Clicking Me Softly:
5-Day Crash Course
A
in Conversion
UNBOUNCE RESOURCES
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Table of Contents
Day 1: The Economics of Conversion
Day 2: The Call to Action
Day 3: Sorry, Your Homepage Sucks at Converting!
Day 4: Introducing Landing Pages
11
Day 5: Optimization & Testing - Every Page can Convert Better
13
Clicking Me Softly:
A 5-Day Crash Course in Conversion
Conversion optimization has become a big deal
in the analytics and measurement crazed world of
online marketing. At its heart is the singular concept
of conversion. Whether or not you know how to
optimize the customer-meets-business interaction,
the simple truth is that conversion is the most
fundamental element of online business success.
To click or not to click. That is the question.
Conversions purpose is to provide the maximum
return on your marketing spend. A concept rooted
in common sense, yet shrouded in the mysteries of
behavioral psychology.
This is the essence of Clicking Me Softly. Convince,
dont coerce. Guide, dont deceive. And remember
that sustainable marketing success is only achievable
when you help people get what they want.
Conversion Fundamentals
For the next five days well explore the ideas, tools
and methodology necessary to maximize the
efficacy of your customers life on the page. In doing
so well make your pages better, more focused,
more persuasive and ultimately more successful.
Each day contains a concept coupled with a short
task designed to turn you into a conversion expert.
Conversion is the mechanism and process of
pouring targeted consumers into, through, and out
the other side of the marketing funnel. Persuasion
is not a dirty word, when spoken in the right way, at
the right time, to the right person.
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Day 1:
The Economics of Conversion
Most people know that its cheaper to keep an existing customer than it is to find a new one. Similarly, it makes
sense to get the most from your existing flow of inbound traffic by improving the conversion rate. Sounds
blindingly obvious right? But many businesses are either too content or too lazy to invest in conversion
improvements.
There are two options when it comes to driving traffic to increase business:
1. You can buy more traffic
2. You can spend a portion of your budget on improving your site
If you are in any doubt about which of these options makes more sense, Ill make it easy for you - its the
second one.
An example
If you have a marketing budget of $1,000/month dedicated to driving traffic to your site, you may observe the
following scenario. Note: these numbers are based on some average Google AdWords pay-per-click stats.
Traffic
Budget
Conversion
Investment
Cost per Click
(CPC)
Visitors
Conversion
Rate
New
Customers
Cost Per Acquisition
(CPA)
$1,000
$0
$1
1,000
2%
20
$50
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Now if we use strategy #1 to buy more traffic - doubling the budget.
Traffic
Budget
Conversion
Investment
Cost per Click
(CPC)
Visitors
Conversion
Rate
New
Customers
Cost Per Acquisition
(CPA)
$2,000
$0
$1
2,000
2%
40
$50
Notice how the cost of acquiring a customer remains the same and your budget stretches in a predictable
manner. This is why many companies just thrown more money at their marketing. More cash = more
customers. Its predictable, but its lazy.
For strategy #2 were going to take some of the budget and spend it on optimizing the destination page
to increase its conversion rate. Remember that you goal should be to reduce the cost of acquiring a new
customer.
Month
Traffic
Budget
Conversion
Investment
Cost per Click
(CPC)
Visitors
Conversion
Rate
New
Customers
Cost Per Acquisition
(CPA)
$2,000
$100
$1
900
2.5%
22.5
$44.44
$2,000
$200
$1
1,800
2.75%
49.5
$40.40
$2,000
$0
$1
2,000
2.75%
55
$36.36
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What this shows us is that as we increase the
investment in conversion optimization, our traffic
spend decreases resulting in fewer visitors, but the
improved conversion rate more than makes up for
this by bringing in more customers and ultimately
reducing the cost per acquisition (CPA).
By month 3, the effect of pausing the conversion
investment produces a further drop in CPA.
The beauty of conversion optimization is that
once your page is converting better it stays that
way indefinitely.
Alternatively, you may choose not to use your traffic
budget and instead invest a few hours of your (or an
employees) time on optimization.
Day 1 Resources
Check out the book <Web Design for ROI> (http://
www.wd4roi.com) for extended discussion of
optimization investment vs. traffic spend.
Optimization experts, <Wider Funnel> (http://www.
widerfunnel.com/unbounce) are offering a free
landing page evaluation for qualified businesses.
Brian Massey, <The Conversion Scientist> (http://
conversionscientist.com) - offers a free 45min
consultation.
Day 1 Task
If you have a marketing budget, plug your own
numbers into the tables above to see the effect it
could have. Then use this ammunition to convince
your boss (or yourself) that conversion matters.
If you are just getting started with conversion
optimization, youd be smart to get a free expert
review by a company specializing in optimization to
uncover some initial opportunities for improvement
- with no impact to your traffic budget - a win win.
See the resources below for companies that offer
this service.
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Day 2:
Call To Action
3. The Outcome: The Outcome is what happens
when the action is taken, and it should
correlate strongly with The Call. In other
words, its the delivery on your promise.
e.g. [Download free whitepaper] indicates
that clicking the button will instigate a file
download (without any request for payment).
4. The Design: How your CTA is presented
visually plays a big part in how people
respond to it (size, color, shape, contrast to
rest of page).
How do people convert? In simple terms they
interact at a designated conversion point. They
do this - and are triggered to do this - by a call to
action.
What is a call to action?
A call to action (CTA) is an interactive instructional
device intended to solicit an action from your
visitors. There are four main components to a CTA:
1. The Call: This is the instructional language
used to request that the user interacts in your
desired way.
2. The Action: On the web, the most common
action one can take is to click a button.
A CTA for every page
As Mick Jagger said so eloquently: You cant always
get what you want. But if you dont ask for what you
want, you wont get anything. For this reason, any
page you create is a wasted opportunity if it doesnt
specifically make a request of your visitor.
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Every page needs a purpose and every page needs
a call to action.
In this situation, it would be smart to place a CTA
at the end of each blog post to engage the blog
Consider the following scenario:
readers at their point of highest interest (assuming
fairly that if they read to the end of the post, then
they most likely enjoyed it). For example:
Employee #1: Nobody is signing up for our
newsletter!
Employee #2: What newsletter?
Employee #1: We have a Feedburner email
update that gets sent out whenever we write a
blog post.
Employee #2: How do people sign up for that?
Employee #1: Ummm, they have to click on the
RSS icon and then select email as the delivery
mechanism and such.
Can you see whats wrong with this conversation?
The goal is to have their customers read a blog post
and then register to receive the blog newsletter.
Its configured so that its technically possible, but
there is no instruction to persuade the visitor to take
the desired action, and the working solution is so
convoluted as to not be obvious or useful (both of
which are conversion faux pas).
The headline encourages the user to respond by
leading with a hook into their emotional reaction (if
you enjoyed this post), and makes a direct request
for them to subscribe. Also note how The Call
describes succinctly what will happen when you
click it.
Tip: The word Submit on a button is like the inbred
cousin of good Calls as it tells you nothing about
the Outcome. Avoid at all cost.
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CTAs for different page types
confirmation pages. You can extend your
reach by asking people to follow you on a
social network, or set a future date for reengagement by inviting them to a webinar.
Here are some examples of calls to action that can
be considered for other ares of your site.
Blog posts: The email subscription example
above is a classic use case. Others include
recommending related posts, and suggesting
that people bookmark or share the post with
their network.
404 pages: Your page not found page
should help people to recover from being
lost. Do this by making suggestions for what
they should do. Include links to your most
popular content, or start them down the sales
process by linking to a product tour. Placing
a large banner graphic on this page can also
be a good way to tease a positive action out
of a negative situation (just make sure its
advertising your product, not someone elses).
Confirmation pages: Engage your customers
while they are in a positive buying mood
by adding a CTA to your transactional
Day 2 Resources
Theres a great showcase of CTA examples, along
with design theory, in a classic post by Smashing
Magazine on <CTA best practices> (http://www.
smashingmagazine.com/2009/10/13/call-to-actionbuttons-examples-and-best-practices/).
Day 2 Task
A good test is to print out some of your pages (a
product page, blog page, homepage etc.), pin them
to the wall and give them the six foot test. Standing
6ft away, can you see a clear and identifiable action
on each page? If its not blindingly obvious what
you want people to do on your page youll be losing
conversions.
Well also be exploring these CT design concepts in
depth in the third week of the crash course.
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Day 3:
Sorry, Your Homepage Sucks at
Converting!
Conversion is about focus - slapping blinders
on your customers and shuffling them toward
the bright light that is your call to action. Every
marketing campaign should have distinct conversion
goals and metrics for measuring them, so that you
can design experiences that maintain focus.
For most businesses, your homepage is simply not
the most focused page on your website. Why?
Your homepage has too many messages
Even if your website promotes a single product or
service, there is the potential for message overload.
Perhaps you are driving prospects from your email
list, encouraging them to visit you for details of a
new feature: If they arrive at your homepage - where
there might be other features, seasonal promotions
and special offers - they can get distracted and
wander from your intended goal.
A common train of thought is, well as long as
they buy something then I dont care where they
go, or what they do. The problem here is that the
campaign you are running, measuring and paying
for isnt being given a fair opportunity to succeed (or
fail). Marketing can only really be effective when its
measurable and you are accountable.
Your homepage has too many
interaction points
Similarly, there are way too many links on your
homepage for it to be a closely guided conversion
experience.
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Your homepage has too many messages
Whats the answer?
Imagine if you made messaging changes on your
homepage to improve SEO, or better align with an
email or social media campaign. All of a sudden your
pay-per-click quality score dives (due to decreased
message match with your ads) and your cost of
acquiring a customer via that channel rises. It could
be that your SEO rank improves - great! But you can
see where this is going: Change creates risk and
monitoring the impacts of changes when you have
multiple inbound marketing channels becomes
overly complicated.
The solution to these problems is to use campaign
or promotion specific landing pages that can be
managed and optimized in controlled isolation.
Day 3 Task
Go to your homepage and count how many
different messages, paths, links and CTAs you have.
These numbers will be a useful comparison when
you get to day 4.
This is not to say that you shouldnt change
your homepage. On the contrary, you should be
continuously optimizing to increase conversions.
Rather, the problem lies in how you are driving the
traffic to your site.
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Day 4:
Introducing Landing Pages
Technically speaking, a landing page is any page
on your website that customers arrive at or land
on. However, for the purposes of this crash course,
when I say landing page, Im referring to a page that
is created as a standalone entity - a campaign or
promotion specific page - designed to be free from
the shackles of your homepage as identified on day 3.
A good example of a standalone, campaign
specific landing page, can be seen below from
<Webtrends> (http://www.webtrends.com).
Standalone landing pages have a few general
characteristics:
1. No global navigation: Preventing customers
from wandering off the conversion path.
2. Single entry paths: They are accessible
only via a promotion or campaign specific
marketing link (social media, PPC, email,
banner).
3. One conversion goal: The page has one
purpose and usually a single primary call to
action.
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The benefits of landing pages
As I mentioned earlier, landing pages remove the
restrictions and complexities of your homepage, and
can improve your conversion rate in the following
ways:
1. Improved message match: When you design
a page with a single focused message, you
create a simplified experience that better
represents the expectation created by your
upstream ad.
2. Improved quality score: A focused message
improves visitor conversion behaviour, and
as a bonus, pay-per-click engines such as
Google AdWords like it better too. A higher
quality score can reduce the cost of your paid
advertising.
3. Separation from primary site architecture:
By removing your landing pages from the
main site (e.g. setting them up on a subdomain) you can empower marketers to
manage their own operations and be more
agile and responsive.
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4. Easier to test and optimize: Technical
and architectural separation lets you run
optimization experiments (A/B or multivariate
testing) without impacting the rest of your
site.
5. Improved measurability through
segmentation: An advanced strategy is to
create a separate landing page to segment
each of your inbound traffic sources. This
makes your metrics much simpler and allows
you to see which channels perform the best
for your audience. Most importantly it allows
you to test different ideas, messaging and
content appropriate to the channel (e.g.
social media widgets for your social media
traffic) without affecting the conversion rate
of your other channels. A good example of
this would be if you were changing your page
to improve email conversions: by doing this
you might affect the quality score for your
PPC campaign by knocking the message out
of sync with your Adwords ads. Segmented
landing pages avoid this problem.
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Landing pages vs. homepages
Day 4 Resources
To help illustrate the points above, compare the
Webtrends homepage (below) to the landing page
shown earlier.
Landing page creation tools: There are several online
tools available for the purpose of creating (and
testing) landing pages.
Unbounce - lets you easily create and A/B test
<landing pages> (http://unbounce.com) without
help from IT. Designed for the small to medium
business market (disclaimer, Im a co-founder).
<LiveBall> (http://www.ioninteractive.com/
liveball-landing-page-software/) - Like
Unbounce, LiveBall is an all-in-one platform that
lets you create and test landing pages. Focused
on enterprise and agency clients.
Day 4 Task
This is a beautifully designed page, but its also (very
necessarily) focused on multiple things. There are
five concepts presented in the main promo area (via
the rotating banner), four supplementary messages
below that, and a total of 25 interaction points. This
is a great destination for branded organic search
traffic, but not as good as the previous landing page
when driving traffic targeted on a single topic.
Check your message match. Take a look at your
current marketing initiatives (PPC, email, banners,
social media) and compare what they say when
compared to the first thing you see when arriving
at your homepage. Start thinking about how
landing pages could allow you to have multiple
simultaneous campaigns and still keep the messages
aligned from ad to page.
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Day 5:
Optimization & Testing - Every Page
can Convert Better
Once you start walking down Conversion Avenue,
youll probably find that its a one way street - theres
no turning around and the traffic flows much better
in a single direction.
Optimizing your landing pages can become an
addictive pursuit in search of the perfectly converting
page. Like unicorns and fairies, this page doesnt
actually exist, and while there is no magical pixie dust
to sprinkle on over your website, there are processes
and techniques you can use to make the most of your
conversion opportunities.
Aside from the financial angle, other benefits
include:
Solving boardroom arguments: Weve all
been there - sitting around the boardroom
table discussing a page on the website,
or if youre nice and advanced, a landing
page. Opinion pushes back and forth about
the main headline, what color the button
should be or, horror of all design horrors, the
dreaded request to <make the logo bigger>
(http://www.makemylogobiggercream.com).
The best part? No matter what your page is for - it
can always convert better.
The most obvious business reason to start a testing
and optimization process is the economics - do it
right and youll get a higher return on your marketing
spend. A no-brainer.
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Its time to realize that internal democracy,
experience, and the HIPPOs (HIghest Paid
Persons Opinion) really dont matter. Having
a disagreement about a concept? Then test it.
Let the crowd decide.
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The customer is STILL always right: If you are
serious about conversion optimization then
Something to note is that you need to run enough
traffic through the experiment and leave it running
this is really lesson #1. Its a beautiful thing
to turn the power over to your user base
for conflict resolution. Say NO to archaic
subjective opinion! Say YES to learning
something about your customers!
long enough to obtain statistically viable data
- testing tools call this the confidence level. By
allowing the test to run for at least a few weeks,
you can remove daily variance from the statistics
(perhaps people react differently to your weekend
Vegas vacation ad during the week compared to a
Saturday).
Its true that you still need the expertise of your team
in order to create a new version of the page to test,
but instead of debating whos right ahead of time,
run an experiment and discuss the results. Youll learn
which message or design works best for the people
who truly pay your salary.
Got an idea? Test it... Start an
experiment...
The foundation of conversion rate optimization is
whats called an experiment. This is where you
create competing page variants and simultaneously
run traffic to each page to see which has the highest
conversion rate.
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There are two primary testing methodologies:
A/B testing: As the name implies, this involves
a simple comparison between 2 pages
(although you can include as many pages
in the experiment as desired - A/B/C/D/E
etc.). After determining the best performer,
it is declared the winner or champion and
becomes the sole recipient of all traffic. In the
example below, the position of a signup form
is being tested with page B emerging as the
winner. Usually, youd use A/B testing to test
a single idea, wait for results and choose a
victor. This can sometimes make it slow, but
very effective as teaching you (a - patience, b how to optimize individual areas of your page).
Testing can be frustrating, but is always fun,
and almost always surprising.
(source: http://media.smashingmagazine.com/cdn_smash/wpcontent/uploads/2010/06/abtesting.gif)
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Multivariate testing (MVT): Multivariate
testing is a more advanced method whereby
multiple versions of your page are generated
to facilitate comparison of every possible
combination of page variants. For instance,
if you want to test two variations of the page
title, call to action position and form length
- your test would produce 8 (23) or more
variations depending on the specific method
of MVT model being used. The impact of this
approach is that you need a long time and a
significantly large traffic volume to achieve
valid test results. For this reason its only really
used for pages receiving thousands of visitors.
Optimization is the process of iteratively repeating
test experiments to improve their effectiveness.
What to test
This is a very common question and ultimately
depends on the content and purpose of your page.
However there are some basic elements that most
people can test as a starting point.
Page headline or title: This is where you state the
unique selling proposition (USP) of your product/
service/offer. Its the page element most open to
interpretation by your visitors, as its usually what
they see or read first. As such, it has a great impact
on conversion. Remember though that this will
also have a big impact on your message match. So
keep it tightly aligned with your ad copy.
With or without video: Video has been shown
to increase conversion rates by as much as 80%
(source: <eyeviewdigital.com> (http://www.
eyeviewdigital.com/documents/EyeView-WhitePaper-Making-Video-Accountable.pdf), pdf).
A classic A/B test is to add video to your page
showing a demo or a face-to-face personalized
message.
Video auto-play on or off: Usability pros will
know that turning on the auto-play feature is a bad
practice that often makes people back out from
a page, especially if they are in an environment
sensitive to sound. However, this is where CCD
(Conversion Centered Design) differs from UCD
(User Centered Design). You need to weigh up the
cost/benefit of any increased conversions against
a potential negative brand impact.
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Call to action attributes: Another classic test
is to play around with the size, position, shape,
color, and text of your CTA buttons. Different
colors have different emotional meanings and
can sometimes have an impact, although a more
important aspect is the contrast between the
color of the CTA and the rest of the page (making
sure it stands out). Remember to make the text
represent The Outcome (what happens when you
click, as defined on day 2).
Number of form fields in a lead capture form:
Increase conversions by lowering the barrier to
entry with less form fields.
Required or non-required fields: Experiment with
making different fields not required.
Length of copy: Some products or services
demand a long and exhaustive description but
generally short and succinct is better. The only
way to know for your own business is to try it out.
When refining your message for the short version,
simplify your copy using bullets and take the
advice of Usability guru Steve Krug for the main
bulk of content: cut it in half, then throw away
50% of whats left.
Day 5 Resources
<A/B testing> (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A/B_
testing) on Wikipedia
<Multivariate testing> (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
Multivariate_testing) on Wikipedia
Testing tools: <Google Website Optimizer> (http://
www.google.com/websiteoptimizer), <Unbounce>
(http://unbounce.com), <Visual Website Optimizer>
(http://visualwebsiteoptimizer.com), <Performable>
(http://www.performable.com), <Optimizely> (http://
www.optimizely.com).
Day 5 Task
Getting started: When deciding on what to test
in your first (or any) experiment, it helps to have a
checklist of common problems to rate your page
in its current state. The <5-minute conversion
scorecard> (http://unbounce.com/docs/rehabscorecard-full.png) can help you identify any major
holes in your page. Pick a page on your site (ideally
a standalone landing page, but you can try it on any
page as an exercise) and see what score you get. Any
items left unchecked can be used as a to-do list for
your first experiment.
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IMAGE SOURCES
Cover Image Source
http://theinspirationroom.com/daily/print/2008/10/mercedes_crash_test_mammogram.jpg
Version B is better than Version A Diagram
http://media.smashingmagazine.com/cdn_smash/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/abtesting.gif
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Conversion optimization has become a big deal in the
analytics and measurement crazed world of online
marketing.
Clicking Me Softly:
5-Day Crash Course
A
in Conversion
UNBOUNCE RESOURCES
www.unbounce.com/resources
