy a product or service that solves their problem, but not necessarily from you.

Late means that they’re persuaded to buy from you, and intend to close the deal.

Sometimes, websites seem to be doing everything right, but the Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) just aren’t as high as everyone expects.   Their sites are functional, accessible, usable, and intuitive. Their look and feel is credible, and their content is high quality. So why do their visitors not behave as we expect? Why do well-planned and well-executed scenarios (e.g. PPC ad, to landing page, to lead generating form, to thank you page) not always convert?

You guessed it: Buying Stage Schizophrenia.

Buying Stage Schizophrenia is when our selling process doesn’t jive with the visitor’s buying process. It’s when our conversion funnel is designed for a buying stage that the visitor isn’t in. Take a look at your site’s conversion funnel…it’s most likely designed for Late Stage buyers, right? Take a look at one of your PPC campaigns…are you showing Early Stage keywords a Middle Stage ad that sends the visitor down a Late Stage funnel? Poor visitor

The key point is to be aware that multiple buying stages are traversing your designed scenarios. It’s fine if your funnel is fine-tuned to Late Stage buyers, but do you have easy navigation paths to let an Early or Middle stage visitor branch out and get more information? It’s fine if your PPC landing pages are perfect for a Middle Stage searcher, but can an impatient Late Stage searcher “Buy Now”?

How do I identify buying stages to improve my scenarios?

A few ways, using basic analytics tools and skills, are:

Look at your keyword lists (in-site search, organic keywords, and paid keywords) and start segmenting by buying stage. Guessing is OK.

Look at click paths and navigation (which pages would be attractive/informative to the various stages?)

Look for those who bail out of conversion funnels (it could be that they’re not ready to buy)

Look at entrance sources (organic vs. PPC vs. referrals vs. direct visits)

Coincidentally (read: not coincidental at all ), we just launched a subscription service that can help with this very issue, you can start improving your conversion rate for as low as $1,000 a month.
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Starting as low as $1000 per month: FutureNow's OnTarget provides on-going expert analysis and prioritized recommendations to improve website conversion rates 40-80% or more. Lead generation and ecommerce versions available.

Instant Clarity on Common Website Problems

Jeff Sexton — Wed, 17 Dec 2008 19:11:26 +0000

Click here to view the embedded video.

Get Elastic’s recent post on reducing friction kicks butt – providing incredibly clear explanations of too-common Website flaws along with great examples of how to do it right. I wish I wrote it. Not only did the article reduced me to green-faced envy, but many of the post’s links pointed to further “must reads.”

Do yourself a favor and go read it now.
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Starting as low as $1000 per month: FutureNow's OnTarget provides on-going expert analysis and prioritized recommendations to improve website conversion rates 40-80% or more. Lead generation and ecommerce versions available.

Texas Tech Tuesday – It Ain’t Just About the Website

Jeff Sexton — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 21:15:54 +0000

As part of my Texas Tech series, I’ve been corresponding with West Texas entrepreneur and football fanatic (sorry for the redundancy), Tom Grimes, who has consistently offered outstanding commentary and feedback on the Texas Tech and Coach Leach phenomenon.

In fact, his last e-mail was so good and applied so well to most lead generation websites that I thought I’d share it with you directly:

“…Leach recruited the BIGGEST OFFENSIVE LINE in college football (bet it’s bigger than most pro teams as well). These guys make the offense that Leach runs possible. They wear down defensive lines, protect the passer, open up running lanes … but guess what … THEY DON’T SCORE. They only make it possible to score.

I think great websites similarly open up the door of possibility but no matter how big the website is … and how many bells and whistles it has … there is a lot more to scoring points with the customer. You still need to do all the other things right.

Southwest Airlines is aggressive online. I print boarding passes through the website. I get my seat assignments through the website. I also get regular email offers from them. Sounds hunky dory but the Website AIN’T the reason I am booking flights. It is the cost, convenience and great service Southwest has been delivering to ME for a long time. The WEB just made my ongoing relationship with them even easier.

Amazon isn’t just a website … they do an incredible job of shipping my books to my doorstep … and yep, they send me customized emails about new books on subjects I read.

UPS lets my company do all its shipping on line … but it is the guy in the brown truck who picks up my packages on the day I want to ship that I am interested in … the UPS website is merely a tool.

The same concept applies to your clients. The WEBSITE is an extension of the business … it ain’t the business. The Man-Giants for Texas Tech don’t score … they make it possible for Graham Harrel and Michael Crabtree (i.e., the SALES TEAM) to connect and put points on the board … the defense is the OTHER stuff we do that people may not notice (like delivering really awesome service).

I think that more and more energy is being put into websites (the Offensive Line) … and it is vitally important … but you still have to have a sales force (QB & Receivers) and combine it with excellent core service & products (Defense). Put it all together and you can win a National Title.

t”

Yet while Tom was taking this from a somewhat negative light by asking “are your company’s QB/receivers up to snuff?” I was taking this from the opposite perspective of, the better the offensive line blocks, the more successful the rest of your offense will become.

More specifically, clients with lead generation sites are always more than happy with the increased number of sales leads we can create through Website redesigns and optimization, but that’s not what the rave about. What they’re usually blown away by is the increase in lead quality and reduction in sales cycle time.

Why?

Because most clients weren’t thinking about – and therefore weren’t expecting improvement in – that aspect of lead generation when they hired us, so success on that front is more of a WOW for them. And also because those factors can be even more important in bottom line success than increasing the raw amount of leads.

Of course, when you really focus on the fact that the website itself won’t complete the sale, it becomes second nature to ensure the sales team gets the best possible hand-offs and the most protection from time-wasting tire kickers “sacking” your QB.

So if you already have a solid sales team, the question I’d ask you is: how good is your offensive line, and how much more could you be scoring with a better one?
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Starting as low as $1000 per month: FutureNow's OnTarget provides on-going expert analysis and prioritized recommendations to improve website conversion rates 40-80% or more. Lead generation and ecommerce versions available.

Bridging the Psychic Pain Gap

Jeff Sexton — Tue, 11 Nov 2008 13:15:13 +0000

When people are confident of their next paycheck, they have a predisposition to buy most of their “because I want it” items that are within financial reach (and maybe even just out of reach as well – hence the credit card). That’s because their psychic pain threshold for buying is just above their actual expendable income level.

Here’s how to visualize it: there are usually, say, 5-7 “extra-budgetary” purchases a person might have in mind for the next two months or so: nicer sunglasses, or an expensive wireless mouse, or shoes or some type of clothing, etc. And most of those things will actually get purchased within a rolling 2-3 month time frame, without the buyer feeling that any of them represent a considered purchase – even if the sunglasses or shoes might be in or above the $150 range.

But that’s only in a prosperous and sunny economy, which we ain’t in right now.

Right now, people’s psychic pain threshold has dipped below their real level of expendable cash – they can still afford some extra-budgetary purchases, but parting with the cash feels a lot more painful.

More plainly, these discretionary items have just transformed into considered purchases.

Rather than buying these “I’d like to have” items in fairly quick succession, people will window-shop the hell out of them, mentally comparing the emotional pay-off to the price, trying to bridge the psychic pain gap. And then they’ll buy just one of them – or maybe two by going with, say, less expensive sunglasses and slightly cheaper shoes.

What this shopping behavior looks like in the aggregate is that people are still buying, but:

Average order size drops, a la the cheaper sunglasses

Conversion rates edge down due to return window-shopping visits

Traffic/Unique Visitors goes down.

But wait, why would traffic go down if people are doing MORE window-shopping?

Because there’s only so much space in our mental queue of “gee I’d like one of those.” There are thousands of things I want, but I can only actively ruminate on – and really feel the want of – a handful of them at any one time.

So if actual purchases slow down, then the rolling 2-3 month want list gets backlogged and it becomes “survival of the fittest” for items to stay active in my mental buying queue. I’m window-shopping more, but for less things in any given span longer than 3 months. And that means an aggregate dip in traffic for most Websites.

So what can you do about it?

How can you fight these trends and stay flat (aka “the new up”) instead of trending down?

Start acting like you’re selling a considered purchase; consciously aim to overcome the psychic pain threshold, instead of assuming the buyer has a green light for purchasing. Here are some tips on how to do that:

Insist on superior product photos, descriptions, and objection-handling sales copy. Think about how much more research you do for a car than a t-shirt. Think about the kind of reviews written up on Edmunds.com compared to the average product description you’ll find at Target. Emotionally, there’s more at stake so you require more information/copy.

Know that you’re competing well outside your category to get customers’ expendable cash – and be compared to compete. Build long-term perceived value around your product while lowering buyer anxiety. Customer reviews are often far better at this than copy. That means reviews shouldn’t be seen as optional any more, and that you should learn how to incorporate these review-elements into your sales copy.

Start optimizing for conversion now. Seriously. You’re competing for market share in a smaller market. You only stay flat if you take customer’s expendable income away from competitors, and it’ll help if your Website is more persuasive and efficient than theirs.

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Why You’d Be Smart to Let a Stranger Select Your Baby Stroller

Jeff Sexton — Mon, 22 Sep 2008 10:01:49 +0000

There I was at Babies”R”Us, way back in 2003, manhandling different strollers and finding myself more eager to read the amazon.com reviews than to kick the tires myself – and it had nothing to do with wanting to avoid the in-store shopping experience and everything to do with wanting to make the best purchase decision possible.

So why would I want to read reviews when I could examine the stroller first hand?

Because I was a yet-to-be-first-time parent and I knew that what really separates good from mediocre strollers are the things that only become apparent with longer-term use and/or at least some parenting experience. I wanted to know things like: does the stroller hold up to continued use; how easy is it to load in the car; are there things that start to come in handy that I might not already know about, like one-handed operation, extra cargo room, tight-turning radius, etc. In short, I wanted to know the kind of things I’d be more likely to read about in reviews than I’d be likely to see or think about by taking a 5-minute stroll down the Babies”R”Us aisle with no baby in the stroller.

As it turns out the persuasive appeal of long-term thinking isn’t new to the internet age. In Breakthrough Advertising, Gene Schwartz specifically advises copywriters to “Stretch Out Your Benefits in Time.” But while product copy can do an adequate job of that, it’s nowhere near as credible as a customer review that mentions a product’s enduring or longer-term benefits.

So it was with an overpowering sense of deja vu that I read Holly Buchanan’s post on gender differences in product reviews.   Seems men are more likely to mention the product’s immediate usefulness and performance while women are more likely to talk about a product’s longer-term ability to fit into her lifestyle, which might explain why the stroller reviews leaned heavily towards long-term benefits.

My question and suggestion is this: what is your company doing to solicit / elicit long-term product reviews from your customers?

Seems like this would be especially important if your product is in the higher-quality, higher-price-point part of the curve. If your product shines best in long-term performance, what are you doing to ensure those traits and stretched-out-in-time benefits are showing up in your customer reviews?
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How Online Searches Affect Offline Sales

Holly Buchanan — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 10:23:27 +0000

I was recently looking for a new speaker stand for my iPod. It would never even occur to me to go into my local electronics store to see what was available and what might be right for me. I do what I always do when researching a new product. I go to Google. Once I do my research on the Internet and decide what I want – THEN I may go to a brick and mortar store to buy it.

Seems I’m not alone. A recent study provides more evidence of the online/offline buying connection.

Media measurement company, Nielsen Online, conducted a survey to examine the relationship between online research and offline purchases. They found that 80% of participants who had recently bought consumer electronics from a brick and mortar store whose site they visited first.

53% bought from the site where they spent the most time.

58% would choose the internet if they could only use one channel to conduct product research on consumer electronics. Only 25% chose the brick and mortar store.

It’s certainly not breaking news that customers do research online before they buy. But how much that online experience affects offline purchases may have been underestimated.

Are you answering your customers questions?

I was in Petsmart the other day stocking up food and gourmet snacks for my pups. I’ve been considering changing dog food. But was that a decision Petsmart’s brick and mortar store could help me make? Maybe, if there had been a doggie nutrition expert standing in the aisle, or they had a “food tasting” aisle where I could let my picky Boston Terrier sample different foods and choose his favorite. But no such help was provided.

The Neilson Online study found this about pet food purchasers:

Here’s the percentages of pet food survey participants who would use the internet to research each topic.

48% Learn about nutritional specifications

45% Learn about product ingredients

45% Learn about recalls

40% Learn more about safety issues

40% Find sales/promotions

This works both ways. Find better ways to answer your visitors’ questions on your website, but also look at better ways to answer their questions in your brick and mortar store.

Defining & Measuring Success

With the average conversion rate under 3%, it doesn’t mean that 97% of visits fail. How do you determine if you give your visitors what they want, whether you communicated effectively with them and whether you influenced their thinking and buying behaviors as well as those of their social-media-connected friends.

Defining success or failure, not only through your metrics but also through measuring the perceptions and actions of your visitors is challenging but possible if you understand the value of qualitative metrics and of quantitative metrics using Persuasion Architecture; just ask us how.
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Preventing the Add-and-Abandon; Making a more user-friendly wish list

Natalie Hart — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 12:21:33 +0000

Ever wonder what happens when you watch your customers put loads of merchandise in their shopping cart; spend a significant amount of time on your site and then all of a sudden abandon it?

Ever get frustrated that they didn’t utilize the wish list tool? Your online shoppers may be falling into the “add and abandon” method of online shopping.

There are 3 core reasons people don’t utilize your wish list.

1.    Sites often require you to fill out loads of personal information prior to even creating the list.

Recently on shopbop.com I found an amazing pair of shoes, and rather than behaving in my traditional add and abandon method, I chose to create a wish list. Upon entering the link, I was overwhelmed by the personal information that I had to fill out. An array of blank fields loomed in front of me, awaiting for me divulge all the information that categorizes me as an individual in the online realm.

Gathering information from your customer is great, but make sure they see the mutual value in entering their personal information. Rather than overwhelming you customer with questions simply allow them to create a list, in the same format as the “add to cart” list.

After they add their items ask them if they’d like to save their wish list by registering to save it for another visit. During this stage it is ok to ask for your customers information or create a login with password, but not before. With a call to action such as “register” or “join” there is an implied sense that personal information will be required. It prepares your customer for what is coming.

The call to action of “create a wish list” does not imply the same expectations and when presented with a page such as this, it can appear that you’ve presented something they didn’t ask for.

2.    There’s no add to cart option

Another feature of the wish list that is frustrating is that seldom is there an offer to transfer your wish list directly to your shopping cart. Some sites will offer an link from the item in the wish list that goes back to the product page where the item can then be added to their cart, but a one click process that can transfer either a few or all of the items from the wish list to the cart will help get your customer to the checkout sooner.

In other words, wish lists can act as a dead-end if you don’t create an opportunity for them to purchase. Allowing them to take action from this page is a win-win, they get an easier checkout process and you get them to spend money. Boom!

3.    You don’t get a running total

Wish lists often appear as a list of the products. Some offer pictures of the products but seldom do they include all the tax and shipping costs that might be associated with the order. Often people want a running total of their desired purchases, especially if they are operating within a budget.

Wish lists are a great tool for both you and your shoppers; just make sure yours is easy to use and appealing.
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Another Reason She May Abandon You: Hormones

Michele Miller — Wed, 14 May 2008 15:50:48 +0000

I go into the garage for a hammer. On my way back into the house, I stop for a cold drink and remember that the kitchen trash needs to be taken out for tomorrow’s collection.

Dropping the can at the curb, I turn and notice that the landscaper forgot to turn on the drip irrigation system, so I trot over and flip the switch. I walk back into the house and realize that I forgot to put the cold bottle of water back into the fridge. I open the door and find my hammer, sitting on the top shelf, chilling next to a bottle of Sauvignon Blanc.

I’m glad I found the hammer. The only question is, “What did I need it for in the first place?”

Welcome to my world. Now in my late forties, I find myself staring down the barrel of menopause and I’m not thrilled about it. It’s not the age that bothers me (it’s only a number) but the havoc it wreaks on my thought process. With four times as many connections between the two sides of the brain, women already have a difficult time concentrating on one thing at a time. Throw in raging hormones and it’s virtually impossible to stay focused. Distraction rules the day.

All to say this: When shopping online, nothing drives a woman battier than putting items into a shopping cart and pushing the “continue shopping” button, only to be sent back to the homepage or a section she’s never visited. What if she wanted to buy the same item in another color? What if the original item page had listed complementary pieces that would go with the one she just ordered?

Imagine shopping in a home supply store. You pick up a light bulb, put it in your basket, and POOF! You suddenly find yourself back at the front entrance with the lighting department positioned all the way at the rear of the store. Do you feel like walking all the way back there just for your next item? Nah, I wouldn’t either. In fact, I can’t seem to remember why we came here in the first place, do you?

If you really want your customer to “continue shopping” on your site, make sure you guide her back to where she really wants to be. Otherwise, she might just might forget what she needed you for and abandon you altogether.

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About the author: Michele Miller is co-author of The Soccer Mom Myth — Today’s Female Consumer: Who She Really Is, Why She Really Buys.

[Editor's Note: The image is of Saturday Night Live's Tina Fey, wielding a pink axe in a fake commercial for a fake drug called "Annuale". Pharmaceutical marketers, and anyone with a sense of humor, should watch it.]
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Why Virgin’s Banner Ads Work, Even on Facebook!

Peter Lee — Wed, 02 Apr 2008 17:44:51 +0000

Traditional banner ads can be frustrating. They’re easy to ignore. And all too often, the landing page on the other side of the click doesn’t fulfill the promise of the ad.

So why not try something new, like placing an ad on Facebook, where captive users are forced to see it right there in their news feeds?

That’s Virgin America’s strategy. But is it anything new?

Despite the hype, social media ads are rarely different than traditional banner or pay-per-click ads. The landscape has changed slightly, but the need for fundamental persuasion and conversion tactics remains. As always, better planning makes all the difference. Let’s take a look…

A Smooth Takeoff

Here’s Virgin’s latest “sponsored news feed item” — i.e., fancy contextual banner ad that targets only certain demographics:

As you can see, the language is simple and engaging. A time limit (March 28) is set, thus creating a sense of urgency without drilling it into the customer’s head.

Nobody likes to be yelled at, especially not on an airplane. So why yell at them to “BUY NOW”? Virgin knows better, and this ad’s subtlety makes it that much more click-worthy.

A Soft Landing (Page)

The landing page continues the scent trail that started with the banner ad. Notice how the exact wording carries over.

See that? Change may be “in the air,” but Virgin was smart to stick with their original verbiage.

What’s even more interesting is that this landing page is actually the VirginAmerica.com homepage. It was the homepage last week, when the March 28 promotion was happening, anyway. This week, there’s a new promotion, and a new homepage message to match.

Consistency across channels is what ensures the success of Virgin’s ad buys. By adjusting the homepage to match their current campaigns, they’re capitalizing on the persuasive momentum of their various banner ad campaigns. (This screen shot proves that Virgin’s Facebook ads are no different than any of their other banners. Would they change the company’s homepage just to match a persuasion scenario that starts at Facebook? Nope.)

Persuade → Qualify → Convert

Virgin America continues the momentum from click-to-click by keeping it simple and keeping visitors engaged on the active window. By showing all March 28-related promotions on a single page, they’re reduce friction in the buying process.

Virgin uses this page to reinforce the visitor’s original interest while introducing a few more offers, thereby qualifying our needs. We click through, and it’s off to the booking engine.

Like most e-commerce shopping carts, it seems flight-booking engines were made to confuse us. Not Virgin’s. Theirs is intuitive and straightforward. As you can see, several steps are combined into one. It’s the website usability equivalent of the magical airplane stall door lock (which doubles as a light switch, and triples as a switch for the fan).

The only downside to having a site that works this well is that now Virgin needs to make sure people enjoy the flight as much as they enjoyed booking it. But if the real experience is anything like the one online, it looks like they’ve got you covered.

CMO’s should take notice.

While there’s no such thing as a perfect website, you should still try to convert like a Virgin.
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The Good, The Bad & The Pay-Per-Click Ugly

Daniel McGuigan — Thu, 06 Mar 2008 17:52:42 +0000

A few months ago, I showed how Dell had bought a PPC ad for “bestbuy Sony DSC-W80,” and although they were smart to buy this highly-targeted search term, there was no follow-through on the landing page.

Bryan Eisenberg bought the camera last year and was so happy with its performance that he’s been spreading the word around the office ever since. After doing a routine Google search, we noticed — unsurprisingly — that there are a lot of bidders for the term “Sony DSC W80″.

What we soon found was that, much like Dell, the landing pages these other e-tailers were taking visitors to illustrated everything from the good, to the bad, to the PPC-ugly.

Plenty of options…

Looks like there’s a lot of competition for this search term. If a searcher clicks one link and doesn’t find what they’re looking for, it will be easy for them to hit the Back button, to see if the competition makes learning about it — and eventually buying it — easier.

When customers have this many options, getting your link on the front page of Google isn’t enough; you have to bring them as far into the buying process as you can with the information you are given. Lets take a look at how well the different options presented here do at bringing the searcher closer to the purchase.

Make sure the Landing Page works

Walmart.com had one of the top 3 paid search results. When we click their link, we assume we’ll be taken where we’ll easily find the product that was advertised. Instead, the customer is brought to a non-working page (curiously titled “walmart9.com”), forcing them to click the Back button.

Obviously, Wal-Mart needs to update this URL. While it may have once led somewhere, it now only brings frustration to the camera-seeking masses. They’re losing sales and paid search credibility with anyone who clicks it.

Walmart.com surely has a massive PPC budget to oversee, and updates like this can slip through the cracks. But it serves as a good reminder to keep tabs on your paid search ads. If you notice one is converting poorly, or not at all, you should at least make sure the landing page works.

Give us a Brand or Category Page (at least)

Thankfully, Vanns.com doesn’t give us a broken link, yet it merely brings us to the homepage. This won’t do.

Since I typed in a specific brand and model number, I expect to be brought to a Product Page — or, at the very least, a Brand Page or Category Page. They have exact information about the product I’m looking for and they just drop me off on the homepage? Leaving it up to the visitor to first find a tiny “Digital Cameras” link, then navigate through the site to find the Product Page, is an unnecessary gamble, especially since the paid search link promised “Sony DSC W80 in stock!”

Why not take me directly to the Product Page instead of making me scan the homepage just to find a Category Page?

Sony’s word against Bryan’s?

You’d think the company that made the product would have something to say about the camera, even if it’s discontinued — which, apparently, it is. At this point, the halo from Bryan’s positive word-of-mouth is beginning to crack. (”Thanks a lot, buddy. Does this camera really exist?”)

SonyStyle.com is missing out on an opportunity here. Although they no longer make the camera, they could provide links to similar cameras, especially if there’s a newer versions of the same model — which there is. They could use this page to show improvements that were made to the newer model. This page provides visitors with nowhere to go besides Back.

• Manufacturers: It takes time to get the word out about your products. If you don’t take advantage of it, you’ll lose some sales from late adopters (a huge chunk of the market).

• Retailers: Don’t forget to capitalize on positive word-of-mouth from older model numbers. Turn would-be customers for those older products into buyers of the newer ones. If you still offer popular discontinued products, leverage that advantage with targeted Pay-Per-Click ads and Landing Pages.

Unscramble the Search

Finally, the product I’m looking for — and it’s right on the landing page. NewEgg.com has it down. They even show visitors the newer model on the same page!

NewEgg removes all the obstacles a visitor might go through to find the product (they’ve already clearly told Google) they’re looking for. They place visitors in the perfect place; this is where customers are in the buying process when they search for “Sony DSC W80″. It was a little harder to find this camera than it should have been, but ultimately, NewEgg shows how to get the most out of your PPC ads.

New research shows that fewer people are clicking Pay-Per-Click ads on Google. In past discussions on this blog, readers have expressed that they no longer use PPC ads because of numerous bad experiences. Perhaps that’s why so many companies out there aren’t optimizing or paying attention to their PPC ads, which — soon enough — affects how useful they are for consumers.

If Pay-Per-Click is part of your online strategy, make sure your ads are optimized. Otherwise, you’re leaving money on the table. PPC can be very valuable when used properly. But if you neglect it, and the experience isn’t useful for customers, these campaigns can negatively effect your business.

To be truly PPC- and Landing Page-savvy, here’s how to appeal to all buying modes.

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[Editor's Note: Want to convert more customers with your Pay-Per-Click campaign? Contact us.]
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That’s My Amazon Kindle, But Those Aren’t My Hands

Holly Buchanan — Tue, 18 Dec 2007 16:00:32 +0000

I’m not known for being a detail person. I’m not the type of woman who can tell you where we had our first date, what you were wearing, or what we ate, but I can tell you whether we had a good time. But when it comes to marketing to women, I’m starting to notice everything.

It usually starts with a feeling that something’s not right. That’s what happened when I kept seeing banner ads for Amazon’s new reading device, Kindle.

When I looked closer, I realized the problem – this is a first-person view, but those aren’t my hands. They’re very nice hands, but they’re a man’s hands. I thought I was being pretty nitpicky here, but it still bothered me that those weren’t my hands. So imagine my surprise when I went to Amazon to do a little holiday shopping and there it was: My personalized homepage with an ad for the Kindle. But this time… Those ARE my hands! (Well, not my hands, exactly, but a woman’s hands nonetheless.)

I wonder, does Amazon change the Kindle ad on your homepage based on whether your name indicates you’re a man or a woman? I don’t know. Anyone else have an Amazon homepage? Is the Kindle held by a man’s hands or a woman’s?

I was so impressed to see my own hands holding the device, I actually clicked through to read more about it. It looks pretty cool. But I had one big question: “Can you adjust the text size?” I can’t see. Really. It’s a problem. I sometimes won’t buy a book if the text size is too small, and it’s not like you can adjust the text size on a book. I didn’t end up seeing any information on the product page about adjustable text size until I scrolled way down to the bottom. Finally, I saw that, yes, you can indeed adjust text size on the Kindle.

Amazon, you’re doing a lot of things right here — (as of today, Kindles are sold out, so check back with Amazon for updates) — but if I could make one suggestion: Make the adjustable text size a main selling benefit and have it in a large, bold font. For those of us with poor eyesight, this could be the main reason for buying the gadget.

It’s sort of ironic, but the Kindle page should be a lesson to all of us. Showing benefits right away is a must, and readability matters — especially when “readability” is the main selling point for some people. Behavioral and demographic targeting is one thing, but the experience falls flat without persuasive copy.
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Women Buy Electronics? No Kidding?

Holly Buchanan — Fri, 16 Nov 2007 15:35:53 +0000

It was one of those eye-opening moments. I was in Toronto eating dinner at a cafe by a park, people-watching (one of my favorite pastimes). I saw a guy walking his dog and some kids skateboarding, doing tricks and racking up some serious bruises. And I saw women — some alone, some walking in pairs.Here’s what struck me: Every single woman was on the phone or texting on her BlackBerry. Every single one. Most of the guys were gadget-free. This seemed pretty funny to me since so many consumer electronics marketing efforts remain geared toward men.

Women are an extremely important market for consumer electronics. There is a huge opportunity here, especially since, according to one study in the UK, electronic retailers are doing such a poor job of understanding and reaching out to this market. Here’s what study has to say:

Thirty-five per cent of female internet users polled said they would increase their spending on consumer electronics if marketers and retailers thought harder about how they approach them and offered more guidance in stores and on e-commerce sites.

A staggering one in two women said they walk out of shops and leave websites without buying anything because they’re unable to find what they want, representing a huge opportunity for brand owners and retailers who are prepared to rethink their approach.

One third of women do not feel confident enough to ask questions in stores with one respondent describing electronics retailers as reeking of a “strong scent of man”.

Almost one in three women do not consider technology advertising relevant to them and the majority of women feel disillusioned that brand owners and retailers don’t understand what they care about and don’t view them as a relevant group of customers.

Ouch! That’s pretty harsh. But if you sell consumer electronics, and you have a website, this could be really good news. More and more women are researching products online before they buy — online or offline. So answer her questions on your website. Help her find the products that best meet her individual needs. Lose the techno-jargon and speak in plain English.

Here’s a great example of a big screen TV guide. See how the copy explains more than just features and benefits; it provides useful information to help her decide which type of TV would be best for her.

First, decide if you want the TV to be on a table, on the floor or on the wall. The advantage of LCD TVs is that they age very well. They rely on a light bulb that can be replaced after it burns out, which usually happens at the five-year mark.

LCD TVs also are very easy on the environment. They draw little power, and their production generates little in the way of hazardous materials. The disadvantage of LCD TVs is that they are relatively expensive and don’t get much larger than 30 inches. Also, demand for these things has been so strong lately that they actually have been creeping up in price because manufacturers can’t make enough of them.

That’s where plasma TVs pick up. Their displays are typically between 40 and 60 inches, and that is their main advantage over LCDs. Like everything else, plasma displays wear out. Under heavy use, you’ll get about three years out of a plasma display before you notice severe fading. If you leave a plasma display on all the time, it might actually degrade to a point at which it is nearly useless. What wears out is the panel itself — kind of like how a fluorescent bulb wears out — and there is nothing to do but discard it. Fortunately, they too are relatively environmentally friendly.

This is the kind of honest, transparent guidance she’s looking for. She cares about the placement of the TV, how long it will last, and, yes, women care about environmentally friendly products.

Would men also appreciate this kind of plain-spoken advice? Sure they would.

Does your website provide helpful guidance? Are you helping her to figure out which product is best for her? Or are you just listing features and product specs?
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Why I Nearly Flaked on the Season Pass

Melissa Burdon — Fri, 09 Nov 2007 19:08:48 +0000

Last winter, when I made my temporary move to Salt Lake City, I started researching the local ski resorts. The mountains surrounding the city are known for having some of the world’s biggest and lightest powder snow. I was convinced by the customer reviews I’d read online that were written by local ski bums from Utah.

Time and again, I read and heard reviews about the Snowbird resort having some of the most challenging terrain, coated by the area’s best powder. So when I finally got a chance to ski Snowbird’s Cottonwood Canyons trails for myself, I quickly turned into a raving Snowbird fan.

I was set on getting a season’s pass for the this year. And after reading reviews like this one from CitySearch, my excitement about the upcoming ski season reached fever pitch:

Depending on the characteristics of — or our level of attachment to — the must-have thing du jour, we all buy in different buying modes to match our feelings about it. I typically purchase commodities in a more Spontaneous mode, but I take my ski season very seriously, and my search for a good deal on a Snowbird pass turned into a Methodical review of various resources to find the ultimate deal. I took my time and I read everything I could before I pounced.

Although I knew I wanted a season’s pass, I had a hard time justifying the steep price Snowbird was asking ($1,149). If the season let me down with only a few big snow days, I could be kicking myself for risking that much money.

~~As the summer came to a close, I got a little anxious about my upcoming purchase. Around this time, I heard a radio ad about “Sniagrab,” an annual sale run by the Sports Authority~~ a local sporting goods chain called Canyon Sports. They were offering discount season’s passes to Snowbird. I don’t recall them specifying a sale closing date, but when I called Canyon Sports (shortly after hearing the ad), I was let down when I heard I’d missed the sale by one day. Maybe it’s my fault that I missed their sale, but the ad was vague and I had still acted quickly. It made me feel stupid — as dumb as that sounds.

~~Chances are you won’t catch me in a Canyon Sports any day soon.~~*

Unwilling to give up my quest for a deal, I searched for “snowbird seasons pass” at Craigslist. Believe it or not, there was a woman who posted a 10-day pass because she’d recently broken a bone and wouldn’t be skiing this season. She was selling it at a discount because she obviously needed to give the buyer an incentive to purchase from her, rather than go directly to the source. But since I was planning on skiing more than 10 days, I continued my search.

I sent an email to my local friends, asking if any of them had a connection to help me out. To my delight, I received a reply from a snowboarding friend. He encouraged me to join the Velocity Sports club in order to get a discount at Snowbird. Velocity’s an exclusive club, so in order for me to join, my friend had to sponsor me. He was only allowed to sponsor one person annually. There was also a $40 membership fee that I had to pay upfront. I signed up and paid my dues but this still didn’t guarantee me a discounted season’s pass. Before I had a shot at one, they made a limited promotion available to existing members who have been members for over a year. So I waited and waited for a reply.

After two weeks without a reply, I sent them a follow-up email. They told me I would hear back from them in a couple of weeks. When three more weeks passed without a reply, I decided to email again. That same day, I received a phone call from Velocity Sports, telling me that the promotion was now open to me but I had only two days to take action.It’s a good thing I didn’t miss the promotion (like I had with the Canyon Sports promo). It would’ve been nice to have gotten periodic updates from Velocity about the promotion. Then again, maybe I would have never even heard from them had I not been really good at nagging! Regardless, they came through for me in a big way, and I got my season’s pass for $799; a $310 savings (after membership fee) over buying directly from Snowbird.

No matter where they decide to buy a product, 64% of customers regularly do their research online before they go for it. In this case, there were a few multi-channel influencers (i.e., the radio ad, craigslist, Snowbird.com) in my buying decision process, but only the consumer-generated media (i.e, the customer reviews and word-of-mouth) had a positive influence on where I actually bought the thing.

The bottom line: It seems the local skiing/snowboarding community is more involved in finding and offering good deals for Snowbird customers than Snowbird is itself.

What do you think? Am I just griping, or should Snowbird consider being more involved in the community in order to better harness their marketing potential?

[Editor's Note: See comments below. Our sincere apologies go out to everyone at Canyon Sports. Although it seems the Sports Authority chain -- not Canyon Sports -- has the Sniagrab Sale, there's too much confusion about who Melissa called. Did she call Canyon Sports, and they answered her about a different sale that just ended? Who knows? Still, it seems there's a whole lot of ski marketing fog to break through in Utah. Either that, or Melissa needs to stop multi-taking when she drives. ]
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Screencast: Building Trust & Credibility Online

Dave Young — Fri, 26 Oct 2007 14:45:15 +0000

If the roof of your home started leaking, you probably wouldn’t waste much time trying to fix it. And unless you happen to be a carpenter, you’re likely to find someone else to do the job. You’d probably call a professional; someone with experience, who can find the source of the problem and patch things up. A leaky roof isn’t generally a good place to shop on price alone. You want to know that whomever you hire can be trusted.

Well, your website isn’t much different. Each day, visitors come to your site, hoping to find someone they can trust. The strange thing is that people tend to think that the words they use online are somehow different than the words they use face-to-face. They’re not. But online, you need to be even more careful about how you relate to would-be customers. They’ve got less to go on. Looking you in the eye isn’t an option, and talk remains cheap — even if it’s in the form of web copy. So, it’s your job to change that around; an especially difficult thing for smaller and/or local brands.

Today, I’m going to show you how one of my clients, Roof Life of Oregon (www.rooflife-oregon.com), used Persuasion Architecture™ to replace their own, virtual roof. I’ll show you how each page uses trust-building elements to create persuasive momentum with the customer to make them feel at home.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Have you used any of these techniques before? Are there any websites you like to visit that inspire confidence? Ones that need fixing?

If you have questions about how to build trust online, please share them in the comments.
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How Female Execs Shop for Consultants

Holly Buchanan — Wed, 17 Oct 2007 14:44:36 +0000

Do women behave the same way in the office as they do at home? Is their buying process the same whether they are buying products and services for their home, or products and services for their company?

Deloitte & Touche is trying to find out.

According this Wall Street Journal article, Deloitte & Touche USA LLP has implemented a new program in conjunction with Marti Barletta’s TrendSight Group, to better understand the needs of female clients and train employees on how to treat them like, well, females.

Deloitte began offering four-hour workshops on gender differences to its employees last year. Among its other suggestions:

Don’t be frustrated if female clients reevaluate or modify their initial requests; because they discover as they shop, women may be very receptive to suggestions about other services.

Women clients want to know and trust their consultants personally as well as professionally; sharing personal details can help build trust.

Women often prefer business lunches to dinners, because they tend to have more responsibilities at home. And they may be more receptive to evening social invitations if asked with sufficient time to make arrangements at home.

Body language differs by gender. Men tend to stare as they listen and nod to signify they understand. Women may nod when they don’t yet understand to encourage the speaker to keep talking. And while consultants often seat themselves beside a male client as their “right hand man,” women are more comfortable seated face to face.

There’s certainly some valuable insight here. I do believe Deloitte will see some positive results. And I applaud any company willing to spend the time and money to truly understand their customers and their customers’ needs.

One point I found particularly interesting was the suggestion that you bring “subordinates” into meetings, so your female clients can meet the people they well be working with. I agree whole heartedly. Women do want to meet the actual people who will be doing the work. But what really interested me was the use of the word “subordinates.” (Can you say “male communication style“?) That’s a loaded word. It implies hierarchy, status, and that such people are “less than.” Be very careful with your choice of words.

There are two things I hope Deloitte will be careful of:

1.) You don’t want women to feel patronized.

2.) You don’t want your employees to stereotype female clients.

This last point is very important. As I’ve found in my research, there’s no such thing as “all women want this” or “all women do that.” Automatically treating someone a specific way just because she’s a woman is dangerous.

I do think there’s some valuable insight that has come from this training program. I’ll be very interested to see the results and feedback Deloitte gets from their female clients.

In the meantime, be sure to read Tami Anderson’s perspective, and let us know what you think of Deloitte’s research in the comments.
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Why Must I “Register” Before Checkout?

Bryan Eisenberg — Wed, 03 Oct 2007 14:31:42 +0000

We’re in the final moments of completing our 2007 Customer Focus Study here at FutureNow. [UPDATE: FutureNow's 2007 Retail Customer Focus Study is complete.] We haven’t done one of these in the past couple years, and there’s already some shocking stuff popping out from the early analysis. One of the most interesting facts is that nearly half of the top online retailers still require people to register before they checkout.

Now, I understand how valuable executives think it is to have these customer accounts, but — of the hundreds we’ve analyzed — how many retailers do you think actually tested whether requiring people to register pre-checkout is costing them conversions (read: sales)?*

Retailers spend so much money driving new traffic to the site, only to force visitors away by asking them to register up-front. Most of the information you need to create an account will be asked in the checkout process, anyway. Get the cash (GTC) first, then do like TravelSmith does and offer the option to create an account after the order is complete.

The silliest thing I’ve seen in awhile happened as I was reviewing one of the retailers in our study. I was working my way through the account registration process for one of the sites. After filling out most of the form, I kept getting an error message. I couldn’t figure out. This site demanded an answer:

“Yes, I would like to receive e-mail from Schwan’s.”

“No, please don’t send me e-mail.”

On most retail sites, you just uncheck the check box and avoid their e-mails. This one used radio buttons, altering the standard experience by having me choose just one. Why?

*Share your best guess in the comments.
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Trustmarks & BizRate: Building & Breaking Trust Online

Bryan Eisenberg — Mon, 01 Oct 2007 13:49:11 +0000

One of the most common interview questions I get is, “How do you build trust online?” If you don’t have a well known brand, how do you overcome the different barriers the web provides?

The web is anonymous; you can say you’re one type of person or entity and, in fact, be another. We have to deal with all the other people who are online, polluting the space with interruptive, bogus messages and less-than-credible offers. So, what can you do to build trust online?

Many factors influence online trust. Some of them include, a “professional” design, “good” copy, “quality” images, an “engaging” online experience, “credible”-sounding reviews, an “openness” to be contacted, external reputation and, sometimes, trustmarks (e.g., Better Business Bureau, Verisign, BizRate or HackerSafe). Notice that every factor except trustmarks is based on perception, — not reality, necessarily.

Trustmarks: Either you have ‘em or you don’t. But not all trustmarks are equal, and they’re still subject to the public’s perception of that trustmark extending its halo effect to you.

In the near future, I’ll post about each one of these trust building factors separately. But today, let me illustrate why trustmarks sometimes fail.

It all has to do with the neighbors you keep. At one point, having a BizRate logo meant something. The general feeling among those in the know was that they sold out from being a trustmark to become a product search engine. (When they don’t really stand for one thing — e.g., “buy with confidence” — trustmarks cease to be effective.) When consumers see a trustmark on another website, and that website betrays their trust or provides a sub-par experience, trust erodes and the halo effect from the trustmark can no longer transfer to your website.

Why should anyone trust BizRate?

BizRate.com conducts post-purchase surveys to evaluate whether customers will shop at the same store again. Did they deliver on time? Did they have good customer support? Did the product they ordered meet expectations? BizRate gets answers to these questions, and even tells you how many shoppers shopped at their store.

Take a look at the thumbnail picture for a screenshot from electronic retailer B&H Photo. Notice how they have a 98-99% positive rating. They have this green smiley face with all these lines around it. This seems to be a trust worthy store, no doubt.

Now let’s compare a few more store profiles that have green smiley faces (see below) to indicate positive stores. Would you trust someone who says a store is “green smiley” positive when 20% of it’s customers have a negative experience? 10%? 5%? What do you think your customers think about when they see you associated with companies that provide negative experiences 1 out of every 5 times? Do you think BizRate can be trusted? Can they actually extend that halo of trust?

If they want to maintain that halo of trust in the mind of the consumer, every trustmark provider needs to step up and start being accountable for their vendors. What standards should they accept?

Trustmarks work when they stand for something.

As I continue to explore trust in the next few weeks, I will dissect eCOST.com. On the surface, they look credible — but if you dig enough, you can figure out why 20% of their customers have negative experiences (a percentage that would hardly inspire confidence on eBay).

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Screencast: Hunting for Early Bird Persuasion, Part 3

Dave Young — Fri, 21 Sep 2007 13:27:58 +0000

Now that you’ve seen Parts 1 and 2, where we found that the smartest way to persuade early-stage customers is to educate them, let’s focus on how to provide a consistent experience for them.

As we look at how Cabelas.com and BassProShops.com prepare to catch the Early Bird customer, consider the following:

Relevance — If they’re not ready yet, don’t get carried away. (Is your website proposing marriage on the first date?)

Screen Space — Early Birds need to know that they’re welcome, right from the homepage. Give them enough space, and combine relevance with scent to lead them in the right direction. (Use the battleship grid to protect the Early Bird from winding up in irrelevant worm holes.)

Scent Trails — Not even the brightest of basset hounds can help you with this one, but creating the right scent for the customer to follow is key; particularly when they’re early in the buying process, and may not even have the vocabulary to know what they should be asking. If they come in with the wrong questions, and don’t buy, they should at least leave with the right ones. Help them find their way.

AIDAS — Awareness. Interest. Desire. Action. Satisfaction. If customers aren’t aware of you, there’s no place to move forward. If you haven’t grabbed their interest, forget it. If there’s no emotional desire to lure them in, they won’t bite. If it’s difficult for them to take action, they’ll run away. And if they’re not satisfied, they won’t return.

Inside-the-Bottle Syndrome (the other “IBS”) — “When you’re inside the bottle, you can’t read the label.” This is the biggest challenge marketers face. They know too much about their own products, too much about their own companies. It’s the “Curse of Knowledge” and you must overcome it to persuade.

Once again, it’s time to go huntin’ for Early Birds…

(If you’re viewing this in an RSS reader, click here for video.)

If you have a moment, share one of your early-stage buying experiences with us in the comments. Which sites have done a particularly good job of persuading you to buy, or turning you off, when you were only pecking around?
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Screencast: Hunting for Early Bird Persuasion, Part 2

Dave Young — Wed, 19 Sep 2007 15:36:45 +0000

Now that you’ve seen Part 1 — you did see it, right? — you should have a handle on the basics of selling to early-stage online shoppers. They may not be ready to “Buy Now!” but giving these Early Birds the information they need, when they need it, will ensure they come back once they are ready. One of the smartest ways to persuade early-stage buyers is to educate them.

Take hunting, for instance. While an experienced hunter may know exactly what she’s looking for in terms finding the right gear, a novice hunter might be more worried about his friends laughing at him for not knowing the first thing about it.

As we look at how Cabelas.com and BassProShops.com prepare to catch the Early Bird customer, consider some of these finer points:

Scent Trails — Not even the brightest of basset hounds can help you with this one, but creating scent for the customer to follow is key; particularly when they’re early in the buying process, and may not even have the vocabulary to know what they should be asking. If they come in with the wrong questions, and don’t buy, they should at least leave with the right ones. Help them find their way.

AIDAS — Awareness. Interest. Desire. Action. Satisfaction. If customers aren’t aware of you, there’s no place to move forward. If you haven’t grabbed their interest, forget it. If there’s no emotional desire to lure them in, they won’t bite. If it’s difficult for them to take action, they’ll run away. And if they’re not satisfied, they won’t return.

Inside-the-Bottle Syndrome (the other “IBS”) — “When you’re inside the bottle, you can’t read the label.” This is the biggest challenge marketers face. They know too much about their own products, too much about their own companies. It’s the “Curse of Knowledge” and you must overcome it to persuade.

Once again, it’s time to go hunting for persuasion…

(If you’re viewing this in an RSS reader, click here for video.)

Check out Part 3 to learn how to catch the Early Bird before the competition does.

In the meantime, share one of your early-stage buying experiences with us in the comments. Which sites have done a particularly good job of persuading you to buy, or turning you off, when you were just trying to educate yourself?
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Starting as low as $1000 per month: FutureNow's OnTarget provides on-going expert analysis and prioritized recommendations to improve website conversion rates 40-80% or more. Lead generation and ecommerce versions available.