The Conversion Scientist™

ConversionCast: eCommerce Site Gradware.com

In this ConversionCast™, we take a look at academic software and hardward eCommerce site Gradware.com, an academic software and hardware eCommerce site.

What are the key strategies you want to get right if you’re running an eCommerce site? I offer my opinion in the workshop “Identifying Your Key Conversion Strategies,” which you can listen to free. You can also subscribe to The Conversion Scientist Podcast for more on conversion and Web strategy.

The eCommerce Web Site Pattern

When we’re looking at an eCommerce Web site pattern, we want to focus on the following key strategies:

• Product Pages
• Category Navigation
• Transaction or Shopping Cart

For this ConversionCast, we don’t have the time to dive into the purchase process, so we’ve focused on the Home Page, Product Pages and Category Navigation.

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Tell us what your eCommerce site offers in the comments below.

ConversionCast: Spinscape.com Site as a Service

If you are building a Web site as a service, you have some important advantages when converting visitors to subscribers.

In this ConversionCast™ we review the conversion strategy for online application Spinscape.com. I am a big fan of Spinscape, and got almost immediate value from using it to outline a book I’m currently writing.

The Site as a Service Pattern

This site follows the Site as a Service Web pattern. You can identify your Web pattern by listening to my presentation at Innotech.

The key strategies for a SaaS pattern are:

• Trial or Demo and a Home Page that encourages the trial
• Effective signup Process
• E-mail notifications that encourage use and subscription

Yes, there are more things you could do to increase conversion, but if you don’t get these right, the rest is not going to help much.

If you can delivery what you offer online, you have some marked advantages over other patterns.

• You can move a visitor quickly through the conversion funnel, from awareness to action.
• You can use a trial or demo to begin a relationship with your visitors
• You can find new reasons to email your subscribers using notifications and updates

Enjoy this 15 minute review.

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Tell us what your Site as a Service offers in the comments below.

Drilling in on Social Conversion Strategies

Dave Evans is one of the smartest guys in Social Media today and has the ability to ask questions that make you stop and think. Really think. So, when he asked my opinion on where social media meets conversion strategy, I really had to think.

The result of our collaboration is his latest ClickZ article Social Conversions: Taking Step Two. For me, the process crystallized the reasons that so many of us have trouble seeing the ROI in social marketing. We’re looking at it wrong.

I will expand here on how we use inappropriate strategies for our social marketing campaigns. In subsequent posts, I’ll drill down on some of the strategies mentioned in the column and show you how they work.

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The Flaw in our Social Marketing Model

Dave’s article hints at the way we use old measures of success in new paradigms. We see social media as simply another way to drive traffic to our traditional conversion funnels.

With this model, we try to cram our social strategies into the Awareness portion of the marketing funnel. While this is a valid use of social marketing, it is it’s most limited.

We try to stuff our social media strategies into the top of the marketing funnel.

When we realize that there is a whole world of conversion after the purchase we begin to use our social marketing more strategically.

Strategic Social Marketing

We can use social media strategically when we apply it to the post-purchase portion of the funnel

This expanded model for social media let’s us use social channels more strategically.

Instead of asking, “How can we use video to drive more traffic to us?” we can instead ask, “How can we use video to increase use of our offering?”

Instead of asking, “How can we use Facebook to build a list of prospects?” we can ask, “How can we use Facebook to get people talking about our product?”

Can you see how we would apply social marketing in a more purposeful way when we change our point of view? Doesn’t it become clearer how we would measure the success of our social campaigns beyond just traffic and page views? If you answered “Well, kinda,” don’t worry.

I’ll be exploring best practices for some of the strategies mentioned in the Social Conversion article, including:

• Use of notification emails which “are among the most overlooked opportunities for engaging new product users.”
• Designing a blog that converts buyers to users, users to opinion, and opinion to talk.
• B2B implementation circles

Keep up with the conversation. Subscribe to The Conversion Scientist and the Conversion Scientist Podcast. Don’t miss a post.

For a complete understanding of the marketing funnel, read Dave’s book Social Media Marketing: An Hour a Day.

Relate to Four, Connect with Thousands

You can connect with thousands of visitors to your site by understanding only four of them.

Communicating is connecting. If you’re communicating successfully, each of your readers will feel that you are writing directly to them.

I’m going to introduce you to a method of writing that will forge strong connections with your readers.

You will understand your readers when you understand the four “Modes of Persuasion.” Every visitor fits into one of four modes, and, as will see, each mode describes a different way of connecting. If you can master each of these modes, you can effectively draw anyone closer with your words.

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The Four Modes of Persuasion

Each of your visitors will come in one of four modes: Competitive, Methodical, Humanist, or Spontaneous.

COMPETITIVE visitors are looking for information that will make them better, smarter or more cutting-edge. Use benefit statements and payoffs in your headings to draw then into your content.

METHODICALS like data and details. Include specifics and proof in your writing to connect with them.

HUMANISTS want information that supports their relationships. They will relate to your writing if you share the human element in your topic.

SPONTANEOUS visitors are the least patient. They need to know what’s in it for them and may not read your entire story. Provide short headings for them to scan so that they can get to the points that ore important to them.

When you understand that every visitor consumes information differently, you can build empathy with more of your readers. In time, your content will appeal to a wider audience making your Web site more enjoyable and accessible.

We’ll be talking more about the four Modes of Persuasion and how this knowledge can be applied to your Web site at The Conversion Scientist. Don’t miss a post.

You can learn more about these four Modes of Persuasion in the book Waiting for Your Cat to Bark? by Brian and Jeffrey Eisenberg.

Photo courtesy konr4d via stock.xchng.

Zero Steps to Copy That Will Make Visitors Stick

A good writer can create images better than a graphic designer.

Whenever we design a Web site, we inevitably ask our graphic designers to give us three comps. Then we, the completely unqualified non-graphic-designers decide which one we “like” best. We might even ask a number of our equally unqualified colleagues to tell us what they think.

Then we pay a copywriter a fraction of what the designers get, and ask them to write the copy for the site, knowing full-well that when we get it, we’ll revise it until every ounce of color, every animating metaphor, and every shred of a story is squeezed out onto the ground in a pool of red ink.

A good writer can create images and convey meaning better than a graphic artist because the writer has the richer toolset. Put down your red pen. Trust your copywriter.

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Be Bold and Your Visitors Will See You That Way

If you’re designing a new site or refreshing an old one, it’s time to be a little daring.

Tell the designers to hold on until you’ve completed the copy. They’ll look at you like you have an arm growing out of your head.

THEN, start interviewing copywriters. Tell them that you’ll pay them to develop three different versions of your Copy Body, the document that contains the text from which you will take your copy when writing headings, text, offers, emails and any other Web-based communications.

The interviews will be short. You’re looking for a certain reaction.

When you present this proposal to the right writer, their eyes will flash. A smile may creep across their face of its own will. Be careful, though. If they say “You’ll pay me?” you’ve gotten a false positive. You want to choose the writer who feels that you’ve just opened the door their a cage of mediocrity.

If you let them out, they’ll take you with them.

Be very clear about what you’re trying to accomplish as a business and what your visitors are trying to accomplish. Give them a set of personas if you can.

Take No Steps

Once you have your three copy “comps,” do not allocate time to have the writing revised by a committee. Do not attempt to combine the best from each. Do not seek to insert superlatives that declare you the “leader,” to be “unique” or “innovative.” If you have to say it, it ain’t true.

If you have the right writer, one of your choices will be far out, one will be written in business speak, and one will be somewhere in between. Throw away the one written in business speak and consider the remaining two very carefully.

Select the copy body that best illustrates your value proposition, the one that captures the essence of your company without stating it. Look for metaphors that can be applied to a variety of your benefits. Seek a story that can stitch every page together into a coherent theme.

Then fix the inaccuracies, and leave everything else alone.

Does this sound scary? Wait till you see what’s next.

You Can Let the Designers Into the Room Now

If you’ve selected an engaging copy body, it’ll be really clear to the designers what their designs should express. They can create real images from the ones your writer paints with words. They can guide your visitor through the story with navigation. They can throw away stock photos of pretty people and choose images informed by metaphor and analogy.

Give them the copy body, the corporate style guide and tell them to create a design. One design. Sure, you’ll make decisions along the way and maybe even significantly change the first comp, but try to let them do what they do well.

Steps You Could Add

If you realize the immense advantage that powerfully written copy gives you, consider investing in some testing. Implement two of the three copy bodies on your home page and on key landing pages. Use analytics to see which makes visitors stick and which generates more leads or sales.

• Which has the lower bounce rate?
• Which home page generates more page views and more time on site?
• Which has the higher conversion rate?

There is no better way to know if you’ve made the right decision than to test. And you may need some proof when your colleagues tell you that your copy isn’t “corporate” — and they mean that as a criticism, not a badge of honor.

Do you know a great copy writer? Do you have a success story or test results that demonstrate the power of effective writing? Let us know in your comments and I’ll feature you in an future post.

UPDATE

I’ve challenged copywriters to put together the very process that I’ve described here over on my Customer Chaos Blog. Would you like to work with one of these guys?

Photo courtesy andrewcs via stock.xchng.

Six E-mail Mistakes that Bassett Furniture Used to Piss Me Off

Are Bassett’s products as bad as their e-mail?

I’ve gotten three e-mails from Bassett Furniture this week. I did not opt-in for this communication. And, to top it off, the e-mail address they sent to is used in one place: my kids’ elementary school. It’s the address I expect to get information from my kids’ school. This sort of thing disgusts me enough to blog about it.

Will you vote for this on Digg and Sphinn? They need to get the message. You can do so at the bottom of this post by clicking on “Share.”

We Know How this Happened

This is probably more common in the tough market that retailers are currently facing. Some executive says, “We’ve got to get more sales. Use e-mail.” The underlings say, “But, we don’t have a database of e-mails because you didn’t approve that program last year.”

The execs don’t want to hear it. They’ve got a bonus to worry about. So, the underlings go out and buy a list from a list broker. This list was probably presented to them as a list of opt-in email addresses. List providers lie knowing that they can always hide behind the “we were told it was opt-in” excuse.

Bassett, this is not an opt-in list. It was scrapped from an elementary school Web site in Round Rock, Texas. You may get away with infringing on my privacy, but stay away from my kids.

Dear Bassett, in a down market, take market share away from your competitors, don’t give it away.

Poorly Executed to Boot

Once they’d found the list, the Bassett underlings asked, “what do we send?” Well, they didn’t spend much time on that question. They essentially scanned a print flyer and sent it on as one big image.

No introductory text

On my smart phone and in my email client, all you see is an email from Bassett Furniture and a URL.

This is what the email looks like in my e-mail preview pane.

With images turned off in my client, I got a big blank page. That’s their value proposition. “Big blank desperate spammer.”

There is no setup text to tell me why I would open it. Of course, I opened it because the address was scraped from the Web site of the school my elementary age kids attend.

No Value Proposition

Actually, “We’re Desperate” wouldn’t have been a bad value proposition. I would have responded to:

“We’re overstocked on the kind of furniture you’ve been wanting for your home, and we’re discounting to move it.”

No compelling call to action

If you allow your e-mail client to download the big stupid image, it says “Buy Online” at the top and bottom, and tells you when their sale ends. Most of the center is taken up with nine images of beds, tables and sofas with discounted prices. The never ask me to “Learn more” or “See more pictures.”

Not written in English

At the bottom of the page, below the big blank space you’ll find this lame — so lame — call to action: “Contact You Local Store for Details and other Special Offers. [sic]”

It makes you wonder what language this was translated from. “All your base are belong to us.”

The store finder is a nice feature and other retailers should steal this one shining feature of the site. Of course, Bassett fumbled the most important aspect of this effort: getting people to buy what they advertise.

Bad landing page

Given my horrid impression of Bassett from their e-mail, could they save themselves with an online experience that rocks? Nope.

The big graphic is a big link. No surprise. The page it takes me to has non of the products advertised in the email. In fact, it picks something at random  from their “CLEARANCE” tab. The featured item changes with each click.

So, the trail to a discounted item is lost within the first click, and I’m outta there.

The lawyers were consulted

To their credit, they did consult the lawyers. Their spam-mail is CAN SPAM compliant, with opt-out and mailing address.

What you should learn from this

1. Don’t buy lists. It’s too easy to generate your own, pure, powerful opt-in house list from your own Web site. You just have to be willing to put in the time.

2. Before you send an e-mail with a big image, consider plain text. It works better on phones and in e-mail clients where images are turned off (>50% by most accounts).

3. Give me a reason to open and read. Each email has a value proposition that is part of your business’s value proposition. State it. Clearly.

4. Take me to a page that has what you offer in your email. Whether it’s information or products, I have to see the same picture or the same text on the landing page. Never take me to your home page. Please.

5. Have someone review your copy, someone who knows English.

6. Follow the CAN SPAM rules. It’s the only reason I can’t report these idiots.

I’m not going to go into their subject line and From: address. It’s amazing that they even thought to include these.

I suspect Bassett’s marketing underlings will be fired for poor performance this Holiday Season. Maybe this post will save them.

For more rants and helpful tips on e-mail marketing, subscribe to The Conversion Scientist blog.