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Contents Foreword Introduction: A Brief Conversion Primer Calculating Your Company?s Conversion Rate Your Vertical Industry?s Conversion Rate The Micro-Perspective on Conversion Conversion versus Persuasion: A Bigger Picture Benefits of Increasing Your Conversion Rate Chapter One: Planning An Incredibly Condensed History of Persuasion and Sales Value?Customer Defined A Solid Foundation Principle #1: Avoid Accidental Marketing Principle #2: Get the Winning Edge Principle #3: Understand Your Customers Principle #4: Don?t Frustrate Your Customers Principle #5: Shun Assumptions That Kill Sales Principle #6: Put Customer Service Where It Counts Principle #7: Emphasize Conversion Principle #8: Recheck the Basics Chapter Two: Structuring From Traditional to Persuasion Architecture Architect Your Path to Success Uncovery?A Closer Look (Wire) Frame Yourself Storyboarding?Now the Plot Thickens Why Success Among the Failures KISS Your Customers If You Want Them Back Chapter Three: Communicating 20,000 Leagues into the Brain Does Your Online Writing Have What It Takes? Case Study: MaxEffect Before and After Image and Web site Images Can?t Smell It on the Web? When Your Copy Must Leap Oceans In-Site Search Engines?Thumbs Down E-mail Strategy?Saying the Right Thing at the Right Time Advanced Wordsmithing: Three Stylistic Ways to Become Memorable Some Final Thoughts on Language Chapter Four: Momentum The Foundation for Momentum Persuasive Scenarios Don?t Slow ?em Down Qualifying Your Visitors Overcoming Analysis Paralysis Map Scent Trails That Build Momentum The ABCs of GTC (and By the Way, POA) Twenty Tips for Lowering Shopping Cart Abandonment How CafePress.com Lowered Its Abandonment Rate What About Your Web Forms? The New Frontier: Complex Sales Chapter Five: Optimizing ?Good Enough? Conversion Rates? E-Commerce Metrics: Drowning in Your Own Data? Ending the Single Page Visit Is Your Home Page Helping or Hindering Sales? Beyond the Sacred Portal of the Home Page Increase Your Pay-Per-Click ROI Optimizing Your Scent Trails Making the Dial Move by Testing Web Analytics for Retailers Glossary Foreword Bryan and I had an entirely different book in mind only a few months ago. As often happens, we were ahead of ourselves. In almost seven years of client work, research, and software development, we have developed some radically advanced thinking about online persuasion and conversion. We have so many more insights we want to share with all of you, and we will eventually, but this key information can?t wait?so this is the book that needs to be published now. Online marketers need a book that deals fundamentally with the principles and concepts of conversion. When we started Future Now, Inc. in 1998, full of na¿ve enthusiasm, crusading for higher online conversion rates, we were a voice in the wilderness. In those days of absurd dot-com valuations based on eyeballs, we believed it would be only a ?couple of years? until our business flourished. It wasn?t until 2004 that online marketers started to include conversion rates on their radar. If it weren?t for the early adopters, our clients and friends, we would never have learned what we?re sharing with you now. This book is a compilation of some of our GrokDotCom articles, ClickZ columns, seminar presentations, and training materials, as well as contributions by our staff and colleagues. We hope you will get from these pages as much as we have put into them. I wish you all happiness, prosperity, and health. ?Jeffrey Eisenberg New York City, February 2005 Introduction: A Brief Conversion Primer Humanity is acquiring all the right technology for all the wrong reasons. ?R. Buckminster Fuller, Michael Moncur?s (Cynical) Quotations Business objectives?your Web site objectives?should, in some way, support your company?s business objectives, right? So what are your Web site objectives? The responses we hear are many and varied. Some say, ?to sell stuff.? Others say, ?to drive leads,? ?to offer self-service?, or ?to offer information.? Responses used to favor selling stuff, but lately driving leads has reached parity with selling. There are also a few self-service and media companies around. Each has unique key performance indicators (KPIs), but all have one thing in common: Conversion Rates (CR), the foundational e-metric. Some would argue that conversion rate should not be the main measure of Web site success. To a point, we agree. It?s only one of many e-metrics we focus on with our Web clients. Still, we believe it deserves special consideration. Knowing your conversion rate is like knowing your temperature when you?re sick. It won?t tell you what?s wrong. Your temperature indicates whether you?re too hot or too cold based on a medical standard. Like temperature, CR lets you know whether you?re hot or cold, whether the situation requires action or not. Calculating Your Company?s Conversion Rate Here?s how to calculate CR: Divide the number of your Web site visitors who took the action you wanted them to take by the total number of visitors to your Web site. When you understand where the number comes from, you can see that conversion rate is a measure of your ability to persuade visitors to take the action you want them to take. Conversion rate is both a reflection of your effectiveness and of customer satisfaction with what you?ve presented on your Web site. For you to achieve your goals, visitors at your Web site must first achieve theirs. When you change your Web site in ways that your visitors appreciate, they express their appreciation by taking the actions you desire them to take. That?s what this book is all about?showing you how to convert your Web site visitors into your customers, fulfilling your desires while at the same time fulfilling their desires. By the way?how many companies do you think actually know their Web site?s CR? According to a study from the e-Tailing Group, 58 percent of retailers rank conversion rate as being of prime importance for understanding how well a Web site performs. But fully 19 percent of respondents don?t know their own conversion rate?that?s about one out of five. What we find most troubling is that people running lead-generation or self-service Web sites are even less aware of their conversion rate than average. At least retailers are accustomed to tracking these numbers. When we ask our clients and colleagues, ?What?s your conversion rate?? we often get dull stares and some challenging questions in return: ?What?s an average conversion rate?? ?How do I know if I?m doing well enough?? The way we typically answer these questions is by asking another question (don?t you hate that?), specifically, ?What?s your industry vertical?? Your Vertical Industry?s Conversion Rate The only way to get accurate data about the average conversion rate in your vertical industry is to have access to comprehensive Web analytics, since any self-reported industry surveys seem suspect. It?s not that their reported conversion rates are too high. Rather, in our experience, we suspect most self-reporting surveys because companies often aren?t measuring correctly, many don?t have their analytics set up properly, and reporting isn?t standardized. Below are some vertical industry conversion rates from the Fireclick Index, which are available to its clients. They?re aggregated from Fireclick?s actual Web analytics retail customers, spanning December 1, 2003 to March 1, 2004: Vertical Industry Average Conversion Rate (percent) Catalog 6.1 Specialty Stores 3.9 Fashion/Apparel 2.2 Travel 2.1 Home and Furnishing 2.0 Sport/Outdoors 1.4 Electronics 1.1 All Verticals 2.3 From these figures, you can see the average conversion rate on the Web is about 2.6 percent. Not very high, is it? We consider that a clear need, which requires a clear call to action. That?s why we wrote this book. You may be thinking, ?You?re too caught up in this conversion rate business. What about simply driving more visitors to my Web site? That should work, shouldn?t it?? Actually, no. Trying to increase sales simply by driving more traffic to a Web site with a poor customer conversion rate is like trying to keep a leaky bucket (your sales funnel, your Web site) full by adding more water instead of plugging the holes. Instead, you need to work on keeping more of your visitors from leaking out of your process on the way to the close of the sale. The Micro-Perspective on Conversion Prospects who come to your Web site may not be ready to buy. They may be only searching for the right place to buy and return later to complete the purchase. They might not know exactly what they want to buy. Only when they?re ready will they take action. Sometimes we get so focused on the end point (the sale), we forget that customers, each at different stages of their buying decision process, take a journey to achieve that end point. In fact, to complete a macro action (your ultimate conversion goal), your visitors will take any number of intermediary steps. ?Micro? actions. And every one of those is a point of conversion. Here?s a simple, linear illustration of the ?micro/macro? idea, taken from our own Future Now, Inc. Web site: Step 1: You land on our home page, read all that text and are persuaded to click through on the ?Conversion Assessment System? hyperlink (a measurable conversion point in the process, but not the goal). Step 2: You land on a page that gives an overview of the value and nature of an assessment. If you can?t be bothered with the text, you are offered the option of going directly to the assessment information via the top navigation; you can select from itemized options in a bulleted list. After reviewing the options, you decide you want to convert more eCommerce traffic, so you click that hyperlink. Step 3: You land on a page that gives you a detailed description of what goes into an assessment. If you scroll down, you?ll find a request form and the telephone number. However, you don?t achieve the goal until you click ?Contact Us? to submit the form. We?d like people to buy an assessment; that?s our macro-action goal. [TYPESETTER: INSERT ?MARCO ACTIONS? GRAPHIC] But to feel comfortable taking that action, a customer often needs to journey through the micro-action conversions. [TYPESETTER: INSERT ?MIRCO ACTIONS? GRAPHIC] And at each point of conversion, we must persuade our visitors to take the next action. Each micro-action is like the point of the spiral that starts the Yellow Brick Road. Each step matters! When you think of each step on your navigation paths as a conversion point you can test, measure, and optimize, you will truly know if you are converting your visitors successfully through each stage of their journey. Conversion versus Persuasion: A Bigger Picture Conversion and persuasion go hand in hand, and very often, people think of them as interchangeable. We don?t. We think of conversion as persuasion?s younger sibling. Conversion isn?t really the biggest problem facing online marketers; persuasion is. However, a misconception about the nature and value of linear conversion funnels persists. Some say the linear conversion funnel is dead. Others still conceive of their efforts as entirely based on linear conversion funnels. Fortunately, misperception is an opportunity for clarification. The linear conversion funnel has its place. Though rudimentary and limited, it?s a great blunt-force beginners? tool for online marketers with few or no metrics in place (and there are far too many of those left). But the linear conversion funnel won?t take sophisticated marketers very much further in their optimization efforts. No conversion funnel will, 2.0 or otherwise. Instead of considering the conversion funnel by itself, we should think of it as living at the lower end of the buy/sell process. Without persuasion, however, there?s no incentive for visitors to walk through your linear sales process. Unlike conversion, persuasion isn?t linear. The conversion funnel is smooth and simple, but the persuasive reservoir that feeds it is as complex and non-funnel-like as your visitors are. The Limits of Conversion-Rate Optimization When we first began studying conversion years ago, we observed that conversion is about the sales process. By definition, it?s always linear. The sales process is about moving consumers along a path that goes from prospecting to close and retention. In the linear sales process, you appear to have much more control of the customer?s environment. You can optimize clearly defined steps that move prospects forward to a close. But this is an oversimplification, taken from the seller?s perspective. In the linear sales interaction, you can easily measure whether you moved people through the sales process. Either the customers took the next step or they didn?t. You can see the drop-off between the funnel?s steps. Conversion rate optimization assumes people want to participate in your sales process by taking an end-stage conversion action now. If they want to transact now, your job is to help them do so easily. (If this is still an issue for your company, priority one should be to harvest the low-hanging fruit by scrutinizing the tactics in this book.) Optimizing your sales process is important, but it remains limited in its ability to drive maximum return on your marketing investment. While you?re busy optimizing your linear sales process, customers are engaged in a distinctly different process: their own, idiosyncratic buying?a process they control completely. They interact with myriad factors that exist outside your linear selling process, outside of your company, outside of your control. You simply can?t control their interaction with competitors, consumer-generated media, or word-of-mouth! Optimizing the Buying Process Is a Matter of Persuasion You have the customer?s permission to sell inside the conversion funnel. Outside the conversion funnel, even on your own Web site, the matter?s more delicate. That?s why we insist a persuasive system that includes persuasion scenarios is ultimately a superior method of understanding customer behavior. When you build a predictive model of customer interactions with your site and any other of your business entities or touch points, you acknowledge that customers are in control and only see what?s relevant to them. Scenarios are plans to influence their buying decision based on what?s relevant to them. You can no longer control how or when in the buying process a customer approaches you to purchase. So you must consider every touch point (online, offline, and across channels and media) as a piece of the buying process in a customer?s persuasion scenario. Use it to influence her next action in your favor. Below is a graphical representation of the persuasion scenario planning techniques we use to plan ways your company can influence this: [TYPESETTER: INSERT ?DRIVING POINT? TO ?CONVERSION POINT? FUNNEL GRAPHIC] The funnel-like shape represents all the business touch points customers may need to navigate before they feel comfortable entering the linear conversion funnel. The whole concept of evaluating alternatives can?t be linear. But once the customer makes the decision to purchase (conversion beacon), the process becomes somewhat more linear. Persuasion scenarios account for the non-linear decision-making process. They also account for various needs that drive your visitors toward conversion while addressing cross-channel marketing issues. Solving the Persuasion Dilemma Persuasion and conversion are two sides of the same coin. Both offer marketers substantial opportunities for growth by providing tools to leverage assets and understand human behavior. Conversion funnels are only one tool in a marketer?s toolbox. Persuasion scenarios, on the other hand, allow customers to feel a seamless, relevant, non-linear path through your touch points?online and offline. Helping customers see what they want, when they want it, and in the way they want to see it, is substantially preferable to forcing them though a hub-and-spoke, back-and-forth path. Visitors will reward your newfound respect for persuasive scenario planning with an action that speaks louder than words: a conversion. [SIDEBAR] Conversion Tip: Six Dell Principles for Improving Conversion (Dell pioneered use of the Internet as a sales channel beginning in 1996 and became the first company to record $1 million in online sales in 1997.) ?Sam Decker, Senior Manager of Dell?s Consumer e-Business, <<DATE/ISSUE>> Bazaarvoice If I were asked, ?what was fundamental to our improvement?, I wouldn?t respond with one or two initiatives. In lieu of a best practice case study, I?d suggest we look at the several principles and processes we use to run the Dell.com Home & Home Office site and merchandising. Part culture, part methods, the entire team understands how to continuously improve our site, day by day. Here are a few that make a big impact to ongoing improvements. Metrics Rigor The fundamental ?blood flow? of Dell is our metrics. We are always looking to optimize and improve, and use metrics to understand the heartbeat of the business down to the capillary. As such, our online metrics are part of daily conversations about the site, but more importantly, included when we discuss the entire business. Traffic and conversion are part of a daily discussion, and many diagnostic metrics are used to understand customer behavior and opportunity. The rigor is around the frequency and use of metrics to report the status of customer experience and the business. Definitions are important, so we make sure everyone understands what the metric means and how it impacts the business. We use dashboards and operation reviews to update management and staff on progress against goals. We ?democratize? access to the data so that people throughout the company can diagnose and analyze customer behavior and business impact. Focus and Ownership We created a position called the Web Producer, who really has two jobs. First, he or she is the ?site manager? for a particular part of the site, managing the workflow, content, and merchandising decisions for a part of the site. But perhaps more importantly, they are given ownership of a metric, such as conversion. This ownership means they?re accountable for meeting goals, and puts them at the hub between product managers, brand managers, developers, and senior management for all activities to drive that metric. They report weekly to senior management and partners on progress against aggressive goals and the status of initiatives planned to improve. Start Small . . . Go Big Perhaps what?s different is the extent of our nature to second-guess our opinions with testing. Because the data is there, and we?re data fanatics, we use testing to justify investment. We start small by piloting new technologies, new merchandising, layout, navigation, and content. On projects, we prioritize using NPV (Net Present Value) net of launch and sustainment costs. So, by testing?starting small and going big?we make sure whatever we do has a demonstrable impact on conversion (or any metric that helps the business). Designing on Purpose Site decisions are balanced between user goals and business goals. We look at multiple data points to understand what customers want and what they do (note: these are not always the same). We triangulate insights from many sources: entry/exit surveys, focus groups, usability studies, phone data, financial results, and of course web metrics. Then, we can modify promotions, merchandising, and real estate allocation to improve conversion. For example, through site pathing and usability studies we found users had no problem finding the financing information. Yet, when people reached the page, we would see high abandonment. So we surveyed what information people were looking for, which of course was how to find their potential monthly payment. So we added an interactive flash calculator to determine payments for any price point. Interactivity is always a conversion booster, but it met a need. Abandonment was cut in half. Driving Urgency Urgency is also a well-known direct marketing concept. So for years, we have been offering time-limited promotions with purchase of a computer. To make sure the reason to buy now is clear to our users we use several tactics: 1. Urgency copy?using words such as ?Click here now,? ?Limited Time Offer,? and ?Last Day? in the promotion message. 2. Clear Action?On every promotion offer, you can?t miss the ?More details? link. 3. Cross-off pricing?we make it clear to the user how much they are getting off the regular price by crossing out the original price and highlighting the sale price. 4. Deadline?We try to always add the date of the promotion, and give a countdown??2 Days Left? or ?Ends Today?. Frequency and Consistency You?ll notice throughout Dell.com, that we merchandise promotions on multiple pages with a consistent layout. The message is treated in the same way on the home page, product page, and configurator. Since many users come into our site at different levels, it?s important that we repeat these important messages on several pages so they are not overlooked. And for users who go through the entire site, this ensures that if they leave Dell.com they remember there are some good deals available at Dell. The concept of frequency and consistency throughout the site, in message and treatment, also works for other messages we want to be sure consumers remember. [SIDEBAR] Benefits of Increasing Your Conversion Rate Call to Action is fundamentally a how-to for understanding and applying conversion techniques to your online efforts. We have written it to be ever-sensitive to the larger picture of persuasion, but our specific focus here is conversion. To examine the persuasion side of this coin in much greater detail, we encourage you to read our companion book, Waiting for Your Cat to Bark?: Persuading Customers When They Ignore Marketing. Within these pages you will find our explanations of conversion rate marketing principles, as well as case studies that reveal how these principles were applied in individual situations. At every turn, you will discover tips that can make a dramatic difference in your bottom line. When you pay attention to the tactics that will improve your Web site?s overall conversion rate, you reap these incomparable benefits: * You don?t get just more sales?you get more sales from your existing traffic (no need to increase your marketing expenses to attract more traffic). * Your customer acquisition cost goes down. * Your customer retention rate goes up. * Your customer lifetime value goes up. * The effect is permanent (it outlives any particular marketing program). To help you realize these benefits, we have organized this book into the following five chapters for improving your conversion rates: * Planning * Structuring * Communicating * Momentum * Optimizing We know the principles and techniques we share with you here actually work?we have clients who have doubled, tripled, quadrupled, and even septupled (yeah, we made that word up, but the idea is accurate?we mean, ?increased by a multiple of 7?) that low 2.6 percent average conversion rate by using what?s in this book. So read on!
Library of Congress Subject Headings for this publication:
Internet marketing.
Internet advertising.