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The Importance of the “Box”
When I was 17 years old my mother came home one day and announced that she had purchased a condom store and I was welcome to a summer job at the new store in Provincetown, Condom Nation. We worked together in that business for a number of years – and as you might imagine there are lots of stories about it, but those are topics for another day. |
Being primarily a numbers person, Mom had explained that this was an eleven billion dollar a year business. During that first summer I was fascinated by the economics – product manufacturing marketing techniques. I felt that I was on the ultimate safe sex mission, and if only we could distribute enough condoms we could stop AIDS from decimating our society. I needed to learn all that I could – this geek was convinced the answers were in the data.
When I finally got some of the production economic data, I noticed something very interesting – the exorbitant cost of packaging in all adult products. I became determined to understand this and it was the question I had for everyone I met at the CES show in Las Vegas.
Many people really didn't understand my question – who the heck was the kid with glasses and a spreadsheet, anyway - but I finally found an old rep from Doc Johnson who was willing to sit down and chat with me.
He explained that "the box" was the most important aspect of the product and he took a few minutes to explain why. People are embarrassed about these things, there is no “consumer reports” for this type of stuff, they'd never ask a friend for advice, and they are often feeling uneducated about what to buy. Since they had no idea how to judge the actual product, they based their opinion on what they could understand - - the box.
He calmly explained that while making a better product was perhaps a worthy goal it was unlikely to increase sales. Focus on slick beautiful packaging – that is what the customers use to make buying decisions, that is what really matters to them. This was my first real lesson in the harsh realities of sales.
Today this lesson is very important at KISS. It is applied to the sites we build, and it is important in your business as well. You see, no customer of KISS has ever viewed the source code of what we do to make a determination about what they thought of our work. I doubt many clients of a high end accountant go over the books with a calculator looking for errors, and very few people ever watched their mechanic work on their automobile engine and made conclusions, either.
When buying something that is difficult to understand, consumers use clues and hints to form their opinion of the company.
This is where the “friendly one business day maximum response” policy at KISS comes in. We know our clients can't read our code, don't know the intricacies of search engines, don't understand the subtleties of keyword density in content creation – and they probably never will. Eventually these folks are made “happy” when they see the sales from their shopping cart each month. In the meantime, they are on the hunt for subtle cues and clues about KISS. A key aspect to keeping our clients happy is to return all calls in timely, efficient, and friendly manner. Does doing this have anything to do with making award winning websites that spit out sales for our customers – Nope. Will our customers judge us by this nonetheless? – Yup.
When it comes to your own website you need to think long and hard about “the box” and what it is saying. These are things that are easily dismissed but in fact are critically important. A competitor who has a product no where near as good as yours, but is presenting it in a better box, will beat you every time.
How easy – or hard – is it to find the contact information on your site? How does the site “seem” graphically – do you look expensive, middle of the road, or bargain basement? Do the pages of your site direct people to a “most desired” response? Sometimes this can be as simple as making the phone number bigger than the email address if you know your close rate is higher with phone contacts.
We sell very little “directly” online, but here is a spot where we are selling an e-book, on e-books in fact.
The book is a good one in terms of the meat – trust me – but this page is all about “the box”. Clarity on what you will get, the price (and opportunity to buy) clearly displayed in multiple locations on the page, the guarantee big and bold, and the intro and table of contents give a properly framed little taste of what it is.
I think this is a great overview of what it takes to succeed with an e-book, but the purchase decision will be made by looking at “the box”.
Step back from what you have for sale and take a good hard look at your “box” - it is likely you'll find seemingly unimportant improvements that have a dramatic impact on your bottom line. |
