Andrew Chak was 1 van de keynote sprekers op het design for conversion congres afgelopen maand. Op webanalisten.nl verscheen reeds een verslag van zijn keynote inclusief de slides. De video mogen we helaas niet plaatsen vanwege het feit dat er veel usability onderzoeks beelden zijn getoond van mensen die nooit toestemming hebben gegeven voor bredere publicatie van hun deelname aan zo’n onderzoek. Wat ik nog wel van Andrew heb is het feit dat hij antwoord heeft gegeven op een aantal conversie optimalisatie / persuasion marketing vragen zoals deze ook eerder al zijn beantwoord door Steve Jackson:

• What are the lessons to be taken for the online field from old fashion 1 on 1 (sales) talks?
  The primary lesson is that whether you´re online or offline, you´re still having some sort of dialog with a person. In the offline world, the quality of the discussion with a salesperson is based on how relevant the discussion is to the individual´s needs. One aspect of a salesperson´s job is to contextualize what he/she has to sell in terms of the user´s individual needs. The difference with online is that the website needs to anticipate the user´s potential needs and provide ways for the user to self-discover the answers they need in order to move forward with a transaction.
• With all the optimizing and persuasive marketing techniques: wouldn´t the website visitor become blind for these techniques?
  Although it is arguable for users to become blind to specific tactics, what won´t change is the fact that people pay attention to things that are relevant or interesting to them. For example, if you reiterate how a given product is the ´best widget ever´, it is quite conceivable that this message would get lost amongst all the other products that make the same claim. But if you offer an interesting testimonial or demonstration that relates to the end user and addresses their needs, then that is something that always has the potential to capture someone´s atttention.
• What will make you more money? Excellent profile based offering to returning visitors or excellent offers based on session behavior?
  The correct answer here is ´it depends´. It depends on the type of product that you have. Is it something where you buy the same thing over and over again and they aren´t heavily considered purchases? Or is it something that you need really think through before purchasing? However, if forced to choose between the two, I would lean a bit towards session behavior as what a user is interested at a given point in time can change from moment to moment and it´s important to respond contextually to what users are doing in order to move them forward to conversion.
• How could you use all the conversational online information about your product or niche to improve your users conversion?
  The key component here is identifying what people are talking about and what their top questions or concerns are. These discussion points should become the initial focus points of your website. By integrating these discussion points, you can help to ensure that your website is relevant to your target users. I´ve even worked with some marketers who would base the text of their banner ad campaigns based on what is discussed in online forums – this helps to create campaigns that have a greater resonance with end users as it is based directly on their own words.
• Where does delivering a good user (web) experience stops and will you have to focus on converting the visitor?
  Hopefully, what we aim to do is to create a good web experience such that the user would want to convert. The web is ulitimately a self-serve medium and it´s up to the user to decide whether or not they wish to click to the next step (outside of involuntary techniques such as phishing and unsolicited pop-ups and the like). Our job as user experience designers is to provide what the users need in order for them to have the confidence to make a decision to transact. At the beginning of the conversion cycle, we need to help users to inform themselves such that they can make a decision. When users are ready to transact, our job is then to remove the barriers that may prevent them from clicking that submit button.