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.

Tip 1: Subiminal Suggestion

Basically, make sure your design elements – and most especially your pictures – enhance your credibility and put visitors in the right emotional frame of mind to convert.

Sound advice, to be sure, but the example Website the author (Dmitry Fadeyev) provides seemed kind of lame to me.  Here’s a more-thorough 5-minute video on this principle by Dave Young:

Click here to view the embedded video.

Tip 2: Prevent Choice Paralysis

Too many choices results in buyers avoiding a decision and failing to convert.  You need to make it easy for a buyer to say yes without getting too bogged down in the details.  One way to do this is to provide a recommended or “best value” option.

But here’s where I’d go a bit beyond that by looking at this through the lens of temperament:

• Spontaneous temperaments like recommended and “most popular” options.  They also ver much want to shorten the time spent shopping and setting up so they can maximize time spent actually DOING THE THING.  If your recommended option helps customers get out on the playing field quicker, then be sure to tell visitors that.
• Methodical temperaments will want to know WHY you believe this is the best value and how you can prove it.  Show your reasoning/methodology in coming to your conclusions and offer up proof of value.  This may involve linking to a mouse-over or additional page from the recommendation box.  Maybe a little link on “Why we recommend this package.”
• Competitive temperaments don’t necessarily need a recommendation, but a quick way to narrow down their choices by advanced filtering.  Or a quick way of knowing why the choice you’ve labeled as premium will give them an edge.  Keep them in control and convinced they’re getting an advantage through their purchase and they’ll convert.
• Humanistic temperaments usually want to know how easy it is to upgrade or downgrade a recommended service or swap-out a product if your recommendation ends up not quite suiting them.  They also want a sense of your motivations in recommending one product over another and possibly if they can Chat or call someone about the recommendation.

Tip 3: Show The Product

This is very similar to my post on “Show me the pics.”  People want to see what they are buying.  Not only do the pictures answer questions, but people want to imagine using the product.

What I’d add to this is that one picture often isn’t enough and that action photos are gold.  For software and services that means not only offering product tours with lots of screenshots, but also in using scenario-based product tours rather than functionality-based tours.  Walk me through doing something rather than randomly showing this or that functionality.

Tip 4: Let People Try It

Great (and self-explanatory) advice, but I was glad that Show the Product came before this.  I’ve seen a fair amount of software companies believe that visitors would just leap at a free trial in order to experience a product first hand, and that just aint how it works.

Visitors invariably want to sniff a product out BEFORE downloading it and investing time with it.  Realize that “Free” doesn’t really equate to risk free.  Dmitry writes about the positive benefits users’ emotional “sunk costs” that come with using a free piece of software – the kind of thing that leads to a paid updgrade vs. a search for a whole new product.  What he doesn’t mention is that visitors are well aware of that sunk cost and will avoid downloading software unless and until they have a decent sense that it will work well for them.

So, yes, by all means, let people try the product for free.  Just make sure you show them enough of the product and what it can do that their willing to invest the time trying it out.

Tip 5 & 7: AIDA and Next Steps

I combined these because they are intimately related and are both areas Future Now has quite thoroughly covered.  We, of course, add the “S” of Satisfaction onto the end of Attention-Interest-Desire-Action.

Also, planning persuasive momentum/next action steps should be more involved than simply ensuring visitors can find a buy button when they’re ready to buy or that you have some additional link made available to them.

Finally, you gotta love this money quote from the article:

“…you shouldn’t design a nice website first and then fill up the space with words. Instead,think about the message you want to send out, write the copy and then construct a design that delivers that.”

Amen, brother.  Amen.

Tip 6: Guide Attention

Having just finished writing about the impact of design on visitor eye tracking, I naturally found this to be the best part of the article.  Lost of great stuff on intelligent use of design to guide the eyes/attention of the visitor.

As for additional resources on the Web, check out

The Elements of Design Applied to the Web

Good Call to Action Buttons

Making Tabs Work for You

Looks can Kill Design Effectiveness

Color, Contrast, and Dimension

and Rowland Wilson on Composition

Tip 8:  The Gutenberg Rule

I really don’t have too much to say about this one, other than it’s another rule of thumb for good composition/page layout and that you should go and take a look at it for yourself.

And that’s it.  I’d love to hear your comments, suggestions, and additional resources as well.  Let me know what ya think…

Absolutely not, right?  Or at least not yet.

You came to buy a specific book.  You’ve already got a task in mind and browsing random books aint it.  You’ll likely blow past any and all call-outs, recommendations, and other assorted distractions until you’ve found the book you came to buy.

And if Amazon ends up not having the book in stock, you’ll go elsewhere.

But AFTER you’ve found the book you wanted, recommendations are welcomed. At that point you’ll actually pay attention to other books Amazon recommends and bundles with your searched-for book.   You’ll even look at what other Amazon shoppers eventually bought after viewing your friend’s book.

Task Orientation Defines Scent

This Amazon thought experiment exemplifies the task-orientation common to most online visitors.

Visitors arrive at your site with a goal in mind.  They already have a task, and your website either helps them accomplish that task or it gets dumped.  And that goes for every page on your site – either it contains the content the visitor wants, or it provides a link to it, or the visitor leaves.

But what about people just wanting to browse?

This is a question posed to me in a recent comment.  As the commenter put it:

“… when I’m browsing through Amazon – with no other goal than to pass the time – I get converted to buy stuff all the time.

‘People who bought x also bought Y’ And if the book or cd Y is something I’ve been interested in – it triggers a purchase.”

His point was that browsing is a task-less online activity that eliminates the importance of scent.

And it’s an interesting question/thought.  To answer it, I’ll first have to distinguish between early stage shopping and true browsing.

Early Stage Buying vs. True Browsing

In the early stage of the buying process, the visitor is aware of an itch he’d like to scratch, but isn’t quite sure exactly what purchase will best scratch that itch.  Let’s say our shopper is vaguely aware of wanting to get in shape, and is kind of wanting to do Yoga.  But he’s not sure if he wants to do Yoga in a dedicated studio, or take classes in a more general, multi-purpose gym, or just buy some tapes for home workouts.

This Yoga shopper is still task oriented – it’s just that the task is researching rather than buying.  And a home-workout themed website or Yoga Studio website that helped her do the research stands a far better chance of getting her business than a Website exclusively focused on late stage buyers.

This is one reason we highly recommend catering to early stage buyers and developing a content strategy for them.  And for more info on how to do that effectively, check out David Young’s excellent video series: Hunting for Early Bird Persuasion

Browsing is different.  Browsing means the shopper isn’t even clearly aware of a product desire yet. They’re not even focused on research.  If asked, the shopper couldn’t even describe the itch they’re looking to scratch.   And yet, they could buy if presented with the right product.

Browsers are still task-oriented

Despite appearances, browsing isn’t task-free.  Even though a specific object hasn’t (yet) catalyzed their free-floating desire, browsing visitors are still driven by desire.

Browsers are seeking novelty and possibility: the possibility of finding something different and better than they’d have imagined.   Browsers are as goal-oriented as any other shopper – just with different goals.

And as is true with every goal-oriented shopper, any website that fails to deliver on those goals gets dumped.  In fact, most shoppers only browse on sites that have already proved themselves capable of delivering novel products.

People browse Amazon.com not because it presents them with recommendations on the home page, but because Amazon masterfully presents them with interesting possibilities of new books that are similar to and possibly even remarkably better than books we’re already impressed with.  This is why the commenter I quoted from recalled the ‘People who bought x also bought Y’ quote rather than a “view Amazon recommendations” quote.

So how does a site plan to deliver on this search for novelty and cooler-than-expected items?

What it takes to be a browsing-friendly Website

Apart from bargain-priced rotating-inventory sites like bluefly, overstock.com or woot.com, the top three e-tailers most noted for browsing-friendly design are:

• Amazon
• Zappos
• iTunes

Here’s what they have in common:

They sell “impulse-buy-friendly” and “most-people-own-a-bunch” items.  Think about it: books, music, and shoes are all things we buy a lot of AND things we buy on impulse.  So each of these sites have a lot of repeat visits/visitors AND a fair chance at luring visitors into impulse buys.

They make it easy to sample the items in stock. iTunes lets you actually listen to the song.  Amazon lets you read the dust cover, table of contents, and a few passages from the book.  Most reviews also give you a flavor of the book.  Zappos gives you the best product photography to be found and provides expedited shipping both ways, which is a way to eliminate the pain and friction of customers trying on and “sampling” the shoes.

They routinely get new items in stock and make it a point to stock huge inventories. If browsers want novelty, it helps to be able to provide it, both with new stuff and with stuff I’ve never heard of before.  Amazon.com has all sorts of weird titles I’d never find at my local Barnes & Noble or even imagine existed.  Same thing with iTunes and Zappos.  Browsing shoppers know that novelty is only a click away.

They have solid user reviews set-up. Amazon and Zappos make up for limited sampling through user reviews, making it no coincidence that they have the best and most solidly established review communities on the Web. iTunes lags behind the others when it comes to reviews, but makes up for by better sampling, lower average price point, and better than average recommendations.

They make it easy to sort by regular categories AND by loose associations. Amazon let’s me see cool webs of connections between books, and look at user generated lists.  Zappos provides great filtered navigation options, so that I can not only sort by black men’s dress shoes, but also by black cap-toe lace up oxfords that cost between $100 and $150.  And many of the revues compare shoes, even to the point of recommending alternatives.  iTunes allows users to sort music by genre, decade, and browse with the aid of since-you-bought-that-you’ll-like-this recommendations.  For even better filtered, or faceted, sorting, check out this Get Elastic article as well as their thoughts on using user filtering and sorting preferences to personalize visitors shopping experience.

They’ve eliminated or greatly reduced buying friction. I can buy shoes on Zappos and get them next day or by 2nd day for free shipping.  With Amazon prime, I get 1-Click buying, and free 2nd-day shipping.  iTunes allows me to enjoy my music within seconds of buying.  And I know I’ll never have a problem with billing or customer service with these e-tailers.  There’s simply no friction to buying and a good bit of near-instant gratification – important factors for inspiring impulse buys.

I originally read the article because it talks about gender and website design. But there’s much more to it than the title (”Website Marketing Across Genders”) suggests. For instance, the phenomenon he calls “Towards” and “AwayFrom” advertising.

I’ll dig into that in another post, but in the meantime, take a look at his description of using a visual on a page to draw visitors toward a specific action:

Let me give you an example of an automotive retailer site that also works in print. The goal is to have the visitor purchase a new vehicle. Place an image in the upper part of the screen or print piece. The left of the image is the owned vehicle, the right of the image is the desired or target vehicle. Just right of center is the couple or an individual facing the desired vehicle and walking towards it.

The web’s media capabilities allow the message to get across very well because the couple or individual can be seen actually moving towards the target vehicle. In a static image that implies walking have the right hand swinging towards the target vehicle, the left hand swinging towards the owned vehicle.

So simple. So powerful.

Speaking of simple and powerful, if you haven’t read Bryan Eisenberg’s award-winning article on website images and eyetracking, you should. It definitely clarifies Joseph’s point.

It all started when I checked my email and found an email from Apple with a subject line that said, “The new Mac Pro. Now with 8 cores standard.”

Like many email users, I don’t automatically enable HTML images. So, I have to click to allow the images to be shown. The result: The Apple email looks like a fancy design of gray and black with absolutely nothing there.

The subject line (”The new Mac Pro. Now with 8 cores standard.”) means nothing to me. How is that a benefit? It certainly doesn’t excite me enough to explore further, but since I’m an Apple fan, let’s say I decide to keep going.

When I did finally enable the image, I see the computer tower…

The call to action above the fold is “Configure now.” Wow, that’s really exciting!

I’m a Humanistic type (as opposed to Spontaneous, Competitive, or Methodical), so the word “configure” holds no scent for me — it sounds like something really technical you do with a graphing calculator. No thanks.

But for argument’s sake, let’s say I’m curious enough to continue and see this landing page:

Could they possibly use more techno-speak? There isn’t a word here of that wonderful, personal, easy-to-understand Apple language.

If this were designed for Methodical types, I’d give it high marks. Even if she didn’t have her images enabled, the Methodical customer might scroll down and see there was indeed some text in the email. She would probably like the word “configure” and appreciate all those wonderful technical specs, and a subject line like, “Now with 8 cores standard.”

But for the other types, this scenario bombs.

Spontaneous customers who don’t have images enabled on their email will likely not even open it with that subject line, and if they see nothing but a black and gray design with nothing in it, they’re gone.

Humanistics won’t often get past that subject line, either. Where’s the wonderful everyday language and engaging images? I’d like to see that nice guy from the TV commercials telling me why this new Mac Pro would be great for me. I bet he could do a good job of putting it into plain English and making me feel good about the product.

Competitives might like the subject line, but they want benefits, not features. How will this help them do more, be better, have a superior computer to what they have today? They also will bail if they don’t have images enabled. They are almost as impatient as the Spontaneous folks. Here’s the sad thing: There’s actually great copy for Competitives like, “Once reserved for the top of the line, 8-core processing power is now at the heart of the Mac Pro.” Same feature, but delivered in a benefit-oriented fashion Competitives would love — yet it’s below the fold where, unlike the Methodical customer, they may not scroll to see it (they’re much too fast-paced).

Bottom line: The whole scenario feels like it was designed by that “PC guy.” I want my Mac guy back.

[Editor's Note: Do your landing pages speak to customers in their own language? If you'd like to optimize your landing pages and improve customer focus, we can help.]

Vince’s painting has affected millions. It’s one of the best known images in modern culture. It’s inspired songs such as Don McLean’s “Starry Starry Night” and is one of the most replicated prints. The painting has a magnetic appeal, engaging the reader by drawing them into its world.

I say “reader” rather than viewer because this image is a perfect example of how an image SPEAKS a thousand words in an instant, emotional impact.

In the past decade, the online marketing industry has been known to echo the phrase “Content is king”. Great content — and equally good layout — is key to helping your visitors successfully find what they’re looking for. The content that’s king to search engines is the copy on a website, but the content that’s king to visitors is a balanced mixture of copy and images.

The images on a site help to create a face for the organization. The emotional visitor is engaged by pictures of friendly employees and clients. Logical visitors, meanwhile, look for images of competent executives — sorry, but handshake clip art won’t do — as well as product images that clearly describe every feature, using different angles and environments.

As a professional model, I get to see how my image is used to promote and communicate their products. As an online conversion and persuasion analyst, I see how clients use words and images to communicate their products and services. Too often, clients are missing some of Van Gogh’s magic brew that could radically improve their conversion results.

As website visitors become more exposed and sophisticated, they become more demanding. This means you’d better have ALL your words and images working in sync to persuade your visitors that they are in the right place.

The images most websites feature aren’t magnetic and powerful; they don’t speak to the visitor. Ask yourself what your images are saying and if they’re saying the right things. Are you conveying the “feel” of your company and products so the visitor really knows what they’ll experience when they buy from you?

That is why you look to the blogosphere and the collection of publications that publish advice from “experts”.

Like you, I keep current with a lot of what industry experts have to say. Some of it’s excellent, some is good, some of it’s neutral, but a dangerous yet substantial portion of it is toxic. I sometimes point to the excellent. I sometimes prod the good with a question or comment. I largely ignore the neutral or harmless even though it provides a source of endless chuckles for my team. However, my tongue is bloody and scarred from repeated biting in an effort to refrain from attacking the toxic misinformation being published.

STOP! Don’t drink that! The Kool-Aid is poisoned!

I can’t say that, can I? You might think I was mean-spirited, unprofessional, spiteful or disrespectful of someone’s opinion.

So, why do people drink the Kool-Aid? If you say anything with enough conviction, someone will believe you. If you put a thought in writing, on a blog, your credibility increases. If you sprinkle in a collection of conventional wisdom, paraphrased concepts and some pseudoscience, the cocktail is ready. Bottoms up!

I haven’t linked to any such toxic advice, even though I read two blog posts and an article this morning that I know will send some people off on expensive wild goose chases.

I hate being called an expert. I’d rather the results speak for themselves. I’d also rather have the right questions than the right answers in a truly accountable marketing system.

I’ve been involved in cleaning up experts’ messes for almost a decade. If you’re a client, you know I wouldn’t hesitate to tell you the truth.

Dear reader, how can I tell you the truth? Perhaps it’s impossible, but I’d like to know if there is some way I could save you the pain.

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.

Anyone with kids knows the routine when you impart your wonderful child with a bit of wisdom.

“Son, do you want to get hurt?”
“No, Daddy”
“Then please don’t jump on the bed!”
“Ok, Daddy”

Simple, right?

Then, about 8 minutes later, comes that ear shattering scream. Your son is curled up on the floor, clutching his thick head, sporting a fresh bump from a nasty tumble. Seems he was jumping on the bed.

Our faithful are likely tired of hearing the same conversion rate rants from us. For the rest, it’s not until after they take a tumble that they decide jumping on the bed is a bad idea.

Jon Miller at Search Engine Land posted a great article describing why B2Bs are typically unsatisfied with PPC agencies, wherein he makes a bold suggestion that B2Bs should abandon PPC agencies altogether. Here’s a nice little nugget from the post:

You know your business better than the agency. One of the most important skills for PPC success is picking the right keywords that your prospects actually use when they search – something you know best. Also, when determining rankings, Google and now Yahoo! care as much about the relevance of your content as they do about your bid (aka “what you say is as important as what you pay”). This means a good understanding of your business and your industry is at least as important as being a search “expert”. Over time, the balance of power between business knowledge and SEM knowledge will shift even further towards business as Google continues to find ways to reward relevant content and discount search agency tricks.

While Jon makes a stunningly accurate diagnosis, his suggested treatment is questionable:

The main value provided by agencies is expertise with SEM, and as I’ll explain, you can bring much of that expertise in-house by using the right kind of pay per click management software. A technology solution can create the best of both worlds: the control and business knowledge of doing it yourself, combined with the SEM best practices and techniques of an expert.

We love technology as much as the next guy, it makes life easier. But in-house technology and SEM best practices will likely still leave you dissappointed. Sure you’ll save their fees, and possibly see some incremental gains but unless you embrace a persuasion methodology, you are just jumping on the bed.

How do you find the right keywords? How do you ensure your prospects are being presented with relevant scent from the ad to the lead form? How do you optimize and measure every variant? What if you don’t have any ‘experts’ on staff?

By giving non-marketing experts a methodology for maximizing demand generation, Persuasion Architecture™ and Persuasive Scenarios are proven to solve this dilemma.

Bryan Eisenberg touched on just one aspect of B2B demand generation last week’s Clickz column.

Sure, it’s hard work, but the only thing harder is ending up with knot after knot on your head.

“An innocuous question can hit you where you live. I should have expected one day someone would ask me, “How do you measure your ROI for that?”

If I’m conducting client training on measuring, testing, and optimizing performance, clients have a right to ask about my own practices. The “that” she referred to is nearly 300,000 words we’ve published online for free over the past two years. I promised her I’d discuss it in this column.

How does someone who writes “ROI Marketing” justify publishing so much content for free? Do we charge for advertising, rent our list, or bombard those names with commercial offers? No. In fact, Jeffrey, my brother and partner who handles such things, estimates we’ve invested about $100,000 developing free content for our newsletter, free whitepapers and other publications. How do we measure its ROI?

We know one side of the equation: the investment. The money has been spent. What did we get in return?” keep reading…

That was from Bryan’s June 2002 ClickZ column, The ROI of Free, where he explained how we calculate the return on all the free content we create. He even said we would double down and did we ever. Since 1999 we’ve published almost two million words for free.

What made me think of this subject today is Chris Garrett’s interview with my friend Sean D’Souza. Sean sums up his response to a similar question with: “Give the ideas. Sell the System.”

I like Chris’s blog. Want proof? You may notice that mine was the first comment. Chris has the interview and links to Sean’s Psychotactics.com.

How effective will the candidates be at using the the web and all it’s mojo? techPresident is a blog set up to do just that, check out this post about how the current candidates are utilizing (or not) Google Pay Per Click (PPC).

It’s time all candidates recognize the power of search to drive highly-targeted traffic to their fledgling websites. Get cracking, everyone! We’re watching.

We’ll be watching as well, and I am sure we can find a few great lessons to share with you about online persuasion.

These are important questions.

Ask a Bigger Question

What makes people buy? When you focus on this question, all the subsequent details fall much more easily into place. This is not a word game; it’s a change in perspective. Without a proper strategy, you can win every battle and still lose the war.

Tactics: The Unspoken Assumptions

Whenever businesses tackle optimization, site design or redesign, they start with a set of assumptions. Very often, these assumptions depend on a granular, detail-oriented view of the problem as the business sees it (from the perspective of the business, not the customer). Very often, the problem is couched in the language of “best practices”, a series of tactics. However, to paraphrase Sun Tzu, tactics applied without strategy are the noise before defeat.

Asking a “bigger question” broadens your view of your situation beyond the details; bigger questions often lead you to reevaluate your strategies, which in turn allows you to devise more effective tactics. The critical answers to these bigger questions—the answers that meet your specific needs—can only from you.

7 Online Marketing Challenges & How to Frame Them as Bigger Questions

Here’s a list of the top seven challenges clients put to us, with their variations. We reframe them through bigger questions to target the deeper issues that influence your marketing effectiveness.

1. “We need to reach more people.”

Sometimes you simply need to reach more people. You need to improve your search engine rankings; you need to add more keywords to your search engine marketing; you need to find new or more places to advertise; you need to grow your list; you need to advertise offline; you need viral marketing; you need to increase the number of links to your site; you need to add or modify an affiliate program, and other variations on this theme.

Bigger questions to explore and ask yourself:

• Are enough of the people coming to our website sufficiently satisfied with what we present that they buy, or does our presentation damage our reputation and create an impediment to buying?
• Are enough of the people who buy from us sufficiently delighted to purchase again, are we wasting resources by driving new traffic?
• Do we provide enough of the right information for people to return even when they are not ready to buy right now?
• Are we focused more on marketing to the search engines or marketing to the people who visit our site?

2. “We need to reach better people.”

Sometimes you simply need to reach better people. You need to target more appropriate publications; you need to select better keywords; you need to source better lists; you need to find more qualified buyers; you need to reach your competitor’s customers; you need to reach people when they are ready to buy; you need the right content to attract search engine traffic, and other variations on this theme.

Bigger questions to explore and ask yourself:

• If we reach those people, do we have relevant content for them when they are in the early, middle and late stages of their buying process?
• Is our offering so narrow that there are too few “better” people?
• Does the buyer only identify the need and buy on a very short time horizon, such that we need to find them before they have the need?
• Is the message we’ve been telling the “wrong” people strong enough for them to reach out and tell the “better” people?

3. “We need more resources.”

Sometimes you simply need more resources. You need more money; your need enough time; you need the right consultant; you need better-skilled people; you need the right talent; you need the right vendor; you need to justify your opportunity costs, and other variations on this theme.

Bigger questions to explore and ask yourself:

• Do our priorities and goals match our resource allocations?
• Do we commit our resources based on predicted rates of return?
• Do we hold people accountable for those returns when allocating new resources?
• If we don’t have the resources or time to do it correctly now, when will we have the resources or time; when, exactly, will we commit to do it?

4. “We need better testing and usability.”

Sometimes you simply need better testing and usability. You need to make it easy to buy from you; you need to make it easy for visitors to find what they are looking for; you need to make it easy to checkout; you need to get feedback from visitors; you need to set up tests and watch how visitors vote with their mice; you need to test to isolate which variables are most important to your visitors; you need to test to see which offers work best, and variations on this theme.

Bigger questions to explore and ask yourself:

• What motivates people to buy even when sites aren’t usability-friendly?
• If usability is the only critical factor, why haven’t conversion rates improved in any meaningful way over the last five years, when attention to usability has increased dramatically?
• What if what we’re testing is only what we can think of, but the problem lies in what we haven’t thought of yet; which variables are truly significant and which are not?
• How do we know that pages further up or down the click-stream don’t affect the test we are conducting on one page?
• Do our scientific tests include an hypothesis of the outcome, a theory for why we expect the outcome and a statistically meaningful sample size so we can validate or refute our hypothesis and learn from the results; can we apply that learning more broadly to other situations?
• Would different click-through paths for different audience segments give us a cumulatively higher conversion than the best average conversion?

5. “We need to redesign.”

Sometimes you simply need to redesign. You need to scrap what isn’t working for you; you need more persuasive copy; you need more persuasive or illustrative images; you need to refresh your company image; you need to update your technology; you’ve added so many pieces to the original design that you need to reconceive it, and variations on this theme.

Bigger questions to explore and ask yourself:

• Do we need a redesign or do we need to make what we have work?
• Why will the redesigned site better serve visitors?
• How, exactly, will the redesigned site better serve visitors?
• Why are the best-converting sites so often boring in their design?
• Will our redesign incorporate a scientific testing methodology that will allow us to optimize click-streams based on a prediction of how different audience segments will engage with the site?

6. “We need better metrics.”

Sometimes you simply need better metrics. You need to measure the impact on conversion of the elements on your website; you need a good web analytics program; you need to turn your data into wisdom so you can act upon it; you need to measure whether your predictions were correct; you need to identify what campaigns, keywords, elements and audience segments give you the best return on your investment, and variations on this theme.

Bigger questions to explore and ask yourself:

• How can we better implement the web analytics program we are currently; do we understand how the data we collect impacts our financial statements?
• Are our metrics based on the way we set up our website to sell or on our visitors’ buying cycles and buying modalities?
• Do our metrics help us refine our website to meet visitor expectations?
• Have we identified and planned an intentional path so that metrics can help us separate the signal from the noise or is our analysis an attempt to divine order from randomness?

7. “We need a better Conversion Rate.”

Sometimes you simply need a better conversion rate. You need a better return on investment on your traffic; you need to remove obstacles to conversion; you need to plug the holes in your leaky bucket; you need to reduce shopping cart abandonment; you need visitors to complete more lead generation forms; you need more business, and variations on this theme.

Bigger questions to explore and ask yourself:

• How does our conversion rate affect our advertising and promotional budget?
• If we could attract a drastically reduced audience that converts better, we’ve increased our conversion rate. Are we prepared to reduce our conversion rate if we can generate more sales at an acceptable return on investment?
• If what we are offering is good, what are all the potential reasons why someone wouldn’t convert today, in 30 days, in 60 days, etc.?
• What is the percentage of visitors we would expect to lose to each of our potential reasons?
• After identifying all the potential reasons why someone wouldn’t convert, if we can’t justify why our conversion rate is less than 20%, why would we set our goals so much lower than that?
• Is it possible that the strategy that helps you increase the average conversion rate isn’t the strategy that would produce the most overall sales or best results?
• Would different click-through paths for different audience segments give us a cumulatively higher conversion than the best average conversion?

Meeting your challenges

Time and again we have learned that the answers to these bigger questions, which depend on a critical appraisal and an intimate knowledge of the business, its marketplace, its audience and its objectives, make the difference when it comes to being successful online.

You can tackle these bigger questions yourself. Objectivity and being able to see outside the box that defines your current situation will best serve the quality of your answers.

What happens if you don’t want to rethink your challenges or to identify more effective marketing solutions? Things stay the same, and you never realize your potential.

What happens if you’re unsure how to, or can’t, rethink your challenges?

Well, that’s why we’re here!

Keyword inflation, low conversion rates sending merchants elsewhere

SAN FRANCISCO (MarketWatch) — A growing number of online advertisers are bidding a partial goodbye to Google Inc.

Frustrated by the soaring price of Internet-search advertising and diminishing returns from the ads they buy, mid-sized advertisers say they plan to reduce how much business they do with Google this year — in some cases, significantly.

Last year, for example, eBags.com co-founder Peter Cobb spent between $5 million and $8 million to peddle suitcases, handbags and other carrying cases online. Google got 75% of that amount.

But this year it will get “significantly less,” Cobb said. “The Google percentage has got to go down,” he said.

In many cases, the cost of an eBags.com ad placed on either Google’s own Web site or one of its affiliates now equals 45% of the price of the product it promotes. That’s crimping the company’s own profit margins and forcing it to look elsewhere to market its bags.

“We’re testing print ads right now,” said Cobb, whose company will spend up to $8 million on ads in 2007. Read the rest of the article

The article continues…

Keyword search prices on many terms rose between 40% and 60% last year, according to advertisers like Dan Sackrowitz, chief executive of Bare Necessities, which sells lingerie online. He saw his Google ad budget soar 50% last year.

The problem is obvious, traffic costs are puffing up like a marshmallow in a microwave and advertisers are having a hard time finding ways to increase traffic and lower costs. Simply put, Google advertisers are hooked.

Instead of looking for ways to increase return on traffic investment, the average marketer will look for another traffic fix. We’ve said before that the marketing battleground of the future is not traffic acquisition, it will be traffic conversion.

The exceptional marketer is looking for ways to optimize their keyword and landing page conversion rates.

Optimizing landing pages is something we’ve been doing with our clients for quite some time. We are a premier channel partner with Google and their new testing platform Google Website Optimizer beta. If you are interesting in our landing page optimization coaching service, we are going to take on a few testers over the next few weeks to participate in this beta with us. Contact us if you want to know more.

Instead, marketers’ focus will shift from managing their bids to
managing the entire conversation with their customers. By improving attributes such as the relevance of keywords, ad copy and landing pages, advertisers provide a better user experience while having an positive influence on their own ad costs.

Panama certainly raises the stakes for all those who have yet to realize how critical true Customer-centricity has become (let’s not forget transparency either).  With the added competition, it’s nice to have a methodology to follow…

Live Chat doesn’t have to be a tack-on concession to customer service. It can be an integral part of your site’s persuasive process. The trick is understanding how to use the technique to advantage and exhaustively planning the Live Chat experience so it fits seamlessly into your bigger picture.

Here are some ideas to get you started.

Read the rest of this article.
Read the entire newsletter: Volume 143

Your website architecture dictates your customer’s experience.
Architecture has nothing to do with graphics. Did your website have an
architect? Or was it designed by the programmer? By the graphic artist?
By you?

A programmer asks, "Does it function?"
A graphic designer asks, "Does it ‘feel right’ and represent us well?"
An owner asks, "Does it say what I want it to say?"
An architect asks, "Did the customer find their answer?"

Read the entire memo (and while you’re there, you just may want to subscribe and start every Monday with 5 minutes of insights that will quite simply knock you on you @ss)

I get a number of emails pleading, “Grok, would you lay off the retail examples and help us long-suffering [fill in non-retail type] businesses?” To which I always reply, “Retail is an easy way to demonstrate the principles, but those principles apply across the board.” My correspondents rarely seem convinced.

My buddy Melissa Burdon, a conscientious Canadian, emailed me an interesting banner ad and appended some commentary. “Where’s the persuasion, Grok?” she griped.

It just so happens, no product or service was involved. The conversion goal this time? Sign up to support a humanitarian cause! Email the Prime Minister! End poverty NOW!

Goodie, I thought, an excellent non-retail example for me to dig into!

Read the rest of this article.
Read the entire newsletter: Volume 142

You’ve seen Cesar Millan, the infamous ‘dog psychology’ dude.  Cesar works miracles with unruly canines in 24 short minutes on the National Geographic Channel show "The Dog Whisperer". 

Now meet Bryan and Jeffrey Eisenberg, the Cat Whisperers.

The authors of "Waiting for Your Cat to Bark? Persuading Customers When They Ignore Marketing" have set forth an intriguing set of principles which they call Persuasion Architecture. The formula is not for the faint-hearted — it involves hard work to navigate a complicated matrix of psychological, technical and demographic approaches in order to develop a customer-centric marketing focus. In the process, it requires a business to be willing to relinquish control of information about its product or service; indeed, transparency is key to the entire process. But the authors guarantee results, whether your target clients are individuals or other businesses. Read the entire review over at Wharton School Knowledge @ W.P. Carey.

Have an unruly marketing situation? Will travel.

"Marketers are saying, ‘We must be more innovative — to zig when others zag,’ " says Richard Notarianni, executive creative director of media at ad firm Euro RSCG.

"The industry is desperate to find clever ways to reach people, whether or not it has any legitimate value. … When someone says, ‘Let’s put advertising in bathroom stalls,’ another says ‘That’s great. It’s a captive audience.’ "

More…

No space is too odd. US Airways (LCC) is in talks to sell ads on airsickness bags, spokeswoman Valerie Wunder says. It already makes about $10 million a year from ads on tray tables and napkins, she says.

"The game has become one of finding the next blank space that hasn’t been covered," says Yankelovich’s Smith.

And more…

"I’ve never seen things changing as much as they are now," says Rance Crain, editor-in-chief of trade magazine Advertising Age and a 40-plus-year observer of marketing. "Advertisers will not be satisfied until they put their mark on every blade of grass."

And finally…

The more consumers ignore ads, the more ads marketers spew back at them, says Max Kalehoff of marketing research firm Nielsen BuzzMetrics. "It’s like a drug addiction. Advertisers just keep buying more and more just to try to achieve prior levels of impact. In other words, they’re hooked."

This year, marketers will spend a record $175 billion on ads in major media, such as TV, radio, print, outdoor, movie theaters and the Internet, says ad-buying firm ZenithOptimedia. That’s up 5% over 2005. Add direct mail and other direct-response ads, and the total will hit $269 billion.

Advertisers are becoming that loud mouth annoying guy at the bar who’s flashing his expensive watch, bragging about his job, and buying every prospective girl a drink. Sorry bud, buying even more drinks, or putting your picture up in a lady’s stall isn’t gonna increase your chances, you are probably going home alone…again.

$269 billion can buy you alot of stuff, but it can no longer buy you a desirable magnetic personality that people want to buy.  It won’t buy you a barking cat.  If you think it will, then I have a 41,723 blades of grass in my front lawn that I will be happy to whore out to a desperate advertiser.

Buy one blade get one free, captive audience for canines and occasional jack rabbits, 25% more traffic in growing subdivision, this offer won’t last long, call now.

In a report titled, "Marketing Technology Adoption 2006," June 2006, Forrester interviewed 371 marketing technology decision makers and influencers, and more than 40 percent say their organizations "have plans to implement Web interaction optimization software by the end of 2007."

We are glad to see the market catching up with what we have been preaching since 1998 and are looking forward to releasing more features of our Persuasion Architecture MAP^TM suite of software and releasing little micro apps to make the software available to many more interested customers in 2007.

Companies like Yahoo (NASDAQ:YHOO), Pepsi (NYSE:PBG), and Best Buy (NYSE:BBY)  now realize the methods they used to mine  for information in the past were often unproductive and inefficient. The pressure-cooker atmosphere of a group of strangers in an unfamiliar setting, combined with questions skewed to obtain answers favorable toward a product, is often a dangerous (if not deadly) concoction. Over the years, countless products that should never have been introduced made it to market, and vice-versa.

Today, major advancements in science, technology, and human-behavior studies offer new tools for studying consumers that are more natural and provide greater insight into what a customer wants. What techniques should you consider?  Read the entire article.

With the time I spend wandering around airports and getting restless in airplanes, you can imagine my panic attack when I realized that my Podcasts, audiobooks, movies, tv shows and music would no longer be accompanying me on my travels.

I’m scheduled to leave on my next trip on October 18^th. That gives me three weeks minus a few days to purchase my video ipod, have it shipped to me and transfer all of my entertainment files onto my new best friend!

My quick solution was to hop onto Google, search for ‘video ipod’ and make my purchase. I am specifically interested in finding out one critical piece of information before making my purchase this time. My old video ipod was lacking substantially in battery life when watching any video. It would die after only 1 ½ hours of playing video and I wanted to find out if this feature had been improved and how much battery life I could expect with a new video ipod.

I clicked on the paid advertisement at the top which is the Canadian store. The keyword ‘video ipod’ is not found anywhere in the description or title but I assumed that I would find what I’m looking for simply because I was going right to the source.

There was a long description of the 80GB video ipod. I know that I previously purchased the 30GB and I truly didn’t need anymore storage. My only concern was whether the 30GB battery life had been improved.

The copy on this page clearly describes the features of the 80GB and we can see that this model is expected to have 6 ½ hours of battery life for video. I clicked on ‘Compare Specs’ to try and find out the answer to my question for the 30GB.

Once I scrolled down the page to see the comparison, I was offered a price comparison, the storage space available for songs and the expected battery life in hours when playing music. There is no spec comparison on battery life in hours for video play time. I still needed to find this out so I clicked on the ‘select’ button under the 30GB to see if I could find the answer to my question.

There are no features listed here at all! I didn’t care about engraving my ipod! I simply needed to find out if the new battery life of the 30GB video ipod would meet my needs.

I was in the late stages of my buying process and I simply needed one small piece of information to click the buy button! Why couldn’t they answer my question?!

I attempted one last thing and I clicked on add to cart just to see if the features would be listed once in my cart.

Nope, they failed to answer my question! They are just trying to sell me accessories on this page.

Although it was very difficult to find contact info, I finally found the phone number and was able to find out the answer to my question through speaking with a customer service rep. I made the purchase over the phone and was told that I should expect to see my ipod in 8 days. The confirmation email I was sent upon purchasing said that delivery could take up to 12 days. It’s unfortunate that the info that the rep told me was not consistent with the confirmation email information regarding delivery time but at least the purchase has been made and I will get my video ipod in time for my travels!

Wouldn’t it have been more efficient to just have me purchase online? Perhaps you have customers who weren’t ready to call in an order but who were ready to purchase online. I had my credit card in hand and wouldn’t have had to speak with a customer service rep. All I needed was a point of resolution link somewhere in my buying process that would bring me to the information that would answer my question!

You likely have visitors who are in the late stages of their buying process and they probably have some specific buying decision questions. You must provide these potential customers points of resolution to bring the visitor to the information they are searching for in order for them to complete the sale.

What questions are people asking your customer service reps? Are you tracking this information? Are you updating your content online with the points of resolution to the answers to these questions?

This ingredient cannot be bought.  It cannot be manufactured or manipulated. Either you have it, or you don’t.

The only thing worse than not having it at all is having it and hiding it from view of your customers.

Can you tell me what the secret  ingredient is? Here is a hint. One of these two sites has the secret ingredient, and one doesn’t.

Site one
Site two