Nine Reasons Your Customers Aren’t Converting and Tools To Find Out Why
May Marketing Madness Usability Week, Post #30
By Conversion Rate Experts
Turning visitors into customers can be hard. It’s even harder if you don’t know exactly what they want or how to convince them to take action.
In this article, we’ve listed nine common reasons why visitors don’t convert and some tools to help you find out why.
Reason 1: You’re Ignoring The Mud Tracks on Your Website
For a long time, visitors to New York’s Central Park were taking shortcuts across the grassy areas, leaving ugly, well-worn mud tracks across them. The park’s planners took an unusual decision: instead of trying to prevent people from taking these routes, they encouraged them to do so by paving them. The planners acknowledged that the routes revealed the ideal placement of the tracks. These dirt tracks were an example of what designers called desire paths. Desire paths are clues as to how users would like to behave.
For Central Park’s planners, it was easy to see the desire paths’ grass turns brown when walked upon. However, many of the desire paths on your website can only be seen using technology. Here are some tools for making them visible:
Tools
- You can use 4Q to find out why visitors failed to convert
- By installing Kampyle or Opinion Lab onto your site, you can gather feedback from customers, so you can hear their suggestions.
- ClickTale’s Mouse Click Heatmaps can be used to identify if users are clicking on unclickable images
Read More »
The Skimming Effect
May Marketing Madness Content Week, Post #19
By Adam Greco
Senior Partner, Web Analytics Demystified
While every business hopes people read everything in glorious detail on their website, the truth is that in today’s busy world of 140 characters, people skim content. It is the reason CNN puts bullets at the top of its articles because it knows people are too lazy to read the entire thing!
I can illustrate the skimming effect in a fun story…As a frequent blogger, I often write pages of (what I think) is super-useful information. I spend time thinking about the content, come up with good examples and do my best to structure it in a way that makes sense to the reader. The same is true for any website content. However, I never really knew how people consume my content. Using web analytics I could see which blog posts were more popular than others and look at time spent on the page for an indication of interest. I thought I was pretty good.
Letting Go of Your Links – Customer Experience Strategy
May Marketing Madness Content Week, Post #18
Links are a wonderful way to supply additional data and improve SEO for your online business. However, if you are not careful, they can also be incredibly distracting. Trying to give visitors all necessary links he/she needs to make a purchase is a great customer experience strategy in some cases, but it’s important to think about your visitors and their cognitive capabilities.
Some Food For Thought
Upon arrival to each page, the visitor is required to process all engagement options the page offers. These include clicking on menu links, buttons, in-text links, etc. Each additional link adds more to the cognitive process. In addition, since clicking links is a standard behavior and offers no risk (unlike clicking a form submit CTA), the chance of a customer clicking a link which takes him/her outside the path to conversion can be high, TOO high.
While optimizing internal links on your site as part of your customer experience strategy, take into consideration your industry, product and marketing channels.
SEO
Sometimes marketers overdo their internal linking for SEO keywords on other pages of their website. Don’t forget your visitors are human, and therefore might be confused and overloaded by the options presented to them. So, keep your keyword links to a minimum.
Ecommerce
Think about the checkout counter in a brick and mortar store. How would you react if the cashier offered you the chance to go back to the store’s entrance to double check products you’re about to buy? Would you get out of line and really go check? Links on your checkout page make this decision way too easy, and many customers have no problem leaving and never coming back to make a purchase.
(Info)Graphic It Up
May Marketing Madness Content Week, Post #16
Visuals are powerful and can often communicate a message much faster than words.
Visuals are vital for online businesses. We need to wow, reassure, and make our sales without the “in-store advantageâ€. So, in order to make up for the products/services visitors can’t touch, test, try on, or sample, we need to offer significant qualitative data on our websites. Adding images/infographics is not a bad start.
Images and infographics, in addition to adding to aesthetic value to your site, serve multiple functions.
Reduce Text Content
While text is necessary for communicating valuable information, attractive visuals can give customers that extra push towards making a purchase, reading your blog, opening up your newsletters, and/or simply enjoying your website.
Read More »
Stellar Newsletters That Sell
May Marketing Madness Content Week, Post #15
Everyone sends newsletters, right? And why not, as they should be a great way to communicate with your business community. However, we all know that getting a good click-through/conversion rate from a newsletter is not easy. The risks are high – if your customers consider your newsletters to be spam, newsletters may have the exact opposite effect you hoped for.
So the question is, how do you create great newsletters? Newsletters that convert…newsletters that your community wants to read and enjoy…The kind that will get your community excited about, and involved and engaged with your product?
Here are 3 tips, taken directly from my inbox – from the newsletters I really enjoy receiving.
1. Make the Title Appealing
Writing a title to your newsletter is an art form. Many of your readers will glance at the title for a fraction of a second and use it to decide whether to open the newsletter or just delete it. Therefore,the title needs to fit your product and your community. The title can be provocative, or tempting, to create a question or a sense of agreement, and most importantly – the body of the newsletter needs to match the title. Don’t make promises in the title that you do not keep inside the newsletter itself.
It may be worthwhile to test a few titles, and see which one is performing better. The title is important, I think that is already clear.
2. Provide Meaningful Content
The best newsletters are those that teach us something, that give added value. It can be added value directly related to your product such as an announcement of a new feature, it can be insights that are derived from your system, or it can be completely unrelated to your service.
A great example for such a newsletter was LinkedIn’s newsletter at the end of 2010. They used their knowledge of your specific professional network, and what each of the members of your network did in the past year. The newsletter displayed a list of your contacts that had changed jobs in the past year. It was informative, derived directly from the product, and it was even presented beautifully… see tip no. 3.
Some of our favorite newsletters are just beautiful. Jetsetter does a great job at providing meaningful content subscribers want to read.
3. Make It Beautiful
Some of our favorite newsletters are just beautiful. In effect, that is another way of providing meaningful content. Some newsletters are just so beautiful, that they make you want to open them, just to see what visual treats are waiting for you this week.
Checking Out the Competition
May Marketing Madness Online Strategy Week, Post #13
When making changes to your own website it always pays to check out the competition. By identifying who your main competitors are, and recognizing their strengths and weaknesses, you can target your own customer base more effectively.
First Step: Identify your competition
When identifying your major competitors, don’t only focus on companies and websites that produce a similar product to you, but on any website that targets the same audience. For example, online gaming websites should not only check out the big websites in the industry, but should also take some time to look at other entertainment, forex or day-trading sites. Use tools like Alexa to find out what other sites your visitors go to, and make sure you take them all into consideration.
Healthy competition never hurts anyone.
Step 2: Check out competing websites
Once you’ve identified your top competitors, take a thorough look at each of their websites, noting each segment of their site in a comprehensive table. Do they have a blog which highlights their product? How about a news section, keeping their customers up to date with what the company is up to? What methods do they offer to get in contact? Are they pushing any social media or other external links on their homepage, and which of these links could work for you? Finally, ALWAYS read through competitors FAQs, because you can guarantee your customers are asking exactly the same questions.
Corporate Identities – Keep It Consistent, Know Yourself
By Anne Scharlow, Head of Conversion, Clickthinking
May Marketing Madness Online Strategy Week, Post #12
Your Corporate Identity (CI) creates the general perception of your brand and how it is positioned within the market. It can also go a long way in differentiating you from your competitors.Although a logo is a quintessential representation, it is not the only component of your brand’s image. Your product, people, consistent quality and a true understanding of your target market should be reflected in every aspect of a business and at every point of contact. However, theory is only one side; implementation is where it gets tricky.
Experiences With Digital
Simply put, we’ve found that even large global brands have not yet recognized digital as a fully established marketing channel and thus CI guidelines are either not in place, not readily accessible to digital agencies, or simply too strict to be followed in the digital environment. Read More »
Website Customer Experience and Social Buzz in a Viral World
May Marketing Madness Online Strategy Week, Post #11
The internet is the ultimate digital diary for both the satisfied AND disappointed customer. Whether it is through social networks such as Twitter or Facebook, or on blogs and site reviews, etc, World Wide Web users like to rave or vent about their website customer experiences. Businesses today can’t afford selling a bad product or providing a bad service, as word simply “gets aroundâ€. They need to go above and beyond.
Exceeding Expectations
Did you know that 64% of shoppers read reviews always or most of the time before making a purchase? A good customer experience usually gets positive responses and comments. Zappos is one success story of an online store that decided to give customers outstanding (unheard of at the time!) service, including 2-way Free shipping, 365 day return policy AND 24/7 call center. They put their emphasis on pleasing, not pricing, on service, not sales.
Although their advertising costs were minimal, Zappos succeeded in growing from $1.6M gross revenue in 2000 to $370M in 2005. In 2009, Amazon bought Zappos for $1.2 billion. Most of its growth is as a result of the Word-Of-Mouth effect. It proved that it’s not just about giving a good website customer experience; it’s about giving an outstanding one, one that will generate the big buzz you’re looking for.
Quick Tips To Put Your Customers in the Driver’s Seat
May Marketing Madness Online Strategy Week, Post #10
Customers come first, right? Right. So all decisions made on your website are to please them, suit their needs, and answer their questions. As we have learned from previous posts in this series, converting customers is about giving them control over their individual web experiences.
Here are a few ways to put your customers in the driver’s seat and strengthen your business.
Search Box AND Navigation Menu
Let your visitors decide how they would like to browse your site. Some know exactly what to type into the search box while others need to be given a menu bar as a frame of reference. First time visitors might not know what you have to offer while returning visitors with an item in mind want to get straight to business.
Product Number View
Allow customers to choose how many products they would like to appear on a page at a time. Whether they are scrollers or non scrollers, iPad or 24†inch screen users, each customer profile wants to be able to view your product pages differently. It’s a small gesture that can go a long way.
Read More »
How To Profile Your Customers and Target Your Traffic
May Marketing Madness Online Strategy Week, Post #9
One of the first questions when building or trying to improve a website is – who is the site meant for? To answer this question you first have to define the main aim of your website, and what a conversion means to you.
The main aims of a website usually include:
• to provide information
• to create a community
• to sell-sell-sell!
• and many others
Based on the aim of your website, you define what a “conversion” means to you – does it mean the visitor buys something? Does it mean that they spend a long time and read many pages? Does it mean they register to receive your newsletter? Or do they leave their details?
Not All Visitors Are Created Equal
Once the aim is defined and you know what conversion means to you, you can also define who your site is meant for. It is very rare that a site is meant for one specific, well defined, targeted visitor profile. In most cases (I would even go as far as saying in 99% of the cases), you will have more than one user profile.
