Don’t Just Build Your Website — Architect It

By Stephen Palmer • May 12th, 2009 • Email This Post • Print This Post

A good website requires four elements: 1) technical programming, 2) graphic design, 3) copywriting, and 4) architecture.

Copywriting and architecture together comprise persuasion architecture. These elements are far more important than technical programming and graphic design.

Unfortunately, most web design firms focus primarily, if not solely, on the first two. There are many who only focus on one of the two. No matter how good your site looks, without proper architecture it won’t convert visitors into leads and sales.

By architecture I mean the navigational functionality and processes that your visitors interact with. It includes the following components:

Main navigation bar
Drop-down (or sub-navigation) menu items
Page layouts
Link structure
Sales and checkout processes and forms
Elements strategically placed to cater to specific personas

Unlike books, websites are not linear, chronological, or two-dimensional. They are interactive, multi-dimensional, and conducive to jumping around from page to page, seemingly with no predictable pattern.

Every visitor approaches your site with different needs, a unique perspective, and distinctive navigational preferences. A website that works great for you may be horrible for another user, and vice versa.

Here’s where it gets complex: Despite the appearance of unpredictability, all website visitors do follow generally predictable navigational patterns and processes. These patterns are determined by four general personas: 1) Methodical, 2) Spontaneous, 3) Competitive, and 4) Humanist.

Do you know what each of these personas look for in a site? Do you know the questions they want answered? Do you know how they want to navigate through your site? Have you created processes for each of them, which are reflected in your pages, how pages are formatted, and your link structure?

Do you even know what a “persona” is and why it matters to your website?

The purpose of persuasion architecture is to allow each visitor to experience your site on his or her terms, to navigate how they want to, not how you think they should. It is to eliminate confusion and/or resistance, or in other words, the barriers preventing them from buying or otherwise engaging with you.

As persuasion architecture pioneers Bryan and Jeffrey Eisenberg write in Waiting for Your Cat to Bark?,

“A Persuasion Architect’s job is to map the cognitive processes that are going to help customers reach the goal that is both theirs and ours. This may bring to mind the idea of pull marketing, because we are suggesting pulling people along by their own motivation…

“…frameworks available in Persuasion Architecture create a persuasive model of voluntary momentum rather than a coercive model. This isn’t about manipulating someone to do something you want them to do. It’s about providing relevant information of genuine interest that lets buyers choose their own path. It isn’t about control; it’s about choice.”

They boil the process down to the following three questions:

Who are we trying to persuade to take the action?
What is the action we want someone to take?
What does that person need in order to feel confident taking that action?

Another term for architecting a website is “wireframing.” As the Eisenbergs write, “Actions and needs establish the parameters of our interaction. We want to create a map of that interaction, through planned scenarios that acknowledge and meet every opportunity. This is the process of wireframing…On a website, wireframing marries your sales process to the customers’ buying decision processes through the use of specific hyperlinks that create and sustain persuasive momentum.”

Whether you have an existing website or you’re in the market for a new one, it’s imperative that your site is built or optimized by an architect, rather than a technical programmer or graphic designer. Any web firm can give you a well-coded and nicely-designed website; very few know how to architect your site for optimal results.

Image Credit: ncst1

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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.