Hal Stephenson | CategoryCode

CRO Tips Part 3: Don’t Be Afraid to Show a Related Face or Emotion Behind the Company

Posted by Hal Stephenson on May 1st, 2012

The Problem

I often see clients who have perfected their sales pitch when discussing it one-on-one. They can dazzle, impress and have you begging to buy their product. Their terrific sales people, but their expertise is lost online. Some may argue this may be the difference between sales and marketing, but I believe it’s a message being lost in translation across two mediums.

Check out our post on Face to Face Marketing.

It’s true, a conversation on a website is much more one sided than a conversation in person. When planning websites, clients will focus on developing their message, and sales points, but don’t take into consideration of showing the face behind their company. The one-on-one personal contact is lost. Sales points and persuasion mean nothing when I’m looking, at best, a smiling stock photo that people have seen 1000 times prior.

Finding a Solution

How do you combat this problem and display who you are to your audience? It’s difficult to create that connection online the same way you can in person. There are several in the box methods of using graphic design to cheaply integrate a human element, but they typically lack in performance.

The first is by adding features such as twitter feeds, and requests to “like a company on facebook”, but users are usually bombarded with these messages on a daily basis that they’re often ignored.
Second is posting staff photo or adding a message from the president to a site. This seems to be obvious solution, however users usually respond with “who’s the suit, and why should I care to read what he’s saying”.
Third, I’ve seen an implementation of live chat features which can create an instant conversation, but once again relies on the user to be curious enough to ask questions.

A Great Example

The campaign created by DDB Canada for Knorr is a perfect example of how a company created a character that we can all appeal too. Watch the video below to learn about the campaign:

Although many small clients may not have the budgets for large campaigns as Knorr, it’s a perfect example of how they created an emotional connection, something unique rather than a simple “Like Us on Facebook” button.

From a graphic design standpoint, you may be thinking that these elements should be handled by a marketing department, and you may only have as much freedom as deciding which photos to use. But as creative types, don’t be afraid to push the envelope.

For small brick and mortar businesses, don’t be afraid to use that as a launching point. Simple ideas such as changing a call to action to “Let’s us buy you a coffee and talk about engagement” or “Talk to Richard about your indoor plumbing” might just open the door to dialogue in a 1 on 1 meeting. Taking advantage of videos may be a great way to introduce a client to your company and help establish credibility and trust.

How We’ve Achieved Success

At CategoryCode, we ran a similar test for and Edmonton-based real estate team – Robert F. McLeod Realty. Their existing landing page had no images of faces, or even who Robert McLeod was. To make matters worse, the images on the page were facing away from the users or headline.

The owner of the company – Robert McLeod, was the brand. We needed to showcase this, establish a connection with users, similar to the one he’d create in person.

With a few images and graphic design tweaks we were able to develop a new landing page that better showcased the company and most of all who Robert McLeod was.

The Result

The results were a grand slam for conversions. Without any copy changes, we were able to produce a 304% increase in quality leads.

If you are interested in learning more about what we did for the Robert F. McLeod Realty Team, please view our Case Study.

CRO Tips Part 2: 5 Ways to Gain Control of Your Eye path

Posted by Hal Stephenson on March 8th, 2012

Most graphic designers already have a working knowledge on how to control an eye path. It’s taught as foundational principle in many design schools. One problem however is that there are several schools of thought on organizing the eye path. I’ve read about some experts who think the best approach is to keep your eye path as straight as possible. Others tend to think that having a ‘z’ eye path (similar to how we read) is the more natural and eye friendly approach.

From my experience with graphic design optimization, I find that keeping it in a simple straight line is works, however it’s not always the best. An eyepath can be controlled using several elements, and if you focus intensity on an item, the eye will be drawn towards it. It’s all a matter of understanding your eye path and using elements to control it.

How to analyze your existing eye path

To begin optimizing a page’s eye path, treat the existing page as a subconscious map. Try replacing your copy with lorem ipsum. Without having to think or search, you should successfully be able to navigate through the page, without missing any key details or sections. Headlines, column headings, lists and even info graphics should be able to explain why a user should commit their time on the site or pay attention to a section of content. If you don’t see important selling points, you should re-evaluate your page.

5 Ways to gain control of your eye path

To gain control of your eye path, it’s key to understand the following 5 key principles to draw attention.

Size

In relation to other elements on the page, larger items dominate the eyepath compared to smaller items.

Color & Contrast

Increasing the amount of contrast of an element can raise the attention brought to that element.

Shape

Adjusting the shape of an object or a section can bring attention.

Position in relation to whitespace

By isolating an element or using whitespace you can transform it into a focal point.

Motion/Video

Adding motion is one the strongest way to grab your user’s attention. This can be done by incorporating a YouTube video, or possibly using jquery to building rotating images.

CRO Tips Part 1: Don’t over clutter the area Above the Fold

Posted by Hal Stephenson on February 6th, 2012

Graphic designers often have a bad reputation when it comes to conversions. One of my favourite quotes to demonstrate this point is from Tim Ash. Tim claims one of the easiest ways to improve conversions is to “Shoot your graphic designer in the head”.

As a graphic designer, this quote is the reason I lock my door at night. But as a web marketer, I completely understand this frustration. Graphic designers tend to consider themselves as creative, and tend to go overboard to make their work standout, and reflect who their personality. Plus, it’s more entertaining than just “production work” .

As a result, I’ve created a list of graphic design rules for conversions that I will be featuring. I will be posting them one at a time to give you time to adjust your page, and test out these rules one at a time to get a result.

It’s important to remember that like every other graphic design rule, take it with a grain of salt. Websites are delicate, and although these rules may work for some elements, it may conflict with others or may mess what’s working on your page right now. Keep in mind that you should always split test any changes to your site and that you’re only limited by your imagination.

Part 1: Don’t over clutter the area Above the Fold

As a graphic designer, we all have horror stories of bad clients. My horror story has to deal with a stubborn client who wanted to keep “everything above the fold”.

This included:

A money-back guarantee
Free shipping notice
Headline
Unique sales proposition
Video
5 selling points
Savings calculator
Contact form
Warranty information
Incentive to buy
Navigation bar
and a live chat button

Despite my attempts to rationalize with the client, the amount of information they wanted above the fold started a competition for eye traffic. Some users saw the savings calculator, while others saw the video, but none grasped all the elements, or the complete story of the company. Even worse, the headline had to be shrunk so small, that nobody saw the unique value proposition.

Consider your above the fold as a 5 second movie trailer to your company. On a good landing page, your above the fold should clearly answer three things within 5 seconds:

“where am I”
“what can I do here”
and “why should I do it?”

2 of these points (where am I, and why should I do) can be answered within a strong headline that states the value proposition. For Example “With over 32,000 international moves a year, XYZ moving company is your destination for large scale moves. Who being XYZ moving, and why, because of their experience.

The 3rd third point (what can I do here) I typically place on a call to action above the fold, as it typically solves what you can do on the site, and typically sums up the metric of a conversion. “Click here to book your move” or “Click here to download your ebook” as an example.

Summary

The website nightmare I faced could have been easily fixed by establishing an eyepath that encouraged the user down the page, where the rest of the information could have been placed. Although having a promising product, sadly the company’s online sales were less than expected.

Silent Facebook Tagging – Social Media’s version of Punch the Monkey?

Posted by Hal Stephenson on January 2nd, 2012

Recently, there has been a rising trend in social media called silent tagging. Silent tagging, is a quick and cheap method of increasing the number of Facebook “likes” on a business page.

The process involves joining a group with your personal Facebook profile, which hosts “tagging sessions” or “tagging Parties”. When a session starts, users post their business’ page link in a reply thread to a comment. If you post your business, you are expected to like the other businesses, on that page, and vice versa. Typically users of these parties will gain 20-30 new fans on Facebook.

It may sound promising method to grow your business, but don’t be fooled. This type of gimmick is known as incentivised traffic, and it’s been plaguing the internet for ages.

Companies that provide incentivised traffic typically lie to internet users to entice them to click a link. It is very reminiscent of the old “punch the monkey” ads. In the same way these ads invited consumers to “click to win a prize”; silent tagging is enticing users to like a Facebook page for their own benefit, other than to appreciate the company.

Incentivised traffic is highly frowned upon as it leads to huge drops in conversion rates.

Unless your goal is to gain a bunch of not purchasing Facebook ‘leaches’ (remember you are liking their page as well), users of silent tagging are a perfect example of measuring for the wrong metrics. Users think they are gaining fans of their products, when really they are lying and deceiving their potential buyers.

Facebook has a ton of metrics to measure your social media growth. If you don’t notice an increase in responses to your comments and updates as your fan base grows, you’re most likely targeting the wrong groups.

If you want success in your social media marketing, it all boils down to integrity. Let your product speak for itself, and be transparent about it. Talk about what makes your company special, and say something worth a response. If you need a fanbase to display that message, start a targeted campaign to get people into your group. Give away something small and valuable as a result of liking a page. Start a contest. The value of your company should not stem from a gimmick or by lying to your customers.

Was Coke’s White Can a Viral Marketing Campaign?

Posted by Hal Stephenson on December 28th, 2011

Photograph by Jenna Wakani

If you were not already aware, the goal of Coke’s most recent promotional campaign is to raise awareness and funds for polar bears and their Arctic habitat. Because of this, Coke has turned its iconic cans from Red to White. While being unique, clever, it’s caused a quite a bit a grief among avid coke fans.

“Coke tastes different inside white cans!” Reads one tweet, and it’s not alone. Thousands of tweets and Facebook updates were recorded talking about the people’s displeasure for their iconic beverage.

One couple posted a video on YouTube in which the wife claims to be able to recognize whether Coke is in a white or red can during a blindfolded taste test. “This is the funky one!” the wife shouts after drinking out of a white can. ‘

While some claims seem to have no scientific backing, other complaints are much more legitimate. Diet Coke is typically sold in white cans, and when coke drinkers found white cans inside the red coke box they instinctively assumed they were involved in some sort of packaging error.

According to Scott Williamson, A spokesman for Coca-Cola, “The white can resonated with us because it was bold, attention-grabbing and reinforced the campaign theme. Coke’s marketing executives wanted a disruptive campaign to get consumers attention.”If Coke was trying to get people’s attention, they succeeded. However, did they see the result the coming?


“Arctic” White Can	Diet Coke Can	Replacement Design

As a web marketer, I think Coke may have hit a social media homerun. It got people talking about its product, the number one key to social media. It may not have been the positive response coke was looking for, but it was still a minor change, cost effective change that a huge measurable impact on their social media status.Take a step and think how was something so minor, like inverting the color of the can, became so impactful to the consumer that they mistook it for a whole other product all together? If it was a smaller brand, would anyone have noticed an inverting of the colors?

Despite all this free press, Coca-Cola announced last week that it is pulling the white cans earlier than planned and replacing it with another design that feature the traditional red-coloured background. It may be speculation, but I think Coke had this planned all along. It seems suspicious to me that they already had another can designed. It also seems fishy that, Coke knowing the subliminal power of it’s famous red branding, would change its classic branding an expect a positive feedback.The color of the can has a big psychological impact of your drinking experience.

It reminds me of a study I read inside the Buyology, Martin Lindstrom. Lindstrom describes a Neuromarketing experiment where smokers were placed inside an MRI machine and shown several images. Some of these images included cigarette packages, bright red Ferraris, Red Cars, and mechanics wearing signature red jumpsuits. The study showed that when smokers were exposed to the non-explicit images (For example: the red Ferraris) there was activity in the craving regions of their brains.

What does this have to do with coke? 2 Things:

Coke contains a highly addictive substance, Caffeine.
Coke uses a similar bright red color.

I don’t believe it’s too much of a stretch to say that if I were to offer you a drink in a red can, the brain will react similar to smokers seeing red Ferraris. The craving area of your mind would see activity, and you’ll expect the bubbles and fizz that’s associated with coke for years.I can’t speak for Coke, but I have a feeling they knew exactly what was coming when they changed their Cans, and they did so as a result to gain free press over it.