Is your site scent strong enough to keep people on your path?
People are lazy by nature, and maybe “lazy” has a bad connotation with it… I’ll expand on that by saying people progressively budget themselves to reduce the time and energy exhausted on one particular task. The internet is no exception, and just as grocery stores pump their fresh bread smells through the ventilation system to increase hunger and drive people to the bakery, your site needs to do the same. Create that trail of scent for someone to follow – if it disappears, the lazy nature in people will infer that the next click won’t result in the solution they are looking for and head down a different path. Users use proximal cues to perceive what will come next and if it’s worth the click – one company that does this well is Gieco.
When this ad is served up on the web it does a few things: one, it shows you their beloved mascot. If clicked you’re taken away to a new page, but you’re comfortable in the feeling that you’re getting closer to your end results.
You now have the option to choose the type of insurance and zip code, then on each subsequent page you’ll see the Geico logo and the little gecko as your guiding light. This is the scent, without it users will abandon their quest and move onto a new search term, or even change sites, heading to somewhere they feel is giving them what they want.
So, when designing your online ads, website, emails, business cards, mailers, etc. make sure you keep the look consistent and carrying a strong scent. As your marketing direction changes do your best to plan for one element to always stay constant.
