Thursday, May 12, 2005
Business Lessons from My Daughter’s Graduation—Do Your Visitors’ Thinking for Them
On our first day in town for my daughter Becca’s graduation from Virginia Military Institute, my wife and I took her and our son, Ben, out for lunch. Becca recommended a restaurant she felt we’d like.
When we walked in, though, I wondered if we were in the right place. Other than a few tables in the corner, it looked like a grocery store with aisles of display racks filled with imported and specialty foods.
If Becca hadn’t been there, I would have figured we were in the wrong place and left. But she guided us around, pointing out a sushi bar in one corner, a deli in the back, juice bars and coffee shops scattered around the store.
“OK,” I thought, “so it’s not a just a grocery store; it’s also a food court.” So I looked for the typical order lines and cashiers I’m used to seeing in food courts. Again, I was perplexed. None of them seemed to have a way to pay for your order.
Becca flitted around, guiding one of us to one place and another to another place. She’d leave us—baffled—at the spot she felt suited our tastes best. Each of us wondered, “OK, what do I do next?”
I almost gave up on the whole adventure when we finally corralled her to answer our questions. Turns out, the restaurant was designed to be unlike any restaurant anyone expected. The owners wanted it to come across like a grocery store. And they wanted it to work differently than a typical food court.
By making it, to all appearances, like a grocery store when you picked up your food and ate it right there, they had become an adventure spot for students at the two colleges in this small town.
Their traffic came entirely from its cachet as a cool restaurant/grocery-store-where-you-could-do-things-that-would-get-you-arrested-if-you-did-them-in-a-real-grocery-store.
You paid by—get this—taking your empty food containers to the checkout line, paying for what had been in them, and then throwing the empty containers into a garbage bag instead of into a grocery bag. It was perfect for an adventurous college crowd, eager to experience new things, but new customers definitely needed a guide to show them how it worked.
My frustration in exploring this restaurant got me thinking how much it was like a lot of underperforming websites. You enter the site and nothing clearly identifies it as being what you thought it would be. If visitors don’t immediately go elsewhere, they look for signs of what they’re looking for, but don’t see anything that leads them where they want to go. And when uncertainties pop up, there’s no ready answer in front of them.
People react to uncertainty on websites the same way I reacted to the unexpected concept of that restaurant. They want to find something familiar to latch onto; they want to be reassured that they’ll find what they’re looking for. That’s not to say that being different is bad. It just means that you have to guide your visitors all the more thoroughly to ensure they can find their way through your site comfortably.
Does your website clearly identify what it’s about? If not, you’re sending them out the door to search elsewhere. Does your site lead your visitors clearly to what they’re looking for? If they get lost, you’ve lost any sales they might make as well. And does your site anticipate the questions and concerns your visitors are likely to have and present them with clear answers? If not, you’re virtually guaranteed to have them hold off on any purchases.
Clever concepts are fine and even an excellent way to generate traffic when your concepts match your audience. But you never want your visitors to stumble their way through the unfamiliar on their own. Just like we needed my daughter to guide us through what turned out to be an innovative and fun dining experience, you need to make sure that your website reassures, guides, and answers your visitors all the way through from entering your site to finding what they were looking for.
Jeff
On our first day in town for my daughter Becca’s graduation from Virginia Military Institute, my wife and I took her and our son, Ben, out for lunch. Becca recommended a restaurant she felt we’d like.
When we walked in, though, I wondered if we were in the right place. Other than a few tables in the corner, it looked like a grocery store with aisles of display racks filled with imported and specialty foods.
If Becca hadn’t been there, I would have figured we were in the wrong place and left. But she guided us around, pointing out a sushi bar in one corner, a deli in the back, juice bars and coffee shops scattered around the store.
“OK,” I thought, “so it’s not a just a grocery store; it’s also a food court.” So I looked for the typical order lines and cashiers I’m used to seeing in food courts. Again, I was perplexed. None of them seemed to have a way to pay for your order.
Becca flitted around, guiding one of us to one place and another to another place. She’d leave us—baffled—at the spot she felt suited our tastes best. Each of us wondered, “OK, what do I do next?”
I almost gave up on the whole adventure when we finally corralled her to answer our questions. Turns out, the restaurant was designed to be unlike any restaurant anyone expected. The owners wanted it to come across like a grocery store. And they wanted it to work differently than a typical food court.
By making it, to all appearances, like a grocery store when you picked up your food and ate it right there, they had become an adventure spot for students at the two colleges in this small town.
Their traffic came entirely from its cachet as a cool restaurant/grocery-store-where-you-could-do-things-that-would-get-you-arrested-if-you-did-them-in-a-real-grocery-store.
You paid by—get this—taking your empty food containers to the checkout line, paying for what had been in them, and then throwing the empty containers into a garbage bag instead of into a grocery bag. It was perfect for an adventurous college crowd, eager to experience new things, but new customers definitely needed a guide to show them how it worked.
My frustration in exploring this restaurant got me thinking how much it was like a lot of underperforming websites. You enter the site and nothing clearly identifies it as being what you thought it would be. If visitors don’t immediately go elsewhere, they look for signs of what they’re looking for, but don’t see anything that leads them where they want to go. And when uncertainties pop up, there’s no ready answer in front of them.
People react to uncertainty on websites the same way I reacted to the unexpected concept of that restaurant. They want to find something familiar to latch onto; they want to be reassured that they’ll find what they’re looking for. That’s not to say that being different is bad. It just means that you have to guide your visitors all the more thoroughly to ensure they can find their way through your site comfortably.
Does your website clearly identify what it’s about? If not, you’re sending them out the door to search elsewhere. Does your site lead your visitors clearly to what they’re looking for? If they get lost, you’ve lost any sales they might make as well. And does your site anticipate the questions and concerns your visitors are likely to have and present them with clear answers? If not, you’re virtually guaranteed to have them hold off on any purchases.
Clever concepts are fine and even an excellent way to generate traffic when your concepts match your audience. But you never want your visitors to stumble their way through the unfamiliar on their own. Just like we needed my daughter to guide us through what turned out to be an innovative and fun dining experience, you need to make sure that your website reassures, guides, and answers your visitors all the way through from entering your site to finding what they were looking for.
Jeff
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