All you need to know about mobile call-to-action buttons to increase conversions. Don’t miss out on these call-to-action (CTA) button design guidelines.
The world is mobile. Some users may not even own a desktop and, with the probable exception of work, they prefer mobile. And we say “probable” because nowadays some workplaces offer tablets. So, let’s not forget about tablets.
You want every visitor to count towards your conversion goals, and this includes your mobile conversion goals.
Mobile best practices don’t really exist. Every audience is different, and we have the tests to prove it. What works for one business doesn’t always work for others.
There is an almost infinite number of things that you can consider for testing on a website. And many of them aren’t worth testing.
We are going to share some design ideas for your website’s mobile call-to-action buttons, so you can test them and discover what works for yours.
Conversion Sciences’ Guidelines for Mobile Call-to-Action Buttons
We’ll split these ideas into three major categories: placement, copy, and design. You can elaborate your own list of ideas — we call them hypotheses — based on what you know about your visitors and your website that could result in a lift in conversions.
Remember, there are no best practice unicorns hidden in this article.
Before delving into CTA button placement, copy, and design, let’s review some mobile conversion testing concepts.
Mobile visitors are in a fundamentally different context than their desktop counterparts
Most mobile websites are responsive designs, designed first for the desktop. This only gets you 50% of the way to a high-converting mobile website. Why? Because a mobile visitor is immersed in a context that is essentially different than the one for desktop visitors. They are waiting for a table, standing in line at the bank, or relaxing on their couch. Often, they are better positioned to start a conversation than to finish a transaction.
This is one reason we often see mobile conversion rates that are a half or a quarter of desktop conversion rates.
As we test for conversions the mobile version will evolve and differentiate itself from the desktop version. We have to make different decisions on which calls to action to use, which calls to action to prioritize, where to place them, whether to use text or icons, and so on.
It is not obvious how to design your mobile call-to-action buttons to maximize conversions.
Consider the symbol for infinity. The infinity symbol represents to us the fact that there is an almost infinite number of things that you can consider for testing on a website. From the operating system to the type of visitor and everything in between.
The number of tests we could elaborate could really reach infinity.
Placement, size, call to action text, stickiness, and frequency all combine to increase the number of possibilities. And don’t forget to consider interactions with other elements. Is that chat icon covering up your mobile call to action button?
Note: In the following sections, we run the design tips, ideas and guidelines from the top organically ranking articles on mobile call-to-action button by the conversion scientist himself: Brian Massey, who’s been a conversion optimization expert since 2007.
Discover what he has to say on mobile call-to-action button placement, copy and design. You’ll be surprised and learn a ton from his answers.
How to Identify the Optimal Placement for your Mobile CTA Buttons
Your visitors’ thumbs are spending too much time on your screens and your mobile conversion rate is suffering. – Brian Massey, Conversion Scientist®.
Conversion Sciences Team: mobile call-to-action button placement best practices
We found articles on this topic that recommended organizing mobile CTAs according to their priority. For example, on an ecommerce site, you should order these calls to action: “Continue shopping”, “View your cart” and finally, “Check out”. The literature said they should be ordered to follow eye movement, from top to bottom,
Is this correct and what guidelines would you give somebody regarding mobile call-to-action button placement?
Brian Massey: What you mention isn’t wrong on desktop screens, but on mobile it’s very different.
For mobile websites, the first question we ask is, which call to action do we optimize for.
How hard is it to take action on a mobile device? It’s pretty hard, even for digital “natives”. Forms are just more difficult to fill out on a mobile device than using a keyboard.
This is one reason for lower mobile conversion rates. In general, the longer your forms, the lower your conversion rates. This problem is amplified by small digital keyboards.
On one particular ecommerce website that was researched, visitors have to go through a four step registration process to buy from this e-retailer on desktop.
If your signup process requires them to find a piece of information, such as a password or account number, your mobile conversion rates will drop.
On mobile, it may make sense to prioritize for something easier to complete. We have to find out which call to action to optimize for. For example, we may find that the best option is optimizing for collecting emails.
Every agency believes they have the right service for the price a company is willing to pay. So they can be very persuasive. Find out what questions you should be asking to pick the right agencies for your business.
Agencies make things possible that our marketing teams just can’t do with the resources they have.
What is maddening is the variety of different ways a problem, like getting search traffic, can be solved.
I believe that data can help us decide who we should go with and which agencies we should let go.
But, what data should you be asking for? Ask any agency and they’ll tell you, “The data we provide.” Who can you trust?
Fortunately, I have an old friend and high-integrity individual to ask, someone I know that won’t tell me what I want to hear. Lance Loveday is the founder and CEO of Closed Loop, a digital advertising agency that specializes in paid media management. I know Lance as a speaker and straight shooter.
Brian Massey and Lance Loveday on the Intended Consequences Podcast.
Don’t be fooled by his mild manner. I we talk about the tough questions to ask when bringing on external resources to solve your most important problems. I was surprised by some of his answers, which means I learned something.
As an optimizer by nature, digital marketing comes naturally to Lance. He’s analytical but also creative – he uses his left brain and his right brain.
Closed Loop helps organizations leverage user experience to maximize strategic advantage. Their work is guided by a few simple beliefs: Good user experience is good business.
They believe there’s always room for improvement. And companies that value design, UX, and the human element will outperform those that live and die only by the numbers.
“If you if you don’t know for sure that you’re winning, you’re almost guaranteed to be losing.”
Lance believes that if you’re investing in the competitive ad auctions on Google and Facebook, you don’t want to be the “dumb money at the table.” Listen as we explore how to find an agency relationship that gives you a competitive advantage.
“There’s a really important qualitative element involved in any relationship right. And I think you need to have good chemistry. You need to ensure that there is alignment of values between the organizations and between the teams.”
When to bring in a paid advertising agency
“It’s one thing to ask the person who’s running the website to run the paid media campaigns, too. And even though you’re not fully trained and you’re not a professional at this we’re going to ask you to take this on as a fourth or fifth responsibility. And that’s OK, if you’re spending you know maybe ten or twenty thousand a month as a mid-sized company.
If you’re spending you know maybe ten or twenty thousand a month as a mid-sized company it’s really not ok at the point you’re spending one hundred or two hundred thousand a month to not have a dedicated professional who does this.”
Full funnel advertising
“You need to have a full funnel advertising strategy to both feed the top of the funnel and then harvest the existing latent demand out there as well.”
Questions to ask when picking an agency?
“Where would we fit in in terms of size amongst your client base. Are we going to be a small fish and therefore get minimal attention?”
“Ask to meet the team that would be dedicated to your account. It drives me nuts to compete with agencies I know are putting junior inexperienced people on accounts and because we we just we don’t do that.”
“Ensure that there’s good chemistry, for lack of a better term. There’s a really important qualitative element involved in any relationship and I think you need to have good chemistry. You need to ensure that there is alignment of values between the organizations and between the teams.”
When you get back to the office…
Think about how you act as an agency to your internal teams. Ask a few good questions.
What do you do to ensure you’re communicating the right amount?
What data do you deliver and why?
How do you work on your “fit” with the rest of the team?
How are you soliciting feedback from others to improve what you do?
The answers you give for yourself can then be turned around to your agency relationships. What you expect of yourself should be expected of your agencies. Demand it.
Marketing departments are understaffed, overworked and required to do quantitative and creative work. No wonder marketers are struggling. How does Erin Collis deal with the variety of tasks all marketers face? What can leaders do?
F. Scott Fitzgerald is credited with saying “The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function.”
But most marketers are holding dozens of ideas in their minds, many of which are in opposition. And then these poor souls are expected to be creative and thoughtful amidst all of this.
I experience it. The people that attend my seminars and workshops experience it. And I believe it is a barrier to a culture of experimentation in marketing, product development and more.
I can bring book authors or consultants or titans of the industry on the Intended Consequences podcast any day, but today, I want to help you step outside of yourself.
Erin Collis and Brian Massey on Intended Consequences Podcast
Carl Jung defined Projection as our tendency to project subconscious thoughts onto other people. He believed studying our thoughts about others would lead us to breakthroughs in our own life and work.
I want to help you see your own challenges through the eyes of another marketer like yourself or the people on your team. It is difficult to see ourselves in motion, so you’re welcome.
Erin Collis has a lot on her plate, as I suspect you do. Erin is Marketing and Communications Manager at Corradi USA. I picked her almost at random to join me and talk about the challenges of being a digital marketer in 2019.
She attended one of my full-day workshops, but we aren’t going to talk about that. Instead, I want you to listen to the advice you would give her. My guess is that this advice is exactly what you need.
As you listen, pay attention to what you are projecting onto our conversation. Would any of those thoughts apply to you?
As always, stick around after the interview for my “When you get back to the office” segment.
Marketing mix.
From these magazine [ads] we can’t see what’s happening with them, or if they’re even making an impact.
Agency digital marketing data.
The data that [the agency] sent to us, we couldn’t understand. And we didn’t see any uptick in sales or recognition.
Building and maintaining relationships (digitally).
A majority of our business currently is offline business, but the value that we have to offer our customers — our dealers — is offering them services making it easier to sell the product.
When you get back to the office…
I found our discussion about creative time most interesting. When do you get to settle in and write, or design or get curious?
For me it’s Friday afternoons and certain mornings that I delay coming into the office.
But I realized I never put that on my calendar. I never carve out time to let the competing thoughts in my head quiet down and let my curiosity take the wheel for an hour or two.
Do you do this? Should you do it more?
That’s all this week, scientists.
Transcript
Click in the content to hear that portion of the podcast.
Test and implement these guest checkout tactics to reduce cart abandonment, grow ecommerce sales and conversion rates, and have your customers complete the purchase.
As a customer, do you really want to create an account for every single website you interact with? Absolutely not. On the other hand, if you are a customer, you want these online retailers to know who you are. This is why a website without a guest checkout is regarded as a “conversion killer”.
Having a guest checkout is one way to keep people from leaving your ecommerce site before they buy.
You may be worried about losing that connection with the customer. But don’t fear. If you implement some of these guest checkout ideas, you will be able to continue the conversation – even if they say they can’t stay for long as of now.
Let’s review these guest checkout tactics to help us grow sales and improve the user experience. It’s jam-packed with examples and ideas from a group of top US ecommerce sites we evaluated to illustrate this article.
Guest Checkout Tactics: What can I do to increase my ecommerce conversion rates?
34% of the users in a Baymard Institute study abandoned an order because they were not offered an ecommerce guest checkout option.
Guest Checkout Examples and Ideas to Grow Ecommerce Sales: Listen to this Article
Guest checkouts are an increasingly standard feature of most ecommerce sites today. But what sets the real winners apart is the checkout experience or the finesse with which they give the customer a choice between registering and proceeding as a guest.
Baymard Institute cart abandonment rate statistics.
If we ignore the segment of visitors that are “just browsing”, and look at the remaining reasons for abandoned carts, we get the above distribution. Source: Baymard Institute cart abandonment rate statistics.
1. Create account after purchase
Ironically, the only bit of additional information an ecommerce site needs is a password to create an account. Anyone paying with a credit card is providing their name, and it is standard practice to provide an email address for receipts and order updates.
Allow guest shoppers to create an account after the purchase is complete. Most of the information will have been filled in, and it would probably be a matter of adding a couple of fields. This will certainly help raise conversion rates, and may have only a small impact on the number of accounts your customers create.
Did you know that your customers are more likely to create an account after they purchase? This may seem counter-intuitive, the best time to ask someone to do something for you is right after they’ve purchased. They like you more because they chose you.
If you want to take it a step further, offer a guest checkout only and tell them they can create an account later, if they so desire.
Victoria’s Secret secret (and subtle) approach to account creation.
2. Express payment options or social signups
A good way to complement a guest checkout, which will also save time filling out forms, is to offer a social signup or PayPal as the payment method. Notice how your customers can then go through the checkout without having to enter lots of details.
Not only will these options make for a smooth checkout UX, they will have a big impact on mobile checkout rates. No matter how short you make your forms, nothing beats a pre-filled option, especially when you are doing it on your phone.
Be careful, though. Not everyone trusts ecommerce websites with their social data. Thanks, Cambridge Analytica. Instead of “Login with LinkedIn”, try language like “Auto-fill from LinkedIn.”
Add this AB test to your mobile conversion optimization list, and see if you can grow the number of completed orders with express sign-ups.
3. Save your details for the next time
The smartest ecommerce sites give visitors clear reasons for creating an account at the time of purchase. They know repeat customers spend 67% more than new customers.
Of all the guest checkout tactics, this is the one I favor the most. Nothing pushy about signing up for an account or registering for future savings. Just a plain “would you like to save your details for the next time?” Why not? If I enjoy your products, I will definitely be coming back to your shop.
Do you offer a customer loyalty program? Well, there’s no better time to promote the incredible benefits of your program than right after a purchase.
Conversion Sciences Pro Tip: Craft a special exit-intent pop-up on your thank-you page that invites your new customer to enjoy the benefits of having an account. An exit-intent popup appears when the visitor is about to leave your site. This is a good time to offer something like, “Let us save your details and earn loyalty points.”
Discover how to create top converting registration forms for your website or landing pages. Don’t let the design of your form hurt your conversion rate.
Are your forms stopping your visitors from converting on your site? Follow these guide and create the highest converting registration forms ever. Of course, this will not preclude you from testing what works and what doesn’t work on your site and with your audience. Read on!
Steps for Creating Top Converting Registration Forms
I recently went to a website to buy a new keyboard for a laptop. I found the site with the right price and delivery and put the keyboard in my cart.
When I went to checkout, the first question on the billing form was Gender.
Gender?
Why does an electronics part manufacturer need to know if I’m a man or woman?
It introduced enough doubt in my process that I left — I abandoned my order.
The unfortunate statistic is that 86% of visitors abandon forms of all kinds.
It’s doubly heartbreaking when they do so in their cart, because that costs you ready buyers.
How to Create the Highest Converting Registration Forms: 13 Key Tips
The thirteen recommendations made here will set you on a path to reduce your abandonment rates. My favorites are:
What am I signing up for? Use a title that explains why the user needs to sign up. Keep this intro short, sweet and simple. Make sure your call to action matches the title. Be more creative than a “Submit” button.
Show them their password (who said invisible passwords was a good idea?) Let them pick if they want to see it or not.
Put errors in an obvious place and make them visible. Make sure to read the last section on how to use error messages as a conversion opportunity.
How to create top converting registration forms: informational messages make for a smoother conversion path when they are located close to the corresponding field. Easy to notice and to understand.
Here’s the rest of the recommendations for creating top converting registration forms.
A social signup option can speed up the form filling process and help you create the best conversion registrations forms.
Leverage Autofill whenever possible or offer preset options. This is especially true on mobile devices. Nothing more annoying than fumbling around with a form.
Make the most of mobile devices. Enable only relevant keypads as required on the field. Make it easy for your visitors. Don’t make them switch to a numeric keypad or keyboard to enter the zip code or phone. Use specific HTML input types. They’ll appreciate it and you’ll avoid friction in this crucial conversion moment.
Explain whyyou need the information and what you expect them to enter. Just because it’s evident to you, does not mean it’s clear to everybody. The same applies to mandatory fields.
Limit the number of fields in your form. Don’t drive your prospects away at the mere sight of the longest form ever.
Billing address same as shipping address? One checkmark will take care of filling up the fields – internally, of course.
Multi-step forms. Split. Split. Split. Research shows that multi-step forms outperform their single-step registration forms. Especially when asking for sensitive information (such as phone) or when the form is too long. Adding a progress bar will entice your prospects to keep going as they are almost done.
Google’s UX researchers found that aligning labels top-left of the fields increased form completion time. This is because it requires fewer ‘visual fixations’. Basically, your eyes scan downwards faster. You are forced to scan in a zig-zag motion when the labels are placed to the left of the fields. The exception is when you are using always visible inline form field labels.
Did I mention speed? You can make your website as fast as possible, but slowing down like molasses at the time of filling out a form is unacceptable. Make sure your forms load fast and don’t slow down your page speed to increase conversions.
Make sure you are GDPR compliant. You have to ask permission for each and every opt-in.
UX Design Guide for Form Validation to Lift your Conversion Rates
Forms are a key component of Landing Pages (in addition to Offer, Image, Trust and Proof). When a visitor considers completing a form — for lead gen, to subscribe or to purchase — it is the moment of truth.
So, it is sad that so many forms work to chase these ready customers and prospects away. Forms are meant to have a conversation with the user. One that guides them all the way to the conversion with the best UX possible.
Form validation used to be a “developer” thing and we need to make it a marketing thing. Forms are placed at your sales funnel’s most crucial moment, the conversion. Therefore, it is only logical that improving the UX would help lift conversion rates.
Here are four elements to consider as you guide development of your website forms in these areas to avoid confusion:
1. When to Show Validation Errors: The right time to inform the user about problems or success
Consider the two main types of form validation: Inline validation and Post-Submit validation.
Inline validation checks field entries as the information is entered.
Post-submit validation validates entries after submitting the entire form. The visitor doesn’t know if the username they chose was already taken or if their email address was entered incorrectly until after they click the button.
If mistakes were made and the form re-loads, the visitor must manually search for the incomplete fields, and correct them. This adds friction to a shopping cart checkout process or a newsletter signup. This hurts completion rates.
Post-submit validation also suffers from scroll confusion. When the page reloads, the error messages often appear off-screen. The visitor may not know that there’s even a problem with their entry until they scroll around. This is a bigger problem on mobile devices where screens are smaller.
Our recommendation is to use inline validation so users can adjust, learn, and correct as they move from field to field. Inline validation is especially effective for the username and password fields, or any field with strict input requirements.
Instagram makes good use of “always visible inline field labels.”
Don’t limit messages to errors. Success validation messages are always helpful and encouraging. For example, a simple check mark by the field can let the user know their username was accepted and it’s unique.
2. Where to Display Validation Errors: Right place for validation messages
When messages are located close to the corresponding “failing” field, they lead to a smoother path for conversion. They become easier to notice and to understand.
You may be tempted to add the error messages by the Submit button. But there are only two occasions where you can display the error or validation message next to the Submit button.
The first is when you perform an post-submit validation and there was no page reload.
The second is when the error affects the whole form, as may happen with a dropped mobile connection, and the page was not reloaded.
In any case, if there was a reload of the page, display the validation errors at the top of the page.
Wave accounting software registration form. Great location for the informational password field. Their social proof is very persuasive.
3. Right color or Right Graphic Representation
Did you know that 1 in 12 men have some degree of color blindness? Source: Color Blindness
Color blindness is more prevalent among males than females, because the most common form of color vision deficiency is encoded on the X sex chromosome. Source.
In spite of this, if you follow the rules (blue is informational, green is success, red is an error and yellow as a warning) even color-blind visitors will understand the meaning.
If red-green color blindness is the most prevalent – one in twelve men are color blind – should you rely solely on color to get your message across in your registration forms? Image source: Pinterest.
I recall asking a friend of mine – yes, he was color-blind – how could he tell the traffic signals apart. His answer was, “I know where they are placed.”
We don’t have specific placements on forms, but we can take advantage of icons. And these have rules as well: X for error, checkmark for success, exclamation point for warning and “i” for informational messages.
4. Clear and persuasive language for error messages
A red symbol notifying you that there is an error and no explanation of what it is or how to fix it can lead to form abandonment. It becomes extremely frustrating for users that may be trying to register for your demo or buy from your online store when they don’t know what they did wrong.
Instagram’s sign up form error messages are not helpful to the user. There is no clear explanation on how to fix them.
If all problems are opportunities, then error messages and error pages are generally missed opportunities. Marketing should be policing the errors reported on their website, messages that have traditionally been written by a techie in IT.
Clear and persuasive language for error messages can actually work in your favor, improving the user experience and increasing conversions.
I’ll give you an example. A few months ago I had to make a doctor’s appointment. The receptionist scheduled me for the following day with the nurse practitioner. I asked if I could see the doctor – best dermatologist in this neck of the woods – and her answer was “No, you will have to wait until she comes back from vacation.” Which happened to be 3 days later.
What do you think would have happened if she would have said, “Of course. She will be back from vacation on this date. But we can get you in tomorrow if you’d like to see her nurse practitioner”. She could have probably have persuaded me to see the NP.
Wayfair’s newsletter sign up form has a confusing call to action button text. What will happen after I press continue?
Follow these guidelines to write error message that won’t have your visitor feel like an idiot.
Get rid of IT jargon. Say goodbye to “Submit”, “Send” or “Error”, not only do they have different meanings in English language, they have a negative connotation putting the blame on the user.
Clearly and simply identify the error and give the user a solution.
Never blame the user. Rephrase your error messages or better yet, provide your website visitors with informational messages so they know what to enter in the first place.
Provide a way to contact you, be it chat, email or a customer service number, in case the user needs your help to solve the issue.
What job description would a marketing manager write if they wanted experimenters in their organization? I think it might go something like this.
Title: Marketing Experimenter
Primary job description: Making people aware of our products and persuading them to purchase them.
You are perfect for this role if:
You are not confident in your ability to create digital campaigns that will connect with our prospects.
You fail frequently and with minimum impact.
You do not consider yourself an intuitive copywriter.
Your do not have an intuitive sense of design.
You are good at holding off helicopter executives.
You ignore the expectations of others, unless they are prospects or customers.
You can waste time strategically.
You forget past victories easily.
You are unmoved by cool agency designs.
You’ve master the tools necessary to learn how to speak to our prospects.
You are good at talking about data and sharing it with teammates.
Must be good at asking questions.
You know how to celebrate successful campaigns.
You know how to celebrate failures.
If this is you, please apply immediately.
If any of these qualifications seem counterintuitive to you, don’t worry. We are all going to have to learn to work with this kind of curious, disciplined and creative person.
Would you want people like this working in your organization. I suspect you may already have these kinds of people on your team. So the real question will be, would this person be delighted to be in your organization?
Intended Consequences Podcast with Barbara Caveness and Brian Massey
To help understand these kind of people, I invited Barbara Cavness to join me on this episode of Intended Consequences.
Barbara is the CEO of (un)Common Logic – a digital marketing agency that you might be tempted to put into the category of “Search Engine Marketing”. But this is really an organization that enables teams of talented people to do great things. Her team investigates digital marketing data to find the surprising facts that can solve their clients toughest problems.
Barbara is very purposeful in her approach to building teams, even though she encounters all of the same obstacles that we do. Learn how this former Duke University lacrosse player became the head of a marketing organization and how she fosters teamwork, curiosity, and creativity.
Fostering curiosity
You know, there are a lot of ways you can free up time and provide opportunities to learn and try new things. There are a lot of overt and subtle ways that you can nurture that.
Gone are the days of the unsophisticated digital marketer.
The vast majority of the clients at least that we serve are very sophisticated marketers themselves so they can spot a fake from about a mile away.
Data can save the day.
OK. Hang on. Deep breath. What does the data tell us.
The importance of pushing your team and investing in your culture.
We have a lot of young people on our team obviously. It is a young company, young industry etc. And so they’re sort of still finding their way when it comes to maximizing their potential. You know, it always comes back to sports for me right. You know I love also being a coach. I love pushing my team.
On doubts
Go run through that wall. You can absolutely do it.
Take a look at your work day. Write down the top five things you do in your role.
Then, for each rate yourself on a simple Experimentation Scale.
In those roles in which you are the initiator of experimentation, give yourself a 3. These are the roles in which you often say, “Let’s study that,” or “Who could we survey?” or “Do we have any history to look at?”
For those roles in which you are a preventer of experimentation, give yourself a 1. This is not a bad thing. We need people on our teams to help us focus our experimenters. This is like the control rods in a nuclear plant. They slow the activity, and are very important.
For those roles that you’re not sure about, give yourself a 2.
In which of these roles do you find yourself most satisfied. In which are you frustrated? Is there a pattern?
I’ll leave you to decide for yourself what this simple exercise means?
Nothing is more worrisome than your website conversion rate dropping. You’ll want to know why, so you can fix it. Breathe. Here’s where to check.
Watching your conversion rate drop is not fun. It will make you lose sleep until you know what’s causing it. And maybe worse until you see it climbing back up again.
Fortunately, any drop in conversion rate has an explanation and one or more solutions.
Bringing it back may be just a matter of time, but just waiting is never a good answer. Sudden drops in conversions can be quite frustrating if you do not know where to dig. Do you agree?
It may be some of the obvious culprits that are to blame for your website conversion rate dropping – website redesigns, landing page changes, new offers, pricing, promos, or sales. But if it’s not obvious, keep calm. Go through this checklist and get it taken care of.
Keep calm and read this post if your conversion rates are dropping.
1. Those Devilish Tracking Codes
It happens. You may believe your analytics tracking codes, also called tags, are working and reporting on your conversions without a hitch. You may find that’s not the case anymore. Incorrectly installed tracking codes could be the cause of your conversion rate dropping.
Maybe they got corrupted when making small tweaks to your site or when implementing a new campaign or when versioning a landing page.
Retrace your steps. Try to remember what you have modified lately. Yes, this is when you’ll realize you should make it a habit to use Google Analytics’ Annotations. This is a great way to easily find the changes you’ve made, changes that may have broken your tracking.
To make sure all of your analytics tracking codes work as they should, we recommend Google Tag Assistant. This is a plugin for your Chrome browser. It will tell you if your tracking is setup properly on any page of your site. Heed the recommendations in the tool. Nothing should be misconfigured.
Here are some places to look:
Did you launch any new landing pages? If so, are the tracking codes setup on them?
Did you release any new offers? Make sure you’re creating goals in Google Analytics for all of your reports, demos, trials and purchases.
Did you add any third-party tools to your site or ecommerce plugins? Make sure they are properly integrated with Google Analytics.
2. Conversion Rate Dropping due to Lack of Browser Compatibility?
Google Analytics has very handy reports to identify where the problem may lie. Check for a significant drop in conversions for a particular browser. Your major browsers include Chrome, Safari, IE, Firefox & Edge and on mobile, Android and iOS.
Found it?
Browser testing: Target Chrome 71.0.3578.98 / Windows 2008 R2.
Now we test the Target website on Chrome 51.0.2704.103 / Windows 2008 R2. Notice the differences.
Finally, Target website tested on Firefox 30.0 / Debian 6.0.
Test your checkout flow, your forms, on-exit intent pop-ups, even your landing pages with that browser. Keep in mind that not all browsers behave in the same way on every operating system. Therefore, you have to check on Windows, Mac and Linux, at the very least. Has some of your website’s CSS or Javascript become obsolete?
Google Analytics has a very handy report for this: Audience > Technology > Browser
Google Analytics browser report.
Then select the Ecommerce report. You’ll be able to look for browsers that underperform.
If it’s not a particular browser, check for mobile, tablet, desktop or amp technical bugs or issues. Is an element of your responsive landing page now hidden from view on a mobile device?
3. Don’t Underestimate Website Performance
If your server or your CDN are experiencing glitches, or your website is suffering from a sudden slow down in page load speed, you may not have dropped your organic rankings yet but your customer UX has degraded.
Moreover, your visitors are currently sending those unhappy experience signals to search engines. Ouch!
Check the Search Console coverage report to make sure you didn’t have any 500 internal server error. If so, talk to your hosting company or sys admins to have them resolve it.
Google Search console coverage report. Is your server or CDN misbehaving? Could this be the cause of your conversion rate dropping?
Now take a look at the Google Analytics speed reports and compare it with the previous period. A slowdown of the average server response time will point to a need for additional server resources or to a software upgrade. If the average page load time is the one that has increased and you are running a CMS like Magento, Shopify or WordPress, start digging into extensions, plugins and image sizes.
Improve visitor experience by addressing page load speed issues.
I guess, pinpointing why your website conversion rate is dropping can get a bit technical, huh?
4. Have you Forgotten to Optimize for Mobile Devices?
Ok, you already checked that your site was displaying correctly when you checked for technical issues. But, it’s possible that your mobile customers require a different conversion experience than the one you crafted for your desktop users.
Access Google Analytics and compare traffic for devices under Mobile Audience overview year over year. Maybe it’s time to contact our Mobile CRO experts. We wrote the book on it.
Usually, customer behavior takes quite a long time to reflect negatively on your conversion rates. So, concentrate on other issues unless you’ve noticed your conversion rate dropping for a while.
If the latter is the case, maybe it’s time to take a fresh look at your marketing personas. Times do change.
6. Conversion Rate Dropping with a Traffic Increase?
A decline in traffic volume can obviously decrease the number of conversions and possibly your online shop conversion rate. But what if there’s an increase in traffic? Yes, even an increase in traffic can badly affect a website’s conversion rates.
First things first. Make sure you identify the traffic source that has experienced a decrease in conversion rate. Is it the same as the one whose traffic volume increased? Remember to check their landing page functionality. If that’s not the problem, review a few of these scenarios.
6.1 Paid Traffic Increase
A lower conversion rate with a paid traffic increase could be pointing to non-relevant campaign targeting or to a lack of understanding what will persuade your visitors to buy or try your products or services.
Maybe you need to put things in perspective and understand that in some occasions such as Black Friday, prospects perform a lot of comparison shopping. Therefore you may experience much higher traffic driven by your social or ppc campaigns but a decline in conversion rates. I bet you are spending more on these campaigns as well, aren’t you?
Optimize your ad copy and landing pages accordingly so your site won’t be left behind in this increased competition and avoid significantly lower conversion rates.
Answer this, have you been running the same campaign for a long time? People are clicking but not converting? Maybe it’s time to change the landing page.
Examine each step of your funnel and look for weak points. Arm yourself with Heat Maps. They can definitely help you identify what your visitors are seeing or missing. Engage in split testing and get those conversion rates back up.
6.2 Sudden Surge in Social or Organic Traffic Volume
A spike in social or organic traffic may be attributed to the creation of clickbait blog posts. The problem with these articles, is that while traffic may increase, these visitors tend not to convert – at least not immediately. You will experience a perceived “drop” on conversion rates as a similar number of conversions are being diluted in higher traffic. Social traffic tends to react faster than organic, so look for correlations there first.
6.3 The Attack of the Bots or Ghost Spam
Bots can also generate a sudden growth in direct or referral traffic. It’s quite easy to identify those bots on analytics – unless they were spectacularly well coded. This is rarely the case. Bots don’t have gender, age and they have 100% bounce rate.
They will produce the same effect as any spurt in irrelevant and non-converting traffic: declining conversion rates.
6.4 Are You Emailing Less?
Email is one of the highest converting traffic sources for most businesses. If you have reduced the frequency of email or have changed the kind of email you are sending, this may impact you overall conversion rates.
Nothing more worrisome than your website conversion rate dropping. Evidently, you’ll want to know why so you can fix it. Breathe. Here’s where to check. This image has been designed using resources from Freepik.com.
7. Blame Seasonality for Your Conversion Rate Dropping
Does your conversion tend to drop at this time of the year? Seasonality usually causes a very rapid change in conversion rates and it may be accompanied of lower traffic or not.
If your traffic has not changed, compare with last year’s data and see if you are following trend. We tend to think of seasonal changes as holiday times but professional services like website design tends to drop during those times.
One of the most interesting seasonality drops I have ever seen happens in the wedding services industry every New Year’s eve. I guess one celebration offsets the planning of the other. So, tread carefully when making website changes without considering these seasonal effects or they could play against you.
The same seasonality may affect traffic, therefore always keep track of decreases or increases in seasonal trends.
8. When your Competitors Cause your Conversion Rate to Drop
If your conversion rate is dropping and you cannot find anything wrong with your site or with your actions, you may want to check what your competitors are up to.
Maybe they are running a special discount or a promotion that drives conversions away from you. Monitor their actions and respond accordingly. This may help you address some of the conversion loss.
Of course, lower conversion rates don’t mean as much as Return on Investment (ROI), so don’t leave that metric aside, You may be alarmed because you see your conversion rate dropping but in the end, that’s not what really matters What counts is your bottom line. Looking at a single conversion rate could be narrowing your view of the business, especially on this day and age of omnichannel marketing.
And, if all else fails, you can hire Conversion Sciences for a CRO Audit. Having a pair of expert eyes analyze your site, your 360 degree customer journey and review your conversion rates is always a plus.
Is analytics really going to make a difference? Will I benefit by getting deeper into my analytics? Find out how exciting one man can make Google Analytics.
Analytics is not one of those words that inspires action. It’s not a word like “Rose” dripping with alternate meanings and romantic associations. It’s not like the word “Disgust”, a word which evokes emotions and even specific facial configurations.
Shakespeare never wrote “A Midsummers Night’s Analysis”.
There has never been a hit pop song with the word Analytics in the title. And I didn’t even bother searching to make sure.
So, it is no wonder that it’s hard for us to imagine ourselves spending time in analytics. It’s a shame. Because, there, amidst the pageviews, conversions, events, and revenue are the hopes and dreams of our visitors. Their trials. Their triumphs, Their frustrations.
If there was anyone who would write an Ode to a Graph I saw in Analytics One Dewy Morning, it is my guest. He is genuinely excited about analytics, and Google Analytics specifically.
He is infectious. That means that, if you listen, you might get excited about analytics, too.
I know this. Your visitors hope you get excited about analytics, because it is the fastest way to make your website better for them.
Chris Mercer aka ‘Mercer’ is not only good at analytics, he’s good at teaching analytics. That’s what he spends his days doing as the Co-Founder of Measurement Marketing dot I-O.
Chris and his team help people like you discover how to grow your business using tools like Google Analytics, Google Tag Manager, Google Data Studio and more.
Chris is my go-to guy whenever someone asks how they should start in analytics. His model is great for small business owners or marketing teams who want to learn and expand their skills and build a system to help them grow.
Essentially, Chris helps people get to know the numbers – to grow the numbers.
So, how can anyone plug into Google Analytics? And where do you start?
You’ll be surprised by some of Chris’ answers. Here are some examples.
Where do we start when it comes to analytics?
I want to know the results. Number one I want to be able to see my results. So which traffic sources are causing which results. How am I getting those results.
It’s not just results.
It’s not only knowing what your results are but it’s knowing how you’re actually achieving those results.
Start with a question in mind.
We say it’s like the myth of the jade monkey. People think their data is like this jungle that they have to hack through and come up on these ruins that they find, and there is this little jade monkey worth of data that makes them a superhero. From a marketing standpoint, that doesn’t exist. Stop looking for that.
When you get back to the office…
Think back to a time that you had to trade off immediate desire for a long-term payoff, something that amazed you.
Did you ever watch Sea Monkeys grow as a child?
Did you ever plant bean seeds and water them daily?
Did you ever care for an ant farm.
These are all examples discovery over time. This is the gift of analytics. Your website is the ant farm and the glass is analytics.
No, your customers are not ants. But they want to understand them. Analytics is the way.
Watch Mercers Quick Start “How to” video –for free — and get some other freebies at MeasurementMarketing.io/ICP
How is Curiosity related to Creativity? What are the barriers to your curiosity? Find out how to spur the curiosity of yourself and your team.
Experimenters. You know the type.
As children, we call them “precocious”. They’re the ones who are always asking, “Why? Why? WHY?”
In middle school, they were sometimes called “mischievous,” seeming unable to resist finding out what would happen if…
In high school, they were called “nerds” because they seemed to obsess about the most unusual things.
As adults, they brew beer, collect anvils, travel, rebuild car engines, watch birds, and join fantasy sports leagues. They seek to understand the rules of some endeavor, and then figure out what happens if they break those rules.
Yes, this is pretty much everyone. In some area of our lives, we all find ourselves obsessing about how things work, why they work that way, and what we could do to make things better.
Unfortunately, the area of our lives that we spend the most time on isn’t the one we are most curious about: our work. How many experimenters do you work with — the kind of people that make you ask, “When did you have time to do that?”
If your answer wasn’t “I am that person,” I have to ask the question, “Why?” What has dampened your curiosity?
It turns out there are four factors that limit our curiosity. My guest, Dr. Diane Hamilton documents them in her book, “The Curiosity Code.” She evaluated me, and I was surprised at what I learned about the limits of MY curiosity.
The Relationship Between Curiosity and Creativity with Dr Diane Hamilton
Dr. Diane Hamilton is an expert in emotional intelligence and behavioral science. She is an author, radio host of “Take the Lead Radio,” and creator of the Curiosity Code Index – which we will dive into on today’s episode.
Curiosity is a topic that is at the core of everything marketers do. We’re all about experimenting, discovering data, and getting answers when it comes to website redesigns, launches, and campaigns.
More importantly, I think that curiosity is a doorway into the mystical peak experiences called “Flow.”.
So anything that limits my curiosity is something that needs to be addressed. Let’s find out what the four limiting factors are and how I scored on her evaluation.
We all start off curious.
When you get back to the office…
When do you feel it’s OK to put your work down and play? Or learn something new?
For me it’s often on Friday afternoons, when the deadlines are met, and things are winding down. I’ve gotten purposeful about tapping these natural times when the bonds of my mind relax, allowing me to follow my curiosity.
The other time for me is when I’m on a deadline. I allow myself to renegotiate a deadline if I’m learning something that will improve my performance long term.
When do you find yourself following rabbits down holes?
Do you feel guilty?
Does your team support it? Do they even know about it? Why not?
How could you configure your work world to indulge these moments of exploration?
I recommend you take Dr. Hamilton’s Curiosity Code Index and see what’s in your way.
Sales funnel or full funnel conversion optimization? Which should you use and when? It all depends on what you want to understand.
Full funnel conversion optimization – or the Conversion Sciences Profit Funnel™ – provides the analysis and insights needed to help positively impact your business bottom line. Analyzing a sales funnel helps improve those issues found in a specific buying process.
There is nothing wrong about analyzing a sales funnel conversion rate or a sales funnel model for a specific segment of a customer journey. But your online business will definitively benefit from performing a Profit Funnel™ or full-funnel conversion optimization as well.
A highly experienced team of conversion experts can leverage both models when optimizing, instead of narrowing the view and hurting profits. An inexperienced conversion consultant will only see a siloed series of sales funnels, evaluate them independently and make decisions based on their own unique ROAS instead of their interactions.
Let’s review the key differences between sales funnel and full funnel conversion optimization or Profit Funnel™. We’ll begin with a great example of both models, a definition of a full marketing funnel. Finally, we’ll cover their differences in scope and the metrics used by each funnel.
Happy customers means returning customers. The starting point for full funnel conversion optimization is the customer blueprint and guess whose CRO audit services include a map of the customer journey for your online shop?
Example of Sales Funnel vs Full Funnel Conversion Optimization
Imagine an addiction treatment center that offers both low-cost at-home testing kits and treatment programs. Their at-home drug testing kit sells for $10, and it costs $5 to manufacture and ship. Their treatment programs start at $15,000.
They have an effective social media presence, paid campaigns to engage and attract their target market. And they also provide valuable resources for people with addiction problems and for their loved on their website. These range from informational articles to online quizzes to help find out whether or not one is suffering from an addiction and what is the best course of action.
Ok. Time to tackle sales funnel optimization. If they analyze their PPC sales funnel they will realize that it is costing them $20 in ad spend to convert each home testing kit sale. This added to the manufacturing and shipping costs may lead them to determine that this $10 sale is costing the company $25. But they are not looking at their profit margins, they are simply calculating Return on Ad Spend or ROAS.
Thus, they may decide to turn off the ad spend and stop this failing campaign because they “lose” $15 per sale. Or they may attempt to improve a Google Ads campaign that is already performing quite well.
But what if this addiction treatment center looks at the full-marketing funnel or Profit Funnel™ instead?
They would find that 20% of their customers have repeated their kit purchase every 3 months.
By the same token, they have not estimated the impact that their content development and social media efforts have on those conversions. And they were attributing the sale to the last touch-point.
As the buyer journey is not limited to a single channel, analyzing a single sales funnel could narrow your business focus and marketing assessment scope.
Moreover, this treatment center finds that 2% of the people who purchase their $10 test later sends a loved one to their center for a $15k treatment program. Those $20 in ad spend for each testing kit sale got the family to notice their services and inquire about their drug-rehab program. Therefore, for every 100 tests they sell, an average of 2 patients will join their treatment program generating a minimum of $30,000 in revenue.
Before I became the CMO, I was more focused on how we were spending our marketing budget than on how marketing could help drive long-term business objectives.But thinking like this holds businesses back. Marketing should be valued for its long-term potential, rather than its short-term efficiencies.
So, What is Full Funnel Conversion Optimization or Profit Funnel™ Optimization?
As we have noticed, a full funnel evaluates the 360 degree customer journey with a company or brand. Its goal is not only to acquire a customer but also to understand, nurture and improve their relationship and experience with the brand.
It focuses on not only pre but post-transaction because it takes into account how this will affect the probability of increased number of subscription renewals or sales, lower customer rotation, lower customer acquisition costs, and increased profit margins.
As we can clearly see, even though it’s called a funnel, this model looks more like an infinite loop with many potential touch-points throughout the buyers journey, over time and across a multitude of devices and online/offline experiences.
Have you even thought of people interacting with your site or buying from you via Alexa? Photo: Grant Ritchie via Unsplash.
1. Sales Funnel vs Profit Funnel™ or Full Funnel Optimization: Differences in Scope
One of the main differences between sales funnel and a full funnel conversion optimization is its scope. The oftentimes narrow span of a sales funnel is overshadowed by the number of elements or touch-points that a Profit Funnel™ considers.
Let’s check them out.
Single Path vs Infinite Loop: Are you optimizing for Omni channel yet?
The most evident difference between the sales and the Profit Funnel™ models lies in their reach. Highly restricted to a specific conversion path for the sales funnel versus a very broad view of the customer journey for the latter.
While most sales funnels are focused on a single transaction (such as a lead, sale or subscription) the full funnel or Profit Funnel™ acknowledges the entire lifetime of a potential customer or client. Its purpose is to allow us to take a step back and look at the entire customer journey or full marketing funnel and help optimize by what is most profitable without discarding the customer experience.
One Decision Maker vs Multiple Stakeholders
Have you been optimizing for a single decision-maker? Maybe you were leaving some marketing personas out of the equation. The higher the ticket price, especially for B2Bs, the higher the likelihood of having more than a single decision-maker involved in the purchasing process. Most companies will include different stakeholders’ input through the funnel and each one of them may further or delay that coveted B2B sale.
Sales funnel conversion optimization targets one person. Profit funnels recognize there is often more than one decision-maker.
Conversion Sciences Profit Funnel™ recognizes and accounts for this fact. Trying to optimize a single funnel to convert this lead is short-sighted, when understanding the 360 degree customer journey and optimizing for it, will significantly increase conversions and boost profit margins.
We often find – when auditing a client’s conversion efforts – that their sales funnels don’t include mobile customers. Addressing this gap via mobile conversion optimization efforts has increased their profits manyfold.
The Profit Funnel™ recognizes the value of determining which of those platforms holds the highest potential for each particular conversion and finding a way to best optimize each path.
Sales funnels often focus on increasing conversions on a certain page on either mobile, tablet, or desktop. Thus, leaving out the reality that customers will interact with your brand, product or service in multiple ways and through as many devices as exist.
Have you even thought of people interacting with your site or buying from you via Alexa?
Full Funnel Conversion Optimization Enables a More Personalized Online Experience
The data-driven strategy of optimizing the full marketing funnel helps you identify consumer segments. Behavioral information can be collected in-store, online, and post-visit. The insights derived from this analysis helps you craft and deliver online personalized experiences to boost conversions and increase their contribution to your bottom line. All the while deriving insights to improving your marketing strategy.
“You are engaging with the consumer on an intimate level — they are telling you what products are interesting. That customer data is one of the most important things to grow your brand.” – Kate Kibler, Timberland’s VP of direct-to-consumer.
For high-traffic sites, Conversion Sciences offers the latest martech stacks – ML and AI-powered – via the Conversion Catalyst AI™. Our Conversion Catalyst AI™ builds a predictive model that identifies which visitors are ready to buy, and delivers the perfect experience so that they are more likely to buy from you. So you can deliver the most optimized experience be it on your website, on wearable devices, voice search, augmented-reality or any of the myriad of experiences the IoT brings us.
Full funnel analysis and optimization will deliver a more cohesive personalized experience to your online customer segments.
2. Sales Funnel vs Full Funnel Conversion Optimization Metrics
It’s hard to take a look at your full marketing funnel and try to gauge how well it’s working besides ROI and profit margins. But following those metrics without fully understanding which effort or efforts made the difference, is no way to run a business either. But lucky you. Full funnel is optimized with your bottom line in mind and a bespoke full funnel attribution will help you identify what’s helping and what’s hindering your conversions.
Therefore, the difference between sales funnel and full funnel conversion optimization is that you will end up concentrating your marketing spend on those efforts who bring in profitable returns. Much better than looking at a measly conversion rate. right? ;)
Sales funnel conversion optimization targets one person while Profit funnels recognize there is often more than one decision-maker.
ROAS vs ROI
Are you narrowing your business focus down to sales funnels and conversion rates? Are you making decisions that affect your whole business by a simple ROAS? Or are you leveraging a 360 degree customer blueprint to improve your company’s profit margins?
In the addiction treatment center example, when the sales funnel was not profitable (its ROAS was negative), they could have shut down the ad campaign. But when they looked at the full funnel (in-patient treatment registrations), the ad investment was profitable and it justified the initial losses in the funnel. It had a positive ROI.
Thus, by using both metrics, you can isolate those efforts whose ROAS may be positive but not their ROI, which takes into consideration not a single digitally advertised campaign but how each contributes to the business profit margins. And you can spare from killing efforts with negative ROAS because, in the end, their revenue-generating power is much larger than the one calculated from the revenue from ad campaign/cost of ad campaign.
By doing so, you change the focus to driving business performance, not just advertising performance.
Single Attribution vs Custom Attribution
Going back to the addiction treatment center example. There are things they do that contribute to their bottom line – such as informational blog posts, quizzes, etc. But their attribution model assigned the conversion value to a single Google Ads campaign.
People have several contacts with a brand before they even consider converting on that landing page, clicking on that PPC ad or that Instagram shoppable image. Which means that any and all contributions along the 360 degree funnel, or full funnel or Profit Funnel™ must be taken into account and their value toward each of the conversions (testing kit purchase, treatment) attributed properly to measure its impact on revenues and on profit margins.
While a single touch attribution model is a fast and simple way to allocate credit to a campaign, full funnel must use a bespoke or custom attribution model to understand what is working and what is not.
It’s common yet dangerous and naive to make assumptions about which touchpoint to attribute credit for a conversion. Oftentimes these assumptions are created from unrecognized personal bias and proven false through data analysis. This is one of the biggest reasons that analyzing all metrics is vital to a company’s long-term success.
Mobile Call-to-Action Buttons: Best Guidelines for Placement, Copy, and Design
Conversion Optimization, Conversion-Centered DesignThe world is mobile. Some users may not even own a desktop and, with the probable exception of work, they prefer mobile. And we say “probable” because nowadays some workplaces offer tablets. So, let’s not forget about tablets.
You want every visitor to count towards your conversion goals, and this includes your mobile conversion goals.
Mobile best practices don’t really exist. Every audience is different, and we have the tests to prove it. What works for one business doesn’t always work for others.
There is an almost infinite number of things that you can consider for testing on a website. And many of them aren’t worth testing.
We are going to share some design ideas for your website’s mobile call-to-action buttons, so you can test them and discover what works for yours.
Conversion Sciences’ Guidelines for Mobile Call-to-Action Buttons
We’ll split these ideas into three major categories: placement, copy, and design. You can elaborate your own list of ideas — we call them hypotheses — based on what you know about your visitors and your website that could result in a lift in conversions.
Remember, there are no best practice unicorns hidden in this article.
Before delving into CTA button placement, copy, and design, let’s review some mobile conversion testing concepts.
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Mobile visitors are in a fundamentally different context than their desktop counterparts
Most mobile websites are responsive designs, designed first for the desktop. This only gets you 50% of the way to a high-converting mobile website. Why? Because a mobile visitor is immersed in a context that is essentially different than the one for desktop visitors. They are waiting for a table, standing in line at the bank, or relaxing on their couch. Often, they are better positioned to start a conversation than to finish a transaction.
This is one reason we often see mobile conversion rates that are a half or a quarter of desktop conversion rates.
As we test for conversions the mobile version will evolve and differentiate itself from the desktop version. We have to make different decisions on which calls to action to use, which calls to action to prioritize, where to place them, whether to use text or icons, and so on.
It is not obvious how to design your mobile call-to-action buttons to maximize conversions.
Always Test your Mobile CTA Buttons
Consider the symbol for infinity. The infinity symbol represents to us the fact that there is an almost infinite number of things that you can consider for testing on a website. From the operating system to the type of visitor and everything in between.
The number of tests we could elaborate could really reach infinity.
Placement, size, call to action text, stickiness, and frequency all combine to increase the number of possibilities. And don’t forget to consider interactions with other elements. Is that chat icon covering up your mobile call to action button?
Note: In the following sections, we run the design tips, ideas and guidelines from the top organically ranking articles on mobile call-to-action button by the conversion scientist himself: Brian Massey, who’s been a conversion optimization expert since 2007.
Discover what he has to say on mobile call-to-action button placement, copy and design. You’ll be surprised and learn a ton from his answers.
How to Identify the Optimal Placement for your Mobile CTA Buttons
Conversion Sciences Team: mobile call-to-action button placement best practices
We found articles on this topic that recommended organizing mobile CTAs according to their priority. For example, on an ecommerce site, you should order these calls to action: “Continue shopping”, “View your cart” and finally, “Check out”. The literature said they should be ordered to follow eye movement, from top to bottom,
Is this correct and what guidelines would you give somebody regarding mobile call-to-action button placement?
Brian Massey: What you mention isn’t wrong on desktop screens, but on mobile it’s very different.
How hard is it to take action on a mobile device? It’s pretty hard, even for digital “natives”. Forms are just more difficult to fill out on a mobile device than using a keyboard.
This is one reason for lower mobile conversion rates. In general, the longer your forms, the lower your conversion rates. This problem is amplified by small digital keyboards.
On one particular ecommerce website that was researched, visitors have to go through a four step registration process to buy from this e-retailer on desktop.
If your signup process requires them to find a piece of information, such as a password or account number, your mobile conversion rates will drop.
On mobile, it may make sense to prioritize for something easier to complete. We have to find out which call to action to optimize for. For example, we may find that the best option is optimizing for collecting emails.
Hard Questions to Ask Your Agency with Lance Loveday
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Agencies make things possible that our marketing teams just can’t do with the resources they have.
What is maddening is the variety of different ways a problem, like getting search traffic, can be solved.
I believe that data can help us decide who we should go with and which agencies we should let go.
But, what data should you be asking for? Ask any agency and they’ll tell you, “The data we provide.” Who can you trust?
Fortunately, I have an old friend and high-integrity individual to ask, someone I know that won’t tell me what I want to hear. Lance Loveday is the founder and CEO of Closed Loop, a digital advertising agency that specializes in paid media management. I know Lance as a speaker and straight shooter.
Brian Massey and Lance Loveday on the Intended Consequences Podcast.
Don’t be fooled by his mild manner. I we talk about the tough questions to ask when bringing on external resources to solve your most important problems. I was surprised by some of his answers, which means I learned something.
As an optimizer by nature, digital marketing comes naturally to Lance. He’s analytical but also creative – he uses his left brain and his right brain.
Closed Loop helps organizations leverage user experience to maximize strategic advantage. Their work is guided by a few simple beliefs: Good user experience is good business.
They believe there’s always room for improvement. And companies that value design, UX, and the human element will outperform those that live and die only by the numbers.
Lance believes that if you’re investing in the competitive ad auctions on Google and Facebook, you don’t want to be the “dumb money at the table.” Listen as we explore how to find an agency relationship that gives you a competitive advantage.
When to bring in a paid advertising agency
“It’s one thing to ask the person who’s running the website to run the paid media campaigns, too. And even though you’re not fully trained and you’re not a professional at this we’re going to ask you to take this on as a fourth or fifth responsibility. And that’s OK, if you’re spending you know maybe ten or twenty thousand a month as a mid-sized company.
If you’re spending you know maybe ten or twenty thousand a month as a mid-sized company it’s really not ok at the point you’re spending one hundred or two hundred thousand a month to not have a dedicated professional who does this.”
Full funnel advertising
Questions to ask when picking an agency?
When you get back to the office…
Think about how you act as an agency to your internal teams. Ask a few good questions.
The answers you give for yourself can then be turned around to your agency relationships. What you expect of yourself should be expected of your agencies. Demand it.
Related reading: How to choose the best conversion optimization consultant
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Why Marketers Struggle and What to Do About It
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F. Scott Fitzgerald is credited with saying “The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function.”
But most marketers are holding dozens of ideas in their minds, many of which are in opposition. And then these poor souls are expected to be creative and thoughtful amidst all of this.
I experience it. The people that attend my seminars and workshops experience it. And I believe it is a barrier to a culture of experimentation in marketing, product development and more.
I can bring book authors or consultants or titans of the industry on the Intended Consequences podcast any day, but today, I want to help you step outside of yourself.
Erin Collis and Brian Massey on Intended Consequences Podcast
Carl Jung defined Projection as our tendency to project subconscious thoughts onto other people. He believed studying our thoughts about others would lead us to breakthroughs in our own life and work.
I want to help you see your own challenges through the eyes of another marketer like yourself or the people on your team. It is difficult to see ourselves in motion, so you’re welcome.
Erin Collis has a lot on her plate, as I suspect you do. Erin is Marketing and Communications Manager at Corradi USA. I picked her almost at random to join me and talk about the challenges of being a digital marketer in 2019.
She attended one of my full-day workshops, but we aren’t going to talk about that. Instead, I want you to listen to the advice you would give her. My guess is that this advice is exactly what you need.
As you listen, pay attention to what you are projecting onto our conversation. Would any of those thoughts apply to you?
As always, stick around after the interview for my “When you get back to the office” segment.
Marketing mix.
Agency digital marketing data.
Building and maintaining relationships (digitally).
When you get back to the office…
I found our discussion about creative time most interesting. When do you get to settle in and write, or design or get curious?
For me it’s Friday afternoons and certain mornings that I delay coming into the office.
But I realized I never put that on my calendar. I never carve out time to let the competing thoughts in my head quiet down and let my curiosity take the wheel for an hour or two.
Do you do this? Should you do it more?
That’s all this week, scientists.
Transcript
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Guest Checkout Tactics to Grow Ecommerce Sales (with Examples and Ideas)
Ecommerce CROAs a customer, do you really want to create an account for every single website you interact with? Absolutely not. On the other hand, if you are a customer, you want these online retailers to know who you are. This is why a website without a guest checkout is regarded as a “conversion killer”.
Having a guest checkout is one way to keep people from leaving your ecommerce site before they buy.
You may be worried about losing that connection with the customer. But don’t fear. If you implement some of these guest checkout ideas, you will be able to continue the conversation – even if they say they can’t stay for long as of now.
Let’s review these guest checkout tactics to help us grow sales and improve the user experience. It’s jam-packed with examples and ideas from a group of top US ecommerce sites we evaluated to illustrate this article.
Guest Checkout Tactics: What can I do to increase my ecommerce conversion rates?
Guest Checkout Examples and Ideas to Grow Ecommerce Sales: Listen to this Article
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Guest checkouts are an increasingly standard feature of most ecommerce sites today. But what sets the real winners apart is the checkout experience or the finesse with which they give the customer a choice between registering and proceeding as a guest.
Baymard Institute cart abandonment rate statistics.
If we ignore the segment of visitors that are “just browsing”, and look at the remaining reasons for abandoned carts, we get the above distribution. Source: Baymard Institute cart abandonment rate statistics.
1. Create account after purchase
Ironically, the only bit of additional information an ecommerce site needs is a password to create an account. Anyone paying with a credit card is providing their name, and it is standard practice to provide an email address for receipts and order updates.
Allow guest shoppers to create an account after the purchase is complete. Most of the information will have been filled in, and it would probably be a matter of adding a couple of fields. This will certainly help raise conversion rates, and may have only a small impact on the number of accounts your customers create.
Did you know that your customers are more likely to create an account after they purchase? This may seem counter-intuitive, the best time to ask someone to do something for you is right after they’ve purchased. They like you more because they chose you.
If you want to take it a step further, offer a guest checkout only and tell them they can create an account later, if they so desire.
Victoria’s Secret secret (and subtle) approach to account creation.
2. Express payment options or social signups
A good way to complement a guest checkout, which will also save time filling out forms, is to offer a social signup or PayPal as the payment method. Notice how your customers can then go through the checkout without having to enter lots of details.
Not only will these options make for a smooth checkout UX, they will have a big impact on mobile checkout rates. No matter how short you make your forms, nothing beats a pre-filled option, especially when you are doing it on your phone.
Be careful, though. Not everyone trusts ecommerce websites with their social data. Thanks, Cambridge Analytica. Instead of “Login with LinkedIn”, try language like “Auto-fill from LinkedIn.”
3. Save your details for the next time
The smartest ecommerce sites give visitors clear reasons for creating an account at the time of purchase. They know repeat customers spend 67% more than new customers.
Of all the guest checkout tactics, this is the one I favor the most. Nothing pushy about signing up for an account or registering for future savings. Just a plain “would you like to save your details for the next time?” Why not? If I enjoy your products, I will definitely be coming back to your shop.
Do you offer a customer loyalty program? Well, there’s no better time to promote the incredible benefits of your program than right after a purchase.
Conversion Sciences Pro Tip: Craft a special exit-intent pop-up on your thank-you page that invites your new customer to enjoy the benefits of having an account. An exit-intent popup appears when the visitor is about to leave your site. This is a good time to offer something like, “Let us save your details and earn loyalty points.”
How to Create the Highest Converting Registration Forms
Lead GenerationAre your forms stopping your visitors from converting on your site? Follow these guide and create the highest converting registration forms ever. Of course, this will not preclude you from testing what works and what doesn’t work on your site and with your audience. Read on!
Steps for Creating Top Converting Registration Forms
I recently went to a website to buy a new keyboard for a laptop. I found the site with the right price and delivery and put the keyboard in my cart.
When I went to checkout, the first question on the billing form was Gender.
Gender?
Why does an electronics part manufacturer need to know if I’m a man or woman?
It introduced enough doubt in my process that I left — I abandoned my order.
It’s doubly heartbreaking when they do so in their cart, because that costs you ready buyers.
How to Create the Highest Converting Registration Forms: 13 Key Tips
The thirteen recommendations made here will set you on a path to reduce your abandonment rates. My favorites are:
How to create top converting registration forms: informational messages make for a smoother conversion path when they are located close to the corresponding field. Easy to notice and to understand.
Here’s the rest of the recommendations for creating top converting registration forms.
UX Design Guide for Form Validation to Lift your Conversion Rates
Forms are a key component of Landing Pages (in addition to Offer, Image, Trust and Proof). When a visitor considers completing a form — for lead gen, to subscribe or to purchase — it is the moment of truth.
So, it is sad that so many forms work to chase these ready customers and prospects away. Forms are meant to have a conversation with the user. One that guides them all the way to the conversion with the best UX possible.
Form validation used to be a “developer” thing and we need to make it a marketing thing. Forms are placed at your sales funnel’s most crucial moment, the conversion. Therefore, it is only logical that improving the UX would help lift conversion rates.
Here are four elements to consider as you guide development of your website forms in these areas to avoid confusion:
1. When to Show Validation Errors: The right time to inform the user about problems or success
Consider the two main types of form validation: Inline validation and Post-Submit validation.
Inline validation checks field entries as the information is entered.
Post-submit validation validates entries after submitting the entire form. The visitor doesn’t know if the username they chose was already taken or if their email address was entered incorrectly until after they click the button.
If mistakes were made and the form re-loads, the visitor must manually search for the incomplete fields, and correct them. This adds friction to a shopping cart checkout process or a newsletter signup. This hurts completion rates.
Post-submit validation also suffers from scroll confusion. When the page reloads, the error messages often appear off-screen. The visitor may not know that there’s even a problem with their entry until they scroll around. This is a bigger problem on mobile devices where screens are smaller.
Our recommendation is to use inline validation so users can adjust, learn, and correct as they move from field to field. Inline validation is especially effective for the username and password fields, or any field with strict input requirements.
Instagram makes good use of “always visible inline field labels.”
2. Where to Display Validation Errors: Right place for validation messages
When messages are located close to the corresponding “failing” field, they lead to a smoother path for conversion. They become easier to notice and to understand.
You may be tempted to add the error messages by the Submit button. But there are only two occasions where you can display the error or validation message next to the Submit button.
The first is when you perform an post-submit validation and there was no page reload.
The second is when the error affects the whole form, as may happen with a dropped mobile connection, and the page was not reloaded.
In any case, if there was a reload of the page, display the validation errors at the top of the page.
Wave accounting software registration form. Great location for the informational password field. Their social proof is very persuasive.
3. Right color or Right Graphic Representation
Color blindness is more prevalent among males than females, because the most common form of color vision deficiency is encoded on the X sex chromosome. Source.
In spite of this, if you follow the rules (blue is informational, green is success, red is an error and yellow as a warning) even color-blind visitors will understand the meaning.
If red-green color blindness is the most prevalent – one in twelve men are color blind – should you rely solely on color to get your message across in your registration forms? Image source: Pinterest.
I recall asking a friend of mine – yes, he was color-blind – how could he tell the traffic signals apart. His answer was, “I know where they are placed.”
We don’t have specific placements on forms, but we can take advantage of icons. And these have rules as well: X for error, checkmark for success, exclamation point for warning and “i” for informational messages.
4. Clear and persuasive language for error messages
A red symbol notifying you that there is an error and no explanation of what it is or how to fix it can lead to form abandonment. It becomes extremely frustrating for users that may be trying to register for your demo or buy from your online store when they don’t know what they did wrong.
Instagram’s sign up form error messages are not helpful to the user. There is no clear explanation on how to fix them.
If all problems are opportunities, then error messages and error pages are generally missed opportunities. Marketing should be policing the errors reported on their website, messages that have traditionally been written by a techie in IT.
Clear and persuasive language for error messages can actually work in your favor, improving the user experience and increasing conversions.
I’ll give you an example. A few months ago I had to make a doctor’s appointment. The receptionist scheduled me for the following day with the nurse practitioner. I asked if I could see the doctor – best dermatologist in this neck of the woods – and her answer was “No, you will have to wait until she comes back from vacation.” Which happened to be 3 days later.
What do you think would have happened if she would have said, “Of course. She will be back from vacation on this date. But we can get you in tomorrow if you’d like to see her nurse practitioner”. She could have probably have persuaded me to see the NP.
Wayfair’s newsletter sign up form has a confusing call to action button text. What will happen after I press continue?
How to Write Great Error Messages
Follow these guidelines to write error message that won’t have your visitor feel like an idiot.
Building a Culture of Experimentation in a Creative Business
Conversion Marketing StrategyBuilding a Data-driven Team with Barbara Cavness
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What job description would a marketing manager write if they wanted experimenters in their organization? I think it might go something like this.
Title: Marketing Experimenter
Primary job description: Making people aware of our products and persuading them to purchase them.
You are perfect for this role if:
If any of these qualifications seem counterintuitive to you, don’t worry. We are all going to have to learn to work with this kind of curious, disciplined and creative person.
Would you want people like this working in your organization. I suspect you may already have these kinds of people on your team. So the real question will be, would this person be delighted to be in your organization?
Intended Consequences Podcast with Barbara Caveness and Brian Massey
To help understand these kind of people, I invited Barbara Cavness to join me on this episode of Intended Consequences.
Barbara is the CEO of (un)Common Logic – a digital marketing agency that you might be tempted to put into the category of “Search Engine Marketing”. But this is really an organization that enables teams of talented people to do great things. Her team investigates digital marketing data to find the surprising facts that can solve their clients toughest problems.
Barbara is very purposeful in her approach to building teams, even though she encounters all of the same obstacles that we do. Learn how this former Duke University lacrosse player became the head of a marketing organization and how she fosters teamwork, curiosity, and creativity.
Fostering curiosity
Gone are the days of the unsophisticated digital marketer.
Data can save the day.
The importance of pushing your team and investing in your culture.
On doubts
Resources and links discussed:
When you get back to the office…
Take a look at your work day. Write down the top five things you do in your role.
Then, for each rate yourself on a simple Experimentation Scale.
In those roles in which you are the initiator of experimentation, give yourself a 3. These are the roles in which you often say, “Let’s study that,” or “Who could we survey?” or “Do we have any history to look at?”
For those roles in which you are a preventer of experimentation, give yourself a 1. This is not a bad thing. We need people on our teams to help us focus our experimenters. This is like the control rods in a nuclear plant. They slow the activity, and are very important.
For those roles that you’re not sure about, give yourself a 2.
In which of these roles do you find yourself most satisfied. In which are you frustrated? Is there a pattern?
I’ll leave you to decide for yourself what this simple exercise means?
That’s all for now scientists.
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Why is my Conversion Rate Dropping? 8 Common Reasons
Conversion Optimization, Ecommerce CRO, Landing Page Optimization, Lead GenerationWatching your conversion rate drop is not fun. It will make you lose sleep until you know what’s causing it. And maybe worse until you see it climbing back up again.
Fortunately, any drop in conversion rate has an explanation and one or more solutions.
Bringing it back may be just a matter of time, but just waiting is never a good answer. Sudden drops in conversions can be quite frustrating if you do not know where to dig. Do you agree?
It may be some of the obvious culprits that are to blame for your website conversion rate dropping – website redesigns, landing page changes, new offers, pricing, promos, or sales. But if it’s not obvious, keep calm. Go through this checklist and get it taken care of.
Keep calm and read this post if your conversion rates are dropping.
1. Those Devilish Tracking Codes
It happens. You may believe your analytics tracking codes, also called tags, are working and reporting on your conversions without a hitch. You may find that’s not the case anymore. Incorrectly installed tracking codes could be the cause of your conversion rate dropping.
Maybe they got corrupted when making small tweaks to your site or when implementing a new campaign or when versioning a landing page.
Retrace your steps. Try to remember what you have modified lately. Yes, this is when you’ll realize you should make it a habit to use Google Analytics’ Annotations. This is a great way to easily find the changes you’ve made, changes that may have broken your tracking.
To make sure all of your analytics tracking codes work as they should, we recommend Google Tag Assistant. This is a plugin for your Chrome browser. It will tell you if your tracking is setup properly on any page of your site. Heed the recommendations in the tool. Nothing should be misconfigured.
Here are some places to look:
2. Conversion Rate Dropping due to Lack of Browser Compatibility?
Google Analytics has very handy reports to identify where the problem may lie. Check for a significant drop in conversions for a particular browser. Your major browsers include Chrome, Safari, IE, Firefox & Edge and on mobile, Android and iOS.
Found it?
Browser testing: Target Chrome 71.0.3578.98 / Windows 2008 R2.
Now we test the Target website on Chrome 51.0.2704.103 / Windows 2008 R2. Notice the differences.
Finally, Target website tested on Firefox 30.0 / Debian 6.0.
Test your checkout flow, your forms, on-exit intent pop-ups, even your landing pages with that browser. Keep in mind that not all browsers behave in the same way on every operating system. Therefore, you have to check on Windows, Mac and Linux, at the very least. Has some of your website’s CSS or Javascript become obsolete?
Google Analytics has a very handy report for this: Audience > Technology > Browser
Google Analytics browser report.
Then select the Ecommerce report. You’ll be able to look for browsers that underperform.
If it’s not a particular browser, check for mobile, tablet, desktop or amp technical bugs or issues. Is an element of your responsive landing page now hidden from view on a mobile device?
3. Don’t Underestimate Website Performance
If your server or your CDN are experiencing glitches, or your website is suffering from a sudden slow down in page load speed, you may not have dropped your organic rankings yet but your customer UX has degraded.
Moreover, your visitors are currently sending those unhappy experience signals to search engines. Ouch!
Check the Search Console coverage report to make sure you didn’t have any 500 internal server error. If so, talk to your hosting company or sys admins to have them resolve it.
Google Search console coverage report. Is your server or CDN misbehaving? Could this be the cause of your conversion rate dropping?
Now take a look at the Google Analytics speed reports and compare it with the previous period. A slowdown of the average server response time will point to a need for additional server resources or to a software upgrade. If the average page load time is the one that has increased and you are running a CMS like Magento, Shopify or WordPress, start digging into extensions, plugins and image sizes.
Improve visitor experience by addressing page load speed issues.
I guess, pinpointing why your website conversion rate is dropping can get a bit technical, huh?
4. Have you Forgotten to Optimize for Mobile Devices?
Ok, you already checked that your site was displaying correctly when you checked for technical issues. But, it’s possible that your mobile customers require a different conversion experience than the one you crafted for your desktop users.
Access Google Analytics and compare traffic for devices under Mobile Audience overview year over year. Maybe it’s time to contact our Mobile CRO experts. We wrote the book on it.
5. Your Marketing Personas Changed Behaviors
Usually, customer behavior takes quite a long time to reflect negatively on your conversion rates. So, concentrate on other issues unless you’ve noticed your conversion rate dropping for a while.
If the latter is the case, maybe it’s time to take a fresh look at your marketing personas. Times do change.
6. Conversion Rate Dropping with a Traffic Increase?
A decline in traffic volume can obviously decrease the number of conversions and possibly your online shop conversion rate. But what if there’s an increase in traffic? Yes, even an increase in traffic can badly affect a website’s conversion rates.
First things first. Make sure you identify the traffic source that has experienced a decrease in conversion rate. Is it the same as the one whose traffic volume increased? Remember to check their landing page functionality. If that’s not the problem, review a few of these scenarios.
6.1 Paid Traffic Increase
A lower conversion rate with a paid traffic increase could be pointing to non-relevant campaign targeting or to a lack of understanding what will persuade your visitors to buy or try your products or services.
Maybe you need to put things in perspective and understand that in some occasions such as Black Friday, prospects perform a lot of comparison shopping. Therefore you may experience much higher traffic driven by your social or ppc campaigns but a decline in conversion rates. I bet you are spending more on these campaigns as well, aren’t you?
Optimize your ad copy and landing pages accordingly so your site won’t be left behind in this increased competition and avoid significantly lower conversion rates.
Answer this, have you been running the same campaign for a long time? People are clicking but not converting? Maybe it’s time to change the landing page.
Examine each step of your funnel and look for weak points. Arm yourself with Heat Maps. They can definitely help you identify what your visitors are seeing or missing. Engage in split testing and get those conversion rates back up.
6.2 Sudden Surge in Social or Organic Traffic Volume
A spike in social or organic traffic may be attributed to the creation of clickbait blog posts. The problem with these articles, is that while traffic may increase, these visitors tend not to convert – at least not immediately. You will experience a perceived “drop” on conversion rates as a similar number of conversions are being diluted in higher traffic. Social traffic tends to react faster than organic, so look for correlations there first.
6.3 The Attack of the Bots or Ghost Spam
Bots can also generate a sudden growth in direct or referral traffic. It’s quite easy to identify those bots on analytics – unless they were spectacularly well coded. This is rarely the case. Bots don’t have gender, age and they have 100% bounce rate.
They will produce the same effect as any spurt in irrelevant and non-converting traffic: declining conversion rates.
6.4 Are You Emailing Less?
Email is one of the highest converting traffic sources for most businesses. If you have reduced the frequency of email or have changed the kind of email you are sending, this may impact you overall conversion rates.
Nothing more worrisome than your website conversion rate dropping. Evidently, you’ll want to know why so you can fix it. Breathe. Here’s where to check. This image has been designed using resources from Freepik.com.
7. Blame Seasonality for Your Conversion Rate Dropping
Does your conversion tend to drop at this time of the year? Seasonality usually causes a very rapid change in conversion rates and it may be accompanied of lower traffic or not.
If your traffic has not changed, compare with last year’s data and see if you are following trend. We tend to think of seasonal changes as holiday times but professional services like website design tends to drop during those times.
One of the most interesting seasonality drops I have ever seen happens in the wedding services industry every New Year’s eve. I guess one celebration offsets the planning of the other. So, tread carefully when making website changes without considering these seasonal effects or they could play against you.
The same seasonality may affect traffic, therefore always keep track of decreases or increases in seasonal trends.
8. When your Competitors Cause your Conversion Rate to Drop
If your conversion rate is dropping and you cannot find anything wrong with your site or with your actions, you may want to check what your competitors are up to.
Maybe they are running a special discount or a promotion that drives conversions away from you. Monitor their actions and respond accordingly. This may help you address some of the conversion loss.
Of course, lower conversion rates don’t mean as much as Return on Investment (ROI), so don’t leave that metric aside, You may be alarmed because you see your conversion rate dropping but in the end, that’s not what really matters What counts is your bottom line. Looking at a single conversion rate could be narrowing your view of the business, especially on this day and age of omnichannel marketing.
Anyone can Plug Into Analytics with Chris Mercer
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Analytics is not one of those words that inspires action. It’s not a word like “Rose” dripping with alternate meanings and romantic associations. It’s not like the word “Disgust”, a word which evokes emotions and even specific facial configurations.
Shakespeare never wrote “A Midsummers Night’s Analysis”.
There has never been a hit pop song with the word Analytics in the title. And I didn’t even bother searching to make sure.
So, it is no wonder that it’s hard for us to imagine ourselves spending time in analytics. It’s a shame. Because, there, amidst the pageviews, conversions, events, and revenue are the hopes and dreams of our visitors. Their trials. Their triumphs, Their frustrations.
If there was anyone who would write an Ode to a Graph I saw in Analytics One Dewy Morning, it is my guest. He is genuinely excited about analytics, and Google Analytics specifically.
He is infectious. That means that, if you listen, you might get excited about analytics, too.
I know this. Your visitors hope you get excited about analytics, because it is the fastest way to make your website better for them.
Chris Mercer aka ‘Mercer’ is not only good at analytics, he’s good at teaching analytics. That’s what he spends his days doing as the Co-Founder of Measurement Marketing dot I-O.
Chris and his team help people like you discover how to grow your business using tools like Google Analytics, Google Tag Manager, Google Data Studio and more.
Chris is my go-to guy whenever someone asks how they should start in analytics. His model is great for small business owners or marketing teams who want to learn and expand their skills and build a system to help them grow.
Essentially, Chris helps people get to know the numbers – to grow the numbers.
So, how can anyone plug into Google Analytics? And where do you start?
You’ll be surprised by some of Chris’ answers. Here are some examples.
Where do we start when it comes to analytics?
It’s not just results.
Start with a question in mind.
When you get back to the office…
Think back to a time that you had to trade off immediate desire for a long-term payoff, something that amazed you.
These are all examples discovery over time. This is the gift of analytics. Your website is the ant farm and the glass is analytics.
No, your customers are not ants. But they want to understand them. Analytics is the way.
Watch Mercers Quick Start “How to” video –for free — and get some other freebies at MeasurementMarketing.io/ICP
Resources and links discussed:
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The Relationship Between Curiosity and Creativity with Dr. Diane Hamilton
Conversion Marketing StrategyExperimenters. You know the type.
As children, we call them “precocious”. They’re the ones who are always asking, “Why? Why? WHY?”
In middle school, they were sometimes called “mischievous,” seeming unable to resist finding out what would happen if…
In high school, they were called “nerds” because they seemed to obsess about the most unusual things.
As adults, they brew beer, collect anvils, travel, rebuild car engines, watch birds, and join fantasy sports leagues. They seek to understand the rules of some endeavor, and then figure out what happens if they break those rules.
Yes, this is pretty much everyone. In some area of our lives, we all find ourselves obsessing about how things work, why they work that way, and what we could do to make things better.
Unfortunately, the area of our lives that we spend the most time on isn’t the one we are most curious about: our work. How many experimenters do you work with — the kind of people that make you ask, “When did you have time to do that?”
If your answer wasn’t “I am that person,” I have to ask the question, “Why?” What has dampened your curiosity?
It turns out there are four factors that limit our curiosity. My guest, Dr. Diane Hamilton documents them in her book, “The Curiosity Code.” She evaluated me, and I was surprised at what I learned about the limits of MY curiosity.
The Relationship Between Curiosity and Creativity with Dr Diane Hamilton
Curiosity with Dr. Diane Hamilton
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Dr. Diane Hamilton is an expert in emotional intelligence and behavioral science. She is an author, radio host of “Take the Lead Radio,” and creator of the Curiosity Code Index – which we will dive into on today’s episode.
Curiosity is a topic that is at the core of everything marketers do. We’re all about experimenting, discovering data, and getting answers when it comes to website redesigns, launches, and campaigns.
More importantly, I think that curiosity is a doorway into the mystical peak experiences called “Flow.”.
So anything that limits my curiosity is something that needs to be addressed. Let’s find out what the four limiting factors are and how I scored on her evaluation.
We all start off curious.
When you get back to the office…
When do you feel it’s OK to put your work down and play? Or learn something new?
For me it’s often on Friday afternoons, when the deadlines are met, and things are winding down. I’ve gotten purposeful about tapping these natural times when the bonds of my mind relax, allowing me to follow my curiosity.
The other time for me is when I’m on a deadline. I allow myself to renegotiate a deadline if I’m learning something that will improve my performance long term.
When do you find yourself following rabbits down holes?
Do you feel guilty?
Does your team support it? Do they even know about it? Why not?
How could you configure your work world to indulge these moments of exploration?
I recommend you take Dr. Hamilton’s Curiosity Code Index and see what’s in your way.
An example of Brian Massey’s Curiosity Code Index
Resources and links from the Podcast
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Differences Between Sales Funnel and Full-Funnel Conversion Optimization
Conversion Marketing Strategy, Ecommerce CRO, Lead GenerationFull funnel conversion optimization – or the Conversion Sciences Profit Funnel™ – provides the analysis and insights needed to help positively impact your business bottom line. Analyzing a sales funnel helps improve those issues found in a specific buying process.
There is nothing wrong about analyzing a sales funnel conversion rate or a sales funnel model for a specific segment of a customer journey. But your online business will definitively benefit from performing a Profit Funnel™ or full-funnel conversion optimization as well.
A highly experienced team of conversion experts can leverage both models when optimizing, instead of narrowing the view and hurting profits. An inexperienced conversion consultant will only see a siloed series of sales funnels, evaluate them independently and make decisions based on their own unique ROAS instead of their interactions.
Let’s review the key differences between sales funnel and full funnel conversion optimization or Profit Funnel™. We’ll begin with a great example of both models, a definition of a full marketing funnel. Finally, we’ll cover their differences in scope and the metrics used by each funnel.
Happy customers means returning customers. The starting point for full funnel conversion optimization is the customer blueprint and guess whose CRO audit services include a map of the customer journey for your online shop?
Example of Sales Funnel vs Full Funnel Conversion Optimization
Imagine an addiction treatment center that offers both low-cost at-home testing kits and treatment programs. Their at-home drug testing kit sells for $10, and it costs $5 to manufacture and ship. Their treatment programs start at $15,000.
They have an effective social media presence, paid campaigns to engage and attract their target market. And they also provide valuable resources for people with addiction problems and for their loved on their website. These range from informational articles to online quizzes to help find out whether or not one is suffering from an addiction and what is the best course of action.
Ok. Time to tackle sales funnel optimization. If they analyze their PPC sales funnel they will realize that it is costing them $20 in ad spend to convert each home testing kit sale. This added to the manufacturing and shipping costs may lead them to determine that this $10 sale is costing the company $25. But they are not looking at their profit margins, they are simply calculating Return on Ad Spend or ROAS.
Thus, they may decide to turn off the ad spend and stop this failing campaign because they “lose” $15 per sale. Or they may attempt to improve a Google Ads campaign that is already performing quite well.
But what if this addiction treatment center looks at the full-marketing funnel or Profit Funnel™ instead?
They would find that 20% of their customers have repeated their kit purchase every 3 months.
By the same token, they have not estimated the impact that their content development and social media efforts have on those conversions. And they were attributing the sale to the last touch-point.
As the buyer journey is not limited to a single channel, analyzing a single sales funnel could narrow your business focus and marketing assessment scope.
Moreover, this treatment center finds that 2% of the people who purchase their $10 test later sends a loved one to their center for a $15k treatment program. Those $20 in ad spend for each testing kit sale got the family to notice their services and inquire about their drug-rehab program. Therefore, for every 100 tests they sell, an average of 2 patients will join their treatment program generating a minimum of $30,000 in revenue.
So, What is Full Funnel Conversion Optimization or Profit Funnel™ Optimization?
As we have noticed, a full funnel evaluates the 360 degree customer journey with a company or brand. Its goal is not only to acquire a customer but also to understand, nurture and improve their relationship and experience with the brand.
It focuses on not only pre but post-transaction because it takes into account how this will affect the probability of increased number of subscription renewals or sales, lower customer rotation, lower customer acquisition costs, and increased profit margins.
As we can clearly see, even though it’s called a funnel, this model looks more like an infinite loop with many potential touch-points throughout the buyers journey, over time and across a multitude of devices and online/offline experiences.
Have you even thought of people interacting with your site or buying from you via Alexa? Photo: Grant Ritchie via Unsplash.
1. Sales Funnel vs Profit Funnel™ or Full Funnel Optimization: Differences in Scope
One of the main differences between sales funnel and a full funnel conversion optimization is its scope. The oftentimes narrow span of a sales funnel is overshadowed by the number of elements or touch-points that a Profit Funnel™ considers.
Let’s check them out.
Single Path vs Infinite Loop: Are you optimizing for Omni channel yet?
The most evident difference between the sales and the Profit Funnel™ models lies in their reach. Highly restricted to a specific conversion path for the sales funnel versus a very broad view of the customer journey for the latter.
While most sales funnels are focused on a single transaction (such as a lead, sale or subscription) the full funnel or Profit Funnel™ acknowledges the entire lifetime of a potential customer or client. Its purpose is to allow us to take a step back and look at the entire customer journey or full marketing funnel and help optimize by what is most profitable without discarding the customer experience.
One Decision Maker vs Multiple Stakeholders
Have you been optimizing for a single decision-maker? Maybe you were leaving some marketing personas out of the equation. The higher the ticket price, especially for B2Bs, the higher the likelihood of having more than a single decision-maker involved in the purchasing process. Most companies will include different stakeholders’ input through the funnel and each one of them may further or delay that coveted B2B sale.
Conversion Sciences Profit Funnel™ recognizes and accounts for this fact. Trying to optimize a single funnel to convert this lead is short-sighted, when understanding the 360 degree customer journey and optimizing for it, will significantly increase conversions and boost profit margins.
Single Device vs Cross-Device
We often find – when auditing a client’s conversion efforts – that their sales funnels don’t include mobile customers. Addressing this gap via mobile conversion optimization efforts has increased their profits manyfold.
The Profit Funnel™ recognizes the value of determining which of those platforms holds the highest potential for each particular conversion and finding a way to best optimize each path.
Sales funnels often focus on increasing conversions on a certain page on either mobile, tablet, or desktop. Thus, leaving out the reality that customers will interact with your brand, product or service in multiple ways and through as many devices as exist.
Have you even thought of people interacting with your site or buying from you via Alexa?
Full Funnel Conversion Optimization Enables a More Personalized Online Experience
The data-driven strategy of optimizing the full marketing funnel helps you identify consumer segments. Behavioral information can be collected in-store, online, and post-visit. The insights derived from this analysis helps you craft and deliver online personalized experiences to boost conversions and increase their contribution to your bottom line. All the while deriving insights to improving your marketing strategy.
For high-traffic sites, Conversion Sciences offers the latest martech stacks – ML and AI-powered – via the Conversion Catalyst AI™. Our Conversion Catalyst AI™ builds a predictive model that identifies which visitors are ready to buy, and delivers the perfect experience so that they are more likely to buy from you. So you can deliver the most optimized experience be it on your website, on wearable devices, voice search, augmented-reality or any of the myriad of experiences the IoT brings us.
2. Sales Funnel vs Full Funnel Conversion Optimization Metrics
It’s hard to take a look at your full marketing funnel and try to gauge how well it’s working besides ROI and profit margins. But following those metrics without fully understanding which effort or efforts made the difference, is no way to run a business either. But lucky you. Full funnel is optimized with your bottom line in mind and a bespoke full funnel attribution will help you identify what’s helping and what’s hindering your conversions.
Therefore, the difference between sales funnel and full funnel conversion optimization is that you will end up concentrating your marketing spend on those efforts who bring in profitable returns. Much better than looking at a measly conversion rate. right? ;)
Sales funnel conversion optimization targets one person while Profit funnels recognize there is often more than one decision-maker.
ROAS vs ROI
Are you narrowing your business focus down to sales funnels and conversion rates? Are you making decisions that affect your whole business by a simple ROAS? Or are you leveraging a 360 degree customer blueprint to improve your company’s profit margins?
In the addiction treatment center example, when the sales funnel was not profitable (its ROAS was negative), they could have shut down the ad campaign. But when they looked at the full funnel (in-patient treatment registrations), the ad investment was profitable and it justified the initial losses in the funnel. It had a positive ROI.
Thus, by using both metrics, you can isolate those efforts whose ROAS may be positive but not their ROI, which takes into consideration not a single digitally advertised campaign but how each contributes to the business profit margins. And you can spare from killing efforts with negative ROAS because, in the end, their revenue-generating power is much larger than the one calculated from the revenue from ad campaign/cost of ad campaign.
By doing so, you change the focus to driving business performance, not just advertising performance.
Single Attribution vs Custom Attribution
Going back to the addiction treatment center example. There are things they do that contribute to their bottom line – such as informational blog posts, quizzes, etc. But their attribution model assigned the conversion value to a single Google Ads campaign.
People have several contacts with a brand before they even consider converting on that landing page, clicking on that PPC ad or that Instagram shoppable image. Which means that any and all contributions along the 360 degree funnel, or full funnel or Profit Funnel™ must be taken into account and their value toward each of the conversions (testing kit purchase, treatment) attributed properly to measure its impact on revenues and on profit margins.
While a single touch attribution model is a fast and simple way to allocate credit to a campaign, full funnel must use a bespoke or custom attribution model to understand what is working and what is not.
It’s common yet dangerous and naive to make assumptions about which touchpoint to attribute credit for a conversion. Oftentimes these assumptions are created from unrecognized personal bias and proven false through data analysis. This is one of the biggest reasons that analyzing all metrics is vital to a company’s long-term success.