Seth Godin tells us that stories sell product. Even if we don’t really have a real story, we lay our literature or powerpoints out in a sequence that makes sense, in essence telling a story, something like this:
Logical order right? Slowly introduces the reader to the product and all of the concepts and details that go with it. Salespeople can use it as a guideline for making presentations. Customers can absorb full concept of what is being offered. The story gets told!
The Web
But the web is different. It isn’t linear. Okay, you can try to make it linear, but the prospects may land on a deep link, or skip leading content to get to the specifications. Or to the price, god forbid.
Don’t agree with me? Look at the average page-view times for your product pages.
Yes, I realize that users may do the same with our literature, but I would argue that it doesn’t happen nearly as much when you have paper in your hands. It would be nice if we had view-times for paper to prove the point 🙂
I just think that the way surfers use the web, and the way we build our product pages, throws out the whole concept of ‘story’. They are hunting up info, and we are ‘writing for the web’ and serving up snippets of info for them to find.
But the story is important to making the sale.
Solutions???
How do we slow them down and convince surfers to listen to ‘the story’? Change their mode of surfing to model other behaviors:
- Literature PDF to print out
- Embedded PowerPoint (ala SlideShare.net)
- Embedded video
The point being is that to make the full case for our product on the web, we need to have some tricks up our sleeve. Changing their mode of surfing and consuming info is the way to accomplish this.
Dave, have you tried any of your suggestions? I’ve wondered about this when looking at page stats. Really, how can someone absorb much of anything when viewing for seconds. I think it is a hard-to-solve problem.
Dave, have you tried any of your suggestions? I’ve wondered about this when looking at page stats. Really, how can someone absorb much of anything when viewing for seconds. I think it is a hard-to-solve problem.
“leading content to get to the specifications. Or to the price, god forbid.”Why is the answer not obvious? Use the <>promise of pricing<> as the incentive to engage the prospect. When they respond (and they will) simply ask “have you developed the criteria for this project yet”? You haven’t? Would you like to see what other customers have asked for when solving this issue? Sure I’ll send it to you in Word form…” Case closed, deal is in the pipeline.
Larry, I have posted catalog PDFs, but am interested in the other two solutions.Selfservice, you are very very right. That is essentially what I do now, and part of what I discussed earlier this year about ‘pricing on the website’. Maybe I should have added a fourth choice ‘offline engagement’.
Larry, I have posted catalog PDFs, but am interested in the other two solutions.Selfservice, you are very very right. That is essentially what I do now, and part of what I discussed earlier this year about ‘pricing on the website’. Maybe I should have added a fourth choice ‘offline engagement’.
Hypertext does reject the linearity you laid out, but I think using this heightened user agency to make a consumer feel in charge is doable. Complicated, but doable.
Hypertext does reject the linearity you laid out, but I think using this heightened user agency to make a consumer feel in charge is doable. Complicated, but doable.
< HREF="http://www.nettetercume.com" REL="nofollow">nicepost<>
as the incentive to engage the prospect. When they respond (and they will) simply ask “have you developed the criteria for this project yet”? You haven't? Would you like to see what other customers have asked for when solving this issue? Sure I'll send it to you in Word form…” Case closed, deal is in the pipeline.