Amadesa

We all know the story of Dorothy and the yellow brick road… all she had to do was “follow, follow, follow, follow” right? Wrong. Dorothy ran into a lot of obstacles trying to get to the emerald city. That can be the case for users on your Web site. All they want to do is follow along and get the information they are seeking, but often times we as designers/marketers put obstacles in their way.

So how do we get our visitors to the emerald city of our site? How do we get them to do the thing we want them to do – and allow visitors to do what they came to do, without having to give them extra brains, heart and courage to do so? We have to get out of their way.

While Dorothy knew what she wanted, not all of your visitors may know exactly what they want – but they will have a reason for being on your site. Our Web sites should be a journey – one where visitors can experience all stages of the buy cycle from beginning to end. The key is that in order to get out of their way we need to offer each visitor what they want/need at each stage of their buying cycle. Think of how your sales people sell – they speak to what the prospect wants to hear based on where they are in the decision making process.

Visitors arriving to your site can be categorized into three different groups: Early, Middle and Late stage visitors.

• Early stage visitors may just want to look around the site and get familiar. They’re visitors who are “just browsing” your site.
• Middle stage visitors might want to download PDFs or ask a question, opt-in to a newsletter – engage in a way that they don’t have to give up a lot of information at the moment. They’re looking for a specific product or information.
• Whereas, late stage visitors are more willing to give up their contact information and make a decision / purchase. They are ready to checkout, or have completed a purchase.

Your site needs to get people to the right places at the right time. By understanding visitors’ needs at each stage you can then optimize your site based on where users are in the buy cycle.

• This may mean you need to speak to all three segments on one page and therefore you would need to segment your page to address each of their needs. You may need copy that addresses how you can help the visitor (early), how you can prove your value (middle), how can your visitor take action – now (late). An example of a page that speaks to visitors at all stages of the buy cycle is the B2B site www.convergys.com.
• More likely, you will have pages of your site that cater to different types of users. This usually requires a clear segmentation scheme, possibly even in your main navigation. You then allow visitors to self select based on their need or role for example. A few examples of sites that use segmentation schemes to speak to users at different stages are www.endless.com and www.ebags.com.
• If users end up on pages that don’t speak to them we need to make sure we link prospects to the right places based on their place in the buy cycle.

The best way to achieve results implementing these tactics is by continuously optimizing your site. You won’t know right out of the gate what your visitors want but if you pay attention to their behaviors you can learn what works for them and more importantly, what doesn’t.

With the challenge of identifying all types of users at different stages of the buy cycle Amadesa offers a solution of presenting users with the most personalized content – serving the right content, to the right people, at the right time. Through Behavioral Targeting we are able to remove the obstacles web designers/developers face of trying to choose the best design for all users we can lay down that yellow brick road for them.

Another approach to targeting users at the right place in the buy cycle is through Segmentation. Instead of trying to maximize your real estate (speaking to all users on one page) Segmentation allows you to show different versions to versions to specific people then identify what is the best page for each segment. Identify your user groups based on their stage in the buy cycle and target them based on their decision making stage.

The Point: Get Dorothy home. Listen to your users and continually optimize your site and be relevant for all your users.