This is the second in a series of three articles focusing on specific ways that paysite owners can optimize the user experience and present sites and content in ways that attract modern customers and keep them coming back.
Whether it comes to streamlining, keeping up with tech trends or increasing sales, we always want to think ahead and not forget the principle of the seven Ps: Prior proper planning prevents piss poor performance.
Of all the things a site owner can do to boost sales, increasing value is the most important by far.
The first article in this series was about paysite technology. This one is about positioning a site to sell in today’s world.
On a basic level, making sales is pretty simple. A salesperson’s ability to sell anything is directly related to the laws of supply and demand as well as psychological factors. A few years ago amidst “the sky is falling” trend in adult forum threads we were beaten over the head with the infamous water analogy: If it’s free, why do people pay for bottled water?
Let’s take the answers to that question and apply them to adult paysites:
Quality
The quality of what you’re selling must be drastically different and superior to what’s available for free – or, at least it must be perceived this way, as is the case with bottled water. Whether or not it tastes better or is healthier than what comes out of the water fountain at a city park doesn’t matter. All that matters is that the customer believes there’s a big difference and this difference should be as obvious as possible.
When it comes to paysites, quality can be any number of things. Perhaps the videos are higher resolution, bigger, longer and look better on a variety of screen sizes. Perhaps the site viewing and video playback experience is better. Perhaps the features available for content viewing are better. A paysite’s tour should be designed to emphasize what’s different and spell it out so every visitor is aware of what’s better about the site than what’s out there for free.
Exclusivity
What you’re selling must not be available anywhere else, or, the benefits of getting it from your site must be apparent. If you want water fresh from a mountain spring, you buy Arrowhead water. The point you want to drive home on your tours is that if a customer wants something special, the only way to get it is to buy it from you. Tell them directly — “This Is The Only Place To Get… .”
Ideas for promoting exclusivity include only making ultra-high def content versions available for on-site viewing with membership, only making content with specific (in demand) models available for on-site viewing (not download) or only making multi-size or device optimized versions available with membership. Try to go beyond this and come up with as many exclusive offerings that can’t be pirated, duplicated or made available anyplace else.
Added Value Incentives
Much of the reason bottled water sells has nothing to do with the water inside the bottle. Water companies know this which is why they’re always working to put out a new bottle that’s easier to carry, contains less chemical composition and is more convenient for people to take with them. Similarly, for years people have been drawn to join and renew paysite memberships because they like the feed streams, behind the scenes, Q&A and live cam show components of the site that come with membership as a value-add to the site’s content.
A paysite’s tour should make potential customers aware of all the benefits of membership and it shouldn’t wait until they get to the join page to start emphasizing the value of the site in the customer’s mind.
Strong examples of this are direct interaction with models or producers as well as anything a customer perceives as a true benefit e.g. “Learn to be a better lover” or “learn to attract men/women like the ones you see on this site.”
Comfort
The more comfortable someone is with a product, the easier it will be for them to justify the purchase. We buy convenient items all the time without a second thought and we buy and re-buy the same items over and over again because we’re comfortable with them.
A paysite should be kept relatively simple, not over designed and super fancy. The goal isn’t to win a design award or blow a customer away with some super cool modern design, it’s to make them feel at ease.
One of the best ways to promote comfort is through effective use of text. The less questions a customer has to ask, the more comfortable they will be with the idea of purchasing. Use short 3-5 word phrases throughout your tours to provide important information and answer potential questions a customer might have.
Many sites wait until the join page to disclose things like price or whether a 1 time, non-rebilling option is available and most sites don’t mention things like privacy or security before the join page either. Experiment with split-testing the same tours with this kind of information presented earlier and keep track of the difference it makes in tour to join page access ratios.
Overall Value
The bottom line is that there’s no secret formula that will result in selling everyone that walks in the door. The real reason anyone buys anything (aside from necessity) is that its overall value is high enough to them and this allows them to justify their buying decision.
For someone to join a paysite, what’s being offered for the price must appear to be a great value. The key word here is “appear.”
Whether it truly ends up being a value is largely up to the customer. A paysite owner’s job is to present a site membership in a way that makes it seem like an offer too good to pass up.
Of all the things a site owner can do to boost sales, increasing value is the most important by far. The goal is for someone to visit your site and think to themselves “I need to see what’s inside.
I need to join just once, even if I cancel right away, because I want what’s being promised.” Video scenes aren’t enough. You have to give them more and leave them feeling like they’re losing out on the valuable content only available on your site if they don’t sign up.
AJ Hall is a 13-year adult industry veteran and the co-founder and CEO of Elevated X Inc., a provider of popular adult CMS software for the online adult entertainment industry. Elevated X powers more than 2,000 leading adult sites, has been nominated for industry awards 11 times and won the 2012 and 2014 XBIZ Award for Software Company of the Year.
