How are you wasting your visitors time?

• Does it take a while for your pages to load?
• Do your database lookups take so long your visitors can go and get a snack before the results are returned?
• Do you have important content that is hidden away?
• Does it take your visitors too long to find the product they are looking for?
• Do you force visitors to pogo-stick between a category page and product pages because your category page fails to provide enough information to confidently select among the choices.
• Is it difficult to sort among choices by the factors or qualities that your visitor feels important?  Or do you  only allow sorting by price?
• Does your registration or check out process have too many steps and take to long to complete?
• Does it take several steps for your visitor to figure out their total cost including shipping?

Here is another classic way of wasting your visitors time that could easily be avoided.

Do a search on Diapers.com for “exersaucers“. You’ll notice 4 listings. 3 of them are out of stock.  But the initial search listings don’t tell you that.  The visitor has to click through to each product page, only to find out she can’t buy the item – a triple loss, as the site has simultaneously wasted the visitor’s time, frustrated the visitor, and come off as an unreliable/unprofessional business.

Placing your out of stock messaging on the category pages will prevent your visitors from repeatedly finding that the product they clicked on and started to desire is – upon their arrival on the product page – suddenly unavailable for purchase.

So while I’ve given you a valuable list and a good examples to get you started, every site has its own unique challenges, and it’s worth asking your team: how many different ways can you find to shave valuable seconds during your visitors journey to become a lead or sale?  How can you help your vistors beat their own internal clocks in order to win more business?

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

Our search on Google started with the term “polo shirts” but provided us with an ad for “Polo Shirts for Man.” I guess women must never search for “polo shirts” even though LandsEnd sells women’s polo shirts on the site. The ad copy talks about the variety of fabrics and colors and LandsEnd does a good job of providing scent from the ad to the landing page.

My initial observation for this page was that people get to this page and would tend to narrow down their selection by size first. If you look closely at the main “hero” shot on the page you’ll see this blue horizontal line and inside it options to narrow down by size.

My suspicion was that most visitors were not seeing it. So the first thing I did was run a heat map on the landing page.  The results were the first sign that I may be correct about this.  Now, if I had access to the web analytics, and if those links under the “hero” shot were tagged properly, we would know for sure whether those size links were being clicked or passed over unseen as visitors eyes jump down the page toward the product photos.

The other thing the heatmap showed is the importance of testing which shirt or product on the category page placed in each of the top positions on the page.  As you can see, high-intensity colors draw the eye more effectively than desaturated colors and neutral tones.

To confirm our suspicions and heat map findings, we decided to use another important tool in our toolbox, usability testing. UserTesting.com was kind enough to provide 3 free tests for us to look at LandsEnd.com at the conference.

The first thing I needed to do was provide the task for our testing participants to complete. This is a critical piece to setup correctly in order to get maximum insight from the test. Here is the scenario as I described it to them:

Purchase 2 different polo shirts and matching pants/shorts for a trip you are taking to a hot tropical location next week. You’d prefer clothing that are low maintenance and are going to feel most comfortable in the heat.

Go through until the end of placing an order but do not submit the order. If this wasn’t a test, would you have made a purchase? Why or why not?

The link provided took them directly to the Men’s Polo Shirt landing page that the pay per click ad above did. Each usability tester recorded their thoughts out load and we were able to see their screen exactly as they did while navigating the site.

Here you can see one of the testers as she goes through making her purchase for a trip to Jamaica. If you want to see the other tests and the test participants notes you can see them on this video summary page. Analyzing her test confirmed what I had seen in the other tests as well and validated my concerns on the page.

Click here to view the embedded video.

These tests confirmed that testers were missing the sort by size links in the blue bar under the hero shot and additionally some of the same issues that we identified in part 1 of the conversion makeover.

1. Conversion Challenge: People just don’t understand some of the jargon/terms that LandsEnd uses. In terms of size what does “Big” mean? Is XL big?

I also asked the users to look for shirts that had fabrics that were good in tropical heat, and every participant went straight to cotton (because they knew that) and missed the other special fabrics (like mesh and moisture wicking fabrics) LandsEnd offers.  See a sample screen shot of the selection process below:

Recommendation: LandsEnd looks at different ways to label these terms or to explain them to make them more intuitive for their non-catalog buyers (in the catalog they explain many of these terms).

They could do this in the hero shot area using visuals as well for the sizing options.

Priority/Likely Impact: High

Resources Required to Execute:

• Fixing the wording or labels in the pull down menu will probably take 2-3 hours, with most of the time spent on coming up with and agreeing on terms.
• Providing a more intuitive understanding of the sizing categories within the hero shot, would likely take an additional 2-3 hours.
• Total time = 4-6 hours, with a possible hour or two to actually implement the changes depending on their technology and platform setup

2. Conversion Challenge: The upsells on the product pages were virtually invisible to most of the participants until they went looking for them, but even then, the recommendations still weren’t entirely relevant for what the visitors were looking for.

Recommendation: As part of the product page redesign we did in part one of our makeover the recommendations were moved to a more visible location where there would also be additional room for 3 to 4 recommendations per product.  This is an improvement, bu LandsEnd still needs to ensure that the recommendations are as relevant as possible.  I would look to have a combination of recommendations for each product; one that is a similar product in the same category, one or two complimentary products from different categories (when looking at a shirt show pants or shorts), and possibly a complimentary accessory. Occasionally you can find a product were they have this kind of combination.

Priority/Likely Impact: Medium

Resources Required to Execute: Variable depending on LandsEnd product recommendation technology, which we are not privy to.

3. Conversion Challenge: People’s momentum was broken when they went to narrow down their selection from a category page and then further complicated when they went to purchase more than 1 of the same or similar items.

Recommendation: There are two things going on here. First the current task of narrowing down one’s selection criteria from a category page could be less than intuitive.  The location of the narrow search items, the too-subtle reaction to clicking on a faceted navigation selection, and the jargon used in some of the pulldowns all conspired to confuse shoppers looking to find just the right kind of polo shirt/item.

Secondly, the ease of adding multiple items of the same product but in different colors should take fewer clicks. Right now you have to click to close the cart, click to reselect your size, and then click to select your additional color before adding the item to cart.

I would recommend taking a look at how the Gap (Banana Republic, Old Navy, etc.) websites allow visitors to more easily narrow item selections through their quick look on their category page, and also how their “virtual cart” makes adding multiple items easier once the visitor has arrived on a product page.

I would also place some or all of the narrow selection/faceted navigation pulldowns above the featured products instead of having them outside the active window, in the left hand column.  Most important is the narrow by size option.

Priority/Likely Impact: High

Resources Required to Execute: This is a highly complex change which would likely require 30 or more hours, but which would have a huge impact and ROI.

Conclusion: I love LandsEnd and their fabulous products, and despite the conversion challenges we’ve discussed, the participants in our usability tests still felt confident they would buy from LandsEnd’s website.  However, very few people only buy clothing from one manufacturer or brand, and it only takes a slight erosion or friction in the process that would cause someone to abandon and head over to their next favorite (and competing) brand.

Usability testing is just one of the arrows in our quiver that we use for our OnTarget clients but occasionally we do this type of analysis for free for teaching purposes. Would you like to suggest your website for this type of review and improvement? If so, then be prepared to have it published. Just let us know in the comments below.

P.S. If you enjoyed this post please consider Tweeting it please.

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

Over the next 2 posts, I’ll show you how we addressed the conversion challenges on LandsEnd product pages and in the next post start by looking at their category pages.

LandsEnds.com main issues fall in to 3 main categories:

1. breaks in persuasive momentum
2. buy flow from product selection to upsell
3. use of jargon

Let’s look at the page closely:

One of the first things that jumped out to me was the initial separation of sizes into big girl, little girl and toddler radio buttons, that was then broken by color swatches, and then tried to resume the size selection by displaying the actual sizes as boxes.  The entire buying flow felt disconnected and confused – disconnected because of the layout and confused because of jargon and unexplained terms.  How do you define big girl versus little girl, and is there any connection between this and the actual sizes?

The second thing that hit me was the add to cart button’s placement below the fold, which is never recommended.  The add to cart button actually felt displaced from the product.  Making matters worse, the layout of the different buying decision interfaces made each action/selection feel disconnected from one another. It felt more like jumping through 6 separate and uncomfortable hoops than pleasantly browsing and selecting one dress to buy.

First the page shows you price, then you choose the size by type.  After that there is actually a line visually separating the size-by-type selection from the color swatch selector, then another line/separation, then the page displays the actual sizes in boxes, then another line, followed by the gift box selector and the quantity and who are you shipping it to drop down menus, followed by yet another line/visual separation, and finally – sigh! – the actual color name and add to cart button.

Seems like working through these steps requires way too much cognitive energy.  Imagine how this complexity compounds as you start adding multiple items.  And speaking of multiple items and up/cross-sells, the pages display of the recommended item seemed to leave it just hanging on the far right hand side of the page, disconnected from everything else.

So I went ahead and moved the pieces of information on the page around to create a better flow. I did not add anything new at this point.

Notice the separate “ready to buy” area with all the purchasing decision information neatly grouped together and organized in a box on the upper right hand corner.

When I shared this Michael he said:

Amazing. A change along these lines would probably make us millions of dollars in additional demand each year.

I love how this breaks down each phase of buying the product.
First look at the picture and think about colors and size.
Then get more information (if needed).
Then handle the details of putting the item in the cart.
And the cross sells are in a place where you can combine them in your mind with the product you are looking at.

Of course, this new design would need to be A/B tested so they could evaluate the true financial impact.

I would still like to see LandsEnd move their “Guaranteed Period” assurance underneath the “ready to buy” area in the new design and have it above the fold. I asked several of our key analysts at FutureNow what else they would like to do and see next.

Jeff Sexton wanted to see the sizing information tied together and not separated by the color swatches. You can see how he would like to see them grouped for better clarity and to deal with jargon issue:

As the father of 2 beautiful little girls, he had a hard time visually the same dress on both girls, he would have like to have seen more variety in the multiple product images shown.

Jeff also commented about one of the critical bullet points in the product description:

Melissa Burdon added:

1. If visitors are looking for shipping information, there is only a text link at the bottom of the page. You could create a tab next to “more info” that answers the visitor’s questions about shipping.

2. There are no reviews- bring star reviews to the top of the page, you could add it as a tab next to shipping tab and let visitors read reviews if they click on the tab. Also feature reviews below the other info on the product page so that the visitor doesn’t have to click on reviews in order to see this info on the page.

3. Test different language for the call to action and size of call to action. Is add to bag more effective than add to cart. This may work well for current customers, but what about new customers who you may be trying to acquire?

4. What if I want to add this to my wishlist and continue shopping? They might want to offer this here.

Brendan Regan added he would like to see the toll free phone number bigger and see them put live help (from bottom) in right column.

Do you see all the opportunity this page has for improvement. A website is like a leaky bucket and in need of continuous improvement.

We do this work for clients but occasionally we do this type of analysis for teaching purposes. Would you like to suggest your website for this type of review and improvement? If so, then be prepared to have it published. Just let us know in the comments below.

In Part 2, we’ll look at LandsEnd category pages and we’ll examine the results of some usability testing we ran on their website which confirmed LandsEnd may have several jargon related issues.

If you enjoyed this post please consider Tweeting it please.

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

Click here to view the embedded video.

Get Elastic’s recent post on reducing friction kicks butt – providing incredibly clear explanations of too-common Website flaws along with great examples of how to do it right.  I wish I wrote it.  Not only did the article reduced me to green-faced envy, but many of the post’s links pointed to further “must reads.”

Do yourself a favor and go read it now.

When I fall off the wagon, every so often, I’ll go ahead and pick a keyphrase and start clicking through PPC ads and their landing pages and take screenshots of the whole entire experience. You can’t imagine how often the experience from keyword to ad to landing page is broken. I want to call them and yell at them to subscribe to OnTarget. I don’t do it. Instead a few weeks or months will pass and the same advertisers drop those ads.  I can just hear their internal discussions as they analyze their metrics and rationally conclude that keyphrase X doesn’t convert for us.

(Maybe we should start the Internet Marketing Darwin Award for PPC ads.)

Keywords Don’t Fail to Convert… we fail to convert visitors for that keyword.

Do you believe the keyphrase you chose is relevant to your business? If it is, then your responsibility is to show every visitor how that keyphrase is relevant to their needs. Every visitor that comes to your site is not completely unique. They have various mostly foreseeable motivations persuading them to buy and various foreseeable objections that would keep them from buying. Ask yourself:

• What is their intent in usingthose keywords?
• What need or desire are they trying to fulfill?
• What is their goal?
• How do we align our goals to meet theirs?

PPC ads are just like tapping someone on the shoulder. PPC ads are only meant to grab attention not convert. If you want to convert your visitor you need to work on the rest of the experience (the conversation) beyond the click.

Do you make any money when a visitor just clicks your ad? No.

So instead of thinking of PPC as pay per click start thinking of it as pay per conversation.

Devote some resources to optimizing your conversations.

How to Get Started Optimizing your Keyword Marketing

1. The first thing you need to do is bucket your keyphrases. Start with the first 100 or so top phrases that drive traffic to your website. For each one of those classify the terms by phase in the buying process. Does the keyphrase apply in the early, middle or late stage of the buying process?

If the term is driving traffic to your site but not really relevant to your business put it in a disqualified bucket for now. For FutureNow one of those terms is “convertion rate.” It may be a harmless typo but time has shown that if they can’t spell conversion they aren’t likely customers.

An example: Someone is planning to buy a new television set. Early in their buying process they might use phrases like LCD tvs, best LCD tv, or LCD tv reviews. As they progress to the middle stage you might see keyphrases like compare Sharp and Sony LCDs, LCD tv 1080 dpi and then move on to specific models in the late stages like Sony KDL-52XBR6.

2. Define and realign your goals with your visitors. Would you expect every person you went out on a date with to marry you at the end of the first date? So why do we expect every keyword to convert visitors to our ultimate goal, the sale or the lead? Our job is to get them there, but based upon their buying preferences, they may not be able to be moved any faster than they are prepared to.

Start planning micro-goals along the way to your macro-goal (sale or lead). Someone earlier in their buying process might not be ready to commit on their first visit. Plan smaller milestones or micro-goals that may lead that person to convert at a later point in their process.

Why don’t many more early or middle stage landing pages have some easy way to capture a visitor’s email address with some kind of offer? 

If your web pages were sales people, how many of them would you fire or at least get trained?

Don’t pay for a keyphrase or a date if your only expectation is a  full commitment at the end.  You need to romance them and show them all your best moves. (Warning – this is conversion advice and it works but I’m no dating expert, just ask my wife.)

Some examples: Maybe you can offer them a buyer’s guide download, a coupon for their first time purchase, an offer to see a webinar about how to choose the product/service they are considering or a price alert notification if this item goes on sale.

Every keyphrase should have a goal that is in alignment with the visitor’s stage in their buying process.

3. Measure your success and build confidence. Respect and support your customer’s journey along their buying process by pulling them along instead of trying to push them to commit too fast. That is the friction that is caused by your sales process colliding with, instead of aligning with, their buying process. This is what creates cognitive dissonance. What you need to build is confidence. Your visitors need confidence that you are there to support their buying process and confidence in your ability to address all their needs and wants in order to convert visitors at all stages.

Start tracking and evaluating your keyphrases and landing pages by how well they support moving visitors through the buying process.  Analyze these micro-goals and continuously optimize the experience to move further and further along so that you keep them on target. Every step closer to the macro-goal is a success, every visit that just bounces is a failure.

Take these 3 steps now and you’ll enjoy a more confident and lucrative 2009.

P.S. This post was inspired by my presentation at Search Engine Strategies in Chicago. Read about it on the AimClearBlog.

I was also lucky enough to get a signed copy of my friend Andrew Goodman’s updated book Winning Results with Google AdWords, Second Edition.The first was was great and I am looking forward to reading this one over the weekend.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

t”

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

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

Why?

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

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

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

• 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.

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

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

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

So what does this have to do with Web Optimization?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

He’ll keep the money.

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

Personas vs. Segmentation/Demographics

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

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

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

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

Using Personas to Take Action and Build Persuasion Scenarios

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Melissa is on her way to becoming a lead.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

* Cross posted from ClickZ.

Carolyn Gardner writes:

“According to Shop.org’s State of Online Retailing report for 2008, online retailers allocate 53% of their marketing budgets to online customer acquisition — driving traf­fic to a Web site or landing page. But when it comes to online customer retention, the marketing spend shrinks to 21%. Does this mean that any effort to convert visitors into customers must come out of the remaining 26% of budget? Because retention is all about building engagement and loyalty, this dispro­portionate spend and disregard for the sales funnel is alarmingly short sighted.

Acquisition strategies that drive traffic to Web sites designed for mass appeal are safe. But going a step further, by creating Web sites with “personalized content,” you improve engagement, retention and loyalty. Loyal customers typically buy and spend more than new customers, so shifting budget into engagement and retention should be a no-brainer. What, then, is the problem?

I think it stems from marketers playing it safe in the comfort zone of e-mail and search. E-mail and search have definite roles to play, but won’t address conversion. After all, what happens after the beckoned traffic arrives? Too often, engagement is weak and visitors bounce. With competition just one click away, there’s a very small window of opportunity. It can only be optimized with personalized content, displaying the right message to the right person at the right time, based on that person’s profile and behaviors. ” (read entire op-ed column)

We explained recently, in our newest whitepaper, how especially in a recession marketers can’t afford not to focus on conversion rates and gaining market share.

Do you need help fixing your sales funnel? We can help.

Lead generation sites fail to convert for three basic reasons:

1. Visitors don’t understand the value they get in exchange for giving their information.

2. They are informationally challenged and collect too little, too much, or incorrect information.

3. You haven’t established trust and set proper expectations of what to expect when doing business with you.

Obviously, each is interrelated and flow from one to the other. There might be a few more reasons, but for now, these three culprits are enough to start you identifying specific problems on your site and determining action items for optimization.

Keep in mind, more leads may not be what you need. You may need more qualified leads, and a properly planned Web site should help the visitor qualify herself.

We’ve worked with several companies that have seen a decrease in the number of leads, but increased sales and optimized the sales team time and closing ratios because the quality of their leads was improved.

Exchanging Value: My Name for Your Service

Many sites offering “free” whitepapers, case studies, or resources in exchange for some visitor information do a poor job of merchandising their downloads. Your downloads contain valuable information. Treat them as such.

Stop thinking of these downloads as free. You’re asking for something extremely valuable to both you and the visitor, their contact information. To get this valuable information “merchandise” your downloads better. Show the visitor the value of what they’re downloading. So when they fill out the lead form, they feel they’re making a good exchange, valuable information for valuable information.

Include thumbnails of documents.

Let them know what they’ll learn from the download.

Let them know what they can do with the information.

List everything what’s “in it for them” in the download.

Let them know what will happen with their information. Will you be calling them? (More on this, below, under “Establishing Trust and Expectations”.)

If you offer a free trial or demo period, provide clear information about what they are getting. Is it a fully functional trial with a time limit? What happens when the demo runs out? Will you offer them support during the trial? (Sounds like a good way to win over a potential customer doesn’t it?) Disclose system requirements before they begin the sign up process.

Track the number of “bogus” e-mails you get, either bad e-mail addresses or e-mails from Hotmail, Yahoo, or Gmail. If you get too many emails from lucilleball@yahoo.com or elvisp@hotmail, rest assured that visitors don’t see value in the offer and the exchange.

Beware, sometimes these tactics will cause a drop in the number of leads, but rid you of junk leads. You have to determine if this is an acceptable trade off (it almost always is).

Help for the Informationally Challenged

Information, information, information is all around us. Some is useful, sometimes it’s hard to find what’s useful, and some information is just plain not helpful at all.

One approach to determine if you have info problems is to examine time spent on page. Often times I work with sites that have low time spent on main content pages but their FAQ page gets more visitor time. This may indicate that visitors aren’t finding information they need elsewhere. If a visitor relies on your FAQ to get information, it reduces trust. Why aren’t these frequent questions answered frequently (or linked to) on key pages like home and service/product pages?

Often sites put up so much information that visitors cannot find the piece of info they seek. This occasionally indicates an information architecture problem, but more often indicates that the visitors’ needs and motivations aren’t addressed in the content.

Another key issue often neglected is that often the person doing the research on the Web site isn’t the decision maker. She’s trying to gather, sort, and print (you do make it easy to do that, right?) information to give to the person making the decision. Are you making your site easy to understand for this person as well?

There really are no easy solutions to get your information in order. First begin to establish a persuasive framework, building personas then planning each persona’s interaction or persuasion scenarios with your site, and determining what information they need and when and where they need it on the site.

Establishing Trust and Expectations

Visitors must trust you. If they don’t, they don’t become leads or often they become bad leads. Visitors may even fill out a lead form if they mistrust you. Sometimes they are just going through the motion of getting proposals and pricing and are planning on buying from your competitor. You might have the better solution for them but the site or the lead process doesn’t instill enough confidence to take you seriously.

Most visitors who aren’t confident simply won’t contact you. They fear harassment from the sales team. Or sometimes your site is ineffective in communicating the values of the visitor and they bail. Again, this is a tragedy especially when you consider they could be in the market to buy what you sell.

Other times, visitors are in early stages of the buying process and an overly aggressive lead form will cause them to tighten up, assuming you’ll push them somewhere they don’t feel ready to go. Here are some things you can do to help instill trust.

Include information about what it’s like to work with your company. Let them know when you will contact them. Assure them that you will only help them determine their needs and not pressure them.

Ramp up your About Us page.

Ask as few questions as possible in your lead form. Don’t force them to give you all types information or endure a stack of intimidating drop downs.

Include short, friendly lead forms in several places on the site (not just your contact page). This will help you track where they filled out the form and better inform you what they might be interested in.

Tell them exactly what will happen when they send their info, tell them how soon they will be hearing from you. If possible give them a choice of how and when they prefer to be contacted.

Some visitors like to be prepared for the call. Provide a checklist of information they might need to have handy when they speak with you.

Some visitors prefer to call. Provide the phone number near the lead form.

Now go get some leads.

. .

Originally seen on ClickZ.

Editor’s Note: Want more tips on lead-generation? Join Bryan on June 3rd in Manhattan at the Call to Action seminar.

Offline, returns and exchanges are less of a concern to shoppers. They can simply take their purchases back to the store they bought them from. Many retailers even offer gift receipts so recipients can take the merchandise back and exchange it.

Online, the gift exchange/return process looms more ominously in shoppers’ minds. What if shoppers want to return or exchange orders? What do gift receivers do? How about gift givers? Where do they go? How fast will they get a refund? Return-shipping costs, shipping hassles, price-matching concerns, and other questions hover like conversion-rate-chomping gremlins, threatening to devour your sales. Online retailers must resolve these questions, manage expectations, and inject confidence into their visitors, or their “buy now” buttons will look like black holes threatening to suck shoppers’ cash into the ether.

In this screencast, I’ll show you how big online retailers like LandsEnd.com, WalMart.com & BestBuy.com handle these concerns during the holiday crunch. You’ll see how adapting these techniques to your own checkout process can help close the sale and keep them coming back — not just to return things, but to buy from you year-round.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Research commissioned by eBay showed that 56 percent of PayPal customers are more likely to buy from a retail site if a deferred payment option is available, eBay said.

This is an interesting development in the online payment services battle. Amazon (AMZN) just announced they’re entering the space with their own payment system. So, this news ups the ante between PayPal, Google Checkout and Amazon Payment.

Retailers who don’t take advantage of this may be missing out. We’ve seen the success that offering a deferred payment options has brought to several retailers we’ve worked with. To see a great example of how this deferred payment is being used by a retailer, check out Ice.com.

One little-known but poorly-kept secret out there in vendorland is that many big companies — the same ones who come to us for retail advice — use eBay to dispose of returned, open-box, or otherwise retail-disabled inventory. Did you know that?

So it dawned on me: Here I am, an experienced buyer — who better to ask than me about what makes me bid, bid, bid? Want to SellItNow™ your way to increased eBay sales? Here are some guidelines so you’ll be able to sell like the pros (and by pros, I mean folks like these, not just eBay PowerSellers).

10 tips for persuasive eBay listings:

#1) A Sticky Headline — If you can’t write a strong headline, you might as well not bother. It’s your only hope for getting anyone to ever see what you’re selling. (Don’t forget to test your headlines.)

#2) Better Product Images — Having better-looking product images than other sellers will do wonders. In fact, 83 percent of eBay shoppers skip listings without images, while sites with galleries get 15% more activity and those with so-called super-size photos show a 24 percent spike in sales.The better photo wins every time. Consider this photo, for example. And remember that lighting control is essential, as well as these two other points about product photos on eBay:

• Place a product image by the headline. It’s the best way to grab attention to your headline. Remember, you’re trying to slow the bidder’s eye as she cans hundreds of similar listings. It costs virtually nothing to add a photo by the headline, you’ll get way more click-throughs, and it simply looks more professional. If you don’t have $0.35 for this critical feature, you’ll never get my attention. Don’t be penny-wise and pound-foolish!
• Show multiple views with close-ups. This article makes the point, so we won’t repeat ourselves. It’s especially important to show multiple views and close-ups while exaggerating product flaws (see tip #5).

#3) Outstanding, Original Copy — If you’re tempted to just cut-and-paste your way into persuasive sales copy, forget it. Your words matter. First of all, it’s obvious when sellers just use the same boilerplate copy from the manufacturer’s website, which may not even be good to begin with, that everyone else is using. Besides, using the manufacturer’s copy implies to me that the product is brand new and untouched.

Show some personality. Showing personality helps potential buyers to see you as real; it builds trust. Why did you buy this product in the first place? Why are you selling it? Have you sold any of these items before? Different people buy in different ways, so the words you choose, and how you choose to dispense them, are everything. Start with spontaneous, emotional copy at the beginning, then get more methodical toward the end when listing product details. The second half of this article offers good advice on how to write for different personality types.

#4) So, What’s the Catch? — Why do you have such a good deal? Oftentimes, the most persuasive thing you can do is to be completely transparent about your business model. Are you making tons of money by selling digital cameras in bulk? Did you buy too much for your brick and mortar store, and you’re selling the overstock? Is your wife making you sell the XBox before you get a Nintendo Wii, so you’ve set a low reserve just to move it (this happens). I want to know. Sorry, but saying “Lowest price on eBay, guaranteed!” means nothing.

#5) Exaggerate Flaws — This one may seem counterintuitive for the novice seller but it makes perfect sense and the best eBay sellers do it masterfully. If there’s a minor scratch on that DVD player you’re selling, zoom in on it enough in a separate photo to the point where it seems ridiculous that you’re apologizing for it in the first place. Overestimating flaws builds trust. Trust is what makes people bid.

#6) Accept PayPal – It’s been the eBay gold standard since 1998. If you don’t accept it, you’re not making things easy. I’m skeptical. In fact, offer as many payment options as possible. Get the cash (GTC)!

#7) Know How to Price — Hear about all those folks trying to sell iPhones on eBay for $1,000? How’s that working out? It’s not. In the world of eBay, your competitors are two clicks away, at most. Overestimate the market for your product, and you’ll never get that crucial first bid. Here’s how it’s done:

• Be aware of what it’s selling for elsewhere. Find out how much similar products are selling for and you’ll have a good idea of what you should expect to get for it. Then…
• Take the expected winning bid price and cut it in half. Shave off another 10% off, and you’ve got your reserve price. Think that’s crazy? Too low? Guess again. Studies have shown that bidding is what drives up the price. The more competition among bidders, the higher the winning bid. The only way to kick-start the bidding frenzy is by putting the floor well below the ceiling.
• If you’re willing to accept a price that’s around or below where it’s selling elsewhere on eBay, list that price as the “Buy It Now” and throw in “free” shipping. Now you’ve killed two birds with one stone. You’ve created a compelling offer and you’ve avoided the stigma of “shipping rape” (see #10). Free shipping is often the #1 driver when it comes to online promotions.

#8) Link to the Owner’s Manual — (Where applicable) link to the owner’s/user’s manual/instructions for your product. Feel free to borrow product details from here, just don’t use the manufacturer’s boring words Just don’t use this tip as a substitute for tip #3 above.

#9) Have a Star Rating Above 99% — If you have a star rating below 99%, that means you’ve upset too many people for me to feel comfortable buying. Sorry, but if you have a 100% rating and you’ve sold to less than 100 people, I’m still not confident; it’s not a true 100%. If you’ve sold to thousands of people and have a 98% rating, your “success rate” means nothing.

#10) No Shipping Extortion — Last, but not least, some eBay sellers lose their minds when it comes to shipping. Do you think we’re stupid? Um, no, it doesn’t cost $15 to ship from a one-pound package from Kansas to Brooklyn within 10 days. If it costs $5 to ship it from China, why must I pay $25 to ship it in “4-6 weeks” from California? And, by the way, I’m receiving the package, so I often how much you’ve paid the very moment I get it. Try this, and the only one you’ll fool is yourself.

eBay sellers: I’ve still got one last free corner of space in my apartment. Please help me fill it with stuff! The quicker it fills, the quicker I’ll clear it out by selling on eBay and then have all sorts of free space to fill up with new eBay purchases!

Do you have any tips to sell more effectively on ebay?

Update: Seth reminds us people are irrational.

You’ve got online sales. You’ve got offline sales. To complicate matters, neither of these exists in isolation. According to a recent BIGresearch survey, 87% of the customers who research their purchases online actually buy offline!On top of that, websites and flesh-and-blood sales staff must continually field product and service questions from customers who increasingly are as, if not better, informed than they are!

How can you implement strategies to improve your sales efficiency – within and across channels – while at the same time meeting the diverse needs of your customers?

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The fact that your products or services aren’t suited to shopping carts doesn’t mean the Web shouldn’t be a focus for implementing your business strategies.In an emerging media and experience-based economy, the Web is the glue that binds a business’s multi-channel marketing efforts. Today, the Internet plays a critical role in how customers perceive brand, shape their buying decisions, and evaluate their experiences-even before you’ve ever sold them anything.

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I sing this song a lot: “You sell, I buy, tra la tra la.” But that’s what it all comes down to. Whatever you’re doing, you’d like me to take advantage of it. You’re selling. I’m buying.You’ve got a process in place to manage the transaction from your point of view. Meanwhile, I have my own agenda, and you want to find a way to convince me you deserve line item space on that agenda!

That’s where an understanding of sales topology really pays off!

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Bryan couldn’t wait to email me the screen shots. “This is crazy! I can’t believe they’re doing this.” There’s a lot we can’t believe folks do, so this actually isn’t an unusual situation. But Bryan was … um … peeved. (That’s putting it politely.)You see, DJ needed a bowl for his water, and providing for DJ proved slightly more complicated than Bryan had anticipated. In his words …

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Okay B2B folks. Time to see the light. Time to challenge your perceptions of industry differences – when it comes to online persuasion, B2B is not substantively different from B2C. You sell; they buy; you’re most effective when your selling process pairs up perfectly with their buying processes. Whatever you’re doing out there in cyber space, you get that relationship right and you’ll persuade brilliantly.Getting stuck on superficial distinctions you think should define your practice of conversion is a big mistake. It’s a great big Forest of Persuasion out there – every possibly variation on selling and buying – and, believe it or not, every tree I’ve ever brought to your attention has come from the same forest! B2B folks who out of hand dismiss B2C examples as irrelevant truly risk missing the forest for the trees.

If you don’t have traffic and don’t have goals for that traffic, you don’t need to pay attention. Everybody else cosy on up, ‘cause this pertains to you.

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I recently overheard a fellow talking about “the simplicity of the B2C sale.” He was comparing it to the complexity of the “considered purchase,” B2B sale. I had to chuckle, not at the thought one sale might be more complex than another, but at the thought that B2C sales, simply because they are B2C, are inherently less complicated. I wonder if that guy has ever bought a house or a car, booked a cruise, applied for a loan or tried to research dietary strategies that might remediate cancer.Your business category is not the issue. The complexity of your sale is not the issue. Whether your sale is impulse or a considered purchase is not the issue. Buying into these notions as determining factors when it comes to your ability to design persuasively is thinking that will lead you down the garden path.

Understanding and managing your sale as a persuasive process is the only relevant issue.

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You sell baseball bats. I need one for a 14-year-old entering high school. I believe the right tool can help make or break the experience, so I want to give my friend something that will be an asset. Trouble is, I don’t know the first thing about bats. And they aren’t exactly cheap!

So I’m sitting in front of a screenful of Google search results. I’m eager and ready to buy. I’m not stupid, I just need some help. I need to know the bat’s specifications and why a purveyor thinks one bat would work better than another for my situation. Features and benefits. Do that for me and you get the sale. How hard could it be?

Those pay-per-click search results immediately catch my eye, and they seem perfectly targeted to my query. I’m happy not to have to wade through the more elaborate results for this mission. And most of these are names I’ve heard of. Let’s pick ……

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Folks have made a habit of emphasizing the home page of your Web site as the Sacred Portal through which your visitors enter the cyber-structure of your business. As if all other avenues of entry were blocked, and the process could only start at Square One.

Yeah, right. Everyone knows the process can start at any square that is readable by the search engines. And you can directly influence the starting square through pay-per-click advertisements and email campaigns. It is possible your visitors can arrive and start digging deeper into your conversion process without ever bothering over your home page.

They’ll arrive on a landing page – something very much like a focused mini home page – and how successful you are at catching them will depend on what you do with that page.

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