Fly on the E-Commerce Cyberwall

Bland copywriting and dead characters
Most of us write blandly. I know, not you, not me. Yeah, sure. But our natural inclination is to write bland, predictable stuff. That's because when we sit down to write, we know exactly what we want to communicate and we go in a straight line to our destination. BOR-ing!

See, your visitors read that kind of predictable, straight-line stuff all the time. They know exactly where you're going with it, too. And if they know where it's going, what reason is there for them to read it?

What gets their attention then? Kill their expectations—like in the movie I took my family to tonight.

The movie was a big-screen version of a short-lived, but cult hit, TV series from a couple of years ago. We enjoyed the movie immensely. It had both the action and the humor we had always loved in the series. But one thing they did took it to another level of edge-of-your seat suspense.

They killed some main characters. Killed main characters? You don't do that in a movie where the built-in fan base already loves those characters! Ah, but you do if you want viewers to feel suspense when the other characters face danger in the climax.

Let's face it. When you expect the characters to be there in any sequels, you know that no matter how close to death those characters appear, they're going to be OK in the end. But if you see characters that you consider irreplacable actually die, you take seriously the jeopardy the others face later. You think, "Hey, the writers already killed off character A. What's to guarantee they won't kill off this one, too?"

In short, you build the audience's interest by pulling the rug out from underneath what they expect.

So what does this have to do with your writing? Just this: if you want to grab your visitors' interest, you can't write straight line, predictible stuff. Throw them off the track and get them curious about where you're going.

Consider this blog entry. If I had merely done a straight line toward an intellectual conclusion that it was important to throw an occasional disconnect into your writing to pique your readers' curiosity, would it have held your interest as much as detouring into a (seemingly) unrelated discourse on movies?

Reversing your readers' expectations is just as effective in copywriting as it is in screenwriting. It raises their curiosity and puts a vice grip on their attention as they focus on figuring out the unexpected direction where you're taking them.

So look at your copywriting. Find where you can disconnect your visitors from their expectations. Take them on a slightly unexpected (but totally relevant) path toward where you planned to take them all along. They'll thank you for it by paying far more attention to your message than they ever have before.
Jeff

Quick tip on improving conversions
I came up with a thought today that really clarified my work on tweaking the conversion rates on a client's site. You always want to have in mind what specific action you want your visitors to take on each page of your site. But I've always found it hard to make analyzing this Most Wanted Response (MWR) tangible enough to be much of a guide in what to do.

But the question I came up with really helped me clarify this. Ask yourself as you look at your page, "If I could tell my visitors exactly what I'd like them to do next on this page, what would I tell them?"

Posing the matter in this way not only clears up any fuzziness you have on what you want them to do, but it usually leads to identifying ways that you can steer them in the direction you want. After all, how can you answer, "What would I tell them?" without thinking of specific things to say and seeing specific places where you can say them?

It was a great time-saver today that I plan to use a lot in the future.
Jeff

Long day
Funny, not even my tried and tested technique of just sitting down and writing has managed to get me started on any kind of a meaningful subject. There's a lot on my mind, but not of a business nature. It's been a mixed up week.

My wife Joanne is at her sister's, helping her go through the last of their parents' stuff before the estate sale. Power is still sketchy a week after the big thunderstorms knocked a lot of people out of power around Minneapolis. At least we have access to enough power to work around the problems, but the workarounds are still a bit awkward. I've got a big presentation to give tomorrow night (nonbusiness, but still stressful), and I'm trying to recover from a search engine algorithm change that trashed the rankings on my site (but fortunately left my clients' sites alone).

At least there's the fact that I'm not trapped by whatever inconveniences and challenges I face. Whatever situation you're in, there are still options you can take. And I'm working through them right now.
Jeff

Another lesson on action
I talked today to an online business owner that I share ideas with. He has a nice site, and plans a major expansion of it "soon." I put the "soon" in quotation marks because he's been telling me for months now about his planned expansion. Today, he showed me page after page packed with pictures of potential products he's considering adding to his site. He even offered to let me borrow a CD he had of thousands of products that his connections can get for him.

I've stopped taking him seriously about his expansion. Each time we talk, I ask him when he plans to start it. Each time his answer is vague as he wants to look for more products for an even broader array of choices. "Next week" he'll be ready. And when the next week rolls around, the timeline changes to the next week after that—week after week for months now.

But where would he be right now if he had actually started when he first talked of starting? He'd probably have hundreds of those products up right now instead of merely bookmarking more wholesalers and looking through more catalogs planning for a future expansion that never comes.

When you keep putting off taking the actions that you hope will bring you success, you put yourself in a position where you guarantee yourself of not reaching your goal—you can't possibly reach your goal because you're not doing a blasted thing to reach it.

The sad thing about it is that this inaction that robs you of success is usually done to safeguard the dream of the very success that you're sabotaging.

You convince yourself that success is only a few steps away. Of course, if you actually do something instead of just talking about it, there's always the chance that your plans won't work out as you hope. So the only way to guarantee that your dream of success won't crumble under the risks you'll have to take to earn your success is to sacrifice any chance of actually achieving it.

But is that all you want? A dream of success? You can't dream your way to success. You have to act. And that means you have to risk your dreams. But you know what? Even if you act and your dreams don't pan out, that doesn't mean you've failed. It just adds to your experience that makes you more capable of succeeding along another route.

Don't just dream. Don't just talk. Act.
Jeff

Favorite directory links
Time for Sunday's feature when I share some of my favorite web marketing links. Man, it's getting harder each week to come up with another category that I haven't already covered! This week, let's look at some good links for finding directories to submit your website to.

Strongest Links
Probably the easiest place to find directory information is in Strongest Links' list of directories. Their list contains all the info you're likely to be interested in for finding directories to submit to. For each directory, it includes:

• Directory name
• Google Page Rank
• Alexa popularity rank
• Saturation (namely, how many other pages link to this directory)
• Any fees required for submitting
• Whether submission is free, paid, or conditional
• A link to more details about the directory

Easy to access and compare, lots of details—overall, a great place to identify broadly based directories.

Internet Search Engine Database

Not as user friendly as the Strongest Links list, it also has only very basic info about each search engine. The list has seven pages of directories, though, so you should be able to find some that Strongest Links missed. I'd start with Strongest Links, though, and move on to ISEDB only after you've exhausted Strongest Links. And make sure you scroll down to find the links to the additional pages. Most of the first page is devoted to sponsored links.

Search Engine Watch forum discussion on directories

In mid-2004, the Search Engine Watch forum had an excellent discussion in which a number of webmasters submitted the directories that they consider highly. Granted, being in forum format, info is not all that well-organized. But if you go through the thread, you should find some additional gems in there.

SearchIt!

I was also going provide info about SearchIt! a multi-purpose free research tool that includes modules to search for smaller, niche directories closely related to your site's theme. The more I considered it, though, the more I realized that SearchIt! really calls for some instructions on how to use those modules. It's a great tool, but if you're like me, you could easily try to skip the instructions on the SearchIt! site and end up confused about what you're doing. (I admit it. That's exactly what I did.)

So I'll continue with more detailed info about using this aspect of SearchIt! in next Sunday's blog.

Jeff