Chris Davidson

Doubtless you have a website and use it as one of several means of communicating with your target market. (By the way, if you're one of the remaining minority of businesses that still doesn't have a significant web presence, then pause reading right here, take a good, hard look at yourself in a mirror and repeat these words, "It is the 21st Century and it's time I stopped behaving as if it were the 19th. Setting up a blog costs me next to nothing, so I have no valid reason or excuse for my continuing procrastination.")

Those of you with a website will have realised long ago that it's all about content. Sure, design is important, but as audiences become more and more web-savvy they are becoming more accepting of design variations and more critical of rubbish content.

This week I want to give you some simple "content-tweaks" to help you increase the response rates you are getting from your website.

One of the easiest ways of getting your target market to engage with you on-line is to offer them something free, in exchange for their name and e-mail address. For example, it's this process that's resulted in you receiving these weekly CDCD broadcasts.

At some point in this process you have to fill in a web-based form and click on a submit button. I've chosen the words in the previous sentence carefully, because they represent standard "geek-speak" that's sneaked into our standard marketing jargon - and none of it belongs there. What am I on about?

The word: "Form"
Forms are what you get from "officialdom". I don't know of anybody who enjoys the idea of "filling out a form", so why ask potential customers to do it? It's an instant turn-off. Find some alternative and more friendly expressions that exclude the word "form".

The word: "Submit"
This is often the word that's to be found on the button that's to be clicked once the form (sic) has been completed. The OED begins its definition of "submit" with, "Surrender oneself for control, etc". This is not how I want my customers to view their relationship with me. How about, "subscribe" or "join the gang"? Anything's better than "submit", in my view.

The "Buy Now" button
This is an interesting one and one that I believe needs further testing. How about "Own Now" instead? It retains the immediacy of taking action "now" and introduces the concept of owning, as opposed to buying. I've yet to try this on my own systems, but I certainly will be doing so.

There is a number of these, including the age old one of replacing "price" and "cost" with "amount".

Considerations particular to e-commerce sites

I now want to move slightly away from content and more towards design. I want those of you with e-commerce sites to check some further subtleties.

Examine the difference between the Amazon.com website and the Amazon.co.uk website.

At first site, not much, you might think. Take a closer look. On the .com site the shopping cart in the top, right corner, is called just that "cart". On the UK site it's called "basket".

Christmas in the UK has become a huge commercial event in recent years. Look around the "basket" on the UK site and you'll see lots of Christmas advertising, (sad; it's only just November). Now look at the .com (USA) site - no Christmas advertising at all.

Many of you outside the USA will have .com domains as well as country specific ones too, like .co.uk, or .de. How are you using these domains to appeal to different markets and to account for different cultural tastes?

That's it folks for this week - as usual, your comments welcomed and appreciated, particularly with reference as to what you'd like to hear about. I do get quite a few e-mails by the way, and I read them all, so please don't feel shy about getting in contact.

Best wishes for the coming week.

Chris Davidson
Editor, Professional Speakers Journal
editor@professionalspeakersjournal.com

 

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