I read an article recently about creating forward sales momentum with web site visitors. I love the concept.

The idea is to create site copy that leads users down a prescribed path toward a purchase. I was nodding my head in affirmation until the author stated that the path to a purchase is linear.

This is where the marketer who lives in the trenches of real life tells the marketing academic that he’s just wrong. Momentum is great, and we should all strive to create forward momentum through our site navigation and copy. The idea that users will follow a linear path to a purchase is just wishful thinking – nothing more.

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If only they would believe everything we say. How easy selling would be.

After years of being conditioned to believe that marketers are liars (and sales people are worse), we as consumers have evolved into a very skeptical breed. Sadly, our skepticism is often validated and reinforced by real-word experience in the marketplace.

So what do we do about it? How do we differentiate ourselves and our message as simply being believable? If we can figure this out, we’ll sell more (online and offline). We’ll increase our conversion rates. And we will be more profitable.

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I’m hung up right now on the issue of online conversion and why conversion rates are, in my estimation, generally so far beneath where they could be.

One reason we fail to convert visitors into buyers online is that we fail to speak to them in a way that coincides with their needs at the time. Sometimes this is understandable. We can’t read the minds of our visitors, can we? In fact… sometimes, maybe we can.

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In May, 2006, a partner and I negotiated an exclusive license of a web-based software application developed by a large research university, and we formed a company that will serve the sole purpose of selling, supporting, and enhancing this product.

This case study will follow our progress, successes, failures, and lessons learned – as they occur.

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When small businesses and high-touch service businesses mimic the referral rewards programs of big businesses, I would argue that they cheapen themselves and fail to maximize the potential yield of their referral sources.

What the heck am I talking about?

I’m referring to the difference between sincere yet deliberate (orchestrated) gratitude and what I call a “transparent referral economy.”

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Who doesn’t want to grow their business through referrals? We’d all rather sell to people who have been referred to us. The sale starts with a level of trust and familiarity that just isn’t produced by other methods of lead generation.

So why are sales people so bad at generating referrals on a consistent basis? I would argue that as sales people and marketers, most of us have over-simplified the concept of referral generation.

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I have spent much of the last few months diving into this issue. I’m puzzled. And I’m convinced that this is the area of greatest opportunity for most of us who invest marketing dollars online.

Depending on who you ask, average conversion rates (the percentage of site visitors who take the action that you desire while on your site) online are between 1.8% and 2.4% and FALLING. At a glance, most of us respond to these figures from a direct marketing perspective and conclude that this feels about right. Direct mail response rates tend to fall in this general vicinity (rarely higher… often lower). So why should the Web be any different?

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