A Day in the Life of a Persuasion Architect

Words: One of Your Better Investments

Feedback, yes we get feedback. Some articles get more than others. This last GrokDotCom article about the value of words generated LOTS of feedback.   It's interesting to see what kind of content will get people to respond.

Have you read the article yet?

How To Measure Conversion Rates

Conversion rate measures the number of visitors who took the action you wanted on your site divided by the total number of visitors. Every end-goal conversion (Macro-conversion), like a purchase, is composed of Micro-conversion points, like the click-through path in a shopping cart. In order to achieve the Macro-conversion a series of decisions has to be taken by the visitor, these clicks are measurable evidence of those decisions.

Only when you define and plan for Macro-conversions vs. Micro-conversions then you can understand why conversion rate is truly a measure of your ability to persuade visitors to take the action(s) you want them to take. It's a reflection of your effectiveness in planning for every decision and the customer’s satisfaction with your plan’s implementation. Since every click represents a person making a decision then for you to achieve your goals, visitors must first achieve theirs first. 

• Overall conversion rate: Total number of actions considered conversion divided by total number of visits. This is a site's overall effectiveness rating for getting visitors to fulfill your goals within a single visit.

• Scenario conversion rate: Total number of visitors starting a specific scenario divided by total number who complete it. Scenario conversion rates enable you to quickly identify specific conversion processes that require improvement or ones whose successes should be modeled.
  • Linear – when visitors need to complete a registration process or checkout process.
  • Non-linear – these are the explicitly planned or implicit scenarios that are created by visitor segments as they navigate your website. In this type of scenario we measure from where people enter the scenario to where they complete the intended scenario and whether or not they hit our key value pages. Explicitly planning these non-linear scenarios is what we call “Persuasion Architecture."

• Conversion over time: There are several measures that reveal a site's effectiveness in generating conversions over time. Use this for situations where conversion is likely to occur over time or multiple visits.

What question are you asking?

Think of your customers going down different paths to the close, not simply one optimized path. If you ask a different question, you may get a different answer.

If your question is, "How do I build a single pipeline that gets me the highest conversion rate?" that's likely to be what you build.

What if you asked "How do I build multiple pipelines that give me the highest conversion rate overall?" What might you build?

Invisible Navigation

From GUUUI we read the following

Most web development projects put a lot of effort into the design of navigation tools. But fact is that people tend to ignore these tools. They are fixated on getting what they came for and simply click on links or hit the back button to get there. Read the entire article.

Why weren't we surprised? Could be that in 2001 our very own lovable persuasion guru Bryan Eisenberg wrote the following...

Clearly, the center area of the screen is prime real estate, the "active window" where you will either succeed or fail in persuading your visitor. This is the first place your visitor makes a conscious effort to engage with you. When her gaze returns across the screen from its preliminary scan, you want to make sure you present content that will capture her interest and motivate her through the conversion process. If anything on the page distracts her or requires her to disconnect from the center area, she is that much less likely to stay, rapt by your powers of persuasion. And if you've learned the Stanford-Poynter lesson, you'll understand that your copy is much more important than your images. (from the article Where Oh Where Did My Eyeballs Go?)

If you are truly focused on persuading folks on your site put the time and effort you are tempted to put into navigation and focus it on the 'active window'. Navigation is important, just not as important as everyone seems to think. The shortest distance between your customers and conversion is not the navigation, it's the embedded links in the active window. From May 2001 Bryan also wrote...

But from our work with clients, we've discovered that the navigation scheme important to actually closing more sales is the embedded-links scheme. And it's very easy to implement. Within the body of your (great) copy, you simply place links to the places you want prospects to go next. Of course, what works best on your site can be determined only by testing. And, naturally, embedded links are only one component of a complete navigation structure. If embedded links are done well (a topic for another article), they will engage your users effectively as they browse within the "active window" of your site. The active window is the main area of your page, underneath or to the side of your main navigation. It is where you place your body text, display your products, and present your offer. It is also where you want to keep your visitors' eyes focused. If you properly engage them in this area by providing the right choices to click on, you persuade them to follow the path you want them to take. This is also why it is very important to keep a consistent look and feel around the active window. Read the entire article.

Ok, what are todays magic words? I'll give you a hint. It starts with an 'active, and ends with a 'window.'