Funny how people interpret consumer behavior. Take, for instance, the email I got from a prospect a few weeks ago. His introductory message stated that he needed ultra-short copy because his site visitors were “web adverse.” Curious… I asked him to explain.
He told me that he had a pretty low conversion rate and that the visitors to his luxury travel site preferred to book via telephone, not through the web. So?, I thought. In his mind, this meant they hated content and had no purpose for the website other than to provide contact information. They came, they instantly looked for the telephone number without reading any information whatsoever on any of the pages. They immediately called the office, all the while keeping their hands over their eyes so they wouldn’t be tempted to read any copy during their visit. Silly, I know. But that’s how he saw it.
I tried to explain that just because people don’t buy from your site doesn’t mean they don’t do research before contacting your company. Here’s proof.
According to the Pew Internet & American Life Project:
> > 81% look for information about a product or service before buying it.
> > 73% get travel info online.
> > 51% take a virtual tour of a location online.
Know what else? According to BIGResearch:
> > 87% of consumers research products online before buying them offline.
Does that mean that all websites are useless? Certainly not!
What my prospect failed to understand was that you have to provide information to fill the visitor’s need during the information-gathering phase. They want to know about your company, they need details about your products or services and they seek out ways to determine which choice is the best for them before contacting you to buy.
Does this sound like a situation where you’d want to provide customers with as little information as possible? No way! It sounds like a situation where you’d want to offer persuasive copy that is heavy on benefits and makes it amazingly easy for visitors to choose you over the competition.
My prospect’s assumption will no doubt cost him lots of business. What should we do instead of assuming we know why people behave in a certain way? Before jumping to conclusions and writing copy that could be way off the mark, do a little research and find out for sure.
It would be oh-so-simple for this site owner to send previous clients a link to an online survey. Here he could ask them what they thought of his site, what they liked, disliked, what they thought could be improved, what they did on the site, why they called instead of booking online and lots of other questions. Then he’d know for certain why his sales were minimal and how to fix the problem.
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Such a helpful post. YouWriter should receive credit for it. Thanks