Qualified visitors arrive on your site hot on the trail of a scent trail that you’ve laid out for them through. Like a dog obsessed with his hunt, they will only stay engaged with your website as long as you maintain the scent they’re craving for all the way through your conversion process.
What is Scent?
As web research scientist Dr. Ed Chi puts it, “information scent is made up of cues that people decide whether a path is interesting.” These cues can vary from keyword phrases and online citations to sleek design elements and a pretty face. The key to maintaining scent in online conversions is using effective cues consistently until readers find the information they need and perform the action you’re looking for.
Maintaining Organic Search Scent
To use search engine scent as an example, let’s say that we have a cosmetic dentistry website that we’ve optimized for the keyword “teeth whitening in Atlanta.” In addition to some helpful, scannable copy about our teeth whitening service on our landing page, we can also optimize our page to maintain scent. We can use bold, relevant headlines and headers to assure visitors that they’re in the right place with visuals of the procedure, smiling faces and the Atlanta area to drive our focus home.
Maintaining Marketing Scent
Similarly, we’d also need to make sure that our landing page maintains the scent of any advertising campaigns that we’ve got running. We might be running a PPC campaign on Google with a message promoting our variety of affordable dental options for the entire family. We’ll need a landing page that maintains that scent by breaking down a patients options and highlights our family-friendly atmosphere.
It’s no secret how much time and effort it takes to get quality traffic to arrive on your site. Maintain the scent that you’ve got the meat potential clients are hungry for, and you’ll see more visitors converting into fresh leads and sales.
Suggested Exercise:
Using Google Analytics, identify the strongest keyword phrase that is bringing a decent amount of traffic to your site. Conduct a brief audit of the keyword’s landing page with an eye out for ways to improve scent by altering or repositioning design elements like headers, photos and copy. If possible, ask a fresh pair of eyes to take a look at the before and after pages from the perspective a new visitor to see if your improved page seems more relevant and inviting.
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