Rapport, Dissonance, Experience, and Ecommerce

In most companies, the people that do outbound marketing - even marketing that drives website traffic - are not the same people that build websites. In fact, it's often two different vendors... with little or no integration whatsoever. Taking this one step further... think in the general sense, about people who build websites and people who create ads. Generally, they aren't the same types of people.

It makes sense then, that customers that respond to the language and feel in certain ads, will not feel the same rapport once they reach your site. Of course, best practices say we should have "integrated marketing," but in this case, I'm referring more to the overall "experience" than just the simple messaging.

Some shoppers love recommendations. Others can't stand them. Some like to see lots of choices and variety, others just want to find what they are looking for, buy it, and be gone. Even more... people are not the same person on every site, and in every shopping experience. They may want to browse on Amazon, but shop and be done on drugstore.com.

So, if your outbound marketing leads users to think you're going to offer one type of experience, but you offer something entirely different... what happens? Dissonance: that's what. The end result is a high number of bounces and nonconversions, frustrated customers, wasted marketing dollars, and lost opportunity for building instant rapport.

What to do? This is what I've seen work: determine the intent of your customers, and align your site accordingly. What did they come to your site to do? And how can you support those tasks? What do they need to make a decision? Whether it be a certain online experiences, certain information, or certain site components: build it. Then, make sure your outbound marketing indicates the "feeling" of the online experience. Better yet, offer various paths for various intent and decision making types.

If we think of our customers as people with various styles rather than clicks on pages, it's a lot easier to understand them.