If you are selling a complex business to business product or looking to increase considered B2C sales, a “next steps” widget is a great way to reach across the sales cycle and offer something for people at any stage. The goal of the “Next Steps” widget is to give users a road map of options, typically from least commiting to most. This could be things like signing up for a newsletter, requesting a white paper, or even asking for a call back from a sales person. Sometimes you can even ask people to sign up online.
To illustrate my points, I decided to take a quick tour and grab a couple examples from around the web:
Search marketing software company Acquisio uses the following unit to make users aware of different options available to them. Although they have done a fine job, I can’t help but wonder if asking for a trial first isn’t putting the cart before the horse. For me, I would probably want to look at the demo and case studies before signing up for the trial. This is definitely worth testing.
Acquisio.com
Customer Relationship SAAS vendor Salesforce.com uses the following widget to promote three possible actions:
Salesforce.com
Their ordering makes a little more sense- starting with the demo, followed by a contact request. If you are not ready for either of these things, you can always take the non committing option- to view the resources on the site.
These widgets work well for B2B companies, but can also cross the boundary and appear on B2C websites. Here is an example from Cruise ship line Carnival:
Carnival.com
It is a little different, instead of focusing on next “steps” the unit simply is giving a couple options to get started. I think it would be smart for Carnival to also have a “request information” option, where people could sign up to get a booklet in the mail.
It is important to present options for differing levels of interest- from information gatherers, to those on final approach to completing a purchase. You would be well advised to test what you include, what the thing looks like, and the order different steps are presented. Here is a mini overview of possible test options for a “next steps” widget:
- Size
- Look and Feel
- Title (ie “Next Steps” or “What to do Next”
- Number of Options
- Ordering of Options
- Colors
- Placement on your pages
Well I guess I better test that then
Thanks for pointing it out!
Do you develop the widget or download one that is available. If you download the widget, where do you download it from.
You would create something like this yourself, so you could customize the options for your specific offer and so it would match up to your graphic design.