Mani Padisetti » Conversion

Love at first site?

manipadisetti — Wed, 02 Dec 2009 23:58:48 +0000

There are many experts suggesting how long a visitor will “give” a website before pressing the Back button.

Some say 1 min and some say 8 seconds – and there are others between these two time lines. If the site loads fast enough, the visitor sees the banner (or above the fold) and decides whether to stay and read the rest. So, do you think your banner says enough to make the visitor understand what you are offering and enough attraction on the banner to read the rest?

Malcolm Gladwell (of Tipping Point fame) says in his book Blink that we make most of our decisions in a blink. That is it. I see a person for a blink and my old brain decided if I like them or not!

Maybe we can use the same Blink test for our website and see if you like your site or not.

Do you believe your marketing forecast?

manipadisetti — Sun, 29 Nov 2009 05:47:11 +0000

The National Advertisers Association in the US released a study saying that

9 out of 10 CFOs don’t use ROI (return on investment) numbers or forecasts from their marketing department.
7 out of 10 CFOs don’t use marketing department’s input for financial guidance.
6 out of 10 CFOs believe that marketers don’t understand the financial implications.

If we can’t convince the person with the money in the organization, how are we to get any funding? While we may blame the Sales department for the inaccuracies , there are certain things we, as marketers, can do.

Here are some:

Get input from customers creatively, including past customers for developing the forecast.
Understand the changing market place. Demonstrate the changing customer preferences in product and media consumption in your forecast.
- I remember the saying:
  “There are three types of people. Those make things happen, those watch things happen and those wonder what happened.”
  If you want to make things happen you must keep a pulse the trends.
Involve your CFO in the forecast development. Even if their involvement is small, make sure it is important so that they see the valuable work you do.
Track your forecast and compare with actual ROI so that every one learns from the variance.

The Shorter The Better

manipadisetti — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 04:26:42 +0000

One of the neat things about Twitter is that it forces us to write what we want to write in 140 characters or less.

You know this famous quote “I have made this letter longer than usual, only because I have not had time to make it shorter” (side note: by the way, often this quote is misattributed to Mark Twain but it is by the 17th-century French philosopher and mathematician, Blaise Pascal). Guess it is easier to write longer copy than a shorter one.

What can and should you say about your business to your visitors if you impose a Twitter style restriction on yourself? Try writing it.

Our site is about helping you get the people on the internet looking for product or service that you sell to come to your site, read your offer and call you – our site says “Converting Browsers Into Buyers”. Have we conveyed it?

It is not just a tag line that means very little (like McDonald’s “I’m lovin’ it”) but tells you what we do and how we help you. Have you done that for your site?

Frictionless Pages

manipadisetti — Sun, 22 Nov 2009 16:21:02 +0000

One of the reasons my wife and I shop at ALDI (the discount supermarket) is the limited number of choices we have there! Choices are good but too many choices are just overwhelming.

When the visitors come to your site, let’s say to the home page, do you give them one choice or many? Typically the home page has something on what you do, a header banner (or a flash presentation), a note asking the visitor to subscribe to your newsletter, highlighting the specials you are currently running, the news about your company or news about your industry or something media said about your company etc. Can you imagine how many things are “asking” for the visitors’ attention?

Keep one goal per page. If there is more than one ‘call to action’ or other distractions on the page, then the visitor will either NOT do what you want them to do or totally bail out.

Have you seen the single page sites that have very long copy? The tests prove that they convert much better than the “professionally designed” websites. You know why? Because those pages have one goal – convert. If the visitor is not interested, then they leave.

On your website, if the visitor is not interested in the action you want them to take on one page, then they go to other pages and check to see if something else interests them (e.g. free white paper). Having several goals (or worse having no goal therefore having multiple distractions on the page) only create friction on the site for the visitor. The less the friction the easier it is for the visitor to read and be on your website.

Give them a chance to buy from you.

Ask Distilled Questions For New Insights

manipadisetti — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 17:04:35 +0000

In ancient India, when the student has enough thirst for the “knowledge” they would seek a guru.

Some of them would be fortunate enough to get accepted as a student by some gurus. The student then starts living there with the other students growing vegetables, doing household chores and attending the lectures. The new student would be allowed to listen to the guru’s lectures but not allowed to ask questions for the first several months. Imagine that! They came to the guru because they had many unanswered questions but the guru says no questions for a while.

The inquisitive mind of the student would not be quiet. The student would ask questions and get clarifications from other students living there. Many of the questions he had before he came to this place would be answered in a few months. After this period he would have only more insightful and more meaningful questions. By the way, such questions and answers are given in the Upanishads (in Hindu scriptures).

In our daily life, if you ask such ‘distilled questions’ not only will the answers, when you find them, amaze you but also open you new doors for you. When you find answers and dig deeper and challenge each part of the answer until you find the one answer. That is, if you get 10 answers, challenge those answers, dig deeper until the answer you’ve is one and you think/feel that is the right one. Then use that answer to find the nirvana!

Here are a couple of examples:

Ask yourself “Why does the customer buy from me?” – Maybe from the answer you get, you can start developing a “path” for your new prospects to follow so that you can convert them to customers; Maybe use that information to develop a new product or service for your existing customers; Maybe from that information you will decide on the route for your customer service team.

What makes you for your organization to keep you in this job? – Maybe from the answers you get you will start to understand the value you provide to your organization and start focusing on increasing it; or maybe you will develop your own plan of becoming more valuable to this or any organization; or maybe you will end up understanding the value your boss is providing for the organization and eventually you get that job!

Answers will lead to new paths or open new doors but right questions are hard to get. To paraphrase Jack Palance in the movie City Slickers, there is only one thing that makes the difference. You just need to figure out that one thing. Then you will make it!

Good searching.