“Markets are conversations.”
–Christopher Locke, The Cluetrain Manifesto
I’ve said this before, but it can’t be emphasized too much: marketing is a conversation. And this applies especially to your website.
The more you treat your website as a personal, one-on-one conversation, the more effective you’ll be at getting people to stay on your site and return to it.
And this is not just a guess. According to an Intelliquest survey (www.intelliquest.com), here are the seven reasons people gave for returning to a website:
1. Very entertaining: 56%
2. Grabs my attention: 54%
3. Extremely useful content: 53%
4. Information tailored to my needs: 45%
5. Thought-provoking: 39%
6. Visually appealing: 39%
7. Highly interactive: 36%
You could use this list to look for ways to improve the copy on your website.
But what does this list remind you of? It mostly reminds me of the qualities of a good conversationalist: someone who is interesting and even entertaining to talk to, who says thought-provoking things, and who is “interactive”, i.e., knows how to listen.
Uncooked Oatmeal
In spite of research like this, many websites still present their information in raw, dry, boring form—I call this the uncooked oatmeal approach. (Imagine how your family might respond if you plopped a big bowl full of uncooked oatmeal on the table and said, “Dinner is served.” They would probably run to the phone for take-out.)
It’s not enough to just serve up information on your website in its raw, undigested form. You’ve got to think about how to flavor that information, how best to present it, how to make it more tasty.
After all, customers are not sitting there with a funnel to their ear, waiting for you to pour in your information! In fact, they probably have several other things on their mind when they come to your website.
To help keep them there, you need to translate that dry information into stimulating, person-to-person conversations. How do you do that?
Moving Up the Conversationalist Scale
Think about good conversationalists you have known (I assume there are still a few of them around). What makes them good conversationalists? They are sincere. They know how to tell a story. They aren’t boring. They offer fresh, interesting insights. And they are good listeners. They respect what others have to say.
Try to incorporate some of these qualities into the copy on your website, or find a good writer who can help you do that. You can also look for websites that seem to be written in a conversational tone, and notice how they do it.
Also, think about the qualities that make a person a not-so-good conversationalist: You get the feeling they are not sincere. They don’t say much that is interesting or helpful. They go on and on. They are boring. They don’t really listen. Do you see any of these qualities in your website copy?
Clearly, you want to do whatever you can to move your website copy closer to the Good Conversationalist end of the scale.
And this can make a real difference. We’ve all experienced this difference when we’ve gone shopping for a new car or refrigerator or stereo, for example. The salesperson who is a good conversationalist—who knows how to talk to people in a sincere, interesting, informative way and treats them with respect—will generally sell more products than the salesperson who has the same information and same products but is not a good conversationalist.
Of course, there are other elements that are important to the success of your website, such as the particular offer you are making. And you want to make sure that your website text includes the key words that optimize it for search engines.
But the seven-point checklist above can help you think about ways to enhance and strengthen your copy to make sure that once people do visit your site, more of them will want to come back.
Comments on this entry are closed.