SO WHY THE INTERNET?
If you're reading this book at all, it's likely that you've already decided to use the
Internet as a major distribution tool for your product (if not the exclusive
distribution tool for your product.) But for anyone who hasn't yet made that
decision--or for anyone who wants to know just why the Internet is so ideal for
business purposes--we'll talk briefly about why the Internet is a perfect vehicle
for virtually any good or service you might want to sell.
As of 2007, over one billion people worldwide use the Internet. However good
the offline marketing for your product is, that's too large of a potential market to
ignore. More than that: if you promote your product by traditional means, the
number of people you can reach is limited by the amount of money you can
spend and the number of media outlets you can reasonably contact-meaning,
most usually, the media in your city alone. But by using the Internet, you can
not only reach people around the world directly--but by making use of business
referrals from satisfied online customers, you can reach people outside of your
geographic range who'd never even think of using a computer.
Additionally, traditional advertising only affords you a limited amount of space to
talk about exactly what your product is and why people should buy it from you.
But with the Internet--and specifically with direct response marketing--you have
unlimited space to discuss your product in detail, to give yourself and your
business a distinct identity, and to convince people more effectively to buy your
product.
And finally--as we'll talk about in more detail in a later chapter-online business
radically simplifies some of the major costs of running a business in the first
place. If you want to start a traditional business, you'll need to apply for a
license, you'll need to acquire a storefront or office space, and you'll need to
devote huge amounts of time to the tedious process of filing tax documents,
managing a payroll, and balancing your accounting books.
With online commerce, you may still need the business license (research business
law in your area to find out if this is the case), but you're no longer required to
find business premises (beyond registering a domain and buying some web
space), and with online payment services and software, most of your accounting
takes care of itself. All you need to do is develop a great product or service, set
up your basic website and payment options, write a killer sales letter--and watch
your product start to sell itself.
Sounds appealing? Then let's learn a little bit more about one of the most
effective ways of promoting products in the modern Internet age--direct response
website marketing.
2
THE BASICS OF
DIRECT RESPONSE
By putting your business on the Internet, you stand to reach a much wider
audience than you can through traditional channels, you're able to simplify your
business operations considerably, and you can present more information about
your product than you can through any other medium.
But as good as all that sounds, there's more to online business than simply
putting your product out there and waiting for sales. As with any business,
you're going to have to put some thought into how you plan to market your
business. After all, there are millions of websites out there, and if you don't set
your site apart from the rest, you stand a very real chance of vanishing into the
crowd--no matter how good your product or service is.
And one of the best ways to promote your website online is through direct
response website marketing.
WHY DIRECT RESPONSE?
In order to understand what differentiates direct response from other commercial
websites, it's helpful to think of the mass communications medium of yesterday--
television.
When most of us think of television programming, we tend to think of "shows".
Television "shows" have two distinctive features in common:
They focus on providing content to an end user (the viewer). The quality of the
content determines the quality of the show. They make their money by
convincing other people to invest in the show.
Neither of these points determines what the content of the show will be, or what,
exactly, will make the investors--whatever form they take--give their money to
the producers of the show. The show could be a drama, a comedy, a variety
show, a "reality show", a documentary, or any of a hundred other categories.
The investors might pay for advertising space on the show, buy tapes or DVDs of
old episodes of the show, or even send money directly to the producers in
response to solicitations (as with the pledge drives public television uses to raise
funds.) Whatever form the show, or the revenue-building strategy takes,
however, one key principle holds: content over marketing.
If traditional web design can be thought of as "shows", direct response website
marketing can be thought of as infomercials.
Infomercials have the following two features in common:
• They focus on describing a product to the end user. All content in the
show is subordinated to the central goal of describing, promoting, and
ultimately selling the product.
• The show makes its money through direct product sales.
Again, neither of these points determines absolutely what form the infomercial
will take. An infomercial might include a short dramatic sketch, a mock "panel
discussion", a comedy act, or simply a straightforward list of features and
advantages for a given product. But as the first point states, all these
entertaining or informative pieces of content must be subordinated to the central
goal of selling products. A "show’s central point is, essentially, to get people to
watch the show (and to make their money based on the number of people who
watch the show.) Whereas an infomercial's central point is ultimately to get
people to stop watching the show and to start ordering the product.
So again: why direct response? In traditional web design, the point is to sell the
customer to the advertisers, or to sell the customers on your website (and to
make enough of an impression that they buy your products or otherwise
subsidize the site.) This can be more satisfying aesthetically, yes--but for a
traditionally designed website to be successful, it needs to offer a wide variety of
content from which users can freely choose.
In simple terms, you need to offer your potential customer 20 things to do on
your website--only one of which is buying your product. Ideally, that gives you a
5% chance to turn a visitor to your website into a sale. The basic idea behind
direct response marketing is to give your potential customer just one thing to do
on your website--buy the product. Ideally, this gives you a 100% conversion
rate. If each type of website gets the same amount of traffic--and assuming that
your goal here is to sell products rather than to entertain casual web surfers--
direct response websites, simply make more sense as a marketing tool.
Staunch television fans might find the comparison between direct response
marketing and infomercials troubling--after all, very few people turn on the
television in order to watch an infomercial, and the ability to eliminate
commercials and other televised advertising from "shows" is one of the central
features used to market the successful TiVo product. But if you intend to run a
successful online business, it's important to remember to think in these terms:
you're no longer a consumer of products; you're a producer. In television terms,
you're no longer watching shows for entertainment, or even producing
entertaining shows--you're producing commercials for a product, and the success
of your business depends on how successfully you can convert viewers into
customers. And infomercials, for all the disadvantages they have in terms of
entertainment, are infinitely more effective than "shows" when it comes to
producing customers. (Yet by no means does your own "infomercial" have to be
devoid of art, entertainment, or other such content--a topic which we will get into
further in a later chapter.)
BASIC PRINCIPLES OF DIRECT RESPONSE
Just as a few fundamental principles differentiate "shows" from infomercials,
there is a parallel set of principles that differentiate traditional websites from
direct response sites:
• Traditional websites focus on the website itself. All money made from the
website is based on outside advertising, donations to support the site, or
sometimes selling products from the site.
• Direct response websites focus on selling a product. Most of the money
made from the website should be directly related to product sales.
And just as in the television world, the fundamental principles behind a type of
program dictates to some extent the form the program will take, your goals for
your website will determine what you can and can't do when marketing your
product.
More fundamental than even these principles, though, are the limitations of the
medium itself. In the television world, all programs will have a few common
elements: all programs will either be filmed with cameras or generated by
computers, all viewers will tune in to all programs by selecting a channel on a TV
set, and all programs will be sensitive to time constraints imposed by the TV
station's programming schedule.
To highlight the differences in approach between these two forms of commerce,
let's first look at some of the common elements among all types of website,
whatever its purpose:
• All websites are based on HTML code (the analogue of a camera or a
computer filmmaking program in the television world.)
• All websites are accessed either through links from other websites or
through a customer typing in the URL (web address.)
• Websites are not, as a rule, time sensitive. A viewer can browse a website
for as long as he or she wants before leaving or buying a product.
We'll talk some more about how to use these common elements of all websites
most effectively throughout the rest of this book. But for now--taking into
account both these common elements and the fundamental principles that drive
each form of web commerce--let's look at some of the specific differences
between traditional web design and direct response marketing websites.
Basic Rule #1: No External Links
In traditional web design, your website benefits to some extent from the amount
of links you offer--viewers have more of an incentive to visit your site. (This is
the logic behind the successful "portal" websites that sometimes offer little
beyond a very good and well-organized collection of links.) In direct response
web design, your website is harmed by offering viewers external links, or any
distractions from buying the product.
Therefore, the first basic rule of direct response web design is this: no external
links. Once your customers get to your website, they should only leave once
they've bought your product (or decided that it isn't for them.)
Basic Rule #2: Small User Base, High Conversion Rate
Traditional web design's aim is to attract and retain a consistent user base. If a
traditional website's hit count is high, the website is more attractive to potential
advertisers, allowing the website to make money. But that high hit count carries
with it a cost: bandwidth fees. (Think of bandwidth fees as your electronic
"rent.") The more users go to a website, the more data your web server is
responsible for sending and receiving--which means a higher basic operating
cost.
In direct response web design, you also need a high hit count-initially. What you
don't want is a high hit count that keeps coming back for more without ever
buying a product (unless you want your viewers to constantly return to your site
in order to check for new products and offers--for some specific notes on what to
do if this is your business model, see the next chapter.)
In order to accomplish this, make your website as simple as possible. Give your
viewers some basic facts about the product, some information about how this
product stands up against its competitors, a few positive testimonials or a photo
or two, and then an ordering procedure. That way your viewers can read your
information, think about whether they want to buy the product or not, and then
either buy it or leave--keeping your bandwidth costs down by keeping out people
who won't be of value to your product sales.
Basic Rule #3: KISS
To go back to the television metaphor for a moment: imagine that you're
watching an infomercial for a new kitchen knife. You hear the expert testimony,
you watch the knife do its work, and you find the price reasonable. You decide,
based on all of this, to buy the knife. So, you wait for the end of the infomercial
in order to learn how to order this wonderful knife--and you're told to dial a
certain 1-800 number, to navigate a complicated menu, to enter a 12-digit
confirmation code from the infomercial along with a social security number, and
finally to talk to a sales representative about shipping information and payment.
By the time you've gone through all of this and are about to read off your credit
card numbers, a thought strikes you: was one knife worth all of this trouble?
This is exactly what you don't want your customers to think at any point while
they're using your website. If your website is built on flashy but hard-to-use
menus, if your ordering information is buried under a maze of links and
supplementary pages full of product details, and if your ordering procedure is
complicated and full of bugs, your customers are going to be too frustrated with
your website to order your product--and worse, they might start to think of your
products and your business as equally customer-unfriendly.
Computer scientists have an acronym to combat this possible problem: KISS, or
"Keep It Simple, Stupid." If your website is easy to navigate, if the information
about your product is clearly presented on as few pages as possible, and if your
ordering procedure is bug-free, then viewers won't be scared off by your website-
-which leads to a much higher conversion rate, and thus a successful direct
response marketing strategy.
We've talked about what direct response website marketing is, why it's an
excellent strategy for your business, and above all a few basic principles of its
implementation. And if you like what you've read so far, then you've got
everything you need to start thinking in practical terms at last--and it's time to
start designing your direct response website, which we'll talk about in the next
chapter.
3
DIRECT RESPONSE
SITE DESIGN
So, we've talked about the Internet in general, and we've talked about some of
the key rules of direct response site design to keep in mind when you're actually
building and publishing your website.
As a reminder, here are those rules again:
• No external links
• A small user base and a high conversion rate
• Keep it simple, stupid
If you have your product ready and a good amount of marketing material related
to it, then it's finally time to start building your direct response site--and it won't
be long before you'll start raking in the profits!
THE FIRST STEP: SITE MAP AND DESIGN
To return to our tried-and-true television metaphor: imagine this.
You're a young producer for NBC, and you've been given the task of creating a
new half-hour drama program for prime time. You're alone in your office, all set
to make your first crucial notes that will become the finished program. So,
before you even think of some basic structural components--what's the concept
behind the show? What characters will I feature? How will I fill thirty minutes
every week, and keep viewers coming back? --you take out a blank piece of
paper and start doodling costume designs for your Christmas special.
You create a great design, throw some story and characters around it, and start
filming your first episode. On the appointed day, the viewers tune in, hang
around for two minutes, and then tune out. Your costume designs are just as
great as you intended, yes--but by choosing the wrong starting point, you
couldn’t control every aspect of the viewer's experience of your show--and they
respond by leaving your network, never to return.
This kind of approach is problematic for any kind of creative work, but with
enough work put into a project from any starting point, you can achieve some
success. But when you're talking about a programming project--and all websites
are, essentially, programming projects--choosing the wrong starting point is
disastrous. If you start work on your website by firing up an HTML editor and
blindly layout out pages, you'll be rewarded with an inconsistent, buggy, and
hard-to-use website--which violates one of our most important rules for site
design.
In order to follow those rules--and thus to achieve success with your online
business--start at the right place: by creating a workable site map. A site map is
just what it sounds like: a diagram showing exactly what content your website
has, and how that content connects to other content through hyperlinks.
In order to understand how to build one, let's look at the simplest possible
example of a site map: the classic "Hello, world" program used by beginning
programmers worldwide. "Hello, world" programs consist of a single screen with
a single message: "Hello, world!" The site map for this would be a single page
with a single piece of content on it, saying exactly this.
A more complicated site map might involve creating two pages: a "Hello, world!"
index page, followed by a page with other information. The site map for this
would be the same single page with "Hello, world!" and a link to the next page,
followed by another page with other content. A mark should be made
somewhere designating the "Hello, world!" page as the usual entry point to this
bare-bones website.
You don't need any technology fancier than a pen and paper to make a site map:
just draw out the pages you want, determine and note what should go on each
page (including text, images, links, and tools for ordering your product), and
connect the pages with lines to show how your viewers will navigate your site. If
you want to get fancier with your design, there are also cheap (or even free)
programs for mapping out web sites before you build the pages. If you're doing
your own coding, investigate this option: some of the most popular web
authoring clients integrate site mapping functions into their page editing
software, which can save you money and reduce the amount of time it takes to
learn how to use a new piece of software.
Site mapping may seem like an unnecessary step in the design process,
especially with the simple sites that direct response marketing demands. But
without a fully-detailed site map, you run the risk of increasing your costs beyond
your original budget when you find out that the page you've designed doesn't
work properly, or that you need some additional content or images but aren't
sure where to put it. At best, this leads to costly revisions (in terms of time if
you're doing your own coding, and in terms of money if you're hiring a coder),
and at worst it can mean paying for a complete overhaul of your website. Think
of your site map as your business plan: write it first, then stick to it unless you
have a very good reason to change it once the site goes live.