Persuasion Architecture
Interview on Persuasion Architecture, Personas and ROI
In case you weren’t able to join me today at the King Conversion: Websites that Sell conference in Erie, PA — put on by the fabulous folks at eBizITPA — I at least wanted to share a recent interview on personas and persuasive planning.
I had a chance to sit down with Cathy von Birgelen to talk about what’s on the mind of Pennsylvania business owners, and what they want to know about improving their websites and other online marketing efforts. You probably have a lot of the same questions and I think I may have some answers for you.
You can either download the interview (by right-clicking here) or just listen to it streaming below:
Click here for Holly’s interview
Hot Topics
Need to bookmark this for the next time you’ve got a few minutes? No problem. I’ll be going into more detail in the actual presentation, but…
Here’s what’s covered in the interview:
• How to start a meaningful relationship with Customers. (Hint: don’t ask them to marry you on the first date.)
• The four buying modes — Spontaneous, Competitive, Humanistic and Methodical — and how to increase conversion based on understanding what information each type wants and how they want that information presented. (There’s no such thing as an average customer.)
• How to use personas to create persuasive messages that speak to people in their language about what they care about. (Because it can’t always be about you.)
• The real purpose of your homepage and how to reduce those nasty battles over that prime real estate. (I know, I’ve seen the scars and bruises.)
• Common conversion mistakes and how to make simple changes that can have a big impact on your bottom line. (Seriously, you’ll be smacking your head and going, “duh” — here’s how Amazon does it.)
• Content for search engines vs. content for customers (Who said you had to choose?)
• What analytics to focus on that can actually tell you something about your site and where it’s most broken. (Hey, if you want to go ahead and read those 20 page analytics reports,knock yourself out. But if you want to know 5 specific metrics to look at, let’s talk.)
. .
About the Author: Holly Buchanan is co-author of The Soccer Mom Myth — Today’s Female Consumer: Who She Really Is, Why She Really Buys; and co-instructor of FutureNow’s Persuasive Online Copywriting seminar, June 2nd in Manhattan.
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Written by:Holly Buchanan
Screencast: Building Trust & Credibility Online
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.
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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Written by:Dave Young
The Aristotle Code: Inspiring Online Credibility (Part 1)
You want a credible website. And you’re a Grok reader, which puts you much closer to your goal. ; )
So you checked out Stanford University’s Persuasive Technology Lab slide show, and were careful to note the beginning explanation, where credibility was broken down into two components: (1) Trustworthiness, and (2) Expertise. (And boy, did those look familiar. Sort of… )
Where had you seen them before?
Being a good student of rhetoric, it hits you: Stanford got it wrong! There’s more than two components of credibility; there are three (at least according to Aristotle).
1.) Virtue
2.) Practical Wisdom
3.) Disinterested Good Will (toward the audience)
Maybe the Persuasive Technology Lab placed “virtue” and “goodwill” in the same category. At least all of their guidelines for website credibility neatly divide into the three components:
VIRTUE — Guidelines 1, 3, 5, 8, and 10 each describe various ways of proving or demonstrating your organization’s overall virtue. In rhetoric, virtue is relative: It generally means the audience believes you share, and live, their values. Obviously, values vary with audiences — but start with typical work ethics and you won’t go wrong too often. With that in mind, is it any wonder that a Virtuous website is one that…
- Looks professional (Guideline 1)
- Shows that there is a real/substantive organization behind it (Guideline 3)
- Shows the stand-up/credible people working for said organization (Guideline 5)
- Is frequently updated/maintained, and (Guideline 8 )
- Is free of errors (Guideline 10)
Heck, that’s just good old fashion takin’-care-of-business. Of course, the “varies by audience” bit applies to what qualifies as “professional looking” and what types of employees qualify as “stand-up/credible.” Obviously, a surf school and an accounting firm would want different looking websites, highlighting different staff credentials.
PRACTICAL WISDOM - It’s not enough to be virtuous. You also need job-related skills and experience (i.e., the actual know-how required for the situation at hand). To paraphrase a modern day rhetorician: I may count my priest as a virtuous man, but that still doesn’t mean I’d want him performing my heart surgery.
Guidelines 2 and 4 provide ways for your Website to demonstrate or display your organization’s practical wisdom by:
- Presenting information, claims, and credentials that are easy to verify (Guideline 2). Tell me your company is a leader in fabric technology and I may or may not believe you. Let me link to Lands End, Outdoor Research, and, say, Cabela’s, where I can see different products labeled with your fabric logo or trade-name (maybe you’re the new GORE-TEX?), and I’ll make that claim for you in my own mind: “Wow, these guys are like the king of outdoor fabrics.”
- Showcasing the staff’s professional expertise and accomplishments (Guideline 4). Some companies have such overwhelming credibility that it’s just assumed that their people kick butt. (Think of a programmer or designer for Apple.) But for non-iconic companies, people understand that organizations don’t have expertise - only people do. So play up the expert credentials and accomplishments of your people.
DISINTERESTED GOOD WILL - Even if you’re generally a virtuous person with outstanding expertise in a given area, I might not find your advice credible if you have an obvious bias or vested interest that’s potentially in conflict with your audience. (I don’t care how honest a man or how fabulous a lawyer your father-in-law might be; he’s probably not who you want to take legal advice from when you’re divorcing his daughter.)
Business executives and salespeople often have a hard time with this one because, well, they DO stand to benefit from their audience’s purchasing decisions. Progressive Insurance will tell you when they’re not your best deal. Why? Because that move violates their own self-interest in favor of yours — which buys them huge credibility for the times when they tell you that they are the best deal!
So, how do you translate this onto the web? Well, I’ve got plenty of techniques for doing this with your copy (more on this in the next post), but the Persuasive Technology Lab’s Guideline 6, 7, and 9 suggest that credible websites should…
- Make it easy for visitors to contact you (Guideline 6). Face it, if your willing to interrupt your day to field their calls, people are more likely to think you actually care about them.
- Make it easy to use the Website (Guideline 7). If you speak to customers about what matters, and make it easy for them to shop in a way that’s intuitive and natural, they just might feel that you care about them. Forcing people to buy the way you want to sell sends the opposite message.
- Use restraint with promotional material (Guideline 9). Giving people the hard sell never indicates respect. Stop pitching and start talking to your visitors. Polite conversation indicates respect. Hype indicates, and creates, cynicism.
Well, that covers all ten guidelines. But now that you understand how each of them is merely a facet of Aristotle’s famous triad, you’re ready for more advanced credibility-building techniques. (Hint: A lot of them come from Persuasion Architecture™ methodology).
And you might be surprised to learn that a recent MacArthur Foundation “genius” has written some of the most compelling advice I’ve ever found on the subject. First it’s Stanford, now it’s a MacArthur Fellow. Holy high-brow, Batman!
(Don’t worry, it leads to some incredibly doable, practical stuff. Tune in next week… )
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Written by:Jeff Sexton
Why We Teach Analysis Without the Analyst
The eMetrics Marketing Optimization Summit is right around the corner, on October 14 - 17 in Washington D.C. It is THE event for web analytics for schmoozing other professionals interested in optimization.
Here is some video footage of my presentation from the last eMetrics Summit San Francisco this May. Maybe this short clip will wet your appetite for the event and perhaps even get you thinking about optimization and the opportunity cost game.
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Written by:Bryan Eisenberg
Bryan Eisenberg on Why People Buy Online
In a recent interview with e-consultancy’s Richard Maven, Bryan discusses the dos and don’ts of persuading customers to take action online.
The best part: I’m pretty sure we can track him down to answer your questions… 
Related Posts:
- Interview on Persuasion Architecture, Personas and ROI
- Bryan Eisenberg on Using Personas to Improve Sales
- Interview With an Eisenberg: Bryan Talks Personas, Persuasion Architecture, and Boosting Conversion Rates
- Screencast: Conversion-boosting Tips from Target.com
- Grokcast: Google's Tom Leung on the Google Website Optimizer
Written by:The Grok
“Good, Fast and/or Cheap”? Refuse to Choose!
John Quarto-vonTivadar tells me there’s an old adage among software developers: You can have it Fast, you can have it Good, or you can have it Cheap. Pick Two.
In short, you can’t have it all. Try to have it all and you set yourself up for failure and a dead project.
Funny how we come to accept this as a perfectly valid philosophy when it comes to our development projects — especially funny when the fortunes of our online businesses are at stake.
Given the high project failure rate in our industry — over 70 percent, by some estimates — I wonder if this “Pick Two” philosophy is nothing more than a crutch; a shoot-yourself-in-the-foot way to shift the blame when things go up the Swanee.
Know what I think? It’s time for a “Pick Three” philosophy!
What idiot’s going to ask the customer — the person for whom you are developing a project — which of these three options they can forgo?
Of course the customer wants it Fast. How often do you hear this: “Sally, I see the ACME project (on which the future of this company depends) is 7 months overdue, but don’t worry. Just finish it off whenever you get around to it.”
Of course the customer wants it Good. “Hey, our people are certified with so many acronyms they can’t possible design poorly or write bad code.”
Of course the customer wants it Cheap. Whoever heard of wanting it expensive?
And, of course, no developer wants to end up with egg on his face when he’s linked to the option that was sacrificed.
But why is it that the customer is all too often excluded from the development equation? The clients for whom folks develop projects make decisions every day about balancing resources with needs. Can we really think they simply won’t be able to get it?
When all is said and done, the “Pick Two” philosophy is little more than a handy way to blame a 7-in-10 failure rate on having over-reached by hoping to attain the elusive “Pick Three”.
To add insult to injury, did you know that of the 30 percent of projects considered “successful,” more than 80 percent of their total project costs come in the form of “troubleshooting and maintenance” after the initial release? Which is to say, if you’re successful, your final project costs 5 times whatever you spent on it during development.
Shiver me timbers, mateys. This is madness!
Let me suggest a different approach; a win/win in which everyone plans for success. Forget Fast, Good and Cheap as your relative “success” metrics, and consider instead a project that is “On Purpose”.
This is the heart of Persuasion Architecture™. By sitting down with the customer and defining together what the Purpose of the project will be, we can establish a series of absolute — rather than relative — metrics, and we can clarify the issues of schedule and financial breadth of the project.
Our project will be “good” to the extent we achieve our Purpose. After all, when’s the last time you heard “Well, Tim, the project did everything we wanted it to… guess we should mark it off as a failure”? We guarantee the Purpose is always the focus by Wireframing the project.
Our project will be “fast” because the Purpose outlines a specific schedule for delivering the purposeful goals. Unless you live in Australia, doing sit-ups to show off the new swimsuit is much more effective when you begin in January than it is if you start training in July.
Our project will be “cheap” insofar as the budget allows us to meet those purposeful goal. Not a single line of HTML or code is written until we do all the hard planning and thinking work up-front — from defining Purpose to developing a Prototype (the Prototype itself being the final acceptance test).
By defining Purpose as our metric for success, we can identify exactly how we’ll go about achieving it, how long it will take, and the resources we’ll require before we begin.
My new adage for this approach: “On Time, on Budget, and on Purpose. Pick Three.”
Are your online Marketing projects being developed on purpose?
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Written by:The Grok
Interview With an Eisenberg: Bryan Talks Personas, Persuasion Architecture, and Boosting Conversion Rates
Netconcepts founder Stephen Spencer recently interviewed Bryan about Persuasion Architecture™, our planning methodology that holds marketing accountable by bridging the gap between customer motivations and business goals. It’s about anticipating what people want and optimizing the experience to make it even better.
Yes, marketing can must be accountable. And once it is, smiling faces and money soon follow. As you’ll see from the interview, it all starts with customer personas…
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Written by:The Grok
“If Clicks Were Votes” — President Giuliani?
Reading Techmeme on Tuesday, I came across the Compete blog, and these fabulous images related to the upcoming presidential election:
If you’re interested in their analysis, read the full post; it’s excellent stuff. It’s also a great example of the speed with which we move these days. Michele’s earlier post about Twittering with John Edwards is another.
The Compete folks predicted, based on website traffic, that Mitt Romney would win the GOP nomination. I love their spirit, and the visuals are damn cool. But as this is the Conversion Rate Marketing Blog, I have to admit, Conversion would be a far greater predictor than Traffic.
I know we’re biased but, at the end of the day, when you’re running for President, what you care about first and foremost is votes (much like when you’re running your business, dollars and delighted customers come first). People voting is about an audience taking an action based on their own motivations. And that’s exactly how we’ve defined conversion for the past decade.
The election itself measures macro-conversions (i.e., votes) but the predictive model can only measure micro-conversions (e.g., donations, volunteering, etc.). Just like smart marketers plan a persuasive system to predict sales, one could plan a persuasive system to predict votes. It’s simple, but that doesn’t mean it’s easy
- First, you’d define the audience, using an intelligent framework like Jungian archetypes or Myers-Briggs (define - find your type).
- Then you’d consider the micro-actions you’d want them to take; those from an earlier-stage decision than voting. For instance, offering an email address as a way of communicating, signing up for a Twitter update, making a financial donation, or volunteering your time.
- Once you’ve decided on the micro-action conversions, plan an experience to facilitate these actions you’ve laid out for your audience. The key is in understanding the individual’s motivations for taking the action you’d like her to take.
Some of this information is publicly reported, specifically fundraising totals. Fundraising shows a different prediction than the traffic alone; namely, Rudy getting the nod to partake in the 2008 general election. Obviously, campaign donations represent only one scenario, of which there are many.
Anybody know any sources that track the other potential scenarios? I’d love to assemble a predictive model based on the wisdom of crowds.
[Editor’s note: For more online campaign analysis, stay tuned for “If Clicks Were Votes” — President Obama?”]
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Written by:Howard Kaplan
“If Architects Had to Work Like Web Designers”
OK, here’s a stupid question: Would you build a house without an architectural blueprint?
Would you just put up some walls, and add in rooms here and there, and not really pay any attention to silly things like, for instance, doors, so you at least have the option to travel between rooms? Would you have stairs that lead to the ceiling? Hallways that go nowhere?
I’m guessing your answer is no. Unless you’re Sarah Winchester. The wealthy widow and heir to the Winchester Rifle fortune built the now-famous Winchster House. Mrs. Winchester was convinced by a medium that continuous building would appease the evil spirits of those killed by the famous “Gun That Won the West.” Construction went on 24/7. There are windows built into floors, doors that open onto blank walls, staircases that go nowhere.
No blueprints were ever created for the Winchester house.
Websites are a lot like houses. At Future Now, we’ve used the “building a house” analogy for years to explain how we work with clients to design and build websites, using blueprints to plan every click; Persuasion Architecture™, as we call it*. So I laughed that much harder when I read Seattle-based graphic designer, and Biznik.com blogger, Shae Allen’s vision of people treating building a house in the same way most companies construct their website.
Here’s just a snippet:
Please design and build me a house. I am not quite sure of what I need, so you should use your discretion. My house should have somewhere between two and forty-five bedrooms. Just make sure the plans are such that the bedrooms can be easily added or deleted. When you bring the blueprints to me, I will make the final decision of what I want. Also, bring me the cost breakdown for each configuration so that I can arbitrarily pick one.
What’s not so funny is how companies across the board think and act this way when it comes to building their websites. They simply design “pages” or “rooms” with little to no thought as to how someone will get there, or what different customer personas might want from that “room.” A good architect will work with the whole family to plan out what each person will want from each room, and combine it all into a house, where it’s easy for each family member to have the experience they want.
A good architect always has a blueprint.
Otherwise you end up with a house where you just keep building and building, changing direction with each new member pushing what he or she wants. You end up with rooms with no clear function, where you can’t figure out where to go next.
Sounds like your company’s website? If so, keep in mind that Sarah Winchester was off her rocker. What’s your company’s excuse?
Why do so many organizations move forward on website projects without a blueprint?
[*For an overview of Persuasion Architecture™, check out this video tutorial on how planning an effective website is like planning a house.]
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Written by:Holly Buchanan
Do You Know HOW to Convert Visitors to Sales?
This quote from an AdWeek article at Yahoo News got my attention when it stated that:
…online marketers are largely unaware of their customers’ preferences.
The article then rehashes the common knowledge that online marketing spend is up, while average conversion rates are steadily sinking. It also cites a few research studies that speculate as to the reasons why conversion rates currently suck.
Jeffrey Grau, eMarketer senior analyst and author of the “U.S. Retail E-Commerce Update,” said the disconnect between spending and results can be attributed to online retailers doing too little traditional market research while relying too much on Web metrics.
The article continues…
Online marketers “treat Web metrics like religion,” he said. “They don’t look at what’s behind the numbers.
“Market research tells retailers why customers are doing things, which is different than only measuring what consumers are clicking on,” said Grau. “Online retailers can use focus groups, e-mail and consumer conversations with customer service agents to find out what people care about.” But Web analytics follow user behavior, and that kind of data doesn’t explain why people do things, he said.
The article also refers to those sites that perform above average, suggesting that:
…top-performing e-commerce sites–those with conversion rates of more than 10 percent–stand out from the pack because they “know their customers and their competition well enough to provide a one-stop shopping experience,” with convenience and customized features suited to their target audience.
Far be it from me to argue with these conclusions, but they’re too shallow for my tastes.
Let’s speculate for a minute…
Let’s imagine that:
- You know WHO your customers are.
- You know WHAT your customers are doing and not doing on your site (i.e., web metrics).
- You actually know WHY they’re not converting.
Now what? Do you now know HOW to convert them?
Every client we’ve dealt with has had enough WHO, WHAT, and WHY information on-hand to make a positive impact on their conversion, but most have yet to figure out HOW to leverage this information to maximize and optimize their conversion rate.
I wish it were as easy as running a few focus groups, creating a few new promotions, offering free shipping, etc–but, it isn’t. If it were, the average conversion rates wouldn’t suck.
Marketers need a system that will manage the seemingly endless variables, understand quantitative and behavioral data, help them prioritize resources for conversion impact, synchronize cross channel message, give them deeper insight into web analytics, equip them to develop relevant creative on-demand, then turn it all into online customer experience.
A tall order, for sure. Thankfully, I know of a such a system
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Written by:Anthony Garcia
