Posted by: Daniel Levis
July 23, 2008
Issue #465

Three Savage Response Rate Killers
and How to Banish Them
from Your Website …

Dear Web Business-Builder,

There are three things that will slaughter response rates on your Web pages.

If you could recognize them, and banish them from all of your Web pages, your response rates would instantly soar.

What are they?

Savage response rate killer #1 — Boredom

If your website visitors can’t get excited about what they find on your website, your response rate will suck.

Remember, there are only two reasons people visit your website: To obtain pleasure or avoid pain. If what they find there fails to promise one or both, it is by definition, boring. 

You’d think this would be obvious, but it’s not.

Most of the websites I visit online are like the actor who said, “Enough of me talking about myself. What do you think about me?”

Your website is NOT about your company or your product. It’s about your prospect. Keep him at the center of the dialog. Appeal to his self-interest. And you’ll have his attention.

Once you’ve got it. Keep it. How? By continually foreshadowing what comes next, slowly lifting the veil on all of the juicy secrets your prospect needs in order to obtain the object of his desire.

Self-interest and curiosity are critical to maintaining your reader’s interest. But there’s more to the boredom banishing formula …

To get people fully engaged, you’ve also got to stir their emotions. Hollywood is in the business of dispelling boredom. And that means it’s also in the emotion manufacturing business. People crave emotional stimulation. They don’t want to think. They want to feel.

And so it’s your job to constantly be thinking about how you can dramatize your claims and get your prospects experiencing the promise of your product (and the horrible outcome of inaction) in the theatre of their minds.

You do this by using metaphors and analogies that bring your selling points to life. You do it with emotionally evocative words and phrases. And you do it through story.

Suppose you’re selling some kind of an information product, and you want to build trust by positioning yourself as a “leveler” — someone who isn’t going to sugarcoat the truth just to make a sale. You could just come out and say that, or you could dramatize it by drawing the following analogy.

 “In the movie “The Matrix”, which is really about choices, Morpheus forces Neo to understand that knowledge can be a bitter pill to swallow. He offers Neo a choice between a red pill and a blue pill. I’m offering you a similar choice.

“Take the blue pill and you’ll wake up tomorrow morning believing whatever you want to believe about [x]. Take the red pill and I’ll show you how deep the rabbit hole really goes.”

Which is more engaging?

Savage response rate killer #2 — Confusion

Your prospects are on sensory overload. When they arrive at your website, you have probably 2 to 3 seconds max to grab their attention, and maybe another 5 to 6 seconds to generate real interest.

I see people spending money on Google AdWords, or one of the other search engines, offering some kind of a freebie to get people to click through to their site, but when I click on their ad, I land on a page that’s just a sea of links.

Links across the top … links on the left … links on the right … links in the middle. What happened to the freebie? Oh there it is somewhere on the right with all of the other stuff. And what’s it supposed to do for me again?

What are people to do when they arrive at a website like that where there’s no clear plot for them to follow? It’s sales suicide expecting them to browse around and somehow stumble upon the action you want them to take. I see this all the time. Nobody has taken the time to map out any kind of a sales process for the website. It just confuses people and they back button away or get lost poking around without taking any kind of action that advances the sale.

Give your prospects a clearly defined plot to follow when they arrive at your website. If you promise something in your advertising, for heaven’s sake follow through on your website with a big ass headline that confirms that promise.

If your headline fails to instantly communicate a very clearly understood and expected promise of self-interest, stimulate curiosity, or evoke emotion (preferably all three) you’ve probably lost them. The secret is brevity, getting maximum meaning across with minimum words. And having a clear plot for your prospects to follow …

Once they’re into the body copy, they become more forgiving, but force them to think in the wrong way about what you’re trying to say and a strike is counted against you — their interest and confidence in your message wanes.

There is a big difference between your prospect mentally saying to himself “why are you telling me this?” and “hmmm … I wonder where he’s going with this?” The first is confusion, perhaps the fault of a gap in logic, or excessive wandering on the way to your point. Your prospect just feels lost. The second is intrigue. Your prospect isn’t sure where you’re taking him, but he’s confident you know where you’re taking him. What’s more, he is anticipating this outcome or that.

It’s not the bomb going off in an Alfred Hitchcock movie that rivets your attention, it’s the fact that it’s ticking under the table and you want to know if the protagonist will discover it and diffuse it in time or be blown to smithereens. No matter where the story goes, you know it’s coming back around to that climactic point. In the meantime, you are held in suspense.

Well it’s the same with your sales copy. Without beginning with a figurative question mark before taking off in this direction or that, your reader feels rudderless and confused. You need a cohesive thread that holds your copy together from start to finish.

And speaking of finish, the cardinal confusion sin is leaving your prospect dangling without closing … without telling him exactly what to do next. I am incredulous at how often I see this.

Savage response rate killer #3 — Disbelief

According to Gary’s Bencivenga’s awesome “bullet” in last week’s TOTAL PACKAGE, the two most powerful words in advertising are “yeah sure.” Gary’s advice is to never make your promise bigger than your proof. Concentrate on surrounding your claims with stronger, bolder proof.

Great advice indeed, but I think there’s more to the disbelief story …

Have you ever read copy that made a huge promise surrounded by even huger proof, and still not bought? I know I have.

Something inside of me that was hard to put a finger on threw cold water on the purchase. From a logical standpoint, the purchase looked overwhelmingly in my best interests — a no-brainer — but at the end of the day, no cigar. I felt like an idiot for not buying and not knowing why.

Perhaps you’ve shared this same strange sensation. What is it, and where does it come from? Eventually I was able to put my finger on it.

It was a lack of trust. I had no reason to distrust the seller, but I did. Why? Recently, I came across an interesting New York Times/CBS survey that I think sheds light on this mystery.

The survey asked two very simple but revealing questions. First, “Of people in general, how many do you think are trustworthy?” On average, the answer was 30%. Next the survey asked “Of the people you know, how many do you consider trustworthy?” On average, the answer was 70%.

Statistically, the odds of these answers being accurate are miniscule. What it tells us is that somewhere deep in our lizard brains, strangers are not to be trusted.

As I read the sales copy, I was impressed by the promise. I was impressed by the preponderance of proof. But I felt no connection to the seller. The seller remained “strange” to me. And as a result, I found myself actively looking for reasons why I should not trust this organization. They did nothing to earn my distrust, but they also did nothing to relate to me or make themselves seem familiar to me.

All of their credibility elements were about their achievements. There was nothing that created any kind of a personal bond or camaraderie between us. There was nothing that demonstrated they were my kind of people. And simply because I felt I did not know them, I refused to give myself permission to believe the mountains of proof they heaped before me. Another sale crushed in the mandibles of disbelief.

In Gary’s bullet, he makes a big deal about how he surrounded his promises with superior proof to win the control, but I’d bet money he also demonstrated superior empathy for his target audience. I’d bet money he created a more tangible human connection. And together, the net effect was a much stronger, more believable promotion.

Creating that human bond and empathetic connection with your target audience is in my mind the real “yeah sure” silver bullet, simply because it’s so rare.

I’d love to hear your thoughts on this. Feel free to strike up a discussion in the comment box below.

Until next time, Good Selling!

Daniel Levis
Editor, The Web Marketing Advisor
THE TOTAL PACKAGE

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9 Comments »

1. Comment by Clarke Echols — July 23, 2008 @ 2:08 pm

   Daniel,

   I think you’re really onto something here.  I’m doing some web-site effectiveness consulting, and
   admit to swiping a lot of ideas from you and Clayton, et al and one of the things I’ve really been
   emphasizing to my client is the need to establish a relationship bond.  He sells tractors and other
   equipment to farms, agriculture and construction.  So instead of the usual, dry "About Us" page
   that says we do this and we think that, I cast a whole new approach:  Let’s look at the owner
   and his company from the eyes of a customer (me) and vendor (also me).  And I told a story to
   convey the message – a story of the owner starting at age 14, learning and advancing, then
   suddenly unemployed when his employer went belly up.  I tell of his involvement with kids
   in high school.  For one of the brands he carries, I tell the story of the company founder and
   how he started with almost nothing and built a huge company still run by the same family.

   Then I found a neat music video that was a #1 hit in Britain telling of a 5-year-old kid
   who was bullied and had trouble with teachers due to dyslexia, but became an entirely
    ifferent person when his dad picked him up in his JCB "digger" (what we call a backhoe in
    the states).  It’s something anyone who’s been picked on will relate with.  And I think it will be very effective at breaking down that wall against trust.  I don’t know for certain yet because we haven’t launched the new site.  But the video at http://www.jcbsong.co.uk/jcbvideo.asp made
   a huge hit with me because I had kids picking at me from time to time (one’s my
   brother-in-law now – sheesh!).

   I have a favorite saying I got from others: "People don’t care how much you know until
   they know how much you care."  I think the barriers to trust are best attacked by showing
   you really do care about that person coming to your site.  You’re not just there to get their
   money.

   The irony is, the money doesn’t really come until you get your eye off of you and onto
   them, and see the world from their eyes.  What a concept!

   I suppose this really is little more than a natural part of "the right way" in the 5 R’s.

   Clarke

2. Comment by The NightOwl — July 23, 2008 @ 2:08 pm

   Thank you Daniel

   This is an excellent article!

   (And thank you also to the Total Package folks.)

   Interestingly, your third point is very "warm" in my mind just now.

   About an hour ago I bought some new software (for a common business need I won’t identify). I’ve been shopping around and test-driving and snooping and probing for a little while now. And one solution kept popping up. I looks very good.

   Here’s the interesting thing. The person who sells it has demonstrated the "one of us" element many times. And I actually feel that this person is perfectly trustworthy.

   So why didn’t I buy?

   There is, I think, another element–closely related to the trust factor: Confidence. That is, confidence in the vendor.

   I’m not confident that I could get support if I needed it pronto. Maybe I could. I don’t know. But there are a number of things that make me feel as if I couldn’t. And this is what had me baulking several times even though this software is highly recommended and blah blah blah…

   Then, recently, I noticed some software developers I’ve been doing business with using another piece of software for the solution I was seeking so I started checking that out and looking into it further.

   I went to that developer’s site and hunted around and there were tiny little things that made me feel confident in the quality of the program and the level of support.

   So I contacted the programmer and got a fantastic reply and some extra information that gave me even more confidence that this was the right decision–because as I said, support is an issue for this type of software.

   I’m afraid I can’t elaborate further, but I thought it worth mentioning that while trusting the seller is certainly an issue, the copy and the site and the interaction with the prospect also have to instill confidence that whatever product or service is being offered will perform/deliver as promised and that if it doesn’t, that the seller will sort it out pronto.

   An contrary example springs to mind: There is someone in the IM-niche whose salespages say at the bottom "I do not respond to email EVER!" (or something to that effect). Now, this person is, as far as I’m aware, reasonably successful (maybe even wildly so; I have no idea!). But I doubt we will EVER do business together.

   Anyway, thanks again. I’ll definitely be looking over some of my pages that I know are more than a little shaky on a couple of these points.

   The NightOwl

3. Comment by Mike — July 23, 2008 @ 2:20 pm

   Thank you. Great insights. To some extent, people have to care too. I mean the more they want something–the more they have to have something–the greater risks they’ll take to obtain it and they’ll go with a lesser amount of trust if they have to. So yeah, if they are bored and/or confused, they aren’t in much of a buying mood. They might not "care" enough and if in addition they don’t trust, they’re gone.

4. Comment by Clint — July 23, 2008 @ 2:29 pm

   Great stuff.  The "overload" is so true and response rates are going down unless you make a change.

   We actually create personalized URL (PURL) for every recipient of our email or direct mail campaigns - YOUR name is definitely something that gets your attention.  When people see their name in a URL, email or direct mail they are compelled to find out more.

5. Comment by larry davis — July 23, 2008 @ 4:14 pm

   Hi Daniel ,
   thanks.
   good value-info.

   Your 3 tips on _
   How-to :
   ‘polish-silver-bullets-beneath-a-full-Moon.’

   ….well , not your words exactly….
   but my take on it.

   Why ?…

   because :
   sometimes ‘the wolf’ called_ "make killer-copy"…

   can be More about Itself Than_
   the visitor/potential customer.

   Your 3 keypoints
   helps remove ourselves…
   & Focus on visitor/customer 1st.

6. Comment by Rich Boy — July 23, 2008 @ 4:17 pm

   Hey, those are some great tips. I browse the web all day and at least 83% of all the sites I see do all 3 of these…
   They are boring,
   They are confusing,
   They aren’t trustable.

   Thanks for helping clear this up and making it something to consciously avoid. I admit I’ve been guilty of doing one or more of the above on occasion, but I’ll be sure to never let that happen again.

   Keep posting these great articles. By the way, I just bought The Ultimate Desktop Copy Coach a day or so ago, and I can’t wait to get it and start reading everything! I feel like a kid waiting to get my candy reward.

   Rich Boy
   http://www.TheRichBoy.com

7. Comment by John Anderson — July 23, 2008 @ 5:47 pm

   Great post Daniel thank you. One of the things that Gary used to make sure he did was ‘make a freind before he makes the sale’. He used incredible amounts of proof while also creating an almost surreal connection through the medium of print. A true master at work. A real long term thinker and giver as well - it was like 2 years into his bullets before he even sold his course! And the relationship he built up over that time -wow.  The only people I can think of as generous online are Clayton Makepeace and all you lovely guest editors  of the Total Package filling my inbox every day!!
   Thanks again for another great post Daniel.

8. Comment by Chuck — July 23, 2008 @ 7:23 pm

   Daniel, these are great points to keep in mind and remind ourselves of from time to time.

   Note that video can be used as a tool to assist with all 3 potential stumbling blocks.

   1. At this point in time, video is inherently exciting and engaging as a novelty, though that is sure to wear off in time when it becomes the norm.  The sales message still has to be meaningful to the audience, of course.

   2. Video can be used to show people exactly what to do or what to expect.  But website clutter and disarray distracts in any circumstance.

   3. Video is a great way for building rapport and helping people feel like they know and trust you – as long as you don’t look like a used car salesman!

   Chuck

9. Comment by Robert Jacs — July 24, 2008 @ 12:19 pm

   Hi Dan, This piece is pure Honey, it could not be any sweeter or clearer. I Grok it , I am saving it, and I am sending it. Thanks for your time, effort, and tought. Robert