Influence
and Persuasiveness
Few Web
sites are persuasive and few site owners consider persuasion a fundamental
element in site design and development. Persuasiveness is not often
seen in Web projects as a key element that needs to be completed
before the site moves onto the implementation phase. If its design
and navigation doesn't convert customers better than the competition,
then a lot of .com projects are not going to be successful!
Serve
Customers What They Need yet Make them think it's What they Desire
To make
a sale you have to influence a visitor to view matters your way
and encourage them to do business with your company. There is no
face to face contact. Instead your Web site is your face
and voice.
Your pages
have to meet and greet the visitor, entertain, inform and move them
to some action. For example, if your site sells weight loss products,
and those words don't appear on your home page, the persuasiveness
of your site is diminished. The visitor comes into your front door
using their familiar language. If you don't move to speak that language
and instead interrupt the conversation they have started,
you are taking them out of their comfort zone. They arrived with
an expectation and you ignored or interrupted it! Some people might
call that rude.
We don't
want to disorient visitors after they've come to our site in a buying
inquiring frame of mind.
Your customer
prospect and their needs should be the center of your persuasive
strategy. The voice you use, including your choice of keywords,
modifiers and verbs depends on the target. A different approach
is needed for teens buying CDs vs a corporate executive looking
for a consultant. A teen visitor may only need a few cool pictures,
samples and cool dialogue in order for you to complete the sale.
In this case, you just kind of need to get out of the way and allow
them to purchase. That's why minimalist copy is popular on sites.
The strategy is to tease the visitor with short statements and not
say anything that might upset them. The problem with that approach
is that it assumes the visitor is already persuaded and motivated
and the Web site just needs to complete the sale.
For a technology
consultant on the other hand, a solid knowledge of the technology
and its business application may have to be demonstrated in some
fashion. Experience, resumes and examples may be sufficient to generate
a phone call. With sales conversions hovering around 1%, this approach
doesn't seem to be working well.
For both
types of customers, keywords need to be present. The executive may
click away just as fast as the teenager if they have trouble finding
what they want.
Weaving
Magic with Keywords
Writing
persuasive, elegant, flashy and informative keyword rich copy isn't
easy. Gord Collins search engine
book called The Professional Guide to Search Engine Writing
explains a strategy of using keywords effectively throughout a site
to support the various needs of search engines. It isn't enough
to throw keywords in creatively and expect good visibility and high
rankings.
The task
can be done successfully however if the time is taken to plan and
understand the persuasive goals of the site along with which kind
of customer is likely to arrive from the targeted keyword phrases.
As the
number of services your company offers increase, so too will the
variety of visitors coming to your site. Satisfying all while not
turning any one of them off is a difficult task. Many experts suggest
not to attempt to satisfy everyone, and instead, focus on your key
customers. For growing companies whose market may be changing, you
may have to serve "old" customers while appealing to new
ones. In this case, your site will have to keep both happy.
Use keywords
in your pages and customers will feel more comfortable and you'll
be more influential in your faceless conversation with
them.
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Web sites Part 1 |
