1. Look Nice – You want to put your best face forward. Your homepage is often the first thing that your visitor sees when they visit your site, so make sure that it is aesthetically pleasing and easy on the eye. Remember, for a vast majority of sites, the homepage has the highest bounce rate.  Give your a visitor a reason not to leave.

2. Make your prospect interested in what you have to offer – In the dating scene, this means opening up and making sure they know something about you that makes them want to learn more.  In website optimization, it means having a top notch Unique Value Proposition (UVP).

3. Remember them – Saving a visitor’s shopping cart for at least 30 days is a helpful tool for reminding visitors that they’re wanted (especially as Holiday shopping ramps up).

4. Don’t give them a reason to leave – The easier it is for your visitor to navigate your site, and the more quickly you can get them through their buying process, the more likely they are to convert.

5. Don’t talk up your best friend – The worst thing you can do is link to a site outside your own and push your visitor in that direction. Tools and references are always helpful, but don’t make them more attractive than the options that push them further though the conversion funnel. If you feel it’s necessary to link to outside domains, use a visual cue (like the common “tear off” icon) to indicate to the visitor that they’ll be leaving your site.

Now go ask for another date, or better yet, get down on one knee

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

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

"Kurt & Smitty" | Image from AMCTV.com

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

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

Unanswered questions keep visitors from buying/converting — that’s not theory; it’s a fact!

So why, oh why, would you knowingly allow your persuasive copy to ignore a frequently asked question?  Why would you possibly be content with hiding the answers to your prospective customers’ questions in an FAQ page?  Are you trying to weed out all but the most determined of customers?

While I don’t have confirmed experimental numbers to back this up (yet), common sense says that for every customer willing to search for an answer on an FAQ page, there are dozens more who simply give up on the purchase or look to your competitors for the answer.

So instead of erecting a sign saying, “Beware of persuasive pothole, please drive around this hole by visiting our FAQ page,” and hoping your visitors are motivated and alert enough to navigate such an alternate route, why not simply fix the persuasive gaps in your copy.  Here’s how to do that:

If you currently have a FAQ Page, Here’s What to Do/Check

1) Determine where visitors are most likely to access your FAQ page. Look at your analytics to see where visitors are within their site visit/shopping process when they attempt to look at your FAQ. Do they do this early on in the process or later,  as a last resort?

2) Get a sense of context by going to those identified FAQ access pages.  You’re not just interested in the questions themselves, but in the context in which they are asked, so look at the page in terms of why visitors would be on that page.  Note that a persona-based or scenario-based analysis helps with this.

3) Go to your FAQ page and think about the emotional concerns behind the questions. Here are a few examples taken from actual FAQ pages, along with the emotional concerns that probably underlie those questions:

• Will we have access to the instructor to ask questions during the online ____ course? Translation: “how interactive is this course – how much better is it than just buying a book or a CD  DIY-type course?“  Going one step deeper: “I’m afraid I might not get the support I need to actually improve my skill level — how can you reassure me that your course will help me actually kick ass, rather than being an unused resource that makes me depressed about my own personal suck-factor?”
• How long will a [durable home good] last? Translation: “you’re asking a premium price and presenting yourself as the last ____, I’ll ever need – so what kind of proof do you have/historically, exactly how long will one of these suckers hold out?”
• How do I know that my ____ is working correctly? Translation 1: “You’ve sold me on the theoretical benefits of your fancy schmancy _____, but I still feel like I might be getting suckered, so how can I confirm for myself that your device is really doing what you say before my 30-day refund clock runs out.“  Translation 2: “I know this is crucial to making sure my ____ doesn’t die an early death, so how can I reassure myself that I’m not breaking my very expensive and brand-new _____?”
• What are your return/exchange/warranty policies? Translation: “Hey, idiot, you were too stupid to put any kind of point of action assurance near your buy/add to cart buttons and I’m not about to give you my money without knowing this stuff.”
• What differentiates you from other _____? Translation: “Someone told me I should check you out, but I’m not impressed so far – either you’re oblivious as to how hard you’re making it for me to figure out what you do and why I should do business with you, or you just plain suck; so which is it?”
• What kind of care/cleaning/maintenance does ____ require? Translation: How will this fit into my life?  Will I have to baby this thing?  Can it handle the normal knocks and dings of daily life without falling apart?  In 6 months or 2 years, will I look back on this purchase as a waste?

4) If you have live chat or a published phone number, comb through those records or ask your customer service reps for the questions people ask and where they are on the site when they launch the chat service or call in.  Once you have the list of questions gleened from Live Chat and Phone trasncripts/experience, repeat the process used in #3 by examining the emotions and concerns behind the question. How do those results differ from your FAQ?

5) Address underlying concerns or questions within your regular Website copy. You don’t necessarily have to do it with copy, as pictures, testimonials, videos, user reviews and other site elements can also address these concerns, but make sure the questions get answered.

Are there any excuses for having a FAQ?

Well….yeah.  Sometimes when you really need a “knowledge base” library, but you don’t want to call it that, or when you want to make the hard core geeks in your audience feel better about asking their un-frequently asked questions, a FAQ page can work.  Just make sure you ALWAYS provide links back to sales pages from within your FAQ answers.  Once you’ve answered the visitor’s question, move them back onto a persuasive path.

Oh, and sometimes there are some Q&A’s you might actually want to hide, like in this Microsoft Internet Explorer 8 FAQ – notice the first question ; )

But seriously, realize that an FAQ is basically a junk drawer; you’re shoving stuff there because you haven’t taken the time to find a proper home for it.  You realize this question may come up, but you haven’t figured out where it would come up – do the hard work to uncover the context and emotion behind the question and finding a better place for the answer within your copy becomes relatively easy.

[Editor’s note: The author of this post is now blogging at jeffsextonwrites.com

All copywriting stories are “nested.”

In writing copy you inevitably create – at a minimum – one frame of reference: the one between your authorial voice and the reader.

In fact, copywriting teachers often advise aspiring writers to “talk” onto the page as if they’re talking to a best friend, simply because that mental exercise animates that almost invisible frame of reference in the mind of the writer.* Writers who forget that frame of reference tend to produce artificial, corporate-speak copy.

So introducing a story into your conversation with the audience instantly “nests” that story within the larger “narrative” of your copy, one frame of reference within the larger frame in which you’re “speaking” to the prospect.

But most readers are consciously oblivious to this frame-shifting because the nesting often takes place rather quickly.  And also because great copywriters smooth-over or hide the frame switching in much the same way that a film editor cuts between camera angles without drawing attention to the cut.  You don’t consciously realize that your TV show changes camera shots an average of every 4 seconds do you?  Don’t believe it?  Count it out for yourself:

Click here to view the embedded video.

And just as with the TV film cuts so it is with frame switching in copy: once you know what to look for, this technique will start to jump out at you.  Let’s take a look at one of the more famous examples of this written by Martin Conroy:

“On a beautiful late spring afternoon, twenty-five years ago, two young men graduated from the same college. They were very much alike, these two young men. Both had been better than average students, both were personable and both – as young college graduates are – were filled with ambitious dreams for the future.

Recently, these men returned to their college for their 25th reunion.
They were very much alike. Both were happily married. Both had three children. And both, it turned out, had gone to work for the same Midwestern manufacturing company, and were still there.

But there was a difference. One of the men was manager of a small department of that company. The other was its president.

What Made The Difference

Have you ever wondered, as I have, what makes this kind of difference in people’s lives? It isn’t always a native intelligence or talent or dedication. It isn’t that one person wants success and the other doesn’t.

The difference lies in what each person knows and how he or she makes use of that knowledge.

And that is why I am writing to you and to people like you about The Wall Street Journal. For that is the whole purpose of the Journal: To give its readers knowledge – knowledge that they can use in business…”

Did you notice how quickly the nesting took place?

If not, the beginning of this, perhaps the most famous direct mail piece of all time, initiates the story telling frame by starting in storybook fashion, except that instead of “once upon a time,” Martin Conroy starts telling his story with “on a beautiful late spring afternoon.” And with that one phrase Conroy establishes both his authorial voice, speaking to you, and establishes the inner frame of reference – that of the business parable.  Pretty cool huh?

Now recall the important lesson from my previous post on frame-switching:

Emotions created in one frame echo across to the other

So if a story told within your copy is necessarily a nested story, then the emotions created within that inner story will echo across to the sales conversation of the “frame” story, i.e. the rest of the copywriting.

Do you see where this is going?

If not, what’s important to realize here is that a copywriter can say things in story format that he cannot credibly state within regular copy.  Conroy can’t really start his ad with “Hey, if you don’t buy The Wall Street Journal, you’ll never rise above middle management.”  Undoubtedly, that line of copy would have created a firestorm of complaints.

And yet the emotions behind that statement – nay, even more powerful emotions, since they’ve now been given life within the mental image of facing either success or frustration at a college reunion – slide under the radar screen and into the minds of Conroy’s readers under cover of this story.  The nested story emotionally primes the reader within the safe confines of “just a story”, while simultaneously positioning that emotional charge t0 jump across to the rest of the copy.

So when Conroy changes frames by slipping in a direct address to the reader with his first subheading of “What made the difference?” his readers are already emotionally primed to eagerly anticipate and take advantage of this all-important “difference” between the two young men.

This causes many readers to interpret Conroy’s offer that The Wall Street Journal will provide  “knowledge that they can use in business” as ‘the WSJ will help me get the promotions I deserve’  – a conclusion made more powerful because it comes from within the reader and not explicitly from the copy itself.

Yet while just thinking about this technique as presented, in terms of explicit story telling, will cause you to spot scads of examples from famous copywriting ads, you won’t really see how widely the technique is used until you realize that:

Referring to the past = Story Telling

For instance, does anyone really think that John Caples’ brilliant headline, “They laughed when I sat down at the piano,” is any less of an introduction to a nested story than Conroy’s “One fine spring day”?

Or how about this one from Sean D’souza’s Psychotactics Newsletter:

When I first started in business, I’d spend hours in meetings.
 I’d be driving to meetings. I’d be sitting in meetings. And
 then I’d get back to my home-office (I no longer work from
 home). And then have to do the job that the client and I agreed
 upon. And I’d do this six-sometimes seven days a week.
Fifty-two weeks a year.
=====================================
I was too afraid to go on vacation
=====================================
I was afraid that a really big job would come along, just as I was getting on the plane. I’d have nightmares about how the client would call; find me away; give the job to my competition, and then continue to work with the competition.
=====================================
I was living in a bit of a trap
=====================================
And I couldn’t get out. And then I discovered the power of copywriting. That copywriting was more than just copy.  It was control…

Sean establishes his nested story with the simple phrase “When I first started in business” and then goes on to shine a bright light on the sensitive emotionally needs of his audience – without offending them!

Nested storytelling and frame switching are everywhere

• Joe Karbo Frank Schultz used a nested story in his famous “Fluke of Nature” grapefruit ad, which starts with, “I’m a farmer, and the story I tell you is the absolute truth, as incredible as it may seem”

• Joseph Sugarman used it for his first BluBlockers ad, wherein the first subhead reads, “When I put on the pair of glasses what I saw I could not believe.  Nor will you.”  And his first line of copy?  “I am about to tell you a true story.”

• Ogilvy frequently made use of stories within his Schwepes and Hathaway campaigns.

• The old Charles Atlas ads certainly used storytelling, as the ad writer, Charles P. Roman, headlined them with the immortal, “The insult that made a man out of Mac”

• Frank Irving Fletcher created his famous “A $10,000 Mistake” ad as a short form story.  Here’s the entire ad: “A $10,000 Mistake: A client for whom we had copied a necklace of Oriental Pearls, seeing both necklaces before her, said: Well, the resemblance is remarkable, but this is mine! Then she picked ours! Tecla; 398 Fifth Avenue, New York”

• And if you really want to see short form story taken to the realm of art, wherein the whole of Conroy’s WSJ opening is recast in 9 short words, then take a look at this:

Finally, for those of you who stuck with me on this, I offer you a dessert ; )

If you really want to see a master of nested storytelling, just watch any of the Bill Cosby videos available on YouTube and pay attention to how Cosby effortlessly switches from being within the story to talking to the audience directly.  I think this one on “Jeffery” is a great one to start with:

Click here to view the embedded video.

What if the seller told an amusing story about that particular pack of Pokemon cards in the product description – would you bid more based on that?  Do you think others might?

Sounds silly, but based on a real-life incident, one mother collected $103.50 from the top bid (out of 44 other bids) on her pack of Pokemon cards simply because people fell in love with the story she told about how she came to own the cards in the first place.  Nothing changed about this under-7$ pack of cards except for the story.

And now, one of the coolest web projects I’ve seen in a while is attempting to recreate a similar phenomenon with a variety of objects but with a really cool twist – they want the buyer to know that the story behind the object is fake!  Here’s how the project website describes the process:

“The project’s curators purchase objects — for no more than a few dollars — from thrift stores and garage sales.

A participating writer is paired with an object. He or she then writes a fictional story, in any style or voice, about the object. Voila! An unremarkable, castoff thingamajig has suddenly become a “significant” object!

Each significant object is listed for sale on eBay. The s.o. is pictured, but instead of a factual description the s.o.’s newly written fictional story is used. However, care is taken to avoid the impression that the story is a true one; the intent of the project is not to hoax eBay customers. (Doing so would void our test.) The author’s byline will appear with his or her story.

The winning bidder is mailed the significant object, along with a printout of the object’s fictional story. Net proceeds from the sale are given to the respective author. Authors retain all rights to their stories.

The test’s results — photos, original prices and final sale prices, stories — are cataloged on this website. The project’s curators retain the right to use these materials in other venues and media. For example: Maybe we’ll publish a book.”  [emphasis mine]

Go ahead and treat yourself to a few of the objects’ stories, you’ll get sucked in, I promise you.  And what’ll you want to bet that these items end up selling for far more than the “few dollars” paid for them?

How this applies to selling “normal” products online

There is a dangerous assumption that because the public demands more straightforward or honest copy, that the best bet is to simply provide little factoid like bullet points rather than actual, detail-rich product copy. Here’s an example of bullets vs. copy taken from a flip-flop manufacturers website:

So focus in on the first, fourth, and final bullet points, if you would.  What you’ll find are the following facts:

• 1st bullet = 2 piece custom bottom unit mold is an OM exclusive design
• 4th bullet = Super soft Crosslite topsole…
• Last bullet = Croslite is soft, comfortable, lightweight, superior gripping, and odor resistant.

So here’s the question: do you think a little storytelling on the reasoning behind and development of the 2-piece bottom and Crosslite topsole might help increase the perceived value of these flip flops?

Just as an example, here’s what the bottom of the shoe looks like (courtesy of Zappos):

Now, do you think the two piece design might allow the shoe to flex more easily with your foot?  Do you think that might improve the comfort and possibly even eliminate or minimize the annoying flapping sound generated by most flop flops?

What if the company told you that this 2-piece sole was born of extensive gate-testing of 100s of flip-flop designs?

Would you pay more for the flip flop knowing that?

Same thing with Crosslite.  I’m betting a good story about it’s odor fighting properties, especially regarding how and why crosslite can fight foot odor, would also up the sandals perceived value.

As of now, the flip flops go for $35 on the company’s website, and slightly more than that from Zappos.  That’s about $15 cheaper than a pair of Reef Fannings.  Now, I don’t own a pair of Ocean Minded Sea Weeds, but I’d bet they’re roughly comparable to the Reef Fannings in terms of construction, fit, comfort, etc.  And I’d also bet that much of the Fanning’s popularity is tied up in the story behind:

1. Mick Fanning’s input into the design of the flip flop
2. The Fanning-inspired bottle opener embedded into the flip-flop’s sole

Yes, I’m probably simplifying things a bit.  I realize Reef is a bigger brand name than Ocean Minded and that the Fanning flip flops also have Nike-like air cushioning in the heal.  But from where I’m sitting, a good origin’s story just might account for the majority of that 42% increase in asking price.

The difference between increasing an item’s price and increasing its saleability

Will you always be able to charge more because of a good story or great product description?  No.

Sometimes you’ll just sell the item more easily, which usually translates into selling more of that item.  If I’m trying to decide on a pair of flip-flops to buy, there’s a chance that I simply won’t pay the same for a no-name brand than I will for a pair of reefs.  But that I might buy a brand like Ocean Minded’s at a discount as long as I had a reason to trust their quality.  And that’s where the product development stories come in: the stories would increase the sandal’s saleability, if not the actual selling price.

So, rather than only 1 visitor in 50 pulling the trigger on a pair, the right storyline might cause 1 in 5 browsers to buy.  You didn’t increase margins, but you did boost your volume and conversion rate, which is a lot more than industry-standard bullet points can ever claim.

Nothing in the ad itself looks “clickable” – no colored and underlined text, no 3-d lighting effects or button-ish looking objects, etc.

Just a small word bubble from the Pringles guy saying “click.”  And if you scroll over the ad, the bubble grows slightly bigger.  That’s it.  Doesn’t seem like a whole lot to bank on, when the ad really won’t “work” if it’s not clicked on, does it?

But what draws your eye over for that second look is the story appeal of the picture itself.  The guy is clearly proposing and the girl looks… well, apart from her facial expression, she’s got a freakin’ pringles tube on her arm!  What the heck is that all about?

And that’s just it isn’t it?  The picture almost forces you to imagine a scenario which would explain the guy proposing while his fiancee-to-be is greedily grasping at the very last of the Pringles.  Hmmm…

Adding to the effect is the woman’s somewhat ambiguous facial expression.  For the most part it looks as if she’s thrilled and totally blown away by the gesture, but it’s ambiguous enough to cause a bit of nervousness (or sympathy for the poor guy).  I mean, the gal’s not even looking at him. Maybe she’s also wondering who the heck proposes while you’re eating chips?

And all of these story appeal elements allow the subtle “click” invitation to work it’s magic.  Please Mr. Pringles guy, tell me what the heck is going on here, would ya? CLICK.

Ahhh the power of (cheesy) story appeal.

The difference of course, is that material in the active window is being actively and consciously engaged and evaluated by the Web visitor, who can then slow down and read material that has proven itself relevant, which is obviously not the case for billboards.  This is where the analogy breaks down, and why most  copywriters will slap anyone clueless enough to vomit up the old “People don’t read online” mantra.

But as useful as the analogy is for web pages, it’s far more so for online ads:

• Both are on the periphery of your vision/attention, and therefore both have to present a reason to shift your attention from the task at hand to their message.
• Both want to leave you hungering for more information or more contact with the brand.

So when my recent post on Apple’s Banner Ad Innovation provoked some Ogilvy-inspired comments that compared banner ads to magazine ads, I thought It would be worthwhile to revisit that advertising giant’s advice on billboards (or what he refers to generally as posters).  So here it is:

• It Pays to make your poster a ‘visual scandal’”
• Your poster should deliver you selling promise not only in words, but also pictorially.
• Use the largest possible type
• Make your brand name visible at a long distance
• Use strong, pure colors
• Never use more than three elements in your design

Now, strong colors might be a toss-up, because while they can draw the eye, they also scream “I’m an ad, ignore me.”  And you can take or leave the other bottom four bullets, but the top two are pure gold for banner ads and are exactly what Apple was doing in it’s New York Times banner/skyscraper ad.

1.  A ‘Visual Scandal’ surprises and delights viewers

This surprise and delight factor causes a peripheral eye sweep to become a studied look, gaining you the web visitor’s/driver’s active attention and consideration.  And it does it while leaving those people with a positive emotional response to your brand (as apposed to gaining attention through an annoying, dancing stick figure).  Here’s an example of visual scandal that Ogilvy provided in Ogilvy on Advertising:

And here are some of my personal favorite examples:

Of course, the razor blade, kill bill, and Nike ads are probably better than the Makers Mark and Frozen Mars Bar ad because in those billboards the selling promise is implicit in the visual scandal, thereby following Ogilvy’s second point as well as the first.

Achieving Visual Scandal by Coloring Outside the Lines

Notice how often this idea of visual scandal requires the use of 3-D or “outside the lines” effects.  So how did Apple do this with a banner ad?  They had multiple space ads interacting with each other, extending the ad outside the lines/boundaries of what we are used to.  Take a look:

Achieving Visual Scandal by Visual Pun

Another technique for creating visual scandal is to make creative and unusual use of a boundary, line, or element that is already a part of the environment, creating a visual pun, as these examples do:

This techniques works for a lot more than posters, too:

Story Appeal

Humans use stories to explain deviations from the ordinary.  As Jerome Bruner writes in, Acts of Meaning:

“Stories seem to be designed to give the exceptional behavior meaning in a manner that implicates both an intentional state in the protagonist (a belief or desire) and some canonical element in the culture . . . The function of the story is to find an intentional state that mitigates or at least makes comprehensible a deviation from a canonical cultural pattern.”

So viewers create stories by speculating on the motives of the actors depicted (within a scene or picture); they use their imaginations to fill in the back-story.  Needless to say, you can’t have a story element to your picture/billboard/banner ad unless it contains people, or more precisely, characters.

Just look at the ad Ogilvy used as an example of “story element”:

And here’s what Ogilvy wrote about Story Appeal (and this ad):

“The kind of photographs which work hardest are those which arouse the reader’s curiousity.  He glances at the photograph and says to himself, ‘What goes on heres?’  Then he reads your copy to find out.  Harold Rudolph called this magic element ‘Story Appeal,’ and demonstrated that the more of it you inject into your photographs, the more people look at your advertisements.”

“The eyepatch [in the Hathaway ad] injects the magic element of ’story appeal.‘”

Do you see how the odd characteristic of the Baron Wrangell character made readers curious.  They speculated about his background, purpose in the ad, etc.  And so they read the ad.  In online terms, they’d click through to get the full story on your home page.

For most people this same story appeal now occurs whenever we see the Mac and PC characters – especially when we see them outside the confines of a TV ad.  Viewers know there’s a story to the ad somewhere, and so look closer to find out what it is.

So all you Internet Marketers yearning for a creative renaissance in online advertising, follow Apple’s lead and employ these techniques to their maximum.  Just try to remember that after you’ve surprised and delighted your audience, it will be relevance and scent that will determine whether your ad actually makes the client any money.

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

In my last post, I made use of a brick and mortar analogy to the current online behavior of some e-commerce Websites, and even recommended the use of those analogies when analyzing online persuasion strategies.

And since at least a few readers responded positively to the idea, I thought I’d share one of Get Elastic’s videos  dramatizing exactly one of those analogies, as well as sharing a link to their whole series.

So welcome to The Crazy, Messed-up World of E-commerce!

And if you haven’t already bookmarked Get Elastic’s blog, go ahead and do that now.

Never?

You mean no one has ever blocked the exit and said something like, “Hey, I saw you put that bottle of wine in your cart, why didn’t you buy it?”

It sounds funny until you realize that most online remarketing services offer to do exactly that to your website visitors.  They’ll pester them with e-mails, pop-ups, and phone calls should they have the bad fortune of visiting your site, adding something to your shopping cart, and then not buying it.

Why would otherwise sane e-tailers revert to such uncivil, gorilla-like tactics?  Really bad assumptions about both human nature and the nature of online shopping.  They simply haven’t compared what they’re doing to that kind of offline analogy.  So here are the bad assumptions, along with a few suggestions on how to correct them and what to do instead:

Assumption #1: Everyone is a late stage buyer

Related assumptions: Everyone who puts something in your shopping cart has a full-blown intent to purchase that item, and it was just chance or a shopping cart flaw that caused them to “abandon” your cart.  Cart abandonment is caused within the cart itself.

Corrections:

• Lots of people research and comparison-shop before they buy.
• Adding an item to cart is often a means of comparison shopping
• Adding an item to cart is often the only way to get important information for making the buying decision – stuff like shipping costs, whether express delivery is available, gift options etc.
• Most lost sales are caused by a lack of information and persuasion on the product page and the rest of the website – not by the cart itself.

Assumption #2: Long-term effects will parallel short-term gain

Related assumptions: sales that you recover from abusive or annoying tactics are easily tied to increased revenue and therefore are more important than the much-harder-to-measure ill will and annoyance created by those same techniques.  That the successes are as cumulative as the ill will generated.

Corrections:

• “He who would run his business with visible figures alone will soon have neither business nor visible figures to work with.”  -    W. Edwards Deming
• Don’t mistake a lack of hate e-mail or complaints as a lack of passionate response.  Or at the least, find out a way to measure the offense or annoyance you’re causing amongst the visitors who you don’t convert through your remarketing efforts.    If more people are converted than are pissed off, and the converted become repeat buyers, then keep doing what you’re doing.  But have the discipline to find out for sure.
• Pissed off people are a lot more likely to share their experiences than a visitor converted through remarketing tactics.  And even the converted visitor will be less likely to do ANY further early stage shopping from you now that they know what to expect from putting an item in your cart or visiting your checkout page.
• Ask any remarketing service what the longer-term trends for their customers have been.  If they can’t tell you overall impact on their clients conversion rates for periods of at least 1-2 years, you should be very, very suspicious.

Assumption #3:  It never hurts to ask.

Related assumptions: that the mere form of a question /offer renders it impossible to offend visitors’ sensibilities or violate their sense of privacy and online safety.

Corrections:

• Read this Seth Godin post
• Imagine that you had only started to fill out a check-out form, had not ever hit any kind of “submit” or “enter” button before closing out, but now have that website e-mailing and calling you because they pulled the info off of their server in real-time, as you typed it into the form.  How do you feel about that?  Think this thing doesn’t happen?  It does.
• A website forces you to create an account in order to checkout.  You create one.  Then you see that they gouge their customers on shipping charges.  You close out of the process and now you’re receiving spam from that company/website.  Are you EVER likely to do business with them in this or any other lifetime?

So are all automated responses and attempts to “save the sale” a bad idea?

Absolutely not.  Just let your offline sense of what’s appropriate guide you in your applications of this online technology. Pushy sales clerks can kill brick and mortar sales just as easily as over-aggressive re-marketing techniques for the simple reason that human nature doesn’t change just because a person goes online.  In fact, I frequently recommend Why We Buy to Web optimization specialists and online copywriters for exactly this reason.

So to use that offline analogy, let’s say you are looking at a more expensive bottle of wine and that the store owner sees you put it back on the shelf to grab a few other cheaper bottles.

Would it be ok for the clerk to approach you, mention that the bottle you were looking at is one of the best buys he has in the store, guarantee you’ll love it, and offer to give you a discount to get you to try a bottle?   Or for him to show you similar bottles closer to your price range?

As long as the clerk was respectful and took “no” for an answer, there’s no problem with that at all, right?  So how could you do it online?

• You could show special offers on previously-deleted-from-the-cart merchandise during the checkout process
• You could have a button on your product page that says “alert me to any specials or discounts on this product,” and then follow-up with a special e-mail offer AFTER the visitor has given you permission to contact them.
• For completed sales – and completed sales ONLY! – you could send a follow-up e-mail with special deals on previously-deleted-from-the-cart merchandise
• And a few other techniques that I’m sure you’ll come up with yourself if you spend some time thinking about it.  I don’t want to give away all my secrets without exacting any mental work from my readers

All of these things work just as well online as their offline counterparts, which is far more than can be said for most “gorilla” (re)marketing tactics.

P.S.  Before going through all this trouble to remarket, why not make sure you’ve fully optimized your checkout process to begin with?  Bryan Eisenberg’s initial and follow-up blog posts on this are a great place to start.

• The rating system is too clunky. Most people get stuck between 3 and 4, usually with 4 sounding too good and 3 too wishy-washy, meaning that the results are often more indicative of a temporary mood than an honest difference.

• Written answers are almost always more informative than raw numbers and everyone knows it, but they’re rarely asked for.  The words people chose, the way they phrase things, what they actually comment on, what details are mentioned, all add up to a much richer insight into the psychology behind the responses.  They provide context.  But Likert scales are rarely asked in conjunction with written responses and the overwhelming preference is for Likert scales over full responses.

• Numbers are preferred over written answers because they’re easy – and easily averaged.  The reason organizations like Likert surveys is that the results are easily totaled and averaged.  You can express the results with mathematical certainty.  That’s harder to do with written responses.  So most organizations somehow decide that it’s better to be precisely wrong than approximately right.

• The mind provides misleading answers to questions of the heart. Ever noticed how most respectable psychological research “tricks” the participants.  Participants are always told the experimenter is studying or looking for one thing, when it’s really something entirely different.  This indirection is considered necessary so that the participants self-conscious desires and biases don’t taint the results.  Likert-scaled surveys almost never use this technique.  Instead they ask direct questions about participants feelings, actions, and future actions.  And as Coke’s misstep with New Coke proves, the results of these surveys simply can’t be trusted.

• No one bothers to write questions (and answers) in a psychologically astute manner. It usually helps to write questions and the attendant answers so that an honest response will not seem self-incriminating to the participant.  Ask a mom if she feeds her kids a lot of fast food, and you’ll probably get a false answer.  What kind of mom would answer yes?  Ask her if she frequently finds herself strapped for time and looking for food preparation and mealtime shortcuts and then follow that up with a question about the mom’s most used go-to solutions to food prep shortcuts, and you’ll get an entirely different outlook.*  Yet almost no one takes the time to do this with Likert-scaled surveys.  And so they get bullshit answers.  Go figure.

• The results are almost always abused.  Surveys are as easily used to bolster a prejudice or further an agenda as they are to actually shed light on a subject.  Of course, any study can fall prey to this manipulation – if you torture the data long enough, you can get it to confess to anything – but the doubly abstracted nature of Likert survey results are far more easily abused than a compilation of written survey answers.  Want an example of this and most of the previous concerns?

Check out this little work of horror from Marketing Sherpa.  Let’s start with their interpretation of the survey and work backwards from there.  So here’s what they think their survey indicated:

“Two-thirds of marketers who work for organizations that have not used any form of social media marketing or PR consider themselves “very knowledgeable” or “somewhat knowledgeable” about this emerging strategy.  Their overconfidence in unproven ability can doom social media initiatives to failure.”

And what do they base this interpretation on?  A worse-than-normal Likert-scaled survey with only 4 badly worded answers.  Marketing Sherpa didn’t provide the exact question in the post, but it was centered on the respondents’ knowledge of social media marketing for organizations.  At any rate, here are the possible answers:

1. Not knowledgeable at all
2. Not very knowledgeable
3. Somewhat knowledgeable
4. Very knowledgeable

So think about it: you’re a marketer, maybe even specializing in interactive/internet marketing.  You’ve played around enough with social media to be comfortable with its dynamics and to know that most so-called social media experts aren’t, mostly because it’s an emerging field and few can claim legitimately successful social media marketing campaigns for non-entertainment or cutting-edge/sexy companies.  Then again, you know you’re no expert either.  So what do you select?

Not surprisingly 58% of the respondents selected “Somewhat knowledgeable.”  The survey basically forces you into that response unless you want to admit that you’re all but clueless about a rather important and emerging element of online marketing.  Even still, 28% of participants selected “Not very knowledgeable.” My guess is that if Marketing Sherpa had worded the choices more intelligently, avoiding the perception of self-incriminating answers, they would have had even more people falling between “not knowledgeable at all” and “somewhat knowledgeable.”

At any rate, the numbers show that 86% of respondents basically indicated that they are not totally clueless, but they aint all that, either.  Not exactly shocking answers given the question and possible answers.  And yet, this is the basis for Marketing Sherpa’s conclusion that the respondents were dangerously “overconfident.”  Give me a freakin’ break!

The real lessons of this?

Stay away from Likert-scales.  And especially avoid them when you’re trying to gauge people’s perceptions, feelings, ambivalencies, etc.  Do the real intellectual work of crafting intelligent and nuanced essay questions.  Invite open ended responses.  Comb through the answers with eye towards being approximately right rather than precisely wrong.

* Special thanks to the talented Holly Buchanon for sharing the McDonald’s survey example with me.

If you enjoyed this post please consider Tweeting it please.

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

Guess which movie gets watched last or returned unwatched?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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?

Is American Idol’s newest judge an attempt to cover all 4 temperaments and create the natural dynamic that comes with that?

According to the American Idol Website:

“We had originally intended for American Idol to have four judges,” said executive producer Cecile Frot-Coutaz. “We’ve seen from our international series that having a fourth judge creates a dynamic that benefits both the contestants and the viewers.”

Of course, this just means they wanted 4 judges, and not necessarily that they wanted the judges to line up with the 4 temperaments.  But when you look at the roles and personalities of the judges, the overlay with the temperaments is intriguing.

Simon Cowell is the NT/Competitive/Rational. He’s very much to the point and focused on the bottom line.  Speaking the truth is more important than sparing a contestant’s feelings.  Simon thoroughly embodies the rational/thinking approach to judging vs. Paula’s feeling and empathy-heavy perspective.

Paula is certainly an NF. She’s concerned with the performer’s feelings.  She wants to empathize with their situation.  She wants to be as inclusive as possible, and she sees no reason to put too fine a point on negative feedback.  She often finds Simon to be deliberately cruel.

Randy is high Sensing and more than likely an SP/Spontaneous/Artisan. Randy almost always comments on how the singer actually sounded.  He frequently comments on “pitch problems” or the dynamic range of the song/vocalist.  And he’s also most likely to comment on how the song made him feel, not in a Paula/introspective way, but in a “that was hot” or a “it was just kind of alright for me” way.  This is Spontaneous speak – very in the moment and sensing.

And that leaves one temperament missing.

Enter Kara DiaGuardi.  Now I haven’t watched as much of this season and have seen precious little of Kara, so this is purely speculative and tentative, but here’s what makes me think that Kara’s probably a Methodical:

• In her video interview on the American Idol website, she consistently emphasized her operational experience within the music industry.  She knows how things get done on a day to day basis. She knows the procedures all the way from conceiving and writing a song, to finding the talent to sing it, to recording it, producing the album, and finally promoting it.  She knows what works.

• Operations is very much the realm of SJs. They’re the people who get things done and carry out the vast majority of the day-to-day management of the world.  Kiersey refers to them as Guardians, Supervisors, and Administrators.  Kara seems to fit this mold rather well.

• She is Sensing in some of the ways that Randy is, but far more Thinking/Technical in her comments.  While Randy talks about Pitch problems, Kara can not only speak to the technical aspects of singing but demonstrate them as well.  She’ll also go past “that was hot” type comments, drawing on her recording experience to talk about what would or would not “work.”

• And for Kara, as for many Methodicals, what works is credibility – did the performers technical virtuosity allow them to properly emote.  Was the performance believable?  Kara is the first judge to criticize a performer for an uncommitted performance.

• Kara comes off as more definitive and judging than Randy or Paula.  As Rob Salem of the Toronto star put it, she’s “more substantially authoritative than Randy.”  In other words, Kara’s more cut and dry than randy, more factual, more black and white.  And she also comes off as far more level-headed than Paula (though that’s admittedly not that hard to do).  This is what one might expect from a Judging preference (vs. Randy’s Perceiving preference).

• Finally, Kara sensibilities regarding what’s appropriate seem a bit more defined and fiercely protected than with the other judges.  Methodicals are often Guardians of cultural norms.  Want to see this in action?  Just watch Kara’s reaction in this video.

So there you have it.  Obviously, it’s early in the season and my assertions are purely speculative about Kara, but I’d say it’s no accident that Kara’s stage persona has so far shaped up to fill the missing temperament from the Randy-Paula-Simon trio.

Hat top to Mark Fox for asking me this question and sparking the idea for the article.

So it’s only fair to ask: can you get sophisticated and wary audiences to buy pseudo-snake oil simply by switching from extolling the virtues of a single miracle product to praising the miraculous combination of two semi-wondrous products?  As in this teeth whitening example:

Well, yes, actually.  The tactic works because having to use two products is a type of downside.

By implying that the promised miracles are too big for just one product and that you’ll need to combine a couple of wonder-products to get the results, the copywriter is tacitly admitting a downside to the strategy: you’ll have to buy two products instead of just one.  And admitting the downside boosts credibility.

Moreover, the “housewife just like you who stumbled into a miracle cure of the decade” bit (the part that’s “enhanced” by the false home town claim) comes off as a lot more credible because more people can see themselves discovering a combination of existing products than discovery a single miracle cure.

But, wait: I can get you a trial sample of both for free!

Ah the copy writer givest a downside, and then the she taketh it away – almost.  If I can get both products for free, it’s not much of a downside that I need to combine the two of them, is it.  Plus, I can see if the combination really works before having to buy.

And then the auto-renewal on your credit card snags ya.

P.S. As a follow up to the Jenny Perfect Skin article, Grok reader Steve Chase snagged this screen shot from Calcutta and it seems that Jenny has a twin sister living there!  And she ALSO figured out this amazing skin combo.  Incredible, huh?

Take a look at the screen shot I took of the landing page.  What do you think most caught my eye?  Here’s a hint: think layout and bolding.

Straight out of The Ogilvy Playbook

Here are two relevant quotes taken from pages 73 and 90 of Ogilvy on Advertising:

“When you advertise in local newspapers, you get better results if you include the name of each city in your headline.  People are mostly interested in what is happening where they live.”

“There is no law which says that advertisements have to look like advertisements.  If you make them look like editorial pages, you will attract more readers.”

Notice how much the landing page has been formatted to look like a blog (the editorial pages of the Web), complete with the “About Me” section at the top of the right-hand column.  And have you noticed that Pensacola, FL has been bolded twice, both in the “About Me” section AND the first sentence of body copy?

Other blog-like touches include a “temporarily closed” comments section and a very chatty / best-friend-name-dropping authorial voice.  But it was the bolded hometown that stood out most.

Now, as a copywriter, I only bold key persuasive points, so that visitors’ eyes will still pick out the important parts of my messaging during a quick scan of the page. Obviously, someone really wanted me to know that this girl was from Pensacola.

And oddly enough, I’m from Pensacola.  What a weird crazy happenstance, huh?

Jenny Has A Lot of Hometowns

So I asked Bryan Eisenberg to go to the same site.  Here’s what he saw:

So, yes, some, uh, creature decided that a hometown girl would be more persuasive than a stranger, and then had absolutely no problem blatantly lying about it.  Makes you proud to be associated with Internet Marketing, doesn’t it?

Still, it’d be a cunning technique, if only it could be de-sleazed first.

Any thoughts on how you might (more ethically) apply this same technique?  If you’re a semi-local supplier, could you get a bunch of enthusiastic customers to “represent” for their hometowns on a templated landing page and then present the testimonial-esque copy based on visitor IP addresses?

What do you think?  And (Michele and Holly, this one’s to you) do you think women are more likely than men to be swayed by a hometown spokesperson?

Over New Year’s, I went on a dance cruise to Mexico — a group of dancers goes on a regular cruise ship and effectively “takes over” the dancing, especially late night — and everyone (including non-dancers) ends up having a great time. We’d planned this trip back in the summer, with my two wacky cabin-mates absolutely insisting that we upgrade to a Junior Suite something-or-other which had a lot more room and a balcony. This was August, “pre-Recession” for readers with short memories, and so splurging seemed like a good idea.

Despite FutureNow’s having a record quarter ending in September, by early November my more practical side was fretting we should’ve just gotten a regular inside cabin with the fake porthole. Or maybe even save some money by not going at all. I may well have chickened out but The Hummingbird and Dr. Evil (right) reminded me everything was already paid for and non-refundable so there was nothing to do but relax and enjoy it.

You know what? I had a blast. Wouldn’t have traded it for anything.

And not because of the balcony but rather despite the balcony. It was the people I was with that made the experience into a rocking-chair tale fifty years hence; in fact, a fake porthole might even have lent further spice to the story.

As I’ve thought about the trip the past week, this concept of remembering to live in the present came back to me again and again. How many of the hundreds of people who just stood and watched for hours from the railing wished they’d learned more from their Aunt Ethel’s b-day gift of 6 lessons at Arthur Murray’s so they might’ve joined in? What about the singular, nutty fellow who despite his lack of dance lessons joined in anyway and ended up trading an appetizer of “looking foolish” for a main entree portion of fun that is beyond price?

Are you too busy to take a dance lesson? Or walk your dog? Or take your Mom out for ice-cream? Or – let me segue this to my business theme — work on some project you’ve been putting off, say, increasing your conversion rate? or getting started in testing? or revamping your website?

Recently, I’ve been listening to some Alan Watt’s Zen-ish podcasts and he talks about one translation of the concept nirvana as being “to exhale”. Which is to say, literally and figuratively, action comes when we “breathe out”.

Are you holding your breath waiting for the Recession to end before you try something new? You’ll have suffocated long before then. Exhale, and start acting now to change your company’s situation.

Are you just waiting for your Dev Team to have enough free time before they get around to improving that shopping cart? They’ll never get to it, unless you stop thinking about it and start doing something about it.  Exhale, and start.

Not enough budget to start testing and optimizing? When have you ever had enough budget for everything? Stop worrying about it and exhale. Right Now is always the Right Time. It’s time for your Future, Now.

Of course, I’d get kicked soundly by my partners here at FutureNow if I didn’t mention our newest software, OnTarget. If you ever did want to get started in optimizing your online goals (increase sales, conversion, lead gen, etc), OnTarget “helps you exhale” by giving you as much actionable guidance as you can digest to get started. Learn more about OnTarget from our post last week to “Please Keep Our Message OnTarget“  or read more on our website.

[To be sure, we do have a much updated and improved video that we're about to release in a day or so, but the secret video gnomes here tell me it's not quite ready as this post goes live; nevertheless Right Now is still the Right Time to publish this overly long post ]

If you’ve ever shared office space with colleagues you really liked and respected, you’ve already twittered.  You’ve already gotten a “feed” of interesting thoughts, updates, recommendations, etc.

Twitter simply allows you to do that with people in other offices/cities/countries.  Think about what you would and wouldn’t share with your office-mate before sending it out on twitter:

• Participating in a group conversation?  Yes, but try to make sure the conversation has value to the rest of the people on your feed and/or make the conversation private.  If I’m your office-mate, I don’t want to listen to your full volume phone conversation with someone else – unless of course the conversation is really that relevant or interesting.

• Occasionally letting people know about cool stuff you’ve created?  Yes, but don’t make it all about you all the time.  No one wants to hear a constant stream of chest thumping at the office.

• Sharing cool websites, blog posts, online articles, etc?  Sure, but don’t flood my twitter feeds with them.  Do the winnowing for me so that I know a link from you will really kick butt.  This doesn’t mean shy away from tweeting offbeat links you think are really cool (let you’re freak flag fly high, baby), just refrain from forwarding on links that you don’t consider must-reads.

• Posting cool or motivating or thought provoking quotes?  Meh.  Every now and then, isn’t too bad, if the quotes are striking, rather than just “inspiring,” but don’t get either too “successories” nor too Despair.com on us.  No one wants to share an office with either a relentlessly upbeat Pollyanna or a “life sucks and then you die” cynic.

• Sharing passing thoughts?  An interesting thought a few times a day is welcomed.  A thought an hour clogs my feed – unless of course your thought has some real substance behind it, which brings me to…

• Sharing insightful comments that (sort of) cohere into a big idea?  Hell, yeah!  If you’re not already following her, Kathy Sierra does this, and it’s her twitters that I look forward to reading most.  Imagine sharing an office with a consistently prescient or incisive thinker who generously shares her perspective.  Who wouldn’t want that?

Of course, when the whole twitter-sphere is your water cooler, you can do more than just impact the conversations that pop up within you “office” – you can seek out people who routinely tweet on the topics that most hold your imagination captive, and, with a bit of tact, introduce yourself and join their twitter conversations.  Here’s one way to do it:

Step 1: Go to a tool like http://search.twitter.com/ and search on frequent topics of conversation for you (or you can use the built in search in an application like TweetDeck)

Step 2: Scroll through the results till you find an insightful comment.  Then check out there twitter page, see if the keyword represents a common topic for them, and introduce yourself and add meaningfully to the thought or conversation.

• While it goes without saying, for clarity’s sake, let me emphasize that you should never, ever promote yourself or your business when doing this.  If you can’t join the conversation for the sake of the conversation and NOT simply as a front for self-promotion, then forget about Twitter altogether.

Step 3: If a good dialogue develops, you can add them to your twitter feed, subscribe to their blog etc.

Step 4: You have now expanded your grapevine network while enjoying interesting and intelligent tweets.  Just like the offline world, great conversations rarely happen by accident – it’s up to you to seek out and surround yourself with intelligent people of shared interests.

Most people don’t want to draw that sharp line of distinction, and it’s why their marketing efforts blend into the clutter.

Discernible edges and silhouettes allow us to visually “grip” an object and separate figure from ground.  Eliminate those edges and you’ll effectively camouflage yourself.

In the picture above, notice how the legs present a solid silhouette and are easily identified, while the man’s upper body camouflage breaks up his silhouette and blurs his edges into the background of trees and snow.  As a result, it’s much harder to make out his his torso and arms.

Like our eyes, our minds also depend on edges and silhouettes.  We define by giving parameters, mentally grasping a concept by its boundaries.  Without the “edges” of contrasting reference points, a concept or term remains ambiguous at best.

That’s why grabbing after an “infinite” market and seeking to be all things to all people ends up camouflaging one’s brand and messaging; without contrast it all just blurs into the background.

Want to stand out?  Sharply define the edges between you and your competitors.

The better you do this, the more strongly you’ll turn-off some customers.  But wouldn’t you rather powerfully persuade some of your market than be overlooked by all of it?

Just follow the example of this doctor:

I found this ad in my local newspaper and was immediately struck by the bold headline:

“You don’t want me to be your family doctor.”

Pretty ballsy headline for a doctor, huh?  Wouldn’t you feel compelled to read more about this doctor with the courage to so brazenly declare what he wasn’t?

Having gained the reader’s attention, the body copy further explains: “Neurosurgery is one of the few medical specialties for which I am well-suited.  I am not warm and fuzzy.  I could never be successful as a pediatrician or in a family practice – no one would come back a second time.  But I am very good at what I do.”

Dr. Goodman then substantiates his claimed expertise with a list of very impressive professional qualifications and accomplishments, rounded off with some examples of his extreme commitment to surgical excellence and his patients’ well-being.

While his professional qualifications are truly outstanding, most readers would never have read them without Dr. Goodman’s use of reverse camouflage in his headline.  Saying what he wasn’t allowed him to stand out amidst the clutter.

So here’s 3 sure-fire ways to reverse-camouflage your messaging.

1.    Get yourself an enemy and/or reject a reasonable alternative position
Nothing fires the blood quite so much as declaring what (or who) you stand against.  But you get no points for tearing down straw men; rejecting a reasonable alternative position puts teeth into your message.

2.    Present a tightly focused perspective
Once you’ve narrowed the group of customers that you’re most interested in attracting, focus your messaging to speak most directly to their felt needs, desires, and frustrations.  People who don’t share those experiences will feel excluded, but your core audience will feel an instant connection.  Both will instantly recognize you.  Tim Miles offers a brilliant example of this on his “About Us” page.

3.    Explain what costs you’re willing to bare and admit the downside to your offer/product.
This one is more about credibility than definition, but amidst a background of ad-speak, solid credibility acts as its own form of reverse camouflage.  Plus, you don’t just want to be seen, right?  You want to be believed as well.

Finally, if all else fails, you can always use your new-found knowledge of camouflage to escape weekend chores (just ditch the boots in favor of camo socks)

Those are probably the 5 scariest words in website optimization today.  More and more visitors are asking themselves that question and then not buying.

They’re applying a considered purchase mindset to much lower price-points than ever before.  And most websites’ copywriting is coming up short in the face of this new challenge, since most of it was written to describe rather than to intensify desire or persuade.

So with that in mind, here’s a quick and dirty list of 7 ways to intensify your visitors desire for your products:

1.  Show your product/service in action
This one is especially good for your spontaneous and competitive customers.  Don’t just describe the thing, write copy that’ll cause the reader to imagine using it.  Take something like:

“The Nikon SB600 Speedlight Flash provides Accurate, seamless fill-flash capability under the most difficult, tricky lighting situations”

and amplify it with:

“Mount your SB-600 to your Nikon DSLR and move from indoor to outdoor and from overcast to sunny without ever having to worry about lighting. The TTL metering takes care of everything – and you can even manually dial the flash power down to 1/64 full output, and everything in between; perfect for fill flash.  And for taking perfect pictures in any lighting”

2.  Show prospects how to test your performance claims
This one is good for all buyers, but especially powerful for your more skeptical temperaments (read Methodical and Competitives).   Here’s an example, using the same Nikon flash as before:

“If you’ve never used anything but your Nikon’s built in flash, we recommend you immediately do this upon taking the SB600 out of the box:

• Just take indoor photos of your kids, your pets, or whatever you have pre-Sb600 comparison photos of.
  
• Then put the new, unedited shot side by side on your monitor with your old post-processed photo.

If you’re not blown away at how much better the raw photo is, send it back for a full refund.”

3. Stretch out your benefits in time
While everyone wants to know that they’ll look back on a purchase as money well spent, this can be especially important for Humanistics, as their slow decision-making style and longer time frame make them especially concerned with how they will feel about a purchase after it has been made. So copy like this can really help to make the sale:

“Imagine getting 5 fabulous shots you wouldn’t have on every photo shoot you do over the next year – including night shots of your family and friends.  How many magic moments will you have captured?  How many albums will you fill with what would have been lost photos?  How many times will you have saved the day by being the only one in the group to have taken a decent photo?”

4. Show experts (or loved ones) approving
Logical temperaments look for the approval of experts, emotional temperaments hope for the approval of loved ones.  So give it to them in your copy.   When possible pull quotes from expert reviews, awards, magazine articles, etc.  Make the reader visualize the approval of family members, colleagues.  For instance if the Nikon SB600 flash provides perfect white balance for night shots, you might take a feature like:

“White balance is optimized through the use of flash color information obtained by the Speedlight.”

And create something along the lines of:

“Your family and friends will finally rave over your control over night time shots – especially when everyone else’s is washed or blown out by too white/bright flash settings.  And it’s all automatic!”

5. Prove superiority or value over other alternatives
Showing how great the Nikon SB600 is helps, but showing how it’s way better than competitor’s products or 95% as good as the SB800 at half the cost is even better.  Do this on a general use and feature-by-feature basis and you’ll win over your logical decision makers.  Assume that your visitors ARE comparison shopping and set out to win the race.

6.  Show how easy it is to get the benefit
In a time-starved world, the perceived difficulty of actually learning to use the product well enough to get the benefit is often the biggest deal killer.

The camera flash might be the greatest thing since sliced bread, but if I still have my DSLR stuck on “P” mode, all those features might convince me that I’ll never be able to figure out how to work the darn thing – and then I’ll opt not to buy.  And simply claiming that the flash is “easy to use” isn’t going to help.

But if you show me how the flash is automated and will start making my pictures better just by sticking it in the hot shoe, and that the rest of the features are easy to learn one at a time, then I’m much more likely to buy.

7. Put your guarantee to work
It’s one thing to state a guarantee, it’s another to make your reader imagine the security that comes with it.  So take a summary statement like:

“Your new flash is guaranteed to be the best camera accessory you’ve ever purchased, or your money back”

and amplify on it with something like:

“Use the flash for a full month and if you’re not taking the best pictures of your life with this new Nikon speedflash, you’ll STILL have another 30 days in which to return it for a full refund.”

If you’re an e-tailer with lots of SKUs implementing this list might not be feasible for all of your items, but do yourself the favor of testing a few of these techniques on your previous top sellers and see what kind of results you get.  I’ll bet they’ll be big enough to make copy improvement a priority for all your popular items.

And if you’re only selling a limited range of items or services, then what are you waiting for – get started improving that copy before the holiday rush!  Remember, you want to leave your readers feeling like the little boy in this picture:

Have a wonderful Thankgiving. Best of luck on Black Friday and Cyber Monday.

• Established his own (very successful) ad agency
• Launched the Dodge and Chrysler brands
• Hired and mentored Leo Burnett, creator of the Marlboro Man, Tony the Tiger, Pillsbury Doughboy, and many other advertising icons that made his clients rich
• Turned positioning into a fine art form half a century before Ries and Trout even coined the term.
• Helped establish Cadillac’s pre-eminence among early automotive marks
• Wrote “The greatest ad of all time,” as voted in 1949 – an ad still listed in the top 50 of Ad Ages Top 100 Advertising Campaigns.

Interesting, but why should you care?  Because MacManus’s – and by extension Burnett’s – approach was the yin to Hopkins’ yang, and because MacManus’s approach still works today.

And what was that approach?

In a word, it was to position the client while dethroning competitors in the minds’ of the audience. He wanted to create, in the mind of the public, a deep-seated prejudice towards his client’s brand.

If, in the words of the legendary Gary Halbert, the biggest key to success is to sell to a starving crowd, then MacManus aimed to persuade the consumer that only his client’s product would fully cure their hunger, and then wait for the more-cheaply-persuaded and much larger mass audience to get hungry as their individual circumstances dictated.  This would be in contrast to targeting only hungry people and then selling to them via direct mail.

And so the two poles of advertising continue on to this day, as is clearly seen in the following comments by an extraordinarily successful brand builder, Chris Maddock.  Chris was responding to my request for his opinion on Google’s recent attempt to track the effect of offline advertising upon online sales/conversions.   Here’s what he had to say:

Jeff,

I think Google’s traditional ad analytics are interesting, sexy, and certainly useful on some level.  But I think the program could also be dangerous, in that it could give some folks faulty impressions of what is actually happening – or what is right – because it assumes advertisers know things they probably don’t.

Let’s say a local hardware store runs some print ads, and compares the online response to another time they’ve run radio ads.  If the print ads were for a short term offer, and the radio ad of a more institutional bent, the print ad could drive more traffic to the website and have the hardware store owner thinking that print’s the ticket.  The reality in such a situation is that the print advertising is impressing and motivating a tiny, albeit palpable, percentage of the market to respond and go the the website, while the time-sensitive nature of the offer makes the advertising all but invisible to the bulk of the market.  On the other hand the radio advertising is likely creating greater long-term top of mind awareness, yet probably not motivating as many to go the website.  Mr. Hardware likely thinks that the radio campaign was less effective, when in fact most category dominant businesses are those that eschew short-term sales, offers, promotions and the advertising tools that make them work, while leaning on intrusive media such as radio and television to push long-term awareness.  Over time, radio could likely drive many more visitors to the website – visitors who will likely buy.

So my worry is admittedly Hamiltonian.  Years of interaction with average business owners and traditional ad people has revealed a startling blindness to things like buying cycles, differences in long and short-term strategy, and proper media selection.

So these new Google analytics are cool.  I just hope the good people using them understand what they’re trying to make happen, and what the numbers returned really mean.

-    Chris

Do you see how Chris picks up the standard of Theodore McManus, Leo Burnett, and Roy Williams?  Although I think it is possible to intelligently and rigorously compare media, I can’t help but agree with Chris’s larger point.  Creating a prejudice in the mind of the customer before they’re hungry is often a more effective strategy than trying to only target hungry customers.*   But it requires a longer time horizon.  So if you are only measuring on the short term, you’ll likely come to the opposite conclusion and then deem your position to be “scientific.”  It’s a perfect example of one of the deadly sins of Web Analytics.

So what’s your time horizon?  And have you implemented a measuring/analytics system that will enable you to measure accordingly?

* To be fair, there are certainly also times when it pays to directly target hungry customers, rather than engage in a lengthier branding campaign.  I’m not necessarily advocating one over the other; I’m arguing that you shouldn’t base your decision on skewed metrics.

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

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

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

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

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

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

• Average order size drops, a la the cheaper sunglasses
• Conversion rates edge down due to return window-shopping visits
• Traffic/Unique Visitors goes down.

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

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

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

So what can you do about it?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Step 2: Test your hypotheses

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

So how can you jump-start this process?

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

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

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

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

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

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

And Tom isn’t alone in considering Michael Lewis’s sports writing to be a hidden treasure; just look at this marketing-based analysis of his book,  Money Ball.  But Tom Peters has been alone in recognizing the business applications of Michael Lewis’s astonishing article on the surprising innovation and success of Texas Tech Football, written no less than three years ago.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Action & Tempo:

“…[Coach Leach] had been harping on tempo all week: he thinks the team that wins is the team that moves fastest, and the team that moves fastest is the team that wants to. He believes that both failure and success slow players down, unless they will themselves not to slow down. ‘When they fail, they become frustrated,’ he says. ‘When they have success, they want to become the thinking-man’s football team. They start having these quilting bees, these little bridge parties at the line of scrimmage.’”

You have to learn by implementing, and it’s incredibly advantageous if you work hard to keep your testing tempo as fast and continuous as possible.  Theory and intuition are great at helping you figure out what to test, what to look for in your analytics, and how to interpret your data, but untested assumptions can kill you.  If you think that customers would respond well to X, figure out an easy-to-implement test to confirm or disprove that.  The last thing you want to do is let your website sit static for months while you plan a major change based off of faulty assumptions about the market and/or customer motivations.

Plus, even if you have a brilliant plan to improve your website, it won’t help you until you’ve actually implemented the changes.  So a fast cycle of smaller tests and changes not only keeps you safer by verifying assumptions and improving learning, but successful tests implemented early can pay off during the time you would have wasted staging a larger “batch” of changes.

In a similar manner, Texas Tech is well aware of the “opportunity costs” involved in not keeping their offensive op-tempo as high as possible:

“An idea about the use of football time was being challenged. The typical football offense seeks to eat up as much of it as it can. The Texas Tech offense, which at that point in the season had passed for more touchdowns than any team in the country, uses just a shade over two minutes on each drive. But speeding everything up has a curious effect on game time. A typical college football team runs 65 to 75 offensive plays a game. Texas Tech tries to run 90 – and sometimes does. A college team with a robust passing game might throw the football 35 times a game; at this point, 8 games into an 11-game regular season, the Red Raiders were averaging 53 passes a game.”

Preferring batch implementation of changes and tests is kind of luck holding onto the football to control the clock – you’re wasting opportunities to move the ball down the field and score.  Yet most companies, like most traditional football offensive teams, don’t have Texas Tech’s sense of urgency; they don’t understand the often substantial opportunity costs involved.  Here’s a real life example:

I presented a client with a lead generation website for a considered purchase with a Persuasive Scenario Analysis towards the end of August.   As part of that report, I also presented a prioritized list of “most likely to generate dramatic improvement” changes/tests.  And among those suggested tests, I predicted that the easiest to implement change that was also most likely to produce immediate results was to prominently display the company’s phone number within their banner.

About 1.5 weeks ago they finally made that change (along with several others) and went from getting 0 calls from their website each week to 20 calls in the first full week they had stats for the revised website.  One of those 20 calls converted into a sale.  Most sales average in at $20,000 to $30,000.

Now, I’m hesitant to put too much weight on only one week’s worth of results, but even conservatively downgrading those figures still results in a significant opportunity cost for NOT implementing that change right away.

Orientation

“Leach made his way to the sideline and from his back pocket pulled a crumpled piece of paper with the notations for dozens of plays typed on it, along with a red pen. When a play doesn’t work, he puts an X next to it. When a play works well, he draws a circle beside it – “to remind myself to run it again.” But at the start of a game, he’s unsure what’s going to work…

The Red Raiders trotted off the field at halftime with a lead, but not a large one: 14-10. A disappointing half, yet with hidden value. For 40 plays Leach’s offense had groped – digressing, probing to learn something new – and it had been useful to see how the empty spaces on the field shifted. Coach and quarterback now knew what they wanted to know about the A.&M. defense.  They had paid for the knowledge with time, but time means less to them than it does to any other offense in the land. A half to the Texas Tech offense is as good as a full game to most. The game within the game was about to begin…

In the five full years Leach has coached Texas Tech, four or five times each season the team has flopped around ineffectually for the first third or so of a game before racing off to score touchdowns at a rate unheard of in organized tackle football. It’s as if his opponent’s defense has some deep dark secret that takes time for his offense to extract.”

Action isn’t good enough if you’re just throwing stuff against the wall and not learning from it by reinforcing your successes and killing your failures.  Coach Leach doesn’t just know that this play worked and this play didn’t, he also seeks to understand why, so that he and his quarterback can adjust their overall strategy accordingly.  Once the Raiders have correctly sized up their opponents, that’s when the real scoring opportunities begin to appear.  Here’s what that looks like in the game Michael Lewis was describing:

“Leach had just a few minutes with Hodges, but he told him what he had noticed. First, the A.&M. cornerbacks were disguising their intentions. They were lining up as if to cover the fade routes – that is, before the play began, they stood between the receiver and the sidelines – but then, just as the ball was snapped, they were scampering back into the middle of the field. To Hodges it looked as if fade routes would be covered, so he had been sending his receivers on slants into the middle of the field. ‘Throw the fade,’ Leach said. ‘It doesn’t look like it’s there, but it is.’

The other glaring opportunity, to Leach’s mind, was A.&M.’s response to Tech’s formations. On the few occasions when Texas Tech lined up in a formation that suggested a running play, with two running backs, the Aggies ’put their ears back and stop the run.’ But when Tech was, as it preferred, in its passing formation, A.&M.’s fear of the pass caused them to leave huge empty spaces to run in. In the second half, the Tech running backs would be charging into pass coverage, and the Tech receivers would be running toward the sidelines.

There was one other thing Leach had noticed – and Hodges had noticed it, too. The A.&M. front line appeared tired. ‘The minute you see the defensive line bent over and their hands on their hips,’ Hodges told me, ‘that’s when you know you have them.’ The A.&M. linemen were a lot bigger than the Texas Tech linemen. They may or may not have been fatter – Leach insists they were – but their bodies were clearly designed for a different sort of football game than this frenetic one. ‘That’s the risk of playing 330-pound guys,’ Leach said later. ‘You get good push, but if you got to run around a lot, you get tired.’”

The problem with most companies is that even when they do run A/B and multivariate tests, they’re often just testing random variables or best practices, which means they have no basis for interpreting the results in terms of a larger ‘game strategy.’ If you only know that headline “A” outperformed headline “B” without understanding WHY headline “A” worked best, it would be like Coach Leach only knowing that play X worked and play Y didn’t without seeing the larger patterns or flaws in his opponents defense and without being able to exploit that during the second half.

Here’s a practical web example of this principle taken from Microsoft’s Experimentation Platform blog.  The post in question features three separate A/B tests and the second test of two different site search bars is a perfect example of how the WHY is so crucial.  But first, here are the two search bar designs:

Which one worked better?  Neither: the results were statistically negligible.  Now, if that’s all that you took away from that test, you’d have lost out.  But if you started the tests with some hypothesis about why one design might work better, you could follow up with goal scoring, revised search bar.

For instance, most people would find the search area of Option A much more inviting because it’s more spacious.  Plus, the “Popular Searches” is labeled as such in Option A whereas it’s something of a disconcerting mystery in Option B.

On the other hand, Option B does one very important thing right, that Option A doesn’t: it labels with strong verbs!  Rather than guessing that the magnifying glass means “search,” I can look at the big green button and instantly know that clicking on it will start my search.  That one is kind of a no-brainer, actually, especially since Steve Krug has rather famously taught that search buttons should either say “Search” or “Go.”

If you started with those assumptions, you might have actually created an Option C that combined the best elements of both features.  Something like this:

And then I’d be willing to bet rather heavily that you’d come up with a very clear winner. But if you simply threw Options A and B up in a simple split test and accepted the results without thinking about them, you’d never get to an improved search bar.

So how can you more consistently move past a “best practices” or a “let’s test everything” approach to Website optimization?  What kind of methodology will let you advance beyond page-level optimization to Website-wide conversion improvement?

Well, while that subject definitely builds on what we’ve just discussed, it’s also worthy of a post in itself, so make sure to subscribe to get Part II as soon as it comes out.

• 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.