Webmaster forum - Call to action

Author

Call to action

Charles Sweeney

2005-05-19, 11:30 pm

Following on from a discussion we had about the "Call to action" wherby
you ask the user to do something.

On my house-sales site, I noticed a number of people were not entering
their town or city in their address, but were just entering the
state/county from a drop-down list.

This had me baffled for a while. I thought there was a problem with the
script that handled the form. I tested it, and it appeared to work, but
the listings were still coming through without a town or city.

The form looked like this:

Address line 1:
Address line 2:
Address line 3:
State/county:

So I thought I would ask for the town or city outright, and changed it
to this:

Address line 1:
Address line 2:
Town or city:
State/county:

Guess what webmasters? Every listing since, has a town or city on it!

So what does this tell us? If you put something specific in front of
them, they respond to it.

--
Charles Sweeney
http://CharlesSweeney.com

Chris Hope

2005-05-19, 11:30 pm

Charles Sweeney wrote:

> Following on from a discussion we had about the "Call to action"
> wherby you ask the user to do something.
>
> On my house-sales site, I noticed a number of people were not entering
> their town or city in their address, but were just entering the
> state/county from a drop-down list.
>
> This had me baffled for a while. I thought there was a problem with
> the
> script that handled the form. I tested it, and it appeared to work,
> but the listings were still coming through without a town or city.
>
> The form looked like this:
>
> Address line 1:
> Address line 2:
> Address line 3:
> State/county:
>
> So I thought I would ask for the town or city outright, and changed it
> to this:
>
> Address line 1:
> Address line 2:
> Town or city:
> State/county:
>
> Guess what webmasters? Every listing since, has a town or city on it!
>
> So what does this tell us? If you put something specific in front of
> them, they respond to it.

It's amazing how a simple change of words can affect things so much. On
one site I manage we changed the text on a button on the enquiry form
and the number of enquiries dropped significantly. Changed it back
again and they immediately returned to the levels they were at
previously. Unfortunatey I can't remember what it was from/to as it was
quite a while back now and the site has been redesigned since then...

--
Chris Hope | www.electrictoolbox.com | www.linuxcdmall.com

William Tasso

2005-05-19, 11:30 pm

Forging a path through the Usenet jungle, armed only with a rusty
Xnews/06.12.01, Charles Sweeney stumbled into alt.www.webmaster and said:

> Following on from a discussion we had about the "Call to action" wherby
> you ask the user to do something.

Yep - they can't guess what we want.

> On my house-sales site, I noticed a number of people were not entering
> ....
>
> Guess what webmasters? Every listing since, has a town or city on it!

cracking piece of research (and resolution).

> So what does this tell us? If you put something specific in front of
> them, they respond to it.

yep - it's bleedin' obvious once it's been laid out clearly.

Hindsight has 20/20 vision :)

--
Whatever you do - do something.

Charles Sweeney

2005-05-19, 11:30 pm

Chris Hope wrote

> It's amazing how a simple change of words can affect things so much.
On
> one site I manage we changed the text on a button on the enquiry form
> and the number of enquiries dropped significantly. Changed it back
> again and they immediately returned to the levels they were at
> previously. Unfortunatey I can't remember what it was from/to as it
was
> quite a while back now and the site has been redesigned since then...

Was it "Click here for help" changed to "XXXX off and don't annoy me"?!

Yes, the human is a strange beast. You really can't take anything for
granted, and must explain things and make things perfectly clear.

--
Charles Sweeney
http://CharlesSweeney.com

Charles Sweeney

2005-05-19, 11:30 pm

William Tasso wrote

> Forging a path through the Usenet jungle, armed only with a rusty
> Xnews/06.12.01, Charles Sweeney stumbled into alt.www.webmaster and
said:
it![color=darkred]
>
> cracking piece of research (and resolution).

That's the beauty of this place. People talking from real experiences
with their users. Invaluable.

>
> yep - it's bleedin' obvious once it's been laid out clearly.
>
> Hindsight has 20/20 vision :)

Aye! The British Patent Office say that once you know about something
it then becomes obvious. One of the conditions for a patent, is that
the invention "is not obvious" but they do make the acknowlegement
above.

--
Charles Sweeney
http://CharlesSweeney.com

Matt Probert

2005-05-20, 8:14 am

Once upon a time, far far away Charles Sweeney <me@charlessweeney.com>
spluttered

>
>So what does this tell us? If you put something specific in front of
>them, they respond to it.

You may not believe how dumb "people" are.

For a long time we have had a "research" facility on the
encyclopaedia, very simple, type in a subject and research away,
collecting every article where the subject is mentioned. Great for
dinosaurs btw!

Did people use it? No!

So then, the last few days we have been beta-testing a "one-click
research facility" where every article includes a clickable research
link, to research that topic.

Do people use it? They crashed the server within 15 minutes when it
first went live! Had to do some quick amendments to speed up the
searching!

People! Bloody customers <g>

Matt

--
The Probert Encyclopaedia - Beyond Britannica
http://www.probertencyclopaedia.com

Toby Inkster

2005-05-20, 7:38 pm

Charles Sweeney wrote:

> It was a full blown form on every page.

You might get even more feedback if you have a single text area, with
submit button, where the submit button takes you through to a second page
to fill in other details (name, e-mail, etc).

Trick people into thinking it's a simpler process than it really is. ;-)

--
Toby A Inkster BSc (Hons) ARCS
Contact Me ~ http://tobyinkster.co.uk/contact

William Tasso

2005-05-20, 7:39 pm

Forging a path through the Usenet jungle, armed only with a rusty
Pan/0.14.2.91 (As She Crawled Across the Table), Toby Inkster stumbled
into alt.www.webmaster and said:

> Charles Sweeney wrote:
>
>
> You might get even more feedback if you have a single text area, with
> submit button, where the submit button takes you through to a second page
> to fill in other details (name, e-mail, etc).
>
> Trick people into thinking it's a simpler process than it really is. ;-)
>

sneaky :)

have you done that? any results you'd care to share?

--
Whatever you do - do something.

Toby Inkster

2005-05-20, 7:39 pm

William Tasso wrote:

> have you done that? any results you'd care to share?

Not on a contact form, no.

But on a data entry form at work, I've done a "wizard" type set of pages.
Put the really easy questions on the first couple of screens, to get them
hooked.

I find people get annoyed if they can't see the number of steps in the
wizard, so I include "(Step X of Y)" in the page headings.

It's quite a nice way of programming too -- have each page ask a few
simple questions, and post the data back to *itself* (not to a separate
form handler). If the data fails a sanity check, simply show the form
again (including what they've already filled in) with a few error messages
in red. If the data passes sanity checks, then store it in the user's
session and do an HTTP redirect to the next screen.

--
Toby A Inkster BSc (Hons) ARCS
Contact Me ~ http://tobyinkster.co.uk/contact

Eric Jarvis

2005-05-21, 4:17 am

Charles Sweeney me@charlessweeney.com wrote in
<Xns965C65746B986mecharlessweeneycom@130.133.1.4>:
> Matt Probert wrote
>
>
> Good info!
>
> On one of my first sites, I had a feedback box on every page. Guess
> what? I got lots of feedback!
>
> As discussed before, there was a contact facility that the user could
> use if minded to do so, but putting it in front of them, and asking them
> to use it (the "call to action") produced the goods.
>

Every web site visit is a story. Not a traditional linear narrative, but
nonetheless it's often a good idea to look at it that way. You work out
what tale you want to tell, and then you devise a set of routes that make
it easy for every visitor to follow the plot.

Put a "feedback" link in a top menu and almost nobody will ever use it
unless they find the page impossible to use. Put a feedback link just
after a visitor has made a purchase or read some key information and
you'll get replies. You've just added a bit into the story where you've
asked what they thought of what they've just done on the page.

--
eric
www.ericjarvis.co.uk
"live fast, die only if strictly necessary"