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Listing "customer personas" instead of features improved our CTR by 200%

brandregard.com

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Re: Listing "customer personas" instead of features improved our CTR by 200%

#21

Post by run4yourlives »

Zak wrote: post #10

I see this sort of thing a lot on sites for products trying to sell to large businesses, sometimes to the point that it's hard to find an actual product description or list of features. I have, several times wanted to yell "but what does your product actually do ?" at the person responsible. I am obviously not the target market here, but why do you think this works?

Because if you were in one of the target groups, you'd be nodding your head as you read it saying: "These people understand my problem(s)".

At that point the features don't matter. They understand your problem so well, that odds are they now how to fix it - most potential customers with problems figure someone else knows something they don't.

In fact, the target customer is likely to be more receptive to not needing a particular feature if they are convinced that you understand the problem.

Re: Listing "customer personas" instead of features improved our CTR by 200%

#22

Post by Lost_BiomedE »

Zak wrote: post #10

I see this sort of thing a lot on sites for products trying to sell to large businesses, sometimes to the point that it's hard to find an actual product description or list of features. I have, several times wanted to yell "but what does your product actually do ?" at the person responsible. I am obviously not the target market here, but why do you think this works?

Patio11's talk on this: http://www.kalzumeus.com/2011/03/26/software-for-underserved...

My comment when sharing this link to others:

"The premise is that while features are needed for your product to function in a specific way, you are selling the benefits of using this product and not the features. Focusing on the benefits of use, is fundamentally an emotional appeal."

Thoughts:

If you see the emotional appeal as verifying the benefits of the features, it makes sense. If you see it as them trying to sell you something by using emotion and hiding the features, it won't. I think the best way is a balance of the two where you show the features as linked to emotional appeal. It hits both groups well.

Re: Listing "customer personas" instead of features improved our CTR by 200%

#23

Post by ctide »

geirfreysson wrote: post #2

For anyone interested we used A/B tests, powered by the seven_minute_abs Rails plug-in, to measure the results. I'd be interested to hear about other people's experiments both with A/B tests and customer segmentation.

Are you running Rails 3? We were looking at various gems the other day for ab testing for a side project, and they all (including seven_minute_abs) seem woefully outdated and abandoned.

Re: Listing "customer personas" instead of features improved our CTR by 200%

#24

Post by detst »

run4yourlives wrote: post #21
Zak wrote: post #10

I see this sort of thing a lot on sites for products trying to sell to large businesses, sometimes to the point that it's hard to find an actual product description or list of features. I have, several times wanted to yell "but what does your product actually do ?" at the person responsible. I am obviously not the target market here, but why do you think this works?

Because if you were in one of the target groups, you'd be nodding your head as you read it saying: "These people understand my problem(s)". At that point the features don't matter. They understand your problem so well, that odds are they now how to fix it - most potential customers with problems figure someone else knows something they don't. In fact, the target customer is likely to be more receptive to not needing…

> Because if you were in one of the target groups, you'd be nodding your head as you read it saying: "These people understand my problem(s)".

I can't speak for Zak but this is certainly not true for me and many others.

If I can't find out what you actually offer, after selling me a nice story about solving my problems, I walk away. It's such a frustrating experience that I assume doing business with them will be just as frustrating so I don't bother contacting them with my questions.

I had this happen recently, finding out later that they did almost exactly what I was looking for... and it was a technical product. I can respect that they wanted to market primary to non-technical types but if I can't get the info anywhere on your site, I'm not interested.

Re: Listing "customer personas" instead of features improved our CTR by 200%

#25

Post by aaronblohowiak »

CTR is important, but it isn't the whole story.. I'd love to have more details about how it impacted your whole funnel (even if it is just a simple statement like "ratios after clicking through were the same before and after the change, so we also tripled activations" or similar.)

Re: Listing "customer personas" instead of features improved our CTR by 200%

#26

Post by run4yourlives »

detst wrote: post #24
run4yourlives wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because if you were in one of the target groups, you'd be nodding your head as you read it saying: "These people understand my problem(s)". At that point the features don't matter. They understand your problem so well, that odds are they now how to fix it - most potential customers with problems figure someone else knows something they don't. In fact, the target customer is likely to be more receptive to not needing…

> Because if you were in one of the target groups, you'd be nodding your head as you read it saying: "These people understand my problem(s)". I can't speak for Zak but this is certainly not true for me and many others. If I can't find out what you actually offer, after selling me a nice story about solving my problems, I walk away. It's such a frustrating experience that I assume doing business with them will be just…

To be clear I'm not advocating secrecy. The website should say something about the product of course.

People like you, or rather customers like you (and me) are usually the biggest pain in that ass for a company. You not being interested is a much larger problem for you than it is for them. I'm not being insulting, but I am serious.

If you are technical enough to read HackerNews, you are probably technical enough in your chosen domain to write the software yourself, or a least come very close to doing so. That means you're also more than likely to push the envelope, demand excellence and try to make the software do something that 99% of the user don't do. While this can sometimes be beneficial, when you have a targeted market it is often just very loud noise.

People like you and I tend to be early adopters, and while we are critical for determining market fit, we tend to be a giant pain in the ass once that fit has been found, because most often we are not it.

It all comes down to understanding that you are not the target market, even if it's still true that you would have use for the product.

Re: Listing "customer personas" instead of features improved our CTR by 200%

#27

Post by geirfreysson »

Zak wrote: post #10

I see this sort of thing a lot on sites for products trying to sell to large businesses, sometimes to the point that it's hard to find an actual product description or list of features. I have, several times wanted to yell "but what does your product actually do ?" at the person responsible. I am obviously not the target market here, but why do you think this works?

That's a fair point. Customer segmentation can be overdone.

There was an interesting article on HBR about research Clayton innovator's-dilemma Christensen was doing into customer segmentation vs. a job-to-be-done approach (http://hbswk.hbs.edu/item/6496.html).

Once someone clicks on a link that calls out to them as a customer, you need to tell them pretty quickly what you can do and how you can do, i.e. what job you can help them do.

On brandregard.com we simply moved the discussion about features down one level, behind a customer segment link. We also discuss features in length below the fold on the landing page.

Re: Listing "customer personas" instead of features improved our CTR by 200%

#28

Post by delinka »

geirfreysson wrote: post #11
delinka wrote: post #8

I was almost amazed at the correct math. A "200% improvement" is definitely "three times what it was previously." But I'm not entirely convinced +200% is a "threefold increase" (I'm a math guy, not a 'human language is fuzzy and ambiguous' guy.)

Starting out with x and ending up with 3x is is a 200% improvement. You think "threefold increase" should mean x+3x=4x?

I thought I was pretty clear that I don't know what "threefold increase" should mean. Sounds like "an increase of three times normal," that's normal (x) plus three times more (3x). so x+3x seems like a reasonable definition.

Like I implied, human language is ambiguous.

Re: Listing "customer personas" instead of features improved our CTR by 200%

#29

Post by arbitrarywords »

geirfreysson wrote: post #11
delinka wrote: post #8

I was almost amazed at the correct math. A "200% improvement" is definitely "three times what it was previously." But I'm not entirely convinced +200% is a "threefold increase" (I'm a math guy, not a 'human language is fuzzy and ambiguous' guy.)

Starting out with x and ending up with 3x is is a 200% improvement. You think "threefold increase" should mean x+3x=4x?

Yeh, this is weird. A "50% increase" is clearly "in addition to", whereas "threefold" reads as "in comparison to". I have no idea how to interpret a "onefold increase".

Re: Listing "customer personas" instead of features improved our CTR by 200%

#30

Post by chopsueyar »

theoj wrote: post #18
chopsueyar wrote: post #12

This is very interesting. In personal selling (face-to-face), emphasis tends to be on features and benefits. The personas work better. Proof is in the numbers.

In face to face selling you already know who you're dealing with and have prepared to address that person's (persona's) needs. With a website you never know what person (persona) will see it, so you need to cover more angles.

You have never sold door-to-door?
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