Quid Pro Quo and the online experience

Michael Jensen | 04/06/2009 | Digitization

“Why should I link to you?”

It’s one of the questions I ask my “Electronic Publishing: Theory & Practice” graduate students, at George Washington University. In this course, each student develops what I term a “deep niche” site—some sub-sub-specialty site that interests them—promotes it in a variety of venues and through a variety of methods, and attends closely to traffic and user patterns, as they make changes over eight weeks.

A few of the take-aways my students get from this half-semester course: a) it’s hard to get traffic; b) it’s hard to keep a site fresh; c) it’s hard to promote, even via Google Adwords; d) it’s really hard to get people to come *back* to your site; e) it’s *especially* hard to get people to *link* to your site.

The last two items are what this post is about. At the heart of user loyalty is the quid pro quo.

A user/customer must get something, to keep coming back. That something can be intellectual stimulation, novelty, humor, insight, wisdom, or a fun-fact-to-know-‘n’-tell. It can be a style that appeals, or a surprise that keeps on giving. It can be a document to be read later, or a great bargain. It can be a fashion tip, or a koan.

For publishers like us, it requires more than a dry description of a book, or a pretty picture of the cover. If we expect a user to be more than a one-time visitor—to be a deep reader.

As I wrote in the earlier “Real Readers Reading,” we want to attract the kind of reader who will be engaged in our kind of content, want to buy the highest quality version, and come back to buy again. These readers can (and should) be anywhere: Edmonton and Winnepeg, Amsterdam and London, Lagos and Pretoria. What distinguishes them is their appreciation of the long form work, and their interest in ideas. And, of course, their facility with English and French.

These are readers who will be unimpressed with promotional copy: they want to browse the book to see if they care about it. They will have no interest in bothering their friends with a Twitter tweet saying “come look at this advertisement.” But they may link to a sample passage and tweet “just bought this book because of this prose.” They are very considerate consumers.

To attract repeat visitors, you have to *keep on quid pro-ing that quo.* Meaning, you have to provide them with continuing value. They want to know that you publish other stuff they might care about (as a *reader*). But if you’re only self-promoting (“you can buy this other stuff”), you may not get them to return. Instead, “Sample these other books” is likely to be the appropriate message for the “deep reader.”

To do a little math: if you’re a publisher site able to attract 5,000 visitors a day, you’re doing pretty well. The Web’s growth has been attenuating and diluting the pool. (Note: Many sites I know have been seeing decreasing raw visitors, and increasing proportions of “conversions” of visitor-to-purchaser. That indicates that the right people are finding these sites increasingly effectively.) With 5000 visitors a day, a reasonable goal might be to get 10% to come back, 1% to give you their email address, and 0.3% to purchase: that would be 500 to return, 50 to give you their email address, and 15 to purchase.

This doesn’t seem like a lot, but these are *deep readers,* exactly the audience every publisher wants. They’re the most likely group to buy more of your stuff. How do we get and keep them?

By providing them with that quid pro quo I’ve been talking about: content, value, humor, quips, quotes, reviews, more content. Something they can sink their teeth into. Something they can *read.*

They’re *readers* after all. Give them what they want, and they might come back. Who knows, they might even buy something.

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