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Using Voice to Engage Readers, A Case Study

By Michael Stelzner

Is the Internet strictly a visual medium? Do you have a good voice? Have you considering talking to people?

I am in the middle of an experiment. Simply stated, I am interrupting the consumer experience with voice and testing to see if behavior can be altered.

This brings me back to my days as a sales manager at The Sharper Image. We found that if we walked around the store with an expensive product in our hands and showed folks how it worked, our sales of that product grew dramatically.

Now to my test. I decided to record a voice snippet and have it auto play after a few seconds.

To see an example, visit http://www.writingwhitepapers.com/book/.

The goal of this page is to get users to act by reading a sample chapter of my book and ultimately making a purchase.

I ran extensive click tests using CrazyEgg (a web widget that tracks user clicks on a webpage). See results below:

The results were very interesting. Indeed people did follow my voice instructions significantly more AFTER I asked them to click on a special link.

The moral. Try using voice and see if it can impact your sales or change user behavior.

What do you think? Please listen to what I did and tell me your thoughts.

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This entry was posted on Monday, December 18th, 2006 at 3:30 pm and is filed under Lead Generation, Marketing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.

  • The Two Mikes,

    Excellent. Notes/Postcards are the way to delivery audio content. I just groan when a site sounds out a big "Hello!" greetings--it's cheesy. As Mike #2 recommends let the recipient determine when and where it is played.
  • Hey Mike - Yes I agree, the voice is very powerful. I happen to have a masters degree in Speech Communications, so this is something close to me. - Mike
  • Shhh, Michael.

    You'll give away my secret. The voice is WAAAAYYYYYY more powerful than the written word and we know just how powerful that can be.

    I have salesment working for mw who think email is great for contacting our customers.

    I still drive 50,000 miles a year to speak to them in person and sell WAAAYYY more than those guys ever will.

    If you want to make it even more powerful, direct it's use towards the time when the recipient is ready by creating an audio note/postcard.

    That way they'll know they need to turn up their volume, they're focused on the audio content and they listen when it's convenient for them, nobody is around to bother htem, etc.

    That would put an end to possible complaints and make it even more effective.

    Hey, maybe this would make a great white paper ?!

    I could use one like it in about 2 weeks myself.
  • Hey Rick and Krishna;

    Thanks for stopping by!

    Rick - I hear you about the option for voice. But, if you think about the evolution of the medium, things are moving to sound, text and visuals. I think there will come a day when sound is the standard, much like it is in radio and TV.

    Krishna - I did provide a button to turn off the sound, but you may not have noticed. Because I am not playing music, but only a 20 second message, I do not think the sound coming from the computer will annoy folks at neighboring cubicles. AND, as far as returns to the page, that is unlikely in this specific example.

    For what it is worth, I do provide a user-selectable *voice* message from me up in the right navigation bar of my blog. Chances are you never noticed.

    This is the one true advantage of interruption audio—everyone hears that instruction or message. I think it is a way to stand out.

    Mike
  • I think it is great to add audio and video to your sites, but would agree with Rick - I would prefer to have the option.

    I use audio on most of my websites and if done professionally in terms of the recording and execution it will support your brand and can create a more personal connection.

    When I went to your site I could not find a button to turn it off.

    A couple of things to note - some people may be in open plan offices and may not appreciate audio coming from their PC - nor may their colleagues.

    And if people return to the page they may not want to hear the same message again.

    Well done for implementing this and keep testing!
  • Guess I'm not in the norm because as soon as a web site starts automatically plays music or either a computerized or human voice recording the mouse click is never close enough.

    I don't mind so much if the choice is up to me, but if the choice is made for me forget about it. Same applies to videos with sound tracks.
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