E-business Briefing: May 2005

Bryan & Jeffrey Eisenberg are the co-founders of Future Now, Inc.: a consulting firm focused on helping clients persuade and convert their website's traffic into leads, customers and sales by applying their patent pending Persuasion Architecture methodology and software, and proven conversion rate optimization methods.

Future Now’s client list includes Dell Computers, PriceWaterhouseCoopers, Overstock.com, Disney, NBC Universal, Volvo, Computer Associates, GE, Everbank, CafePress.com, LowerMyBills, WebEx and many others. They are co-authors of Persuasive Online Copywriting and the newly top-selling release Call To Action: Secret Formulas To Improve Online Results.

1. What’s your background and how did you fall in love with the internet as a marketing channel?

BE: Chris, my first experiences online was back in 1982 when I setup my first BBS. Even then I was fascinated to see what people did when they logged in, and what they decided to navigate to.
I have had a fascination my whole life in trying to answer the question "what makes people do the things they do?"

After college I went on to work as a social worker. I think the biggest persuasion challenge anyone must face is to persuade a paranoid schizophrenic that they must take their medication and shower. In December 1997, we started Future Now, with our only focus being: how do we get people to do what we want them to do on our sites.

2. In your ‘Call To Action’ book you suggest that “familiarity and trust in a brand is one of the top 3 obstacles to buying from an online retailer”. Many retailers are currently struggling with the ‘price vs brand’ issue. Does the brand matter as much as we think it does? Do you think consumers always factor in brand, alongside price?

JE: Competing on price alone is like taking cocaine; it might give a quick boost but you’ll pay for it later. Value is what customers are looking for. I’m not waffling on this answer. Value is hard to define but easy to spot when you see it.

Our job as marketers is to help the customer gain confidence that our product or service has true value. Brands matter to the extent that they help provide that confidence.

3. Last year we discovered that about 50% of pages on the top 15 UK retail sites couldn’t be found via a keyword search, when in fact they were there all along and could be found via link navigation. If you were faced with this issue how strategically important would it be to fix it vs improving the conversion rate?

JE: There is no simple answer to this question; it would depend on each individual website. What good is a page that is found but can’t convert or doesn’t bring the visitor close to converting? There is an obsession with being found.

When we take on new clients that have performed aggressive SEM campaigns we find that the single page access rates are usually alarmingly high. 

4. What would you say the key building blocks to a successful website are?

BE: In our new book “Call To Action: Secret Formulas to Improve Online Results” we provide a six-part framework for a successful website. I’ll give you all six with an extremely abbreviated definition:

1. Planning – how you will measure success
2. Structure – how the content is placed in context
3. Momentum – how you move people along their buying process
4. Communication – how you communicate value
5. Value – how you actually provide value
6. Accountability – how you measure, test and optimize the above

5. What are the key elements of web page design, in your opinion? Are there any ethical issues to consider when implementing persuasion architecture / persuasive design?

BE: The whole framework for persuasion architecture is based on the key building blocks; first you must understand your business topology (what the market, competition, sales process and values your product or service provides), this must be tied in with your goals and KPIs, from there you must focus in on a deep motivational understanding of your customers, how do they do their research and gather buying information, what linguistics do they use, how do they make purchase decisions, how you need to present to them and what objections you need to overcome.

From there we plan the interaction your visitor will take click to click. We must map out what will continue being relevant with every click they take. From there we worry about the messaging of each page, what imagery will work for the visitors we expect to engage on this page. We then plan each individual element on the page once they have been prioritized and enhanced for maximum persuasiveness. Then we group it all together to make a designed page and work to optimize it for download speed, coding and search engine marketing.

All this brings us back around to implementation and then optimization. There are no ethical issues as the focus of persuasion architecture is helping the visitor engage and resolve their buying process while we integrate the sales process. In other words we are helping the visitor buy the way they want to be sold.

6. You are a passionate advocate of the power of words. Can you explain why you think good copy is so important / compelling / persuasive / necessary? 

JE: I know that conventional wisdom holds that a picture is worth a thousand words. The one thing I know is that this kind of knowledge is conventional but I often doubt its wisdom.

Wars have been fought over the definitions of words but not over pictures. Words are what make us human; since only humans have the unique ability to assign complex meanings to words. Words are what stir our passions, give life to our ideas, allow us to reason and to persuade others to share our perspective. If our perspective has value then often the best way to communicate it is with great copy.

7. Short copy is better for persuasion, but longer copy may be better for Google… how do you strike the right balance online?

JE: Who said short copy is better for persuasion? Who said long copy was better for persuasion? Who said that long or short copy is a high priority for being found in Google? Who makes these rules? Copy should be as long or as short and is necessary to properly cover a subject. The only thing we insist on is that copy must be relevant for every visitor no matter what their question or where they are in their buying process.

Frankly, mediocre copy that answers your prospects questions will outperform well-written copy that doesn’t hit the mark.

8. You say a homepage should be no heavier than 40k. Why is this? Can usability and other rules be applied to all websites, or is there no such thing as a one-size-fits-all model? 

BE: There has been a long known interaction rule of 7-8 seconds to capture someone’s attention. A radio ad has 7 seconds to engage you and so does a website. The truth is what people really want is interaction, and interaction happens at sub-second speeds.

As bandwidth pipes increase designers feel they can increase the page weight of a site, when in fact the inverse is the truth. People expect things faster and faster. There are exceptions; we do occasionally want to opt-in for a rich media experience, but most pages should strive to load as quickly as possible, even if visitors are on broadband.

Take a look at how Google even highlights the fact that they bring “Results 1 - 10 of about 148,000 for bryan eisenberg. (0.06 seconds)”

9. A well-defined and strategically designed checkout is vital to the performance of any online retailer. Do you have any tips for retailers? What are the factors they need to consider?

BE:
1. Keep the process as simple as possible, no more steps than necessary. If you have multiple steps provide a progress indicator for the number of steps. 

2. Provide “Shop with Confidence” Messages. Remind people during each stage of checkout of your return policy, guarantee, security and privacy policies, as well as any other pertinent answers to their questions.

3. Try to keep your forms above the fold. If people feel they have to scroll or they see too many fields side to side on a page (think several billing and shipping fields side by side) the form gives the perception that it may take too long to complete.

In our book Call to Action we give many more tips for reducing shopping cart abandonment and for getting visitors to complete forms (for those B2B companies.)

10. In Call To Action you talk about the irony of having a bad experience with a retailer, but thinking more of them after they dealt with the matter in a satisfactory way. I couldn’t agree more, but with price commoditisation many retailers aren’t investing in decent customer service. Thoughts?

JE: Those retailers who are competing only on price and neglecting their customers should give us a call in five years and let us know how it worked out for them.

11. What are your top five tips for improving conversion rates?

BE: We provide hundreds of tips in Call To Action including tips from twenty colleagues whose expertise we respect. Improving conversions is mostly hard work involving thousands of details. I would hate to tell people that there are a top five. Nevertheless, I’ll give you these:

1. Plan multiple conversion scenarios based on diverse market segments
2. Execute on those plans
3. Measure the results of those plans
4. Test those plans to improve them
5. Repeat tips #1 - #4

12. I bet you and your brother were scary children with Jedi-like persuasive powers. Who is the most persuasive and why?

JE: Bryan looks a bit like Yoda, doesn’t he?
BE: … and Jeffrey snores like Chewbacca.
JE: All kidding aside, Bryan and I are long-time students of persuasion. We are both fascinated by what makes people do the things they do. We don’t compete to be more persuasive; we simply work harder than most people to understand what motivates people.

Bryan and Jeffrey Eisenberg were interviewed by Chris Lake, editor, E-consultancy. Send word to chris@e-consultancy.com .

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