The factor that has the most impact on weather a visitor to your website buys or bounces is their individual level of motivation. Everyone has their own individual motivations for finding their way to your landing page or website and there can be literally millions of different levels and types of motivation that get some one to click and buy. For a refresher read the post on the 21 reasons why people buy. An understanding of your visitors motivation is vital to improving your conversion rates, which is why I recommend starting with your customer by creating user persona documents before you begin to design or write any copy. Understanding the exact motivation or combination of motivations from your visitors perspective is where the mouse meets the click. But selling online is more complex than just matching motivations; we are not really all a bunch of pavlovian dogs although we’re not far off. Different people prefer to buy in different ways and the key to better conversion rates is not a heavy-handed persuasion fist, it’s a combination of tools of which persuasiveness is only one.
The problem with most websites is that they start and stop with only one way to communicate to everyone. A mass media broadcast strategy in a one to one Internet world. That works on TV and in print but not on the Internet. On a website you can literally tap into the exact way your visitor prefers to buy rather than forcing everyone to buy the same way.
The key to tapping into this power is the humble little link. But before we get into that let’s first take a look at how to help different types of visitors buy. No matter what you sell online or who your potential buyers are, it all goes back to the human brain. Every human brain is wired the same way and therefore we all process information the same way. When in a buying or browsing mode, no matter what our individual motivations may be, we all fundamentally process information three basic ways. Visually, auditorally and kinesthetically. These are the different modalities of learning and processing information before we decide to buy.
Every individual usually prefers one of these modalities over the other. The visual modality person learns best by seeing. The visual cortex of the brain is larger than all of the other sensory cortexes of the brain put together. The auditorial modality person learns best by hearing. The kinesthetic modality person learns best by doing.
So how does this tie back into selling online, optimizing your conversion rate and the humble little link you ask? Well, remember that each modality is connected with the processing of information and processing of information is directly tied to how we choose and make purchases.
Visitors on your website move through the online space, from one page to another page by following text, images and links. Each modality is an indicator of how that particular person prefers to buy. Quite literally each modality is attracted to a mirror of itself. The visual person is attracted not only to images but to words that resonate with the visual. For example words like see, and look. The auditory person is more attracted to words that key in on the auditory senses like hear, listen. And the kinesthetic person is drawn to tactile words like feel.
These different modalities are keys to how each person prefers to be sold to. Remember websites don’t sell, they help people buy and if you can tap into how different types of people prefer to buy you can sell more online.
So let’s tie this back to the link now that you know what motivates the different types of modalities and what each prefers. You can apply this to increase your conversion rate by weaving in the different key trigger words for all three modality types into your sales copy and linking each to a different buying path, that is a different page and flow that is specifically designed to sell to that particular modality.
Because the prospects that visit your site don’t all fall into only one specific modality type you’ll need to apply your linking strategy to all three. By tapping into how each visitor’s brain is wired and allowing them to flow through your website at their own pace and through a path that they create for themselves through the links you’ve provided you’re helping them buy from you.
