|
This Newsletter is 392 words and will take approximately 2 minutes to read.
How to make your web site a selling machine
(Why most web sites don't help the sales process)
Most web sites - at best - only focus on the average visitor.
All of the content is created for what this ‘average’ visitor wants,
and written in the way that the ‘average’ visitor wants to hear about
it.
At worst, the web site only focuses on the company.
The web site talks about the company, tells the visitor what they think
they should know. All this is done with little regard for how even the
‘average’ visitor wants to hear it, see it, and experience it.
The user centered approach is clearly better, but there is still a problem.
None of your visitors are ‘average’. Think about your real-world sales
process. Sales people naturally customize their message for each type
of buyer.
When
a web site does not address each individuals needs, sales suffer. When
a visitor is not able to find the specific information about your
product or service that interests them, they tend to leave and search
out another web site that does.
For
example, a 2001 paper by user Interface Engineering shows “you can
increase sales on your site up to 225% by providing the sufficient
product information to your customers at the right time”1
What’s the solution? It’s called developing personas, and it’s brilliant.
(I didn’t make it up.) It involves a completely new way of thinking
about your web site and your customers. The idea of persona development
was first introduced in 1999 by software developer and consultant Alan
Cooper as a method of making software design more useful.
Read the rest of this article:
How to make your web site a selling machine
1 “Are the product lists on your site reducing sales?”, An
E-commerce white paper by User Interface Engineering, 2001. Retrieved
on October 4, 2005 from http://www.uie.com/publications/whitepapers/PogoSticking-09-20-2005.pdf
|
