[JessicaLin]

Read the article below. It's about converting website visitors into clients:

The pre-experience: the art of teasing

A while ago I was studying some numbers on website conversion. I noticed that for the past few years, across several industries, it's been stuck at approximately 3%. This means that only 3% of website visitors does a transaction on the site, such as a purchase, applying for a news letter or taking part in a game. It struck me as intolerable that we let 97% of our visitors go without letting them do anything. Despite all the knowledge, experience and techniques we've gained the past five years, we're still letting our customers just walk away. Time to do something about it.

First of all, let's consider our goals. A website must be 'accountable': that means we have to agree upon certain targets for the website. That doesn't just mean sales targets: we may also be looking for profiles (containing client data, of course), e-mail addresses or research data. Perhaps we're looking for leads or prospects. When setting the targets, profiles, leads and other data all carry value. Not dismissing them could mean the world to our business case.

Five seconds to inspire

When meeting someone new, it takes most people about three seconds to size up the other person. Luckily, your website gets a little more time: research shows that on average, if people don't find anything interesting on your website, they'll leave within five seconds. To make sure your visitor stays around, we're going to use the 'inspiration-transaction' model. This model assumes that a website needs to have something that forces a surfer's first visit to last longer than five seconds. This 'inspiration' could be a personal video message, interactivity, a game or surprising content based on target group approach or profile information. There are many ways to inspire a visitor. After the inspiration follows the 'connection', then the 'dialogue' and finally the 'conversion'.

The art of teasing

When your five seconds are up, you get the chance to convert your visitor into something that benefits our business case. Preferably the visitor becomes a client, but an appointment, download, quote or profile could do as well. Just so long as it adds value to our business case. But before we can convert, we have to solve another task. We need to create an atmosphere in which we can tease the visitor, so that he will want to do what we want him to do. This is what I call the 'pre-experience'. It's where a visitor 'pre-experiences' the actual conversion, making him more likely to go ahead and do it. If a website visitor can almost experience a product or service online as if it were the real thing, it'll act as a powerful reason to convert. Our results will certainly beat the glorified digital brochures 90% of today's companies call a website. So make sure to pay attention to your pre-experience, and think about how you're going to tease your visitors in order to reach higher conversion rates.

Examples

Getting a visitor to convert is a lot like personal sales contact. You shake your client or prospect's hand, you use your personal charm, you playfully extract the needs and desires of your client to get that final signature on the deal. Such interactions are easily translated into an online environment, using tools like video Q&A, personal avatars and behavioral targeting. Or how about the thrill, energy and excitement of a rollercoaster ride on a beautiful summer's day at the amusement park. Could we grab that feeling and energy, personalize it and unleash it in an online environment? Yes, we can! Just look at Nike, Adidas or Meez for instance, who let you create your own avatar.

http://www.nike.com/nikeos/p/nike/en_EMEA/
http://www.adidas.com/campaigns/foot...meline_adipure
http://www.meez.com/

Time to act!

An online webshop, the website of a theater or amusement park, government websites or telecom websites, all of these can be designed to be more personal, more realistic and more enticing for a visitor to interact. It's intolerable that for the past five years we've been staring at a 3% average conversion rate. With all these new techniques and insights, we can do better than that. If we're able to bridge the gap between the virtual world and the real world, we're going to see improved results. Do the math: what if we increase the amount of visitors by 5% and increase conversion from 3% to, say, 7%. What would that mean for your organisation?

You may notice I went a little fast at some points. Right now, I'm working on an article about a website's 'sticking power and conversion power', where some of the things I've talked about here are given more attention. Until then however, I hope I've already inspired you to get to work. It's time to forget the glorified digital brochures, it's time for serious web presence. My question: do you notice anything odd in its content, language or the way it was written?

Discuss! [thumbup]

[GuitarLoverBe]

Let me guess, you wrote it? Looks ok to me.

[medprof]

Yes I noticed immediately.
A while ago I was studying some numbers on website conversion
This means that only 3% of website visitors does a transaction on the site, such as a purchase Does a transaction makes it sound like the person who wrote it isn't a native english speaker. Replace it with do (if you wrote it). There are other mistakes, but nothing that a normal (read non-anal) person wouldn't make.

[CedssypeEdids]

The wording and grammar are for the most part correct. And may I add it was quite an interesting read too!
I would suggest changing 2 sentences from your first paragraph:

This means that only 3% of website visitors does a transaction on the site to "This means that only 3% of website visitors perform/carry out a transaction on the site".

And
It struck me as intolerable that we let 97% of our visitors go without letting them do anything to "It is intolerable that we allow 97% of our visitors to leave without doing anything"
or "It came as quite a shock that 97% of our visitors leave without doing anything"

Just an opinion.

[Qxsumehj]

The writer is following his own advice on teasing; giving tasters of the information that will be contained within a full report.

The problem is that the strapline of his own advice doesn't apply to his article, there is nothing catchy to make you actually read and digest the final paragraph correctly, though if you do it may make you reprocess the prior information contained within the article istelf i.e. the article is self referencing.

[JessicaLin]

Thanks for the tips guys! [thumbup]

I didn't write the text, but I did translate it from its original Dutch version. I work for a Dutch marketing company and do translation work for them, so I was wondering if it was noticable that it's not a native text. The quoted sentences (doing a transaction, doing something...) were sentences that didn't feel entirely right to me either, now I can fix them! [thumbup]