I always enjoy reading articles by Bryan Eisenberg, of Future Now, and one of his latest articles on the Clickz site is no exception. Points of Resolution discusses how you should try and anticipate your visitor’s questions, through the use of persuasion architecture. I’m sure that many of his observations will resonate with readers:
“When you read or navigate a site, you’re led down a dim path toward understanding. Sometimes you bump into something. There’s a concern or question about what you just read, or you’d like more illumination, deeper explanation or additional information. This is a Point of Resolution, where you smack into a question, curiosity or concern that requires an answer.”
He says that: “On your Web site, a visitor may have a question about what she just read or saw. While it may not be serious, it halts progress and must be addressed. Don’t allow anything to slow a visitor down or compel her to rethink in order to continue.”
A theme which I have seen crop up before in Bryan’s articles is the idea of getting closer to the customer and trying to get in to their mindset. In this article he talks about answering questions asked by theoretical personae (probably your top ten customers). One observation, though funny, happens time and again in a high percentage of websites: “A common folly among site owners is to answer the questions they themselves would ask, not what visitors want to know. Despite good intentions, they’re shooting in the dark.”
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