News feed
Assist your end-users first: technical writing, copywriting, HTML Help, usability, and multimedia - by Epic Trends
Connect with your customers-and fuel your sales-through user assistance: technical writing, multimedia, web content, copywriting, usability, user interfaces, demos, tutorials, html help, and online Help.
Add the Epic Trends blog to your favorite news reader
Monday, September 26, 2005
You might want to check out your web site against this list. I have lots of work to do on my own web site.
Usability checklist for web sites by Epic Trends
Thursday, September 15, 2005
Putting it all together
Here’s a quick checklist to get the big picture:
Plan
Develop your unique value proposition.
Plan how you get traffic.
Storyboard your site.
Understand your marketplace, visitors, brand and positioning, strengths and weaknesses.
Understand everything your visitors went through to get to your site. Anticipate their knowledge levels and moods.
Structure
Improve your web site by looking at:
Navigation,
Information,
Design/style,
Color, text, and images,
Layout,
Technology,
Fonts,
Usability,
Speed, both raw and perceived.
Momentum
Use AIDAS on every page.
Look at the five step sales process and how your web site reflects it.
Make sure every page has a clear call to action: Buy Now, Try Now, Get it free!
Optimize the active window, especially navigation.
Test usability. Create a desire for your product and motivate the act of buying.
Look at the point of action. Make sure you locate elements on your web apge at the places where they impact the sales process by addressing whatever is on your customer’s mind. For example, place a guarantee on your final checkout page. The policy won’t make much sense on your index or home page.
Present just enough information, but not too much. You’ll only overwhelm your visitor.
Value
Sell benefits and describe with features.
Address the benefits your customers want, their deeply felt needs, with your products, services, and, ultimately, your copy.
Is the style of your site consistent with your company?
Remember that value is more important than price in many buyers’ priority lists.
Communication
Format text for skimming.
Emphasize text for grabbing attention.
Keep paragraphs short and to the point.
Identify important headlines that grab attention and make those headlines “visually pop from the page” as the Eisenbergs and Davis put it.
Make your words snap, crackle, and pop. Verbs are most powerful when they communicate sound. The Eisenbergs and Davis put it best: “The killer app is not sight, it’s sound, whether heard directly (audio) or mentally (read through copy).”
Branding is successful when you have a relevant message that you repeat frequently enough to your potential customer that they remember it. Increase the relevancy and frequency of your message in ways that are memorable. Think out of the box and break out of the cube.
Thursday, September 15, 2005
Writing for personalities
In “Persuasive Online Copywriting,” Eisenbergs and Davis remind us that “Buying is the flip side of selling.” And “People rationalize buying decisions based on facts, but people make buying decisions based on feelings.”
Buying always occurs when the visitor figures out he/she needs something. To get a user to click the Buy Now button, you must see the world from their point of view as they step through your buying process, your web site. Show them repeatedly how you fill their need. Jakob Nielsen’s latest usability Alert Box points out that often a successful buy occurs after the buyer visits to your web site several times.
The buying process involves these steps:
1. Identify
2. Search
3. Evaluate
4. Decide
5. Purchase
6. Re-evaluate
Write copy for all the different personalities who visit your site. The following table, with condensed information from “Persuasive Online Copywriting,” can make this easy.
Amiable
Active, fast-paced. With this group, address values and provide assurances, credible opinions rather than options.
Analytical
Businesslike, detail oriented. With this group, provide hard evidence and superior service.
Expressive
Personal, relationship oriented. With this group, offer testimonials and incentives.
Assertive
Businesslike, power oriented. With this group, provide options and probabilities.
The following copy addresses all four personality types:
You can customize Whiz Bang Calendar to meet your personal needs. We guarantee that you will be more productive and efficient in managing your time with this unique scheduling software. Check out our features and tools to find out how thousands of users say they accomplished more in their work day with Whiz Bang Calendar.
Amiable
You can customize Whiz Bang Calendar to meet your personal needs.
Analytical
Check out our features and tools to find out . . .
Expressive
. . . find out how thousands of users say they accomplished more in their work day with Whiz Bang Calendar.
Assertive
We guarantee that you will be more productive and efficient in managing your time with this unique scheduling software.
Test every page of your web site, every hot link and menu against the following test, AIDAS.
Grab their attention.
Strengthen interest.
Stimulate desire.
Get them to take action.
Satisfy them.
Text hot links allow you to hone in on the different personalities who visit your web site, keeping them engaged. Any time a visitor disengages, you risk losing them and the sale. Navigation propels your sales. Keep it simple. No fancy tricks; nothing complex. Do not use menus more than two options deep.
Wednesday, September 07, 2005
Now, we are getting into the high-powered areas to create web copy that really rockets sales in your online store: A discussion of the sales process and how that affects your online copy writing. As mentioned in earlier entries in my blog, much of the material for these tips comes from an excellent book by Bryan and Jeffrey Eisenberg and Lisa Davis called "Persuasive Online Copywriting: How to Take Your Words to the Bank."
Sales is entirely about persuading web site visitors to take the action you want them to take. Persuasion equals selling. You can increase your online profits by:
Increasing traffic.
Selling more expensive products.
Increasing your conversion rate.
Increasing conversion rates is your first priority for online success. When you maximize this area, you can then concentrate on improving your products and increasing traffic. To increase your conversion rate, you can make thousands of refinements, most of which cost practically nothing but your time. For example, reduce the number of clicks in the buying process, redesign navigation, or make your unique value proposition (UVP) crystal clear. We'll discuss UVP later.
To maximize conversion rates, which are dismally low in online sales, locate the leaks in your buying paths and navigation. Leaks are where your users drop off, leave, and don't come back. The best way to locate leaks is to evaluate the Single Page Access metric in your web logs. This shows you the reject rates for your home page and key landing pages. Pages with high reject rates require the most of your attention. You need to tempt, entice, and persuade your visitors to travel deeper into your site.
Get knee deep in your conversion process, analyzing every micro action the user must take. The Eisenbergs and Davis in give you a list of great questions to keep in mind as you consider each step of the conversion level.
"Has the sales path clearly mapped the actions your prospects take?
How well are prospects guided step-by-step?
How many leaks are left?
How many prospects are falling through?"
As you look at each page, consider their questions:
"What actions satisfy all your objectives?
Who needs to be persuaded to take action?
How do you persuade them most effectively to take action?"
The sales experience is a five step process:
Prospect
Rapport
Qualify
Present
Close
Rapport, quality, and present influence all the other steps. The process is fluid.
In the prospect step, lots of qualified traffic shows up on your doorstep. This is where you present the UVP, unique value proposition. A UVP is a short statement that describes the unique value of your business in powerful, exciting words. The UVP answers the all-important question in a visitor's mind: "Why should I do business with you and not somebody else?" You can use a UVP as a slogan in advertising sometimes. Look at your Single Page Access Report in your web log analytic software. This identifies where you need to strengthen your message.
In the rapport process, you can build a connection in many ways:
Download speed,
Site appearance,
Easy navigation,
Elements that build trust,
Powerful web copy,
Great customer service,
Guarantees and re-assurances.
Qualifying is crucial to closing your sale. Answer questions in the hyperlinks you offer. Make sure you address questions for all kinds of visitors, the ones who:
Know what they want,
Sort of know what they want,
Don't know what they want,
Or just don't want anything.
Address anything and everything: Answer concerns, resolve objections, give details about service plans, offer payment options, and describe your guarantees. All these important assurances must appear specifically at each point of action (POA). These assurances propel your visitor to buy---and close the sale. Concentrate on every step of this process.
In the next blog entry, we'll continue a discussion of the sales process.
Tuesday, September 06, 2005
Very interesting Alert Box from Jakob Nielsen for all of you online sellers. Find out when potential buyers actually click the Buy Now button. Users often convert to buyers long after their initial visit to a website. A full 5% of orders occur more than four weeks after users click on search engine ads.
Alert Box
_529.png)
