Conversion Optimisation - Are You Closing the Deal?

Step 2: Optimise

Every conversion process, from attracting the first clicks to landing on the goal page can be seen as a series of steps, each one with its own drop-off in clicks. For example, the click path below illustrates the percentage of visitors reaching the site that make it through each step in the purchase process, right through to actual payment. Essentially, only 10 out of every 100 visitors in this case reach the desired goal.

Conversion Optimisation sets out to reduce this mid process drop-off through page redesigns and usability improvements. By reducing the vast drop-off between stages 1 and 2 of the purchase process, the overall conversion rate of a site can be greatly improved.

There are many techniques that can be used to improve conversion rates, depending on which area is being improved. A better landing page can reduce the drop-off between a PPC click and adding a product to the shopping cart.

At the end of the day there are nearly infinite ways in which you can tackle optimising your conversion rate and each case of optimising a website should in large part be unique to its subject. However, there are some points of advice that are generally regarded as common wisdom.

One of the most important aspects of Conversion Optimisation is keeping visitors focused on their goals. To do this it is important to maintain a highly visible and influential click path from the landing page to the goal/action page that is as short as possible. The more links and irrelevant distractions that are present on a site, the less likely visitors are to remain focused on achieving your desired objectives.

Find out if people are looking for something specifically and whether it can be tied to a source. Don't take people to your homepage by default if they're looking for specific keywords and are clicking through on designated links or (more importantly) are coming through a PPC campaign. Again, keep them focussed on the defined goal. If they have a head start over the other customers don't peg them back by forcing them to the start of a specific click path. Rather, let them enter where they are most comfortable thereby keeping the path to conversion as short as possible.

One of the biggest toss-ups in Conversion Optimisation is between having the minimum amount of required content from customers necessary to encourage action versus obtaining as much relevant information from a captive audience as possible. Knowledge about your customers is gold dust in any form of marketing, and the best source of information is always the customer himself. But in this day and age consumers are very nervous about giving away any personal details lest they be used for spam or scams. On top of this you want to keep the path to conversion as short as possible - there are few more effective ways of chasing visitors away from a website than by asking them to fill out droves of questionnaire forms.

One possible way of dealing with this is by not abandoning your consumers once they have achieved your defined goals. After consumers have taken action (often in the form of a purchase) don't abandon them - rather offer reassurance to do away with any post-purchase dissonance and show thanks for the business transaction. Asking for a telephone number or email address before a visitor completes a transaction might seem like an attempt to capture personal information for the sake of spam and may scare visitors away. Asking for this very information after the transaction has been completed can demonstrate that you care about the customer and want to ensure that the channels of communication are open for you to contact him should anything go wrong with the order.

Remember that it's not always about one visit to your site and one transaction, but ideally you want to encourage repeat visitors who will become more and more comfortable with the process.

Other rules of thumb to consider

Identify what the most important thing is to communicate to your site's visitors
Keep critical elements above the fold
Use formulaic, tried and tested headlines. If possible test prices and other marketing elements - it's a well documented fact that something marked at $19.99 is more likely to sell than something going for $20.00
Add a sense of urgency to show what visitors will be missing out if they don't take action (e.g. Claim this voucher before the end of May)
Make important and captivating words prominent as people tend to skim-read
Place your most popular material on the landing pages
Reassure customers that you don't want their details for spam purposes - insert an anti-spam statement, or else include a lot of "we hate spam" statements on the pages
Display certificates or testimonials from established voices around where customers need to enter their credit card details
Try to show the customer straight away that they're getting a better deal here than anywhere else
Make lots of offline avenues available to the customers. Many times they need offline support to complete an online transaction. A helpline number with a human voice at the other end can lend a lot of credibility to a site. This can act as a safety net, so that if your online avenues fail you still haven't lost the customer
Develop a personal feel. A blog, an "about us" page or charity work can do a lot to make visitors feel more comfortable about a site
Try to pre-empt customers' problems - both online problems and offline ones that they may seek to resolve online. Customers don't always know why they're visiting a site, or may not yet have articulated a need to themselves
And last, but definitely not least, make sure that you optimise for both Firefox and Internet Explorer!

Tricky, but Worth It

Conversion Optimisation is a delicate science. Pay attention to too many stats and you'll get yourself lost in a deluge of irrelevant data chasing a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. Pay attention to too few and you're likely to miss some key pieces of information that, if correctly acted upon, could increase your site's revenue by an astronomical figure. The same holds true for optimisation that does for analysing - try to capture too much information about your consumers and you may scare them away, but if you don't implement an information capturing path structure, valuable interactions between your site and your consumers will be going to waste.

When one considers the sheer amount of factors at play in these interactions one realises just how easy it is to completely miss the point of optimising a site. The pay off is that when you get it right, conversion rate increases of 50% are not unheard of.

Worth the effort? You better believe it.

Coming Soon: Chapter 15. What should you expect?

Over the past few months we've taken you through each of the various eMarketing tactics and in the 15th and final chapter of the eMarketing 101 series we'll be presenting a case study that will round off this introductory course.

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