MindValley Labs Internet Marketing Blog

Client Case Study:

Ultra­Dent sells den­tal solu­tions. They needed to know how to make sales online in a very com­pet­i­tive mar­ket (10+ direct adver­tis­ers on Adwords). What tricks could they use to boost their check­out rate?

We sug­gested that Ultra­Dent AVOID the tra­di­tional style of ecom­merce store­front and instead exper­i­ment with the con­cept of seg­ment­ing and edu­cat­ing the cus­tomer before ask­ing for the sale.

Here’s How We’d Revamp their Site:

The com­pany we spoke to ear­lier this week would like to remain anony­mous, for the pur­pose of this case study I’ll refer to them as Ultra­Dent. Ultra­Dent is a retailer of plaque con­trol prod­ucts. It’s a tra­di­tional ecom­merce store in the Ama­zon mould with a shop­ping cart but its web­site isn’t con­vert­ing as well as it could be.

My the­ory is this:

Peo­ple in the mar­ket for den­tal care are not edu­cated cus­tomers. They have heard of plaque con­trol and teeth pol­ish­ing — but they’re puz­zled and con­fused by the myr­iad of dif­fer­ent prod­ucts and choices. When they get on Google and search for “Plaque Con­trol” they are NOT LOOKING FOR A PRODUCT. Instead, they’re LOOKING FOR INFORMATION.

This is an impor­tant insight:

Peo­ple Google Search for INFO — NOT for PRODUCTS. Yet most PPC adver­tis­ers insist on dis­play­ing a list of prod­ucts rather than infor­ma­tion rel­e­vant to the search — not a smart idea.

The Ultra­Dent Site Problem

When the user first lands on the site after a PPC ad click the user was pre­sented with a myr­iad of choices.

Here is an Out­line of their Site

Note: For pri­vacy rea­sons we do not show their actual site but a “block” ver­sion that just shows the posi­tion of types of ele­ments they cur­rently used.

They make sev­eral big mis­takes
Among them

1. Promo prod­uct of the day, sale of the day, spe­cial offers — etc etc…

2. Admin log in but­tons (absolutely not needed!)

3. Prod­uct search? Why? The client typed in “Plaque Con­trol” on Google. They already did their prod­uct search. You should be cap­tur­ing this info via your Adwords link.

4. Cheesy stock photography

5. Mul­ti­ple Prod­uct Side­bar? A com­mon sin of ecom­merce sites — don’t con­fuse cus­tomers with mul­ti­ple prod­uct suggestion.

What ben­e­fits do all these fea­tures actu­ally give to a cus­tomer? This web­site has no tar­get­ing what­so­ever and it also fails to form any trust between the web­site and the browser.

The Site Makeover — Going for Sim­plic­ity, Cus­tomer Seg­ment­ing and Cus­tomer Education

Here’s how we’d redo their site.

Frankly, we’d toss out the ENTIRE front page and start fresh.

The image below gives an idea of what the new front page should look like.

Here’s the key things we’d do.

1. Build Trust

One way to quickly estab­lish trust and integrity to your web­site is to sim­ply put a pic­ture of the owner or man­ager of the com­pany up. This helps estab­lish trust. It also helps with brand­ing and hav­ing the cus­tomer per­ceive you as an AUTHORITY on the sub­ject of Den­tal Care. Being per­ceived as an author­ity is crit­i­cal to the strat­egy we’re about to discuss.

2. Focus on Infor­ma­tion First — then the Sale.

Most traf­fic for prod­ucts such as teeth whiten­ing is of course going to come from Google. It’s so impor­tant that you under­stand how peo­ple use Google and their quest for information.

“No-one googles to buy, they google to get information”

SO… what’s the impli­ca­tion of this?

Don’t try to sell the cus­tomer upfront. The head­line and open­ing body copy should instead focus on mak­ing the cus­tomer feel that they are on the right place to answer their question.

Sam­ple Headline:

“Hav­ing been in the Den­tal Indus­try for 8 Years, Here’s the Dirty Truth behind Plaque Con­trol Prod­ucts that Your Den­tist May NOT want you to Know”

The next part is an open­ing para­graph men­tion­ing what the site is about — some­thing along the lines of

“My name is _________. On this site I’m going to reveal to you every­thing I’ve learned about Plaque Con­trol — the pro­ce­dures, the best prod­ucts, the indus­try lies and the best choices for consumers.….….…..”

That’s the kind of open­ing that can hook a cus­tomer and make them stay on your site.

Now here’s the next — and the MOST IMPORTANT PART.

3. Cus­tomer Segmenting

Ask the cus­tomer what they’re look­ing for. Yes — seriously…give them a list.

What’s Your Biggest Ques­tion on Plaque Control?

• Cost of Teeth Whitening
• Home ver­sus Dentist
• What’s the dif­fer­ence between kits, gels and strips.
• etc, etc

Here’s the KEY POINT

Each ques­tion is a link to a sep­a­rate page on the site that answers the ques­tion and then RECOMMENDS ONE PRODUCT THAT THE CUSTOMER SHOULD BUY.

In many cases hav­ing many dif­fer­ent prod­ucts with dif­fer­ent prices and reviews can have a severely neg­a­tive impact on your con­ver­sion rate. There should never be any rea­son for your browser to have to stray from your web­site to get more infor­ma­tion. This strat­egy elim­i­nates that possibility.

So what does the cus­tomer see when they click on their ques­tion of choice?

4. Edu­cat­ing the Customer

Now let’s say the cus­tomer clicks on “What is the Cost of Tooth Whiten­ing?”. The next page they see looks some­thing like this:

The page DIRECTLY answers the ques­tion in brief and then rec­om­mends ONE sin­gle prod­uct for the customer.

At this point, the cus­tomer is hav­ing their main ques­tion answered. A sense of trust has been estab­lished. They are likely to per­ceive you as an expert and not a sales­per­son look­ing for a quick product.

What­ever prod­uct you rec­om­mend has now gained great cred­i­bil­ity. The buy rate will likely be MUCH higher.

But why do we rec­om­mend just show­ing one product?

Let’s say you show 4 dif­fer­ent prod­ucts, the prob­lem is that unless you explain the pros and cons of each really well, the vis­i­tor could jump off your site, go back to Google and do research on the prod­ucts. Along the way, they might stum­ble onto a com­peti­tors site and you lose the sale.

So if you must show mul­ti­ple prod­ucts, explain them really well based on the ques­tion the cus­tomer pre­vi­ously clicked on.

In the case above, you know the cus­tomer is likely con­cerned with price. If you have 4 prod­ucts in your cat­a­logue, you can list all 4 on this page. But address the pric­ing lev­els of each. For example:

Prod­uct 1: This one is the most eco­nom­i­cal. But results take 3 months. I would rec­om­mend this if you’re look­ing to spend less than $200.…

Prod­uct 2: High end prod­uct with great tes­ti­mo­ni­als. Fast (most cus­tomers see results in ___ hours). The pric­ing is $3400.

Again, you want to give the cus­tomer the EXACT info they need so they can make a pur­chase on your site — with lit­tle con­fu­sion and lit­tle need to go back to Google and do more research.

Sum­mary: Keys To Make Sales Online

How to make sales online is a sub­ject that’s trou­bling so many inter­net mar­keters. Don’t stick to con­ven­tions — think out of the box. Learn to tar­get your cus­tomers, dis­cover what they’re look­ing for, give them EXACTLY what they’re look­ing for and make a sale through edu­ca­tion and cus­tomer segmenting.

Roberta Rosen­berg, The Copy­writ­ing Maven, and a reader of this blog sum­ma­rized it best in a com­ment she left us 4 months back:

Whether it’s online, in a cat­a­log, or through tra­di­tional direct mail mar­ket­ing, too many choices will “par­a­lyze” most prospects and impede their abil­ity to click the “buy now” but­ton. What prospects do want, how­ever, is assis­tance toward mak­ing the right choice from among many options.

Learn More:

• How To Make Sales Online
• Case Study on get­ting Traffic
• The Para­dox of Choice

Last 5 posts by

• Do you think SEO in other lan­guages is eas­ier? — Sep­tem­ber 18th, 2008
• Google Slap — How to recover from a Google Slap? — Sep­tem­ber 8th, 2008
• What Does Your Order But­ton Say? — August 29th, 2008
• Will Knol Rule The Search Engines? First Analy­sis Indicates…It Just Might — July 23rd, 2008
• Are small busi­nesses drop­ping out of AdWords? — July 23rd, 2008

About the Author

Prior to MindValley Media, Mike was the Head of New Ventures Strategy at eBay where he conceived of the strategies that led to the investment in Craigslist, the launch of Kijiji.com and the acquisition of Skype. Mike has an MBA from Stanford and previously worked for the Boston Consulting Group. He is also a certified Google AdWords Professional.

Check out other posts by Mike Reining

If you want to see what's in the private lab...

Ask yourself... which part of your business would you most like to improve?

I can send you 7 tactics related to your specific needs, if you like.

You don't have to buy anything, just take it as a backstage pass into our private course.

Will it give you the solution you've been waiting for?

There's only one way to find out.

Your first-name

Your email

Get Free Tactics

Our strict privacy policy keeps your email 100% safe and secure.