At FutureNow, we work with clients in a variety of industries and business models: e-commerce, lead generation and catalog. Lately, I’ve had the pleasure of working with some clients who are driving traffic from their web sites to physical store locations. These clients share some basic challenges, so I’ve decided to cover things you should be focusing on if you’re an online business trying to drive traffic to a physical location.

First, decide what action you want your visitors to take. We know that you want your visitors to come off your web site and visit your physical location, but what actions do you want them to take ON your web site that demonstrate their interest in coming to your physical location? These are what we call micro conversion points.  “Micro” because they are stepping stones on the way to some sort of purchase, which we call a macro conversion.

Here are some examples of actions a site might want the visitor to take to show their interest in moving forward. The following points should be tracked as micro conversion points, and you should optimize to increase these individual conversion rates.

• A “locations” page where you feature your address and map with directions. If visitors get to this page, they are interested in where you are located, which shows strong motivation and intent.
• Some sites feature a “Find the nearest location” tool.
• Booking an appointment for a service or holding/reserving a product.
• Contact us page, phone calls and emails are demonstrating that visitors are looking for answers to questions.

Tracking these micro conversion points is important, but it’s also important to follow through and track whether visitors who take these micro conversion actions are resulting in physical store purchases. Many companies track one or the other, but they seem to have a hard time tracking micro conversion rates on their web sites or they have a hard time connecting actions on a web site to actual sales in the physical store.

Here’s a list of questions you can ask yourself in order to get the right tracking in place to start seeing how your online efforts are resulting in ‘brick and mortar’ sales.

Tracking whether a store purchaser was originally a web site visitor:

Are you tracking all in-store purchases, asking each purchaser whether they went to your web site before they came to your physical store? This will help you find out general stats on how many visited your web site prior to purchasing.

Are you collecting email addresses and sending out surveys to in-store purchasers to find out how they came to your store?

• For those who identify that they came to your web site before coming to your physical store, are you asking them if they already knew about your store and were just coming to your site to find the address/location or to call the store?
• Are you asking them whether they were actually searching for something online, and found your web site as a solution to a problem (and didn’t yet know about your store) and they only found out that you had a physical store from your web site?

Tracking phone calls from listed phone numbers on your web site:

Is the phone number listed on your web site unique from other marketing efforts so that you can track it separately?

Is the phone number you list on various pages unique from the other pages on your site? In other words, if you feature a phone number on the about us page, is it a different number than the one on your contact us page? This would help you identify what pages visitors are making a decision to call from, and will also help you identify what types of things they are asking after visiting specific pages on your site.

Are you collecting enough information from the caller on the phone, so that you can match this up if the visitor turns into a sale in the physical store location?

Purely “clicks and mortar” E-commerce sites see the importance of optimization before the Holiday Season because it directly impacts their sales online. “Bricks and mortar” companies that use their web site to drive traffic to their physical store don’t see the direct impact as strongly, but this could be because they aren’t tracking  the impact effectively. If you’re in this situation, use some of the tips above to begin tracking and optimizing. You still have time to optimize for the holiday season and beyond!

The survey involved nearly a thousand participants ages 16 to 24, and the good news for us as online marketers was that 75% of respondents said that they “couldn’t live without the Internet.” Wow, that’s a bold statement indicating that the Web will continue to be a central part of that generation’s lives, and will be essential to how they research, form opinions, make decisions, and buy.

Maybe it’s not “bad news,” but the challenge this presents is: How will our generation of digital marketers and online businesspeople keep up with the attitudes and expectations of a new segment that doesn’t remember the absence of the Web?

"Kurt & Smitty" | Image from AMCTV.com

I can’t help but think of my latest TV series obsession, Mad Men.  The fictitious ad agency, Sterling Cooper, hired two young upstarts, Smitty and Kurt, to help them figure out what the youth of the early 1960s was thinking.  They informed their hopelessly old employers that the youth “don’t want to be told what to do or how to act. [They] just want to be.“  Sound familiar?  It sounds corny, but Sterling Cooper did the right thing by bringing in outside perspective to help them better empathize with their target audiences.

So, what are we going to do? Should all marketing teams have their own “Smitty and Kurt” to help them grok how Digital Natives want to interact with businesses?  Should we spend more time spying on our children and grandchildren as they network their always-available lives at lightning speed?  Let us know in the comments what specific tactics you’re using to keep up with what “the kids are into these days.”

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]

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]

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?

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.

1. a serious or respectable drama or film classic,
2. a romance or chick-friendly movie for the wife,
3. and some guilty pleasure action movie or low-brow comedy.

Guess which movie gets watched last or returned unwatched?

You betcha, it’s usually the drama/classic.  Oh the shame!

The thing is, unless I had added the high-brow movie to my “menu,” I’d likely have forgone the guilty pleasure of the action flick and just picked up the semi-respectable romantic comedy to watch with the wife.

Seems like recent scientific research shows it’s not just me and not limited to movies, either.  Apparently, diners given the option of salad are 3 times more likely to order french fries than if salad wasn’t on the menu.  Kind of counter-intuitive, when the healthy option spurs more unhealthy behavior.

But when you think about it, it kind of makes sense.  The fact that you thought about ordering the salad – and intend to order the salad at the next meal – helps you justify the french fries now, just like renting Touch of Evil helps me justify actually watching X2.  ‘Cause aren’t we all interested in eating desert now and working out later?  Would drinking be nearly as popular if the hangover came before the high?

So how can this apply to your business? Lots of ways, I’d guess, but the 2 that come to mind are as follows:

1) Charging the self-aware more money for the privilege of being restricted to the straight and narrow.  Chip and Dan Heath have an excellent article on this very strategy in the last issue of Fast Company.  People want to offload responsibility and even choice in order to circumvent their own “desert first” tendencies, and they’ll often pay you to help them overcome their own worst tendencies.

2) Front loading the exciting stuff while reassuring prospective customers that the good-for-you stuff is available/on its way. Amazon Prime is so incredibly seductive because 2-day shipping is within most people’s impulse-buy time horizon.  And it’s justifiable because, hey, shipping is free, and I’m sure I’ll get around to actually reading these books at some point, right?  And thus my antilibrary grows.

If you sell services, give some thought on how you can implement these techniqes, both from a business strategy and a web copy standpoint.

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.

“…at no time does a brand own a customer. That chain is cut loose too easily. Brands that approach the online marketing space for customer ownership will be disappointed. Come looking for that precious bit of attention, and marketers get paid in full.”

1) The best way to reveal the real substance (or lack thereof) of your message is to strip it down.  Remove all the wordsmithing, jargon, self-applied labels, ad-speak, etc and you’ll get down to the core message.

The process of stripping “Unlike any coffee you’ve ever had before” down to “The Best Coffee” reveals the rather empty content of a slogan that, at first blush, doesn’t sound too bad.

2) If you get down to the core message and it turns out that you’re not saying anything compelling and/or you’re making the same claim everyone else is, you will NOT be able to fix this with copywriting alone.

“Better than Starbucks” is a more powerfully worded claim than “The Best Coffee” because it evokes a definite standard and a concrete mental image.  But it’s still an unsubstantiated and un-persuasive claim.  Copywriting alone can’t fix this.

3) Just because what you’re saying is true doesn’t mean people have to believe you.  You may really have world-changing, you’ll-never-settle-for-anything-less-again coffee.  It may be true that you have “The best coffee,” but that doesn’t mean it’s anymore believable when you say it than when anyone else says it.

4) The best way to substantiate claims like this is often through Action / Signaling Theory.  You really believe that you’ve got the best coffee?  Prove it! Offer a free taste, put a money-back guarantee on the taste of your coffee, hold public taste-offs against all comers, etc.

There’s something very compelling about a company willing to give you a free taste on the conviction that you’ll want more.  Or to allow you to try it on the condition of a full refund.  I’ve seen it work to sell everything from frozen custard, to hamburgers, to sales training.  If you’re stuck for a way to substantiate your claims or differentiate your company, give this some consideration.

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.

When Michael Lewis wrote his article on Coach Leach and the Texas Tech Football program, that program was known as an offensive powerhouse that relied on sheer scoring power to outgun opponents.  Its defense wasn’t mentioned in that article, and one can only guess the omission was intentional.  Just look at their game results against Texas and OSU for 2005-2008:

What you can see is that up to 2007, Texas Tech continually increased it’s offensive scoring, but to mixed results – because Texas and OSU still outscored them.  Texas Tech’s defense was losing these big games.  So immediately following his team’s 2007’s bitter loss to OSU, Coach Leach changed defensive coordinators.

And after that, well, you can see for yourself: Texas Tech is undefeated this season and the major game-changing difference in their match-ups against Texas and OSU wasn’t the ability to score more points, but to hold those other teams’ offenses to significantly fewer goals.

So what does this have to do with Web Optimization?

In tougher times, most companies reinforce their strengths; doing what’s worked well before.  But few are really willing to look at their organizational assumptions and weaknesses head-on.

In terms of web optimization for hard times, it might not be just a matter of improving website performance, it might be a matter of changing the offer.  Or changing the emotional appeal behind the offer.  Or the guarantees and risk-reversals that you’re using.

Roy Williams has addressed this issue over several Monday Morning Memos and I think his analysis and advice has only grown more relevant as the months have passed by:

• Expect more people to be hardheaded in judging value.
• Be willing to expand beyond your current comfort zone and offerings/marketing in order to reach and convert these skeptical, hard-nosed value shoppers.
• Expect stories and long copy to make products and services more saleable (faster to sell and more easily sold), but test very carefully before concluding they’ll allow you to sell them at higher prices.

So what about you and your Website: are you looking beyond what you’ve always done well?  What assumptions are you changing and what competitive weaknesses are you looking to shore up?

An interesting question that has been popping around the office from several clients and also on the Shop.org blog. It has all of us at FutureNow wondering if this is another case of predictable irrationality.

“In a recent comScore study, 72% of consumers said that if an e-commerce site eliminated free shipping, they would use another e-commerce site that did offer free shipping. Last week the LA Times reported that this year, nearly 80% of consumers said they were more likely to shop online with a retailer that offers free shipping, compared with 60% who said that last year.“

The questions we have for retailers are:

• do customers prefer to see a Free Shipping offer rather than calculate and pay a lower price that includes paid shipping?
• If you sell online, do you currently offer Free shipping? If so, are you planning to for the rest of the holiday season? Are there any limitations or restrictions on it?

The questions we have for customers are:

• Is the allure of Free Shipping that hypnotic for you as customers?
• As someone who buys online, what do you prefer?

We have asked these questions through testing in the past and found plenty of surprises. I’m sure most retailers would be surprised by the results of asking these questions correctly.

Please share your thoughts.

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.

“Leach is unusual in giving his quarterback the authority to change every play, wherever the line of scrimmage. “He can see more than I’ll ever see,” Leach says. ‘If I call a stupid play, his job is to get me out of it. If he doesn’t get me out of it, I might holler at him. But if you let him react to what he sees, there’s a ton of touchdowns to be had.’ All Leach is really saying to Hodges when he sends in the play is, ‘Line up in Ace, see how they line up against it and call a good play…’

The Texas Tech offense is not just an offense; it’s a mood: optimism. It is designed to maximize the possibility of something good happening rather than to minimize the possibility of something bad happening…”

Unfortunately, most optimization consultants take the opposite mindset from that attributed to the Texas Tech Football Program’s by Michael Lewis in his NYT article I’ve been quoting from in this series of posts.  In short, most Web consultants focus their efforts on minimizing the possibility of something bad happening (of loosing an already convinced customer’s sale) by fixing usability flaws.

Yet if you want to move beyond page-level optimization, you’ll have to begin maximizing the possibility of something good happening – of convincing visitors to convert who may not already be convinced when they arrive.  And you do this by planning visitor interactions on a click-by-click basis, imagining:

• What questions will arise in their minds,
• What tasks they’re looking to accomplish,
• What expectations they had when they clicked the previous link
• What doubts and concerns are keeping them from moving forward

You’ll find that real scoring opportunities most frequently involve:

• Increasing the match-up between visitor click-through expectations and your content, as well as the match-up between their buying tasks and your selling objectives, and
• Adding content or hyperlinks to answer key questions and provide missing substantiation

Both of which are a far cry from simply tweaking buttons and testing navigation schemes.  And both of which require you to go beyond mechanically applying best practices or ‘mindlessly’ running A/B tests.

This kind of optimization requires that you see how visitor behavior lines up against the backdrop of your current content and then to choose a change/test based on your best hypothesis of why visitors are doing what they’re doing instead of what you want them to do.  Kind of like the Texas Tech QB calling a play based on the mismatch between the formation and the defensive response.

Here’s an actual example from LuLu.com*, specifically their page on softcover publishing:

Now, let’s say LuLu’s three desired actions on this page are, in order of priority:

1. Click the “Self-publish” button in the active window
2. Click the “Lulu Demo” button to the right of the tabs
3. Use the “cost calculator” tool located down below the fold

And just so you can see that cost calculator portion of the page, it looks like this:

Now, let’s imagine that the Web analytics are telling you that the majority of traffic is going to:

• The “Services” page as accessed by the top tab
• The Home Page (either from the back button) or main “Publish” page
• “Help” or “FAQs” either from the top tab or Footer Nav Links

And we’ll also imagine that very few page visitors are taking the actions we want.  Plus, those that are clicking on the “Self Publish” button are quickly closing out of the “upload/cart” – they’ve just got a huge abandonment rate.

Step 1: Take your best guess at what’s going on.

First, I’d imagine visitors coming here from the homepage, the Publish page, and maybe even directly from organic and paid search. And that means most of them aren’t quite ready to upload their manuscript just yet – they probably still have some questions.

Given that situation, the current label for the main call-to-action – the “Self Publish” button – will probably feel deceptive to the visitor.  They’ll likely think the button links to a demo or to more info, and then they’re taken to an upload page.  Is it any wonder they rapidly back out of the upload interface?  Do you see how the context of the click/hyperlink on the prior page can dramatically affect the performance of the current page?

I’d also guess that people aren’t seeing the real demo button because it’s outside the active window.  Plus, the page utterly fails to answer questions about the relative pricing, merits, and limitations of LuLu’s paper, book size, and binding options.  So instead of moving forward, visitors are moving backwards to the publish and home pages and navigating to Help and FAQ pages to try to find those answers/information.

Step 2: Test your hypotheses

I’d test an alternative main button label of “Start by uploading your manuscript for free” and I’d put some Point of Action Assurances near the button.  Something like, “No commitment to upload & you retain the copyright.”

This ought to better prepare visitors for where that button will take them, and it will better appeal to spontaneous shoppers, who are most likely to click that kind of call to action.

I’d also test moving the demo button down into the banner area, not too far from the “Upload” button.  This will make it more visually prominent and should grab some of the traffic now going to the “Services,” “Help,” and “FAQ” pages.  Plus I’d make sure the demo ends with a link to bring visitors back to this page; remember, we want to maximize the chances they’ll come back and convert!

Finally, I’d add copy next to the pictures of “Perfect Bound,” “Saddle Stitched,” and “Coil Bound” pictures, as well as creating some “How to publish as economically as possible” bullets next to the cost calculator so visitors don’t have to blindly guess at what size paperbacks are more expensive, what trade-offs are involved in using cheaper paper, etc.

Step 3: Get it done and learn from the test results

Here’s where a lot of companies get stuck.  They get the test ideas queued up and then they don’t get the new buttons or banners or pictures designed.  Or they don’t write the copy, or some such.  A week to a week and a half goes by so that they’re just starting the test by the time they should have actionable results.

At any rate, not every test goes the way you plan, obviously.  But here’s the beauty of testing this way: if relabeling the “Upload” button doesn’t have any success, but the other tests DO increase the time on the page, the use of the cost calculator, and the number of people watching the demo, maybe you need to test a special, “Upload Your Manuscript” landing page, with new assurances and upload info, giving visitors timelines, points of contact, etc.

Believe me, those kind of results aren’t a failure – they’re a first down!  Now you just have to keep driving toward the goal with follow-up tests.  And the cumulative results of this kind of testing creating the kind of customer insight for breakaway success.

So how can you jump-start this process?

Well, in the spirit of the Raider’s fast-tempo offense, I’m offering a fast-turnaround Web Optimization service, emphasizing do-able, quick-to-implement changes capable of driving real world touchdowns:

The 48-hour, $500 e-mail/ad campaign and landing page analysis

If you’re planning or in the middle of a campaign and want to optimize your results, I can personally analyze your e-mail, ad, etc along with the campaign’s intended landing page and provide you with insight-oriented and easily implemented tests/changes for driving results – just like the kind you saw with LuLu.com.

Better yet, I’ll provide you with an interpretation of the actual results – what to look for, how to make sense of what you’re seeing – and follow-on actions.  If we score a game-winning touchdown and you like the feel of that, you can sign-on for ongoing optimization with Future Now.

If you only walk away with additional insight and a better understanding of how to implement your own optimization efforts – hey, that’s more than worth it for $500 and 48 hours. If you’re interested, contact us.

* Note that LuLu.com is not a client and I have not seen their analytics.  Everything about this example is hypothetical.

• Dutiful George Washington for Sensing-Judging / Methodicals
• Philosophical Thomas Jefferson for iNtuitive-Thinking / Competitives
• Rambunctious Teddy Roosevelt for Sensing-Perceiving / Spontaneous
• Idealistic Abraham Lincoln for iNtuitive-Feeling / Humanistics

Unfortunately, the cover story (though excellent) treated temperament from a Nine Characteristics perspective rather than a Four Temperaments perspective in a way similar to this Slate article or some recent blog posts regarding presidential personality type.

Yet at least the Time cover/article got me looking for and reading those posts, because the authors guessed slightly different temperaments from each other, and I found the differences illuminating.

But before discussing the blog authors’ picks, my personal predictions were SP/Spontaneous for fiery, action-oriented McCain, NF/Humanistic for idealistic and emotionally intelligent Obama, and NT+Judging/Competitive for sharp-minded and power-hungry Hillary Clinton.

So here’s how the experts typing matched up with mine:

• Everyone agreed that McCain has a spontaneous temperament.
• Emily Yoffe felt that Hillary was an SJ, but it turns out that Hillary has actually taken an MBTI test and has tested as an NTJ, which matched up with most blog post guesses.
• Some experts believe that Obama was an NT, while others felt he was more likely an NF

And here’s what you can take away from the misperceptions and disagreements surrounding presidential candidate typing:

1. Myers-Briggs Preferences (and Temperaments) are just that: preferences.

People are adaptable and can develop or use weaker sides of their personalities – and may even prefer to use them in a given situation.  Introverts, for instance, all have an auxiliary personality that they use for social situations or work.  Johnny Carson was a legendary introvert, but hardly came off as one during The Late Show.

So too could an NT politician learn to speak empathically about deep emotional issues and learn to champion inclusive policies.  Or conversely, NF’s are more than capable of adopting an NT mindset when the need for tough-minded leadership decisions arises.  Hence the NT/NF disagreement over an emotionally savvy, but also emotionally flat “no drama” Obama.

And it’s also why Future Now analyzes buying behavior in terms of “buying modes,” rather than assuming that buying mode will line up with temperament preference.  No one buys accounting software spontaneously, and even the most hard-headed and practical of us have been known to make spontaneous purchases on vacation.

2.  Knowing how temperament preferences overlap – and where they differ – is important

Why would one person see an SJ/Methodical when another sees an NT/Competitive?  Well because both temperaments have a strong preference for logical decision-making.  And an NT with a strong Judging preference, like Hillary’s INTJ personality type, can come off as an organizer – reliable and sufficiently detail-oriented to fool you into thinking they have a methodical temperament*

So what does this mean for your Website/copy?

Rather than pushing copy or messaging styles onto visitors, it’s best to cover all the temperaments persuasive needs according to the “fast up top and slow down bottom” layout method.  That way you can let visitors self-select the copy and links that most appeals to them without worrying about improperly typing them. You can get a sense of how these temperaments interact with a page by reading Howard’s analysis of Jakob Nielson’s eyetracking study.

Conclusion: Put Copy for Fast Decision Makers Up Top and Slow Decision Makers Down Bottom

So the default copy organization for most pages will include copy, links, and calls to action intended for competitive and spontaneous temperaments (your fast decision makers who are less likely to scroll and spend the time to examine the entire page) up top, and copy more suited for methodical and humanistic temperaments (slower decision makers who will examine the entire page) below that.

For instance, if you have an NT/competitive who follows a link intended for Methodicals, the page he lands on will still have some bottom-line or big picture copy at the top of the page and a call to action appropriate for his temperament.  And if that particular competitive keeps reading, well, he may just be in a more Methodical Buying Mode.  No big deal – as long as your pages are set up properly.

And that’s what I took away from the recent spate of articles and blog posts on Temperament and MBTI.

P.S. If this stuff interests you, I highly recommend that you check out this free audio book.

* For the record, what probably should have pushed Yoffe away from typing Hillary as an SJ, is that she is very much an ideologue.  Her political stances were sharply radical when she adopted them and required something of a philosophical bent to arrive at.  She didn’t enter politics by being an outstanding administrator; she entered politics because of a commitment to her political theories and ideas.  Plus, her career as a lawyer indicated an NT preference over SJ.

Armed with this powerful data, the Comcast Business Services team went ahead and got the ok to produce a 3 page PDF that shows pricing information with a competitive comparision. Now that PDF is the most popular piece of their website.

What will you to this quarter to find out why your customers are at your website and how they perform at accomplishing their task so that you can fix it?