Fall Teleseminar Series 2006 – Call 8 of 9 – with Jeffrey Eisenberg

Episode 8 of FreshBooks “Build Your Business” Fall teleseminar series

Persuade More People to do Business on your Website (1 hour)

Listen using the MP3 player below or download the podcast here.

Jeffrey Eisenberg, co-founder and CEO of Future Now Inc., shows us how easy it can be to implement persuasion architecture, what crucial changes we need to make about how we think about visitors to our web sites, and answers your questions.

Here are some notes and timelines from the call:

(1:35 – 5:10) Discussion about the word “user”; increasing usability used to be an easy way to increase conversions.

(6:53) What are the biggest ideas you’re offering to people who have goods or services that they’re trying to sell?

(7:08) The word “user” is a bad word – people are people, buyers. How you sell is irrelevant to them.

(8:22) People have become in charge in a way they never have before; they are evaluating, communicating, looking at your products/services which have to become more and more transparent.

(9:00) It used to be: the more you advertised, the more you sold. Now, people want more information before they buy. For example, car buyers want to know why certain decisions were made in the design of a car before they purchase.

(9:45) 87% of car searchers start online, less than 1% buy online. People are not going to manufacturers’ sites, they’re going to other sites, looking for the information the business itself isn’t giving them.

(10:00) This is critical: if you sell goods, there is someone out there talking about your goods. If you sell services, you may be hesitant to put prices on your site. If the price is going to be an obstacle, it’s going to be an obstacle no matter what. If you haven’t built up the value of your services already, you’re not going to do it with someone over the phone.

(11:00) Clicks are decisions – people make conscious decisions to click.

(11:51) There is a concept that people think in terms of web “pages”. People don’t read pages, they read from hyperlink to hyperlink. When you design a site, think in scenarios, and how people will engage from hyperlink to hyperlink along the path that they want to go down.

(12:47) If you’re still designing pages you’ve missed it by a million miles. It’s the context of that page that matters – the anchor text versus where it’s pointed to, and if where it’s pointed to answers the question that the hyperlink implicitly asked.

(16:14) Rethink the buying process. The simple idea is this: we’re focused on the way we want to sell, but customers are focused on the way they want to buy. Every click they make is a conscious decision to find out what’s on the other side.

(17:08) If we’re dealing with people who are making a conscious decision, we at Future Now Inc. ask 3 questions to frame a scenario that works for them:
1. Who is the person that we’re trying to persuade?
2. What is it we want them to do?
3. What would motivate them, give them enough confidence, to do that?

(20:20) This is the essence of persuasion architecture, and it really is that simple. You can apply this to a PPC ad or landing page – does the headline, content deliver?

(20:41) Tailor the way you design your site, the way a sales associate would tailor their presentation to different people.

(22:52) Understand the context of your offering within the marketplace (including competition and the customer feedback that’s out there).

(24:19) Psychographics: description of the 4 different archetypes of how people make decisions (competitive, methodical, spontaneous, humanistic).

(26:30) There aren’t that many ways of making decisions, therefore they’re predictable. Instead of talking to everyone (aiming at the middle), Future Now Inc. designs for the extremes, the outside corners, so people in the middle will find something and be able to segment themselves.

(28:13) Creating personas.

(32:35) Adding demographics to the 4 archetypes.

(34:08) Small companies can be more nimble; larger companies will have a harder time writing the necessary content and being transparent.

(35:25) Blogs give you the opportunity to say something – odd angles of approach – that you may not be able to put on your web site. This allows you to frame information in a different way.

(40:13) Poor assumptions about the leaky bucket theory described.

(43:13) Definition of reputation: the way search engines look at you. If you’re doing SEM to bring in traffic, and not doing anything to make it worth a search engine’s visit to be there, you’re working really hard for nothing.

(46:17) How do I get more people to fill in my contact form?

(47:17) Ask yourself: why aren’t people confident enough to fill in the contact form? You are probably not giving them enough information on your site. Get specific: what you do, how you do it, who you do it for, price, what you don’t do.

(51:58) What are some cost effective ways to capture feedback from customers about what is not working for them?

(53:11) Ask the people who buy from you what difficulties they had and bought anyway. There are no tools that substitute talking to real people. Don’t lead them, let them ramble on, even if it hurts. They’ll tell you what you need to deal with other people.

(54:51) Can I have Mr. Eisenberg’s email address to find out about his new services for small businesses coming out in January 2007?

(55:26) Future Now Inc. is going to be providing some services around Google’s web analytics multivariate testing ability. Because there is no defined release date from Google, it will be best to visit the site to find out more about this; here are Future Now Inc.’s contact details.

Thanks Jeffrey!

Links from Teleseminar:

• Jeffrey’s company: Future Now Inc.
• Future Now’s publications (Waiting for Your Cat to Bark?, Call to Action)
• Persuasive Online Copywriting is out of print. Try Amazon or your local library.

Next podcast:
Craig Fitzpatrick, CEO of Devshop, will outline project management techniques specific to software development projects that will help reduce risk, meet deadlines and improve client satisfaction. Sign up here.

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