Being aware of the decision process is crucial to persuading consumers and encouraging buying behaviors.

Back in 1898, Elias St. Elmo Lewis developed a new framework for describing consumers interests through four stages called A.I.D.A.

Awareness/Attention
Interested
Desire/Decision
Action
S (Permanent Satisfaction - key to repeat sales)

In his book, Submit Now: Designing Persuasive Web Sites (New Riders Press, 2002), Andrew Chak applies the AIDAS model above to mapping website visitors.
Using this principle he recommends designing web pages and landing pages for four main user types.

Browsers – May not know what they are looking for; what they want; but do have an unmet need

Evaluators – Are aware of their options;knowing comparable options;looking for detailed information

Transactors - Have already decided to buy, and need to quickly go through the ordering process

Customers – Have completed an order. To ensure there is a repeat sale their satisfaction levels need to remain high to order again. (Important Tip: Continue communicating with previous buyers/customers)

Also keep in mind your sales cycle and applicable time frames. An example would be buying a computer, which could take time to final make the order after deciding what to buy and from where. Using the internet websites are also key elements in driving impulse sales that are short in duration or have low dollar value. An example would be buying flowers online for valentines, etc. The difference is you will probably not put a lot of thought into it spanning several weeks of deciding.

Key Questions to ask yourself when designing your  work flow:

1. Do you have what I want?
2. Why should I get it from you?

Remember sometimes your customers will purchase on the first visit. Others may not, they may return later to continue their evaluation stage before pulling the trigger and ordering. Therefore you must provide clear paths for people to follow: “Order Now” vs. “Compare us to our competition”.

How many times have you visited a website and tried to look for credibility such as return, and shipping policies, secure online order pages, 1-800 numbers, live chat, etc. These facilitate both your new customer ordering now and someone just sizing up your company to see if your website looks legitimate.

Remember: Without having a consumers’ attention (Stage 1) and interest (Stage 2) they will not get to desire to act (Stage 3).

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Here are some thoughtful ideas around creating better and more optimized surveys. You probably only want to ask questions that you can action or follow up on. And never ask for more than you need!

1. Every question you ask takes time to respond to, so don’t ask too many. Or else you will lose the goodwill of the survey respondent filling it out.
2. Never ask vague questions that let them sit on the fence. Or you will find people tend to stick to the middle responses and remain neutral.  You ideally want the responder to be providing an opinion in order to gain insight. Example: Asking for a range of Extremely Satisfied through to Dissatisfied, versus instead “How well do you think we did?”.
3. Initial questions you ask can indeed influence later responses.  Asking a question about their favorite consumer brand of detergent for example. Now the responder is thinking about what they connect with. But remember that could lead them to respond differently if you later ask “rate our detergent with others you prefer”.
4. Have an option for a responder to skip questions or submit as many responses as they like. Do not require them to finish the whole questionnaire. You can probably remember responding to very long surveys and not wanting to really think about your responses so you can just finish.
5. Similarly keep some of your questions fun so as to keep people interested in continuing, without boring them.
6. If you are going to add rating scales, why not think about making the scales generate an emotional response. Easy User Experience through to Completely Confused

Resources:

Please leave your suggestions in the comments, or links to more resources on this topic.

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• Defining Advertising Objectives for Small Business
• Small Businesses Raise Search Spend in 2009
• A/B Test Splits and How to use them
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