Make things up to truly engage your online visitors

10th May 2012

Once upon a time there was a website visitor who started reading a blog post about making things up. The reader sat in his office surround by books and files gripped by the words scrolling past his eyes. Surely, it could not be true, he thought. The blog post was telling him not to tell the truth on his own website. The website visitor sat their stunned, staring at the screen with his mouth wide open in amazement. How on earth could it be worthwhile making things up instead of telling people the truth, he thought.

Reading engages people

You might be thinking the same as our blog reader – surely I can’t be advising you to make things up on your website. But I am. Honest…!

New research shows that when people read fiction they become much more emotionally engaged with the subject. The researchers used fictional accounts of voters and gave them to people who were due to vote in elections. The people who read stories where the main character was very similar to them actually voted in higher numbers than people who read stories where the characters were remote. In other words, when people read fiction with which they identified it changed their behaviour.

Story telling is an essential component in all communication. Indeed, news media call everything they do “stories” and when you watch TV shows like X-Factor you get the story behind each contestant, which often looks at their triumph over adversity. And what do the judges do? Well they ensure there is conflict – an essential component of a good story. The show may parade itself as a talent contest, but in reality it is a series of stories – and that’s central to its success.

This new research adds to the massive amount of material available which shows how fundamental the concept of story is to communication. It suggests now that by using stories you can change behaviour. If you want your website visitors to do certain things, then telling them fictional stories about what other people have done could help. Of course your stories must be realistic and you need to identify the fact that they are made up (otherwise you’ll generate mistrust once you are found to be lying). But if you use stories then you can increase engagement and produce behavioural changes in your website visitors.

So, for example, imagine you are a business consultant offering management advice. A set of fictional tales about managers in certain situations could well help engage people. Similarly, what if you are an SEO company? You could produce a set of short stories about people desperately trying to get better placings on search engines. Think of them as case histories you make up. Just as long as you make it clear that these are fiction, you can engage your readers and make it likely that they change their behaviour – such as taking that trial of your SEO software or booking an appointment with your management consultancy.

Stories are important, whether fiction or fact, but too few websites use the concept of story telling – much to their detriment.

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Social businesses make more money

9th May 2012

Forgive me, but every time I see a blog post like this one saying that social media helps your business I let out a very loud “OMG”. Almost everywhere you look online these days there is some debate about whether or not social media can actually help your business. Each week there are new tools to help you measure the return on investment of being social. And there are all sorts of experts helping you understand how being social can boost your sales.

The reason for my amazement is that this all appears to be a surprise to people. It’s as though there has been some kind of revolutionary awakening with business leaders going “Goodness me, being social and actually talking to our customers helps? We must try some of that.” Let’s get the facts straight: business has ALWAYS been social. It has always been about PEOPLE connecting with other people. Period. That’s business. Social media is NOT NEW. Indeed, those of us old enough to recall the late-1970s mainframe driven technology revolution will remember “bulletin boards” where business people used to chat online with their suppliers and customers. That was social media – 35 years ago…!

Business is social

And when the Encyclopedia Britannica relied on door-to-door sales staff who would come knocking on your door of an evening and get your Dad to buy a set of books and a lovely shelf to put them on, guess what – that salesman was being social. Gosh, your Dad even invited him in and gave him a cup of tea. And every Friday after school I used to rush home because that’s when the United Friendly Insurance Man came to call and he always had a tube of Fruitgums for me. He was social.

Every business activity is social. Every business activity involves people talking with other people. Shop keepers talk to their customers, suppliers make friends with their customers and people who buy things go back to certain places because the “people there are friendly”. Social activity is what makes business survive. So why are so many business owners surprised that online social tools can help their business?

Indeed, there is reticence amongst many business leaders to engage in online social activity. They want “proof” it works, it seems – which kind of suggests they haven’t yet “got” that their business IS social. Business leaders also are frightened that being social online will expose them to all sorts of mayhem and problems.

However, new research confirms – yet again – that the fears are ungrounded and the successes are there for the taking.

According to a study from Pulse Point Group, businesses that are socially engaged are earning up to 7% more than similar businesses which avoid online social technologies. This merely adds to previous studies which show that the companies which do the most social media have increased their profits and also have raised their share prices. In other words being social – whether that’s online or offline – increases your bottom line and raises the value of your business.

The United Friendly insurance man who came to my house every Friday afternoon realised that. It seems he was way ahead of many of today’s business leaders who are still searching for “evidence” that being social is going to help their business. OMG.

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Switch off email for a happier life

8th May 2012

Bing-bong – here comes another email. Most people have constant reminders that email has arrived. Whether it is the familiar bing-bing sound, the little pop-up alerts at the bottom of your computer screen, or buzzes on your smartphone, email is omnipresent. Most people it seems also keep their email window open all day, whether in a separate application or a tab in their browser if they use webmail services like Gmail. But new research confirms earlier studies which suggest this could be harmful to your health.

You have new mail

Being constantly interrupted by email is stressful because you feel a lack of control. Being unable to control our own life is a significant trigger for stress. And when you are stressed you produce hormones which long-term have a negative impact on your body, ultimately causing organ damage if they are present in excess for any length of time.

New research now adds to this knowledge by showing that when you have email “always on” you tend to multi-task much more, with people switching activities from work to email around 37 times an hour if they have an email window constantly open. Such people are in a state of “high alert” as a result and these new findings show that their heart rates are constantly higher too. Constant, fast heart rates are not good for you – they are linked to heart damage.

Furthermore, the constant switching between windows is actually less productive. Your brain cannot accommodate the constant change in focus as easily as we might think. As a result, we have to keep going back to emails to do things again – doubling up on work and ultimately taking longer to do things. Keeping an email window constantly open actually reduces productivity.

The new research also undertook an interesting piece of analysis. The researchers gave people an “email holiday” where they did not look at emails for five days. These individuals had heart rates which were returned to normal and reported that they were much happier. Their stress levels were much lower.

Not only that, but when people were given an email holiday they became MORE productive being able to focus more on their real work.

Having “always on” email is an illusion. You think you are more productive, when in fact you are less efficient and effective. Not only that, you are more stressed and doing your body harm.

Here’s what to do to INCREASE productivity and REDUCE STRESS:

  1. Only open your email program when YOU want to send or answer emails
  2. Switch off all alerts to new incoming emails
  3. Set aside times of the day when you will deal with emails – a couple of times a day is enough
  4. Ensure you have an email processing system in place. Emails will fall into one of three categories: for deletion, for immediate answering, for answering later.
  5. Have an email filing system- your inbox should ALWAYS BE EMPTY once you have completed your email activities

Ultimately your aim should be for you to control email, not the other way around. Your health depends on that.

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Point people to the right place on your web page

7th May 2012

Looking down

Newspaper and magazine designers have known about this “trick” for years, yet websites often do not use it. The “trick” is to force your readers to certain parts of a page by using directional movement in pictures. So, when you look at the front page of a newspaper there will often be implied movement in the picture – the eyes of the person pictured looking towards the main headline, making you read it. Then there may be another image which effectively points towards the bottom right corner of the page, helping you want to turn the page. Most of the time, magazine and newspaper designers will choose images and place them on the page to help direct you to read certain things.

Online, however, many web pages have images which – for instance – “look out” to the side, making readers much less interested in what’s on offer. Those designers who have realised you can make people visit certain parts of the page appear to have chosen the use of arrows to do the job. Indeed, you can buy all sorts of “internet marketing graphics” in order help you have the correct website “furniture”. These include arrows pointing to the “buy now” button and boxes with pointed sides leading your readers in a certain direction.

But new research shows that these are much less useful than we might think. Researchers compared the use of arrows with pointed fingers and eyes looking in a certain direction. And, you guessed it, the arrows were much less powerful in forcing people to go in a particular direction than a pointed finger or eyes looking in a particular way.

This suggests that if your website uses arrows to signal where the “buy now” button is, or that your boxes have directional signs in them, you’re getting less success than if you use fingers and eyes.

It is a further signal to website owners that the more you “humanise” your website, the more engagement you get. Pictures of people are always more interesting to your visitors than pictures of things.

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Websites should appeal to individuals – i.e YOU…!

2nd May 2012

Websites must be tailor made

When you look at a web page you decide whether or not to stick around in the blink of an eye. Various research studies put the time taken for us to decide whether or not we like a web page as between 0.2 seconds and 0.56 seconds. That might seem all too rapid to make the decision, but you’d be amazed at what you can achieve within 0.2 seconds.

For instance, that’s the difference between Usain Bolt and the runners who don’t even get a medal, in spite of being amongst the fastest in the world. Time gaps of 0.2 seconds make the difference between winning or losing a Formula One race – so reactions faster than that are needed by the drivers. And a gap of 0.2 seconds means the difference between crashing into another car on the motorway or escaping by 20 feet, if you are travelling at the speed limit. Quite a lot can happen in one fifth of a second. Indeed, you can even work out the emotional state of the people around you all within that blink of your eye.

Your brain is capable of processing a lot of information in that short amount of time. You can, for instance read the page headline and see if there are the keywords you were looking for. You can also detect whether or not the site is easy to navigate and you can check out the images to see if the site is your kind of thing. Plus you make a judgement as to whether or not the site is packed with distracting adverts, whether it is likely to be informative and whether or not it is well put together. All in the blink of an eye.

What your website visitors want to know in that 0.2 seconds is the answer to this question: “Is this web page for me?” or “Is this exactly what I am looking for?”.

Now, new research complicates the picture still further. Psychologists in Canada have demonstrated that in order for us to be persuaded by any information the content needs to match our personality type. So not only do your web pages need to show they are exactly what people are after, you also need to match the content to the personality types of the visitors you are targeting.

In the past, before the Internet, this is what you actually did with all your content – such as your company brochures. You spent time chatting to potential clients and then pointing them to the relevant page in the brochure. If you detected they were not the “detail” kind of personality, but more “gut instinct”, you might even say to them “don’t bother reading this brochure, I’ll get one of our existing customers to give you a call and let you know what they think about us”. In other words, in the “olden days”, sales people questioned their targets and prospects, interviewed them and generally worked out the best way to respond. They did not have a “one size, fits all” approach.

But now, on the Internet, that’s exactly what most businesses do, which is why it is not as successful as it might be. Sales messages are getting lost online because unlike the past, they are not tailored enough. This new research is a reminder that effective selling takes place when it matches the target’s precise requirements and delivers it according to their personality.

Online it is tough because unlike real world sales interviews you don’t have 15 minutes, merely 0.2 seconds. And that means you simply must tailor your web pages to specific targets and match the personality types of these people. In other words, one size fits all web pages are relatively useless; web pages for each individual customer are the way to go, if we could only have an app that achieved that.

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