How to Grip Website Visitors in the Vise of Persuasion

By Stephen Palmer • March 24th, 2009 • Email This Post • Print This Post

Every time I write a website I use the following checklist to ensure optimal effectiveness.

First, understand the ends of these means: 1) surprise and delight readers; catch them off guard to enhance the experience and insert your business into their memory, 2) vividly illustrate why potential customers should buy from you, and 3) answer their questions on their terms, thus increasing their likelihood to buy, 4) the ultimate goal is to persuade visitors to buy your products and/or services (as opposed to simply inform).

Most of these principles apply to every other form of written content as well.

1. Pick the right angle/strategy.

The “angle” can be a metaphor, a tagline, a core idea that all your content wraps around. For example, the angle for Real Estate Marketplace is “Legendary Service,” which conjures dramatic images of warriors and saints.

The strategy needs to be expansive enough to fit all content, yet focused enough to speak to the core of the value that you offer.

2. The “WIFM” rule.

Your visitors enter your radar asking the question, “What’s in it for me?” Most websites are written about the person/business that the site is designed to tell about. Yes, you build a site to tell people about you, but it must be written to be about your visitor. How do you meet their needs? What’s in it for them if they use you? How do you make their life better? The home page especially needs to illuminate the benefits to your readers.

Future Now, Inc., an elite New York-based company specializing in website conversion, offers a free tool, the We-We Monitor, that reveals how well your website focuses on your customers, as opposed to yourself. Try it out on your website now — the result may surprise you.

3. Translate features into benefits.

Some features of my MacBook Pro laptop computer are the 15″ monitor, the 2 GHz Intel Duo Core processor, and 1 GB of memory with 667 MHz of RAM. I don’t have a clue what most of those mean.

But what I do know is that my computer is fast. I know that it can process a lot of information and run a lot of programs simultaneously. I know that it loves to digest pictures and videos. In other words, I don’t care about the features; I care about the benefits that those features provide. And so do your customers.

If you’re a graphic designer, a feature is that you’re proficient in Flash. The benefit to your customers is that you make their website come alive with excitement. If you’re a hair stylist, a feature is that you use Redken salon products. The benefit is that your customer’s hair will shimmer like the night sky. If you sell Jeep Wranglers, a feature is the 202 hp 3.8 liter V6 engine; the benefit is that drivers will be flabbergasted as they crawl up a boulder-littered incline like it was child’s play.

4. Cater to personas.

A persona is the sum total of how a person thinks, the types of questions they ask and answers they want to receive, how they view the world, and how they define themselves.

There are four basic personas (based on the Meyers-Briggs Type Indicator): Methodical, Spontaneous, Competitive, and Humanist. Your website needs to cater to all of them, and there are specific writing techniques for doing this.

This needs much more explanation, but here’s the short version: Methodicals want the fine print and details, Spontaneous types want to get quickly to the benefits, Competitives want to see your competitive advantage, and Humanists want personal interaction and testimonials.

5. Persuasion Architecture.

Persuasion Architecture means designing website navigation and writing content so that visitors are persuaded to take action in a style that feels completely natural to them. It’s the art and science of increasing website conversions. The goal becomes to get visitors what they want, rather than forcing them to do what we want them to do.

The home page is critical to this and should accomplish two primary goals: 1) show visitors what’s in it for them, and 2) provide links within the text taking them to every other page on your site where they can get more details.

Remember that each persona will want to go to a different place; persuasion architecture gives them the ability to go where they want to go — not where you think they should go — without confusion or resistance.

6. Instill the vision.

It’s proven that people will not — in fact cannot — take any action that they have not already envisioned in their mind. Does your copy instill the vision of what it will feel like for potential customers to interact with your business? Does the vision inspire each of their senses?

The more clearly a person can envision taking a particular action the more likely they are to take that action in reality.

7. Exploit verbs.

Verbs explode your copy, transforming passive content into active content that leaps from the page and into the mind. The Wizard of Ads and foremost advertising guru in the nation, Roy H. Williams reveals the secret, “Double the verbs; whack the adjectives.”

Predictability is enemy #1 in the Information Age, and mastering the use of verbs is half the battle of delighting readers with unpredictability.

To recap:

Pick the right angle.
The WIFM rule.
Translate features into benefits.
Cater to personas.
Persuasion architecture.
Instill the vision.
Exploit verbs.

Now, what do you need to change on your website after reading this checklist?

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Stephen Palmer is a marketing consultant and persuasive writer with KGaps Consulting, a co-founder of The Center for Social Leadership, and the New York Times best-selling co-author of Killing Sacred Cows: Overcoming the Financial Myths that are Destroying Your Prosperity.

He is a liberal-arts graduate of George Wythe University and a graduate of the “non-traditional business school” Wizard Academy.

Stephen resides in Round Rock, Texas with his gorgeous wife Karina, awesome son Alex, and princess daughters Libby, Avery, and Laela. Stephen and Karina blog about their magical life on Palmer Journeys.