Submit Now Designing Persuasive Web Sites

by Chak, Andrew

• ISBN13: 9780735711709
• ISBN10: 0735711704
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2002-09-20
• Publisher: New Riders

Summary

Usability is not enough. This book shows what it takes to design a site so browsers become buyers: the ultimate measurement of success for an e-commerce site. Designing Persuasive Web Sites: Submit Nowexamines how customers search, evaluate, and make decisions realistically-not using marketing guesstimates.This book focuses on changing the mindset from selling to customers to helping them buy. It begins by exploring how customers make decisions and how that integrates with the online experience. It presents tangible design ideas that can be instantly applied to sites to make them more effective. Real examples are used to provide insight and inspiration that can be directly applied to a multitude of sites. The book provides a simplified description of the essential process necessary for designing a site that gets visitors to click. It concludes with guidelines to for designing any transaction-oriented site.

Author Biography

Andrew Chak is a user-experience design consultant

Table of Contents

Preface	p. xvii
Introduction	p. 1
Getting Users to Click	p. 12
The Consumer Decision Cycle	p. 13
Satisfied	p. 14
Recognizing a Need	p. 14
Searching for Information	p. 15
Evaluating Options	p. 16
Deciding to Purchase	p. 16
Two Fundamental Motivators	p. 17
The Six Elements of Influence	p. 19
Scarcity	p. 20
Commitment and Consistency	p. 22
Reciprocity	p. 23
Social Proof	p. 24
Authority	p. 26
Liking	p. 27
How the Web Is Different	p. 28
Users Can Go from Start to Finish	p. 28
Users Go Online with a Purpose	p. 29
The Internet Doesn't Have Any Salespeople	p. 29
Designing for Decisions	p. 29
Make Decisions Easy	p. 30
Simplify the Options	p. 31
Remove Decision Barriers	p. 32
Provide the Right Information at the Right Time	p. 33
Designing for Four Users	p. 34
Browsers	p. 35
Evaluators	p. 35
Transactors	p. 35
Customers	p. 35
Browsers	p. 36
Introduce Yourself	p. 40
Support First-Timers	p. 45
Provide a Tour	p. 46
Expose the Black Box	p. 47
Provide Multiple Paths	p. 49
Door Number One, Two, or Three?	p. 49
Being at Two (or More) Places at the Same Time	p. 51
Bottom-Up Pathing	p. 51
Search and Ye Might Find	p. 53
The Evil All-Text Search	p. 53
Rigging Your Search	p. 55
Can You Spell "Fritillaria"?	p. 55
Provide Specialized Searches	p. 56
Product Versus Information Searches	p. 59
Provide Easy Starting Points	p. 60
Popularity Counts	p. 60
Bring in the Experts	p. 60
Finders Keepers	p. 62
Be a Matchmaker	p. 64
Don't Forget the Date	p. 65
December 20	p. 65
December 23	p. 66
December 24	p. 66
It's Not Just About Christmas	p. 67
Teach and They Shall Follow	p. 68
Creating the Need	p. 68
Enabling Users to Decide	p. 69
Get 'Em When They're Ready	p. 70
Allow for Bookmarking	p. 71
Allow Users to Bookmark in Their Browser	p. 71
Email It to Yourself or a Friend	p. 71
Save It on the Site for Later	p. 73
Evaluators	p. 74
Differentiate Between Products	p. 78
How to Tell Two Brothers Apart	p. 78
Use Pictures to Differentiate	p. 80
It Starts with Great Content	p. 82
Products Are More than Just Features	p. 82
Address Concerns Up Front	p. 84
Disclose Weaknesses with Perspective	p. 85
Provide Factual Product Detail	p. 86
Pictures That Sell	p. 88
Show the Details	p. 89
Visualizing the Context	p. 92
Seeing How It Fits	p. 93
Sometimes Drawings Are Better	p. 94
Let Your Users Do the Talking	p. 95
User-Generated Reviews	p. 95
External Reviews	p. 97
Prewritten Testimonies	p. 97
Comparing Apples to Apples	p. 99
Comparing Products	p. 99
Comparing with the Competition	p. 101
Fixed Versus Dynamic Comparisons	p. 101
Help Users Do the Math	p. 103
Financial Decisions	p. 103
Ordering Quantities	p. 104
Getting an Estimate	p. 105
Include a Demo Reel	p. 106
Web Application Demos	p. 106
Product Demos	p. 109
Design It Yourself	p. 111
Explain Design Options	p. 112
Saving It for Later	p. 114
Forward the Design to Someone Else	p. 115
Keeping a Souvenir	p. 115
Provide a Natural Progression to the Ordering Process	p. 115
Selling Your Company	p. 117
Provide Assurances Every Step of the Way	p. 117
Explain Your Security	p. 118
Explain Your Privacy Policy	p. 119
Establish Your Company's Credibility	p. 120
Use Third-Party Validation	p. 120
Don't Make Obvious Mistakes	p. 121
Transactors	p. 122
Provide the Shortest Path to Transact	p. 125
Make Your Call to Action Readily Available	p. 125
Taking Direct Orders	p. 129
Fork Your Transactions	p. 130
Membership Not Required	p. 132
Allow Users to Transact Any Which Way They Can	p. 134
Product-Based Transactions	p. 135
Different Ways to Pay	p. 137
Service-Based Transactions	p. 137
Bundle Your Offerings	p. 140
Multiple Applications at Once	p. 140
Would You Like Fries with That?	p. 141
The Discount Bundle	p. 142
How to Gently Interrogate Your Users	p. 143
The Importance of Context	p. 143
Explain the Benefit	p. 144
If It's Not Required, Don't Ask for It	p. 144
Display Your Privacy Policy	p. 145
Making Registration Seductive	p. 146
Taking Care of Unfinished Business	p. 150
Saving User Information	p. 150
When Users Can't Decide	p. 151
Providing a Reminder	p. 152
Customers	p. 154
The Online Receipt	p. 157
The Confirmation Page	p. 157
The Confirmation Email	p. 158
When to Use What	p. 159
Making It Real	p. 162
Fix-It-Yourself Transactions	p. 163
Provide Help	p. 163
Order Canceling	p. 164
Return and Exchange Policies	p. 165
Allowing for Human Contact	p. 166
Tracking Transactions	p. 168
Tracking Shipments	p. 168
Tracking Applications	p. 169
Transaction History	p. 170
Identifying Your Customers	p. 171
"C" Is for Cookies	p. 171
The Gated Login	p. 172
The Just-in-Time Login	p. 173
Which Method Is Best? All of the Above	p. 174
Getting to Know Your Customers	p. 176
How Not to Profile	p. 176
Contextual Profiling	p. 177
Cumulative Profiling	p. 178
Let Customers Tell You How Bad You Are	p. 179
Email	p. 180
Surveys	p. 181
Other Sources of Feedback	p. 181
Responding to Customer Problems	p. 183
Address the Customer by Name	p. 183
Send an Acknowledgment Email	p. 184
Fix the Person and Then the Problem	p. 184
Inform Your Users	p. 184
Don't Just Respond, Provide a Solution	p. 185
Create Response Templates	p. 185
Include Your Phone Number	p. 186
Provide a Personal Touch	p. 186
Turning Customers into Sellers	p. 188
The Email Referral	p. 188
Receivers Become Members Who Become Senders	p. 189
Set Up the Next Transaction	p. 190
Get Them to Transact Again	p. 191
Make the Next Transaction Easier	p. 192
The Design of Everyday Pages	p. 194
Users See What They Expect	p. 196
Users See One Page at a Time	p. 198
How to Use This Chapter	p. 199
Home Pages	p. 200
Site Search Pages	p. 203
Articles	p. 206
Product-Listing Pages	p. 209
Product Pages	p. 211
Case Studies	p. 214
Buttons	p. 217
System Versus Graphic Buttons	p. 217
The Art of Making Buttons	p. 218
Shopping Cart and Checkout	p. 221
Application Forms	p. 228
Error Pages	p. 233
404 Errors	p. 237
Contact Us	p. 239
Email	p. 239
Phone (and Fax)	p. 241
Addresses and Locations	p. 241
The Keep-in-Touch Email	p. 243
Subject Lines	p. 243
Contents	p. 244
Formatting	p. 244
Administration	p. 245
Clicking It Together	p. 246
An Easy-to-Choose Bank	p. 248
Simple Paths for Users	p. 248
Goals Help Browsers Get Started	p. 249
Helping Evaluators Pick Products	p. 250
Supporting Transactors to Apply	p. 252
Let Customers Know What Happens Next	p. 254
A Virtual Changing Room That Sells	p. 255
A Utilitarian Home Page	p. 255
Browsable Product Sections	p. 257
The Virtual Changing Room for Evaluators	p. 259
Suggested Outfits	p. 262
Prefilling Information for Customers	p. 263
Customers Get Some Help	p. 264
Picture-Perfect Acquisitions	p. 266
The Simplest of Home Pages	p. 266
Evaluators Learn More	p. 267
Touring the Site	p. 268
Signing Up the Transactors	p. 269
Pictures to Go	p. 271
When Customers Become Sellers	p. 271
Booking the Right Trip	p. 273
Searching for Flights	p. 273
Evaluating Flight Options	p. 275
Tickets for Transactors	p. 276
Establishing a Trustworthy Market	p. 277
Helping Sellers to Sell	p. 278
Upselling the Sellers	p. 279
Helping Buyers to Browse	p. 280
Motivating Browsers to Bid	p. 281
Creating a Safe Place for Transactions	p. 282
Attention to Detail Sells	p. 283
Pictures That Tell the Story	p. 284
Selling the People	p. 284
Helping Evaluators to Be Choosy	p. 285
Clicking It for Your Web Site	p. 286
The Persuasive Web Design Process	p. 288
Goals, Goals, and More Goals	p. 289
Business Goals	p. 290
User Goals	p. 290
Web Site Goals	p. 291
Defining Content and Functionality	p. 292
Learning from Your Users	p. 295
Prioritizing Goals, Content, and Functionality	p. 297
Choreographing the Experience	p. 298
Use-Case Scenarios	p. 298
Navigation Maps	p. 302
Wireframes	p. 306
Persuasion Testing	p. 307
Goal-Oriented Tests	p. 308
Site-Level Comparisons	p. 309
Product-Selection Tests	p. 310
Evaluating and Improving Your Site	p. 311
A Final Word	p. 313
Resources	p. 314
Books	p. 315
Web Sites	p. 318
Persuasion	p. 318
Information Architecture	p. 320
Usability	p. 322
Retail	p. 325
Internet Statistics	p. 325
And If You've Got the Time...	p. 326
Index	p. 327
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