Agenda Anticipation™
Key to a high website conversion rate
Given well-targeted website traffic, the key to a high conversion rate (converting visitors to buyers) is simple: your content must be relevant to your visotor's needs.
Q: Where do most websites go wrong?
A: Most websites are constructed as monuments to their owners' egos (and we mean that in a good way). A great deal of thought (and expense) has gone into impressing the visitor. But little or no thought has really been given to the visitor's actual needs.
Q: Why has so little thought been given to the visitor's needs?
A1: It is assumed that the visitor's need is simply to be persuaded to buy a product or service.
A2: It is assumed that any needs more nuanced than that are either irrelevant or undiscernable among the vast sea of different visitors.
To understand a visitor's real needs you have to be clear about
what brings a given individual to your web site in the first place. Your visitor is not randomly surfing, she is on a quest. She needs something, and she has reason to think she may find it on your site.
The reason your visitor hopes you are what she's looking for is because she has a problem to solve. She hopes you will be the solution that brings pleasure, power and gratification where there was lack, pain and need.
To understand the kind of pleasure, power and gratification your visitor is hoping for, consider two conversations you've probably had.
Two Conversations
In your first conversation, your companion's attitude is that of self-aggrandizement. It's tastefully done, and this person's achievements really are impressive, but you would like some attention too. It becomes tiring always being the appreciative audience.
In your second conversation it's all about you. Your companion is the perfect listener. He or she hangs on your every word and facilitates you in brilliantly expressing yourself and getting everything you need.
Web site with low conversion rate = Visitor as audience
Most web sites are (at best) like the tastefully impressive yet ungratifying conversation with the self-aggrandizer. They may posture and strut with real class, yet they fail to deliver what their visitors really want and need. The visitor might be impressed enough to think "cool graphics!" yet she leaves because she fails to detect relevance to her needs.
Web site with high conversion rate = Visitor as center of attention
Motive-Directed Design™ aims to make your visitor's experience on your web site feel like the second conversation.
You want your visitors to get the immediate sense that it's all about them. It's all about meeting their needs. An effective web site makes it easy, fun, and above all gratifying for visitors to carry out the agendas they arrived with.
Next: The key to helping visitors carry out their agendas is Relevance Routing™
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