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Editor's Note
02.12.01

bgcolor="#003366" face="Arial, verdana" size="4">The Expertise Gap - A Costly Missing Step

Does your online product or service sell LESS than it should? Are
you offering it at a price that's a great deal for buyers but
even then don't get nearly the sales it SHOULD bring? Do you have
a good product or service, and yet visitors to your site don't
seem to understand the benefits? Do interested visitors e-mail,
asking about it, but STILL DON'T BUY?

If yes, then you might be experiencing "the missing step"
phenomenon. Bear with me and I'll explain.

Any visitor can come to your site. There's no "admission test"
required - and thus, there's no way for you to know what level of
expertise and familiarity the visitor has about your subject. He
could be as knowledgeable as you, but in most cases he will be
much less experienced. 

But HOW experienced? WHAT does he know and understand - and 
what doesn't he? Does he have some negative preconceptions such 
as "all salespeople lie" or " the Internet is full of scams" like so
many have?

The average visitor that comes to your site is a RAW prospect. To
BUY, he needs to become a "refined" prospect - his level of
understanding has to be brought up to a certain level before you
can seriously expect him to be ABLE to purchase your product.

The most common mistake in web site content is to assume the
visitors are even CLOSE to your own level of expertise and
familiarity in your subject. This can easily lead to a GAP
wherein most visitors will never have a chance of understanding
the true benefits of your product or service. It all starts TOO
HIGH on the scale of expertise for him...and remains "beyond
him."

As a result, the average visitor won't get drawn into the
content. It remains just that little bit too much a mystery for
him during those CRITICAL FEW SECONDS you have to create the
basic understanding of WHAT it is that he can get from this site
and WHY he should bother to read it at all. If your site fails to
communicate that, the visitor is gone.

The Number One Missing Step is the lack of instant communication
when a visitor enters your site. You don't have more than a few
seconds... and if your first few sentences do not create an
understanding of the content, then you've lost him. Your first
challenge is to PULL the visitors INTO YOUR SITE CONTENT.

After the visitor has been "stabilized" as a visitor - he is now
interested and continues to read - your next target has two
objectives.

You want to GET HIM EXCITED while, at the same time, giving him
INFORMATION in a way that discreetly increases his understanding
of the subject.

In other words, you ALTERNATE between two things. You tell him
what benefits he could ACHIEVE in the subject (with your product)
and EXPLAIN THE BASICS that he needs to know so he WILL
UNDERSTAND why it is in his best interests to buy your product.

If you've ever had difficulty in understanding why visitors DON'T
GET IT - don't understand how great your product actually is -
then you probably were missing this little piece of information
on the subject!

People buy things because they have some GOAL. 
You strengthen that goal.

If someone HAS a goal and he UNDERSTANDS the facts of the
subject... and your product would HELP TO ACHIEVE THAT GOAL...
then why wouldn't he buy it? If they won't then you have the
MISSING STEP OF CREATING THE UNDERSTANDING NEEDED 
TO BUY!

Checking Your Site With A New ViewPoint

Read your web site with the "buyer-biased" eyes of a visitor. Try
to take the viewpoint of a person who is NOT an expert but rather
UNFAMILIAR with your subject. Search for GAPS. Is there something
missing? Something you assumed that "everyone knows" but perhaps
they won't? Look for those few gaps where the uninformed visitor
will fall into the dark... and disappear forever.

Don't count on your visitors to tell you. They just go away!

So, check out what they NEED to understand before they CAN BUY.
Usually, you don't have to make any MAJOR changes. More likely,
there's a paragraph missing here and a word or sentence there.
In online sales, most of your sales are 99 percent successes -
only it takes the full 100% to GET THE SALE, doesn't it? So don't
change EVERYTHING... instead, fine-tune and adjust the text by
locating and filling in the missing gaps.

The difference that minor adjustment can create in sales results
can be quite dramatic!

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Harry Kafka is a marketing consultant who publishes several web
sites on marketing. Visit http://www.e-publisherguide.com to read
about his advice on publishing information products and creating
web site strategies leading to high sales conversion ratios.

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We at the Editorial Team would like to thank all our readers for reading WebProNews. We hope you find this information useful.

Peter Thiruselvam
Editor

The WebProNews Team

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