But (most) websites aren’t linear because hyperlinks break linearity (aka subvert hierarchy).

People don’t read (most) Websites one full page at a time in a numbered order; they read/scan/move from one link that interests them to the next link that interests them, often entering or starting on something other than page #1 (what bad web designers notionally understand as the home page).

This means “Long copy” and “short copy” only apply to Websites metaphorically at best, roughly translating to “content rich & substantiated” and “minimalist / pared down,” respectively.

The upside is that hyperlinks make it possible to get the best of both (offline) worlds. Visitors who want more substantiation and richer content can drill down on the links that interest them, and visitors who only want a quick, bottom-line summary and an express path to converting can get that too – all on the same site.

That said, long copy equivalents still tend to out-convert “short copy” alternatives.  Here’s why.

The crucial element: Are you answering their questions & concerns?

Two recent studies, one involving complex B2B sales/Websites and one on e-commerce sites, show that well over 50% of potential leads/customers fail to convert because the Websites studied failed to answer prospects’ questions and provide needed information.

I’ve experienced it myself: if I need to know a wireless card or piece of software will work on my Mac, I’m simply not buying until I get that answered. Similar dynamics exists with concerns rather than absolute requirements, and, yes, this is especially critical for services, complex sales, and lead generation.

Content rich sites typically out-convert minimalist designs because they more completely answer the prospects’ questions.

And as I’ve previously written, question-answering content isn’t just copy. High quality pictures answer questions and concerns. User reviews answer questions and concerns. So do videos, blogs, forums, etc. And, of course, there’s persuasive copy.

Modeling Customer Psychology and Persuasive Online Copywriting

Suppose you’re genuinely interested in buying something, talking to a salesman about it, and in the process of asking how much it costs. How many times can that sales guy dodge or ignore your question before he destroys your trust?

Once? Twice, maybe.

With online copy, visitors ask questions by scanning the page and clicking on links. If your web copy doesn’t facilitate scanning and skimming, and if you don’t provide hyperlinks and content to answer visitors’ questions, your Website will become that used car salesman who won’t give a straight answer to a direct question.

At Future Now, we’re big on Personas simply because we’re big on making sure Websites answer the questions and concerns of their visitors.  We find it essential to model and facilitate the flow of visitor-website sales conversations in order to avoid the “used car salesman” syndrome.

So rather than having any old interaction or conversation with visitors, personas allow one to reverse engineer conversations that lead to conversions. To do this, simply:

• Take a persona’s emotional state, concerns, and informational needs upon entering a Website
• Compare that starting point with what the visitor will have to feel, know, and believe in order to confidently take the action you want them to convert
• And then plan out the conversation your site will need to have with that persona in order to make that persuasive journey from starting point to sale.

Going through this process allows Website designers and copywriters to persona-lize the Website. They can plan messaging and links custom tailored for each buying behavior/motivation.  The visitor can then self-determine just how many rabbit-holes of information/assurance/question-answering she needs to in order to feel comfortable buying, thereby getting the exact “length” of copy that’s right for her.

Fast decision makers and late stage buyers that just need a quick and easy way to buy, get it. And those visitors needing a lot of information, insight, and assurance can get that too.

Think of it as an adult and sales-oriented choose-your-own-adventure novel. Or just think of it as a really sincere sales conversation performed by your best salesman who just happens to be available to talk to (and convert) customers 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

What more could you ask from either long or short copy?

P.S. For a different (but congruent) take on the advantages of Long Copy (and it’s online equivalents), check out Sonia Simone’s excellent article over at CopyBlogger.

• Don’t waste hyperlink words on non-descriptive or generic words.  Make links keyword rich and ensure that customers can predict where the link will take them.  Plan and link for maximum “scent”
• Use plain language.  In other words, talk to the dog in the language of the dog (about what matters to the dog).
• Front load user- and action-oriented terms.  For calls to action, we’ve always recommended an imperative verb + (implied) user benefit

But one of the article’s baseline assumptions seemed off to me: do website visitors really follow the F pattern regardless of a page’s graphic design and layout?  What if you’re selling lingerie?  Wouldn’t you expect a different eye-plot than the standard F-pattern; something closer to this:

The whole point of a properly designed page is to direct and guide the visitor’s attention/eyes where you want them to go.  That’s why visual prominence is so important to page layout and why people (rightly) spend money testing it with sophisticated eye tracking equipment in order to get these kind of results:

And for more text-heavy sites and pages, wouldn’t skim- and scan-friendly formatting that makes use of bullets, bolding, and embedded links similarly affect or change the F-pattern described by Nielsen? We know the direction of your model’s eyes can affect how people look at your page.

I’d also imagine that just as buying a new car suddenly helps its automotive twins to “magically” appear all over the road, a strongly scented link can allow the reader to notice and pick it out amidst the rest of the text on the page, despite the fact that it may or may not have been entirely front-loaded to maximize the impact of its first 11 characters.

What do you think?  Do page layout and scent trump (or at least alter) F-pattern scanning?

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

There are a lot of objections to linking, especially linking off the website. The web & the HT in HTML is all about links.

I won’t go there today.

This blog post about New York Times columnist Frank Rich titled “Frank Rich: Why I Link” is worth reading.

Why has Rich embraced linking when his peers have not? “The theory was: Why not be as transparent as possible by showing sources, when we could?” he told me recently.

That’s a philosophy followed by much of the rest of the Internet; it’s the very foundation of blogging. But most newspapers — including their top columnists — haven’t signed on. read more here…

I would like to see more journalists linking to their sources, providing background and generally acting like if they knew their work was going to appear online. What do you think?

]]> http://www.grokdotcom.com/2008/12/22/linking-matters/feed/ 7 http://www.grokdotcom.com/2008/08/13/when-information-architecture-can-fall-short/ http://www.grokdotcom.com/2008/08/13/when-information-architecture-can-fall-short/#comments Wed, 13 Aug 2008 15:11:22 +0000 Jeff Sexton http://www.grokdotcom.com/2008/08/13/when-information-architecture-can-fall-short/ “Information Architecture involves the design of organization and navigation systems to help people find and manage information more successfully.”

Basically, Information Architecture (IA) views websites as libraries in need of the right kind of card catalogue set-up to facilitate information access by visitors.

But most websites aren’t libraries, or merely stores of…

“Information Architecture involves the design of organization and navigation systems to help people find and manage information more successfully.”

Basically, Information Architecture (IA) views websites as libraries in need of the right kind of card catalogue set-up to facilitate information access by visitors.

But most websites aren’t libraries, or merely stores of information. In fact, most commercial websites are more interested in persuading visitors to take certain actions (i.e. converting) than they are in providing access to information.

In this sense, the interactivity enabled by hyperlinks and Websites is more accurately viewed as a digital conversation than a digitized card catalogue. And the goal of the Website’s architect is not to ensure proper categorization of information, but to:

• Anticipate the flow of possible conversations and
• Provide the appropriate hyperlinks to allow visitors to steer the conversation in the direction they want it to go.

So how do you translate, “steering the conversation” into Web architecture? Well, typically, humans steer a conversation by:
Keeping with this analogy to conversations, a website Architect who wanted to design a site for persuasion (rather than “information access”) would be well advised to:

1. Figure out who the website would be conversing with. In other words, figure out who is coming to the site and model them via personas.
2. Map out the conversations while paying particular attention to how different conversational partners would a) self-identify their needs and goals, b) ask questions regarding their concerns, and c) move towards conversion. Allow your personas to walk over the fresh grass, and then study the organic trails they’ve made, rather than forcing all visitors into a grid system of walkways. In other words, create your scenario maps.
3. Create a link-structure and content plan that will allow each visitor to naturally steer the conversation while building up persuasive momentum towards conversion. In other words, convert your non-linear scenario maps into a per-page website blueprint that specifies each page’s messaging and hyperlinks so as to permit visitors to move through the site without requiring them to disengage from the conversation in order to use a navigational bar.

And that, my friends, is the key to creating a website capable of engaging in more intelligent, respectful, and successful sales conversations (i.e. generating higher conversion rates).

So where does that leave traditional Information Architecture?

Well…One still needs a sitemap. You still want those methodical types and returning visitors to be able to skip the conversation and just look up the content they want, which requires you to establish some type of organizational schema and persistent navigation. Traditional IA is great at this because it’s basically digitized library science to begin with.

But never confuse helping users to “find and manage information,” with engaging visitors in meaningful sales conversations. For that you’ll need Persuasion Architecture (PA) –not Information Architecture (IA).

]]>

With the help of our esteemed colleagues, Copyblogger Brian Clark & SEOmoz founder Rand Fishkin, five winners will have a single link tested on the landing page of their choice. The goal is simple. We want to show how words alone can make a big impact on conversion, and to help you make more money online. The contest is free. Anyone, in any industry, can enter.

Here’s how it works…

• Just comment on this post or the ones like it at Copyblogger and SEOmoz, linking us to the landing page you want tested and telling us why you should win.
• Judges Brian Clark, Rand Fishkin & Bryan Eisenberg will choose 5 winners.
• To be eligible, contestants must have clear metrics and analytics in place, the ability to test (Google Website Optimizer is free, so no excuses), and the willingness to implement our suggestions.
• Contestants must have enough traffic to yield valid test results.
• For each of our winners, the judges will select a single link to be tested, then agree on three variations of that call to action (a.k.a., anchor link).

Don’t be shy. We usually charge for this stuff. Besides, we’re not perfect. Look at all these contest titles the Grok team already burned through:

• Contest: Verbal V i @ g r a for Impotent Links
• The “My Hyperlinks Were 98 lb Weaklings” Contest
• Content: “Click Here” vs.”Click Where?”
• The “Can Your Hyperlink Do This Contest?” Contest
• Bragging Rights for Great Hyperlink Writers

So, if you have a better suggestion for a title, or would actually like to enter the contest, let’s hear it in the comments…

UPDATE: Regarding traffic, we’re looking for landing pages with 2,000 visitors per day, but we’ll consider pages with 1,000+ visitors per day.

[Winners will be announced Thursday, October 11th. Results and analysis of the winners' hyperlink tests will be posted a few weeks later. We're shooting for October 31st -- Halloween.]

Here are the linked phrases Marketing Sherpa tested, followed by the results expressed as a change in click-through conversions:

• “Click to continue”: 8.53%
• “Continue to article”: 3.3%
• “Read more”: (-)1.8%

So, yes, “Click to continue” was the clear winner. But look at what it was being compared to! As calls to action go, those links stink*. I especially liked Brian “AdWords Man” Carter’s analysis:

“My take on ‘click to CONTINUE’ working better than the ‘read more’ or ‘continue to article’ was that continue is an innocuous word, whereas a lot of people don’t like reading or think it’s work, and even if they are reading, don’t remind them that they are or will have to after they click. Likewise, ‘article’ brings the person’s attention back to the larger context of what they’re doing, as opposed to ‘continue’ which allows them to keep their head down and their brain engaged on the exact same track that brought them to the link.”

In other words, you’re comparing a relatively clear and non-friction-inducing call to action to two losers: one using a rather flaccid verb, and the other creating friction in the mind of the reader.

Copyblogger Brian Clark’s — not to be confused with Carter — statement that “…if you want someone to do something, you’ll get better results if you tell them exactly what to do” has to be understood within the context of his larger body of work. For instance, consider it in light of this quote from his most recent post:

“Persuasion is generally an exercise in creating a win-win situation. You present a case that others find beneficial to agree with.”

Basically, what he’s saying (and correct me if I’ve misinterpreted this, Brian) is that once you’ve provided readers with “a scent trail worth following,” and a win-win situation or offer, it’s best to clearly tell those readers HOW to take that next action — and make sure they know how to get that win!

That’s a far cry from the straw man Clark’s detractors so readily maul when deriding his perceived advocacy of “using ‘Click here’ all over the place.”

Looking beyond the straw man (define) to a more contextual understanding of Brian’s advice, what Future Now teaches is largely similar. The difference is that we explicitly state that HOW to take the action must be appropriately influenced by, and combined with, a (re)statement of WHY they should want to do it. In presenting the win-win proposal, we tell our clients to focus on the visitor’s win, not their own. (The JigsawHealth.com case study is a great example.)

See, Brian does this intuitively all the time; the gestalt of his writing agrees with this approach. Unfortunately, though, Brian’s too good a writer, and blogger, for the rest of us to, um, copy.

Here’s our best crack at a formula for persuasive links: imperative verb + implied benefit.

Instead of this:

• Steve found an investment secret that changed his life. Read more…

Or this:

• Steve found an investment secret that changed his life. Click here for the investment strategy of a lifetime.

You get this:

• Steve found an investment secret that changed his life. See how you may be able to double your income in one year.

Notice that the call to action in #1 lacked the benefit to the reader, and that even though #2 stated the benefit for the reader, the imperative verb wasn’t congruent with the benefit like it is in #3.

We feel, and have usually seen with our client’s Websites, that the formula infused in the third example outperforms other options. And I personally believe that this formula offers a contextual understanding of Brian Clark’s advice.

But, hey, this is the web, right? Why not test it out? Next Tuesday, October 2nd, Thursday, October 4th, we’ll announce details on how you can volunteer your site for a little free A/B testing on this very subject. Stay tuned!

[*Although generic, “Click to continue” is sometimes good enough. Use it sparingly, though, since it only works in limited contexts. For instance, if it's used repeatedly on a page that overtly links to similar content.]

It seems Google wants to recruit the public to report on link buying. Good paid links aren’t obviously paid. So, Google will be divining whether or not those links are paid and then penalizing your site. Might some nasty competitor buy a textlink ad or, for that matter, a Yahoo! directory listing and then rat you out?

Here’s a summary of some of the questions and comments being raised:

Small Business SEM says: “Buying links is a form of advertising, and no search engine can decide when and where you should advertise. For me, the main takeaway from all this is that Google is admitting it has no clue how to identify paid links from non-paid links. ”

Scobleizer says: “The real message? They will swat down anyone who really does a good job of selling advertising into Google’s page rank system. PayPerPost is just the most public example of someone selling access to Google’s search engine’s result set but there are others and Matt’s series of posts makes it clear he’s looking to track others.”

Sugarrae says: “My general opinions on paid links aren’t important and neither are yours. This isn’t about whether or not paid links should or shouldn’t have value. What matters is that Google is going to decide whether you’re good or evil based on a guess they know full well has a coin flip toss chance of being accurate in the case of paid links done well. What is important is that Google stands up and admits their own weakness and finds another solution to their issue that doesn’t involve penalizing me or you, based on their “best guess” to a problem they themselves created when they based their entire algorithm on links.”

SEOCLASS offers a broad round up of comments in the blogosphere here: Google Wants To Tell You How To Run Your Website

Obviously, there are a lot of opinions on this. Few of them are full of love for Google. What do you think?

P.S. Do you think this might be hurting the Do No Evil brand?

YouTube – Web 2.0 … The Machine is Us/ing Us

I could see you nodding your heads when I discussed the need to marry your sales process to your visitors’ buying decision processes. “Yep,” you murmured. “That sounds about right.” Then I heard a collective pause, some head scratching and this: “Uh, nice theory, Grok. But how do I put it into practice?”

You make this theory a reality in our business through hyperlinks. Hyperlinks that persuade action. Hyperlinks that answer the questions your visitors ask by providing relevant information. Hyperlinks that allow buying to co-exist happily with selling. Hyperlinks that establish and sustain persuasive momentum.

So let me introduce you to the hyperlinking strategy that is the backbone of a persuasive Web site.

Read the rest of this article.
Read the entire newsletter: Volume 110