Read the full article at The Results People blog.

Read the full article at The Results People blog.

Read the summary now on our new blog.

Except for one thing. The thank you page.

Seems pretty obvious, right? Lots of marketers overlook it – you’ve already made the sale (or download, or whatever), and in this age of data-driven marketing, it seems like traffic and conversions are all anyone (read: your boss) cares about. But remember all those things you learned in marketing school: it’s cheaper to keep existing customers than get new ones, the best time to upsell is at purchase… These people already trust you with their email address, credit card, and so on. Take advantage of that and keep them engaged!

Using the thank you page to your advantage.

You have a few options for what you could put on the thank you page, and what you choose will depend on your business goals and sales model.

Before we get to the optional stuff, your thank you page should always include:

• Something that says “thank you”.
• Transaction details – confirmation number, shipping tracking, etc.
• Any next steps that they need to take for their transaction – they need to print their receipt, etc.
• Clear information about what’s going to happen next – they’ll get a receipt by email, etc.

Now for the fun stuff. To re-engage this customer, you could:

• Provide resources related to the one they’ve just downloaded (another white paper, a related case study, a product brochure, etc.).
• Cross-sell other products related to the one they’ve just purchased (a la Amazon).
• Give them a coupon or other incentive for their next purchase.
• Give them an opportunity to create an account (if you let them go through the conversion process as a “guest”).
• Offer other ways to engage with your company (newsletter signup, contact information).
• Encourage social sharing (“Tell your friends/colleagues about this deal/white paper”) or social engagement with your company (“Like us on Facebook, Follow us on Twitter”).
• Get feedback with a customer satisfaction survey.
• Display some highly-targeted ads for other products or partner companies.

How do you thank your customers?

What are you doing on your thank you pages to keep your customers engaged? Do you have any favourites from other companies that you’d like to share? Tell us below!

This was the first time I had ever heard this, but it immediately struck a chord. Why can’t we argue with Google? Why do we just accept its answers? How do we know they’re right? Of course, Google doesn’t really create an answer, it connect us with answers. But more and more, Google is disintermediating the source of the answer. For many searches, we never go beyond the search results page. We accept the answer as presented by Google, without ever questioning the rationale behind the answer.

Why is arguing important? What could we gain from arguing with Google? Let me give you one example of why it’s good to argue.

There is no problem…

The Summit featured recorded video clips from famed pundits, including Malcolm Gladwell. Gladwell told us that the purpose of the Summit – to ponder how we might reinvent search – was misguided. “Can we build a better Google or Bing? Yeah, sure we can. But it solves a problem that’s not really a problem.” In Gladwell’s view, we already have access to all the information we need.

I diasagree vehemently with Gladwell. This same logic could be applied to any avenue of human endeavor and would stop all progress and innovation in its tracks. Could a horse and covered wagon transport us across the country? Yeah, sure it could. But I’d rather take a plane, thank you.  And someday I hope there’s an even faster way. Gladwell’s off the cuff comment shocked the audience. How could he provide an answer so obviously lacking in informed context?  The structure of his argument had holes so big we could have poked the Golden Gate Bridge through them.

Say What Malcolm?

If Gladwell believes that a valid answer to every question is Wikipedia, perhaps his argument holds water. But he is ignoring the fundamental precepts of information foraging and retrieval. We need to surface the best information by taking the shortest possible path to it. Everyone who knows anything about search agrees with that, and we also agree that we’re not there yet. Not by a long shot.

But going beyond this, there’s the broader question – is the current use case of search the one we need going forward? Right now, search is about the retrieval of relevant information. Let’s leave aside the question about whether it’s successful at doing that. But is simple retrieval of information (often false information) enough anymore? As Esther Dyson pointed out, perhaps “search” isn’t even the verb we should be using now. Is “solving” or “fulfilling” is a better description of what we need? Dyson remarked, “We use the internet to connect to and affect the world around us.” And if that’s the use case, search falls far short of our expectations.

But I couldn’t argue with Gladwell, because he wasn’t in the room and I couldn’t uncover the rational behind his pithy answer. He was a bit like Google; he dropped his wisdom from on high and was gone.

The Importance of Arguing

We argue because it knocks down intellectual straw men. It allows us to test and prod the logic that lies behind opinions. It challenges beliefs, which tend to keep us barricaded from the rest of world. If those beliefs are deeply held, they may be difficult (or impossible) to dislodge, but if they’re never questioned, minds will never change and we’ll all barrel down those pre-laid tracks to a much too predictable future.

I agree with Barthelet. We should be able to argue with online information. We should be able to see the path taken to answers. We should be able to challenge sources. It’s more appropriate in some instances than others, and it’s an option we may not take advantage of very often, but it should be open to us.

Originally published in Mediapost’s Search Insider Feb 3, 2011

Red shirt, no real purpose = death.

Granted, in Star Trek, including an alien battle makes the episode more exciting. But the story line is developed by the main characters, not that ensign you see for 6 seconds before he gets killed. The aliens didn’t have time to deal with insignificant, pointless Away Team members.

Think about sinking resources and screen real estate into a part of your site that’s got no real purpose. Your visitors don’t need distractions like that flashy red button over there that doesn’t have any impact on the story you’re trying to tell.

Data and human emotions just do not mesh.

Data always struggled trying to understand human emotions. Even with an emotion chip, he still couldn’t quite grasp them properly.

Analytics are great – they tell you what visitors did on your site, how long they did it for, where they came from, where they went, how much money they spent… but they don’t tell you why visitors did something. There is no substitute (emotion chip, etc.) for true human emotions. You need to talk to real people to find out what they’re experiencing on your site.

I’m a doctor, Jim, not a…

Poor Bones. Kirk just kept throwing stuff at him that he wasn’t familiar with. You need to take the time to understand your visitors, so that you’re presenting them with information and tasks that they can understand and complete without getting frustrated with you.

Our neural pathways have become accustomed to your sensory input patterns.

Ok, I’m taking this one out of context a bit (in case you’re wondering, this is Riker commenting on the crew’s friendship with Data), but the point here is that there are lots of tools out there now that let you monitor one specific visitor’s behaviors, and then present them with content that is uniquely applicable to them. By building up that database of their inputs, you can effectively target your message to them.

In that particular moment, I was reconfiguring the warp field parameters, analyzing the collected works of Charles Dickens, calculating the maximum pressure I could safely apply to your lips, considering a new food supplement for Spot…

Data was extremely good at multitasking, even when “romantically” engaged with Jenna. Understanding what else is going on while your visitors are engaged with you through ethnography or similar types of research can give you an idea of how much attention visitors are really giving to you.

Believing oneself to be perfect is often the sign of a delusional mind.

No matter what you think, there is always room for improvement. Getting into A/B and multivariate testing is pretty easy these days, so I suggest you give it a try. Take all of the work you’ve now done to understand your visitors and use it to start tweaking your designs to optimize conversions. If you need some ideas on what to test or how to optimize parts of your site, check out user experience best practices, form best practices, landing page testing ideas, call to action best practices, and some of our other online experience articles.

Act, and you shall have dinner; wait, and you shall be dinner.

This Klingon proverb summarizes the current digital marketing landscape pretty well. It’s not enough to throw up any old website any more – you have to understand your customers and what their needs and pains are, and act on giving them what they need to solve their problems. And you have to be constantly monitoring this and adapting to their changing needs. Sit still, and you risk giving up business to your competitors who aren’t sitting still.

Make it so.

So get out there, boldly go where none of your competitors have gone before, and start getting to know your buyer better. It’ll pay off.

Engage.

Still not sure what you should to understand your buyers or to optimize your website? We can help.