How to Make Me Feel Good

Last week, I talked about how making people feel good can make them more likely to buy from your site.

Emotions help sell. There’s no doubt about it.

However, a number of people who read the article got back to me and said words to the effect of, “Mildly interesting observation, Nick. But how about some examples?”

Fair enough.

Here are some thoughts on how you can make people feel good at your site:

Let’s assume the basics: like decent navigation, great service, good prices, etc. Beyond that, you’ll start making me feel good when you add value.

When you exceed my expectations…

I’ll smile when you give me more than I thought you would. I’ll feel good when my experience at your site is unexpectedly pleasant. When I’m surprised.

Example number one can be found at Kraftfoods.com.

I have multiple kids. So I’ve spent a fair amount of time over the years on Kraft products particularly the ubiquitous Kraft Dinner. Not an entire balanced meal. But easy to make.

My expectations of the Kraft site were not that high. After all, if I were to describe a web site as the “Kraft Dinner” of sites, you probably wouldn’t get a “five star” impression. No offense to Kraft.

So, I was pleasantly surprised when I actually visited the site. Take a look at their Recipe Recommender page.

The Kraft Interactive Kitchen offers me a number of services…

• Recipe Recommender
• Simple Meal-Planner
• Recipes by E-Mail
• Your Recipe Book

If you have multiple kids and buy Kraft products, these services may well be attractive to you.

They’re adding value to the brand. They’re adding value to my experience at the site. I’m getting more than I expected and feel good about it.

So what can you do on your site that will exceed the expectations of your visitors?

Example number two is when I sign up for a newsletter at LandsEnd.com.

My expectation was that while I was signing up for their newsletter, they’d try to drag as much personal info out of me as possible. Call me cynical, but too many sites have this smash-and-grab mentality.

So, I was pleasantly surprised when I found that instead of asking me a lot of lame questions, they actually invited me to customize the content and frequency of the newsletters I’d receive.

They gave me some choice. Some control. Very unexpected. And I felt good about that.

Example number three is Backflip.com.

I love this site. It enables me to organize my favorites in a way that lets me actually find the sites I’d like to go back to. And I can access my Backflip page from any computer. Great service. With this site, I felt good from the outset.

So how do they manage to exceed my expectations on a regular basis?

They keep adding new services. New elements.

Your site shouldn’t be static. You can launch without every single service in place. That gives you the opportunity to add new stuff; to surprise and delight your customers when things get better and better.

The addition of great new stuff makes me feel good. And yes, you can make me feel good with gifts, discounts and special offers. But everyone does that.

If you really want me to smile, give me more than I expected. Surprise me. Delight me.

Then I’ll add you to my Backflip page and come back to your site time and time again.