Figure 5-3. Dell.com landing page for the term “laptop”
How do you cater to visitors in the information search stage? The simple answer is that you provide them the information they are looking for. The challenge is to determine the actual information visitors need. There are several techniques you should follow to help capture visitors’ interest in this stage.
We have highlighted how search engines decipher the information searchers are looking for. Look for insights by analyzing the different results the search engines provide. Not all the results are designed to help buyers move farther along in the buying cycle. So, you should determine which of the first 20 results on the SERPs are helpful to buyers. Taking clues from this will get you started. When examining the Google, Bing, and Yahoo! SERPs for the search term “laptop,” we noticed these engines determined that people needed information on the following:
Ecommerce website to place orders
Product reviews to determine which laptop is a good fit
Buying guides to find the right laptop for their needs
Laptop history and general knowledge regarding them
News about the latest in laptop technology
For this particular search, customers in the information search stage will value buying guides the most. There are, of course, many ways to design these buying guides to meet different customers’ needs.
Creating the buying guides for your website will depend on the personas you are targeting. A methodical persona will more likely need comprehensive guides that explain how to choose the right product. These people are not looking for shortcuts, preferring to have something they can print and take their time analyzing. However, these types of detailed guides will not work with a spontaneous persona. These people need information that answers their questions quickly. Humanistic and aggressive personas might need a mix of the two. So, it is important to develop an appropriate guide for each persona. Finally, the more expensive your solution is, the more details visitors will need in helping them choose the right product or service.
Figure 5-3 shows Dell’s organic landing page for the term “laptop.” The page is well designed for visitors in a late buying stage. However, there is nothing on the page that addresses visitors who are in the information search stage. The page assumes visitors know what they are looking for and that they are ready to convert.
Figure 5-4 shows Best Buy’s organic landing page for the term “laptop.” Although most of the page is focused on visitors in a late buying stage, two areas of the page are targeted at early stage visitors. The “Know Before You Buy” and the “5 Features to Consider” areas are in the middle of the page and occupy an important part of the page real estate.