Conversion / Testing

If You Ignore Customers' Questions, You'll Kill the Sale Jeff Sexton , Jeff Sexton Writes - Jun 15, 2010

Ever had your burning questions ignored by a "sales pro"?

Frustrating, insulting, and credibility killing are the words that come to mind from the experience. Sales people who ignore questions kill most of their sales.

And guess what?

Your website is killing sales right now as you're reading this.

Identify the Customer Questions Your Website Isn't Answering

Whoever takes incoming phone calls from prospective customers -- whether it's sales, customer service, or just the office secretary -- can easily rattle off a list of commonly asked questions. 

Just ask these people for them.

Now go onto your website and see if you can find the answers. If you have to hunt around on an FAQ to find the answers, it doesn't count. Burying a commonly asked question deep within the bowels of your site doesn't count.

In fact, if the question is about a product or service and the answer isn't:

• On the product/service page, or
• Prominently linked to from that page,

then for all practical purposes, your site doesn't really have the answer. That's why people are calling in with the question.

Some People Don't Want to Call With a Question

At least half the people on the Web are introverts; they'd rather not call until they've got all the information. And a fair number of extroverts would prefer not to get tied up with a pushy sales guy anyway, or would just rather have all the facts before calling.

So for every customer who calls, there are two to five who aren't bothering to call. They're either checking out the competition's website, trying to find the answer on a forum or Yelp or social media -- or they're just plain procrastinating on buying the thing.

How do I know this? Multiple studies show that the #1 cause of lost sales on the Web is unanswered questions and concerns -- both for e-commerce and B2B sites. In my experience,I've never had this exercise fail to boost conversion rates.

How to Fix It

Before you just plunk the answers down onto your product pages, hold off and think about the questions first. Interview your old customers and ask them about the questions. Find out the concerns and the context for the questions.

What you'll probably find is that a customer testimonial or spoken experience provides far more compelling copy than simply putting the plain information on the page.

After all, what would you find more compelling?

"Our toddler swim lessons require no prior experience and are open to kids as young as 2.5 years," OR

"We were worried about bringing our 3-year old son, Todd, to SwimKidz, as he'd never been in any water deeper than his bath tub and he'd been, frankly, easily frustrated with other toddler athletic programs we'd entered him into. But Janet was awesome! I couldn't believe she had him swimming underwater on the first day. Or swimming by himself by the end of six weeks. The results were amazing and it turned out that Todd was only one of five 3-year olds in the class. I've recommended SwimKidz to all my friends and everyone has had the same experience."

The first statement provides the factual answer, but the second testimonial provides the emotional assurance and mental imagery necessary to win the sale. Even if you didn't have that testimonial, knowing the context behind the question could help you craft copy that would address these same emotional concerns.

So there you have it -- it's as easy as 1-2-3

1. Ask the people answering the phones about their commonly asked questions.
2. Find Out the context and emotional concerns behind the questions.
3. Provide the answers on the product or service pages of your site (or at least link to the answers from those pages).

Jeff Sexton of JeffSextonWrites.com is a skilled copywriter who has consulted with several Fortune 50 companies, run hundreds of messaging tests, and provides copywriting services to companies large and small.