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Kenny and I were approaching times square when a fashionably dressed man walked up to us and asked "you guys wanna see a show?" Looking down he had a notebook that said Comedy Central. Kenny immediately reacted to the prospect of seeing John Stewart or Stephen Colbert live with immediate excitement! Street salesman has us hooked, now how does he finish the sale? In the real world the tactics are simple:

  • Find interest
  • Make it emotional
  • Make it time sensitive

Much of the same tactics apply for online with a few additional tricks

The more you know

Try to capture as much information about your customer, and custom tailor their web browsing experience. They are much more likely to convert if you truly know them and help them find the product they need. The more information you have about that specific customer, the more likely you are to present them with the item they want to purchase

Create Goals

It's important to create a few conversion goals at this point. For e-commerce this is straightforward: sales. Usually centered around a particular campaign. But it may be different for your industry or product.

Usually it breaks Down into the following three types:

  • Sales
  • Interaction
  • Traffic

Now onto the science!

Now that you know what your goals are you can craft a campaign that targets them, but it’s not over yet! it’s time to analyze that user all the way through their experience on your website. You can do this by isolating a small sample of converting users and look for trending patters. Then look at the non-converting users and look for their patterns. Are these users similar to the other users, and need to be helped back on to the track of the converting users? Try adding related links or banners that drive those non-converting users back on the track the converting users are on. From here you can determine if there is a correlation. If not you might consider grouping those new users into a different demographic, and run different campaigns to them. Understanding you target customer, and offering sensitive products or services to them is a crucial way to increase conversions.

Guiding your users

Remember your website is the salesperson guiding your users through your content. And the goal of any salespersons should always be to help that client find what the are looking for!

 

Side note: The guy on the street was only selling comedy shows... Having Comedy Central written on his notebook was a tactic. Well done New York street salesman, you got us this time.