Review: Waiting for Your Cat to Bark

Waiting for Your Cat to Bark: Persuading Customers When They Ignore Marketing
by Bryan and Jeffrey Eisenberg, with Lisa T. Davis
Nelson Business, 2006
Hardcover, 225 pages
ISBN 0785218971

Dogs aim to please, cats do their own thing. But if you're waiting for your customers (cats) to aim to please you (like dogs do), the authors contend, you'll be waiting a long time. The answer is found in learning to persuade them to make a purchase or take an action using what the authors call Persuasion Architecture.

In this book the Eisenberg brothers (principals of FutureNow and publishers of GrokDotCom.com e-mail newsletter, which I read and recommend) present a highly sophisticated model of the buying process (that is, the sales process from the customer's viewpoint). While the model works in brick-and-mortar stores, it is particularly adaptable to (and measurable in) online stores. The Eisenbergs are known as the world's conversion boosting experts and the authors of the best-selling book  Call to Action (2005, ISBN 1932226397).

If you're brand new to e-commerce, skip this book. But if you have an online store that has hit the ceiling with its conversion rate, you can learn a lot from Persuasion Architecture. Be prepared, however, to spend some time to wrap your mind around it since it isn't easy to grasp the first -- or second -- time you study it. The Eisenbergs' approach draws from a number of disciplines -- sales, typology, demographics, psychographics, etc.

Developing an online store using Persuasion Architecture consists of 6 phases: (1) uncovery, (2) wireframing, (3) storyboarding, (4) prototyping, (5) development, and (6) optimizations. The vital step is the first: "uncovery," what most of us would describe as "discovery," the process of understanding what is knowable about your customers, your business, and the sales process, and examining this from every possible perspective. Uncovery includes such things as:

• Determining how your customers view your company, your brand.
• Understanding how to plan for both transactional shoppers (focused on a single purchase only) and relational shoppers (looking for a long-term relationship with a vendor).
• Grasping four temperaments suggested by the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI), which the authors have renamed Methodical, Spontaneous, Humanistic, and Competitive shoppers.
• Identifying shoppers at each of three stages of the buying process -- just browsing, knowing approximately what they want, and knowing exactly what they want.
• Developing two or more "personas," which the authors define precisely as "representative stand-ins for the modes in which it is possible for individuals to interact with you and your business."
• Studying search keywords that reveal something about a customer's buying stage and temperament.
• Coming up with trigger words that motivate different personas and serve to move them forward in the buying process.

Persuasion Architecture isn't easy to explain, understand, or implement. But if you're serious about moving your e-commerce site to the next level, here's a guidebook that indicates the waypoints on that journey. Strongly recommended for established online businesses that will devote the time necessary to optimize their online sales process.

Order now from the Amazon site nearest you. US | CA | UK | Germany | France | Japan