Selling Customer Experience

Most online marketers focus on getting web site pages crawled, indexed and ranked high in search engines. If you do social media marketing, add word of mouth marketing, links, social media chatter and server-busting traffic to your marketing strategy. If you represent my colleague’s company, you have it easy. This company uses famous people in their TV and radio ads. You see the company in magazines. It’s already famous by brand name alone.

But are they known and respected for selling products people like? Have they sold the need for their products? Are they going to survive for years because customers can purchase their products online with ease? How much input do you have, as their search engine marketer, in matters of customer experience, usability and persuasive design? Is your company skilled enough to do this?

Requirements gathering

Generally, a company with expertise and the right people will begin a project with a Requirements Document. It includes business requirements for either a website for an online business or an application such as forms or shopping carts. It may include functional requirements, so that the back-end can be figured out in detail. When I do requirements documentation and traceability analysis, I add areas that are rarely considered. They include:

• Search engine requirements – for search marketing, social media, links, PPC
• User interface requirements – design, user experience, persuasive design, web standards
• Accessibility requirements – define and meet legal obligations
• Content requirements – for marketing content, product descriptions, legal

Long term success begins from the start of planning your web project.

As you can see, it takes a village to raise an online presence and keep visitors interested enough to keep coming back. In the past there has been an increase in understanding by some Internet marketers that usability and user experience should be part of their services. They may propose to their client the idea that for their marketing efforts to really “stick”, the web site must look nice and be easy to use. This is a good start, but it’s only step one. There are thousands of attractive web sites that don’t convert. They don’t make a good first impression. They’re forgettable. In many cases, they’re broken and their owners aren’t even aware of it.

Landing on Mars

As someone who started out in SEO before switching over to usability consulting, I giggled when I saw a discussion in a user experience discussion about landing pages. Somebody wanted to know what they are. Of course, as Internet marketers, you already know. Many of you are hired to painstakingly design them and write compelling content for both search engines and site visitors. I thought the discussion was a good sign that the two industries, user experience and usability, and search engine optimization and marketing, were landing on each others’ planet. They share common concerns.

Credibility is one of them. Without credibility, its unlikely visitors will want to stay on a website even if it appeared in the top 10 search results in a search engine. The requirements for credibility heuristics alone can run in the hundreds. Credibility encompasses trust, authenticity, believability, understandability and confidence. Therefore, say a Netshops store comes up high in search for jewelry boxes; the brand alone may pass the first test. But after someone clicks into a web page, what is expected to happen? What does your marketing client want? Are they happy for the clicks or do they want somebody to DO something on the site? If they can do something with ease, has the site convinced them to come again? Were they persuaded to refer it to a friend? Bookmark it? Blog about it? Twitter it? Sign up for a newsletter?

Motivation is another area that designers are still experimenting with. Human Factors studies are a constant resource for understanding consumer actions and human behavior. There are people like me who are fascinated by how computers have become extensions of our bodies. Mobile phone design can’t keep up with us because the more we use them to communicate, listen to music or access the Internet, the more we rely on them. The more we rely on them, the more we start demanding better ways of doing so. Those companies with online businesses who are not paying attention to evolving human needs will not survive in the long run unless they consider adding another new requirement: mobile devices.

Pro-Choice

If you’re truly interested in search behavior, user experience or persuasive design and want to enhance your understanding and skill sets to better serve your clients, there are fascinating studies to explore. One of my all time favorites is from years back when Jared Spool (http://www.uie.com/) ran some tests on photos for shoe web sites to see which images converted better. Only one picture was a clear winner, and it was a picture that showed the bottom of the shoe to show to the tread. Since that was something customers cared about and needed to see, the smart design choice was to offer various views of the shoe to include those selling points.

There’s more research into how to offer choices online to help customers make good decisions. The “contrast principle,” for example, is where two similar but different choices, with two different prices are presented. As expected, the lower price converts better when the products are similar. Adding a third choice changes the outcome and often for better financial gain. (For more information, try “Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions by Dan Airely.)

When creating landing pages, have you stopped to consider what helps visitors make the decisions you hope they will make? Who is coming to the page and what information are they weighing? Are they bargain hunting? Are they able to read the page? Do they have enough prior education to make good choices on your products?

An example from real life may help you visualize the contrast principle. During dinner at a restaurant, my husband and I were offered the opportunity to buy a glass of wine, order a bottle of wine or try a selection of wine for $10, where we could sample from 5 different choices. We chose to sample them. We were allowed to finish all five glasses of wine and offered a choice of purchasing a bottle if we wanted to. We chose a bottle based on how good it tasted, rather than price, because we were so blown away by a particular German wine. And, the next time we went to dinner at that same restaurant, we skipped the single glass or sampling routine and went ahead and ordered the bottle of wine, which was the more expensive choice. Of course, this is exactly the desired reaction by the restaurant. Wine tasting at wineries is no accident!

I wrote about the Extended Brain, computers and human behavior. Science is discovering what some call the “spiritual brain”, and some sciences are researching the differences between how each gender responds to computers. Of course, we already have niche areas such as marketing to women, which requires understanding female brains and behavior.

Our dependency on computers has led young people to develop a love of big band, jazz, classical rock and roll and 80’s songs thanks to Rock Band and Guitar Hero video games. We’re using Wii to exercise, sing and do yoga. Understanding and meeting user needs makes those games popular. Creating a dependency for something or inventing a need we didn’t even know we had, makes the study of human behavior and technology quite intriguing. My son plays Rock Band with his friends in town via an Internet connection and speaker cell phones. They don’t have to be in the same house to jam or talk to each other.

How we respond to computer information doesn’t begin and end with a good user interface. How visitors search and find web sites doesn’t end with the marketing process or how search engines present search results.

These are layers in a computer user’s experience process that we’re just beginning to understand.

———————————————————————————————

This article was originally written by Kim Berg and published by Search Engine Land, February 27, 2009

Economy blues? Poor conversion rates? Web site lost its spunk? Quotes are always free at Cre8pc. Get the answers you need NOW!

Balancing Search Marketing & User Experience: Why Bother? Sign up for Cre8pc.com's Web Site Usability Course at the Search Engine College

Homepage Only Usability Review – $125

Discover how your most important web page is performing by investing in this very affordable review. If your conversions are not what you expect, sometimes the problem starts with your homepage. If your homepage is performing fairly well, what else can you do to enhance your customers’ experience? Do you need a little assist in making sure that everything that could be included is there and in the right place or format?

If your budget is tight, the Homepage Review is for you. I promise to recommend whatever I can to help your homepage sizzle!

Blended Usability and SEO Site Review – $300

Most web site audits and reviews lean towards search engine marketing or user friendly web design. This special customized service offers an expert blending of organic SEO practices and a human factors/usability heuristics approach to your review. Both practices, though different, can perform quite well together. This review looks for ways to improve both usability and SEO and suggests ways to blend them together for a more persuasive, conversions oriented web site. Much of the focus is on navigation and information architecture, link structure and content. The Blended Usability and SEO Review is a perfect choice for small business sites, startups and home-based web sites that are curious about their web site design.

Custom Conversions Review – $500

This is a smaller, customized version of a typical full web site audit, only this is limited in scope to create an affordable, yet robust and useful review. There is strict emphasis on conversions from both a marketing perspective as well as persuasive design. All things are considered, from SEO to accessibility to usability. The purpose of this review is to flush out possible abandonment issue and points of confusion. The Custom Conversions report is recommended for any type of web site, although some restrictions may apply due to the size and scope of your site.

The holidays are here and so is the first quarter of the year 2012. It’s the right time to start fresh, or spoof up your web site. With the economy bruising budgets, these three discounted reviews won’t set you back and you can recoup your investment quickly by increasing conversions and looking smart in search engine results.

Payment methods: Check or PayPal

Online order forms with confirmation for invoicing, your instructions, setting up your delivery date and more.

Take Me to Discounted Reviews Now

Economy blues? Poor conversion rates? Web site lost its spunk? Quotes are always free at Cre8pc. Get the answers you need NOW!

Opportunity: Three Deep Discounted UX/SEO Services Sign up for Cre8pc.com's Web Site Usability Course at the Search Engine College

I’d been pondering lately how hard it can be to describe what online marketers and web site designers and developers do for a living. Ask 10 of us what we do and you’ll get 10 different answers. It gets even more complicated if you run into someone who is cross trained or specializes in combinations of skills from the marketing and user centered design camps. Way complicated.

What came tumbling out under pressure last week is Why Blending Usability & SEO Really Matters. At my last check, it had been Tweeted 716 times. I think that’s a record for anything I’ve written for SEL. Or anywhere.

The comments and social signals indicate the article has been making rounds. There is much more acceptance of holistic SEO and UX practices today than ever. It’s been my lead topic of writing for 15 years and basis for all of my work. While I continue to see and experience evidence of severe ignorance by companies about making the user experience vital, I’m encouraged that the movement to unite SEO and UX is not only out there, but kicking ass.

We all benefit from this.

Economy blues? Poor conversion rates? Web site lost its spunk? Quotes are always free at Cre8pc. Get the answers you need NOW!

Blended Usability and SEO Practices a Hit Sign up for Cre8pc.com's Web Site Usability Course at the Search Engine College

Google is looking at penalizing ad heavy sites that make it difficult for people to find good content on web pages, Matt Cutts, head of Google’s web spam team, said yesterday at PubCon during his keynote session.

The key point Google appears to want to make is that anything that prevents people from reading content concerns them. The article goes on to say,

Google has been updating its algorithms over the past couple months in their different Panda updates. After looking at the various sites Panda penalized during the initial rollout, one of the working theories became that Google was dropping the rankings of sites with too many ads “above the fold.”

This is an odd stance, considering Google AdSense Help essentially tells website publishers to place ads above the fold by noting, “All other things being equal, ads located above the fold tend to perform better than those below the fold.”

There’s nothing wrong with following Google’s suggestion above. All you need to do is put the ads in a left or right sidebar and start their appearance above the page fold. The most likely human response is to focus on the important content and tasks that are also placed above the page fold and ignore the ads anyway.

My guess is that Matt Cutts was warning about the types of pages where banner ads, text ads, adsense ads and animated ads are presented in what a “in your face” type of method. We see these kinds of web pages often. There is a brief article or blog post of about 3 full paragraphs with ads of all kinds and sizes placed above, below, and on each side.

When I see someone trying to promote a page such as this, I wish I had a paint gun and could splatter gobs of colored paint all over their revenue greedy, unreadable, mind blowing self centered page. I won’t “like” it, Tweet it, recommend it or if submitted to a forum or group, will not approve it. I’m really strict about this. I’m all about the people and presenting credible, pleasant material.

I would like to see Google jump on pages that display a survey on arrival for the first time to a page or site. Typically these surveys cover up the content and to be able to read I’m forced to click it away. The same thing for ads that slide over the content or drop down from the top and hang there until you make the effort to get rid of it so you can read the content it’s covering.

Economy blues? Poor conversion rates? Web site lost its spunk? Quotes are always free at Cre8pc. Get the answers you need NOW!

Ads Rile Google? Bah. What about we Humans? Sign up for Cre8pc.com's Web Site Usability Course at the Search Engine College

Easy to Use Navigation Starts with Content

These questions revolve around Who, Where, What, When, Why and How. Answering them is fun, and not as obvious as you might believe. Using them as guides for credibility, trust, persuasiveness and desirability is an added bonus for your overall conversion rates. Don’t settle for a brief welcome statement that offers no guidance or spark of interest. These six words can help you add some zing!

Who

Firstly, who are you? This is a basic question. It’s often answerable by a logo. A logo is not that exciting, nor is it likely completely descriptive. Just ask Google. Add a descriptive tagline, which contains keywords and explains the purpose of the site or points out a valuable detail.

“Who” is found in your business address. Evaluate whether it is important to your business to provide an entire business, office or headquarters address, or simply a whittled down version. Many websites offer no clues about their country of origin, language and whether or not it targets a global or local target market. Search engines benefit from finding a zip code and town, in text, on your homepage. This increases your page’s chance of coming up in local searches, or whenever a search engine determines a local result fits someone’s search criteria.

Who you are is not enough, however. Who are you selling to? Men, women, old, young, here, there, and yes, if you offer senior citizen discounts, don’t hide this fact. Who would benefit from your products and services? Who is on your staff? Who is your sales representative? Your visitors want to know who you are. You are much more than your website or company name.

Where

Your location is important. If you place “Call our toll-free phone number” on your homepage, it’s helpful to know what country, at least, your company is located in so that somebody from half-way around the world understands when to call. If you run a local business, targeting local sales, is this obvious from your homepage? Is your site a headquarters with offices worldwide? What is the native speaking language? This may be important for those who are uncomfortable doing business outside their own country.

Some site owners know people will not buy certain products, such as medical supplies or drugs, from outside the USA, for example. Therefore, they pay for fake addresses, or display addresses that are nowhere near the company’s true home base. Determine if you need to offer a map to validate an address, or register with places such as the Better Business Bureau, to improve credibility.

Small businesses, if you work from home, rent a postal box, or explain that your home-based business is located in a certain country or province and leave it at that. There are other ways to prove your credibility and authenticity, without losing your right to privacy.

Included for “Where” is addressing where your target market is coming from. There may be instances where your content can address people from certain towns, cities, countries or schools. This information offers instant validation to your homepage visitor that they have arrived at a place that is intended for them.

What

This may be the most obvious point to address on your homepage, and the most challenging when you truly understand the real question. ‘What” is more than just what your product or service is. That’s the easy part.

What also pertains to what action do you want them to take once you tell them what you do? I’ve been to sites that spend so much time explaining what they’re about, but forgot to say if you could order it online. Remember, this is the homepage we’re focusing on. It’s not helpful to make anyone click around to figure out what services are offered, or what ways they can buy the cool products displayed on the homepage.

What credit cards do you accept? What award did you just receive? What do customers think about your services?

“What” is also where you can offer the value proposition, features and benefits. Do this by understanding and then addressing the one big question your visitors have – “What’s in it for me?”

The more you describe what you do or sell, the more information someone has to base decisions with. You aren’t wasting their time with this one. The value and benefit of your “What” may be greater or more substantial than the competitor’s site, who forgot to include this part or can’t offer a better deal.

When

This is easily an overlooked element on homepages. Everyone has a “When” question. It may be “When I call you?” List office hours or store hours, or when your “live help” person is on duty. When can orders be taken? When do you ship? When is the sale over? When is the clearance sale going to start? When will the next shipment of your hot items arrive? When can they order? That one is easy, and one reason you should use an “Order or Buy Now” button in some cases. (There are reasons for its sister button, “Add to Cart”, too. You may discover you need both.)

I recommend that you walk around your whole site and ask each page the “When” question. When can they print a page? When does the confirmation email arrive? When does the next news update occur? You can go nuts with this one, but the more you answer this question, the more confident your visitors will feel about you or the company.

Why

Related to “What”, is “Why”. This is where you lay out the value proposition and marketing content, in more detail , but be thoughtful and precise. Do you want a homepage that scrolls forever about why your product or service is the best there is? Or, can you nail the top-level benefits and link to more of them inside the site, where additional information and call to action prompts are?

Why will this product make someone smarter, thinner, richer? Why do 3 billion people around the world use it? Why are you so smart, thin and rich? Why is your book on the New York Times best sellers list? Why are the gems in your necklaces so special and will rose quartz really heal? Will being rich make life better, really? Why are the parts on this product better than the parts on a similar product sold by the other company? Why are your qualifications important?

Why did you name your website what you did? I have a friend whose online business has a good reason to answer this question. The site (and company) name cover two unrelated topics, but the company has combined them into something unique. Customers want to know what inspired this.

This is not an excuse to go on an ego trip. It’s an opportunity to show your passion. It’s how you define your offer. Do the homework for the many people who are still comparison-shopping, and convince them you have what they want and need.

How

Finally, how do offer your product or service? If there’s a shopping cart, strong identifiers are a login and cart icon at the top of an eCommerce website. Other clues are links to “Track your order”, “Your account” , buy buttons and order instructions.

In addition, your visitors have Time concerns. Timing is vital for sales. In addition, it communicates your readiness and ability to stay current and up to date.

Are they limited time specials? How often does your blog update? How often do you send your newsletter? How many clicks does it take to get to pricing? You may not address this one via content, but your navigation or embedded links to “Price Comparison Chart” or “View our prices” conveys how long it takes to get to vital information for comparison shoppers. How many products are in inventory? This may express expertise, for example. How many people subscribe to your newsletter? This may indicate popularity and length of time in an industry.

The purpose of interviewing your homepage may seem more practical to you now. Answer the six questions by providing focused content, navigation links and descriptive labels, bullet points, and small size instructive text.

They all contribute to your web site’s overall credibility.

Economy blues? Poor conversion rates? Web site lost its spunk? Quotes are always free at Cre8pc. Get the answers you need NOW!

Five Easy Ways to Improve Your Homepage Sign up for Cre8pc.com's Web Site Usability Course at the Search Engine College