By John Ekman

Chief Conversionista, Conversionista!

 

In the 90′s I studied Engineering Physics for one year at the Technical University of Lausanne, Switzerland. I studied stuff like Quantum Mechanics, Solid State Physics, Complex Analysis and similar. In French. No kidding. It was not easy, but actually not as hard as you might think. However, during this year I NEVER managed to to buy bread in the bakery without being hassled. Here’s how it unfolded:

I went into the bakery, approached the lady behind the counter and spoke to her in French  -which  by this time was pretty decent:

- “Good morning, I would like two pieces of the dark little round bread with seeds which is on the second shelf, to the far right, thank you very much.”

Only silence.

Then: “Vous parlez de Pain de Siègle de Campagne Vaudois ???!!”, accompanied by a soul-penetrating gaze. As close as you can get to a slap in the face without actually delivering it.

The Bakery lady meant that if I had the audacity to come into her nice little bakery then I certainly should use HER language. How could I have the nerve to just walk in there and point at things without calling them by their proper names?!

 

So what do Swiss bakery ladies have in common with your web site?

Way too much unfortunately. Most sites have some point where they give their visitors a good old slap-in-the-face, if the visitor has the audacity not to use the proper language which should be used on that fine site.

Below I have some examples of the validation of Swedish Personal ID (social security) numbers. Although your site might not deal with such numbers you most certainly can use these ideas for your own validation of dates, postal codes, vehicle registration numbers and similar.

The examples below show perfectly valid variations of the same Swedish social security number. I was born on the 21st of March in 1965 so the first string is my birth date. It can be given with our without the initial “19”, and the separator can be a hyphen, a space or no space, like so:

19650321-8937

650321-8937

196503218937

6503218937

19650321 8937

650321 8937

 

Different sites use different formats but only one is correct in their little (bakery) shop.

So, if you write your social security number in any other way than “their way”, they’ll give you an error message which is the equivalent of a Swiss palm in the face. For example:

 

Trygg Hansa (Top Insurance company)

“The social security number you entered is incorrect.” Wow, that was not so fun to learn.

Should I seek help with the authorities to correct it?

 

 

SEB(Top bank)

SEB do something which is quite common. They only allow only ten digits in the field where you enter the number (= the format  YYMMDDXXX). If one decides to write “19″ at the beginning or a hyphen before the last four digits, you simply can’t enter the entire number, and it becomes “automatic failure”.

Then they tell you: “The social security number is not correct.” Oops, I really must have a bad number.

 

Tretti.se (Top E-commerce site)

Wrong number. “You must enter a valid number.” But hey, wasn’t that exactly

what I was trying to do?!

 

 

 

NetOnNet.se (Top E-commerce site)

“You have entered an invalid number.” Please give me a break, I’m trying my best here.

 

In addition to annoying their users, these sites do themselves a disservice. They get lower conversion rates and poorer outcome on their campaigns.

 

Validation – How should you do it then?

Ok, now you understand what I am getting at and it’s easy to talk others down. “Do it better yourself then, if you’re so damn smart,” you might think.

Sure. I will.

For starters: Accept all normal variations that the user may enter without any hassle. In the case of a Swedish Personal ID number – start with the six variations I wrote at the beginning of the article.

If you speak to your tech people they will tell you there are all kinds of methods you can use to “Parse”, “Scrub” or “Append” a text input string, so that whatever the user types in it’ll be passed along in the clean correct format you want.

 

“Put the blame on yourself, not on the user”

Secondly, if you still have to give an error message – blame yourself, not the user. Here is a suggested text:

“We could not figure out which number you meant. Write it in the format YYMMDDXXX and we’ll do the best we can.”

So do your visitors and yourself a favor: stop being a Swiss bakery lady. Stop giving your visitors a slap in the face and you will see that your conversion rate will increase.

 

(This post originally appeared at http://www.conversionista.se/validering-personnummer/ in Swedish)

 

About the Author

John Ekman is the founder and CEO of Conversionista! He is regarded as a Swedish authority on Conversion Rate Optimization. According to John, a Conversionista is someone deeply and crazily passionate about improving Conversion Rates. John has a long history in the optimization of online businesses going back to 1996.

See John Live!

John will be presenting a session on “What Have E-tailers Learned from Retailers? Absolutely nothing!” at Conversion Conference West 2012 in San Francisco, California. See the full agenda and read more about this session.

Want to save on your Conversion Conference Registration? Follow John on Twitter to touch base and request for a discount code!

 

 

 

 

By Robert Brady

Director of PPC Conversion, Trafficado

 

Pay-per-click (PPC) advertising is popular with internet marketers because you can track everything. You know exactly what search queries are triggering your ads, you know how much each click costs, you know which ad gets the highest click-through rate (CTR) and you know which clicks turn into actual conversions. This transparency and accountability is how I sell PPC to my clients and it’s how I demonstrate the value of ongoing efforts. But even if you have a great ROI, is there more you could learn from your PPC?

 

Learn from Clicks

You’re probably already testing at least two different ads in each ad group and rotating out the underperforming ad(s) on a regular basis. That’s great. It helps improve your CTR, your Quality Score (QS) improves, your account history is strengthening, your cost-per-click (CPC) goes down or your avg. position improves. That’s a lot of benefits, but what is it telling you about your customers? Take the following example:

First, you may be tempted to pause Ad #2 because it has lower CTR. However, we see that Ad #2 has a much higher CR, which led to a lower cost/conversion. Therefore, you would likely pause Ad #1 to get less expensive conversions. In addition to the performance boost, what else can you learn from this? Here are some additional learnings.

• The inquisitive call to action “How affordable?” gets better CTR, but it appeals most to price shoppers who don’t convert.
• The positive imagery of Ad #2, “Make your yard beautiful…” primes the user to convert.
• Mentioning Minnesota didn’t help CTR like I expected, but the “localness” may be increasing conversion.

 

Turn Learning Into Action

The 3 learnings above are great, but how can you act on that insight? Here are follow-up tests to help you learn even more about your customers:

• You like the higher CTR with the “How affordable?” copy, so test a landing page that offers 3 quotes from local providers. By doing the legwork for price shoppers you can capture customers earlier in the buying cycle.
• Positive mental imagery works with the ad copy, so extend it into the landing page copy. Test using more pictures of beautiful lawns. Maybe customers need an idea of what their lawn could be with a little help.
• Take the “localness” to the next level. Target campaigns to cities like Minneapolis or St. Paul. Maybe even suburbs like Ramsey, Anoka and Brooklyn Park. Make sure the landing page supports it too.

 

Get Started

Your PPC is doing great. CTR is good, conversion rates are healthy and ROI is positive. But you still have the chance to get even more out of your PPC as you look at your results and analyze what the data tells you about your customers. As you learn more about your customers you’ll be able to produce even better results. But that’s enough reading, get to it!

 

About the Author

 

Robert is a Google AdWords Certified Partner, Microsoft adExcellence member and is certified with Marketing Experiments for Online Testing and Landing Page Optimization. He has worked with a variety of different companies ranging from a small grass-fed beef grower in Idaho to a large B2B data storage provider.

He currently resides in Provo, Utah and can often be found skiing the greatest snow on earth, mountain biking through the Wasatch mountains or playing ultimate Frisbee at the park on a Saturday morning.

See Robert Live!

Robert will be presenting a session on “End to End PPC Conversion Optimization – From User Intent through Leaky Funnel Forensics” at Conversion Conference West 2012 in San Francisco, California. See the full agenda and read more about this session.

Want to save on your Conversion Conference Registration? Follow Robert on Twitter to say hello to him and request for a discount code!

 

By Eric J. Hansen

Founder and CEO, SiteSpect

 

You already know that running multivariate tests can help you improve the usability and effectiveness of your site, but where do you start? Typically you want to examine your web analytics framework and truly understand the most important metrics, known as key performance indicators (KPIs), behind your business goals. Those KPIs, in turn, can be correlated to site factors that can be tested. This blog post will look at how to turn metrics into testable factors, A/B versus multivariate testing, and 5 key errors to avoid when getting started.

 

Starting at the beginning

If you don’t already use a web analytics framework for your website, it’s high time you start. This framework will make your goals and their measurement explicit and keep you focused on what’s important. Almost every website wants to achieve one or more RACR goals; that is, Reach, Acquisition, Conversion, and/or Retention. If you are focused on more than one of these goals for your business, you’ll want to set up a different framework for each of them, as you’ll be focusing on different metrics and therefore different factors to test.

 

Framing the big picture

 Let’s look at a very simple web analytics framework for Conversion using a hypothetical online retailer as an example:

 

Business objective	Website goals	KPIs	Target	Metrics	Dimensions	Segments
Sell goods	Increase online revenue	Average order value	$25.00 per order	# of sales per day	Geography	US vs. Europe

 

With this framework, we now have enough information to figure out which site elements, or factors, to test in order to understand which of them influences visitor behavior. Obviously, you will want track those pages and areas of the site that users click on in the conversion funnel, such as the “Buy Now” button and resulting “Thank You” pages.

Here are some of the things you could test and measure in support of an e-commerce website:

• What elements of the website led to the most “Add to Cart” clicks, followed by successful order completion pages (e.g. “Thank you for your order”)?
• Which combination of product information such as graphics, descriptions, layout, and color increased average order value?
• What combination of factors relating to site search most successfully brought users to pages from which they ultimately purchased products?
• Consider testing coupons and promotions.
• Test offers such as free shipping or financing.
• What about credibility factors, such as logos denoting secure credit card processing?
• Does the availability, placement, or look and feel of customer reviews and testimonials make a difference on purchase decisions?

Those are just a few things to think about. You’ll want to start with the factor(s) you think is most important to your KPI(s) and decide what experimental design is best. With A/B testing, you test one factor, such as a call-to-action button or a hero shot, against one or more variations to see which is most persuasive. While A/B testing allows you to test just one factor at a time, multivariate testing enables you to test many changes simultaneously. Evaluating the impact of combinations of factors and variations often reveals significant interaction effects that can have a dramatic impact on your conversion goals.

 

Common errors to avoid

There are five common mistakes that are easy to make when running multivariate tests. Here’s one of them:

1. Improper factoring caused by poor or no isolation of individual test changes; for example, changing a headline’s text, font color, and font size, all at the same time as an A/B test instead of a multivariate test.Why is this problematic? Because it’s difficult or impossible to isolate the impact of each individual change — i.e., was it the font color and/or the text that caused the visitor to behave differently?

Please join me at my session during Conversion Conference West on March 5 at 10:15 to learn the other errors to avoid and help you prepare your website for testing.

 

About Eric J. Hansen

Eric is the CEO and founder of SiteSpect, and the chief architect of the firm’s non-intrusive technology for multivariate testing, behavioral targeting and digital marketing optimization. He is a frequent speaker at conferences covering web analytics and optimization, and writes regularly on topics dealing with the intersection of marketing and technology.

 

Learn more MVT planning secrets from Eric!

Eric will be presenting a session on “The Essential MVT Roadmap: Test Planning Secrets to Ensure Success” at Conversion Conference West 2012 in San Francisco, California. See the full agenda and read more about this session.

Want to save on your Conversion Conference Registration? Follow him on Twitter and request a discount code.

By John Lawson
CEO, 3rd Power, Inc

Magic Lanterns

Have you ever heard of a magic lantern?  Unless you’re an avid history buff, the answer is probably not.  The magic lantern marked the beginning of modern society’s fascination with visual images.

In the mid- to late- 1800s, different investors experimented with glass slides viewed with a projector (all operated by hand of course).  The idea of projecting images from glass plates (usually onto a wall; screens came later) began many years before photography came on the scene.  Magic lanterns became popular as an accompaniment for speakers on the lecture circuit. This became the precursor to slide presentations and the movies.

Moving Pictures

Moving pictures – the silent films – took the nation by storm in the early 1900s.  In 1903, most Americans had never even heard of a picture show, let alone a moving picture theater.  By 1910 there were nearly 10,000 theaters across the country and movie-making had become a million dollar industry.

And we were never the same again.

From Then Until Now

We follow the trail of the movies as it transitioned over to television.  From there it grew to personal computers and now to handheld computers and smart phones.  The public’s fascination with visual medium has never slacked but rather has grown exponentially.

Now couple this growth of visual venues with the emergence of Web 2.0 and social media marketing.  It’s what some are calling the perfect marketing storm.

It is the combination of social media and online video converging as a marketing strategy.  Voila!  Meet social video!

Social Video

Social video is an interweaving of video sharing sites (YouTube for instance – but there are many more) with social media outlets such as FaceBook and Twitter.

You may be wondering what this has to do with you and the growth of your business.  The answer is simple.  For those who pay no heed to this exploding phenomenon do so at their own peril – in the business sense at least.

Stop and consider your own marketing and advertising strategies.  If you still think a few stock photos on your website, or awesome photos displayed in your online catalog, are putting you at the head of the game – think again.  That is fast becoming old school.

Why Videos Are Vital

Today’s savvy consumers have never lost their hunger for all things visual.  Additionally, they are now looking for value-laden content, and at the same time are looking for – and expecting – interaction.

In this series of articles, Social Media Marketing With Video, you will learn why it’s vital in today’s business economy to include videos in your overall marketing plan.  Among other things, video marketing:

• sets you apart from your competition,
• gives you a stronger standing with search engines.
• establishes you as a distinct personality
• builds your personal brand

Summary

Think of that forward-thinking speaker on the lecture circuits in 1840.  If his advance flyers heralded the fact that his talk would be accompanied by magic lantern slides, the number of tickets sold would far exceed those of the speaker who relied on his personal presentation alone.

Take a lesson here.  Video marketing is exploding all over the Internet.  It’s easy to learn, simple to produce, and will greatly enhance your online presence.

Social video marketing is too important to ignore.

About the Author

John is the CEO of 3rd Power Outlet and the founder of the award-winning ecommerce industry blog at ColderICE.com. John is an Platinum eBay Power Seller, Top-Rated Amazon Seller, Social Media Personality and ecommerce analyst for Wall-Street firms. John specializes in ecommerce, social rich-media marketing and mobile commerce. He is a dynamic and entertaining speaker whose presentations are packed with usable, actionable information.

See John Live!

John will be speaking with Mike Volpe, from Hubspot in a session titled, “Monetizing Your Traffic – Turning Blogs & Social Media into Conversion Gold ” at Conversion Conference East 2011 in New York City. See the full agenda and read more about this session.

Want to save on your Conversion Conference Registration? Check out John’s blog ColderICE and follow him on Twitter and request a discount code!

The following is an interview with Ben Jesson from Conversion Rate Experts, conducted by Dave Chaffey from Smart Insights.

Many web consultants have relevant-but-similar backgrounds. They’re experts at design, or pay-per-click advertising, or another standard specialty.

But when I recently met Ben Jesson and Karl Blanks from Conversion Rate Experts their background didn’t fit the norm. Their company was founded when a real-life rocket scientist teamed up with an internet marketing specialist to look at websites through unconventional eyes.

This unusual perspective has turned out to be highly profitable for their clientele, which includes firms like Google, Vodafone, and Sony.

In this interview we ask them about the processes they use to increase leads or sales from an online business and have included links to a lot of the tools they use.

What is Conversion rate optimization?

 
Q1. We’re seeing a lot more companies working now on CRO. What is it? Is it more than landing page optimisation?

Yes, it should be. Landing page optimisation focuses on one page. We coined the term Conversion Rate Optimization (“CRO”) in 2007 to describe the process of optimizing the business itself. It’s really commercial optimization

A proper job of CRO includes the review of the entire process from the initial lead-generation ad, all the way through to the post-sale follow-up. The real goal is to identify which parts of the sales funnel will yield the greatest wins with the least amount of work.

That means it’s necessary to bring a lot of disciplines to the party, including understanding traffic sources, visitor psychology, and the company’s position in the marketplace, including its core strengths and weaknesses. On top of that there’s usability testing, copywriting, and web design factors to look at.

All these elements go into creating hypotheses for testing. We’re maniacal about testing, because we’ve seen too many businesses merely throw a series of “best practices” against the wall to see if anything sticks. Best practices should not be the answer to optimizing a website, but merely one starting point for formulating a test strategy.

Once we determine what truly works for a particular website, then we examine how our findings might be used in other media channels. For instance a better series of benefit statements might be transferrable to direct mail or email autoresponder campaigns—subject to testing in those media, of course.

The business case

 
Q2. How do you help companies persuade colleagues of the returns from CRO, the business case?

It’s easy; we explain that CRO allows companies to generate more revenue without spending more on advertising. It’s about getting a higher return from the existing ad spend.

Unlike certain industries like public relations, the entire foundation of CRO is based on data, measurement, and testing. You don’t need to present arguments when the data can do the talking for you. Once you measure the value of visitors, conversions, and sales, then it’s simple arithmetic to show how, say, a 10% boost in conversions would help the bottom line.

Here’s another powerful side-benefit: When you optimise your funnel and bring in more revenues, you then have earned a luxury: You get to decide whether to pocket those profits or plough them back into even more advertising, thus distancing yourself even further from your competitors. It’s a nice problem to have.

Identifying the biggest opportunities

 
Q3. What approaches do you use to decide which part of a site needs most urgent attention?

FORTUNE magazine called what we do “a combination of multivariate statistical analysis and good old-fashioned detective work” and that pretty well describes our approach.

It’s often very useful to map out your entire sales/conversion funnel and make sure it’s being comprehensively measured in whatever web analytics package you prefer.

Then you should look for the biggest drop-offs from one step to the next. We like to say that we look for the “blocked arteries” (that is, pages—or page elements—that get loads of visitors but are underperforming). How do you know if something is underperforming? Clues come from a range of feedback mechanisms: the analytics data, usability tests, surveys, customer support feedback … and, of course, gut feel. Of course, we have the advantage of having been engaged by companies on several continents and in many industries, so we have a good knowledgebase of what’s good and what’s bad. See our list of effective tactics and strategies.

What mistakes limit conversion?

 
Q4. Give some examples of the most common “conversion rate killers” you see.

Killer #1: Not split testing. Many people think they’re done if they take action to make changes to their site. In reality they’re only “done” when tests show that the changes in fact improved conversions. Installing a “best practice” magic button that another site swears by might actually lower conversions. Despite the popularity of video, Google once discovered through tests that video reduced conversions on one of its pages. You simply must test to find out.

Not long ago, multivariate testing software cost more than £5,000 per month. Now you can use Google Website Optimizer and other software packages for free, so there’s really no excuse. We created a tool, called Which Multivariate, which helps you to select the best software for multivariate testing.

Killer #2 is “meek tweaking”—in other words, making changes that are never likely to have a significant effect.

Killer #3 is asking for the sale on the first visit. It’s often a good idea to test the creation of a multi-step conversion funnel, in which you provide great value before you ask for the order. Comparison charts, forums, special reports, and email marketing are examples of elements that allow you to provide good information, ask for names, cultivate a relationship and thereby improve the chances of a sale.

We recently gave a talk on 15 Common Causes of Conversion Death

What are the latest approaches?

 
Q5. Are you seeing any innovative design techniques that are helping conversions?

Excellent design is a prerequisite for conversion, but the biggest breakthroughs tend to be the new tools and techniques for gathering insights into the visitor’s mindset.

Excellent design is a prerequisite for conversion, but the biggest breakthroughs tend to be the new tools and techniques for gathering insights into the visitor’s mindset.

For determining how visitors interact with a site we often use both Clicktale and CrazyEgg.

KISSInsights and Ethnio are both good for asking your visitors to give you immediate feedback on your site. GazeHawk enables you to conduct an eye-tracking study on your site for a tiny fraction of the traditional cost.

Many of your readers will already know about how wireframing is important in order to get agreement on functional aspects before you take the time to make a site look good. We like Balsamiq for that purpose. [Editor - I use that too - a great simple wireframing tool for consultants and agencies]

Finally, your readers may want to get our free newsletter to see what a million-dollar landing page looks like, along with a graphical analysis. We call it that because it generated over a million dollars for one of our clients.

If you want even more examples of what’s possible with conversion improvement, watch the video in the header of our website.

About the Author

An internet marketing specialist, Ben co-founded Conversion Rate Experts after implementing almost every web marketing strategy, and concluding that conversion rate optimization is by far the biggest opportunity for most web businesses.

See Ben Live!

Ben will be speaking in two sessions at Conversion Conference East 2011 in New York City. The first with Charles Nicholls, of SeeWhy titled “The Science Behind Abandonment Recovery & 15 Tools That Reveal Why They Abandon” and the second titled “The Human Connection: Persuading Through Caring, Empathy and Emotion” with Kate O’Neill, from [meta]marketer. See the full agenda and read more about this session.

Want to save on your Conversion Conference Registration? Check out Ben’s website, Conversion Rate Experts and contact him for a discount code!

By Howard Kaplan
CEO Future Now

Contrary to what you may assume, Persuasion Architecture personas are not about identifying the “type” of each individual who visits your website so you can control exactly what you show them (ie – the goal is not to enable dynamically loaded content). Personas are about focusing your attention on the proper planning of scenarios (click-by-click pathways) specifically designed for each persona.  Doing this removes the need to identify a visitor’s type in advance, and the pressure of showing them just the right info- the web takes care of this for us!  As long as persona-driven content- content that is “just right” for each type of visitor, *or visitors behaving in each mode*, self-selection handles the rest.

For those new to PA Personas, a brief summary:

• Persuasion Architecture personas are rooted in behavior in the sense that they describe both a pace for gathering information/making decisions (quick vs. slow), and information bias (logical vs. emotional).
• Your sales process needs to account for and align with four different and identifiable ways of buying your products or services.
• It’s possible to cater to all four types of personas on one website, and even within one page of that site.

(Editor’s note: If you want more details, and to see what tools are out there to help you with your personas, please read our earlier piece, How to Practice Persuasion Architecture with Personas. )

Question:
Usually I like to have all the facts, and I spend lots of time weighing my options before I make my final decision. But at work I don’t have time for that, and I have to decide much more quickly.  What persona am I?

Answer: It’s irrelevant. 

Personas don’t represent groups of people as much as they represent groups of behaviors. I know this is hard to digest, but it actually makes things easier. If you let go of the false assumption that each of us has a type, and fits into one of these groups, things start to make a lot more sense. That’s because even though each of us has a preferred way of acting, and a preferred information focus, certain situations can make us act differently. This is one reason we here at FutureNow prefer to think of the personas as describing a mode of behavior rather than describing a particular kind of person.

I’ll use myself as an example to illuastrate

purchasing patterns to get a better understanding of how mode really works. I’m an admitted Competitive (I feel most comfortable with, and naturally gravitate toward, a quick decision-making pace and a logical information focus). But I don’t always act like a Competitive buyer.  Certain products or kinds of purchases cause my behaviors to skew toward other modes of behavior and decision-making. This is not uncommon, and explains why you might be able to see parts of yourself in each of the four personas for your company, or imagine different situations where you’ve exhibited distinctly different behavior from how you would act under “normal” circumstances.

Hmmmm… if personas are more about “mode” than they are “type,” I can see how that accounts for differences in my behavior patters. But what factors do I need to be aware of when it comes to figuring out how my customer’s modes might skew?

Great question!  One to keep in mind, while I introduce a tool that can help you develop your personas.

This is a tool we use that displays the questions you hear from your customers, the motivations, and topology of your personas within the context of the four mode quadrants. You can see evidence of the factors that influence your personas in the diagram we’ve been using in these posts. Here are some of the things you’ll want to think about as you take a stab at doing a Schizographic Diagram for your business:

1) Products, brands and companies frequently have a “type” or “mode” associated with them too, and that can be part of what causes a person’s preferred mode to skew toward another mode of behavior and decision-making when purchasing a particular item. Technical products with lots of details, like computer hardware, for example, tend to fall into the Methodical quadrant. This can cause even the spontaneous types to act more methodically when purchasing them. But that’s not to say you won’t have competitive or emotional buyers purchasing computer hardware.

2) The circumstances in which a person is making a purchase can also influence their mode. Think of someone who makes those kinds of purchases for their department at work. They purchased a secondary hard drive for a colleague’s computer last month, and now another colleague has come to them with a similar request.  They know just what they want, and where to go to get it. They are unlikely to need all the facts and details this time, because they already did that the last time they made a purchase. This situation is very different from the man looking for more storage for his home computer because he and his wife are about to have their first baby, and want to make sure they have enough storage for all the videos they plan to take in the next year or two.

3) Believe it or not, we may even shift modes several times while attempting to complete one purchase. Our stage in the buying process can influence our mode too. We may be much more methodical at earlier stages of the buying process, collecting lots of details, and comparing the stats for one product to those for another. But by the time we’ve narrowed down our options, it’s possible we’ve reverted to our naturally preferred mode of decision-making, and just want to read some testimonials to see what other people thought of the products, before we make our final decision.

The variety of reasons why people might have need of your product or service, the image your company presents, the nature of your product, and other factors that can skew persona behavior all will be evidenced in your Schizographic diagram. That’s where you’ll be able to see how those factors play out in your personas.

 

About the Author

Howard is a veteran in the Digital Marketing & Technology space, combining over a decade of experience both on the technology & engineering side with the customer-facing sides of the businesses he’s led. In addition to helping over 100 startups in his professional career increase their online conversion, he’s also consulted to major enterprise technology firms like HP, Webex, VMware and Intel. He currently serves as CEO of FutureNow, a pioneering Digital Marketing SaaS, helping clients generate more sales, leads & customer engagement through improved conversion.

Howard is known for his expertise in helping clients plan integrated sales & marketing campaigns, tightly measured and improved over time for optimal performance. Mr. Kaplan is a frequent speaker on the topics of marketing optimization, web analytics, and SaaS development at Internet Retailer, MarketingSherpa, Ad:tech, Shop.org, among others. He’s been recognized as an Expert Instructor by Search Engine Strategies, and serves on the Ad:tech judges panel.

Howard is a graduate of Georgia Institute of Technology, holding a bachelors of Science degree in the field of Software Engineering.

See Howard Live!

Howard will be speaking with Brian Lewis, from SiteTuners in a session titled, “Persona-Driven Conversions – Walk A Mile In Your Visitors’ Shoes ” at Conversion Conference East 2011 in New York City. See the full agenda and read more about this session.

Want to save on your Conversion Conference Registration? Check out Howard’s blog, and follow him on Twitter and request a discount code!

Web Professional Minute recently interviewed Steve Krug, Author of, “Don’t Make Me Think” & “Rocket Surgery Made Easy” and posted this video, titled, “Usability Doesn’t Have to be Complicated” – Interview with Steve Krug, on their site on September 30th, 2011.

Since Steve will be Keynoting Conversion Conference East this month, we thought it would be great to repost that interview as it provides some insight as to what he will be covering at the conference.

In this eight minute interview, Steve shares his views on the benefits of Usability and offers up several how to’s for Web professionals.

“Usability doesn’t have to be complicated and almost anyone can do it says” Steve Krug, Author and Web usability consultant at Advanced Common Sense.

“Anyone who’s ever watched a usability test knows that they work remarkably well. Sitting someone down and having them use what you’re building while you watch is the best way to ensure that it will actually be usable. And yet very few organizations do usability tests. And the ones that do don’t do them very often. Why? It’s simple: most people think usability tests are expensive, time consuming, and hard to do” says Krug.

You can also check out Steve’s Rocket Surgery Made Easy by Steve Krug: Usability Demo here:

About the Author

For 15 years, usability expert Steve Krug labored in pleasant obscurity, helping clients like Apple, Bloomberg.com, Lexus.com, NPR, and the International Monetary Fund develop products and Web sites that people could actually use and enjoy. But since his book Don’t Make Me Think! A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability appeared in 2000 and sold 300,000 copies, he’s had to settle for relative obscurity.

See Steve Live!

Steve will be providing the Closing Keynote at Conversion Conference East 2011, in a session titled “You’re NOT doing usability testing? Are you…nuts?”
in New York City. See the full agenda and read more about this session.

Want to save on your Conversion Conference Registration? Follow Steve on Twitter and request a discount code!

By Charles Nicholls
Founder, SeeWhy

It has been a personal quest of mine for some time to understand online buyer behavior. On average, 71% of shopping carts are abandoned without a purchase. But, what are the unique predictive factors that determine the likelihood of an abandoner becoming a buyer?

Research has told us why visitors say they abandon. For example, Forrester Research asked almost 3,000 people why they abandon, and the top five reasons can be grouped into price and timing objections. But there is another way of looking at the reasons behind abandonment: not what they say, but what they do.

In New York, I’ll be presenting the results of the most extensive study ever conducted into the behavior of website visitors when they abandon their shopping carts. We analyzed the behavior of more than 600,000 people and a quarter of a million online transactions to understand what people actually do when they buy, and in particular, their behavior when they abandon.

Surprising truths emerged…

Conventional wisdom suggests that website conversion is good, and abandonment is bad. Yet, the first major conclusion of this research is that not all shopping cart abandonment is bad. In fact, shopping cart abandonment is an important part of the normal buying cycle for many customers, and for many types of purchase.

You would be right to conclude from this that abandonment, rather than being a rejection of the brand’s value proposition, can be a step in the decision process for some buyers and for some purchases. We generally expect that higher value shopping carts are abandoned more frequently as customers naturally take longer to consider their purchases. This data supports how some customers will come back multiple times as they consider the purchase, storing items in their shopping carts as ‘wish lists.’

The research also exposes some major exceptions to the buying pattern. For example, abandonment rates are very high for lower value purchases, in which the cost of shipping is disproportionately high. Equally, as the value of the cart approaches $100, the abandonment rate shoots up. So, it should come as no surprise that Macy’s has recently introduced a flat $99 free shipping rate across its site to combat this phenomenon.

What this data really says is that we need to rethink the way they view abandonment. For many customers, abandonment is part of the normal purchase cycle. This is not restricted only to new customers, but applies across the board, including a site’s most loyal repeat buyers.

We also need to consider how to support buyers during their consideration cycle. Getting visitors back to the site dramatically increases the chances of closing a sale. This explains why email re-marketing works so well. Rather than looking at customers as lost when their sessions end, remarketing can continue the dialog with the customer and keep them engaged as they go through their consideration process.

About the Author

Charles Nicholls is Founder and Chief Strategy Officer of SeeWhy, blogger, ecommerce visionary, and author of ‘The Top Ten Converting Websites’ and ‘In Search of Insight.’

Recognizing that traditional Web Analytic approaches are limited to historical analysis, Nicholls founded SeeWhy in 2003 to make ecommerce more relevant to individual visitors and customers through real time web analytics. Nicholls, a 20-year veteran of the software industry in the US and Europe, is internationally recognized as one of the preeminent thinkers in the Analytics space. In 2003 The Massachusetts Institute of Technology selected Nicholls as a global leader in Intrapreneurship following his highly innovative creation of Business Objects Analytics. In his role as an advisor to leading companies globally, Nicholls has worked with many of the world’s top companies on their web and customer analytics programs, including Amazon.com, Ebay, Lands End, MasterCard and a many smaller companies.

Before creating SeeWhy, Nicholls was an executive officer of real-time analytics company HNC Software (now Fair Isaac). Prior to HNC, Nicholls spent 6 years at Business Objects (now SAP), where he founded and led the Business Objects Analytics division. Nicholls also founded Ithena, an award winning Silicon Valley CRM analytics startup, which Nicholls merged with Business Objects in 2000.

See Charles Live!

Charles will be speaking with Ben Jesson, from Conversion Rate Experts in a session titled, “The Science Behind Abandonment Recovery & 15 Tools That Reveal Why They Abandon” at Conversion Conference East 2011 in New York City. See the full agenda and read more about this session.

Want to save on your Conversion Conference Registration? Check out Charles’ blog, Seewhy Blog and follow him on Twitter and request a discount code!

By Amy Africa
CEO, Eight by Eight Web Usability Expert

Navigation accounts for over half your success online.  If I can’t find it, I can’t buy it.  These days, navigation comes in all shapes and sizes: top, left, bottom, right (although righthand navigation is usually very risky so you don’t see it a lot) and often times, a combination of the four.  If your navigation is good, the user won’t need to use your text search.  If you want to improve your site, you’ll want to make it easier – and faster – for people to buy from you.

How do you improve your navigation?  Make sure your most popular items and/or categories are represented.  Look carefully at your word connect – if a user is searching for T-shirts, he doesn’t want apparel, he wants T-shirts.  Consider problem/solution navigation.  Look at using bestsellers lists and recently viewed items boxes.

Speaking of text search, if you want people to use your text search, put it in the upper righthand corner or in the top of the middle column.  Should you put it there? Not likely.  Yes, statistically people who use your text search will be more likely to buy than almost anyone else on your site, however, if your text search sucks, the traffic won’t buy and they will leave. (Either on the search results page or one of the three subsequent search pages after it, successful or not.)  Chances are, you don’t want that.  Does that mean you shouldn’t have a text search?  Absolutely not.  However, where you put it should be based on how well it works.

Like navigation, having a solid cart/checkout will be a big part of your success online.  One of the biggest secrets to cart/checkout success?  In-your-face action directives that tell the user exactly what they’re supposed to do next.  This starts with the very first page (for some, it’s a View Cart page, for others it might be a pop-up cart.)

From a user perspective, the best checkouts have alternative ways to order, safety and security icons, a temperature bar (allows the user to know how far along they are in the process), speed (you’ve got to be seamlessly quick) and without a lot of drama.   What does that last part mean?  It means that the checkouts with the absolute highest conversions all have one thing in common: they’re lightning quick, safe and they only ask questions that are relevant to the order. Getting someone to make complex e-mail sign-up choices for one of your bazillion newsletters or asking them to register with your site BEFORE they hit checkout is not the best idea.  In fact, it’s often the worst.

E-mail is your silent weapon. One of the best things about e-mail (especially trigger e-mails) is that it makes up for all your other weaknesses online.  To have a solid e-mail program, you’ve got to capture as many e-mail addresses as you can.   Ask for the email address aggressively till you get it – after you have it, you can use that space for something else.

When something is important, ask for it.  Action directives in the cart and throughout your site are key.  Make sure you ask for the order/inquiry on every view.  Yes, people will scroll on your site but don’t take the chance – when something is important ask for it repeatedly.

Trigger e-mail programs are key for any size e-commerce business, especially small ones.  There are all sorts of trigger e-mails you can choose from: abandoned cart, abandoned search, abandoned site, EBOPP’s (e-mails based on past purchases), EBOSI’s (e-mails based on selected interest), thank you for ordering, thank you for signing up for our free newsletter and so on.   The key with triggers is to make them look like one-to-one communications – from me to you.  Unlike thrust e-mails, big, fancy graphics aren’t going to make the difference in your triggers so you’ll want to keep them simple and action-oriented.  (For example, if you send a thank you after a catalog request, you may want to send a trigger that suggests items that the user might want to look at/buy online while they’re waiting for their catalog.)

Category pages are often more important than your main entry page, use them wisely. What’s important for a category page?  Good question.  You want to show the user your breadth of product line in such an aggressive way that they know what they’re supposed to do/purchase.

Use your social sharing icons wisely.  If you are advertising Twitter/Facebook (which is NOT right for everyone), bring them to YOUR page, not a “create an account” page or a “sign in and share” page.   Also, if you are not using these tools consistently – as in once or more per day – It’s often best NOT to promote them.

Check your site speed regularly.   Things like Flash, guided navigation and search, heavily-scripted forms, unwieldy carousels, and poorly optimized images can all have a HUGE impact on your site performance.  Just because your main entry page loads quickly does not mean that your users won’t experience a slowdown in your checkout.  Be diligent about your site load/performance and your e-mail deliverability.

About the Author

Amy Africa has been in the forefront of web usability studies, web design improvement, and successful e-commerce for over 15 years. Amy has been widely published in industry magazines and has been featured at web conferences around the globe. Her depth of knowledge, backed by intensive field testing and web user studies, has earned her the reputation of a voice to be heard on Internet topics ranging from site improvement, traffic building to analytics, email marketing and mobile.

See Amy Live!

Amy will be Keynoting the second day of Conversion Conference East 2011 in New York City, in a session titled, “Websites for Lizards: Online Selling to the Reptilian Brain.” See the full agenda and read more about this session.

Want to save on your Conversion Conference Registration? Check out Amy’s website, Eight by Eight and follow her on Twitter and contact her to request a discount code!

By Lance Loveday
CEO, Closed Loop Marketing

We’ve all experienced it at some point; the sneaking suspicion that those we’ve chosen to trust may not be entirely worthy.

Take web sites, for example.

We visit a web site, look around and like what it has to offer. We want to believe that the site—and the company behind it—has our best interests at heart. Perhaps we’ve even had a good experience with the site before.

But then the oddities begin to creep in, the strange little inconsistencies that make us wonder… is it me, or should I really trust this site?

Suspicion…

It doesn’t take much to plant seeds of doubt in a visitor’s mind. Small broken promises and misunderstandings can suffice, such as:

• We click on an ad, then don’t find the promised item on the landing page.
• We carefully click on a product link, only to find something different highlighted on the next page.
• We start a registration process, only to encounter many more steps than the site indicated.
• We try to complete a specific task quickly, only to find our progress slowed by questions, ads, and confusing page layouts.

What’s going on here? Don’t these companies know what their visitors want?

In many cases, the answer is yes—perhaps too well. They know exactly what we want, they just choose to use that understanding in a way we don’t expect. In a way that serves their business goals, not necessarily those of their visitors.

Let’s take a look at a couple examples I’ve run into in the past.

Example 1—GeoTrust

Once upon a time, it came time to renew the GeoTrust secure certificate I’d installed on a personal server. The email notice contained a convenient link which led to the following page (I’ve enlarged and called out the product list for clarity):

So far so good, this looked like exactly what I needed. I wanted the first item on the list, the “QuickSSL” product, so I clicked on the first dark-blue “Renew” button.

And came to this confusing page:

Here’s where the doubt crept in. The page title is what I expected, but the content on the page seems to be all about the “QuickSSL Premium” product. Did I make a mistake? I didn’t want the Premium product, I wanted the less expensive “QuickSSL” product.

At first glance (and most visitors won’t give the page much more time than that), the only available action on this page is the huge orange “Upgrade to QuickSSL Premium” button:

Yikes! How do I purchase the plain “QuickSSL?” Ah, there it is, a visually de-emphasized link in small blue text:

This is a great example of evil usability at work. Notice all the factors that contribute to this link’s obscurity:

Unclear design. Compared to the orange button, this option does not look much like an action item. It’s smaller, in a darker color, and doesn’t look like a button at all.

Unclear wording. The call to action, “Stay with QuickSSL,” isn’t what visitors to this page expect to do next. What they expect to do””what I expected to do when I came here””is to “purchase” or “renew,” not “stay with” the QuickSSL product.

Unexpected positioning. Visitors interested in purchasing the QuickSSL product don’t expect the next step in the process to be hidden down at the bottom left-hand corner of a page, outside the shaded area that contains the emphasized text, and after a bunch of unexpected content. The orange button, on the other hand, IS in the expected position on the page for a next step.

Why would GeoTrust design the page this way? Those less cynical than me might say it’s incompetence, poor audience task modeling, or a loose-cannon designer.

I think not.

It’s an example of a business goal overriding the visitor’s clearly stated intention. Now, we can debate the company’s intention. Perhaps they truly believe the basic “QuickSSL” product is inadequate for most customers and see this as a way to helpfully guide customers to a better solution.

What’s more likely is that this is a pure and simple upsell that disguises its intent by twisting well-understood usability principles such as:

Web visitors don’t generally read text. So all that verbiage that tries to make this sound like an option, instead of the only available action? Ignored by most visitors. But great cover.

Buttons get clicked. Visitors arrive on a page looking for the next step. What’s clickable? they ask. And on this page, that clickable item is the big orange button. It’s not a carefully considered thought process, it’s a trusting response to what appears to be clear guidance. “There’s a button!” Click.

Let’s look at another example.

Example 2: GoDaddy

Another task I undertook some time ago was registering a domain name through GoDaddy.com. Let me preface this by saying I’ve had a decent customer experience with this company, overall, so I came into this with a fair amount of goodwill.

I’d just found the domain name I wanted, and clicked the “Continue” button. Below is the page I saw next.

Take a look: What’s the one item that looks most clickable on this page?

If you answered, “The huge green button,” you’re right!

But if you click that button, you add two additional domain names to your order, just like magic! What if that’s not what you wanted to do? What if you want to register only the domain name you picked on the previous page?

To do this, you’d have to click the small text link under the huge green button:

This annoys me every time I go through the GoDaddy checkout process. I’m used to it now, but each encounter incrementally diminishes the store of goodwill I have for the company. I never send friends to the site without detailed caveats along the lines of:

“It’ll be very confusing and they’ll try to sell you extra stuff, but just ignore all that. Look for the tiny little text links that say “No thanks” and keep on going.”

Again, it’s remotely possible GoDaddy truly believes they’re doing customers a service here. Or that they’re incompetent or don’t understand their audience.

Again, I think not.

You’ve got to change your evil ways, baby

It’s easy to shake an accusing finger at these and other sites who deliberately lead visitors into unintended actions. But waiting for them to change their ways isn’t the answer. As long as the rewards of this approach are greater than the downside (customer complaints, blog rants, etc.), they’ll keep right on down the same path.

What can we do about it? How about starting here:

• Complain to the company, often and annoyingly.
• Warn and educate everyone you know about tactics like this.
• Avoid companies that consistently use these tactics, and spread the word about them.
• On the flip side, reward companies who treat visitors with respect. Visit them, buy from them, and spread the word about them.
• Help those who are less Internet-savvy than yourself through the minefields.

Meanwhile, I’ll keep doing my small part by encouraging our designers, clients and anyone else who will listen to resist the temptation to join the Dark Side and use their powers for good.

Thanks to my colleague and co-author Sandra Niehaus for providing the inspiration, research and much of the writing on this topic.

About the Author

As the CEO of Closed Loop Marketing (CLM) Lance Loveday is a recognized thought leader in the online marketing industry. He is a regular speaker at industry events-MacWorld, Search Engine Strategies, Web Design World and South by Southwest, to name a few-where his strategic, humorous and down-to-earth approach inspires designers, online marketers and business executives alike.

Since its inception in 2001, CLM has become a highly sought after agency serving a wide array of clients-from startups to big brands like Hewlett-Packard, Brocade, and Lockheed Martin. To each client, CLM brings a deep expertise in not only online advertising platforms but also the user experience-what happens “after the click.” It’s this combination of skill, experience and knowledge to which Lance attributes his company’s success.

Lance is co-author of the breakout business strategy book Web Design for ROI, which was published in 2007 by New Riders Press. His educational background includes an exploratory tour in law school, preceded by a BS in Managerial Economics from UC Davis, where he is honored to guest lecture on occasion.

Lance, his wife Courtney, and their three children reside in Northern California. And while he considers himself a cyclist and shares a first name with Lance Armstrong, he has only been mistaken for the cycling champion once. And it wasn’t on a bike.

See Lance Live!

Lance will be speaking with Larry Marine, from Intuitive Design about Usability mistakes in a session titled, “Usability & Design Mistakes that Kill Conversion” at Conversion Conference East 2011 in New York City. See the full agenda and read more about this session.

Want to save on your Conversion Conference Registration? Check out Lance’s book, Web Design for ROI and follow him on Twitter and contact him to request a discount code!