The Essential Messaging Component Most Ecommerce Sites Miss

[Music] welcome to another edition of the quick wind clinic I'm looking at a page submitted by Joshua it's interesting for those of you especially in b2b e-commerce but their message the the inside I want to draw today could still be relevant to you regardless of whether you're in b2b or not now we only have a few moments how do we pack these few moments with something rich and rewarding for you as you probably know and I say this a lot because I need you to know where the heuristics come from where the science was is grounded but we've run twenty thousand experiments here we built the first system in rigorous science analyzing ecommerce in its earliest days we used to evaluate the very first e-commerce carts and run them through sort of a test in our research lab when Yahoo bought via web from Paul Graham they spent forty nine million dollars and I quickly went in and analyze the effectiveness of that site some of you are young and don't don't remember those days but I can tell you at the time yahoo had the best solution for e-commerce it was a different day now you might be sitting here and saying what does all that have to do with me well it's just that I've watched e-commerce evolve over decades and I want to bring to bear a simple question that I think is missed if I were to ask you what is the number one one of the number one flaw in most ecommerce sites what would you say it is think about that for just a moment if I were to take right now 100 stores and I've analyzed stores from you know from Verizon to Amazon and and I'm drawing back in that sort of library of experiences and thinking about what I saw there and thinking about what I saw here and I'm asking myself a question in less than you know six more minutes how can I help you today well if your business is ecommerce let me at least share with you the number one problem I see in site after site in store after store now take you on a journey with me so let's look at the homepage and I'm gonna ask you a question what is the central component is missing here look at the homepage with me okay as you're thinking about that I'm going to click on the link that says school chairs as I do so a new page emerges and I want you to look at that page and ask yourself okay what is there missing here now think for a moment because it's been missing on both pages so look for a pattern digging down deep inside and say what is it that's wrong with this page well clearly there's a lot of things we could point out but there's something so fundamental that should be here that's not well maybe maybe it's not on the category page and maybe it's not on the home page so let's check on the product page every site has these commonalities typically a PDP a product display page a category page a home page I'm looking at this and I'm asking alright is it here perhaps it's here no it's not I need to help you find the answer to the question I've raised and to do so I'm gonna right sort of symbolize two elements now as I symbolize the two elements I'm suggesting that for me to choose to buy from you I have to come to conclusions about both C and P you say well what is C and P before I go there let me add another concept this is the concept used frequently in philosophy it's the difference between esses airy and sufficient I'm gonna draw on in over the C and by the way if you're not familiar with that you can google it but you know some things are necessary and you have to have them but by themselves they're not enough that's the easiest way for me to explain it and I want to say that a certain conclusion about the company is necessary that's the C a certain conclusion about the product is necessary both they're necessary but one or the other separate are not sufficient so I'm now going to draw set around this and I'm going to say that both are required to reach sufficiency now you're saying so where is all this going well here's where it is retailers because their retailers typically spend a lot of ink trying to help you understand what they offer and to talk about their product let's call that P but P represent product it is necessary that I believe that the product is right for me did you hear that and everything in this site is designed to help you find the product and convince you that the product is right for me but I started this session by raising a question I said what is missing and what is missing it's not on the home page it's on the category page it's on the product page what is missing is the information I need to infer that the company is right from me hold on a second what does this mean well it's very simple if I conclude that this product is right for me you cannot assume that I conclude I should buy it from you I might find a product like this or I might find this exact product somewhere else and your copy on this page needs to help me draw a sense of certainty inside that not only is this the right product but that you are the right company you