Building Persuasion Scenarios to Increase Conversion

At the heart of Persuasion Architecture methodology is our process for planning multiple persuasion scenarios for each of your personas to account for all of their preferred buying modes and the different stages of the buying process. Each of these persuasion scenarios is mapped to a specific micro or macro conversion that will serve your company's business goals.

Unlike the typical conversion funnel, a persuasion scenario accounts for the non-linear behavior personas engage in as they buy, and successfully allows the customer to shop their way, but never neglects the company's need to convert.

Defining a Persuasion Scenario

A persuasion scenario consists of persuasive components that lead a visitor segment to participate in a conversion action. Some of these components will be linear; others will be non-linear. All must be customer-focused - based on how each segment approaches the decision to buy - rather than business-focused. A persuasion scenario provides for the meaningful measurement of customer activity so you can optimize performance.

Want to begin using Persuasion Architecture to plan better scenarios for your website and marketing efforts? Future Now provides website assessment products and consulting services that will help you benefit from Persuasion Architecture in your business. Contact us to discuss your goals.

Elements of Persuasion Scenario

Driving Point

This is the prospecting point, outside the funnel, where a scenario technically begins. It might be a search engine result, a pay-per-click, a banner ad or a home page. It's the concretely identifiable place where the visitor shows a level of interest in entering the scenario.

Funnel Points

These are pages that are entrees to the conversion funnel - a door (perhaps one of many) to the house that's for sale. At this point, you are in a position to control and develop the dynamic of the persuasive process. A funnel point can be landing page or main product category page, and essentially functions as a home page would to build persuasive momentum within the scenario itself.

Points of Resolution

These are pages that contain information visitors may or may not need to answer questions associated with their individual buying processes. Each point of resolution page or entity must always link to either a waypoint or a conversion beacon (see below) to ensure the visitor never misses an opportunity to convert.

Waypoints

These are 'persuasive touch points' that marketers determine are integral to the seller's conversion goals, as well as important to the needs of a particular visitor segment. Waypoints support the sales process and the conversion goal. For example, an analytic, price-conscious ticket buyer for an event would certainly wonder about costs, so a sales-process "Ticket Pricing Page" would help her answer those questions. Similarly, if the ticket seller wants to increase bundled sales, a waypoint would be a "Subscription Ticket Options Page" that appeals to a visitor segment interested in better overall value. Not every visitor to the site needs to hit every waypoint to be persuaded or complete the scenario - waypoints are selling-process pages that meet the needs of a majority of folks within a visitor segment.

Points of resolution and waypoints are persuasive components that support the non-linear qualities of the online experience. The order in which a visitor hits these pages and the actual number of these pages she views is dynamic. In other words, they allow her to interact with you in a way that feels comfortable to her.

Conversion Beacon

A conversion beacon signals the first (or next) step in a linear process through which a visitor must pass to reach the conversion point. Points of resolution and waypoints lead a visitor to the conversion beacon, the place where the visitor demonstrates the intention to convert. For example, if the persuasion scenario is designed to get visitors to subscribe to a newsletter, points of resolution and waypoints would build value for the newsletter while the sign-up button that begins the registration process would constitute the first conversion beacon. Each step in completing the registration process constitutes another conversion beacon - and the visitor must complete each step in order. Checkout processes include lots of conversion beacons.

Conversion Point

This is the point where we know with absolute certainty that a visitor has successfully completed a persuasion scenario. The conversion point is the entity that gets delivered so that both we and the visitor know conversion has taken place. This is usually some form of confirmation.

Download our Persuasion Architecture whitepaper to learn more about the methodology.

Persuasion Scenarios in Action

Each component of a persuasion scenario is designed with a customer focus that acknowledges the differing needs of each visitor segment and provides persuasive momentum. Into that structure, and always sensitive to it, the scenario incorporates the sales process of the business in a way that benefits visitors without undermining their buying decision process.

This explicit planning provides exceptional support for the analytics goal of measuring and optimizing for even greater return.

Linear Aspects

The analytics expert describes the success of the linear aspect of a scenario. Linear aspects typically occur at the beginning or at the end of a conversion process.

At the beginning, they could look like this:

Search engine result (the driving point) to landing page (the funnel point)

or

Banner ad (driving point) to landing page (funnel point)

And at the end:

Shopping Cart (the conversion beacon) to Complete Checkout (conversion point)

or

Form Completion (the conversion beacon) to Confirmation (conversion point).

Linear aspects of a scenario come into play when visitors need to start a conversion process or complete a registration process or checkout process. They're easy to setup in most of the better analytic tools.

Non-linear Aspects

Intuitive marketers know people don't interact with websites and marketing pieces in straight lines. They understand prospects have questions that need to be resolved. In the online exchange, the ability to answer these questions requires building non-linear qualities into the scenario - these are more difficult, but by no means impossible, to measure.

It is possible for analytics to identify the click-through path within the non-linear points of resolution, which can help marketers determine whether they are providing appropriate answers.

Using Persuasion Scenarios in Your Company

Using Persuasion ArchitectureTM to plan persuasion scenarios is a rigorous process that helps customers buy how they want to buy. That is why conversion rate boosts of 30%, 100% or even 5500% aren't unheard for our clients.

Contact an engagement coordinator to learn how you can use Persuasion Architecture in your company, or familiarize yourself with our products and services.

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