Visibility

Landing page optimization and testing is a complex activity that requires knowledge of many fields including usability, copywriting, math, and web design. But at its core, we are still trying to influence the behavior of people, and human nature has not changed.

In 1898, Elias St. Elmo Lewis pioneered a framework for describing stages of consumer interest and behavior. In effect, he created the modern concept of the sales funnel. All people were thought to progress through four stages covered by the acronym AIDA.

Awareness – The consumer realizes that some number of possible actions is available
Interest – The consumer selects and shows a preference for a particular course of action
Desire – The consumer’s enthusiasm grows as the  course of action is further investigated
Action – The consumer is moved to act and begins enjoying the benefits of the course of action

The key to properly applying the decision making model to landing pages is to make sure that there is continuity and flow to support a visitor’s progression through each of the steps. None of the steps can be skipped, and all of them must happen in sequence. That is not to say that equal emphasis should be placed on each within your landing page, or that visitors will spend an equal amount of time in each step. But there should be a clear path, and the proper support to keep them moving forward toward your conversion goal.

Aligning AIDA with user types

In his book Submit Now: Designing Persuasive Web Sites (New Riders Press, 2002), Andrew Chak closely follows the AIDA model and applies it specifically to website visitors. He correctly suggests that the website or landing page should be designed for four main user types corresponding to the mind-set of each stage:

•    Browsers - May not know exactly what they want, but have an unmet need

•    Evaluators - Know enough to compare the available options, and are looking for detailed supporting information

•    Transactors - Have made buying decision, and need to quickly go through the mechanics of the actual transaction

•    Customers - Have completed their transaction, and need to sustain their satisfaction level until they transact again in the future

It is also helpful to realize that AIDA applies to different scales of tasks and different time frames. For instance, a consumer researching the next computer to buy may take days or weeks to make a decision. His or her interaction with your website is likely to be one among dozens. Depending on his mind-set when he visited your site it, as well as any research he may have conducted since visiting your site and the uniqueness of your company and its selling proposition, he may have completely forgotten about your website and offer by the time he makes an ultimate buying decision.

At the other extreme, the Web supports small-scale and short-duration micro-tasks that may happen in a fraction of a second. Sometimes the task that you want the user to perform is simply to click through to another page on your site. Yet the same four steps must still happen during the visit for the conversion action to occur.

Give the people what they want

Ultimately your landing page(s) must help to answer two questions for a visitor to pass through all of the AIDA stages.

• Do you have what your visitor wants?
• Why should he or she get it from you?

This process may not happen during a single visit or interaction. The ultimate goal may be weeks or months away. But you must provide a clear path to that goal, as well as support along every step of the way. If your conversion action typically has a long delay, then try to provide mechanisms to record your visitors’ progress, and restart them in the most recent and relevant state upon their subsequent return visits to your landing page.

It is important to note that the typical time spent in the awareness and interest stages on the Web is very short. Most visitors who are at the point of determining if your site has what they want are already in the desire stage. But without attention and interest, desire cannot happen. Similarly, it is highly unlikely that a visitor will move on to consider why he should transact with you if he hasn’t first passed through the other three stages of attention, interest and desire in order.

Tips for applying AIDA

My company, Sitetuners.com, incorporates the principles of AIDA into a formula called “The Matrix” to ensure that our clients’ websites are guiding the right people through the right activities in the right order.

There are two basic steps involved in creating The Matrix:

•    Define key user classes and roles.
Understand who is coming to your site and performing the mission-critical tasks that are key to your business success.

•    Define critical conversion tasks for each class.
Break down your primary conversion actions into smaller activities that are appropriate to each user role.

Here are some example conversion tasks for different types of sites:

•    Insurance comparison site - Find three, $1-million term life insurance quotes for a healthy 30-year-old single man living in California.
•    Network security company - Download and open the whitepaper on “Remotely Diagnosing Security Threats.”
•    E-commerce site - Determine the cost of a Model-XYZ laptop computer when configured with the optional DVD drive.
•    Photo-sharing site - Activate a free account and upload pictures

Notice that none of these tasks represent the final conversion action, but rather an incremental step that moves the visitor closer to the final “action” stage of the AIDA model.

Next, for each task map out what specific help, information, and resources could support visitors’ transition from interest to desire to action, and incorporate relevant support messaging into your landing pages. Be sure to consider the user type (browser, evaluator, transactor) so that your support messaging is appropriate to the mindset of your visitors.

By taking a disciplined approach such as the one outlined above to ensuring that every AIDA step is addressed for your visitors, your landing pages will reflect a continuity and flow that supports the visitor’s decision making process. Once your site is aligned with your visitors’ mental model, you’re likely to see significant improvements in your conversion rate.