Showing posts tagged sales

9 Direct Marketing ideas to create UX that sells

In 2005 I had the privilege of attending a three day workshop by the D.M.A. (Direct Marketing Association).  I recently dug up my notes for a project I’m working on and came across this great list I had put together based on that workshop.  The list is still applicable today as I design UX that sells:

  1. Multiple offers in one promotion equals lesser sales.
  2. Direct marketing leads the customer to take an action.  Advertising is solely for building brand awareness.
  3. Broad based media like TV, Radio and Print are best used to find new customers.
  4. 40/40/20 rule:  Direct marketing success depends on 40% on reaching the right audience, 40% on the offer or promotion and only 20% on the creative execution.
  5. Features are all about the product.  Benefits are all about the customer.  Benefits are more likely to sell the customer.
  6. The direct marketing industry is highly prone to mistakes.  Expect to make a lot of mistakes.
  7. Find out what products your customers want to buy and make those, rather then developing a product and then try to find a market for it.
  8. Average creative can sell a great offer.
  9. Testing equals what, research answers why.

One simple way to find your sales narrative

I’m in the middle of redesigning our homepage experience and thought I’d pass on this simple way to find your sales narrative.  I asked my product manager to sit down with me for about 45 minutes and talk through his typical experience at trade shows.  He’s been attending genealogy trade shows every couple of months for a number of years now.  Out of anyone at the company (currently) he has spent the most time selling our site to our target customers.

In  my interview with him I asked him to recount to me one of his most recent dialogues with a prospective customer.  He quickly started getting into the typical discussion he has with a potential customer and often indicated when the conversations would go one way or another depending on the unique needs of that individual.  I transcribed everything he said and now have a fantastic starter framework for the homepage site experience with some possible alternate messages and paths.

UX for retention vs. UX for acquisition

Last week’s post really got the gears in my head moving.  I’ve always thought of myself as a designer who gets business, but I really reached an epiphany this week on the topic.  To put it bluntly, when it comes to sales the principles of good usability go out the window and are trumped by the principles of sales.

Where good usability principles do fit though, are after you’ve got the user inside your application and you want them to stay.  Once you’ve got ‘em you want the design to get out of their way and let them do what they came to do.  When you’re trying to sell them though, you need to get in their way, which is to say your design needs to nudge them towards what you want them to do.

Good UX isn’t necessarily good selling

I was reminded this week that good UX doesn’t always equal good sales.  Operating from the idea that good usability is usability that decreases the cognitive, visual and physical loads on the user, this test showed that decreased loads actually decreased sales.

Path 1 was our old control path in this test.  Path 2 was a significantly decreased cognitive, visual and physical loads path.  The image below shows the nature of the test and the results.  Path 2 only had a conversion rate of 1.64% compared to the control path which had a conversion rate of 2.58%.