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Apple’s MacBook Pro 17”

How Visuals Help Increase


Sales Conversion
© 2009 by Sean D’Souza. All rights reserved. Published by Psychotactics Ltd. No part of this publication may be reproduced
or distributed in any form or by any means, or stored in ad database or retrieval system without the prior written permis-
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For more information, please write to:


PsychoTactics Ltd., PO Box 36461,
Northcote, Auckland, New Zealand
Phone: 64 9 449 0009
Email: sean@psychotactics.com
iv  |  Visuals and Conversion | Psychotactics.com
Visuals and Conversion?
We’re so fixated on headlines, sub-heads and other wordy stuff, that we forget that visuals play an incredibly
big role in conversion. But the moment you say something like: Visuals help in conversion, than a multitude
of people stand up and ask for proof.

And really, the proof isn’t hard to find.

If you look at a page with graphics and visuals vs. a page without graphics and visuals, which one gets your
attention? Which page slows you down? Which page creates more curiosity? The answer is so obvious, that it
barely needs explanation.

And yet, not all visuals work towards creating greater conversion. Some visuals simply take up space. They
are useless, incredibly stupid visuals that do nothing to slow down or educate the reader. Your job is to under-
stand the role of visuals and how they help to create drama and curiosity. And how to distinguish between the
useless, stupid visuals and the smart visuals.

Let’s take a trip into the world of visuals.


Put on your 3-D glasses. We’re going to have some fun!
Library.PressDisplay.com - The Washington Post Sunday - 11 Jan 2009 ... http://0-library.pressdisplay.com.www.elgar.govt.nz/pressdisplay/servi...
Library.PressDisplay.com - The Washington Post Sunday - 11 Jan 2009 ... http://0-library.pressdisplay.com.www.elgar.govt.nz/pressdisplay/servi...

Notice how the graphics


get your attention? Now
imagine all that white
space (Fig 2.1) with a
whole bunch of text. What
would you read? What
would you skim?

1 of 1 14/01/2009110:05
of 1 14/01/2009 10:05

Visuals and Conversion | Psychotactics.com  | 1 


Stopping the Skimming
Let’s face it. As humans we’re skimmers.

We skim over channels.


We skim over the pages of magazines.
And the bad news is that your customers skim over your sales pages.

And in most cases, you do nothing to stop them. Nothing to slow them down. Or keep their attention. And
this can be a costly error. Because the more time the customer spends on your page, the more likely they are
to buy something. The more the customer gets an idea of what they’re really buying, the more likely they are
to step right up and swipe their credit card.

And visuals are one of the more effective ways to slow down the readers (or in our case, customers).
Visuals slow down customers.
They get the customers interested.
They drive home the important points.
And they do so, in a matter of seconds.

And we know this to be true, because you actually looked at the visual before you read this text. And text,
wonderful as it is, can be missed. Text can get buried under a mountain of more text. But visuals stand out.
And stop the skimming. And that’s the biggest reason why they’re so darned important in the business of at-
traction and conversion.

Visuals slow down


the reader

Visuals combined with a


caption, get a message
across in a matter of
seconds.

They get the reader


interested while highlighting
important points

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Three Types of Visuals
If you’ve ever put up a web page, you’ll have used at least two of these three visual types. And yet, in this sec-
tion we’re going to look at why it’s important to use these visuals, and how to use them effectively. But first,
let’s start off with a simple understanding of the three types of visuals. They are:

1) Photos.
2) Graphics
3) Videos.

Photos: Photos come in a whole range. Photos can be images of clients, of owners, of staff or people who
are somehow connected to your story or sales page. Or they can be images of your product. Or they can be
objects that tell a story. Let’s look at each one separately.

A photo tells an instant story. Therefore using photos is pretty important. Photos when coupled with captions,
become even more effective in telling a story. Even if you don’t read a word on this page, what does it start
to reveal? Your response will be exactly like everyone else’s response. You’ll know somehow it’s a diamond-
based site. You’ll get the feeling that it’s a company that seems to have been around for a few generations at
the very least. You’ll also get the feeling of trust even though you can’t figure out why.

And guess what? You haven’t read a single word on the page. The photos and the visuals created the impres-
sion in your brain long before you had the time to read anything.

Visuals and Conversion | Psychotactics.com  | 3 


Again, don’t read a word on this page. Ok, so
you read the headline. But what’s the message
you get from simply looking at the photos?

And once you did read the photos and the cap-
tions, what message did you get?

No one has to explain the concepts to you.


Your brain is nicely wired to take in messages
by simply looking at a photo. If this page
was full of photos of teenagers vs. adults, it
wouldn’t matter how great the copy or the
headline; you’d still be cagey about buying the
product/service.

By simply using client photos you can reveal


the age group of clients; the dominant sex of
the people within the group. And when you use
captions along with the photos, you can send
across other messages.

For example: If all these clients had addresses


based in New Zealand, you’d automatically
assume that the product was more suitable
for New Zealand instead of anywhere else
(even though the product may be just as suit-
able anywhere on the planet). If all of them
had the title of say, ‘chiropractor’, then you’d
assume that the product was for chiropractors.
And you’d make up your mind in a mater of
seconds after seeing the visual and reading
the text.

This photo of an object gets your attention. When buying from a sales page, it’s a little
harder to feel and touch a product. Photos of the product from different angles help to get a
message and a feel across. There’s a reason why there’s a surfer on that laptop, you know.
It’s meant to make the laptop look cool. Do you think the laptop would look just as cool with
a blood-spattered murder victim?

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There you are, reading a page about a marketing
program. And you see a delicious plate of salmon.
What do you do? Your curiosity is instantly
aroused. You want to see what the salmon is
all about, don’t you? In this particular example,
the salmon was used to explain the difference
between a dish that was ordered a la carte vs. a
buffet. And how a buffet appears to be more value
for money, but usually ends up just making you
feel sick and bloated.

A simple image can quickly defuse a client’s


objection; it can get across a story or a message.
It can create a certain brand. And it can do so in a
matter of seconds.

This is the page on which the visual appeared. Notice how your eye is instantly drawn to
the salmon, then to Jeff’s image on the top right, and then to John’s image at the bottom
right of the page.

Visuals and Conversion | Psychotactics.com  | 5 


The usage of graphics
Photos are all very fine and cool.

But what if you have a service and don’t have a product shot? How do you go about describing a workshop or
a consulting sequence with photos? This can be easily achieved by using graphics. No matter how abstract
your service (or product) you can explain one heck of a lot by using well-placed graphics. And if you use
graphics, you can quickly explain the following:

1) Sequence of events.
2) Technical facts.
3) Contents of a service/product.
4) Create a mood or setting.

This is the sequence that a client would follow


on a course, for instance. How do you explain
what you’re going to cover in a course in a mat-
ter of seconds? Well you put it in a graphic. And
instantly the customer is able scan the graphic
and get a pretty good understanding of what
they’re about to buy into.

Most consulting and training concepts are


kinda abstract. It’s hard to explain what you’re
going to do when you’re rendering a service. Yet
a simple graphic clarifies the service in a matter
of seconds.

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Each of the graphics you see on the left hand
side represents a course. How do you represent
a course? You do so by putting it in a ‘box’.
When your clients see a box, they know instantly
that there is a great deal of information con-
tained in the box.

Who told your clients that there’s a whole bunch


of information? Nobody did. But they still get the
message. Trying to describe a course in words is
not very hard, but a picture tells the story with
far more pizazz and drama.

When selling the product iLife, Apple.com uses photos—because it can. But when it comes to something more abstract,
Apple.com resorts to graphics without losing any of the punch or drama.

Visuals and Conversion | Psychotactics.com  | 7 


An illustration creates a mood. And it is
a type of graphic, as you can see. On the
Psychotactics site, we use a fair bit of illus-
trations to create a specific mood, and to
stop the reader and get them curious to
read the information. But can you use it on
a sales page? Yes indeed you can. It really
depends on what you’re trying to convey.
At www.5000bc.com we use it on our sales
pages as well to reasonably cheery effect
(see graphic of 5000bc.com below).

8  |  Visuals and Conversion | Psychotactics.com


Chuck Green from ideabook.com uses a combination of graphics and text to quickly tell you what you’re getting (a book, a CD) and
how you can pay for the product. And yes, how much the product costs. All done in one nice little vertical rectangle and transmit-
ted to you in a matter of seconds.

Visuals and Conversion | Psychotactics.com  | 9 


Not sure what’s in the product or service you’re buying? Chuck Green from ideabook.com tells you exactly what you’re getting by
using graphics in a great amount of detail. Now you know. ;)

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Guess who was inspired by Chuck’s site? Yup, right after I saw Chuck’s site, I too created graphics that explained
what each course contained (in this case, it was the Website Strategy Course). And here’s a little story. When I sat
down to write a sales page for a new course, I forgot to include these graphics. And a client—who’d obviously been
reading through a few of the courses—emailed me to ask if he’d be getting similar information as the Website Strat-
egy Course. He emailed me because he couldn’t see the graphics on the new course, and that alone caused him to
pause, wonder and delay his decision to buy. Luckily he emailed me. In many a case, if a client doesn’t understand
something, they simply go away and buy something else instead.
Visuals and Conversion | Psychotactics.com  | 11 
It’s not only the product/service that is depicted with a
graphic. It’s also the bonuses. Customers can indeed work out
things themselves, but graphics make the very same bonus far
more interesting and desirable.

You may think it’s enough to just list the bonuses, but it’s not.
It’s important to have a complete list + a complete description
+ a complete set of graphics.

So there you go: With graphics, you can quickly create a sequence of events, demonstrate technical facts,
show contents of products or services, or set a mood.

Which takes us to the next part: The components of visuals. What criteria do you need to have when choos-
ing visuals? Not surprisingly, you’re about to find out.

12  |  Visuals and Conversion | Psychotactics.com


Components of Visuals
How do you make a barbeque look interesting?
How do you make a headphone look interesting?
For that matter, how do you make a keyboard look interesting?

For well over a century, newspapers and magazines have done just that. Day after day, they’ve got your atten-
tion with visuals that instantly get your attention. And you too can put in visuals that are very relevant and
explanatory. All you have to do is follow these three simple guidelines:

1) Use interesting visuals.


2) Non-complex visuals.
3) Caption everything.

When you look at the page of just about any newspaper, you’ll find these rules (or should I say, guidelines) in
place. But does it only apply to editorial? No it doesn’t. In fact, some of the smartest companies in the world
use it on their sales page. And as result move thousands or even billions of dollars of their product. Product
and services that would be
Library.PressDisplay.com harder
- The to Herald
New Zealand sell if- 14itJan
weren’t
2009 - P...for the excellent usage of visuals.
http://0-library.pressdisplay.com.www.elgar.govt.nz/pressdisplay/servi...

Not just a bar-


beque, but one Ordinary bottle:
that’s bursting Shown in inter-
into flames. esting way, by
cropping, and by
aligning (at the
top) with New
Zealand Herald
masthead

A burst of yellow,
blue and orange
in a sea of white Photo of victims
snow. The juxta- that stand out
position of colour because of the
and bare back- relative sizes. The
ground draws you bigger photo is
in instantly. more of a land-
scape, but this one
is more cropped in
for drama.

This border is black. The border at the top of


the page is red. Can you tell why? Yes, every-
thing tells a story. And in all these instances,
the photos are simple (non-complex), interest-
ing, and have captions.

Visuals and Conversion | Psychotactics.com  | 13 

1 of 1 14/01/2009 09:55
Example: Apple MacBook
I’ve rarely seen businesses sell products like Apple. They make their sales pages luscious. A piece of alumin-
ium is turned into a thing of beauty. And here’s how they do it: With visuals. Stunning visuals. And captions.
And simplicity.

There may be nothing dramatic about a laptop. So Apple uses a dramatic image on the laptop itself. The image is simple, but it
tells a reasonable story. It shows colour and graphics. And not just any graphics, but ‘cool’ graphics. What’s also interesting, is
that if you’re into video, you’d very quickly see how the graphic seems to be telling a story about how you could possibly use ‘8
hours worth of video editing’ time on the road (then again, maybe it’s just me). But let’s not lose the point. The graphics are inter-
esting, and simple, and captioned.

14  |  Visuals and Conversion | Psychotactics.com


Colour that’s good enough to eat. That’s the purpose of putting that peacock feather on the screen. But don’t miss the other
graphics on the page. Every one of them is attractive in its own right. And every one is simple, and captioned.

Visuals and Conversion | Psychotactics.com  | 15 


What’s so great about a keyboard? The caption tells you. ;)

16  |  Visuals and Conversion | Psychotactics.com


Every little thing is highlighted. The USB port, the processor, the RAM. And graphics for everything. Simple, interesting graphics.
And everything is captioned (yes, yes, I know I’m repeating myself).

Visuals and Conversion | Psychotactics.com  | 17 


Caption, please!
If you have a photo, graphic or even video, you are being silly by not putting a caption. Look at your news-
paper. Or a magazine. Do you ever see pictures without captions? Well, there are few, but very few. Only the
decorative graphics don’t have captions.

Every other visual has captions. Without exception!

Or captions can sit within the visual itself as it does with most of
the cartoons on the blog at http://www.psychotactics.com/blog

Captions can sit alongside a graphic as it does so with these set


of graphics above.

Captions needn’t always be long. They can be a single word. But


it always helps to have an explanation as well, just to avoid any
sort of confusion in the mind of the customer.

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As brilliant as this page is right now, the visual of the diamond could have been enhanced with a simple caption. A caption
draws you in to the main story. Never be caught without a caption.

Even video needs captioning. And so do


client photos. Details such as city, coun-
try, professions are important informa-
tion for your prospective customers.

Visuals and Conversion | Psychotactics.com  | 19 


The Palm Test
The palm test is a simple test to do. Just put your palm over a visual. When you cover the visual, does the page
look less effective? If the removal of the visual takes away from the story, then you know you’ve got to keep
the visual. The visual should enhance the text, and drive home a message. If it’s there just for decoration, or
just because you think you need a visual, then all you’re doing is distracting the customer.

In this section, we’ll look at two things:


1) The palm test
2) Crappy visuals you want to avoid.

Let’s start off with the palm test, shall we?

Now you see the salmon, now you don’t. If you cover the salmon, does the page reduce impact? Sure it does. The best way to
figure out if a visual is needed (or not needed) is to cover it with you palm. In this case, the salmon creates a factor of curiosity
and drives home a very, very important point.

When you uncover the salmon again, you’ll see that it does indeed create an impact of sorts. You can try the same test with the
rest of the visuals on the page. I’ve called it the palm test, but feel free to use anything (including green speech bubbles) to do
this simple, effective test.

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Remember we talked about the crappy visuals? Well here you go. Crappy as ever. These visuals don’t add to a
page, don’t create curiosity, and God only knows why people use them.

If you took the salmon visual (on the previous page) and put it on just about any site or web page, you’d find
it doesn’t fit in. That’s the job of the visual: It needs to fit in and needs to be useful to the message on the page
itself. You can’t simply drop visuals in and expect them to work. They need to illustrate the message for that
specific product or service. This is why every single one of our products and services have unique visuals
(with very few exceptions). Sometimes you can indeed recycle an image, but in most cases, unique visuals
are not just appropriate to tell the story, but also important for differentiation from one offering to another.

Go to Google Images and you’ll find thousands of these ugh visuals that have no meaning at all. Don’t make this mistake.

Each of these visuals are on this page


for a purpose at Adobe.com. And in this
case, every graphic is clickable, and
leads to a specific tutorial. This is a
good example of how graphics should
be used. More importantly, they are
unique to the product or service and
not just random stock images dumped
on a page. This doesn’t mean you can’t
use stock images. Just be sure that
the stock image actually does what it’s
supposed to do, i.e. tell a story or edu-
cate the reader.

Visuals and Conversion | Psychotactics.com  | 21 


Summary
ƒƒ Types of Visuals: Three types of visuals you can use are graphics, photos and videos. Photos work very
well for client photos, product shots and objects that tell a story.

ƒƒ For services, you may well use graphics as services such as consultancy or workshops are more abstract
and difficult to explain with photos. Therefore a series of well placed graphics work very well indeed to
show sequences, technical facts, contents of an offering or to create a mood.

ƒƒ Video is very effective in telling a visual story. Videos can’t stand alone, as they’re sequential in nature
and you often have to watch a video from one end to another. Therefore even if you have videos, you need
photos and graphics, and text to give snapshots of the story. You may personally detest video, but you are
NOT your customer. Give your customer what they want, not what you want.

ƒƒ Visuals need to be interesting, non-complex, and most importantly, they need captions. A visual
without a caption is not a good visual at all. Try and put captions on every visual including client photos,
objects and even video.

ƒƒ Visuals are very effective tools of conversion, but only if used well. Use the palm test to see if your
visual is helping tell the story. If it’s not helping to tell the story, get rid of the visual. And for heaven’s sake
stop using stupid, crappy generic visuals like ‘handshakes’. They have no intrinsic value and are a waste of
space.

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Other Resources
Is it really hard to create saleable information products?

What if you don’t consider yourself a writer? Can you still create
an information product that sells? And can that information
product then help you get increased revenue and time? The an-
swer lies in your ability to believe in yourself. Most of the clients
I deal with don’t believe they can create an info-product. And
then having created a single info-product believe that they’ve
put all they know into that product. And that they have nothing
else to give.

And from experience we know that those who follow this course,
and what it teaches, can create not one, but tens, even hundreds
of info-products. Which of course leads to another problem?
How do you get customers to buy? How do you create a distribu-
tion channel? How you do all of this without the hype and the
hoopla. How?
Find out at: http://www.psychotactics.com/homestudy-courses

There’s one big problem with a website.

And that problem is that a website is invisible among thou-


sands and squillions of other websites. So is it then possible to
somehow have a strategy. A strategy that doesn’t depend on
tens of thousands of prospects. A strategy that doesn’t depend
on tons of advertising and all those joint ventures? And is it
possible to make your website so powerful that it has followers?

That it’s not a bunch of bytes online, but actually a place where
customers congregate. Sounds crazy doesn’t it? Well, find out
for yourself the difference between just having a website, and
having a website strategy that makes your business robust;
makes your clients happy, and makes you a more prosperous,
and far more relaxed business owner. Find out at:
http://www.psychotactics.com/homestudy-courses

Why Article Writing Creates Expertise

Every business has not one, but about five hundred competi-
tors. And no matter how unique your business is today, you will
have competition lurking just around the corner. This leads us
to a dilemma. How you separate yourself from the herd? How
do you get customers to come to you, instead of you always
having to pitch to them?

The key is the ability to get a message across to your audi-


ence in a manner that’s non-threatening, educational, and
entertaining at the same time. And let’s face it, you’re probably
intimidated that you’re never going to be able to do that ever.
Because every time you’ve sat down to write, it’s been one heck
of a struggle. You know that article-writing is crucial, but you’ve
tried it, and it’s been frustrating and demoralising. And you
don’t know of a way out. Well...hint, hint (Go on take the hint
and click). And judge for yourself.
http://www.psychotactics.com/homestudy-courses
Visuals and Conversion | Psychotactics.com  | 23 
If you find anything that bugs you, please click on
the bug above to send me an email. Nothing is too
small or too big. And if I can, I’ll be sure to fix it.
sean@psychotactics.com

PO Box 36461, Northcote, Auckland, New Zealand


Tel: 64 9 449 0009 Email: sean@psychotactics.com

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