First, there was Jeff Sexton’s post about asking the right Persuasion Architecture questions before redesigning, which was inspired by a Seth Godin post. Then, Jakob Nielson had some good thoughts from the Usability camp about redesigns and how radical they should be.

Mr. Nielson’s thoughts resonated with me given that our OnTarget product is generally focused on incremental improvement of clients’ existing websites. He urges readers to avoid redesigns that involve massive change to a site’s user interface.  Why?  Because users (read: customers and prospects) hate change and love the familiar, even if we as marketers are sick of how our own sites look.  It’s always good advice to “evolve a UI with gentle changes rather than offer a totally fresh design.”  He also recommends “getting the basic design right in the first place, before you launch, so that it can live several years with minor updates.”  I think that’s a key point: a good (re)design is one that can stay fresh and current for several years, and accommodate a process of continuous improvement and incremental change.

I’ve seen many gorgeous site redesigns that didn’t stand up to that criteria–they weren’t well-coded, well-documented, or maintainable.  And when it came time to start optimizing, the marketing team found many unexpected constraints that made incremental changes more expensive than they bargained for.

Another point I’d like to drive home is that redesigns should be done with ROI in mind, not because internal stakeholders are sick of the look and feel.  There should be documented goals that can be measured, for example, increasing pages per visit by 20%, and increasing conversion rate by 5%.  And flexibility should be built in, so that you can always have a “to do list” of small improvements you can implement each month to incrementally build on your successes.

Finally, if you are considering a moderate to major redesign, keep in mind that usability testing can be done on very simple prototypes before you make major investments.  And, we love giving feedback on mockups, wireframes, prototypes, etc. because it allows our clients to launch with the best possible product, after which we start the process of continuous improvement.

“Are you saying that we shouldn’t bother with creating multiple personas with granular details but rather focus on creating only a few (4 if we use the logical-emotional, quick-deliberate quadrant)? But if we add the stages of the buying cycle in there, we could end up with [too many] personas. This is still unclear to us.”

First off, thanks for reiterating these common issues. You probably won’t be surprised to hear us suggest what we’ve said on numerous occasions before: start with what you can handle. If you are unsure of how to proceed, that in itself tells you to shoot for the simpler solution by focusing on the *actual* goal, which is to improve conversion, sell more widgets, get more leads, etc. If you do nothing, you obviously will just continue to have the same results you already have. But if you over-reach for “perfection” to the point at which your eyes glaze over and you become catatonic then you’ll also have the same results you already have. So start small.  A subtle and deep Persona development that doesn’t get implemented correctly is hardly better than using the quadrant approach, and both approaches will definitely work on the important stuff that ought to be improved first.  In fact, if that wasn’t the case, then you’d have to worry, right? Navy blue is still blue, right? An Anjou pear is still a pear, right? And meerkats are still…oops, ditch that last.

And just to let you know: there’s no particular reason that smaller companies should find this harder than larger companies…just the opposite, in fact. We had a recent client, a *huge* technology company, who’s marketing pros convinced themselves they “got personas” and then wondered why their recently-developed PA personas were different than their expectations. So they missed the real point, which is not to reinforce a company’s self-centric approach, but instead to re-think their marketing to be customer-centric. Smaller companies tend to be more likely to implement change, often because fewer sacred cows need be put out to pasture before improvement can begin.

In short, go with the quadrant approach (or even one-dimensional, if need be!) and move on from there. Add in buying cycle, but don’t add a dimension just to keep the count “evened out” — add in distinct differences that result in a required change in persuasion, not a change in demographics. A Spontaneous persona, for example, will often breeze through her Early and Middle stage buying process faster than you can model for, so there’s nothing to be gained by inferring a difference that cannot be measured. Think of buying a candy bar — the buying process is fast for pretty much everyone, except outlier demographic specialties (a diabetic, a seed nuts allergy, a strict bodybuilder, etc). I often refer to this as “the demography seasons the modality.”

Now think of buying a house — surely the Spontaneous is going to go through a completely different process buying a home than buying a candy bar. There will be a Early buying process, and a Middle as well before the house is chosen, inspected the deed is signed and the lawyers paid. The nature of the underlying goal influences how the customer goes about achieving that goal, even when she has a pre-disposition to act in one preferred mode or another. Got it? I like to refer to this as, “The topology mediates the modality.” How much of your content strategy today answers the Methodical’s early stage buying needs?

“We also began questioning the practicality of designing at the page level for all of our personas. Some of us feel that it is possible to use personas for creating a scent trail at the individual page level if personas are very clearly defined but we also believe very large international sites would become extremely cluttered if multiple personas were used in the persuasion architecture of each page. Could you explain your
position on this?”

Another great question, probably because we hear this one a lot as a “freeze” point for larger companies. The answer is almost *never* to be creating multiple page versions, one variation for each persona. That’s not working for personas; that’s working for personalization in an aggregated populance. And if that worked, you’d've seen that emerge a decade ago as a solution that everyone would have jumped on. The reason it doesn’t work is that Persuasion Architecture(TM) Personas aren’t designed to be stereotypes of demographic groups; instead, they are representative models for the buying process and there’s a limited number of ways that the Human Operating System works. Each of us is a little mix of each of the modalities, and even that varies in time, place and context. The Personas are models; the Customers are not. So each of us, as individuals, exhibit varying relative balances of the PA Personas at each step in our own buying process.

So when you design for persuasive scenarios you’re optimizing how the various personas *could* move through the site *persuasively*. Not all possible paths; just those paths along which effective persuasion occurs (that distinction will drive your IT folks crazy. Sorry! ). And to answer the final part of your question, the question of internationalization is a good one, but again is answered by the persuasive process. If someone from Japan buys a camera the same way as someone from Poland, then your issue is one of language. If those processes are culturally different, then the persuasion is different, and has to be analyzed to really lead to optimization (and you’ll have to also determine for yourself, if, say, one quadrant type is different from one culture to another while another quadrant might remain the same), and then you layer the internationalization on top of that.  Usually, though,  when one mode changes due to culture, all modes change and the relative mix of modes changes as a whole.

Again, keep the goal in mind: more conversion, more sales, more leads. You’re looking to optimize your sales system by optimizing all parts of the process. You correctly comment that this can get complex and, in your words, “extremely cluttered”. The “clutter” claim often comes when a company attempts to graft persuasion architecture on top of information architecture — without having understood the persuasion first, an information system was designed and implemented un-prepared to persuade — of *course* it’s going to turn out complex and cluttered. Our experience has been that when you plan the persuasion first, you’ll actually be amazed at how un-cluttered your very talented information architect’s work will be since she’ll be working to a plan for persuasive paths.

I hope that helps! Let us know if you need any further clarification.

This post is intended to respond to the questions we were asked. If you want to know more about personas I’d recommend you read our books or if not download two documents: our Persuasion Architecture (PDF) & Getting Started with Building Persona (PDF) whitepapers.

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.

After reading this article about the “Fogg Behavior Model”, I began thinking about all of these different scenarios for all my different clients. For each one of my clients, I can pinpoint which of the three elements in the Fogg Behavior Model is their weakest.

“The Fogg Behavior Model shows that three elements must converge at the same moment for a behavior to occur: Motivation, Ability, and Trigger. When a behavior does not occur, at least one of those three elements is missing.”

In applying his model, BJ Fogg of Stanford, recommends that you work backwards to determine whether you’re successfully meeting these three requirements.

First, what is the trigger for getting visitors to you? What is the offer you’re selling them through your CPC? What are the trigger words you’re using in your radio ads to get them to come ot your site or pick up the phone?

Next, ask yourself if the visitor has the ability to take the action you want them to take? Do they have the budget? Are they technically savvy enough to browse your site and/or use your tools? Are they located in a geographic area that you ship to? Does the visitor have the time to browse your site?

Finally, are you effectively motivating visitors? Are you answering the questions that they have to help them move forward? Are you presenting them with attractive offers?

The “Motivating” element is where I spend a lot of my time helping my clients. In order to determine whether our clients are effectively motivating their visitors on their web sites, we ask the following three questions Persuasion Architecture is based on;
1)    What action do you want the visitor to take?
2)    Who are your visitors?
3)    What do these visitors need in order to feel comfortable taking the action?

Do you need help getting your visitors out of the Fogg?

Marketers are often measured by the number of leads they generate. Sales people are measured by sales. Marketers don’t want to be held accountable for sales because they aren’t actually selling. Sales people criticize “poorly qualified” web leads. This all leads to a lot of tension.

The Consequences of “Low Quality” Leads

In fact, in a survey conducted by Omniture and InsideSales.com they set up aliases, such as John@xyzcompany.com, and completed the lead or request information form of 700 different companies, several different times. Then kept track of their lead response and nurturing strategies and found:

• Average email response time: 19 hours, 31 minutes
  *Optimum response time should be within the first hour

• Average phone response time: 36 hours, 57 minutes
  *Optimum phone response time should be within the first five minutes

• How many companies even responded?
  *Only 47.3 percent responded via email, and just 7.5 percent responded via phone!

Web-generated leads decrease effectiveness by over 6x in the first hour according to InsideSales.com.

Obviously, there is a huge disaster in the making. Marketers have potential customers who indicated some level of qualification to buy from your company and sales people who practically refuse to respond. In the end everyone loses out.

Five Steps to Solving the “Lead Qualification” Problem

1. Identify which sources of traffic generation are creating improved qualification rates and ideal close rates. You need to have the analytics and a CRM / sales workflow system that helps you close the loop from marketing all the way through the close of the sale.

2. Identify which offer types improved qualification rates and close rates. Understand your personas and what actually matters to them. Spend time testing and refining offers and generating additional content that you can prove matters to your prospects.

3. Improve your method of qualifying and capturing leads. Test your lead forms to find the right balance of questions that keep the quality and lead count up. Use a platform that enables you to capture web activity (pages/content viewed, tool/calculator interactions) and include that information in the customer profile for sales. This usually involves tagging content to identify its value in the sales and buying process. Content tagging is so simple when you use Persuasion Architecture.

4. Improve your method of distributing leads. Often times the delay in getting form submissions responded to is your internal process of routing leads to the appropriate sales person. This should never be a manual process considering you lose a leads effectiveness with in the first few minutes. Think about it, the last time you submitted a form on a site, when did you want the response to your inquiry. Now! So do your prospects. Use a platform that will automatically distribute leads based on the profile of the customer you have collected through their visit(s). Distribution is often based on geographic region, company size, product/service they are interested in, etc. Either you can have the prospect fill this out in a form or most of this information can be collected and gleaned by web activity.

5. Improve your lead response time. When marketing aligns with sales using effective content planning, integrating the customer buying process with the company’s sales process, distributing leads that have not been turned off by your processes (and horrendous forms), providing sales people with details that matter to them about the prospect’s interests and motivations and then distribute those leads effectively, their isn’t a salesperson who wouldn’t want to respond to that kind of “qualified” prospect right away.

Do you need help generating more qualified leads? We are here for you.

Well sports fans, here we go.  Black Friday.  Soon, Cyber Monday.  (Forgive me for the brief digression, but did you know neither Black Friday nor Cyber Monday typically deliver results, in the form of conversions, er, sales, mainly just delivering traffic   Unsurprisingly, retail numbers thus far have been bleak, to say the least.

Retailers are hopeful however, and doing everything they can to jumpstart the economy and try to turn a profit this holiday season.  Amazon got my attention with their personalized email, touting deals exclusively for me, but really failed to deliver on the promise.  Uber-disappointing when you consider how much insight they have into my buying process, not to mention my personal as well as holiday gift time purchase history.  Yes, even the market leaders sometimes miss opportunities. Perhaps they need some help harvesting the insight from their customers’ past purchase behavior?  [*Update* CNBC documents Amazon's strategy.]

Naturally, many retailers are using price cuts to try and attract attention.  Even brands who rarely do so, like Apple for instance, give kickbacks to customers this weekend.  Who says Politicians should be the only ones to prosper?!  [Don't say we're not in the giving back mood either- deal hunters should stop by Gizmodo for a rundown of all the best deals this weekend.  *Update* NY Times has a good rundown too.]

Not every retailer is up to the same old tricks though.  Sears, through a partnership with Yahoo is trying to capture the holiday spirit, and capitalize on the web sense of community to spur sales.  Of course, they promise exclusive deals as part of the promotion .

If history is any indicator, each of these efforts will result in traffic spikes (not only on websites but highways and mall parking lots as well!) of highly motivated would-be customers. These potential prospects certainly have a list of products in mind, or if they’re earlier on in the buying process, an idea of what type of product they’re shopping for.  Everyone hates to be sold, but loves to buy. Buying is about the experience, above and beyond the “right price”.  What will you do to convert those could-be customers into delighted customers?

Plato said, “necessity is the mother of invention.”  If Plato were faced with a marketing budget coming under fire to pare costs and brace for a long dark winter, I respectfully suggest he’d get focused on “inventing” some ideas around Optimization.  Your traffic is coming to your website for a reason, and if your conversion rate is in the single digits, perhaps it’s time to consider what your audience is telling you, and do something about it.  After all, you won’t have the same luxuries to keep spending $$ on driving an overabundance of traffic.  Perhaps now is the time to capitalize on opportunity: the web is your home to listen not to what they say, but rather to what they do! We’re always here to help you listen, and turn your audience feedback into actionable (and continuous) website improvements. 

Tomorrow we’ll start to see a harbinger of things to come.  Will Santa’s little elves be out in full force?  Most definitely.  But the larger question we want answered is, will the experience be enough to overcome the last stage of the buying process- reevaluation. So, in the name of research, go out and enjoy the deals… but let us know about the experience.

Do you see more sites this weekend who deliver on their promises, or are your expectations continuing to outdistance the experience they provide?  We want to know!  Our audience does too, so please sound off in the comments.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

t”

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

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

Why?

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

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

So if you already have a solid sales team, the question I’d ask you is: how good is your offensive line, and how much more could you be scoring with a better one?

• 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.

As online marketers are forced to reign in their spending (along with just about everyone else today), many may be tempted to cut their optimization budgets. After all, optimizing a website is w_o_r_k. It’s far easier to simply buy more traffic, when you need to generate greater profits.

That strategy even works too, on a short enough time horizon, although admittedly more so in bull markets than bear ones. But in recessionary times (or those dangerously close to it like, say, now) those who have become addicted to Google’s PPC fix find themselves up a certain creek, and lacking an effective paddle.

I made the case last month while talking to a group of Direct Marketers at the DMA, that increasing traffic is like a one night stand, where as conversion improvements are a long lasting love affair. When you increase conversion, the impact is permanent, and as you generate more traffic to your website, with your newly effective funnel, you generate exponentially more revenue than before. Far more so than simply incrementally increasing traffic.

While we’re talking about traffic… you know what happens to traffic when consumer confidence is low? It drops.

Sorry for the Debbie Downer post, but it’s not all bad news! Increasing conversion may be work, but it’s not hard to figure out. In fact, 3 simple questions are all you need to help you improve your website performance:

1. Who is your audience?
2. What action do you want them to take? (i.e. – what is conversion on your site?)
3. What information do they need to feel comfortable and confident taking the action? (i.e. – what’s their motivation for doing what you want them to?!)

If that sounds hard, give us a call and we’ll show you it doesn’t have to be. Want a sneak peak into how? Well since you asked, Bryan would be happy to show you, along with the fine folks at Sitebrand. Enjoy!

Great video, great message.  Now imagine that the guy in the suit worked for a corporation, and his boss asked him to come up with the words for the beggar’s sign. 
 His sentence would have been made into a paragraph by Corporate, watered down by Legal, and politically corrected by Human Resources.  I’m thinking it would be a completely different message by then. 
 Uh oh, I think my cynicism is showing again. [emphasis mine]

Yup.  Nothing like the mental image of some tone-deaf suits destroying the impact and emotional nuances in one’s copy to spark a good, hearty rant.  I’m right there with you, Susan.  But believe it or not, this is a problem that personas can go a long way toward solving.  Seriously.

You see, absent a well defined and imaginable audience, most people tend to do one of three things:

1. Market to themselves.  We all naturally tend to fall back on what WE like and what WE find motivating.  Great if we’re selling to people just like us; not so great otherwise.
2. Market to Stereotypes.  As in, “hey, let’s target our advertising towards soccer moms!”  People are funny like that: they know when they’re being talked down to.
3. Market on Price. Not that you’ll immediately advertise a sale, but it’s easier to talk about features than real benefits when you’re not clear about the prospect’s emotional itch.  And that’s a game of emphasizing features vs. price.

Most clueless revisions and edits fall into these three categories.  A lawyer might Latinize your copy because it sounds more like the formal language he’s around all day.   He’s making your copy sound like the language he respects and that “speaks” to him.  He’s marketing to himself.

Same thing with executives.  As a group executives naturally skew towards a Competitive temperament.  Plus, Executives with non-competitive temperaments often find themselves operating in that mode due to the professional demands of their jobs.  So they tend to re-write copy to better speak to them:

• Put the bottom-line up front
• Bullet out the important points
• Get rid of the fluffy crap and don’t get dragged down into the weeds
• Etc.

And that’s great for Competitive temperaments, but it can leave everyone else cold.  Unfortunately, Competitives only make up 15% of the population.  So now you’re potentially leaving 75 85% of your audience unconvinced.  Yikes!

Unfortunately, telling a client or boss that they are marketing to themselves never goes well.  Never try this one at home, kids, ‘cause that conversation aint going to stay about the copy.  Same thing with pointing out stereotype-based copy.  There is simply no neutral way to say these things; they’re always interpreted as an accusation.

Fortunately, personas can say things you can’t

Instead of telling the VP of marketing that he’s re-written your copy based solely on what appeals to him, imagine being able to pull out the persona you’ve been tasked to write to and having a discussion about how well the VP’s copy would or would not connect emotionally with that persona.

Now you can put your objections to his edits in terms of what the personas – and therefore the customers – do and do not like, rather than what you or your editors do and don’t like. Telling a VP that his version of the copy fails to address the emotional concerns of Sally is far less threatening and far more persuasive than telling him his edits have sucked the life out of your copy.

And this works for everything:

• for explaining that Sally doesn’t understand the jargon-filled features your editors are trying to cram into the copy
• for arguing the more appropriate connotations of one word over another, for example, “normal” rather than “average”
• for explaining that Johnny really DOES want to know the details and methodology
• etc.

In short, personas give you a vastly more objective basis for discussing the emotional nuances of your copy as well as the tone-deaf edits that might be threatened upon same.  With personas, these conversations DO stay about the copy and they usually do end up going well.

So while I admit that ranting about bad edits can provide a nice break to the day, I’ll also tell you that successfully defending your copy is infinitely more satisfying – and that personas are an excellent tool for achieving that goal.

With that level of “targeting,” it’s anyone’s guess. There just isn’t enough information available.

But if George Costanza, the white middle-income male New Yorker between age 30 and 44 from “Seinfeld” picks up the wallet, everyone knows exactly what he’ll do.

He’ll keep the money.

By allowing you to imagine their concerns, reactions, and questions, personas allow you to better plan marketing interactions and messaging. Personas are critical to lead generation Web sites, specifically those that want to engage their suspects and prospects in a sales dialogue online and offline.

Personas vs. Segmentation/Demographics

When building personas for your lead gen or demand generation Web site, psychographics are typically more profitable than demographics.

Psychographics give insight into how an individual perceives the world, their belief structures, and some of their core personality traits. Psychographics, in the form of personality theory and motivational research, have a long documented effectiveness at predicting decision-making styles and behaviors — including buying behaviors.

Demographics, on the other hand, are only loosely correlated to behavior and often horrible in predicting marketing response.

Personas tell us how to plan and have a conversation. Demographics mostly tell us where to have that conversation. Both are important.

Using Personas to Take Action and Build Persuasion Scenarios

Web sites and online interactions especially benefit from this by allowing copywriters to plan the interactivity of click paths, the link structure for embedded hyperlinks, and the messaging required for increased persuasive momentum and conversions.

“Actionable personas” have easily predictable and imaginable conversations and reactions, like good fictional characters. They have to generate empathy and engage the imagination.

Meet Melissa Putnam, 23, Sales Assistant, $32,000 Annual Income

Melissa, a newbie at her job, was just asked by the sales manager to research and suggest some potential sales training vendors. Melissa is a people person; she likes to build strong relationships and relies on good first impressions to get relationships off to a strong start. She wants to make a splash and impress the boss.

The Brooks Group, a sales training company, offers all sorts of customized training, many of which would be a perfect match for Melissa’s needs.

Let’s peek at how we planned the interaction on the site for Melissa’s style and needs.

Melissa is a “humanistic,” meaning she’s interested most in relationships. So as she arrives at the Brooks Group Web site, she’s immediately presented with two links to the About Us page, both at the top and left-hand navigation.

When she clicks through, she’s presented with a page that addresses her motivations about midway through, and notices the header “Meet the team.” You also see a picture of the founder, and a link in the active window that reads ‘real coaches.’ This is all Melissa speak.

After she clicks that link, she arrives at the “Working with Brooks Group” page. There’s a lot of content here that is virtual red meat for her. Here she reads a little about coaching and clicks the link near the bottom of the page that reads, “Contact one of our sales coaches, and they’ll talk you through a typical training deployment.”

Melissa is on her way to becoming a lead.

If you click around the site acting as Melissa, you’ll find other paths for her to follow, all leading toward a conversion event, giving her several opportunities to call or fill out the lead form. You’ll find links and elements designed and planned exclusively for her humanistic style persona.

If you’re astute, you’ll notice that Melissa isn’t the only persona accounted for on the site.

Meet Charlie “Nubs” Harrison, 45, Sales Manager, $90,000 Annual Income

Charlie, a former top salesperson, was just promoted to sales manager. He’s starting to doubt he made the right decision. His quote: “Managing these people is like herding cats.”

Charlie is a take-action, spontaneous type. He doesn’t like to waste time and he’s in pain. His sales people are driving him crazy.

Since Charlie has little patience, the first and most visible link in the active window was planned for him. He might also be interested in first learning about the company, Unlike Melissa, he’s looking more for credibility and experience than a relationship.

On the “about us” page, a link is planted just for him that reads, “the ability to manage sales rather than micromanage sales people.” Score for a Charlie type visitor!

As he follows that link, he arrives at the “Herd Your Sales Cats” page that is rich with Charlie language and content intended to speak to his pain. Near the bottom is a link that reads, “Getting started with the Brooks Group is easy.”

Here are things you can do for your personas to better plan your online lead gen interactions.

• Speak to temperaments such as humanistic. When you have content for several on the same page, put elements links and copy for the impatient competitive and spontaneous types higher up on the page, humanistics in the middle, and provide all the deeper details last for your methodical personas. Methodical types are not afraid of reading, so let them at it.
• Account for buying cycles. Ask what your personas need at each stage of the buying process. If they’re early in the buying cycle, they don’t know what they need or how to buy your product. If in the middle, they know approximately what they need. And finally, those in the late stage know exactly what they want. Provide copy, links, and elements for all three stages. In a recent column, I showed how Marketo was trying to convert outside the context of an early stage buyer.
• Understand sales complexity. You need to know how your personas relate to four measurements of complexity and provide content that addresses the questions and issues they face. One persona may have a greater felt need (Charlie), while another needs consensus (Melissa).

You might be thinking, wow, this is a lot of work.

Yup. But we can help you get these great results.

Being purposeful and prepared to deal with your prospects is always sweat-inducing work. But with a good plan, the sweat breeds greater conversion.

Bottom line for the Brooks Group: it doubled its leads by planning using persuasion scenarios, components that lead a visitor segment to participate in a conversion action.

* Cross posted from ClickZ.

How much are you investing in analytics? My friend Mel Carson is asking on the Microsoft AdCenter Analytics blog.

In the UK last week Brand Republic reported that UK spend on search engine marketing would reach £2.75bn this year.

However, just a tiny fraction of that cash – £330m – was spent on the art of SEO or search engine optimisation. The lion’s share of web site owner’s budget went on paid search solutions like Google AdWords or Microsoft adCenter.

SEO is an essential and vital route to improving usability and search engine visibility of web sites. So with what appears to be a disproportionate amount of  time and money being allocated to this fine discipline, it made me wonder how much was being invested in web analytics.

When I say investment, I mean investment in people. Although many web analytics tools cost money to run, some are now free but you still need people to make sense of the data they provide.

Mel makes some great points and there are many reasons resources are not allocated to website optimization. In website optimization I am including search engine optimization, content optimization, making changes to the experience and testing.

Some of the issues are:

• Advertising is sexy and fixing websites in not.
• They haven’t yet bought in to how important good rankings are.
• They haven’t yet bought in to how important converting those visitors is.
• Web Analytics is viewed as a shared resource.
• There aren’t enough analysts around to interpret the data collected.
• Teams haven’t been set up to make changes based on the data received from whatever analysis exists .
• Budgets for making changes are considered capital expenses not operational expenses (Thanks @timlb).
• Companies have not realized the leveraged ROI that continuous optimization provides.
• Many corporate cultures prefer to throw money at a problem than do the hard work it takes to make improvements. Feel free to throw money my way
• The fact that many of the web analytics tools are free.  Managers can check off a little box on their list saying they do web analytics.

These are just some of the reasons. What are some of the other reasons? Please comment below.

It was the CEO of Omniture, Josh James, in January of 2005 who said “Web analytics can pay for itself with a single business improvement — so the real question is how quickly can companies make data-driven decisions? This willingness to change will ultimately dictate time to ROI.”

That is the point I will be addressing this week at New York University to the new students entering the Master of Science in Integrated Marketing. How quickly companies and make and act on data-driven decisions will be the main competitive edge over the next 10 years. Should it really take 11 months to respond to a YouTube video by one of your brand advocates?

Amazon has this culture of optimization.  If Borders or even Barnes and Nobles ever truly want to compete then they need to adopt it too. They need to get quick at making data-driven decisions and have a  process for continuous optimization.

What are you doing to change the speed of optimization and communication in your company? I’d love to chat with you about it.

Success on the web involves adopting a culture of continuous improvement. Which means plan (but remember good enough really is good enough), measure (get good at free then invest in more robust tools and analysis) and most importantly improve (transform your thinking from always being right to always be testing).

Let’s try selling optimization as the need for speed.  Moving fast is sexy and very profitable.

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).

Or an outsider to come and open the bottle for you. In fact, their outsider perspective is a huge part of any consultant’s or outside copywriter’s value – so long as they’re willing to call you to the carpet over your unseen assumptions and un-named elephants.

But if you can’t bring in an actual outsider, any attempt you make to understand your reader’s or customer’s perspective will give you an edge over the head-stuck-up-their-own-bottle competition. Now for those painful (but worth it) steps…

1. Change your context

Through repeated association, things that typically go together often become fused in the mind, as if they’re supposed to go together — even if their relationship would strike an outsider as coincidental or weird. Transplanting these relationships from one context to another can allow you to see the strangeness of these connections that familiarity has made invisible to you.

This training video does an admirable job of giving insiders an outsider’s perspective. By directly comparing the medical care of a man and his dog, events and procedures that would seem normal to hospital workers (the video’s target audience) suddenly appear ridiculous because the context for evaluating them has been changed from hospital to vet’s office. The incongruity that a man is receiving worse care than a dog forces viewers to re-evaluate the “supposed to” nature of hospital procedures, as they no longer seem quite so “normal.”

Joel Greenblatt also does a nice job of this in The Little Book That Beats the Market. By moving from the stock market to of the context buying a small business such as an pizza parlor, Greenblatt liberates us from the illusion of “normalcy” that we have about wild swings in share prices. If GE’s share price moves from $25 to $50 and then back down to $25 within the span of 8 months, we think nothing of it. But that’s like saying a pizza parlor could go from being worth $10K to $20K without any major changes in the business. Changing the context allows you to see how weird stock price fluctuations really are.

So use this same technique by pretending you have to explain the Unique Value Proposition of your product or service to your grandmother or a 6th grader. Describe things through metaphor or parable, then pay attention to what doesn’t “map” well from one idea to another – especially things that strike you as odd or comical when placed into this new context. The “that’s funny” moments will become your portal to an outsider’s perspective.

2. Frame ideas like Martin Scorsese

Movie directors frame their shots in order to force viewers to focus on the intended point of action, while live stage theaters literally spotlight performers. They both make it easy for the casual observer to know exactly what to focus on, to know what’s important at that moment.

Experts and insiders benefit from a “big picture” awareness that provides similar focusing cues and mental spotlights. But outsiders, lacking the big picture, tend to see the most prominent, high-contrast stuff. In order to replicate their experience, you’ll need to mentally block your normal area of focus, to turn off your mental spotlight – so you can notice everything else.

Picture yourself as a man from Mars, with no background information whatsoever, who just landed at your website for the first time.

• What’s most visually prominent? What’s high contrast?
• What’s the most kinetic or fast-moving element?
• What parts of the experience would confuse you if you didn’t already know the back story?
• What would seem jumbled or overwhelming?

Describe the scene, website, etc. in the voice of your man from mars – and do this out loud to another person or a voice recorder.

• Where are you led astray?
• What false assumptions do you make?
• Where does confusion or uncertainty cause you to abandon the task at hand or to seek help?

And before you write this post off as hokey, keep in mind that a HUGE portion of FutureNow’s success at improving client’s conversion rates stems from this exact mental exercise (except we do it with personas instead of Martians).

OK, now that you know where the outsider will miss the important stuff and become flummoxed, go back and provide your visitors with a mental spotlight to guide their attention. Be explicit, and purposefully frame your shots – create mental images from a can’t-miss-it perspective. Be sure to tell your readers how to engage their x-ray vision to look past the merely attention grabbing to see what’s really going on.

A great offline example of this is What to Expect When You’re Expecting. The second pregnancy feels so way different because 2nd time moms know what to expect – they’ve got their mental cues in place. The book, What to Expect When You’re Expecting has become a perennial best seller and must-have for first time mothers, precisely because it does such an admirable job of providing that 2nd time experience to first time mothers.

3. Do the “which means ” exercise, then ask “Why?”

Copywriters frequently do the “which means” exercise to draw out the benefits from features and to understand the customer’s real motivations.

This compact car is a hybrid, which means it uses 25% of the gas as your current SUV . . . which means you’ll feel like gas prices are back at $1 per gallon . . . which means you can go back to eating steaks instead of ramen noodles.

What they sometimes fail to do is realize that an outsider might not know WHY a hybrid uses 25% of the gas of an SUV and will therefore ask “Why is that?” at the first “which means” statement.

Copywriters for skin care products make this mistake all the time. For example, I’ve seen plenty of skin product websites which will tell me that increased cellular turnover will lead to younger looking skin (so they’ve done one level of “which means”), but they frequently forget to add copy explaining WHY cellular turnover has this effect, leaving skin care outsiders scratching their heads, unconvinced.

So there you have it, three not-so-easy (but worth it) exercises for gaining an outsider’s perspective. Perhaps you’ll only get one or two insights per exercise, or you might get an avalanche of “a-ha” moments, but the point is that even one or two insights from an outsider’s perspective can dramatically improve the persuasive power of your website.

. .

About the Author: Jeff Sexton is a professional outsider (aka, Persuasion Architect) at FutureNow.

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.

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

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

Click here to view the embedded video.

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

If you have questions about how to build trust online, please share them in the comments.

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… )

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.

Click here to view the embedded video.

The best part: I’m pretty sure we can track him down to answer your questions…

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?

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…

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

1. First, you’d define the audience, using an intelligent framework like Jungian archetypes or Myers-Briggs (define – find your type).
2. 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.
3. 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?"]

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.]

…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

I was reminded of this on a recent plane ride when my seat-mates were reading the latest James Patterson book, The Memory Keeper’s Daughter and You: On a Diet. I had my usual pile of books, including Playing the Quantum Field, The Female Brain, 50 Psychology Classics and Marketing in the In-Between: A Post Modern Turn on Madison Avenue.

If you’re not into quantum physics or neurology, no sweat. But I do think you’d be interested in Marketing in the In-Between by Len Ellis. You may know Len from his Click Z columns. Now, if you’re a fan of nice little business fables, this is NOT that type of book. Len has a Ph.D. from Columbia and reads informational and mathematical theory for fun. But I still found his writing very accessible. It’s also a quick read; a tiny paperback, less than 100 pages.

I mention the book because I’ve been writing a lot about what analytics can and cannot measure (here are two examples). Len Ellis puts a more scientific spin on this very subject:

Policy makers at all levels, planners of all types, marketers in all categories use data about human affairs to inform their understanding, recommendations and decisions about the built environment in which we all must live … we are reduced to a set of features that are isolated from their contexts … as data becomes the dominant lens for understanding and acting on human affairs, it tends to crowd out [motivational forces].

Reliably predicting the frequency of a behavior in the aggregate cannot capture what moves the individual. That’s simply a limitation of the technique. Aggregating individuals balances out and thereby washes out everything particular or exceptional about any one of them. it yields a measure that can predict frequency at the aggregate level, although neither probability nor explanation at the individual level … washed out were all the factors – motive, volition, knowledge and intent – that might actually explain the individual instance of behavior.

The very process of creating data requires isolating a particular feature of a situation and discarding the larger context in which it is embedded.

In other words, data can tell you WHAT people are doing, but it does not tell you WHY they do what they do. Data doesn’t tell you the individual’s motive, volition, knowledge or intent. You also need to look at behavior in context in order to have a true understanding of what’s really going on.

So, we know what information/insight data can’t provide, but does that mean individual motive, volition, knowledge and intent can’t be measured? Not necessarily.

Every good science project starts with a theory (”This is what’s going to happen and why“). You carefully control the environment in which the experiment takes place, so you can understand the context. You then conduct the experiment and measure the results.

In Persuasion Architecture™, we start with customer personas, creating testable hypotheses as to why customers will take certain actions. Personas provide insight into motive, volition, knowledge and intent. Scenarios are then carefully planned so that context is taken into account; including angles of approach, so we can better understand what caused someone to first realize a need for your product or service, the background knowledge they bring to the table, and a clear sense of their other options. Once you’ve created persuasive scenarios as a predictive model of customer behavior, you can use web analytics to more accurately measure whether your hypotheses were correct. NOW you can measure how many visitors are going through your scenarios, how well those scenarios convert, and optimize your sales process to match how your customers wish to buy.

With this customer insight and context, you can generate far better results than by relying on data alone.

If you have an hour or two, be sure to pick up Marketing in the In-Between. Whether or not you’re a geek like me, it’s sure to give you some really important insights as we move forward in this new, data-driven age.