Anyone who’s been around sales for a little while will be familiar with the ‘AIDA’ acronym:

Attention
Interest
Desire
Action

I don’t know who it was who first figured this out - but in my library I have a book called ‘The Five Great Rules of Selling’ by Percy H. Whiting, and published by the Dale Carnegie Group. Percy published his first edition back in 1947, so the idea is at least 60 years old.

And it’s evergreen. If you look at any sales letters you may still get by snail mail (does anyone else still get those Readers Digest official-looking envelopes?), or some of the better email-delivered sales pitches, the AIDA structure really stands out. It’s almost like you can draw a thick red line between each section!

But to think of AIDA as limited to just a sales pitch is wrong. I think it’s way bigger than that, and its principles can be easily applied to the entire online communication process. AIDA is incredibly relevant today, and this is what I want to explore in this post.

The goal of AIDA is to move someone from being a disinterested observer, completely uninvolved with your company, product or service, to a customer.

Mostly this is someone who’s willing to pull out the credit card and pay for whatever it is you want them to pay for. However it could also be someone who’s willing to try something different from what they otherwise would have done, like online self-service instead of picking up the phone and ringing your customer support.

The list if long, and I’m sure you get the idea - it’s to get someone who visits your web site to perform your ‘most desired action’.

Step 1 - Attention

Think of the last time your were researching something online. How did you find the web site (or sites) that gave you the information you wanted? What was the process you went through? Here’s what it’s like for most people.

After starting off with a definite goal in mind, the typical web surfer has descended into an aimless and time-wasting pattern of clicking on links that grab her attention. Even though there’s an expectation of research, those links are so damn distracting!

Just like the flashing lights and atonal sounds of a slot machine, web sites and their links/ advertisements are designed to grab and hold your attention. Everyone is guilty and no-one is immune… but still, there’s that information requirement lurking in the back of her head, just looking for a way to front and center.

So how do you get your (potential) web site visitor to your site?

if you answered search engines, you’re on the money. Granted, there are many different online paths to a web site but they all bow to the mighty search engine god.

The attention grabber is simple. Get your web pages visible in search results, through fair means or foul, so at the very least she will see your web pages high in the results when she searches for your target keyword or key phrase.

That’s the role of search engine optimisation (SEO). No more, and no less. SEO is the tool that’s supposed to drive gobs of unqualified traffic to your web site, in the hope that at least of it will stick.

Step 2 - Interest

And some traffic will stick, if you make your web site interesting enough. However having your web page on page 1 of the search results isn’t enough.

If she uses Google, your web page is only 1 of 31 other results she can click on, if you count the sponsored links (Adsense stuff) at the top and right of natural search results.

So not only do you have to get to page 1, you have to impel her to click on your link. You have to make your link shriek “CLICK ME, CLICK ME’, louder than all the others.

Fortunately there’s an SEO overlap here. When she gets a page of search results she will scan what’s there and if your link is more interesting, or promises more, than the others, you’re looking good.

Here’s the secret. A web page’s title element is very, very important for good natural SEO. But it’s also what gets displayed as the result ‘headline’, in her page of search results. That title therefore has two jobs; the SEO job (to get your page ranked well), and the human reader job (to grab her attention).

There are a gazillion articles on how to write effective headlines for sales copy. The lessons and recommendations they make all apply to that all-important

The challenge, of course, is to make it all work within the 60-odd character limit you have with the displayed titles. But it can be done.

The effort you put into making your titles work for search engines and humans at the same time will pay big dividends. If you don’t believe this, just Google your target keyword or key phrase, and look at the crap that gets served up. You can do better than that, can’t you?

Let’s now have a quick look at the description meta tag. Like the section of the page. Unlike the

It is important to spend some time crafting your description text, and you have around 150 characters to work with. It is what your searcher will see directly below the title in her results page, and it plays a big part in convincing her that your link is better than the ones above or below it.

Think of your page’s description meta tag as a sub heading. Of course it won’t hurt a bit to weave some keywords into the description (in case the SEO experts are wrong, or Google changes the rules again), but you need to craft it like it was your most valuable salesperson. Make it engaging for human readers and relevant for search engines, and you’ll have her interest.

Step 3 - Desire

Congratulations! You aimless web surfer is now a suspect. She’s on your web site, and now your content has to captivate and compel her to read enough of your web site to realise that clicking on your desired ‘call to action’ is a smart thing to do.

I’ll talk more on the call to action further down. Right now I want to focus on content.

You’ve probably read this a hundred times, that content is key to web site success. Well, it’s true. Clean, fresh, original, well-written and well-presented content.

Content that’s words, images, video or audio or some blend of the them all. Content that’s all on one page, or broken down into multiple pages. Long copy or short copy. Whatever.

You won’t have to look far for great online advice about writing excellent online copy. here’s three resources I use often, and they will soon have you producing plenty of quality output for your web site or blog:

Copyblogger

Michel Fortin

John Carlton

It’s been said many times you only have her attention for 6 seconds after she clicks your link. That includes load time.

I don’t know how true that is. I’ve never tested it, and it’s been repeated so many times that it’s now a mantra. But even if it isn’t accurate, you have to admit the intent is right.

Engage her interest fast, keep it with great content on your web site, and have a mile-wide navigation path to your call to action page so it’s absolutely unmistakable.

Step 4 - Action

This is why it’s called a call to action. Without a string call to action your web site is lame. Your call to action needs to be crystal clear, totally unambiguous, and wholly accessible from everywhere on your site.

Who knows? She might be of the mindset to click through after reading just a few paragraphs, or scanning your subheadings. Or, she may need to read everything in some odd order before she’s ready to hit that ‘buy now’ button. Who knows?

Just make it easy for her to find your call to action, and then ACT!

Your call to action can be many things.

If your web site is designed to capture sales leads, you would want her to fill out some online contact form, or to pick up the phone and ring you.

You may have to ‘bribe’ her with a free report, subscription, email sequence, whitepaper, software application or podcast - but that’s just part of the process. In these days of intense online privacy it’s usually more productive to offer something of value (your bribe) in order to get something else of value (her contact details).

Your web site may be designed to to sell things direct, in which case you want her to find your online store and fill that shopping cart. Make this so easy for her, and always - always - use a good analytics tool to monitor the performance of your check out process.

Online shopping carts have a tendency to be abandoned on a whim, and analytics will give you the data you need to identify problems, and incrementally improve performance through ongoing testing and measurement.

Next on the list is information-centric web sites, typical of .gov, .org and .edu domains.

Just because a web site has no commercial focus doesn’t mean you can’t aim for and achieve accountability. For example, .gov web sites exist within a framework of public accessibility policies, and any good analytics application will give your web master the data he needs to prove compliance with legislated or ministerial requirements.

All other considerations apply - title, description, content and search engine visibility - and your reader expects to quickly find what she’s looking for (or not), so she can move on to other things.

The final type of web site is the customer-service web site, where your reader finds what she wants online - it could be software to update some application, a manual or how-to article, or simply an operational question - without the hassle of call centres and on-hold waiting times.

I love these web sites, they are a real boon for everyone concerned. I like then because I don’t spend hours on hold, and can find what I want when I want. The company likes it because affective online customer service keeps call volume low and costs down.

The call to action here is a very obvious FAQ/ download/ support section on the web site, plus the navigation tools to quickly find the right information. Effectiveness is measured by the good old analytics application, but just as importantly in reduced call times, reduced on-hold times for people who have a genuine (or difficult) request, and ultimately reduced costs for customer service.

So there you have it - a lengthy rant on the applicability of the time-honoured AIDA framework to online efficacy beyond its traditional sales and marketing role.

I’d be very interested in your comments.