How is conversion optimization ensuring that website redesigns always deliver an improvement in performance? Brian Massey and Joel Harvey can tell you. And they do.
Poker is one of those games that, like digital marketing, requires a left-brain/right-brain approach. To begin with, good poker players know the percentages. They know that the two four’s in their hand gives them a 12% chance of winning in a typical game. That’s their left-brain, data-driven knowledge.
Then you add in all of the right-brain stuff. Emotion. Reading the other players’ faces. Controlling your own face. Tells. And past behaviors.
Yep, that’s digital marketing. But there’s one move that throws all of that out the window.
You may have seen it in the World Series of Poker on TV, or in a James Bond movie. One player pushes his entire stack of chips into the center of the table and says, “All in”. What he’s saying is, if he loses this hand, he loses everything. All of the other players have to ask themselves, “WIll I match his entire stack?” or should I get out now.
Going all in smashes everything. It may mean that you’re ignoring the data in one big high-stakes bluff. Or it may mean that you’re trying to ratchet up the emotion, scaring the rest of the table into making a bad decision.
There is an equivalent to “going all in” in digital marketing as well. It’s called a website redesign.
This is one of the biggest budgeted projects a company will do. When someone throws a lot of money at the marketing department, it can be hard to resist.
Sure, it could have a huge impact on the financial prospects of the firm. It can also cause you to lose everything.
Poker players have one advantage over digital marketers when going all in: They can see their cards. They know their percentage. Digital marketers? Well, they have past performance from the current site..
Joel and I are talking website redesigns today. And we’re going to tell you something that may blow your mind. Website redesigns don’t have to be an all or nothing hand. You don’t have to push all of your budget in and wait 3, or 6 or even 12 months later.
Listen to find out how we stack the odds in our favor, guaranteeing a winning hand.
The website redesign needs to be profitable – not pretty.
Users tell you what they think you want to hear.
Slow and steady wins the [website redesign] race.
Demand data.
When an agency comes to you and asks you to pick something, that’s an opportunity for you to say, “Wait a minute! You guys go off and collect some data and tell me which one of these is going to be victorious.” You shouldn’t be guessing. They shouldn’t be guessing.
Website Redesign Tip
The all-in approach isn’t just limited to website redesigns. Individual campaigns are usually all-in affairs as well.
When you get back to the office, open a spreadsheet and start writing out the assumptions that you’re making when designing that email, social media ad, or landing page.
You should quickly have a few dozen.
“We need to be clever in our headline”
“We need to have a picture on the page”
“We need icons on our website.”
“Video is required.”
Many of these may be well supported by past experience or best practices.
For each, you should ask, “Do I have a way of finding out if this assumption is a good one.”
You may be able to look at the performance of past pages. You may be able to see which email subject lines worked best in the past. You may create different versions of ads and see which delivers the best result.
Now you’re looking at your cards, and you’ll rarely win a hand if you don’t.
Let’s dive into a brand new online marketing concept: Contextualization. Thanks to AI and ML, we have come a long way from creating customer segments. To improve conversions, we also need to understand context. Read on.
I predicted years ago that my business would be using machine learning for much of what we do manually today.
When I talk to people like Olcan Sercinoglu, I know that day is coming. Olcan is the CEO at a company called Scale Inference. He studied and worked under Peter Norton from Google – the guys who wrote the book on Machine Learning – and has spent the last 25 years as a developer engineer. Scaled Inference focuses on applying machine learning to online user interactions, and to personalize their experiences in ways we could never do by ourselves..
If we can understand how machine learning is different, we can understand how our digital marketing will be changed in the near future.
And so my interest was, “OK, this is great, but how do we how do we build a platform that is useful to others?”
From Segmentation to Contextualization: The New Way to Look at Marketing Key Takeaways
Moore’s Law. Back in 1965, Gordon Moore predicted that we’d be able to fit twice as many transistors on a microchip every year. We are experiencing a golden age of tools – the tools are getting better, less expensive and getting easier to use.
The future of AI marketing. Is it all about personalization? Are the metrics you’re optimizing for clear? And if not, can AI even work for you? Or how do we take all this data and make it matter?
Contextualization. We are taking this idea of personalization and introducing you to a new term – contextualization. Everything you do as a marketer should flow from optimization. By understanding the metric first, then you can ideate and create based on the context that’s being emerged from the data.
How do we use AI to make us better marketers?
AI Optimization-Why context matters with Olcan Sercinoglu
But at the end of the day or what companies actually want out of that saying there hasn’t been much progress. I think a lot of progress is going to happen as machine learning shifts towards metrics and these easier modes of integration.
Moore’s Law: As Valid Today as it was a Few Decades Ago
In 1965, a man named Gordon Moore made a bold prediction, a prediction that was expected to fail almost every year since. It is a prediction that helps to explain the dizzying speed with which our lives are being upended by new tech..
What Moore said in 1965 is that we’d be able to fit two times more transistors on a microchip every year, year after year. What this meant for the semiconductor industry is that microchips would get twice as fast and cost half as much to produce every single year.
This, they thought, was crazy talk.
A Grain of Rice and a Chessboard
Take a typical chess board. On the first square place a grain of rice. On the next square put two grains of rice. On the next square, four. And double the number of grains of rice on each subsequent square.
By the time you reach the final square, number 64, the amount of rice you would need would require the entire surface of the earth and its oceans to grow, 210 billion tons.
That’s the power of compounding.
Every few years, the skeptics declared that we had reached the end of our ability to shrink these tiny transistors any more. “It’s just not physically possible,” they said.
And every time, Moore’s prediction was proven more or less true.
Even today, as the wires that run across microchips approach the width of an atom, engineers find ways to make things half the size.
Why should you care? As microchips shrink and drop in cost, so do the things we build with them. For example, the camera that is found in any laptop has a HD resolution and costs the manufacturer a few dollars. The cost of servers and storage space has plummeted as well. Hence, most of our computing and storage is done in the proverbial cloud.
All of this has created a golden age of technology — for consumers, for businesses, and especially for marketers. Entrepreneurs are using the cloud and cheap computing power to make digital marketing cheaper easier, and more predictable.
It is now more expensive to ignore the amazing data we can collect than it is to buckle down and put it to use.
While we’re sitting around wondering what to do with all of this data, entrepreneurs and engineers are using it teach machines to learn.
The Era of Neural Networks: Is the Future of AI marketing all about Personalization?
Neural networks are computer programs that work like human neurons. Like the human brain, they are designed to learn. Neural nets have been around for decades, but only in recent years have we had enough data to teach them anything useful.
Machine learning is lumped together with Artificial Intelligence, or AI, but it’s really much simpler than building an intelligent machine. If you have enough data, it’s relatively easy to teach a machine how to learn and to get insights from it.
In fact, machine learning is being used all around you and you probably don’t even know it.
In this episode, I am going to change the fundamental question you ask as a marketer. You will no longer ask, “Will this creative work for my audience?” You will ask, “Which people in my audience will this creative work for?”
And we’ll ask some more tactical questions.
How do we pull meaningful things out of our data in a reasonable amount of time.
So how do we understand the information that the machine pulls for us?
Are you optimizing for the right things? And if not, can machine learning even work for you?
How do we take all this data and make it matter?
How do we as marketers, become better at using the tools and resources available to us in the age of Moore’s law?
I start the conversation, asking Olcan, “Is the future of AI marketing all about personalization?”
From Segmentation to Contextualization: Focus on the Context that Your Visitors Arrive In
My favorite take away from my conversation with Oljan Sercinoglu is that context matters.
There is one big context that you don’t need machine learning to address: It is the context of your mobile visitors.
You may say that your website is responsive, and that you’ve already addressed the smartphone context. But, you haven’t.
Do you want proof? Check your analytics. You’re smartphone conversion rates are probably a half or a quarter of your desktop sites, even with that responsive design. I know this without looking at your analytics.
Mobile visitors are coming in a completely different context than desktop visitors. They don’t need a shrunk down version of your website. They need a different website.
Fortunately, you don’t need a machine learning program to identify these visitors. You can start personalizing your mobile site to deal with this new context.
Try this as a contextualization exercise: Reduce the number of fields on the mobile forms, or eliminate the forms altogether. Replace them with click-to-call. If you have an eCommerce site, make “Add to Cart” secondary and build your mobile subscriber list. Email is the life’s blood of eCommerce.
If your website is generating millions of visits, you may want to consider putting that data to work for you. Not every business is ready for machine learning, but you don’t want to be the last business in your market to start using it.
When You Get Back to the Office
When you get back to the office, I recommend that you share this episode of Intended Consequences with someone else in your company. It’ll make you look smart and forward thinking.
If not I have a challenge for you.
Here’s my challenge to you this week – start to really think about how you define success. Answer the question, “I’ve done a great job because…” and fill in the blank. Answer this questions three ways. everything you do as marketer should flow from optimization.
Then ask, how do I measure each of those with data I’m collecting today. Once you’re clear that it’s the idea that by understanding the metrics, first then you can begin to prioritize your data gathering and create based on the context that’s being emerged from the data.
Think you should be getting more from your digital marketing agencies? Find out how to work with, negotiate with and make your digital agency relationships more profitable.
We’ve trained our agencies to work against us.
The pitch meeting is the culprit.
The pitch meeting is when an agency comes to their client — or their client comes to them — and they present the creative that they’ve prepared. It may be well-researched creative, based on data both qualitative and quantitative.
During the pitch meeting, the agency asks a small group of people — company executives typically — to review, choose, modify or reject the creative. There are no clients in this meeting. The people in this room are supposed to represent the customer that the creative is designed for.
The people making these decisions may know their customers well, but this setting is designed to bring out our biases.
The personal preferences of each executive drives confirmation bias. The emotion of past wins and past failures drives availability bias. The love of cool designs drives novelty bias.
And the highest ranking executive in the room gets deferential treatment. I’m not sure if there is an official deference bias, but there should be.
The pitch meeting is a tough time for the agency. Regardless of what the research done, if the executives don’t like the creative, it puts the relationship at risk. So, the pitch meeting becomes about pleasing the client, not the client’s customers.
This is how failed campaigns get launched, how website redesigns reduce revenue, how agencies get canned for decisions made by this small group of executives.
The oppression of the pitch meeting can only be broken by the client. Or so I thought.
Managing agency relationships with Garrett Mehrguth on Intended Consequences podcast
Garrett Mehrguth runs an agency called Directive, and he’s taking some unusual approaches toward his client relationships. Today on Intended Consequences, we’ll learn how Garrett is using transparency, data, branding and hard decisions to help shape the culture of his clients.
He believes, as I do, that this is in the best interest of a clients’ customers, which will ultimately serve the brands we work with.
On today’s show we talk all about agency management – how to leverage the relationship, how to think about the relationship, and how content (the written word) is not dead – with the CEO of Directive Consulting.
Digital Agency Management Tip
There will be a moment that first re-shapes the pitch meeting dynamic.
For me it was when an agency gave me three mockups of a new design and asked me to choose the one I wanted to proceed with. I said, “I don’t know. Go collect some data and tell me which one I should pick.”
When you get back to the office, try a little experiment.
Pull up some of the creative that your agency or internal team has delivered. Instead of considering what you think of it, ask yourself, “How could the agency collect some data to help us make this better?”
If you listen to this podcast, you’ll be familiar with several tools that can be used.
In your next agency meeting, ask the question, “How could we collect some data that helps us get this right?” Their response may be unsatisfying at first, but you’ve taken the first step toward changing their focus, from your preferences back to your customers’ preferences.
Repeat after me: “Go get us some data to tell us what will work.”
Check out these click-worthy examples of persuasive copy for online ads. Discover why they work and how to test for persuasive ad copy.
The world of digital marketing makes it super easy for you to reach your target audience. But you have to whip up a mighty persuasive online ad if you want your prospects to click on yours. Persuasion is one of our CRO Agency secret weapons. It is layered into so much of what we do and is often the difference between beginners and conversion optimization experts.
In this post, we’ll review the definition of persuasive copy, how to make sure it works, and show you compelling examples of persuasive copy in online advertising.
Appeal to logic emotion and credibility all in one. Check out these click worthy examples of persuasive copy in online advertising.
What is Persuasive Copy
Persuasive copy can be defined as an argument that elicits a desired action from a relevant audience. Easier said than done, right?
Aristotle explained what constitutes persuasive copy best in his rhetorical appeals or ‘modes for persuasion’. Let’s keep in mind that his goal was to make his oratory (his presentations) more persuasive. And in doing so, he identified three types of persuasion appeals that are as valid today as they were back then.
the appeal to reason, logic or logos
the appeal to emotion or pathos
and the appeal to one’s character, credibility or ethos
Not everybody makes a decision about a specific product or service based on the same argument. Purchasing a lipstick could be more of an impulse buy and an appeal to pathos or emotion may be the right call. Adding an appeal to reason such as “Free Shipping” may seal the deal and get you the click you desperately want.
An example of emotionally persuasive copy in this Avon color trend nail polish, Fairytale collection: “Until your prince charming shows up have fun with the frogs.”
Avon color trend nail polish, Fairytale collection. The copy reads: “Until your prince charming shows up have fun with the frogs”. Why is this a prime example of persuasive copy in advertising? The famous Prince Charming in other countries, like Brazil and Italy, is called the “Blue Prince” — royal blue blood and all. So, until the blue one shows up, have fun with the rest of the colors. Clever emotional argument to leave the guilt behind and have fun now. If the shoe fits. ;)
Fortunately for most of us, developing persuasive copy is not an art but a data driven process. And as such, it can be tested.
How to Test Persuasive Copy in Online Advertising
As investment in digital advertising increases, it becomes essential to figure out what really works. Ad copy testing can be executed pre-campaign launch or while the campaign is live.
Some methods for online ad copy pre-testing may include focus groups, projective techniques, and recall tests. Performing these pre-tests ensures less spend is lost when it comes to activation.
Running an online ad campaign is costly. This is a different version of the Paypal for Business ad used to test the level of persuasiveness in the copy. What appeal has been dropped? Let us know in the comments section at the end of the post.
But the proof is in the pudding and nothing beats solid AB Testing to provide you with the metrics you need to define what’s really working. If you are looking to learn about testing persuasive copy, our blog is packed with articles that explain how to do this in detail. Check them out:
Or you can take our CRO Course and become a conversion specialist. Or if you’d rather have an experienced conversion agency power boost your online marketing spend and turn more of your ad clicks into revenue, check out our CRO for Advertising solutions.
And as we promised an article about compelling examples of persuasive copy in online advertising, let’s dive into them!
Why Is Persuasive Copy Crucial to Online Ads
Let’s assume you have the right ad placement, defined the perfect audience, and have properly identified what your audience responds to. After all, persuasive ad copy in and of itself is not the only factor that weighs in on a campaign’s success.
Is your ad copy missing the mark? Has your click through rate hit a new low?
We all want our online ads to influence our audience in such a way that they are inclined to click to call or click to buy from our website. But, what makes copy this convincing? Sometimes, actual examples of persuasive copy can guide us in crafting our own click-worthy online ads.
Compelling Examples of Persuasive Copy in Online Advertising
A genius way to apply emotion to a SaaS service on a Facebook ad for Litmus & dotmailer.
Examples of persuasive copy in online advertising help illustrate the concept.
Appeal to logic or logos works quite nicely for the auto insurance industry. I wonder what would happen to these click-through rates (CTRs) if they added some emotional arguments to the ad copy.
Auto insurance appeal to logic examples. They all look alike. Which one would you click on?
Finding examples of persuasive copy in advertising is simple if there is a Google Guarantee available. Not an easy addition to your online ads but worth every penny. All the credibility you want in a single line.
Building credibility through the Google Guarantee.
Ethos and logos appeal for this Facebook ad campaign.
Ethos appeal.
Lower the guilt with a logical argument. Less fat and less calories than your biggest competitor: McDonald’s french fries. How is that for an attention-getting example of persuasive copy?
Burger King fries ad copy. Stop clicking the button and keep reading!
Of course #FOMO is an emotion! This compelling example of persuasive copy in online advertising proves it! Almost depleted iPhone battery coupled with “Last Chance to Buy T&C Tickets” An example from a Digital Marketer Facebook ads campaign.
Appeal to emotion iPhone battery Facebook Ad example from Digital Marketer.
Searching for click-worthy examples of persuasive copy for your Facebook lead generation campaign? A winner. Hands-down. No big emotional commitment. Only 8 hours for $500 and you get rid of those pesky projects.
Lead generation ad example targeting homeowners looking to start projects.
IBM Watson understands that their audience responds to reason. And that some may be ready to buy. The free trial is a highly persuasive method to get them to click on their ad.
IBM Watson “free trial” a persuasive element of their offer.
This online ad for WD40 is all about persuading through pathos. You will need some WD40 to unstuck that scroll bar.
Humor, sex and curiosity are all emotional appeals.
Every once in a while, you run across an ad that you just can’t forget. Trident’s Facebook ad that appeals to emotions or pathos through some quirky logic as I am sure deodorant won’t taste like spearmint either.
Example of emotional and logical appeal in persuasive copy for Trident’s online ads.
Although they usually resort to logic and ethos – 4 out of 5 dentists recommend – to craft persuasive copy.
Trident Coupons: Save money, prevent stains.
Sandwich delivery ads leverage a mix of ethos or credibility (reviews, how many served), logical (pricing and selection) and emotional (fresh, good, smells, comfort) elements. Definitely great examples of persuasive copy in PPC ads.
Sandwich delivery ads.
Pizza delivery examples of persuasive copy for Google Ads. One relies on logical and ethos vs emotional appeal.
Logical and ethos vs emotional appeal for pizza delivery Google Ads.
Nike sneakers Google Ads: These are not Nike stores, so they lack the brand’s built in credibility. Therefore, they use pathos or emotional persuasion on the headline and ethos appeal on the body via the rating reviews and the on time delivery percentage.
Pathos or emotional persuasion on the headline and ethos appeal on the body via the rating reviews that give credibility and the ontime delivery percentage.
The Nike Official store, is all about logical persuasion of product availability with some additional credibility elements as message support.
Nike official store Google ad.
PPC ad copywriting for a mobile ad with emotional appeal. Click to call the luxury location of your choice.
PPC ad for best NYC hotels. Luxury, of course.
So many persuasive reasons for that mileage traveler in you. Capital One Venture card uses ethos on their youtube and tv ads but not on their Google Ads. Here it’s all facts.
Capital One Venture card uses logos or logical appeal to persuade to click on this PPC ad.
We explore how intelligent omni channel marketing technology can help marketers better manage their marketing strategy. Plus, the perils of walking the line between creativity and efficiency. And at the very end, the very own Brian Massey, gives a formula to start prioritizing our traffic-driving investments.
Digito Marketus:
This is a species of primate known generically as digital marketers. During the day, it’s natural habitat is tall square nests built for it, called offices. These are social animals that travel in groups called “departments.” They work alongside other species, such as Neandersales and Blockus ITeas.
This clever species forages through forests of audiences dining primarily on the fruit of the prospect tree, which they share with a symbiotic species, the Neandersales.
This species is known for working in places with scarce resources. They have evolved to flourish with very little. As such, they must be highly creative AND they must be efficient..
They are advanced enough to use tools that help them make fewer mistakes, giving them time for more creative pursuits.
If you’re listening to this podcast, you are either Digito Maketus or manage a department of them.
My guest today studies this species for a living. And — surprise — she actually is a member of the Digito Marketus.
Lindsay Tjepkema (Chep Ka MA), Director of Marketing for the Americas at Emarsys, is a marketer who markets to marketers and specializes in successful omnichannel marketing.
Podcast: Digito Marketus is a species commonly known as “Digital Marketers”
Lindsay Tjepkema | Using Marketing Technology to Create a Seamless Omnichannel Experience
On this episode of Intended Consequences, we come to understand how this fascinating species walks the line between creativity and efficiency, crayons and spreadsheets, design and databases.
We’ll talk about how she uses the Omni Channel Marketing Technology in her multi channel marketing strategy to deliver user experiences that put the customer first.
We lure Digito Marketus out of its nest– using a trail pens, thumb drives and t-shirts emblazoned with corporate logos — and ask some important questions.
What is it that drives your creativity? What are the roots of your experience that lead you into this role? And how do you balance this creative desire with the need to be efficient and customer data-driven?
On every episode of this podcast, we give you one technique to challenge you as a marketer, manager or business owner. So, accept the challenge and take your business or practice to new heights. It’s at the very end of the podcast.
Intro to Omni Channel Marketing Technology
I think marketers really just need to know what’s available to them and how to use it so that they can be more successful when handling multiple channels.
During this podcast, I want to ask that you actively participate in this conversation. What I mean by that is – while I’m asking Lindsay questions, I want you to ask yourself those questions. For example, when it comes to omni channel marketing what does success mean for your organization?
And to dig even deeper, Lindsay and I go into this question of “why is it that marketers seem to struggle to get to the next level of success? Are you struggling?
This conversation with Lindsay will start with me first asking how she measures success on her digital channels.
If you want to connect with Lindsay Tjepkema or Emarsys and Host of the Marketer + Machine podcast. You can check her out at emarsys dot com and her podcast.
We talked about knowing the value of a lead on this episode. If you sell stuff online, it’s easy to know how much a transaction is worth. But what if you generate leads or email list subscribers? Are you creating an omnichannel considering your touch point personas?
When you get back to the office (a formula to start prioritizing your traffic-driving investments)
When you get back to the office, try to put a dollar value on your leads or subscribers — even if you’re an eCommerce business, you must be using an email list.
THIS DOES NOT HAVE TO BE ACCURATE. What you want is a dollar value that you can use to prioritize what you’re investing in. It will require you to look in Analytics and possibly the customer relationship management system your sales team uses.
It’s basically, the revenue generated from your Website divided by the number of leads you generate.
It requires you to understand how many leads or subscribers you’re generating and then how much revenue you are getting from that.
Don’t let silos get in the way. When you don’t have real data, estimate.
At the end of the day, you’ll be able to say, “we generated 100 leads last month. That’s $2500 dollars in our pocket!
Discover how to identify what keeps visitors from converting on your site. Five factors you MUST look into to improve online conversions right now.
There’s one thing, one thing that’s keeping your visitors from converting on your site.
It may not be the only thing, but it is the primary thing that your online business isn’t delivering the results you expect. It’s where you start when you optimize your website.
So, traffic but not conversions? It’s one of these five things:
The Value Proposition and Messaging isn’t clear.
They perceive risk when considering taking an action.
You aren’t showing up as credible and authoritative.
They want to know if others have benefited from you.
Your design and layout aren’t helping them digest the buffet of content you’re presenting.
Find out what keeps visitors from converting on your site and start testing to increase your conversions right now.
How to identify what keeps visitors from converting on your site.
Value Proposition & Messaging
Do you think your value proposition is the one thing that keeps visitors from converting on your site? Let’s take a look at the anatomy of a value proposition. Your value proposition is composed of all of the things you do to solve a problem and is communicated by:
Brand awareness
Content and Copy
Images
Pricing
Shipping policy
Words used in your navigation
Design elements
All of these website elements are used to let your visitors know how you solve a set of problems, and why your solution is the best choice. The one that will save the most time and money, or that will deliver the most satisfaction.
But your value proposition doesn’t have to be communicated through words and images alone. Video, audio and animations are proven ways to communicate your value to a prospect.
And herein lies the rub.
Digital media gives us the amazing ability to put anything onto a landing page that our hearts desire. And if you can do anything, how do you know which is the right element to use? Here lies the conundrum.
How to know if your value proposition is what keeps visitors from converting on your site
A high bounce rate is a sign of three things:
You’re bringing the wrong traffic
Your lead isn’t hitting the mark
You’ve been attacked by bots
If your landing page suffers from a high bounce rate, look at the source of your traffic. Does the page keep the specific offer made in the paid ad, email, or organic search query that enticed the visitors to click on your site? If it’s your homepage, the answer is most certainly, “No.”
If you feel that your traffic is good, and is coming to a relevant page, then we should ask if the lead is hitting the mark. By “lead” I am referring to the headline + hero image.
Often, hero images are wasted on something non-concrete. The headline should act as the caption for the image it accompanies.
Don’t show a city skyline. Don’t show a person smiling at a computer. These things don’t scream for meaningful captions and don’t help conversions either.
You should also look at the words you use in your main navigation. These should communicate what your site is about in the words of the visitor, not just the structure of your website.
Still don’t know what’s keeping them from converting? Ask your visitors
If you still don’t know what is keeping visitors from converting on your site, consider using an exit-intent popup that asks one open-ended question: “What were you looking for when you came to our site?” or “Why didn’t you purchase?”
We are also big fans of putting an open-ended question on your thank-you page or receipt page: “What almost kept you from buying?” or “What almost kept you from signing up?”
You May Be Scaring Visitors Away: Use and Misuse of Risk Reversal
In general, more people make decisions based on fear than on opportunity. So, your amazing value proposition is destined to die in the minds of many of your prospects because of fear.
What if I don’t like the product?
What if my identity gets stolen?
Will a pushy salesman call?
Will I have to deal with tons of email?
At the heart of it all is, “Will I feel stupid if I take action right now?”
Risk reversal (and most of the following) is a set of tactics that puts the visitor’s fears at rest. It consists of things like:
Guarantees
Warranties
Privacy policies
Explicit permissions
Return policies
Placing these items in clear view near a call to action can do wonders for your conversion rates.
Don’t put fears into their mind
There is a potential danger. Your risk reversal tactics can actually put fear into their mind.
For example, stating, “We will never spam you.” can actually place the concept in the mind of someone who wasn’t concerned about it. You might say instead, “We respect your privacy.” with a link to your privacy policy.
Traffic but not Conversions? Help Visitors Convert on your Site with Social Proof
Social proof demonstrates that others have had a positive experience with your brand. These take the form of:
Testimonials
On-site ratings and reviews
Third party reviews
Case studies
Social media shares, likes and comments
Comments
If social proof is your one problem that keeps visitors from converting on your site, customers don’t feel that you’re right for someone like them. Make sure you show them that they are in the group of people that benefit from you.
Negative Reviews Help
Ironically, it also serves to answer the question, “Just how bad was a bad experience with this company?” This is why negative reviews have proven to increase conversion rates on eCommerce sites. Cleaning your reviews or only posting good reviews can shoot you in the foot.
Is it Lack of Credibility & Authority What Keeps Visitors from Converting on your Site?
If you are in an industry with lots of competition, or with “bad actors” who manipulate to get sales, your one problem may be credibility and authority.
The design of your website is one of the first things that communicate credibility. But be careful. A fancy, overly-designed site may communicate the wrong idea to visitors. It may convey that you’re expensive or too big for your prospects.
Credibility can be established by emphasizing things about your company, and by borrowing credibility from other sources such as, your clients. your payment methods, you media appearances and the like.
Brand Credibility
You gain credibility by building confidence with your brand and value proposition. How long have you been in business? How many customers have you served? How many products have you sold? How many dollars have you saved?
Brand credibility generally takes the form of implied proof.
Borrowed Credibility
Your website or landing page can borrow credibility and authority from third-party sources. Placing symbols and logos on your website borrows from these credible sources. Ask yourself:
Have you been interviewed or reviewed in well-know publications?
Have you been interviewed on broadcast media outlets?
What associations are you a member of?
What awards have you been nominated for or won?
Has your business been rated by consumer organizations like Consumer Reports or the Better Business Bureau?
Have your products been reported on by analysts such as Forrester?
Place proof of your associations on your site’s landing pages to borrow authority and credibility from them.
User Interface & User Experience: Factors that Keep Visitors from Converting on your Site
Nothing works if your visitors eyes aren’t guided through your pages.
No value proposition, no risk reversal, no social proof, no credibility stands a chance if the layout and user experience don’t help the reader understand where they’ve landed or where to go from there.
Long load time equals poor experience
The first thing to look at is site performance. If your pages load slowly, you visitors may be bouncing away. If any element requires a loading icon of any sort, you are probably providing a poor user experience.
Clutter means bad visual hierarchy
When a visitor looks at a page, it should be very obvious what is most important element and what can be looked at later. This is called a visual hierarchy.
For example, we like to make call to action buttons highly visible, so that it is clear to the reader that they are being asked to do something.
Designers use their knowledge of whitespace, negative space, font, font size, color, and placement to design an experience that is easy for the visitors’ eyes to digest.
Don’t add surprises
A good user experience has little place for novelty. Arbitrarily adding animations, fades, parallax images or scroll-triggered effects are generally unnecessary, can cause technical glitches and may actually hurt conversion rates.
How to Know “what” is Hurting your Conversion Rate
We recommend this process to determine the primary problem that keeps visitors from converting on your website.
1. Gather all of your conversion optimization ideas
Begin recording all of the ideas you have for improving the site in the spreadsheet. Sources for these ideas:
Ask your team
Read your customer reviews
Read your customer surveys
Pull from your marketing reports
Read your live chat transcripts
Generate heatmap reports for your key pages
Watch recorded sessions
Don’t be surprised to have dozens of ideas for a website or landing page.
2. Categorize each of your ideas
The ROI Prioritized Hypothesis List spreadsheet has a column for classifying each idea.
Messaging
Layout/UX
Social Proof
Risk Reversal
Credibility
There will also be some things that you just want to fix.
3. Count your conversion optimization ideas
Count out how many ideas you have for each category. The category with the most ideas is probably the one problem you should address first. We use a pie chart to illustrate the different issues.
This site’s one problem is Value Proposition and Messaging followed by Layout and UX
4. Start working
Begin working on the ideas in the category with the most ideas.
This is a great time to start AB testing to see which of your ideas really are important to your visitors.
Your search traffic will demonstrate their approval through more sales, more leads and higher conversion rates overall.
This sounds like a lot of work
It is a lot of work. But you could consider hiring us to identify what keeps visitors from converting on your site and we will test our way to your success.
Experience a lift on your contact form conversion rate. Know what form of form you should have on your lead generation site. These best practices designed to increase contact form conversion will definitely help.
Contact forms are the most common way of beginning a conversation between a company and a prospect. In this article, we’ll show you how to get more prospects to fill out your form without reducing the quality of those leads.
What’s the big deal with forms? They have fields. You fill out the fields and you get something you want.
So, why do so many of your visitors fail to fill out your forms?
There is some psychology and some science to getting more form fills, whether you are trolling for leads or asking your visitors to buy something. The folks at SingleHop have done a study and it is exactly what we’ve seen in our testing of contact forms. You’ll learn a lot about increasing contact form conversion from this little infographic.
Contact Form Fields: How Many is Too Many?
As a general rule, the more fields you have, the lower your conversion rate. However, the leads you do acquire will be better qualified. The best way to find the right mix is to A/B test your contact forms.
Generally speaking and to increase contact form conversion, you should avoid:
Fields that ask for qualifying information that can be found out on a phone call, such as purchase timeframe.
Drop-down fields that may not contain an answer accessible to the visitor, such as title.
Drop-down fields that imply something, such as number of employee ranges.
“None of your business” fields, such as mobile phone, yearly revenue or social security number.
Best Practices to Increase Contact Form Conversion
While you may think your website is selling your product or service, what it’s really selling is a sales call. You must convince the visitor to complete your form.
There are four components that will help you achieve this.
Build Trust
You can build trust by including your phone number and contact information. Sometimes they will call you.
On a mobile device you should optimize for phone calls.
Provide Social Proof
Your contact page should present testimonials and endorsements to make visitors feel comfortable completing the contact form.
Add Value
Make sure you are building value. What’s in it for the visitor if they fill out the form?
Who will contact them? A salesperson? A consultant?
Will there be a hard sell?
How long will the call be?
What questions will be answered?
Sell the call to increase contact form conversions.
Use Risk Reversal
You can significantly remove barriers to completion by simply presenting your privacy policy on the form. While these are rarely read, they indicate that you care enough to have one.
On a contact form, the call to action usually lives on the contact form button. The call to action should communicate what will happen when it is clicked.
Studies indicate that using first person improves conversion rates. Test changing “your” to “my”.
For example “Download your free report” is second person. “Download my free report” is first person.
Contact forms infographic.
The Best Lead Capture Forms
The best contact forms don’t assume the visitor wants to fill out the form. Only lonely people fill out such forms.
Instead, your form should give visitors a good reason to complete the form, and build trust with them and explain the value of completing the form.
This is an important step in their journey to solve a problem.
Treat it as such.
21 Quick and Easy CRO Copywriting Hacks
Keep these proven copywriting hacks in mind to make your copy convert.
Heatmaps are just the first step to obtaining useful insights on your website visitors. Today we’ll find out how heatmaps helped increase prospective student inquiries by 20% for a University and have a chat with Andrew Michael of Hotjar. Find out what he has to say.
Andrew Michael | Understanding Your Users: Leveraging Tools to Grow Your Website
How Heatmaps Helped Increase Prospective Student Inquiries by 20%
We were looking at the heatmap report for the website of Northcentral University, a non-profit online university headquartered in Arizona.
Reading a heatmap report is like looking at a weather radar, but instead of blobs of green, red and yellow showing us where rain is falling around us, a heatmap report shows us where visitors are clicking on a web page.
And it was raining clicks in an unexpected spot on the NCU website.
Specifically, visitors were clicking on one of the fields in the middle of a form, and only on that field. Not the name field, not the email field. The majority of them weren’t completing the form.
So, why were visitors so interested in this one field?
It was an important question, as this form was the primary invitation to get more information on the University. It was on almost every page, ready to start a more in-depth conversation with any visitor.
The field visitors were clicking on was “program of interest”, a dropdown field that listed the degrees offered by NCU. It was meant as a way for prospective students to tell NCU which degree program they were interested in.
These prospective students were using it as an information source.
While the copy on the page was regaling visitors on the value of NCUs one-on-one learning, it’s 100% doctoral professors and it’s diversity, visitors were telling us that they had one question first.
Do you offer a degree program I’m interested in?
At least, this was the hypothesis. So we designed a test.
At the top of every page, we placed a dropdown menu that listed the university’s programs, just like that on the form. When a degree program was selected, we took them to the part of the site that described that degree program.
Half of NCUs visitors would see this dropdown. The other half would not. They’d have to use the dropdown in the form.
When we measured the results, the visitors who saw the dropdown in the page were 20% more likely to fill out the form completely, requesting information.
This indicated that the change would increase prospective student inquiries by 20%, a very significant improvement in the key metric for the site.
The current site offers a complete section designed to help visitors find a degree program they’re interested in.
This is something that we would not have been able to find any other way than through a heatmap report. It doesn’t show up in analytics. No one would have complained.
This is the power of a class of report called user intelligence reports.
Anyone who knows how to read rain chances from a weather radar can use this kind of report. More and more of us are doing this.
These reports are surprisingly easy to generate and the tools are inexpensive.
You can bring people to websites all day long but if it’s not optimized and it’s not user friendly and you’re going to lose all day and you just can end up throwing money down the drain.
Leading the way is a company called Hotjar. On today’s show we’re breaking down HotJar with Andrew Michael. A tool focused on helping you understand your users. Andrew got into marketing because he’s intrigued by psychology – understanding what drives people’s decisions.
An Insightful Chat with Andrew Michael from Hotjar
Intended Consequences podcast with Hotjar’s Andrew Michael
Time is precious for overburdened marketers. On this show, we seek to understand which tools are truly valuable, and which are just giving us “interesting” insights.
We install something like Hotjar on every one of our client sites when optimizing.
Tools like Hotjar are a part of what I call ‘the golden age of marketing’. These tools are continually evolving, getting easier to use and less expensive.
These are the tools that buy you more time to be creative, ground breaking and successful.
We start off the podcast talking about all of the things Hotjar brings to the table under a single subscription. Then we talk about the outcome of leveraging tools like this – how do they actually empower marketers serve their online prospects better?
Listen to the Podcast. It’s well worth it.
When You Get Back To The Office
I’m not a shill for Andrew. I just know these tools are a great value and easy to learn.
When you get back to the office, i recommend that you do a trial of Hotjar. Add it to your homepage, or one of your “money” pages where you ask visitors to take action. Setup a heatmap report on it.
Let it run for a few days, and then look at the scroll report. This report tells you how far visitors are scrolling on your page. This is one of the first things we look at when we start analyzing our clients’ sites.
Where is the report turning blue? This is the place on the page that visitors stop reading. Look in the blue area. What key content are they missing?
If more than half of your page is blue, you have a scroll problem. Visitors aren’t being engaged enough to get through your content.
Reasons for this include: false bottoms, where visitors think the page ends when it doesn’t. It can mean that your content isn’t engaging them enough high on the page. It can mean that you’re not handling a key objection.
Your strategies include moving key content to the top of the page, putting arrows, chevrons and “v”s on the page to tell visitors to keep going, or re-thinking the story you tell on this page.
Don’t be discouraged. This is progress! Next, share this report with your design team and see what they think.
This is how pages get better and businesses grow.
You can get all these links discussed on this week’s episode in our shownotes. One thing to remind you all of is that Hotjar is a freemium model so it’s one you can definitely
Alright scientists, that’s it for this week.
Andrew Michael | Understanding Your Users: Leveraging Tools to Grow Your Website
Every industry has them. Your company may be one of them. They are the whack-a-mole companies, sticking their virtual neck out, and striving to do things better, driving online sales with an evolving ecommerce conversion marketing strategy.
And they often get whacked.
But the companies I’m talking about hunker down in their holes and plan their next chance to pop out again, with more force. It’s in their blood. The Internet is becoming the place they stage their emergence.
These whack-a-mole companies may sell products that range from the common to the mundane. Zappos was a whack-a-mole company. They started out in online sales of shoes. In ten years, Zappos outshone their competitors and sold an almost $1 billion business to Amazon.
Wikipedia calls Whac-a-mole a “Redemption Game”
The GoodLife Team is a whack-a-mole company in the very competitive real estate market. They are small by the standards of their peers, but like Zappos, I expect them to pop out of their hole with such force that they will leave the table altogether, flying free of the hammers that seek to drive them back.
Patience and Impatience: Ecommerce Conversion Marketing Strategy for Online Sales
Whack-a-mole companies are both patient, and remarkably impatient. They are remarkably impatient to try new things. They aren’t careless. Successful whack-a-moles seek to find out what works and what doesn’t quickly.
Yet, they are patient in the long run. They know that they’re going to get whacked a few times, and they prepare for the blows. Theirs is a journey of learning and persistence.
I am drawn to these kind of companies. It is them that I find myself writing for.
Ecommerce Whack-a-moles
If you are a budding whack-a-mole in your industry and want to turn the Web into a powerful sales channel, find out how the highest-converting sites on the Web use ecommerce marketing strategy to maximize conversion rates and online sales. “Conversion” is the magic that makes you stronger than your competitors.
The E-commerce Pattern: Core Conversion Marketing Strategies
Here are the three strategies that are conversion deal-breakers for e-commerce web sites. Get these strategies right, and you should be able to optimize your way to higher conversion rates. Get any of these wrong, and you will find yourself struggling to improve.
The third of the five “core” conversion marketing patterns is the e-commerce pattern. The two patterns I’ve already discussed are the Brochure site and the Portal site. As a refresher, the Brochure pattern is a known as the “sales support” pattern. The purpose is to provide information during the sales process and tell prospects how to get more information. The Portal pattern, also known as the “advertising model” and “subscription model,” monetizes content.
For this discussion, I assume a site is generating reasonably qualified traffic and that the offering has a demand in the marketplace.
The E-commerce pattern
Also known as “online shopping,” “eRetail” and “eTail,” e-commerce sites are designed to handle the online purchase of a product or service. For purposes of this discussion, you are building a site with the e-commerce pattern if:
You accept payment on your website for a product or service
The buyer consumes the product offline. The “site as a service” pattern is targeted at businesses that deliver their product directly through the site.
You are selling more than one item, more than one version of an item, or more than one product line. A single item site should look at the Portal Pattern, or the up-coming “Considered Purchase” pattern.
My goal here is to explore three strategies that are conversion deal-breakers for e-commerce websites. Get these strategies right, and you should be able to optimize your way to higher conversion rates. Get any of these wrong, and you will find yourself struggling to improve.
Category pages
For sites that feature dozens or thousands of products, it is critical that visitors at all stages of the buying process find their way to specific items on your site. Category pages are the traffic cops, driving shoppers to the right product areas and eventually to the products they seek.
Are category pages more important than the home page? For visitors who are just becoming aware of your online brand, the home page serves as the top-level category page, or the “featured products” category page. A quick survey of the highest converting retail sites on the web reveal some interesting similarities in their category page and category page design.
The home pages are filled with specific offers. The page is essentially designed like a circular you would find in your newspaper.
Intuitive categories are displayed to help visitors dive deeper into the site.
Some sites use a BAH (big ass header) that cycles through offers. Flash banners can sink your conversion rate unless you are using them to provide specific offers.
Pricing is put front and center on product “ads.”
Copy is included with the products that are displayed. Even if there is only space for a few words, some value proposition is put forward with each product. A product image and the price often isn’t enough.
Search is present on every page.
Defining the right categories is critical. Most of the high-converting sites have between five and eight categories in their top-level navigation. Office Depot gets it down to four. More refined categories are listed in the left column; “specials,” “best sellers,” “brands,” etc.
For e-commerce sites that don’t have the brand strength of these large retailers, it is tempting to spend space talking about the company and its unique value proposition. Keep this brief. Avoid the temptation to add ancillary items to navigation, such as “about us.” Let your offers and categories do the talking for you.
In summary, specific offers, smart category choices and search are the hallmarks of strong category pages.
Product pages
Just as landing pages are crucial to increase the conversion rate of advertising efforts, well designed product pages are crucial for the e-commerce website. With best search engine optimization practices, product pages become the landing pages for searching shoppers.
Product pages typically ask the visitor to “add to cart” and “buy now.” These should be the most tested pages on your site.
The elements that make for a great product page differ from industry to industry, but there are some rules of thumb.
Show the product. There is a correlation between the conversion rate of a page and the number and quality of product images available.
Provide all of the information a visitor needs to say “yes.” Price, shipping, return policy, ratings and reviews; what you include on your product page depends on what you’re selling, and to whom.
Test to find the right balance of information. Providing too much information can distract buyers from clicking “buy now,” and even introduce reasons not to buy.
Product pages serve two masters: people who are already exploring your site and those who have landed there due to a search engine query. Test these pages to find your best converting product page design.
Shopping cart
E-commerce shopping carts have traditionally been a thorny issue with conversion scientists and web site optimizers. Too many businesses choose shopping cart software that is rigid and difficult to customize. Many of the most popular shopping carts on the market seem to have been designed by engineers, and they don’t consider that buyers may be on the brink of abandoning the transaction.
The purchase process is the needle point for your success. The wary shopper is always on the lookout for red flags, reasons to reconsider their purchase decision. Alarms are sounded by what is missing from your shopping cart pages.
The shopping cart is often used as an information resource. Prospects will add a product and then start the checkout process to uncover information that they didn’t find elsewhere on the site.
What are my shipping options and what will it cost me?
What will tax be?
Are there any catches?
Is the product in stock?
Provide this information on your product pages to reduce these informational probes into your shopping cart and decrease your abandonment rates.
Flexibility is the key with shopping cart systems. They should be easy to customize, provide places for “reinforcing” copy, and be able to answer questions like those above. If your shopping cart can support A/B split testing, all the better.
The shopping cart is so important, that almost any business should consider replacing their system if they can’t easily and quickly change the sequence, layout, button location, button text, page copy, promotion codes, trust badges, etc. As with product pages, small changes in these elements can result in big increases in conversion rates.
As of this writing, I can’t recommend any shopping carts systems that meet these criteria. Please offer your recommendations in the comments.
There are a variety of tactics to be explored within each of these make-or-break strategies: category pages, product pages and the purchase process. There are other strategies that may be equally important, and I welcome your input through the comments. Building an email list is one such strategy that comes immediately to mind. It can be a powerful conversion tool for businesses whose customers purchase frequently. I’ll write more about this strategy in my next installment when we talk about the “considered purchase” pattern.
It gives you the force to fly free of your industry Whac-a-mole table by slashing your online sales costs.
Let’s see why knowing your customer is key to marketing and conversion success and from this insight you can begin to find opportunities for growth.
Valentin Radu is a businessman, a successful businessman, who believes knowing your customer is fundamental. He has built the first online car insurance company in Romania and sold it to within a few years.
So, if you’re Valentin, what do you do for an encore?
You build the tools you wish you had when you were building your business and offer them to other businesses so that they can be successful.
You can lead a horse to water, but he still won’t look good in a bikini.
Valentin Radu believes we spend too much time chasing new customers, when we should be spending our time and energy on our “true lovers”. Listen and see if you agree.
The Human Biases Holding You Back. Learn more about human biases, how they work together, and why it impacts your role as a marketer.
Gain Executive Buy-In. How do you know what made your customer buy to begin with? Who is your buyer? And when you get the answers to these questions – how do you get buy-in from leaders in the organization to make the pivots needed based on the data?
Understanding What Drives. It’s important to know which calls to action tend to drive the most clicks, and which pages (Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, etc.) are getting the most ad traffic.
It turns out that these exciting tools bump up against something less procedural, and more… human.
Imagine this: You are offered a magical machine that lets you read the thoughts of the people coming to your website. Not the personal stuff, just the stuff that applies to your business.
You can see how they solve problems. You can try different designs, different copy, different calls to action to see if they find it easier to buy. And you don’t have to redesign your website.
You can hear what they are trying to do and what is confusing them.
You can point them to the information they need at any time.
And the magic tools wouldn’t violate their privacy in any way.
You might be skeptical, of course. But would you be resistant to this?
The answer is, that you probably would be. This is human. There are a number of biases that all humans harbor. These biases — confirmation bias, availability bias, novelty bias, survivorship bias — work together to keep us doing what we’ve always done, even when we clearly need change.
Fortunately, humans are also social animals. Our biases can be up-ended by the behaviors of others. When we talk about using social signals to change human behavior, we are talking about Culture.
In a company, culture is a huge, powerful lever. This also makes it difficult to move, especially if you are not a leader in your company. You can feel like Sisyphus, pushing that bolder up the hill. Over and over agin.
The opportunity, however, is great. Marketing has always been about knowing your customer. We’ve never had access to more information about our customers. Will you be an agent of knowledge or will you remain mired in your biases?
Understanding Your Customers
When a visitor arrives on your site what is it that you want them to do? Well most marketers would say first, you want them to buy. And then you want them to come back.
This is the charge.
So how do we take our customers — our site visitors — and turn them into ‘true lovers’ as our guest today, Valentin Radu from Omniconvert calls them?
Getting them to buy and come back is the charge. But here’s the challenge.
How do you know what made your customer buy to begin with? Who is your buyer? How do you know the action they took when they first landed on your site? How do you get the freedom as a marketer to experiment, to look at the data, to understand the data in order to make decisions to increase conversions?
And when you get the answers to those questions, how do you get buy-in from leaders in the organization to make the pivots needed based on the data?
Knowing your customer is key to marketing and conversion success.
Experimenting with Your Marketing
These are the questions we explore in this episode. Experimenting with your marketing is the only way that you can truly know what is working. It’s the only way you can succeed. Marketing and status quo cannot go together. At least for my listeners.
You might be thinking, that all sounds great Brian, but how do I influence change to allow for more more experimentation and effect true company growth?
Omniconvert is a CRO tool that helps marketers increase conversion rates. From surveys to overlays – it’s a marketers sandbox. You can find out more by connecting with me or head on over to omniconvert dot com.
When you get back to the office.
When you get back to the office, I suggest that you start using a little data in your decision-making process. You can start with some data that is already “laying around.”
When was the last time you looked at what your PPC and Facebook ad team were doing? Many digital marketers don’t spend a lot of time with the advertising, but there are some real gems of growth here.
And most of us are doing some sort of advertising.
Call down to your ad team and ask them for a spreadsheet of all of the ads they’ve been running. Go back six months or even a year. Ask for the ad text, the number of impressions, the number of clicks, the cost per click and the link URL. This is easy for them to generate. If they can track conversions, definitely ask for conversions for each ad.
Then spend some time with this data. You’ll understand:
Which calls to action tend to drive the most clicks.
What pages are getting the most ad traffic. You’ll want to go and see how these pages are performing in analytics.
How many ads are sending traffic to the home page.
From this, you can begin to find opportunities for growth.
Are you using words like the best clicked ads? Are you sending good clicks to bad pages? And is there a better place to send traffic than the home page? The answer is yes, by the way.
Then share your findings with at least one other person.
You have just begun culture change. You radical, you.
Taking the Risk out of your Website Redesign
Conversion-Centered DesignPoker is one of those games that, like digital marketing, requires a left-brain/right-brain approach. To begin with, good poker players know the percentages. They know that the two four’s in their hand gives them a 12% chance of winning in a typical game. That’s their left-brain, data-driven knowledge.
Then you add in all of the right-brain stuff. Emotion. Reading the other players’ faces. Controlling your own face. Tells. And past behaviors.
Yep, that’s digital marketing. But there’s one move that throws all of that out the window.
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You may have seen it in the World Series of Poker on TV, or in a James Bond movie. One player pushes his entire stack of chips into the center of the table and says, “All in”. What he’s saying is, if he loses this hand, he loses everything. All of the other players have to ask themselves, “WIll I match his entire stack?” or should I get out now.
Going all in smashes everything. It may mean that you’re ignoring the data in one big high-stakes bluff. Or it may mean that you’re trying to ratchet up the emotion, scaring the rest of the table into making a bad decision.
There is an equivalent to “going all in” in digital marketing as well. It’s called a website redesign.
This is one of the biggest budgeted projects a company will do. When someone throws a lot of money at the marketing department, it can be hard to resist.
Sure, it could have a huge impact on the financial prospects of the firm. It can also cause you to lose everything.
Poker players have one advantage over digital marketers when going all in: They can see their cards. They know their percentage. Digital marketers? Well, they have past performance from the current site..
But do they use it?
On today’s show, I’m pulling in Joel Harvey – Chief Operating Officer at Conversion Sciences. Joel’s role is to make sure we live up to our company motto: “Always deliver remarkable results.”
Joel and I are talking website redesigns today. And we’re going to tell you something that may blow your mind. Website redesigns don’t have to be an all or nothing hand. You don’t have to push all of your budget in and wait 3, or 6 or even 12 months later.
Listen to find out how we stack the odds in our favor, guaranteeing a winning hand.
Website Redesign Tip
The all-in approach isn’t just limited to website redesigns. Individual campaigns are usually all-in affairs as well.
When you get back to the office, open a spreadsheet and start writing out the assumptions that you’re making when designing that email, social media ad, or landing page.
You should quickly have a few dozen.
Many of these may be well supported by past experience or best practices.
For each, you should ask, “Do I have a way of finding out if this assumption is a good one.”
You may be able to look at the performance of past pages. You may be able to see which email subject lines worked best in the past. You may create different versions of ads and see which delivers the best result.
Now you’re looking at your cards, and you’ll rarely win a hand if you don’t.
Resources and links discussed
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From Segmentation to Contextualization: The New Way to Look at Marketing (Podcast)
Artificial Intelligence, Conversion OptimizationI predicted years ago that my business would be using machine learning for much of what we do manually today.
When I talk to people like Olcan Sercinoglu, I know that day is coming. Olcan is the CEO at a company called Scale Inference. He studied and worked under Peter Norton from Google – the guys who wrote the book on Machine Learning – and has spent the last 25 years as a developer engineer. Scaled Inference focuses on applying machine learning to online user interactions, and to personalize their experiences in ways we could never do by ourselves..
If we can understand how machine learning is different, we can understand how our digital marketing will be changed in the near future.
Olcan Sercinoglu | Why Context Matters
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From Segmentation to Contextualization: The New Way to Look at Marketing Key Takeaways
How do we use AI to make us better marketers?
AI Optimization-Why context matters with Olcan Sercinoglu
Moore’s Law: As Valid Today as it was a Few Decades Ago
In 1965, a man named Gordon Moore made a bold prediction, a prediction that was expected to fail almost every year since. It is a prediction that helps to explain the dizzying speed with which our lives are being upended by new tech..
What Moore said in 1965 is that we’d be able to fit two times more transistors on a microchip every year, year after year. What this meant for the semiconductor industry is that microchips would get twice as fast and cost half as much to produce every single year.
This, they thought, was crazy talk.
A Grain of Rice and a Chessboard
Take a typical chess board. On the first square place a grain of rice. On the next square put two grains of rice. On the next square, four. And double the number of grains of rice on each subsequent square.
By the time you reach the final square, number 64, the amount of rice you would need would require the entire surface of the earth and its oceans to grow, 210 billion tons.
That’s the power of compounding.
Every few years, the skeptics declared that we had reached the end of our ability to shrink these tiny transistors any more. “It’s just not physically possible,” they said.
And every time, Moore’s prediction was proven more or less true.
Even today, as the wires that run across microchips approach the width of an atom, engineers find ways to make things half the size.
Why should you care? As microchips shrink and drop in cost, so do the things we build with them. For example, the camera that is found in any laptop has a HD resolution and costs the manufacturer a few dollars. The cost of servers and storage space has plummeted as well. Hence, most of our computing and storage is done in the proverbial cloud.
All of this has created a golden age of technology — for consumers, for businesses, and especially for marketers. Entrepreneurs are using the cloud and cheap computing power to make digital marketing cheaper easier, and more predictable.
While we’re sitting around wondering what to do with all of this data, entrepreneurs and engineers are using it teach machines to learn.
The Era of Neural Networks: Is the Future of AI marketing all about Personalization?
Neural networks are computer programs that work like human neurons. Like the human brain, they are designed to learn. Neural nets have been around for decades, but only in recent years have we had enough data to teach them anything useful.
Machine learning is lumped together with Artificial Intelligence, or AI, but it’s really much simpler than building an intelligent machine. If you have enough data, it’s relatively easy to teach a machine how to learn and to get insights from it.
In fact, machine learning is being used all around you and you probably don’t even know it.
And we’ll ask some more tactical questions.
I start the conversation, asking Olcan, “Is the future of AI marketing all about personalization?”
From Segmentation to Contextualization: Focus on the Context that Your Visitors Arrive In
My favorite take away from my conversation with Oljan Sercinoglu is that context matters.
There is one big context that you don’t need machine learning to address: It is the context of your mobile visitors.
You may say that your website is responsive, and that you’ve already addressed the smartphone context. But, you haven’t.
Do you want proof? Check your analytics. You’re smartphone conversion rates are probably a half or a quarter of your desktop sites, even with that responsive design. I know this without looking at your analytics.
Mobile visitors are coming in a completely different context than desktop visitors. They don’t need a shrunk down version of your website. They need a different website.
Fortunately, you don’t need a machine learning program to identify these visitors. You can start personalizing your mobile site to deal with this new context.
Try this as a contextualization exercise: Reduce the number of fields on the mobile forms, or eliminate the forms altogether. Replace them with click-to-call. If you have an eCommerce site, make “Add to Cart” secondary and build your mobile subscriber list. Email is the life’s blood of eCommerce.
If your website is generating millions of visits, you may want to consider putting that data to work for you. Not every business is ready for machine learning, but you don’t want to be the last business in your market to start using it.
When You Get Back to the Office
When you get back to the office, I recommend that you share this episode of Intended Consequences with someone else in your company. It’ll make you look smart and forward thinking.
If not I have a challenge for you.
Here’s my challenge to you this week – start to really think about how you define success. Answer the question, “I’ve done a great job because…” and fill in the blank. Answer this questions three ways. everything you do as marketer should flow from optimization.
Then ask, how do I measure each of those with data I’m collecting today. Once you’re clear that it’s the idea that by understanding the metrics, first then you can begin to prioritize your data gathering and create based on the context that’s being emerged from the data.
Alright scientists, that’s it for this week.
Resources and links discussed
Olcan Sercinoglu | Why Context Matters
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How to Manage a Digital Marketing Agency Relationship
Conversion-Centered DesignWe’ve trained our agencies to work against us.
The pitch meeting is the culprit.
The pitch meeting is when an agency comes to their client — or their client comes to them — and they present the creative that they’ve prepared. It may be well-researched creative, based on data both qualitative and quantitative.
During the pitch meeting, the agency asks a small group of people — company executives typically — to review, choose, modify or reject the creative. There are no clients in this meeting. The people in this room are supposed to represent the customer that the creative is designed for.
The people making these decisions may know their customers well, but this setting is designed to bring out our biases.
Agency Relationships with Garrett Mehrguth
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The personal preferences of each executive drives confirmation bias. The emotion of past wins and past failures drives availability bias. The love of cool designs drives novelty bias.
And the highest ranking executive in the room gets deferential treatment. I’m not sure if there is an official deference bias, but there should be.
The pitch meeting is a tough time for the agency. Regardless of what the research done, if the executives don’t like the creative, it puts the relationship at risk. So, the pitch meeting becomes about pleasing the client, not the client’s customers.
This is how failed campaigns get launched, how website redesigns reduce revenue, how agencies get canned for decisions made by this small group of executives.
The oppression of the pitch meeting can only be broken by the client. Or so I thought.
Managing agency relationships with Garrett Mehrguth on Intended Consequences podcast
Garrett Mehrguth runs an agency called Directive, and he’s taking some unusual approaches toward his client relationships. Today on Intended Consequences, we’ll learn how Garrett is using transparency, data, branding and hard decisions to help shape the culture of his clients.
He believes, as I do, that this is in the best interest of a clients’ customers, which will ultimately serve the brands we work with.
On today’s show we talk all about agency management – how to leverage the relationship, how to think about the relationship, and how content (the written word) is not dead – with the CEO of Directive Consulting.
Digital Agency Management Tip
There will be a moment that first re-shapes the pitch meeting dynamic.
For me it was when an agency gave me three mockups of a new design and asked me to choose the one I wanted to proceed with. I said, “I don’t know. Go collect some data and tell me which one I should pick.”
When you get back to the office, try a little experiment.
Pull up some of the creative that your agency or internal team has delivered. Instead of considering what you think of it, ask yourself, “How could the agency collect some data to help us make this better?”
If you listen to this podcast, you’ll be familiar with several tools that can be used.
In your next agency meeting, ask the question, “How could we collect some data that helps us get this right?” Their response may be unsatisfying at first, but you’ve taken the first step toward changing their focus, from your preferences back to your customers’ preferences.
Repeat after me: “Go get us some data to tell us what will work.”
They’ll probably call me, and that’s OK too.
Resources and links from the Podcast
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20 Compelling Examples of Persuasive Copy in Online Advertising
Advertising CRO, Persuasion ScienceThe world of digital marketing makes it super easy for you to reach your target audience. But you have to whip up a mighty persuasive online ad if you want your prospects to click on yours. Persuasion is one of our CRO Agency secret weapons. It is layered into so much of what we do and is often the difference between beginners and conversion optimization experts.
In this post, we’ll review the definition of persuasive copy, how to make sure it works, and show you compelling examples of persuasive copy in online advertising.
Appeal to logic emotion and credibility all in one. Check out these click worthy examples of persuasive copy in online advertising.
What is Persuasive Copy
Persuasive copy can be defined as an argument that elicits a desired action from a relevant audience. Easier said than done, right?
Aristotle explained what constitutes persuasive copy best in his rhetorical appeals or ‘modes for persuasion’. Let’s keep in mind that his goal was to make his oratory (his presentations) more persuasive. And in doing so, he identified three types of persuasion appeals that are as valid today as they were back then.
Not everybody makes a decision about a specific product or service based on the same argument. Purchasing a lipstick could be more of an impulse buy and an appeal to pathos or emotion may be the right call. Adding an appeal to reason such as “Free Shipping” may seal the deal and get you the click you desperately want.
An example of emotionally persuasive copy in this Avon color trend nail polish, Fairytale collection: “Until your prince charming shows up have fun with the frogs.”
Avon color trend nail polish, Fairytale collection. The copy reads: “Until your prince charming shows up have fun with the frogs”. Why is this a prime example of persuasive copy in advertising? The famous Prince Charming in other countries, like Brazil and Italy, is called the “Blue Prince” — royal blue blood and all. So, until the blue one shows up, have fun with the rest of the colors. Clever emotional argument to leave the guilt behind and have fun now. If the shoe fits. ;)
Fortunately for most of us, developing persuasive copy is not an art but a data driven process. And as such, it can be tested.
How to Test Persuasive Copy in Online Advertising
As investment in digital advertising increases, it becomes essential to figure out what really works. Ad copy testing can be executed pre-campaign launch or while the campaign is live.
Some methods for online ad copy pre-testing may include focus groups, projective techniques, and recall tests. Performing these pre-tests ensures less spend is lost when it comes to activation.
Running an online ad campaign is costly. This is a different version of the Paypal for Business ad used to test the level of persuasiveness in the copy. What appeal has been dropped? Let us know in the comments section at the end of the post.
But the proof is in the pudding and nothing beats solid AB Testing to provide you with the metrics you need to define what’s really working. If you are looking to learn about testing persuasive copy, our blog is packed with articles that explain how to do this in detail. Check them out:
The Proven AB Testing Framework Used By CRO Professionals
4 Types of Useful AB Testing Tools You May Not Realize You Have
The AB Testing Process that Empowers Marketers
4 Mobile AB Testing Ideas that Worked for Our Clients
Or you can take our CRO Course and become a conversion specialist. Or if you’d rather have an experienced conversion agency power boost your online marketing spend and turn more of your ad clicks into revenue, check out our CRO for Advertising solutions.
And as we promised an article about compelling examples of persuasive copy in online advertising, let’s dive into them!
Why Is Persuasive Copy Crucial to Online Ads
Let’s assume you have the right ad placement, defined the perfect audience, and have properly identified what your audience responds to. After all, persuasive ad copy in and of itself is not the only factor that weighs in on a campaign’s success.
We all want our online ads to influence our audience in such a way that they are inclined to click to call or click to buy from our website. But, what makes copy this convincing? Sometimes, actual examples of persuasive copy can guide us in crafting our own click-worthy online ads.
Compelling Examples of Persuasive Copy in Online Advertising
A genius way to apply emotion to a SaaS service on a Facebook ad for Litmus & dotmailer.
Examples of persuasive copy in online advertising help illustrate the concept.
Appeal to logic or logos works quite nicely for the auto insurance industry. I wonder what would happen to these click-through rates (CTRs) if they added some emotional arguments to the ad copy.
Auto insurance appeal to logic examples. They all look alike. Which one would you click on?
Finding examples of persuasive copy in advertising is simple if there is a Google Guarantee available. Not an easy addition to your online ads but worth every penny. All the credibility you want in a single line.
Building credibility through the Google Guarantee.
Ethos and logos appeal for this Facebook ad campaign.
Ethos appeal.
Lower the guilt with a logical argument. Less fat and less calories than your biggest competitor: McDonald’s french fries. How is that for an attention-getting example of persuasive copy?
Burger King fries ad copy. Stop clicking the button and keep reading!
Of course #FOMO is an emotion! This compelling example of persuasive copy in online advertising proves it! Almost depleted iPhone battery coupled with “Last Chance to Buy T&C Tickets” An example from a Digital Marketer Facebook ads campaign.
Appeal to emotion iPhone battery Facebook Ad example from Digital Marketer.
Searching for click-worthy examples of persuasive copy for your Facebook lead generation campaign? A winner. Hands-down. No big emotional commitment. Only 8 hours for $500 and you get rid of those pesky projects.
Lead generation ad example targeting homeowners looking to start projects.
IBM Watson understands that their audience responds to reason. And that some may be ready to buy. The free trial is a highly persuasive method to get them to click on their ad.
IBM Watson “free trial” a persuasive element of their offer.
This online ad for WD40 is all about persuading through pathos. You will need some WD40 to unstuck that scroll bar.
Humor, sex and curiosity are all emotional appeals.
Every once in a while, you run across an ad that you just can’t forget. Trident’s Facebook ad that appeals to emotions or pathos through some quirky logic as I am sure deodorant won’t taste like spearmint either.
Example of emotional and logical appeal in persuasive copy for Trident’s online ads.
Although they usually resort to logic and ethos – 4 out of 5 dentists recommend – to craft persuasive copy.
Trident Coupons: Save money, prevent stains.
Sandwich delivery ads leverage a mix of ethos or credibility (reviews, how many served), logical (pricing and selection) and emotional (fresh, good, smells, comfort) elements. Definitely great examples of persuasive copy in PPC ads.
Sandwich delivery ads.
Pizza delivery examples of persuasive copy for Google Ads. One relies on logical and ethos vs emotional appeal.
Logical and ethos vs emotional appeal for pizza delivery Google Ads.
Nike sneakers Google Ads: These are not Nike stores, so they lack the brand’s built in credibility. Therefore, they use pathos or emotional persuasion on the headline and ethos appeal on the body via the rating reviews and the on time delivery percentage.
Pathos or emotional persuasion on the headline and ethos appeal on the body via the rating reviews that give credibility and the ontime delivery percentage.
The Nike Official store, is all about logical persuasion of product availability with some additional credibility elements as message support.
Nike official store Google ad.
PPC ad copywriting for a mobile ad with emotional appeal. Click to call the luxury location of your choice.
PPC ad for best NYC hotels. Luxury, of course.
So many persuasive reasons for that mileage traveler in you. Capital One Venture card uses ethos on their youtube and tv ads but not on their Google Ads. Here it’s all facts.
Capital One Venture card uses logos or logical appeal to persuade to click on this PPC ad.
I hope you found inspiration and ideas on these compelling examples of persuasive copy in online advertising. Now, discover how to Make Testimonials More Persuasive or sign-up to receive our weekly newsletter. Packed with great conversion optimization tips.
Omni Channel Marketing Technology: How to Walk the Line between Creativity and Efficiency (Podcast)
Conversion Marketing StrategyDigito Marketus:
This is a species of primate known generically as digital marketers. During the day, it’s natural habitat is tall square nests built for it, called offices. These are social animals that travel in groups called “departments.” They work alongside other species, such as Neandersales and Blockus ITeas.
This clever species forages through forests of audiences dining primarily on the fruit of the prospect tree, which they share with a symbiotic species, the Neandersales.
This species is known for working in places with scarce resources. They have evolved to flourish with very little. As such, they must be highly creative AND they must be efficient..
They are advanced enough to use tools that help them make fewer mistakes, giving them time for more creative pursuits.
If you’re listening to this podcast, you are either Digito Maketus or manage a department of them.
My guest today studies this species for a living. And — surprise — she actually is a member of the Digito Marketus.
Lindsay Tjepkema (Chep Ka MA), Director of Marketing for the Americas at Emarsys, is a marketer who markets to marketers and specializes in successful omnichannel marketing.
Podcast: Digito Marketus is a species commonly known as “Digital Marketers”
Lindsay Tjepkema | Using Marketing Technology to Create a Seamless Omnichannel Experience
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Resources and links discussed regarding marketing automation for omnichannel strategies:
On this episode of Intended Consequences, we come to understand how this fascinating species walks the line between creativity and efficiency, crayons and spreadsheets, design and databases.
We’ll talk about how she uses the Omni Channel Marketing Technology in her multi channel marketing strategy to deliver user experiences that put the customer first.
We lure Digito Marketus out of its nest– using a trail pens, thumb drives and t-shirts emblazoned with corporate logos — and ask some important questions.
On every episode of this podcast, we give you one technique to challenge you as a marketer, manager or business owner. So, accept the challenge and take your business or practice to new heights. It’s at the very end of the podcast.
Intro to Omni Channel Marketing Technology
During this podcast, I want to ask that you actively participate in this conversation. What I mean by that is – while I’m asking Lindsay questions, I want you to ask yourself those questions. For example, when it comes to omni channel marketing what does success mean for your organization?
And to dig even deeper, Lindsay and I go into this question of “why is it that marketers seem to struggle to get to the next level of success? Are you struggling?
This conversation with Lindsay will start with me first asking how she measures success on her digital channels.
If you want to connect with Lindsay Tjepkema or Emarsys and Host of the Marketer + Machine podcast. You can check her out at emarsys dot com and her podcast.
We talked about knowing the value of a lead on this episode. If you sell stuff online, it’s easy to know how much a transaction is worth. But what if you generate leads or email list subscribers? Are you creating an omnichannel considering your touch point personas?
When you get back to the office (a formula to start prioritizing your traffic-driving investments)
When you get back to the office, try to put a dollar value on your leads or subscribers — even if you’re an eCommerce business, you must be using an email list.
THIS DOES NOT HAVE TO BE ACCURATE. What you want is a dollar value that you can use to prioritize what you’re investing in. It will require you to look in Analytics and possibly the customer relationship management system your sales team uses.
It requires you to understand how many leads or subscribers you’re generating and then how much revenue you are getting from that.
Don’t let silos get in the way. When you don’t have real data, estimate.
At the end of the day, you’ll be able to say, “we generated 100 leads last month. That’s $2500 dollars in our pocket!
Alright scientists, that’s it for this week.
What Keeps Visitors from Converting on your Site?
Conversion-Centered Design, Landing Page OptimizationThere’s one thing, one thing that’s keeping your visitors from converting on your site.
It may not be the only thing, but it is the primary thing that your online business isn’t delivering the results you expect. It’s where you start when you optimize your website.
So, traffic but not conversions? It’s one of these five things:
Find out what keeps visitors from converting on your site and start testing to increase your conversions right now.
How to identify what keeps visitors from converting on your site.
Value Proposition & Messaging
Do you think your value proposition is the one thing that keeps visitors from converting on your site? Let’s take a look at the anatomy of a value proposition. Your value proposition is composed of all of the things you do to solve a problem and is communicated by:
All of these website elements are used to let your visitors know how you solve a set of problems, and why your solution is the best choice. The one that will save the most time and money, or that will deliver the most satisfaction.
But your value proposition doesn’t have to be communicated through words and images alone. Video, audio and animations are proven ways to communicate your value to a prospect.
And herein lies the rub.
Digital media gives us the amazing ability to put anything onto a landing page that our hearts desire. And if you can do anything, how do you know which is the right element to use? Here lies the conundrum.
How to know if your value proposition is what keeps visitors from converting on your site
A high bounce rate is a sign of three things:
If your landing page suffers from a high bounce rate, look at the source of your traffic. Does the page keep the specific offer made in the paid ad, email, or organic search query that enticed the visitors to click on your site? If it’s your homepage, the answer is most certainly, “No.”
If you feel that your traffic is good, and is coming to a relevant page, then we should ask if the lead is hitting the mark. By “lead” I am referring to the headline + hero image.
Don’t show a city skyline. Don’t show a person smiling at a computer. These things don’t scream for meaningful captions and don’t help conversions either.
You should also look at the words you use in your main navigation. These should communicate what your site is about in the words of the visitor, not just the structure of your website.
Still don’t know what’s keeping them from converting? Ask your visitors
If you still don’t know what is keeping visitors from converting on your site, consider using an exit-intent popup that asks one open-ended question: “What were you looking for when you came to our site?” or “Why didn’t you purchase?”
We are also big fans of putting an open-ended question on your thank-you page or receipt page: “What almost kept you from buying?” or “What almost kept you from signing up?”
You May Be Scaring Visitors Away: Use and Misuse of Risk Reversal
In general, more people make decisions based on fear than on opportunity. So, your amazing value proposition is destined to die in the minds of many of your prospects because of fear.
Risk reversal (and most of the following) is a set of tactics that puts the visitor’s fears at rest. It consists of things like:
Placing these items in clear view near a call to action can do wonders for your conversion rates.
Don’t put fears into their mind
There is a potential danger. Your risk reversal tactics can actually put fear into their mind.
For example, stating, “We will never spam you.” can actually place the concept in the mind of someone who wasn’t concerned about it. You might say instead, “We respect your privacy.” with a link to your privacy policy.
Traffic but not Conversions? Help Visitors Convert on your Site with Social Proof
Social proof demonstrates that others have had a positive experience with your brand. These take the form of:
If social proof is your one problem that keeps visitors from converting on your site, customers don’t feel that you’re right for someone like them. Make sure you show them that they are in the group of people that benefit from you.
Negative Reviews Help
Ironically, it also serves to answer the question, “Just how bad was a bad experience with this company?” This is why negative reviews have proven to increase conversion rates on eCommerce sites. Cleaning your reviews or only posting good reviews can shoot you in the foot.
Is it Lack of Credibility & Authority What Keeps Visitors from Converting on your Site?
If you are in an industry with lots of competition, or with “bad actors” who manipulate to get sales, your one problem may be credibility and authority.
The design of your website is one of the first things that communicate credibility. But be careful. A fancy, overly-designed site may communicate the wrong idea to visitors. It may convey that you’re expensive or too big for your prospects.
Credibility can be established by emphasizing things about your company, and by borrowing credibility from other sources such as, your clients. your payment methods, you media appearances and the like.
Brand Credibility
You gain credibility by building confidence with your brand and value proposition. How long have you been in business? How many customers have you served? How many products have you sold? How many dollars have you saved?
Brand credibility generally takes the form of implied proof.
Borrowed Credibility
Your website or landing page can borrow credibility and authority from third-party sources. Placing symbols and logos on your website borrows from these credible sources. Ask yourself:
Place proof of your associations on your site’s landing pages to borrow authority and credibility from them.
User Interface & User Experience: Factors that Keep Visitors from Converting on your Site
Nothing works if your visitors eyes aren’t guided through your pages.
No value proposition, no risk reversal, no social proof, no credibility stands a chance if the layout and user experience don’t help the reader understand where they’ve landed or where to go from there.
Long load time equals poor experience
The first thing to look at is site performance. If your pages load slowly, you visitors may be bouncing away. If any element requires a loading icon of any sort, you are probably providing a poor user experience.
Clutter means bad visual hierarchy
When a visitor looks at a page, it should be very obvious what is most important element and what can be looked at later. This is called a visual hierarchy.
For example, we like to make call to action buttons highly visible, so that it is clear to the reader that they are being asked to do something.
Designers use their knowledge of whitespace, negative space, font, font size, color, and placement to design an experience that is easy for the visitors’ eyes to digest.
Don’t add surprises
A good user experience has little place for novelty. Arbitrarily adding animations, fades, parallax images or scroll-triggered effects are generally unnecessary, can cause technical glitches and may actually hurt conversion rates.
How to Know “what” is Hurting your Conversion Rate
We recommend this process to determine the primary problem that keeps visitors from converting on your website.
1. Gather all of your conversion optimization ideas
Begin recording all of the ideas you have for improving the site in the spreadsheet. Sources for these ideas:
Don’t be surprised to have dozens of ideas for a website or landing page.
2. Categorize each of your ideas
The ROI Prioritized Hypothesis List spreadsheet has a column for classifying each idea.
There will also be some things that you just want to fix.
3. Count your conversion optimization ideas
Count out how many ideas you have for each category. The category with the most ideas is probably the one problem you should address first. We use a pie chart to illustrate the different issues.
This site’s one problem is Value Proposition and Messaging followed by Layout and UX
4. Start working
Begin working on the ideas in the category with the most ideas.
This is a great time to start AB testing to see which of your ideas really are important to your visitors.
Your search traffic will demonstrate their approval through more sales, more leads and higher conversion rates overall.
This sounds like a lot of work
It is a lot of work. But you could consider hiring us to identify what keeps visitors from converting on your site and we will test our way to your success.
You can request a free consultation with us.
This article is an updated and revised version of our original article published on Search Engine Land.
What Form of Form Will Get You More Conversions?
Lead GenerationContact forms are the most common way of beginning a conversation between a company and a prospect. In this article, we’ll show you how to get more prospects to fill out your form without reducing the quality of those leads.
What’s the big deal with forms? They have fields. You fill out the fields and you get something you want.
So, why do so many of your visitors fail to fill out your forms?
There is some psychology and some science to getting more form fills, whether you are trolling for leads or asking your visitors to buy something. The folks at SingleHop have done a study and it is exactly what we’ve seen in our testing of contact forms. You’ll learn a lot about increasing contact form conversion from this little infographic.
Contact Form Fields: How Many is Too Many?
As a general rule, the more fields you have, the lower your conversion rate. However, the leads you do acquire will be better qualified. The best way to find the right mix is to A/B test your contact forms.
Generally speaking and to increase contact form conversion, you should avoid:
Best Practices to Increase Contact Form Conversion
While you may think your website is selling your product or service, what it’s really selling is a sales call. You must convince the visitor to complete your form.
There are four components that will help you achieve this.
Build Trust
You can build trust by including your phone number and contact information. Sometimes they will call you.
Provide Social Proof
Your contact page should present testimonials and endorsements to make visitors feel comfortable completing the contact form.
Add Value
Make sure you are building value. What’s in it for the visitor if they fill out the form?
Sell the call to increase contact form conversions.
Use Risk Reversal
You can significantly remove barriers to completion by simply presenting your privacy policy on the form. While these are rarely read, they indicate that you care enough to have one.
Get the Call to Action Right
On a contact form, the call to action usually lives on the contact form button. The call to action should communicate what will happen when it is clicked.
Studies indicate that using first person improves conversion rates. Test changing “your” to “my”.
For example “Download your free report” is second person. “Download my free report” is first person.
Contact forms infographic.
The Best Lead Capture Forms
The best contact forms don’t assume the visitor wants to fill out the form. Only lonely people fill out such forms.
Instead, your form should give visitors a good reason to complete the form, and build trust with them and explain the value of completing the form.
This is an important step in their journey to solve a problem.
Treat it as such.
21 Quick and Easy CRO Copywriting Hacks
Keep these proven copywriting hacks in mind to make your copy convert.
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How Heatmaps Helped Increase Prospective Student Inquiries with Hotjar
Lead Generation, Web AnalyticsHeatmaps are just the first step to obtaining useful insights on your website visitors. Today we’ll find out how heatmaps helped increase prospective student inquiries by 20% for a University and have a chat with Andrew Michael of Hotjar. Find out what he has to say.
Andrew Michael | Understanding Your Users: Leveraging Tools to Grow Your Website
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Resources and links discussed
How Heatmaps Helped Increase Prospective Student Inquiries by 20%
We were looking at the heatmap report for the website of Northcentral University, a non-profit online university headquartered in Arizona.
Reading a heatmap report is like looking at a weather radar, but instead of blobs of green, red and yellow showing us where rain is falling around us, a heatmap report shows us where visitors are clicking on a web page.
And it was raining clicks in an unexpected spot on the NCU website.
Specifically, visitors were clicking on one of the fields in the middle of a form, and only on that field. Not the name field, not the email field. The majority of them weren’t completing the form.
So, why were visitors so interested in this one field?
It was an important question, as this form was the primary invitation to get more information on the University. It was on almost every page, ready to start a more in-depth conversation with any visitor.
The field visitors were clicking on was “program of interest”, a dropdown field that listed the degrees offered by NCU. It was meant as a way for prospective students to tell NCU which degree program they were interested in.
These prospective students were using it as an information source.
While the copy on the page was regaling visitors on the value of NCUs one-on-one learning, it’s 100% doctoral professors and it’s diversity, visitors were telling us that they had one question first.
Do you offer a degree program I’m interested in?
At least, this was the hypothesis. So we designed a test.
At the top of every page, we placed a dropdown menu that listed the university’s programs, just like that on the form. When a degree program was selected, we took them to the part of the site that described that degree program.
Half of NCUs visitors would see this dropdown. The other half would not. They’d have to use the dropdown in the form.
When we measured the results, the visitors who saw the dropdown in the page were 20% more likely to fill out the form completely, requesting information.
The current site offers a complete section designed to help visitors find a degree program they’re interested in.
This is something that we would not have been able to find any other way than through a heatmap report. It doesn’t show up in analytics. No one would have complained.
This is the power of a class of report called user intelligence reports.
Anyone who knows how to read rain chances from a weather radar can use this kind of report. More and more of us are doing this.
These reports are surprisingly easy to generate and the tools are inexpensive.
Leading the way is a company called Hotjar. On today’s show we’re breaking down HotJar with Andrew Michael. A tool focused on helping you understand your users. Andrew got into marketing because he’s intrigued by psychology – understanding what drives people’s decisions.
An Insightful Chat with Andrew Michael from Hotjar
Intended Consequences podcast with Hotjar’s Andrew Michael
Time is precious for overburdened marketers. On this show, we seek to understand which tools are truly valuable, and which are just giving us “interesting” insights.
We install something like Hotjar on every one of our client sites when optimizing.
Tools like Hotjar are a part of what I call ‘the golden age of marketing’. These tools are continually evolving, getting easier to use and less expensive.
These are the tools that buy you more time to be creative, ground breaking and successful.
We start off the podcast talking about all of the things Hotjar brings to the table under a single subscription. Then we talk about the outcome of leveraging tools like this – how do they actually empower marketers serve their online prospects better?
Listen to the Podcast. It’s well worth it.
When You Get Back To The Office
I’m not a shill for Andrew. I just know these tools are a great value and easy to learn.
When you get back to the office, i recommend that you do a trial of Hotjar. Add it to your homepage, or one of your “money” pages where you ask visitors to take action. Setup a heatmap report on it.
Let it run for a few days, and then look at the scroll report. This report tells you how far visitors are scrolling on your page. This is one of the first things we look at when we start analyzing our clients’ sites.
Where is the report turning blue? This is the place on the page that visitors stop reading. Look in the blue area. What key content are they missing?
Reasons for this include: false bottoms, where visitors think the page ends when it doesn’t. It can mean that your content isn’t engaging them enough high on the page. It can mean that you’re not handling a key objection.
Your strategies include moving key content to the top of the page, putting arrows, chevrons and “v”s on the page to tell visitors to keep going, or re-thinking the story you tell on this page.
Don’t be discouraged. This is progress! Next, share this report with your design team and see what they think.
This is how pages get better and businesses grow.
You can get all these links discussed on this week’s episode in our shownotes. One thing to remind you all of is that Hotjar is a freemium model so it’s one you can definitely
Alright scientists, that’s it for this week.
Andrew Michael | Understanding Your Users: Leveraging Tools to Grow Your Website
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Ecommerce Conversion Marketing Strategy for Online Sales
Ecommerce CROEvery industry has them. Your company may be one of them. They are the whack-a-mole companies, sticking their virtual neck out, and striving to do things better, driving online sales with an evolving ecommerce conversion marketing strategy.
And they often get whacked.
But the companies I’m talking about hunker down in their holes and plan their next chance to pop out again, with more force. It’s in their blood. The Internet is becoming the place they stage their emergence.
These whack-a-mole companies may sell products that range from the common to the mundane. Zappos was a whack-a-mole company. They started out in online sales of shoes. In ten years, Zappos outshone their competitors and sold an almost $1 billion business to Amazon.
Wikipedia calls Whac-a-mole a “Redemption Game”
The GoodLife Team is a whack-a-mole company in the very competitive real estate market. They are small by the standards of their peers, but like Zappos, I expect them to pop out of their hole with such force that they will leave the table altogether, flying free of the hammers that seek to drive them back.
Patience and Impatience: Ecommerce Conversion Marketing Strategy for Online Sales
Whack-a-mole companies are both patient, and remarkably impatient. They are remarkably impatient to try new things. They aren’t careless. Successful whack-a-moles seek to find out what works and what doesn’t quickly.
Yet, they are patient in the long run. They know that they’re going to get whacked a few times, and they prepare for the blows. Theirs is a journey of learning and persistence.
I am drawn to these kind of companies. It is them that I find myself writing for.
Ecommerce Whack-a-moles
If you are a budding whack-a-mole in your industry and want to turn the Web into a powerful sales channel, find out how the highest-converting sites on the Web use ecommerce marketing strategy to maximize conversion rates and online sales. “Conversion” is the magic that makes you stronger than your competitors.
The E-commerce Pattern: Core Conversion Marketing Strategies
The third of the five “core” conversion marketing patterns is the e-commerce pattern. The two patterns I’ve already discussed are the Brochure site and the Portal site. As a refresher, the Brochure pattern is a known as the “sales support” pattern. The purpose is to provide information during the sales process and tell prospects how to get more information. The Portal pattern, also known as the “advertising model” and “subscription model,” monetizes content.
For this discussion, I assume a site is generating reasonably qualified traffic and that the offering has a demand in the marketplace.
The E-commerce pattern
Also known as “online shopping,” “eRetail” and “eTail,” e-commerce sites are designed to handle the online purchase of a product or service. For purposes of this discussion, you are building a site with the e-commerce pattern if:
My goal here is to explore three strategies that are conversion deal-breakers for e-commerce websites. Get these strategies right, and you should be able to optimize your way to higher conversion rates. Get any of these wrong, and you will find yourself struggling to improve.
Category pages
For sites that feature dozens or thousands of products, it is critical that visitors at all stages of the buying process find their way to specific items on your site. Category pages are the traffic cops, driving shoppers to the right product areas and eventually to the products they seek.
Are category pages more important than the home page? For visitors who are just becoming aware of your online brand, the home page serves as the top-level category page, or the “featured products” category page. A quick survey of the highest converting retail sites on the web reveal some interesting similarities in their category page and category page design.
Defining the right categories is critical. Most of the high-converting sites have between five and eight categories in their top-level navigation. Office Depot gets it down to four. More refined categories are listed in the left column; “specials,” “best sellers,” “brands,” etc.
For e-commerce sites that don’t have the brand strength of these large retailers, it is tempting to spend space talking about the company and its unique value proposition. Keep this brief. Avoid the temptation to add ancillary items to navigation, such as “about us.” Let your offers and categories do the talking for you.
In summary, specific offers, smart category choices and search are the hallmarks of strong category pages.
Product pages
Just as landing pages are crucial to increase the conversion rate of advertising efforts, well designed product pages are crucial for the e-commerce website. With best search engine optimization practices, product pages become the landing pages for searching shoppers.
Product pages typically ask the visitor to “add to cart” and “buy now.” These should be the most tested pages on your site.
The elements that make for a great product page differ from industry to industry, but there are some rules of thumb.
Show the product. There is a correlation between the conversion rate of a page and the number and quality of product images available.
Provide all of the information a visitor needs to say “yes.” Price, shipping, return policy, ratings and reviews; what you include on your product page depends on what you’re selling, and to whom.
Test to find the right balance of information. Providing too much information can distract buyers from clicking “buy now,” and even introduce reasons not to buy.
Product pages serve two masters: people who are already exploring your site and those who have landed there due to a search engine query. Test these pages to find your best converting product page design.
Shopping cart
E-commerce shopping carts have traditionally been a thorny issue with conversion scientists and web site optimizers. Too many businesses choose shopping cart software that is rigid and difficult to customize. Many of the most popular shopping carts on the market seem to have been designed by engineers, and they don’t consider that buyers may be on the brink of abandoning the transaction.
The purchase process is the needle point for your success. The wary shopper is always on the lookout for red flags, reasons to reconsider their purchase decision. Alarms are sounded by what is missing from your shopping cart pages.
The shopping cart is often used as an information resource. Prospects will add a product and then start the checkout process to uncover information that they didn’t find elsewhere on the site.
Flexibility is the key with shopping cart systems. They should be easy to customize, provide places for “reinforcing” copy, and be able to answer questions like those above. If your shopping cart can support A/B split testing, all the better.
The shopping cart is so important, that almost any business should consider replacing their system if they can’t easily and quickly change the sequence, layout, button location, button text, page copy, promotion codes, trust badges, etc. As with product pages, small changes in these elements can result in big increases in conversion rates.
As of this writing, I can’t recommend any shopping carts systems that meet these criteria. Please offer your recommendations in the comments.
There are a variety of tactics to be explored within each of these make-or-break strategies: category pages, product pages and the purchase process. There are other strategies that may be equally important, and I welcome your input through the comments. Building an email list is one such strategy that comes immediately to mind. It can be a powerful conversion tool for businesses whose customers purchase frequently. I’ll write more about this strategy in my next installment when we talk about the “considered purchase” pattern.
It gives you the force to fly free of your industry Whac-a-mole table by slashing your online sales costs.
Be free, my plastic mole friends!
Photo courtesy O Mighty Crisis Blog.
This article by Brian Massey was first published on Search Engine Land
Knowing Your Customer (Podcast)
Conversion Marketing Strategy, CRO Tests | Multivariate | AB TestingValentin Radu is a businessman, a successful businessman, who believes knowing your customer is fundamental. He has built the first online car insurance company in Romania and sold it to within a few years.
So, if you’re Valentin, what do you do for an encore?
You build the tools you wish you had when you were building your business and offer them to other businesses so that they can be successful.
You can lead a horse to water, but he still won’t look good in a bikini.
Knowing Your Customer with Valentin Radu
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Resources and Links Discussed
Key Takeaways
It turns out that these exciting tools bump up against something less procedural, and more… human.
Imagine this: You are offered a magical machine that lets you read the thoughts of the people coming to your website. Not the personal stuff, just the stuff that applies to your business.
You can see how they solve problems. You can try different designs, different copy, different calls to action to see if they find it easier to buy. And you don’t have to redesign your website.
You can hear what they are trying to do and what is confusing them.
You can point them to the information they need at any time.
And the magic tools wouldn’t violate their privacy in any way.
You might be skeptical, of course. But would you be resistant to this?
The answer is, that you probably would be. This is human. There are a number of biases that all humans harbor. These biases — confirmation bias, availability bias, novelty bias, survivorship bias — work together to keep us doing what we’ve always done, even when we clearly need change.
Fortunately, humans are also social animals. Our biases can be up-ended by the behaviors of others. When we talk about using social signals to change human behavior, we are talking about Culture.
In a company, culture is a huge, powerful lever. This also makes it difficult to move, especially if you are not a leader in your company. You can feel like Sisyphus, pushing that bolder up the hill. Over and over agin.
The opportunity, however, is great. Marketing has always been about knowing your customer. We’ve never had access to more information about our customers. Will you be an agent of knowledge or will you remain mired in your biases?
Understanding Your Customers
When a visitor arrives on your site what is it that you want them to do? Well most marketers would say first, you want them to buy. And then you want them to come back.
This is the charge.
Getting them to buy and come back is the charge. But here’s the challenge.
How do you know what made your customer buy to begin with? Who is your buyer? How do you know the action they took when they first landed on your site? How do you get the freedom as a marketer to experiment, to look at the data, to understand the data in order to make decisions to increase conversions?
And when you get the answers to those questions, how do you get buy-in from leaders in the organization to make the pivots needed based on the data?
Knowing your customer is key to marketing and conversion success.
Experimenting with Your Marketing
These are the questions we explore in this episode. Experimenting with your marketing is the only way that you can truly know what is working. It’s the only way you can succeed. Marketing and status quo cannot go together. At least for my listeners.
You might be thinking, that all sounds great Brian, but how do I influence change to allow for more more experimentation and effect true company growth?
Omniconvert is a CRO tool that helps marketers increase conversion rates. From surveys to overlays – it’s a marketers sandbox. You can find out more by connecting with me or head on over to omniconvert dot com.
When you get back to the office.
When you get back to the office, I suggest that you start using a little data in your decision-making process. You can start with some data that is already “laying around.”
When was the last time you looked at what your PPC and Facebook ad team were doing? Many digital marketers don’t spend a lot of time with the advertising, but there are some real gems of growth here.
And most of us are doing some sort of advertising.
Call down to your ad team and ask them for a spreadsheet of all of the ads they’ve been running. Go back six months or even a year. Ask for the ad text, the number of impressions, the number of clicks, the cost per click and the link URL. This is easy for them to generate. If they can track conversions, definitely ask for conversions for each ad.
Then spend some time with this data. You’ll understand:
From this, you can begin to find opportunities for growth.
Are you using words like the best clicked ads? Are you sending good clicks to bad pages? And is there a better place to send traffic than the home page? The answer is yes, by the way.
Then share your findings with at least one other person.
You have just begun culture change. You radical, you.
Alright scientists, that’s it for this week.
Knowing Your Customer with Valentin Radu
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