Why Your Content Needs a BAU
A Behavioural Analysis Unit. Every content strategy should have one. Every piece of content you create must have one.
Your BAU Team
If you’ve ever seen the show Criminal Minds, you know what I’m talking about here. Seven different characters, each with a role to play. Together, they make catching the bad guys easy, while keeping the show interesting, exciting and fun to watch. Sounds like the ideal piece of content, doesn’t it? I thought so.
In Content Criminal Minds: Why your content needs a BAU, I look at each character and how you can use their strengths to your advantage. So, head over to Heather Lloyd-Martin’s site SEOCopywriting.com and have a read.
By the way, I hear rumours that this may be the first in a series of posts on incorporating behavioural analysis and targeting into your content, so you might want to subscribe to her RSS or another of her channels. I’d hate for you to miss out on the fun!
Business Blogging: Daily Publishing Schedules and Other Funny Stories
I hear it over and over again: The more you blog, the more customers you’ll get. Companies have even done reports and studies that prove blogging more often will increase sales. Are they right? Well, yeah, but that doesn’t even come close to telling the whole story.
Why You Can’t Just Blog More to Get More Customers
Just because you push more pages live every week, doesn’t necessarily mean you’ll gain anything from it. If it were that easy, the “winner” in your industry would be whoever published the most content every day, and that’s just not so.
(Source)
Converting (and more importantly, retaining) customers involves several elements such as:
- Product quality
- Trust
- Service
- Site usability
- The power and clarity of information
- Pricing
- Need
- Conversion funnel effectiveness
You also need to consider the frame of mind visitors are in when they click a link to a blog post or choose your article from the search results. When they arrive, they will likely be searching for information. They won’t be looking to buy, and this is vital for conversion. Even if you do catch visitors at the right point in the buying process, blog posts rarely do much to move readers along the conversion funnel.
The assumption that blogging increases sales also assumes the only reason to blog is to attract customers. Yes, this may be the ultimate goal, but blogging isn’t the only way to go about it. This type of content also attracts the attention of related businesses. And why would you want that? Opportunities, authority, trust and links.
The benefits of blogging aren’t restricted to the phase “before the sale”, either. Blogging can provide support, encouragement and add value to your product, which helps retain customers and lower your customer churn rate. If you play it right, it can even help with upsells.
The Role of Quality and Time in Blogging
So, because blogging has all these benefits, you should publish several times a day, or at least once a day, right? This sounds easy on paper, but let’s be honest: How many companies can afford to produce 30 or more posts per month? Even if you decide to create the content yourself, you likely won’t have that kind of time.
I know lots of companies and individuals that do manage to blog regularly, but I’ve also seen quality become an issue. Granted, not every piece you publish is going to be successful, but blogging for the sake of a schedule just reduces the frequency of your “good stuff”. And every time you publish something that misses the mark, I think it works against you. You should set a precedent.
Think about this: I love reading SEO by the SEA and Hobo Web. Neither of them post every day. (Bill Slawski tends to post once a week, while Shaun will often go months without posting.) But, I still look forward to their posts and rarely miss one. In fact, I’m more likely to visit their blogs than industry blogs that post regularly because I know they’re worth the wait — Bill and Shaun are known for producing quality content.
I would even suggest that posting daily or multiple times a day would hurt their blogs. Sticking to a daily schedule would cause a sharp decline in quality. The content would become repetitious, and they’d run the risk of simply becoming a megaphone for other sites.
A few years ago, Steven Bradley wrote an excellent piece on traffic vs. publishing frequency. (Another fantastic blog to follow, by the way) In it, he looked at a few different instances where reducing the amount of content available to the search engines and readers actually increased rankings and traffic. (He also has a few additional reasons why publishing a ton of content isn’t always the best idea. It’s lengthy, but well worth the time to read.)
And who says your target audience has time to read that much in the first place? How many people visit your site daily? If they only read the morning commute to work, and that commute is an hour long, they only have a limited amount of time to read. And, if they also use that time to tweet, answer email and prepare for the upcoming day, you have even less time. Some people only read on Sunday mornings, so it would be pointless to publish on other days during the week, but it could be highly beneficial if your target audience visit blogs throughout the day.
What Goes Into a Conversion
People aren’t going to give you money just because you wrote a good piece of content. A number of elements that go into the conversion of a customer, including:
- Need — Your product/service has to meet a specific need, in the right way
- Quality — The item you’re selling needs to meet the level of quality a visitor is looking for
- Trust — The customer needs to trust you and have trust in the thing you sell
- Customer Service — The individual buying needs to know you’ll be there for him or her if something goes wrong
- Pricing — The cost of your product or service has to fit the customer’s budget
- Value — The price must balance with the need the buyer has for the item, and for the benefits it will bring
- Familiarity — The more comfortable someone is with the business, and the more he or she can identify with that business, the more likely the individual is to purchase
Blogging can help with these things, but it only goes so far. I mean, how often do you remember which website a particular piece of content was published on? How many times to you read about a shoe manufacturer and immediately buy a pair? Sure, it happens on occasion, but you can’t count on it to happen regularly.
Integrating Blogs and Content Into Your Marketing Strategy
When I’m asked how often a company should publish blog posts, I can’t give them a standard or even a definitive number. You see, the answer to that question depends on their:
- Target audience
- Industry habits and standards
- Competition
- Marketing strategy
- Resources
- Budget
- Current marketing assets and opportunities
- The needs of the website and holes in their current plan
If their content doesn’t suit their business, their marketing goals or their target audience, all the time and money invested in their blog would be wasted. Instead of publishing seven days a week, wouldn’t it be better to invest it in one or two pieces a week that have a positive effect and directly help to achieve your goal?
5 Must-Have Tools for Content Creators and Website Owners
I like shiny new toys. The only thing I like better than shiny new toys are shiny new toys that make my job easier and improve the value and service Angie’s Copywriting provides to our customers.
The problem with all these toys is finding ones that work well AND save time. Lots of times, I find ones with one or two helpful features and this usually means entering the same information into multiple locations. Or, I end up tracking several applications at the same time.
Well, you’ll be happy to know I’ve found some brilliant programs. They’ve made my life easier, and as far as I’m concerned, they’re a must-have for anyone creating content or running a website.
Project and Strategy Planning — Trello
Fog Creek Software call their wonderful new program “a collaboration tool that organises your projects into boards”, but Trello is so much more.
A free collaborative organizational program, Trello lets you create lists and cards you can add to a virtual board. These cards can then be dragged and dropped between the boards as needed. You can label and filter them, add comments, a voting mechanism, checklists, due dates, and more. (Did I mention you can collaborate with others and even publish the boards publicly?)
Currently, I’m using Trello to organize and track:
Books I’m Writing – I name the board the title of the book. Then, I create a list for each chapter. The subheadings and topics in each chapter are represented by cards in the list.
Marketing Strategies – I have one list for ideas, one for onsite marketing, one for offsite marketing, and one for promotion/advertising. Then, I create a card for each segment. (The email marketing list might contain cards labeled “signup strategies”, “pitches”, and “landing pages” for example.) To help flesh out the concept on each card, I add URLs, ideas, checklists, due dates, and notes in the comments section.
Website Planning and Building – Trello is excellent for keeping up with the constant changes that come with new websites. I create a list for each parent page, cards for each child page, and add links to additional boards in the comments.
For larger websites, I create multiple boards: The first board is divided into steps. So, I’ll make a list for market research, design, structure, content, marketing, etc. Then, each of those lists contains cards that represent and link to yet another board for each of the major steps. (Under marketing, for example, there might be a card for social media with a link to a social media board, one for SEO with a link to the board with all my SEO plans on it, etc.)
Content Creation — As you might imagine, I work on a ton of content for clients, my sites, and sites I run in collaboration with others. While I use Google Calendar and RememberTheMilk to keep everything straight, I found I still needed something to keep track of ideas and what stage each piece is at. So, I created a board specifically for content creation.
To do this, I made a list for each step in the process (ideas, currently writing, waiting for editing, ready-to-publish, published). Then, I drag each idea from one board to another as I get them done.
Easy peasy, right? Trello could use a few tweaks to improve its usability, but they’re pretty new and they’re working like crazy to add new ideas and features. Overall, I am absolutely loving it.
Trello Pros:
- Able to keep up with constant change (drag and drop)
- Excellent collaboration
- Flexible (boards/cards/lists can be used for just about anything)
- Free
- Labeling, filtering, and card customization
Trello Cons:
- Unable to make a card represent a board
- Comments get lost on extremely active cards
- Inability to integrate with other software programs like iCal, Basecamp, and others
Email Marketing and Newsletter Management — MailChimp
For effective email marketing and management, you can’t beat MailChimp. I’ve seen it in action for businesses of various sizes, and it always impresses me.
MailChimp starts with easy-to-build signup widgets and forms. These simple forms collect and automatically add respondents to a list. Then, you can use an existing template or create one of your own to make your own HTML and text emails. (Recipients can choose which format they prefer when they sign up.)
You can schedule the emails to go out at a specific time, create and drip feed an autoresponder series, or send them out immediately. You can send an email out to everyone, or segment your lists to personalise the emails and get a higher conversion rate. MailChimp’s reporting feature and live statistics make it really easy to see how your campaign is performing.
MailChimp offers a number of other services as well including an inspector to ensure safe delivery, an RSS-to-Email tool, geo-location, split testing, and more.
MailChimp Pros:
- Super simple for non-tech types
- Make campaigns as simple or as complicated as you’d like
- Integrates seamlessly with a variety of other software programs
- Flexible campaign creation
- Free or very affordable
- Solid list management
- Excellent reporting feature
- Easy campaign duplication
MailChimp Cons:
- Takes a bit of tinkering when you first start if you’re inexperienced and have no techie know-how
- Would love to see more data collection involved
- A bit clunky when dealing with late sign ups or sending to a single recipient
- Can’t disable social sharing on some emails and not others in a single campaign
Product Marketing and Membership Software — Your Members
A membership plugin designed for WordPress, Your Members isn’t something I’d normally recommend for anything other than creating a membership site, but wait until you can see what it does.
Your Members includes full user management, payment gateway integration, content management, and a ton of other features. It also includes add-on packages for Facebook membership sites, secure video streaming/distribution, and more.
Currently, I’m using Your Members strictly to manage and market the ebook series I’m working on. This plugin will make it possible sell my ebooks individually (choose the ones you want), in bundles of four for a small discount (buy all the books on a specific topic), as an annual 12- month subscription (for all 12 ebooks), or for a significant discount. It will also allow me to offer additional content and ebooks, as well as deliver courses and other features.
I think this is brilliant for anyone who creates content. You can use Your Members to sell your works of fiction (think: a novel and a series of short stories, or releasing the novel as a series), videos, podcasts, products and educational courses, blog posts, web designs, images…If you can make it, Your Members can sell and manage it.
Your Members Pros:
- Create flexible packages and memberships
- Full content control (Hide or show full or partial posts)
- Tons of opportunities to upsell and cross-promote
- Super easy to install, set up, and customize
- Ability to create your own messages and emails
- Integrates easily with other software
- Excellent customer service
Your Members Cons:
- Requires an initial investment
- You need to plan how you’re going to offer your content very carefully
- Must make sure the right people have access to the right content
Social Promotional Tool — inviteApe
Social sharing and word-of-mouth marketing are becoming more and more important. A recent Neilsen study showed more than 70% of consumers trusted socially shared content over brands and official media sources, so why not use this to market your products and services? That’s where the inviteApe WordPress plugin comes in.
This tool allows your followers to share links and information to your website and rewards them when that share pays off! So, if I share a link about my buddy Glenn’s book, and you click the link, I get a free copy. Ok, maybe just a discount or some other free material, but you get the idea. I used it to share initial copies of my first ebook and I don’t have a single complaint.
inviteApe uses Gravatar to create personalised pages for you and all your followers without lifting a finger. You can redirect users and customise the offer however you’d like. It’s a brilliant, quick little app.
inviteApe Pros:
- Easy way to encourage others to share your content and expand your reach
- Very little setup required
- Works for just about anything, and with a little customisation, you can even use it to sell and sign people up to mailing lists
- Works easily with pretty much any theme
inviteApe Cons:
- Need an established social-based following that’s already sharing and paying attention to your content
- Must have a main offer and something to give. This “something” has to attract others who aren’t as familiar with your work and tempt them to share
Invoicing and Bookkeeping — Freshbooks
I love that Freshbooks has a dashboard where all of my clients can log in and see what’s happening with their accounts. The UI is pretty and easy for everyone to use, and it tracks everything involved in my projects including my time, expenses, how long it takes them to pay, how much is outstanding, and how much I’ve been paid for. Best of all? It’s priced at a level that’s suitable for individuals and small businesses.
Another thing I really enjoy about Freshbooks is that it integrates with tons of stuff. This means I don’t have to worry about setting up PayPal requests or copying and pasting the same information multiple times. I just set it up and go.
The time tracking is probably good for people who remember to turn the silly thing on and off, but for me, it just doesn’t work. I need something with automatic tracking, a desktop app that works on my Mac, and something that lets me assign the time to a project, without having to go back to the website. For this, I use Paymo.biz.
Paymo’s time tracking app still needs some tweaking because it’s a bit clunky, but it’s new. And I have to say that it’s the best I’ve found for Mac so far. (Paymo is actually another really good alternative to Freshbooks. However, I find it has more of a project management focus, which is why I chose Freshbooks. I also don’t generally use time to invoice, so it isn’t much of an issue.)
Freshbooks Pros:
- Slick, brandable interface for clients
- Easy and fast to track and send invoices
- Uploading options means you can keep all of your client’s files in one place where they can access them whenever they need to
- Snail mail and email invoicing. Also does recurring payments
- Affordable
- Integrates with Basecamp and numerous other programs small businesses already use
Freshbooks Cons:
- Time tracking is helpful, but it doesn’t auto-track movements on your desktop.
- Another set of log-in details for clients
- Initial setup takes some time
- Frequent tab switching when locating and setting up projects
Customer Relationship Management — CapsuleCRM
CRM programs have been a particular pain for me. I’ve tried a bunch, and I’ve found they all had major issues for me:
- Desktop-based — Really sucks when you travel and frequently switch machines, not to mention a huge resource hog.
- Affordable, but don’t do what I want — I hate having to track everything manually!
- Fantastic, but expensive — If I have to work six months to pay for client management software, I don’t care how well it works. It’s not worth it.
Capsule CRM integrates completely with Gmail, so I never have to re-add information. Just click the button to upload the email and it’s done. It automatically matches the email with the right client.
It manages sales leads, as well. As a small business, I don’t find this section as helpful, but I’m trying to get into the habit of maintaining it for that inevitable day when I realize I’ve once again grown bigger than I thought. Overall, the entire thing is quite intuitive and I no longer have to worry about losing emails to a server crash. (Just be sure to back this up.)
CapsuleCRM Pros:
- Stores contacts individually and as an organisation
- Integrates with other software and apps, as well as social networks
- Makes contacts and organisations easy to find, including any projects or opportunities associated with them
- Change an individual into an organisation or an organisation into an individual
- Merge multiple contacts
CapsuleCRM Cons:
- Doesn’t allow you to make a case into an opportunity or an opportunity into a case
- Doesn’t include cases and opportunities on the dashboard
- No way to search the content of emails? (There may be one, but I haven’t found it yet.)
- Tasks and calendar don’t integrate with iCal and Gmail tasks or other calendar/to-do apps
Content Collaboration — Gather Content
I’ve been looking for a suitable way to share and revise content with clients, and this quest brought me to Gather Content. It basically gives you a way to design mockups and insert content. You can then invite clients, designers, and others involved in the project, so they can revise and tinker with the layout and the various elements. You can assign pages, due dates, and upload content. When you’re done, you can export the whole kit ‘n’ kaboodle in one full swoop.
I don’t think I’m using it the way the developers had intended it, but so far, I’m pretty pleased with it. At the moment, I’m using it to design and layout new website content. I’m also using it as a temporary home for all the new content for my existing sites. I couldn’t care less about the design options, but I did have a play with them and thought they worked quite well. I’ll be testing this one further before adding it to my existing client routine.
Gather Content Pros:
- Easily create and move pages
- Files, comments and everything you need is in one place
- Project organisation is fantastic
- Keeps track of what’s due and when
- Easy for others to change things and make comments. (Revisions are all saved, so you can easily move from one revision to the next without losing anything.)
- Free!
Gather Content Cons:
- Having to play with the design is a bit frustrating when you just want to use it for content. You need to add a text box to the page before adding content
- Reloads the entire page when you switch from one page to another. Avoid this by opening pages in multiple tabs
- No integration with other software or apps yet
**UPDATE** I just received an email stating that Pegbe is being shut down. However, I’ve left it in this article because of the information on RememberTheMilk. I also thought it was a good insight into the way I structure and manage my day.
To Do List — Pegby
I’ve used RememberTheMilk to handle all my to-dos since I started my business. I enjoy it, and find it’s really convenient, but I have been playing with Pegby recently. It’s another one of those pretty drag-and-drop apps that you actually don’t mind playing with. You create one card for each item, and from there, you can add notes, files, and tags. You can push it off until later, or share the board with someone else and delegate the tasks.
This is fun for me, but not practical when things start getting overly complicated. Not to say it won’t work for someone else, but my brain simply doesn’t work that way. That’s why I’m still using RememberTheMilk to handle all of my long-term tasks. But, I’ve found Pegby’s Trello-like information radiator layout is a great option to manage my daily to-do list. (I’m still playing with it, so opinions here may change.)
Pegby Pros:
- Pretty, fun, and makes me want to get things done, so I can move the cards around
- Information radiator layout is ideal for daily task lists
- Free (Works on a pay-what-it’s-worth model)
- Collaboration is pretty simple
- Email cards to the board
- Paying members can make boards public and give them their own branding
Pegby Cons:
- Can’t simply tick off completed tasks if it’s an item with multiple steps
- Not really designed for long-term task management
That’s it for me. What sorts of tools have you recently adopted or been testing? Anything I should try?
*** Update ***
The other day, I tweeted a blog post and made a comment that I really liked the tag cloud the site was using. Today, Infomous replied to my tweet with a thank you and a gift! Turns out, it’s a tool. And they have a bunch of other really neat tools for analysts and publishers like this nifty alternative navigation system. Very nice, yes?
Blog Tag Cloud
Twitter Tag Cloud
Copywriting Master Class Sneak Peek: Creating Successful Link Bait
It’s here! Yesterday, I released the first ebook in the Copywriting Master Class series. It’s 40 pages packed with link-bait-creation goodness!
Today, I thought it would be fun to share a sample of it with you. Enjoy!
Boost the Strength of Your Content
Congratulations. Things seem to be rolling along nicely. Your link bait may even be ranking well in the search results, thanks (at least in part) to a little known ranking factor called ‘Query Deserves Freshness’ (QDF).
(The search engines believe newer content is better, so they often list new content higher in the search results to see how it does. It’s also the result of the high number of links, traffic, and attention new content gets compared to older content. And without maintaining this momentum and establishing your piece, it will start falling in the search results.)
To make the most of your new rankings, and the attention your fresh, new piece of link bait is getting, you’ll need to increase its strength and visibility almost immediately. In fact, I make this part of the pre-planning phase because it takes work and time.
Link Back to Your Own Link Bait
Usually, when I create an important piece of content, I also develop a guest posting strategy to go with it. This way, I’m generating links to keep the content up in the search results, but I’m also driving fresh traffic to the piece, while expanding my reach. (I’ll write more on this later, but in the meantime, check out The Fine Art of Creating a Guest Posting Strategy.)
This strategy is almost identical, except for what I choose to write about, and how I choose my targets.
For example:
Let’s say we’ve created link bait for a car manufacturer entitled ‘The 20 Strangest Cars on the Road’. For guest posts, I would create content that looks at customizing cars, odd cars from history, unique uses for various cars, and other content that touches on the subject of the link bait piece, but doesn’t duplicate it. If it fits, I may add a little extra intrigue by borrowing an image or video from my link bait piece, to use in the guest posts.
Then, I publish a few of the guest posts on the same day as my link bait, a few more the next day, and so on. Why? When readers click through from the guest post to read more of my content or see what I have to offer, they’ll land on the link bait piece, and continue reading. After all, if they were interested in the guest post enough to click through, they’ll likely be interested in our link bait as well.
The transition is smooth, and readers are more likely to read further, rather than returning to the first site. (I should add that I normally don’t publish additional blog content immediately after a link bait piece. I like to milk my link bait for all it’s worth, before moving on.)
The second reason for this is to create a safety net. If something goes wrong with the piece (it attracts the wrong audience, feedback is negative, it’s not getting attention, etc.), I have time and the opportunity to make changes and get things back on track.
When choosing sites to guest post on, I tend to stay away from others in my industry. Instead, I search out sites that are target rich. This means their readers are interested in the content, use my chosen social media networks, and own websites (are likely to link back).
So, in our example, I would look for sites such as car magazines, companies that specialize in customizing cars, high-end recreation websites, and others who attract people with a high income, and an interest in expensive cars. I may even create pieces that look at cars driven by top CEOs and target business magazines and websites.
Blog posts aren’t the only format you can use, of course. Other types include:
- Videos
- Slide shows/presentations
- Ebooks
- Articles
- Press Releases
- An app, widget, game, software, or tool
- White papers
- Case studies
You can use anything really. The only rule is that whatever you choose has to link back to your site and target the right audience.
Continue to Generate Interest
It’s no shock that people lose interest in your content the second you press publish. So, if you’re going to keep people coming back in the weeks ahead, you’ll need to keep working with it.
One I way I accomplish this is to create…
Want to read the rest and find out how I keep traffic coming to my link bait? You’ll have to get your own copy of Copywriting Master Class: Creating Successful Link Bait.
Horror Movies, Great Copywriting & Profitable Websites
The other night, I was working away at my computer watching “Paranormal State” on Netflix (New to Canada! YAY!) and because it isn’t exactly a show for my kidlet, I plugged in my headphones. The apartment eventually got dark, but because I’m quite a connoisseur of scary stuff, I didn’t pay much attention. It takes a lot for a movie to scare me.
Suddenly, I heard something move to my left, and I admit it: It scared the crap out of me! I yanked the earphones out of my ears and literally looked to make sure I was alone.
Of course, I laughed at myself. It was silly, but the show and my own habits set me up to freak out and do exactly what I did. It did scare me enough to start thinking though…how similar are scary movies to good websites? Is there anything I can learn here?
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Scary Movies Bring Everything Together
Horror movies use our minds to scare us. Every element works to gain our trust, suck us into the story, and make us part of the story…the music, the images, the sounds…it all fits together perfectly.
Websites aren’t supposed to scare us…well, some are, but generally speaking, they’re not supposed to. What they are supposed to do, however, is to gain our trust, suck us into the sales funnel, and make us buy into the ultimate goal. Every element needs to work together to do it.
The Perfect Introduction
If you’ve ever watched Paranormal State, you’ll notice it starts off with a black screen, completely devoid of everything except simple white lettering. The sounds are reminiscent of something banging on the pipes and other sounds you’d normally hear at the scariest points of a movie.
The message is written clearly, simply, and is very much to the point. The text is in a font you’d normally see used on official paperwork, and before the show even starts, you know the entire show will be presented from an investigative standpoint.
Websites and copywriting need to set up the visitor instantly. The first thing they notice should already tell them what to expect from the rest of the site. If you were to think of your website like a movie, it should give hints about the main elements of the plot.
Not sure what the plot for your website or copywriting should be? Here are a few tips:
- Start with the end in mind – Decide where you want visitors to be at the end of their visit. Hopefully, this is at the end of a conversion.
- Decide where each ‘viewer’ starts - Websites are a lot like a ‘choose your own adventure story’. Your job is to figure out where each segment will land and begin their journey. Even though they may start at multiple locations, they should have a similar theme.
- Connect the Dots - Make a note of all the important ‘intersections’ for each of your conversion paths and make sure each visitor can go through the ‘story’ without getting lost. Can they skip to the end at any time?
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Focus Attention On the Most Important Information
In a scary movie, you’ll notice that only one element, sound, visual stimuli, or script, will peak at any one time while the foundation of the story is being laid. At the key points where you’re being drawn into the story, only one element will build tension. This might be a character talking while nothing notable can be seen onscreen, or it might be the music slowly building the tension while all is quiet and still.
Then, as you near the climax of the movie, you’ll hear the intensity build in two of the elements. The music will intensify as the characters begin to realize whatever it is the climax will be. You’re naturally pulled into the storyline and find yourself experiencing the story yourself. Waiting. Wondering. Wanting to know. The climax? All three elements reach their peak.
Now, think of your conversion process.
While it may not be as noticeable in a shorter process, ecommerce stores make it relatively easy to plan out. Think about it:
You start the story by landing on the site. Already getting an idea of what you should be looking for, you follow a category or click on a product page.
Once there, the theme of your visit surrounds this main piece, giving you information, and convincing you to purchase that item. There are other paths you could take, other products you could purchase, but the main focus should be centered on the product you initially chose. In short, even though there are other elements present, the other stimuli should be muted and naturally direct focus on the main path.
From there, you place your item in the shopping cart. The end (the checkout button) should be calling to you, but things like sales, free shipping if you buy $X more, and other offers should be intensifying. They’re all indications of the climax to come.
By the time you’re done, you can’t help but think about how nice it will be to get your items in your home and in your very own hands. Clicking the checkout button? That’s the climax. The moment of relief from all the built up tension.
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Every Story Has a Hero
No matter what kind of movie you watch, they always have a star. There is always one main character you can rely on to find happiness, save the day, or defeat the bad guys. This is where most of the focus is centered, and generally, where the story begins and ends.
Does your site have a hero? Does it have a product, a group of information, or offer that everyone can look to for help? Will it save the day?
The next time you watch a horror movie, or any good story, watch it, enjoy it, and be entertained, but watch it a second time. Take time to watch it with the sound off, listen to it without watching the screen, and if you can, read a script from the show. Make note of how the elements work together and how the movie draws you in until you convert and buy the story. Then, look at your own website, or get someone else to do it, and see if it does the same.