How To Build Websites That Sell The Scientific Approach To Websites PDF

I.
Marketing
Marketing With No Budget: Things That Work
What You Need To Know About Marketing and Strategy
How To Set Internet Marketing Goals and Objectives
3 Ways to Increase Online Sales
The Key to Customer Loyalty
How and When to Use Sex to Sell More
II.
Conversion Optimization 101
What You Have to Know About Conversion Optimization
The Ultimate Guide to Increasing E-Commerce Conversion Rates
Ridiculously Effective Technique for Online Lead Generation
How To Increase Sales Online: The Checklist
How Images Can Boost Your Conversion Rate
How to Use Video to Increase Conversions
How To Build A High Converting Landing Page
3 Hard Truths About A/B Testing
53 Ways to Increase Conversion Rate
Table of Contents
How to Build Websites that Sell:...
How to Build Websites that Sell:... Table of Contents
Table of Contents
Table of Contents
Hyperink Blog to Book Series
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III.
Design
Design Like Jagger
Eight Universal Web Design Principles You Should Know
First Impressions Matter: The Importance of Great Visual Design
How To Design A Homepage That Converts
Website Credibility Checklist Factors
How To Design User Flow
Intuitive Web Design: How To Make Your Website Intuitive To Use
IV.
Understanding Users
How To Use Behavioral Design For Boosting Converstions Using the Fogg Behavior Model
People Comparison Shop, Stupid
10 Useful Findings About How People View Websites
Mobile Internet Users And Their Shopping Behavior
Why You Shouldnt Assume How Users Feel About Your Site
Great User Experience UX Leads to Conversions
How To Identify Your Online Target Audience and Sell More
Are You Providing Answers to Magic Questions?
V.
Email Marketing
How To Creative Effectvive Email Drip Campaigns
How To Generate More Sales From Your Email Marketing Campaigns
7 Mistakes That Hurt Your Email Relationship Building Efforts
Lead Magnets: Email List Building On Steroids
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VI.
Writing Copy
Writing Homepage Headlines For The Modern World:3 Formulas That Work
How To Get People To Believe What You Write
What To Call Your Call To Action
Value Proposition Examples
7 Principles of Effective Sales Copy
Copywriting Based on the Science of Persuasion
Click Fear and How to Avoid It
VII.
Pricing
10 Principles of Effective Pricing Pages
Invent A New Category, Charge More
Pricing Experiments You Might Not Know But Can Learn From
Product Pricing Strategies and Techniques
Table of Contents
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I.
Marketing
How to Build Websites that Sell:... Marketing
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Marketing with no budgeta familiar story for most small businesses and startups. When
theres no money, theres usually time. Time is unfortunately also limited, so the question
ishow to convert that time into money most effectively (get the biggest bang for the
hour)?
You could come up with hundreds of free online marketing ideas, but in order to get
results, you should focus on the few that really make a difference.
Note that these methods aint quick fixes, but will make a significant impact if you stick
with it.
Blog
Blogging is one of the most effective marketing tools out there. It wont do much in the
short-term, but youre probably in it for the long run. A great blog builds an audience that
is looking forward to your messages, and that is invaluable. A year from now youll wish
you had started today.
If your website does not have any content besides your product information pages, you
will never have large amount of free traffic via search engines. The more content you
have on your blog, the more natural traffic you get. A large amount of the people who
get to your blog via search are your target market. Thats pull marketing at work. A study
of 2,300 HubSpot customers revealed that businesses that blog witness their monthly
leads rise by 126 percent more than those who dont.
Search engine optimized posts
Your blog can be your most effective SEO provider. In order to make your posts rank on
Google and Bing, make sure to do these three things:
The title of your post has to be worded in a way someone might use while doing a
search. Do your research first on Google Keyword Tool.
Marketing With No Budget: Things
That Work
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Mention the same phrase as you have in your title one or two times in the body copy,
toodepending on the length of the post.
Have clean URLs: http://bla.com/title-of-your-post is better than http://bla.com?
id=123.
What to blog about?
Instead of trying to out-spend, out-sell, or out-sponsor competitors, try to out-teach
them," say the guys over at 37Signals (see the video here), and theyre right. This
captures the essenceuse your blog to teach and educate your prospects and
customers.
Use a casual tone in your blog. Nobody wants to read boring academic texts. If theres a
sentence you wouldnt say while talking to your friend, dont use it.
Goes without saying, but Ill say it anywaythere is no substitution to great content and
writing, so make it good. Further reading: 5 Ways to Make Your Blog Posts Outstanding.
Getting success through a blog takes time, so make sure you have persistence and
patience.
A great way to speed things up is guest blogging on popular blogs. Check out a few
insightful videos about guest blogging on guestblogging.com. Any post you write, submit
them on social bookmarking/news sites like Digg, Reddit, Stumbleupon, Sphinn, or Hacker
News. Where to submit depends on your field and target audience.
Create an online tool
You might not have money, but perhaps you have programmers in your company or your
best friend can code. If thats the case you can create a useful or fun tool to drive traffic
and generate leads.
Hubspot, an internet marketing company, created a free tool that assesses your website.
The tool claims to have assessed close to three million sites, and your score on the 1-100
scale represents the percentage of those sites that your site tops. Now thats a pretty
cool tool, and its free. It has gotten Hubspot a ton of fame, inbound links, and leads.
Online tests are tools, too
You dont necessarily need to create a sophisticated tool. It can be as simple as a test
and people love tests.
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The One Question, a website helping people find their purpose has created a simple life
purpose test, which helps people reflect. They get around 100 people per day joining their
mailing list through that test.
Gemstone Shoppers has created a test where people find out what their gemstone is.
Once they get their result, they can embed a banner with their personal gemstone onto
their blog or website. The banner links back to the shopgemstones.com website and so
the test serves also as a link building tool.
Note: Make sure your tool can capture users emails or generate leads in some way,
dont waste the traffic.
So thinkwhat useful tool can you create that would benefit your prospects?
Participate in relevant forums
Its likely that people in your target audience are already talking about your field in some
sort of forums. It might be an old school bulletin board or a group on some social media
network such as Facebook or LinkedIn.
Your job is to join in on the conversation and start adding value. This will help you build
relationships and show off your expertise and position yourself as an authority in the field.
Dont ever spam your product or trash the competitionthats the quickest way to turn
the community against you. You have to become a member of your community, and you
can do that by acting like one. What goes around, comes around. You can have a link to
your website in your profile and signature, but dont go around posting your link on
random forums.
If youre a hosting company, you might want to participate in Web Hosting Talk. Sell
infoproducts? Check out WarriorForum.
Go to Google now and find all the relevant forums and discussion groups.
Join Twitter and/or Facebook
Get on the social media bandwagon. Create your Facebook page and sign up for Twitter.
Depending on your field, LinkedIn and YouTube might be great matches, too.
Remembersocial media is for building relationships, not selling. You should only rarely
shout buy my product on Twitter or Facebook (unless its a special campaign and its
between a lot of great content). Make friends, follow great people (your prospects), and
re-tweet their stuff. This helps to boost the relationship.
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Relationship bank account
If you ever read Stephen Coveys 7 Habits of Highly Effective People," you might
remember the term emotional bank accountsimilar to a bank account, you can make
deposits or withdrawals from each of your relationships. This principle applies on social
media, too. I called it the relationship bank account, and its the key principle to
understand if youre ever to get success on social media.
Every time you share something useful, entertaining, or in other ways value-adding on
Twitter or Facebook, you make a deposit on to your relationship with the followers. Every
time you ask for a sale or issue any other kind of self-oriented request, you withdraw
from the relationship.
Make sure you deposit enough before making a withdrawal: share useful content (can be
links to your blog), link to great articles out there, give tips on how to use your products.
Its okay to ask for a sale every now and then, but share at least 10 pieces of great
content for every time you ask for something. Nobody wants to talk to people who only
want to sell them something.
How to market on social media? Theres a ton of great content out there. Check Social
Media Examiner as one of the best resources out there.
Pitch your story
If you have a great product unlike any other (or slightly different), you can try to pitch it
to the media and popular blogs/websites.
Ive compiled a list of more than 36 places you can submit your startup for some
coverage.
There are also online press release distributors such as prlog.org, www.24-
7pressrelease.com, www.1888pressrelease.com, and many others like thatbut these
wont actually get anyone to read your press release. They are useful for link building
though.
What you can do is try to identify journalists that write on the field of your product and
shoot them an e-mail. Dont pitch your product, but the story of why it matters.
Have an affiliate program
Help others help you. Somebody might come across your product and see that its a
perfect for their audience (blog readers, newsletter subscribers, existing clients, etc).
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They might recommend it anyway, but theyll push it harder if theres something in it for
them. Hence its a good idea to have an affiliate program where you pay commission per
every client referred.
Dont be stingyif its a digital product, a commission under 30 percent isnt gonna cut it.
Have it at least 50 percentmost likely your margins will allow this. Its money you
wouldnt otherwise earn at allbetter half than nothing. Think long termhow much
money you might make off of a client in the long run. The hardest sale is always the first
one.
So there you have itif you were looking for a silver bullet, sorry to disappoint you. You
better hear it from meit doesnt exist. There are no shortcuts and there is no substitute
for hard work (and some luck).
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Anyone can create a product. That is not the hard part. The hard part is selling the
product.
It is imperative that you understand key concepts of marketing before you start to
market your product, or before you even start creating your product. The way you
market it needs to be integrated to the product itselfit sets the tone for the whole thing.
The business world is full of competition. Theres a good chance that the market you
want to enter already has some players in it, and you need to take that into account.
Here are the most important things you need to know about marketing and strategy.
Understand Your Customer
Success starts with understanding who your clients are and what they need. This is crucial
for two main reasons:
1. In order to create a product that truly delivers, it needs to address the needs of the
buyer.
2. To sell your product successfully, you need to know your client demographics, their
values, aspirations, and reflections of themselves.
When you know who your customers are, you will be able to better leverage your time,
energy, and resources to pursuing the right customers. You can focus your advertising
efforts. Especially if you are a one-person business owner, you need to reevaluate your
customer relationships and make choices about how to maximize and effectively use
your limited time and resources.
To cater better to the needs of your clients, ask yourself the following questions:
1. What does your client need and want?
This is the basis of everything. Your product needs to really address the needs and wants
of the customer. If the needs are not met, everything else is meaningless.
What You Need To Know About
Marketing and Strategy
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2. Why does your customer buy from you?
It is important that you know what customers consider most valuable about your products
or services. Ask and talk to your customers to find out. Once you have a list, ask them
again if you are indeed delivering what they want. These two questionswhat does the
customer value with regards to your products and services; and how well do you provide
that valuewill determine the relationship that you will have with the customer.
3. What does the customer expect after the sale?
The hardest part of the sale is after the sale is made. It is the make or break period: the
customers expectations will either be realized or failed. It is the time where you will know
whether the level of activity, delivery, customer service, and commitment to promises
made all supported the sales effort.
Do you know what is the emotional value they are looking for? What is the emotion in
them when they are using your product?
When people buy a Volvo, they buy safety. When people buy Versace, they buy glamour
and wealth. Ask yourself what is the emotional need your clients seek, and communicate
that in your sales copy and advertising messages.
Another thing is that you need to understand their demographics. If your buyers are
women between ages of 20 and 30, it would be a very bad idea to show pictures of old
men on your website. Show a picture of a person that is representative your of desired
customer, and it helps others customers to connect with your business. People in
different stages in their lives have different needs. Men and women have different needs.
You might think that as you know a lot about your business, you know the needs and
motivation of your clients anyway, and you dont need to ask. But heres the thing: all
people make decisions differently from one another. And the thing that persuades you is
unlikely to be the thing that persuades the next guy. Our personal outlook is a lousy
indicator of what works for anyone else.
When thinking of what your clients want, here are things you can count on:
They want you to really listen to them and not go on and on about yourself or your
product.
They want to know you really care about helping them solve their problems.
They want you to be a knowledgeable resource so you can guide them through the
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They want you to be a knowledgeable resource so you can guide them through the
process.
They want to know you will charge a fair price for a product.
They want to know you will stand behind what you sell.
They want to know you wont fade away as soon as theyve made the purchase.
More than anything else, prospects and customers watch what you do more than they
listen to what you say.
Offer a unique high value product
You want your product to stand out from the crowd, and you want people to really benefit
from what youre doing. If you cant do it, save your time and dont go into business. The
best things you can do for yourself is to create something that is both of high value to
customers and that few others are doing.
Lets look at this graph below. Its a matrix, with two parameters: value to the customer
and uniqueness. This will teach you the most important things about marketing and
product design.
Your business can be in one of the four quadrants. Lets start in the bottom left corner:
this is when you provide a product or service that offers very low value, and theres a ton
of other companies doing the same stuff.
The quadrant in the bottom right corner is when you provide something of great value
to the customer, but so are 10 other companies. When there is almost nothing different
about you and your competitors, or the differences are very subtle, you always compete
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on the price. Customers will usually buy the cheapest product.
The upper left corner is a place you will most definitely want to avoid. Its where you
provide something totally unique, but it offers no value to the customer and thus nobody
wants it. You are the only one doing this pointless thing, and soon there wont be any as
youll go bankrupt.
The place you want to be is in the top right corner, where you provide a unique product
that delivers great value to the Customer. Now that sounds easier than it really isso
many businesses fail to do that. The uniqueness can be a multitude of things: features,
design, price, location, business model, you name it. Figuring this out might not be easy,
but it sure as hell is worth your time investment.
Be remarkable and worth recommending
When you look at most of the internet businesses out there, then it seems that almost
everybodys strategy is to be a little bit better than the other guy while being mostly the
same. Sameness is the predominant strategy. And thats stupid. Mediocre things will not
get you anywhere, but will crush your business instead.
Create products that people will want to buy by building the marketing into the product
experience itself, not by trying to come up with marketing after the product is done. If
you fail to do so, you will struggle to find the time or money it takes to make your offering
successful. If you make average products, youre going to fail.
The most reliable way to succeed today is to stay away from the average and the
mediocre. Your product should raise eyebrows and get people talking about it (which is
what being remarkable is). You want it to be so different in some way, that it will make
people want to tell their friends about it.
This is the best way you can do advertising for yourself as the time of conventional
advertising is over.
People are becoming more and more resistant to advertising. Unless youre Coca-Cola or
Procter and Gamble, who can throw a gazillion dollars at advertising, this is not the game
you want to play.
So how to build this remarkability into your product?
A good way is to go to the extreme with an aspect of your product.
Cost. Give everything you know away for free. And charge for support or live
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seminars. Princethe singergave his new albums away for free. Every concert that
followed sold out to the max for a very high price. Or do the opposite: price is so much
higher than anything else on the market that it will intrigue people.
Design. Make it look ultracool, or go out of your way to have no design at all. Being
just average or good enough wont cut it.
Service. Go out of your way to provide excellent service to your customer. Or treat
the VIP customers significantly better than others, so that the desire to become one
increases.
Go beyond core features. Whatever your product does, it has a set of core
features. These are things people expect a product to do. What if you would do much
more? A training company could offer personalized coaching for participants.
Change your target customer. Repackage your product/service and target a non-
conventional target group. Handbags for men. A chiropractor who offers his services
to companies instead of individuals. Construction tools for women.
If you can figure out a way to make your business so unusual, different, and unexpected
that people cant help but say something (good or bad, doesnt matter!), you have made
it and saved yourself so much money. Youre either remarkable or invisible.
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One of the hardest things for any internet marketer is to figure out what to focus on.
Marketing is overwhelmingly broad, and you could pretty much do 10,000 different
things. How to set internet marketing goals and objectives? Whats most important?
Answer: building marketing assets.
What are marketing assets? The terminology was created by Seth Godin, who talks about
marketing assets here. In his words:
For a marketer, an asset is a tool or a platform, something you can use over and over
without using it up. In fact, its something that gets better the more you invest.
Running an ad is an expense. Building a brand people trust is an asset.
Buying a trade show booth is an expense. Having a permission-based marketing list of
people who want to get anticipated, personal, and relevant emails from you is an asset.
The answer is right there. Your marketing goals and objectives should focus on building
the following:
building your reputation and brand,
building your (permission-based) mailing list and building the relationship with the
people on that list,
building your blog/Twitter/Facebook/etc. audience, both in quality and quantity.
Now every time you ask, what should I be doing?", you can take action based on
whether an activity helps you build a marketing asset or not.
How To Set Internet Marketing
Goals and Objectives
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There are three ways to grow salesonline and offline both. Only three. However, most
companies focus only on oneand are missing out on revenue opportunities.
So what are these 3 ways to increase online sales?
increase the number of customers,
increase the average order size,
increase the number of repeat purchases.
#1: Increase the number of customers
This is what most businesses do and try to get better at.
You do this by solving a real problem, being remarkable, driving relevant traffic (free and
paid), boosting conversions, using referral programs and so on. Its the most expensive
part of increasing sales.
#2: Increase the average order size
They say the most profitable question of all times is Would you like fries with that? And
that captures the essence of this point.
When you get people to that stage when theyre ready to buy from youyou can ask
them to buy more things, and theres much less friction. The reason being that getting
customers to that buying point is the hardest part of the sales process. They need to trust
you and believe in the value theyre getting, they need to convince themselves they need
or want it, and that its the right thing to buy at this moment.
Once theyve reached that step and made a conscious decision to give you money
theyre also giving you their trust. So in that moment you are able to sell them more.
Upsell a product that costs ~60% less
Question: When somebody buys a shirt, should you upsell them a tie, or the whole suit?
The right answer is tieits (usually) cheaper and hence seems like a small thing to
3 Ways to Increase Online Sales
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The right answer is tieits (usually) cheaper and hence seems like a small thing to
add. If youd try to upsell something more expensive, youd counter the same kind of
friction as you did with the initial product (doesnt mean it cant work, its just harder).
The time-tested 6060 rule says that your customers will buy an upsell 60 percent of the
time for up to 60% of the original purchase price. Any upsell you offer must be congruent
with the original purchase. This means that when they buy shoes, you offer to buy shoe
care products, not a key chain.
Ever registered a domain name through GoDaddy? Lets see how many things theyll try
to upsell you:
Heres the list:
1. different extensions (.net, .info etc),
2. domains you searched previously,
3. variations you might consider,
4. premium domains,
5. country/region specific domains,
6. add 5 more domains and get bulk pricing
7. popup banner with get 3 or get 5 additional extensions for a deal,
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8. email plan.
Yes, thats 8 attempts to upsell you! I agree that GoDaddy is excessive, but its been
working for them. You should at least try to upsell 1 thing.
Quantity discount
Buy more, save more!
Vistaprint does this:
Offer an upgrade
Remind people that for just a little more $$$ they can get a fancier product.
Most people wont need more than 16 GB in their iPad, but just in case and its just
$100 more helps Apple make more money.

Bundling
Offering something to go with the initial product for a special price is a great way of
increasing the average order size.
Amazon frequently recommends you get a bundle:
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Notice how in addition to offering the bundle, theyre also pitching the Amazon credit
card (upsell!).
I throw marketing seminars each time I go to Europeand whenever I offer an online
marketing course to go with the seminar fee (for some extra $$$but a very good deal),
around half the people take the offer. Bundling ftw!
Complementary product
Do you need batteries? Sometimes you can get the extra sale by reminding them of a
new need they will have because of buying the product they have already decided on.
This can be an easy sale because it is rational, makes sense.
This is how the Phoenix Pendant does it, on the page that appears after the customer has
clicked the buy button:
One interesting thing they do here is tell you not to buy it if you dont need it. This can
reduce frictionif a customer is expecting to go straight to checkout and then they get
smacked with an upsell suggestion, its nice to word it in a way that makes them feel
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under less pressure and more in control. The people at the Phoenix Pendant tell me that
60% of customers take the upsell.
Longer commitment
Charge monthly? Get them to sign up for a longer time period. GetResponse lures with a
18% annual discount:
Extended warranty
If youve ever bought a gadget, youve been probably offer an extended warranty for a
price. Even though statistically speaking its a bad deal for the buyer, it provides peace of
mind.
Amazon example:
Add-on services
Ever go to Chipotle? You can get a good burrito for a decent price, but they offer to add
tasty guacamole (right in front of your eyes) for $1.80 more.
Get customers to add small things to their order for a small fee. They might just add up if
you know what I mean.
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Heres how PSD2HTML does it:
Expedited delivery
If you sell physical products or do custom work (be it software development or engraving
jewelry), you can get people to pay more for faster service.
HP ships your purchases faster if you pony up additional $39:
#3: Increase the number of repeat purchases
Its much easier to sell to an existing customer than to get a new one. Youre spending a
ton to acquire themits much cheaper to keep them than to go off finding new ones all
the time.
You dont want to keep all of themjust the profitable ones. So you need to be able to
identify which ones are costing you, and which ones are bringing you bacon. (Some you
might want to offload because of the emotional cost of servicing them, i.e. difficult
customers that you spend a lot of support hours on).
Here are some ways to keep the existing customer buying:
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Offering promotions and reminding customers of what you offer
Send targeted follow-up emails to customers offering them a related product or service
(you can do this automatically with a good email autoresponder and shopping cart).
Notifying them of deals is also great.
Wine Library is constantly sending me wine offers over emails (cause Ive bought
before). Every now and then Ill take it:
Companies do this with email marketing, but also all social media (Facebook, Twitter,
etc.)get customers to follow you on one of these and offer special deals for just the
followers.
Heres an example from Modcloth Facebook page:
Free shiping for a year (locking customers in)
Do you use Amazon Prime? Its when you pay a fee to get free 2-day shipping for a year
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(+ some other benefits). Free 2-day delivery is nice, and so are free streaming movies.
Appearently more people used the 2-day shipping now than their free Super Saver
Shipping. People like it.
However, by giving you this deal theyre essentially locking you in. Why buy from anyone
else if Amazon ships it for free (get it in 2 days)?
Wine.com does the same thing:
If your customers buy frequently the kind of products you sell, come up with an incentive
to keep buying only from you.
Offer coupons with the order
Do you know whats the open rate of transactional emails? Three times higher than
commercial email!
According to Experians Transactional Email Benchmark Report
The average revenue per transactional email is 2-5 times higher than standard bulk
mail
Transaction rates are 8x higher than bulk mailings for order confirmations and 4x
higher for shipping and returns/exchanges
Customers tend to open transactional emails repeatedly
So when customers place an order with you and receive the Thank you for your
purchase emailmake sure you include some marketing in that email, such as a coupon
code.
They just completed an order, so they probably wont buy immediatelyhence a coupon
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code with an expiry date is a better idea than offering an additional product (you should
have offered that as an upsell before completing the purchase).
I bought a gift for a friend, and the confirmation email had a coupon in it:
Save credit card details
I shop on Amazon all the time. The few times when I dont buy something from Amazon is
when Im after something specific and Amazon doesnt have it.
Of all the reasons I prefer Amazon, the biggest one for me is that my credit card details
are already stored there. If Id go buy from an online store Ive never visited, Id have to
enter all the payment and shipping detailsall over again! No, thank youAmazon it is!
No it is not just me talkingdata shows a sharp jump in per account spending (and the
trend is upward):
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(Note: dont copy Amazon blindly. What works for them, will not necessarily work for you.
They can get away with a lot of crap.)
People are inherently lazy. Your job is to make buying from you as easy and convenient
as possible.
Customer experience
People remember experiences. If the experience your website provided sucked, they
wont come back. Investment in user experience pays off.
Somebody on Quora suggests that play.com provides a great experience. I did a search
on Twitter and it could be true:
Service is the new selling
This is directly related to the last point. Once you get the customers in, provide a superior
support and service experience. You can always impress people with excellent service
since the average is very low.
Once you provide excellent service, people not only recruit new customers for you, but
theyll be sure to repeat the experience.
Release a new, better model every year
iPhone, anyone?
Conclusion
When trying to increase your online sales, dont forget the other two ways besides getting
new customers. Optimize for all three ways and enjoy growth thanks to untapped
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opportunities.
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If you want to double your results, you can either double the number of visitors (very
expensive), double the conversion rate (possible, but increasingly harder as theres a max
limit to your conversion rate) or double repeat purchasesloyalty.
Jakob Nielsen has mentioned that 20102020 will be the loyalty decade. Investing in
loyalty is as important as investing in usability and conversion optimization.
If you plan to be around with your business, you have to plan for loyalty.
Shared values before interactions
A common narrative shared online is that you build loyalty by interacting with customers
(sending them emails, social media, etc). It is only true when a critical criteria has been
met first: shared values.
If you dont form relationships, your customers will just want discounts. If consumers
share values with your brand, you can spend less on messaging, less on discounting, and
youre less affected by the turbulent economy.
In a study of 7,000 consumers in the U.S., the UK, and Australia those who said they have
a brand relationship, 64% cited shared values as the primary reason. Thats by far the
largest driver.
Do you stand for something?
In order to have shared values with your customers, they need to know what your values
are. If youre running a vanilla company trying to please everybody, youre not touching
anyones heart.
In 1983, Harley-Davidson was almost going out of business. By 2008 the company was
valued at $7.8 billion, being one of the top brands in the world. Central to the companys
turnaround and success was Harleys commitment to building a brand that stands for
something. Its customers organize around the lifestyle, activities, and ethos of the brand.
Shared values lead to loyalty
The Key to Customer Loyalty
Marketing
Marketing
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What are consumers really loyal to? People at Corporate Executive Board were looking
into this for over a year.
Long story short, what they found out was that people are not loyal to companies.
Theyre loyal to what the companies stand for.
We saw that emotional attachments to brands certainly do exist, but that connection
typically starts with a shared value that consumers believe they hold in common with
the brand.
Aaron Lotton
Real thing, not stick-on emotions
If youre successful and/or original, your products, prices, and marketing messages will
be copied. Those things are not your unique competitive advantage, nor will they create
loyalty.
The companies who focus on values, community building, and relationships are building
assets that cant be easily replicated. The best and most sustainable way to create
emotion and build relationships: mean it.
You show hot women in your ads or feature happy families on your website, but those are
merely stick-on emotions. The real thing is something intrinsic about your business.
A great example: Toms Shoes. You buy a pair of shoes, they give a pair to a child in need.
The company has been around only a few years, but has become a known brand people
lovebecause theyre the real thing.
Patagonia has a following. As does Harley-Davidson and Whole Foods. They stand for
something real.
Heres a good article on the real thing vs stick-on emotions.
People will buy from you if who you are aligns with who they are. So make it known who
you are and what you stand for.
Marketing
Marketing
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Sex sellseverybody knows. Or does it?
A fifth of all ads use sex
According to the book Sex in Advertising: Perspectives on the Erotic Appeal, around 20%
of all ads use sex (a good collection here). Of course you already knew this.
Open any magazine and sexy ladies (and men) will sell you anything from shampoo to
chainsaws. Some say that fitness marketing is almost soft porn these days. Most big
companies have used sex to advertise. Even Appleeven though it doesnt allow sexual
apps on their appstore.
Why are there so many ads using sex? Is it cause its really boosting sales? Heres the real
explanation for this.
If you look at most of the Fortune 500 companies, who are they run by? Men. So, youre
their advertising agency and youre pitching these ideas to these men. Well, men have a
very specific idea of whats beautiful.
University of Florida advertising professor Robyn Goodman (source)
Perhaps sex doesnt sell, after all
According to one study an overwhelming 61 percent of the respondents say that sexual
imagery in a products ad makes them less likely to buy it. Interestingly, 53 percent of
respondents surveyed said they are more likely to buy a product that is advertised using
the imagery of love.
Another study made by AdWeek and Harris poll showed that more than half of Americans
(56%) say they are bothered by sexual imagery in ads they are exposed to, a quarter are
very bothered and the rest are somewhat bothered.
Of course, these surveys were asking people how they would behave. People rarely know.
How and When to Use Sex to Sell
More
Marketing
Marketing
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Sex doesnt sell movies
A study on sex in the moviesthat examined more than 900 films released between 2001
and 2005concluded that nudity and explicit sex scenes dont translate to success for
major motion pictures.
Contrary to popular belief, sex and nudity failed to positively affect a films popularity
among viewers or critics and did not guarantee big box office receipts. The top-grossing
films in the study contained mostly minor to mild sex and/or nudity.
Women turned off by sexual ads?
There are these two studies which show that women are bored by ads using sexeven
when they were made for and appeared in fashion magazines aimed specifically and
uniquely at female consumers, including Vogue, Cosmopolitan, and Allure.
The studies dont reveal exactly what the women dont like about these ads. When I
shared the study about women disliking sexy ads in magazines with a lady friend, she
suggested it might be because of envy. The goal of those ads in those magazines is not to
make people relate to them, in fact the opposite is true. Theyre aspirational.
Sex reduces brand recall
MediaAnalyzer Software & Research explored how men and women look at sexually
themed ads and what effect that visual behavior might have on the ads effectiveness.
Long story short, mens brand recall was worse for the sexual ads than for the nonsexual
ones. An average of 19.8 percent recalled the correct brand/product for the nonsexual
ads; for the sexual ads, 9.8 percent did. Strong, sexual visuals reduced the attention a
brand was getting by 50%.
Men liked the sexual ads, but couldnt really remember what company was advertised.
Women did not like the sexual ads, and interestingly their brand recall was more than
50% worse.
Marketing
Marketing
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I think Reebok Easytone is a good example where sex is being sold way more than the
product itself. The shoes are completely overshadowed by ass. In the end, you want sex,
not the shoes.
And its not just about the brand recall, its about noticing the brand to begin with. A
viewing observation study revealed that men hardly pay any attention to the ad copy or
products on sexy ads.
So when does sex sell?
Sex has a proven track record. The Wonderbra Hello Boys campaign is a great example.
Its billboards stopped traffic and aroused the attentions of men, but it put women in the
driving seat. Seven units were sold every second in its 1994 heyday1.6m in that year
alone.
An interesting tidbit: 73% of sexual ads in magazines contain a sex-related brand benefit.
Common themes follow the Buy this, get this formula. If you buy our product: (1) Youll
be more sexually attractive, (2) have more or better sex, or (3) just feel sexier for your
own sake.
Axe and Old Spice body sprays make a lot of money, and theyre positioned as sexual-
attractant enhancers. For over 30 years, sex in one form or another has been a mainstay
in Calvin Klein ads. Their annual revenue in 2010 was $2.5 billion, up from $1 billion in
2005. Ads continue to be as edgy as ever.
Victorias Secret is all about sex. The company has grown from three boutiques in San
Francisco to the most successful intimates brand in the world. So clearly, being all about
sex can be good business.
So Id suggest you use sex in your branding if your brand is about sex. It seems to work.
Sex makes us impulsive and focus on the short-term
Marketing
Marketing
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Scientists claim they have discovered exactly why sex sells. Researchers found seeing an
attractive man or woman in an advert excites the areas of the brain that make us buy on
impulse, bypassing the sections which control rational thought.
These results suggest that the lower levels of brain activity from ads employing NI (non-
rational influence) images could lead to less behavioral inhibition, which could translate to
less restraint when it comes to buying products depicted in the NI advertisements.
Dr. Ian Cook, a professor of psychiatry at the Semel Institute for Neuroscience and
Human Behavior at UCLA
Basically this means that seducing consumers can be a more effective way to sell
products than persuading consumers. Even better, combine both.
Similar findings were confirmed by other studies.
Belgian researchers conducted a series of tests on 358 young men, showing some of
them sexual images or objects, and showing the others non-sexual images or objects.
The sexy imagery did not work on all men all the time, but as a group, men with sex on
their brains were more impulsive and valued immediate gratification more than the
controls.
I observed in my studies that men are more likely to pick a smaller immediate reward
over a larger later reward. Hence I do think that men might spend money on something
they might otherwise not purchase. Men would become more impulsive in any domain
after exposure to sexual cues.
Bram van den Bergh, the studys lead author
Another study received similar results. They found that men who viewed photos of
women judged to be attractive became more attracted by short-term rewards.
Add here the research by George Loewenstein of Carnegie Mellon University and Dan
Ariely of MIT, who found that sexually aroused men would do all sorts of things they might
not otherwise do.
When aroused, more men (compared to non-aroused) found womens shoes sexy and
wanted to take part in a threesome. Aroused men narrow their view of the world. When
theyre thinking about sex, thats all they think about and that leads to impulsive,
irrational behavior.
So what does this all mean?
Marketing
Marketing
32 32
If you want your customers to think short-term and go for immediate satisfaction
(impulse purchases), using sexual imagery is a good idea.
I would think a time-related scarcity would boost any sexy offer even moretaking
advantage of their irrationality while theyre turned on.
Using sex to sell more online
Offline advertising is one thing (even though a racy ad can be a fantastic link
building tool), what about using sex onlinebanners ads, landing pages, websites and so
on? (Im talking about non-adult industries).
There was a successful auction on eBay where a guitar was sold using sex. Unfortunately
we wont know what the result would have been without the sexy photo.
And Shoemoney conducted an experiment on Facebook and discovered that ads with
boobs get the most clicks (and lower CPC thanks to higher CTR) and they even convert.
This was his winning image:
Of course, you have to be careful when using such imageryit will surely attract tons of
clicks (and more cost) from people who have no intention of buying your stuff.
Virtual cleavage works (for men)
How would you increase conversions when targeting hardcore social gamers, male, ages
18-40? With breasts, of course.
Ion Interactive was testing a landing page for a video game. Two variations of a female
vampire image were be tested to determine whether a head shot or body shot is more
effective at driving game sign ups.
Marketing
Marketing
33 33
Image source
Results: Version C kicked butt! For PPC traffic, landing page C resulted in a 95% increase
in sign ups over landing page A and a 35% increase in sign ups over landing page B. For
Affiliate Marketing traffic, landing page C resulted in a 39% increase in sign ups over
landing page A and a 30% increase in sign ups over landing page B.
However, this doesnt mean that sex sells more video games. In fact, less sex sells better.
Some say its because there are more women playing video games than ever. Even Lara
Croft has been reduced to more anatomically feasible proportions; her breasts and lips
have shrunk in recent years. Newer versions of the game have sold better than the
earlier ones.
Untapped potential
The truth is that theres little data available on using sex to boost online conversions. It
seems that its not a widely used approach. I would think that theres some untapped
potential here and some people will make good money using it.
Can sex work when selling to women?
Marketing
Marketing
34 34
Researchers followed up on earlier research that has demonstrated that women exhibit
negative reactions to explicit sexual content in advertising.
Their hypothesis was that womens attitudes toward sexually oriented advertising would
improve if ads reflected devotion and commitment.
Findings from our initial experiments were supportive of this hypothesis. Experiment one
illustrated that commitment-related cues in the ad itself (for example, positioning the
product as a gift to a woman from a man) boosted womens attitudes.
So if you want to appeal to women, show love and commitment instead of purely
recreational sex.
Maybe youre already selling sex, you just dont know it
That smartphone in your pocket? Thats for sex. So is the car you drive and the clothes
you wear. Everything you own is about sex and attracting more of it. This is what
evolutionary psychologist Geoffrey Miller says in his book Spent.
Pretty much every purchase decision and acquisition of personal goods is motivated by
the primal desire for procreation, pleasure or bothhe claims.
If thats true and you can figure out how your product or service can help buyers get
more sex, maybe it is a good idea to test using sex in your ads and website. Just bear in
mind that including sexuality in your advertising and/or web visuals will almost certainly
alienate some of your audience (but that might be okay).
Become a Hyperink reader. Get a special surprise.
Like the book? Support our author and leave a comment!
Marketing
Marketing
35 35
II.
Conversion
Optimization 101
How to Build Websites that Sell:... Conversion Optimization 101
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This section will make you money. It will teach you about conversion optimizationhow
exactly to do it, based on all the best research and experiments.
Why do conversion optimization? It is the cheapest, quickest way to increase sales online.
Think about this: if youre currently converting at 1% (1% of your visitors buy your stuff),
but can increase that to a mere 2%, youve doubled your sales.
Conversion optimization is the method of tuning websites or landing pages with the
goal of converting more visitors into customers. The higher the conversion rate (%), the
more sales (sign ups, subscriptions, etc) you get.
Conversion optimization is about testing. Most companies are not happy with their online
conversion rate, says Econsultancy. Companies who were happy with their conversion
rates did on average 40% more tests than those companies who were dissatisfied.
Why dont you test?
3 likely reasons:
You dont really know what conversion optimization is or how to do it,
You think its too complicated,
You figure it takes too much time.
Its not that complicated nor that time-consuming. Your business exists to make money,
conversion optimization makes your business more money. If thats not worth your time,
Im not really sure you got your priorities straight.
How do you know if your conversion rate is high enough?
It depends. It depends on what action you want people to take, how much your product
costs, where the people are coming from and so on.
What You Have to Know About
Conversion Optimization
37 37
Send spam to 100,000 people with your offer and you conversion rate will be 0%. Send
an email to your in-house email list that has been nurtured for years, and you might sell
to more than 10%.
The average conversion rate for purchases is commonly believed to be 2%, but dont get
stuck on that. If youre doing more than 2%, it doesnt mean youve reached Nirvana and
should stop optimizing. A good conversion rate is the one thats better than your current
one!
Note: Bear in mind that overwhelming majority of people will NOT buy anything on their
first visit to your site. Hence, dont try to sell to everybody right away. Instead sell them
the idea of coming backask them to join your email list, subscribe to your rss feed,
follow you in Twitter, and so on.
A quick refresher on testing methods
Create multiple versions of a web page (such as home page, product page, landing page,
etc) or even a part of a web page (such as headline wording, call to action button size,
email capture box location, etc) and see which version converts betterwhich
version gets more people to do what you want them to do.
Customers often behave unexpectedly. This is one reason we need to test. The second
reason is that you are not your customer, hence thinking customers use your site like you
do will leave you in the dark.
You dont know what works until you test it.
A/B testing
There are 2 ways to test. A/B testing (or split testing) is when you create two versions of
a page (page A and page B). 50% of the traffic is showed page A, and the other 50% is
taken to page B. This division is done automatically by software (see the end of the
article).
If a user lands on page A, a cookie is placed on her computer, so that when she comes
back later, she will always see version A. This ensures that people wont really notice that
youre conducting any testing on your website.
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Technically you could also do A/B/C/D etc testing, but the more versions you test at the
same time, the more time it takes for you to know which one is the best. You need
statistical significance. Theres a significance calculator spreadsheet in Excel you can use.
Google recommends at least 100 conversions per page before deciding which version is
best. The exact amount actually needed is a matter of debate. I say sometimes 25
conversions is enough to spot a winner (exact conversion rate requires more time).
If you test more than two pages against each other, it will take you much more time to
find the winner. Speed of testing is also important, so I say skip the Cs and Ds.
Multivariate testing
Multivariate testing enables you to test more than 2 combinations at the same time, and
the combination of different combinations. Let me explain.
39 39
Lets say youre testing 2 versions of a headline, 2 versions of a call to action text on a
button and 3 different images of the page at the same time (as on the picture above).
So the winning combination could be:
headline 1, button 2, image 1
etc, etc. Lots of possibilities, and youd need a lot of traffic to find the winning
combination.
Only do this if you have a ton of traffic. Low modest traffic websites should stick to A/B
testing.
Structured approach
According to the conversion optimization report , companies that have a structured
approach to conversion are twice as likely to have seen a large increase in sales. So dont
just throw spaghetti on the wall and see what sticks; have a structured approach.
Lets go over some frameworks you can use for your conversion optimization.
Structured Approach by RedEye
40 40
You can download a white paper on the structured approach advocated by RedEye and
Econsultancy (who conducted the conversion study mentioned above).
The approach they recommend is a 4-step loop (Measure-Analyze-Test-Optimize):
1. Measure. You can only improve what you can measure, so measure everything. Be
clear on your business goals, benchmark your competition for ideas, dig in your web
analytics data, conduct customer surveys, analyze search behavior on your site.
2. Analysis. Once you know your goals, its time to figure out whats working well, whats
not and why. Analyze your content for relevancy and clarity, figure out if it matches user
needs, do usability testing and analyze user paths/journeys on your site.
3. Test. A/B and multivariate testing are the two most valuable methods for companies
to improve conversion. Prioritize tests by potential value and cost.
4. Optimize. After conducting tests, implement successful design and content changes.
I suggest you download the white paper and read the whole thing.
Invesp Conversion Framework
Invesp has 8 principles in their conversion framework.
1. Build buyer personas and focus on a few select personas when designing your
layout, writing copy, and so on.
2. Build user confidence, make them trust you by using all kinds of trust elements.
3. Engagement. Entice visitors to spend a longer time, come back to visit, bookmark it,
and/or refer others to it.
4. Understand the impact of buying stages. Not everybody will buy something on
their first visit, so build appropriate sales funnels and capture leads instead, and sell them
later.
5. Deal with fears, uncertainties, and doubts (FUDs). Address user concerns,
hesitations, doubts.
6. Calm their concerns. Incentives are a great way to counter FUDs and reduce
friction.
7. Test, Test, Test.
8. Implement in an iterative manner. Build smaller blocks, make smaller changes,
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and test them and improve their performance.
C = 4m + 3v + 2(i-f) 2a
This is not a lesson in physics, but a conversion formula developed by Marketing
Experiments.
Luckily you dont need to solve the formula above, its actually a helpful tool to keep at
arms length (like print it out and stick on your cubicle office wall). This is what the
characters mean:
C = Probability of conversion
m = Motivation of user (when)
v = Clarity of the value proposition (why)
i = Incentive to take action
f = Friction elements of process
a = Anxiety about entering information
Translation: The probability of conversion depends on the match between the offer and
visitor motivation + the clarity of the value proposition + (incentives to take action now
friction) anxiety. The numbers next to characters signify the importance of it.
Friction is defined as a psychological resistance to a given element in the sales or sign-up
process. Anxiety is a psychological concern stimulated by a given element in the sales or
sign-up process. Reduce these as much as possible and do what you can to increase the
users motivation and incentive and clarify the value position.
LIFT
An interesting framework for analyzing landing pages is LIFT, developed by WiderFunnel:
42 42
This framework has value proposition as vehicle that provides the potential for the
conversion rate. Its the basis of it all. Relevance and clarity boost conversions, while
anxiety and distraction kill it. Urgency is what propels people to take action right away.
Ingredients of a successful test
Not all tests are equal. Heres what you need for successful conversion testing:
A hypothesis: testing is not there to prove an idea works, but to assess whether it
works.
Dont test your site by showing a different version at different time periods (e.g. one
week one design, second week another design), the results will NOT be accurate.
Dont be afraid to fail: In testing & optimization, failure is success. Too many times, I
have seen the uglier, poorer cousins convert better.
If you dont have huge amounts of traffic, dont test too many variations at once. Also,
if you do A/B testing, its worth testing one change at a timeotherwise you wont
know which thing made the difference.
Dont end the test too soon, make sure results are statistically significant.
Avoid meek tweakingin other words, making changes that are never likely to have
a significant effect. (See below)
Testing should never end. Decide what to test, test it, make a change and test again.
What are the most important things to test?
We could test everything, but lets test the 20% that makes 80% of the difference.
Now lets look at each area separately. Ill showcase some cool recent experiments you
can learn from.
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Value Proposition
Value proposition is the main reason a prospect should buy from you.
(If youre struggling with yours, heres a worksheet (pdf) to guide you through the process
of effectively communicating your value proposition.)
Can you find a value proposition here?
Didnt think so. Stating your company name as the first thing and throwing around
superlatives like finest quality dont convince much.
What about here?
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This makeover version brought 145% increase in conversions.
Marketing Experiments recommends you test your value proposition via PPC ads first,
and only then test the winning versions on your landing page:
Images from Marketing Experiments
Headline
On the average, five times as many people read the headline as read the body copy. It
follows that unless your headline sells your product, you have wasted 90 percent of your
money. The headlines which work best are those which promise the reader a benefit.
David Ogilvy, ad guru
A good headline can make the difference. Its kind of nice when just changing the
wording of your headline increases your results by 127%.
A headline is the first thing a visitors sees and reads on your website or landing page. Its
the very first thing you say about you. If you start out with Welcome!, youve already
lost.
If the visitor came through a paid ad, the landing page headline should reinforce the
45 45
message from the ad; utilize persuasive momentum.
If youre split testing article headlines or email subject lines, remember the 65 character
rule. Google only displays 65 characters in its search results, email clients such as Gmail
will truncate long subject lines and Twitter doesnt allow too much for tweeting your
headline.
CityCliq: 88.9% improvement
The winning headline is the one on the right.
Offer
A confused mind always says no, goes the old direct marketing adage.
The offer is the deal youre presenting to your visitor. Make it clear and concise. Nobody
will try hard to understand what is it that youre offering.
The offer is not a call to action, that comes later.
Call to Action buttons
The most important part about CTA buttons is that theyre clearly visible, above the fold
and theres ideally just one per page. The more choice you give, the harder it is to decide.
Peoples attention span is limited. They dont want to figure out what buttons that say
submit actually do. Buttons without the word submit convert better, tests show. Steve
Krug was right: dont make me think.
The word free on the other hand seems to be quite magical. For instance Firefox
improved their conversions by 3.6% (over 500 more downloads per test) when they
changed their button text from Try Firefox 3 to Download NowFree.
What about the color of the button? Big orange buttons are all the rage these days (think
Amazon), but there are still some other colors in the world. In this test red kicked greens
46 46
butt and converted 21% better (orange was not tested):
Image: Hubspot
Larger sized buttons usually do better. Hubspot found that a good button size is around
225px wide and 45px high.
Oh yeah, never ever have a reset fields button. Nobody fills a form to clear the field in
the end. If they do, they wont bother to start over.
Friction
Whenever theres somebody asking for a sale, theres friction! Reducing friction produces
a disproportionately high return on invested effort.
Friction consists of two components:
Length: fatigue, irritation, or aggravation caused by forms or processes that ask for more
time or information than feels reasonable
and
Difficulty: poor usability, asking questions people dont know the answers to, insufficient
product information, etc.
Absence of trust is also frictiona visitor will not convert if he doesnt have confidence or
trust in you.
MarketingExperiments brings this case study. The original page with 3 calls to action:
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This was the treatment:
The optimized form requires only one choice, and the call-to-action is simply a
Confirmation, thereby minimizing difficulty-oriented friction.
By including the offer price on the landing page (which also removed one page in the
order process) and minimizing friction by reducing the level of decision making difficulty
on the order form, free-trial-signup conversion rose by 65%.
Another one:
Simply reducing the number of fields and dramatically reducing the perceived page
length through layout increased overall conversion by 77%.
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Here are some things that reduce friction:
Testimonials and/or customer reviews,
Case studies of previous customers,
Third-party references such as media mentions or reviews,
Easy to find company contact info, employee photos and bios,
Trust marks that communicate your site is secure and that confidential data is handled
with care,
Short forms (whenever you add an input field to your form, ask yourself, Is this
additional information worth losing sales?),
Clarity: focus on what the user gets and needs to do to get it,
Distraction removal: the offer page doesnt contain anything not related to
converting the user,
Use language that is familiar to your target audienceavoid jargon and corporate
speak,
Guarantee: offer a guarantee on their purchase such as a 90-day risk-free trial; 100%
money-back guarantee; or a 100% satisfaction guarantee,
Beautiful design: websites that are more attractive create a greater feeling of
trustworthiness and professionalism in consumers.
Unfortunately you cannot eliminate friction 100%it is a natural part of selling. If you
want to people to buy something, you must eventually ask for a credit card number,
address, and other information.
Stanford Persuasive Technology Labs web credibility guidelines is a must-read for all.
Price
The right pricing can really help you boost your conversions.
Read our article on pricing experiments.
Radical change
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This is when you go beyond testing one element to create an all together new and
different version.
Great examples (click on the links of each case study to read the specifics):
SEOMoz: 52% improvement in sales and $1 million dollars increase in revenue
Image: Conversion Rate Experts
How they did it:
created a web page long enough to tell the story
infused the headline with curiosity rather than overt buy me language
explained precisely what customers would get at each level (plan)
showcased things customers cared about but SEOmoz had taken for granted
augmented the message with video
lowered the risk by offering free subscribers a 30-day full-featured membership for
just $1
Highrise: 2 radical changes, 37.5% and 102.5% improvement in conversions
Image: 37Signals
What they learned:
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You really need to test: A long form page had a 37.5% increase in net signups
compared to the original. The person design converted better than the original.
Then they added more info under the person design page, and it converted worse.
Big photos of smiling customers work (but the specific person didnt quite matter)
Performance Based Design book: 131.2% improvement on landing page
What they learned:
Engaging visitors through appropriate copy improved sign ups by 100%+
Sometimes you can overthink. The winning design was thrown together very, very
quickly, yet outperformed the more formally designed landing page with more than
double the conversions.
Conversion optimization tools
There are quite a lot of tools available, WhichTestWon.com lists 39. Im going to skip
expensive enterprise tools and list some of my favorites that are easy to use and easy on
the wallet.
Google Website OptimizerThe best part of GWO is that its free. Most people can do
most testing with it, but it requires you to be somewhat tech savvy. Google does
provide handy video tutorials that help, but theyre somewhat outdated, and the sound
quality on some is plain horrible.
Visual Website Optimizer and Optimizely. Great services for entrepreneursboth easy
to use. VWOs cheapest plan ($49) comes out to $0.0049 per visitor. Optimizelys
cheapest plan ($19) comes out to $0.0095 per visitor. Heres how they compare to
each other.
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ConversionDoubler seems to be in the same ballpark, but I havent used it myself.
Zentester has a forever free plan, but the catch is that your test results are public.
MaxA/B is an easy to use WordPress plugin for A/B testing. Ive had some issues with it
in the past, but for the most part seems to do the job.
What worked for them, wont necessarily work for you
Just because something worked on somebodys site, doesnt mean it will work on yours.
For instance take this case where reducing the size of call to action and removing
urgency elements actually increased the conversion rate.
No website is the same and no users are the same. The trick is to understand your users
and target them in the most appropriate manner. Customers are influenced by a range
of activities before they convert; website content, website usability, online and offline
advertising all play a role in whether or not the consumer will make a purchase. You have
to test.
Excellent libaries of case studies
There are several good conversion optimization case study resources.
WhichTestWon claims to have the worlds biggest library of A/B & multivariate testing
case studies (164 at the moment of this writing). Offers paid membership for in-depth
information on them.
MarketingExperiments blog has a ton of case studies. Not all of the posts in the link
are case studies, but a lot of them are.
Visual Website Optimizer has a user-friendly database of case studies. Free.
ABtests.com. All kinds of tests. Upload your own test results.
WiderFunnel case studies. 30 or so.
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If you run an online store, youre always trying to boost your sales. Heres how to
increase the conversion rate of your ecommerce site.
Whats the conversion rate I can be happy with?
Dont worry about average rates. A good conversion rate to strive for is better than the
one you have right now.
There are just too many variables that affect conversions, so its very difficult to have
apples to apples comparisons between different sites. Quality of the traffic is a major
contributor.
Rates around 1 percent and 2 percent are fairly common.
Quality Product images
If Id have to pick one single thing that would sell a product online, its images.
You could technically have an e-commerce site with just images, and no product
descriptions (I dont recommend it). It wouldnt work vice versa.
People want to see what theyre getting. The grandfather of boosting e-commerce
conversion rates is having high quality photos of your product. The more the better. Show
the products from different angles, in context, make them zoomable.
Ties.com gets it right:
The Ultimate Guide to Increasing
E-Commerce Conversion Rates
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Extra credit for the view this in the dressing room feature. Check it out.
Great product copy
Product descriptions matter. The role of product copy is to give buyers enough
information, so they could convince themselves this is the right product for them. Clarity
trumps persuasion. The best sales copy is full, complete information. No hype needed.
How long? You should offer both, the concise version and the long version. The shorter
version should capture the essence: whos the product for, what will it do, and why is that
good.
The longer version should give so much information that the user will not have a single
question left. If they read the whole thing and still have questions or doubts, then you
have a problem. If theyre convinced only half way through, they can just skip and
continue to checkout.
Lets look at the same product on Home Depot and Amazon.
The Home Depot version sucks:
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They cram the text inside a stupid iframe, only provide you with three sentences of
information and a bunch of technical info in bullet points.
The Amazon version has proper text for humans, turns features into benefits and even
provides a comparison table. Technical info is provided too.
If you sell stuff you dont make, dont just repeat the manufacturers canned descriptions.
Add your personal touch and recommendationstell the customer why you personally
recommend this product and how it will help them.
Recommended reading: E-Commerce Copywriting: The Guide to Selling More
Product videos
Images are good, but everything indicates that video is the future. Photos have their
limitations; video is the next step before actually touching and feeling the product.
If youre not doing product videos yet, do them for at least part of the inventory and see
if it makes a difference.
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Zappos has videos for almost all of their products, such as this:
Customization creates ownership
People like to customize stuff. Its fun, has a game-like element to it and creates a feeling
of ownership. Once youve spent minutes configuring a product, it feels like your own.
Back in 2008, I needed a new laptop and went to dell.com. I played around for like 30
minutes customizing my laptop. At the end, of course, I bought it. It ended up being much
more expensive than any of their standard sets.
If your business is up for it, you can do mass customization, like Dell or Timbuk2using
efficient manufacturing (the labor contents of every Trimbuk2 bag is only 30 minutes).
Here what Timbuk2 bag customization looks like:
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Does customization make money? Gemvara lets women customize jewelry (I designed it
myself!), and theyre making millions. So yeah.
Charging for shipping is a conversion killer
Do you know how many merchants offer free shipping? Half of them! Some offer always
free, some have conditions. Amazon and JCPenney offer free shipping, if you buy for at
least $25 or $50 respectively. Nordstrom offers free shipping for all purchases. All of this
has gotten people used to the idea of free shipping.
An e-tailing group study revealed that unconditional free shipping is number one criteria
for making a purchase (73 percent listed it as critical). In another study, 93 percent of
respondents indicated that free shipping on orders would encourage them to purchase
more products.
High shipping costs were rated as the number one reason why consumers were not
satisfied with their online shopping experience. In fact, shipping costs are the main
reason why people prefer brick and mortar to online.
People want free shipping, no surprise there. But how attractive is it? In fact, orders with
free shipping average around 30 percent higher in value those that charge a few bucks
for transport. Makes business sense.
When 2BigFeet introduced free shipping for orders over $100, their conversions went up
50 percent.
For whatever reason, a free shipping offer that saves a customer $6.99 is more
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For whatever reason, a free shipping offer that saves a customer $6.99 is more
appealing to many than a discount that cuts the purchase price by $10.
David Bell, Wharton
If youre afraid that offering free shipping will erode most of the profit in the order, watch
this video for a useful strategy to use.
What about charging very little instead of free?
In the book Free, author Chris Anderson shares the case of Amazon. Once Amazon
implemented the free shipping offer, sales went up in each country except for one
France. Why? France charged 20 cents instead of free. While 20 cents IS almost free, it
sure didnt seem that way to people. Once they changed it to free, sales went up also in
France.
Moral of the story: free is in a league of its own. The difference between cheap and free
is huge.
If you charge for shipping
If you decide to still charge for shipping, you have to do this one thing: mention shipping
costs up front. If you can, charge a flat fee (simple pricing is best) instead of per item.
Nothing kills conversions like a surprise shipping fee revealed at the very end. According
to this study, 47 percent of people indicated they would abandon a purchase if they got to
checkout and found that free shipping was not included.
Have a section for sales and specials
The above mentioned e-tailing group study conducted at the end of 2011 found that 47
percent of online buyers would only buy discounted products, except under exceptional
circumstances. 62 percent said they are looking for a section that identifies sales and
specials.
Endless sales, Groupon, and its clones have trained people to shop cheap. Discount
seeking behavior is set to continue, so thinking about having a dedicated sales section
on your site. Naturally do whats right for your brand, but it might be something worth
experimenting with.
Suggestion: make it clear where people can see stuff on sale.
Steve Madden has several calls to action for stuff on sale:
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While the rotating offers banner is usually not a good idea, they have the exact same
offer on each bannerso it works out.
Tackle shopping cart abandonment
Shopping cart abandonment means the loss of a customer who is going through the
check-out process of an online store. Its widespread.
In 2011, the shopping cart abandonment rate reached all-time high of 72 percent. Its
believed that this rate will continue climbing.
A Forrester study found that 89 percent of consumers had abandoned a shopping cart at
least once. Researchers attributed that high rate to user sophistication: as shoppers
become more experienced online, they are more likely to comparison shop even as they
move toward checkout.
Other industry experts offer this explanation: shoppers are shocked at high shipping
costs.
Top reasons why people abandon shopping carts (and what to do about it):
High price. If your product is the same or similar to what the competitors offer, people
will choose based on the price. If your price is the best, say it (must be true, or lose all
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credibility). If its not the best, you have to communicate your added value.
You charge for shipping? Stop. Figure out how to offer free shipping.
Hassle: you ask for too much data/forced registration.
Doubt: Will it fit me? Can I return it? Use live chat to address buyers concerns and
answer their questions.
Your site is too slow. Speed up your site.
Follow up
A very effective way to reduce shopping cart abandonment rates is following up by
email (263 percent improvement in the linked test). Another company got
500 percent ROI with shopping cart abandonment campaign. SmileyCookie
recaptured even 29 percent of the abandoned carts.
How many companies do this? Listrak shopped Top 1000 retailer sites, added items to a
shopping cart, began the checkout process by adding first and last name, e-mail address
and phone number, and then abandoned the carts before completing a purchase. They
then tracked whether retailers responded with e-mails and analyzed the contents of any
follow-up e-mails retailers sent.
Only 14.6 percent of the top web retailers used e-mail campaigns as a way to retarget
shoppers.
So what do you do?
Collect email address firstso you are able to send follow-up emails if they do not
complete their orders.This is the screen people are taken to on Amazon when theyre
ready to check out:
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Make sure the first follow-up email goes out ASAP. If they complete the purchase
somewhere else, its over. If the purchase take place, send one or two more followup
emails (might include a coupon).
Track the effectiveness of those emails (open, clickthrough, and conversion rates).
Many ecommerce platforms such as Magento, 3DCart, and Volusion offer integrated cart
abandonment solutions. There are also several add-on software providers out there that
can do this.
Here are two to start with:
Rejoiner
SeeWhy
Persistent shopping cart
People comparison shop. A common behavior is that they add products to cart on a site,
so they could return later. If upon their return they discover that the contents of the
shopping cart have expired, they will not start from scratch (too much hassle).
The solution: persistent shopping cart. Done with a persistent cookie, this shopping cart
will be right there even a day or a week later.
Save the cart
An alternative to this is the option to save the shopping cart contents, so the user can
retrieve it later after theyre done with comparison shopping.
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Giving the option to send the cart contents to email (later retrievable through a link) is a
smart way of staying on the shoppers mind.
Show contact info, offer live chat
Its a small thing, but known to boost conversionsespecially important for small, less
known stores. Its a trust thingmaking your email and phone number clearly visible
shows youre a real business.
Icon Direct shows a real person and a prominent phone number:
Offer a live chat option for answering quick questions. 77 percent of e-retailers that use
live chat considered it a critical communication method, according to the results of a
survey.
Apple is doing it:
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A live chat service Ive used myself and can strongly recommend is Olark.
Clear progress indicators
People like to be in control and to be in the know. Are we there yet? We want to know
how much longer something is going to take. This is why numbered lists are better than
unordered lists and why you should have clear progress indicators on your site.
Crutchfield has it in the top right corner, but I think its too small and will go unnoticed by
many:
The way Crate&Barrel is doing it is better, the steps are more prominent:
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Address uncertainty
Is this safe? Can I do returns? When will I get my stuff?
If the visitor has never ordered from you, he will have several uncertainties you have to
deal with. Make a list of the most common objections and doubts, and address them on
product pages and in the shopping cart.
Asos has a tabbed box detailing shipping and returns info right on the product page:
Ace Hardware puts their phone number, privacy policy, security guarantee and returns
info on their shopping cart page.
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I like how Groupon is dealing with this (look at the sidebar):
Offer multiple payment options
Options are good. Two reasons:
Given the scandals about credit card information theft, some people are wary of using
credit cards for online payments (especially on a site theyve never used before).
A 2009 survey of 2,000 online British adults found that 50 percent of those who
regularly shop online said that if their preferred payment method is not available, they
will cancel the purchase.
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These people are not the majority, but adding payment options like PayPal or Amazon
Payments to credit card payments will help you win over some customers you would lose
otherwise.
Heres how Altrec offers two options:
Communicate your value proposition
Too many ecommerce sites forget about value propositions. When new people arrive on
your site, they have to figure out what your site is about in a matter of seconds. Yes, they
can see that you sell stuff, but how are you better or different?
For instance, Ive never heard of this store:
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They dont say ANYTHING interesting about themselves. This is costing them sales.
Heres a different example. While its far from perfect, they state what they do under the
logo and list key reasons for buying from them:
If you dont communicate your value proposition, you will lose a lot of potential buyers.
People wont invest time to figure it out.
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Better search
Search is crucial to e-commerce. People need to find products, and quick. Around half of
the visitors navigate ecommerce sites using search. For search-centric sites like Amazon,
the number is probably way higher.
Use auto-suggest search that shows products as you type. After online retailer
BrickHouse Security added an automated drop-down menu of textual results that appear
when shoppers enter terms into its site search window, it boosted conversion rates.
Wild Gems example:
Theres a really good article on e-commerce search on Smashing Magazine, read it.
More choice requires better filters
The more choice you give people, the harder it is to choose something. The way to
combat paradox of choice is by filters. The more choice you offer, the better filters you
need to provide.
Ever been to a wine store? Its one of those places where the selection knocks you
unconscious and you feel like grabbing beer instead. Retail stores dont have good filters
(usually its the salesperson).
Online, you can have great filters. The role of the filter is to make finding most suitable
products easy.
Winelibrarys filters do a good job:
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All of the filters dont fit on this screenshot, there are more. The order of the filters is by
popularity: more common options like country and variety first, bottle size and closure at
the bottom as they dont matter to most.
Wiltshire Farm Foods have filters right on the home page, starting with the top selling
categories which account for the vast majority of sales:
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Short forms
Eventually, people will add some stuff to the cart, and theyre ready to check out. Your
success in leading them through this depends a lot on the forms. The more fields they
have to fill in, the more friction there is.
This is the very reason people prefer to buy from Amazon. Their shipping and credit card
information is already there, so they will save themselves from the hassle of filling in
forms. Theyre even ready to pay a higher price just to save a couple of minutes (I know I
am!).
Ive seen stores ask for shipping address for digital downloads. Ugh! No fax, no salutation.
Just stick with the essentials.
A must-have feature: people need to be able to check the box shipping address same as
the billing address.
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Bottom line: do not ask for information you dont absolutely need.
Decode the credit card data
People from all walks of life shop online, and some are not very savvy. Some people dont
know what the CVV code is, some are even having a hard time figuring out their credit
card number.
Your job is to make it as clear as possible what data youre asking for. For instance,
Target is making it difficult:
Why on earth would you ask the type of a credit card! I bet tons of people are spending
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minutes figuring out what card they have, and another group constantly chooses the
wrong card type. This is very bad design. Your job is to make the customers life easy, not
yours.
Another thing: sec. code. Thats not clear and easy to understand. Yes, theres a question
mark there, but it could be done so much better.
This also ask for card type (#fail), but at least explains where to find the 3 digits.
Promote shopping cart contents
Many marketers assume that once the customers click add to cart, they will make it
through the entire checkout process. Nope. Youve still got work to do.
Even when they add a product to the shopping cart, it doesnt mean theyre going to buy
it. You have to keep selling it to them.
The best solution is perpetual shopping cartdisplaying the contents of their cart at all
times while they browse.
Onlineshoes.com has it in the right sidebar:
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The key is to show the subtotal, items in the cart and photos: a constant reminder what
theyre about to buy.
Best Buy only shows 2 items." People will forget in two minutes what they added and
how much that was.
Marketing Sherpa reported that 64 percent of retailers believe perpetual shopping carts
are very effective at improving conversions.
Account registration in the background
Surely you know the $300 million dollar button story. Dont force people to register.
Instead, offer the option to register if they want, but create an account anyway for those
who opt for guest checkout. They will enter their email and name anyway. You just have
to generate a password and email it to them once they complete their order.
Sock Dreams plays nice and offers guest checkout:
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Product reviews
People use reviews, a lot. Even while theyre shopping in brick and mortar stores they
read online reviews. Probably youre doing it too. I know I am.
Nearly 60 percent of online shoppers consult reviews prior to purchasing consumer
electronics and 40 percent of online shoppers claimed that they would not even buy
electronics without seeking reviews about the product online first.
Bottom line: Start gathering and showcasing reviews on your site.
If you sell commodity products and cant get users to write many reviews, you might
want to look into pulling reviews from an external site to have more of them.
Dont delete negative reviewsthey actually help sales if there are only a few of them.
Upsell, but watch where
Upselling and cross-selling will boost your average order size. Apple knows this and
immediately after adding an iPad to your cart, it tries to upsell you:
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The rule of upselling is this: you only offer related products (Apple offers Smart Cover for
iPad, and doesnt try to sell you an iPod), and the offer must be at least 60 percent
cheaper than the product they just added to their shopping cart.
So if theyre buying pants, upsell a belt.
Brick and mortar supermarkets will try to upsell you while youre checking out (grab a
candy bar while you wait). Online, dont do it. Focus on getting them to check out.
Amazon gets it and never tries to upsell you during checkout. Placing the order is just one
click away, now is not the time to distract me:
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Clear, big calls to action
The user experience in your store needs to be smooth. Smooth in the sense that they
should never have to look for something. It should always be obvious how things work.
If people need to look for add to cart or checkout buttons, youre failing miserably.
Those two are the most important buttons in your store. You want them big, bold and
prominent. Avoid text links.
Patagonias add to cart button stands clearly out from the rest:
The wording and color of the button also matter, but you need to test it. Bigger buttons
are better.
The North Face has buttons that stand out in the checkout screen, but I think theyre
creating some confusion there. You must have hierarchy. The checkout button is more
important than the continue shopping button, hence Id make it bigger and make it
first.
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Offer back-ordering
Item out of stock? Too bad, no sale.
If you plan to re-stock the item within a predictable time or can have it custom
made/ordered, offer a backorder option.
Wild Gems does this successfully:
Dont copy Amazon (or other big brands)
What is permitted to Jupiter is not permitted to an ox.
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The big guys have a huge advantage over youtheyre known. They dont have to
wrestle with trust and security issues like most small online stores. People are super
confident that Amazon or Target will deliver the goods (and on time), have stuff in stock,
accept returns and what not.
You still need to win customers trust. Dont copy the big guys blindly. (10 more reasons
why not).
Do user testing
Usability is your best friend. I strongly recommend you conduct user testing on your
ecommerce site to find problems with your interface you might not be aware of. Give
people some tasks (e.g. find X, and buy it), and have them comment out loud while
theyre browsing your site. You either watch over their shoulder or watch the screen
recording of it.
15 people will already discover 99 percent of the problems. Even testing one target user
is better than testing none at all.
Usertesting.com and YouEye are some of the tools you can use for it.
Test this stuff
Take my advice. Then do your own testing.
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An average website has a sales conversion of 1 percent to 2 percent. So itd be fair to say
that on most sites more than 95 percent of visitors dont buy anything (especially on their
first visit). So instead of trying to sell them right away, we should capture leads (emails)
instead.
I firmly believe that the best way to sell something is to avoid it at first. You need to let
people know you first, earn their trust, and then you might try to sell to them.
Sure, this somewhat depends on the industry, but its true for most businesses.
The formula
This is not the focus of this article, but in a nutshell the formula for making tons of sales
online is this:
1. Capture emails
2. Build and develop relationships via regular communication
3. Add tons of value (way before asking for anything in return)
4. Repeat step 3 as much as possible
5. Sell great products
The technique
Nobody just wants to give you their email address. Everything starts with an attractive
value proposition, and you need to get your signup forms right.
However theres one online lead generation technique that has produced far better
results for me than anything else: tests and quizzes.
Theres something magnetic about tests, and people are almost drawn to them. Some
people are even willing to pay a fee in order to take a personality quiz.
Ridiculously Effective Technique
for Online Lead Generation
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I think it has to do with how people like themselves. Or maybe its nostalgia (thinking back
to the teenage years and taking silly tests in magazines). Or maybe its a subconscious
hope to discover something magical.
Whatever the case, it works ridiculously well.
Examples
T1Q
T1Q is a site for people who have no idea what to do with their lives. When I launched the
site back in 2008, it had a typical email capture form on the site:
It got around five people per day to join the list, out of around 500 daily visitors. 1 percent
conversion rate. A couple of years later, I split tested it against an invite to take a test
(both forms were on the home page):
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The results: Now I got around a hundred people per day joining the list. Overnight. Thats
a huge difference (+1,900 percent).
Todays version is converting even better.
Why it works so well
Besides being a free test and having therefore innate attractiveness, it does one key
thing: it solves a problem the visitors have (or to be exact, offers a promise to solve it).
Most visitors come via search and they are googling variations of find life purpose or
what should I do with my life." The keywords told me the problem they had, and this free
test was built exactly to address these questions.
The lesson here is: dont just build a random quiz. Your business/website solves a real
problem. The test should, too.
If you dont know what problems your customers need help solving, youre not doing it
right :) Talking to users should be one of the two key activities in your business.
Relevant to your product
I could have also built Do women find you sexy quizand Im pretty sure it would have
been popularbut it wouldnt attract my ideal customers. So Id end up with a bunch of
useless emails.
Ideally your test would only be attractive to people who are also the target group for your
products. In T1Qs case, its e-books, courses, and coaching programs related to finding
your purpose and passion.
ShopGemstones
ShopGemstones is a gemstone information site. One of the best in the world.
Their goal: build up an email list of gem nerds (my words, not theirs). Gemstone people
are often somewhat esoteric and believe in the healing properties of gems and so on.
So a test was designed to attract these people:
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11 questions in total, and email asked at the end.
We did something else that was cleverwe turned the test into a link building machine.
Once they got their results, we showed them this among other things:
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Hundreds of test takers added this to the sidebar of their blog. Once one person did it,
her friends saw it on her blog, took the test and put their results onto their blogs.
ShopGemstones got hundreds of links thanks to this.
Should I Quit
This Should I Quit My Job? test is technically a funnel to get people to sign up to courses
like Live Off My Passion.
It targets a specific user and plays on the natural curiosity (are you one of them?) of
people.
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They ask for the email at the end. A score is given right away, but for the explanation you
need to confirm your email (double opt-in).
Im not in a position to disclose exact figures, but I can tell you that this went live early
April and has gotten thousands of opt-ins plus nice sales down the funnel.
Cant build a test? Build a tool
In B2B settings its more difficult to come up with a good idea for a test, but a tool could
be easy (although harder to put together).
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HubSpot is killing it with MarketingGrader. Every business owner is interested in how their
website is doing, how they stack up against the competition, and giving your email for
useful insights seems a small price to pay.
TweetCharts does something similar, only it lets you dig into Twitter data:
The main idea is the same: help your prospects solve a problem, and ask for their email.
Email up front or later?
Theres two ways of thinking here.
Ask for the email before the test. Users see the test value proposition and they want
the benefits. There is no other way to get to the goodies, but to give your email. So
they do it. Also, a significant amount of users do not actually complete testsso if they
dont reach the end, you also lost their email.
Ask for the email at the end. Less friction up frontite easier to get going. At the end
you state that they will get the results by email (can reveal partial results right away),
so theyre motivated to give it to you.
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You have to choose which scenario is more likely to work in your case. Better yet, test it!
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What if there was a methoda processthat you could apply to (pretty much) any
website to increase sales? Wouldnt that be swell? Well, there is.
This method works across all categories, it doesnt really matter what business youre in.
Ive turned it into a checklist. So the way to use it is you take your website, compare it to
any item on the list, make improvements, and your online sales will increase.
Start with measurable goals
Before we get started on the checklist, make sure you have actual, measurable goals in
place (e.g. sell boots, get subscribers).
If you dont have a single focus for your site, its very difficult to achieve results
You cannot systematically improve what you cannot measure (or wont notice when it
happens)
So start with specific goals and make sure your web analytics software is tracking those
goals.
Personal opinions do not matter (much)
Theres no shortage of opinions in this world. Sadly, most of them are misguided and
even incompetent. People see the world as they are, and think everybody else is like
then. But I never click on ads!," Nobody shares their email!," I think it should be
blue and so on.
You are not the world. You are not your customer. Hence you cannot make conclusions
about user behavior based on your personal preferences. Its very natural to want to, but
try to resist.
Instead, focus on evidence based marketing.
The internet is not in its infancy anymore. We (humankind) have had many, many years
How To Increase Sales Online: The
Checklist
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to test, try and see what works online. There are all kind of frameworks out there that
explain where conversions come from. Theres research. Theres testing.
The following checklist is a summary of key elements that help you get more sales (or
whatever youre after).
Increasing sales online: the checklist
Here it is:
Create buyer personas
Drive relevant traffic and create relevant messages (for personas)
Make your design good
Create compelling value propositions
Understand buying phases
Reduce friction
Focus on clarity
Eliminate noise and distraction
Engage visitors
Add urgency
Follow usability standards
Now lets look at each item individually.
1. Buyer personas
The more people feel that an offer is right for them, the more likely they are to take it.
Let me prove it to you. Lets say you want to buy new running shoes. First, answer these
questions:
Your gender?
Age?
Weight?
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Where do you normally run?
Now, would you rather buy running shoes that are suitable for all or the one that is
specifically designed for your gender, age group, weight and type of use? Thats a no
brainer.
Your goal is to identify main types of customer groupstheir needs, wants, requirements,
and use cases. Buyer personas are essentially a specific group of potential customers, an
archetypal person whom you want your marketing to reach.
Optimizing your site for buyer personas gets you away from an egotistical point of view
and gets you to talk to users about their needs and wants. What people care about are
themselves and answers to their problems, which is why buyer personas are so critical for
marketing success.
Essentially its about knowing who you are selling to, what is their situation, what are they
thinking, their needs and hesitations. If youd know the exact person youre selling to and
the problems they have, youd be in a much better position to sell them. RightNow
Technologies increased their conversions 4x by building a persona focused site.
How to build them?
The truth is that most companies have only the faintest idea what lies behind the buying
decision. We presume an awful lot. The buyer persona is a tool that can help you see
deeper into the buyers thinking.
Use interviews with existing customers to map out different personas. To get more
information on this, read The Buyer Persona Manifesto (free pdf). Heres a free webinar
recording on buyer personas I recommend checking out.
Your personas should dictate every word and every image on your site. Your website
layout, navigation and general user flow should come from personas.
2. Relevancy and motivation
This is about 2 things:
targeting the right people,
communicating the right message.
Its not really possible to sell people things they dont need or want. If you sell laptops and
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somehow get me to your siteI wont buy one because I already have one. What you
offer is not relevant to me at this moment.
A key ingredient of high conversions is relevant traffic. If you stop driving irrelevant traffic
to your site, your conversions will go up. As a marketer, one of your constant jobs is to
find the right marketing mix:
the right media (where to advertise / promotefree or paid),
the right message (what do you say?),
the right offer (how much $$$ for what).
If you get the media right and the traffic is relevant (e.g. people are genuinely interested
in what you have to offer), youre instantly doing better.
Now you have to figure out which value proposition works best for this audience. This is
where you go back to step one and customer personas.
Understand why people need your product, what problems it solves for them and reflect
it back to them. When people (your target group) feel understood, magic happens.
Additional reading:
What to call your call to action (pay attention to the trigger words part)
How to design user flow
3. Design and visual hierarchy
In a nutshell: beautiful design sells better than ugly design. Beautiful does not mean its
full of bells and whistles. Beautiful design is also effective.
BMW, Apple, or Nike are not throwing millions of dollars at design just for fun. They know
it sells better. In fact, design (not just how it looks, but how it works too) is the key reason
why people buy them.
How do you know if your site is ugly?
If you built your site yourselfand youre not a designerit sucks. Get a new one.
If you use cheesy stock photographylike customer service people with headsets or suits
shaking handsits likely the rest of your site sucks too. Dont use the women laughing
alone with salad style:
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If you had a freelancer build it who charged you $2 an hour, it sucks. Quality
craftsmanship always comes at a fair priceno matter what country theyre from.
The more you know about something, the better youre able to tell the difference
Have you seen The Devil Wears Prada? Theres this scene (starts around one minute
into the video) where Anne Hathaway's character mocks the fashion people who think
two identical belts look so different.
Be it dogs, fashion, or web designyou have to spend years analyzing them to be able to
separate the good from the bad, and know exactly why.
Ive seen too many butt-ugly websites that their respective owners thought looked great.
Yes, to an extent beauty is in the eye of the beholderbut mostly not. Your site is either
ugly or it isnt.
Sure, there are exceptions like Craigslist, but those are outliers. First of all, Craigslist
started when butt-ugly was the standard, and later it successfully made barebones design
its thing." If theyd start today looking like they do, nobody would use it.
Visual hierarchy and user guidance
Your websites design carries another important roleit communicates whats important
and what the user should do next.
Every page on your site should have a most wanted action, or the number one thing you
want people to do on those pages. This is where visual hierarchy comes in.
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Look at this website:
Now think what was your eye movement order? What did you notice first, second, last?
Probably the first two were the headline (Its your money) and the image, followed by
the the explanatory paragraph and call to action (Free! Get started).
It is not a coincidence. They wanted you to see those thing in that order. And whats
equally important is what you DIDNT noticethe navigation, all the other secondary
information that is not really important at first.
Additional reading:
8 universal web design principles you should know
Design like jagger
10 useful findings about how people view websites
8 things that grab and hold website visitors attention
4. Value propositions
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A value proposition is a promise of value to be delivered. Its the main reason a prospect
should buy from you (and not from the competition).
In a nutshell, value proposition is a clear statement that:
explains how your product solves customers problems or improves their situation
(relevancy)
delivers specific benefits (quantified value)
tells the ideal customer why they should buy from you and not from the competition
(unique differentiation).
You have to present your value proposition as the first thing the visitors see on your
home page, but should be visible in all major entry points of the site.
If your main landing pages (home page, product page etc) dont have a value proposition
or they dont understand it, you are losing sales.
Ive written an extensive post on creating value propositions along with a bunch of
examples. You should read it.
Design Boost does it well.
What is it: learn app design. Tools and know-how for building and selling apps
End-benefit: become over-employed
Whos it for: people who want to build apps like the pros
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5. Understanding buying phases
Lets say you surf the web and come across this site:
What stands out is that they go straight for the saleasking to register right away. The
only thing people know about them at this point is: Create attractive articles. Quick.
Easy. Profitable.which says absolutely nothing.
Its like when you see a pretty girl/handsome boy walk by, approach him/her with a
meaningless sentence, and then go for the kiss. What would be the success rate of that?
Zero. We know this, yet people do it all the time online.
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Understanding buying phases is all about understanding how people work.
Largely, customers fall into three groups:
People who have a problem/need, but they dont know it
People who are researching different options, comparison shopping
People who have made the decision
Depending on your industry there might be a few additional groups. Use customer
interviews to learn about the different phases your buyers are in.
You have to sell differently to each group. The first group is pretty much hopeless and its
very difficult to sell them anything, since you need to sell the problem first.
Researchers
In most niches, these people form the majority. The main question you need to answer
for them is, why should I buy from you?
If you dont have a compelling value proposition, youre going to lose. If you dont make it
clear how youre better or different from the competition, youre going to lose
especially if youre not the cheapest.
Humans dont like to think. They like to compare products by looking at a couple of
simple parameters like price and maybe something else (e.g. in case of web hosting, disk
space).
If people cant understand the differences between your product and that of your
competitor, theyre going to choose based on the price. If its all the same, why pay
more!?
Do this:
State your advantages and differences on your home page and on product pages
If you sell mass market products (e.g. Sony TVs, Dell laptops, Gucci perfumes) and
youre not the cheapest, you need to clearly communicate the added value of your
higher price.
Researchers are looking for information that will help them decide. Your job is to provide
them with as much info as possible to make a positive purchasing decision.
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If you rush the saleask for a sign-up before they have enough information, you will
scare them away. Heres a good case for burying your signup or buy button. One
company removed the sign up call to action from the top of the homepage, and sign-ups
increased 350 percent.
People who have decided
Some people, after theyve conducted their research, will come back to you for the
transaction. Theyre looking for clearly visible call to action buttons (add to cart) or links
with trigger words (sign up).
Your job is to make sure thats easy to find. Conduct think out loud usability testing to
test it.
6. Reduce friction
Whenever you ask people to do something or commit to something, theres friction. Its
impossible to remove friction completely in a business transaction, you can only minimize
it.
Friction is all the doubts, hesitations and second thoughts people have about giving you
money for a product.
Is it really worth the money? Will it break? Can I trust this guy? Will it work? What if it
doesnt fit? Is this a scam? Is it the right choice for me? Will she like it?
The way to convert an infidel to a believer is to address all of their doubts and give them
full information, so they are able to convince themselves.
The usual suspectselements that add friction:
Long and/or complicated process. This is get a quote forms with 10 fields, 3-page
applications, etc
Websites with horrible usability where people dont understand how to buy or cant
find any contact info.
Anonymous site: no names, photos, phone numbers or physical address published. If it
seems youre trying to hide, you must have something to hide. If you dont publish
photos of yourself, is it that you dont want your customers to recognize you?
Ugly, amateur website
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Insufficient evidence. This is where you make a bunch of claims, but dont back them
up.
Insufficient information. A chair, two feet tall, black, $5,000. There are thousands of
sites that hardly provide any information about the products they sell. Research says
50 percent of purchases are not completed due to lack of information.
FUDs: fears, uncertainties, doubts. Much like the list of questions above, every person
has some doubts in a form of a question. The way to overcome these is to address
those FUDs in your sales copy. Interview your customers to find out what they are.
The classical way to boost credibility is to use testimonials:
Credible testimonials are with full name and photo, from both celebrities and people like
your buyers. Anonymous testimonials are not believable.
Fitness site Bodyhack combated arguments that their results page photos are
Photoshopped. No one can achieve those results in three months, they heard. They
added a ton of evidence, like videos, to overcome these concerns.
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Make a list of all the FUDs your target group have, and address them with evidence.
Social proof is powerful. Show impressive numbers, like how many happy customers
youve got. Nobody wants to be the only idiot buying your stupid product.
7. Clarity
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People wont buy what they dont understand. In fact, people fear what they dont
understand. Racism, xenophobia and all that comes from the fear of the unknown.
Whatever youre selling, the buyer is a human. Doesnt matter if its your granny or a top
exec from PwC. Theyre all humans. If the text (or video) on your site is easy to
understand and in a compelling language, your conversions will go up.
A friend of mine blogged about an email he received. I think its a good example of what
NOT to do.
Hi Deniss,
My name is [...], Senior Director of Feedback Management at [..]. I wanted to let you
know about some information that could impact on your role at [...]. A recent [...] study,
Customer Feedback Management: Leveraging the Voice of the Customer to Amplify
Business Results, revealed that companies successfully leveraging Voice of the
Customer (VOC) programs accomplish quantifiable year-over-year performance gains
including increased annual revenue and higher customer satisfaction ratings.
[...] I will be hosting a webinar, based on the studys findings [...]
I hope youll be able to join us for what is sure to be an informative webinar that will yield
valuable take-aways for your organization!
You can always avoid this kind of jargon by using the friend test. Read the text on your
website out loud and imagine its a conversation with your friend. If theres a word or a
sentence you wouldnt use, re-word it.
What does this company do?
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Pretty clear, isnt it. No fancy schmancy stuff. You dont need big words. You need to be
clear.
If the text on your website is not fun to read and takes effort to understand, youre doing
it wrong.
Same goes for video. A good example of a clear presentation is by Nest:
Watch: Nest ad on YouTube
Its a thermostat! This could be the most boring technical video of all times. But its not.
8. Noise and distraction
Theres an adage for outdoor billboard designits ready when theres nothing left to
remove. In a way this also applies for websites.
The more choice you give to people, the harder it is to choose anything. When there are
too many options to choose from, its easiest to choose nothing at all. Theres tons of
research to confirm this. In addition, greater choice makes us unhappy.
If you have a ton of products, you have to provide great filters to help people narrow
down the choice.
Noise and distraction is not just about how many products you have. Its how busy your
layout is, how many competing design elements there are, all asking for attention.
Rule of noise: The closer you get to closing the sale, the less things you should have on
your screen. Once they get to checkout screen, you shouldnt have ANYTHING on the
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page that doesnt directly contribute to conversion.
Look at Amazon checkout screen. No sidebar, no menu, no related products. They just
really want you to click the Place your order button.
Have a single most wanted action for each screen, and make sure the important stuff
stands out. Dont have anything in the layout that isnt absolutely necessary. Simple
works.
9. Engagement
Whats your conversion rate? One percent? Three percent? Even if its a high five
percent, thatd mean that 95 percent of the visitors dont buy anything.
They came to your site (maybe even through paid advertising), bought nothing and left
now what? Have you lost them for good? Not necessarily.
In a lot of cases the best way to increase sales is to avoid one at first. Remember buying
phases? Instead of asking for money, try to engage them in some way and ideally collect
their email address so you can keep talking to them.
General rule: the more expensive and/or complicated the product, the more time people
need to make a decision.
If youre selling cars or computers, its highly unlikely that someone will buy one online on
their first visit. This is why you should get their email first, add value, prove your
expertise, get them to like you, etc. BEFORE you ask for the sale.
Think Traffic wants to sell you different infoproducts. But much, much later. They go for
the email first:
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While email is the best way to go, you might also go for
social media follow (Twitter, Facebook etc).
some sort of test or quiz,
immediate tryout of your product,
sweepstakesenter to win.
Optimizely lets you just enter any URL to see their product in action:
Appsumo is using a lot of sweepstakes to build their list:
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Additional reading:
14 Steps to Building Sign-up Forms That Convert
Lead Magnets: Email List Building on Steroids
How to Get Subscribers to Actually Consume Your Content
10. Urgency
Urgency is a powerful motivator, if done well.
Most of us have seen something like this:
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Act now or you miss this super deal!
There are three ways to create urgency:
Quantity limitations (Only three tickets left at this price)
Time limitations (Discounted tickets until July 1st)
Contextual limitations (Fathers Day is coming, get a gift now)
As long as the reason for the urgency is believable, it will work. Too many marketers
abuse it and try to add urgency to everything. Its not just possible. But when it makes
sense to use it, it will produce a ton of results.
11. Usability
If your site is difficult to use, people wont use it. Nobody will bother to figure out stuff.
The best websites provide a seamless experienceeverything seems intuitive and people
dont have to think.
Luckily its not the 90s or early 2000s anymore when usability was just plain awful. In
2010 the average failure rate was 22 percent.
Check out these fantastic usability checklists for different sections of your website.
Compare your site against all of them and make necessary corrections.
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If youre in it for the long run, focus on loyalty
What does the future hold? Jakob Nielsen proposed the following formula a while back:
B = V C L
Bbusiness results
Vvisitors / traffic
Cconversion
Lloyalty
If you want to double your results, you can either double the number of unique visitors
(very expensive), double the conversion rate (possible, but increasingly harder as theres
a max limit to your conversion rate), or double repeat purchases.
Whereas we might aptly call the period 20002010 the conversion decade for website
usability professionals, 20102020 will be the loyalty decade.Jakob Nielsen
If you want to increase sales right now, focus on conversions or (relevant) traffic. If you
want to increase sales online in the long run, focus on loyalty.
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People hardly buy anything without seeing it. Usually they also want to touch it, hold it,
and take it for a spin. You really cant do those things online (unless its web based
software). So to compensate for all of that, you need to work twice as hard to make your
products come alive via excellent photography and graphics.
I know of a guy selling construction hardware online. He added images to all the screws
hes selling, and the sales of screws went up.
Schwans (home delivered food service) has one of the highest conversion rates among
e-commerce sites, and when you go to their site you can sense that its based on their
juicy images.
High quality images
This should go without saying, but too many websites try to sell products with low quality
images.
Made.com is a site that caught my attention recently with their beautiful images that let
their products shine. Screenshot:
Another great one is Best Made Company. Screenshot:
How Images Can Boost Your
Conversion Rate
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Always do what they do: pick a default image that is shown in full size and display
clickable thumbnails (that produce enlarged images).
Alternate & detailed views
Dont just show a single image, show as many as you canfrom different angles.
Lets take that same axe above. You can see all of these views on its product page:
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Much better than just a single photo of an axe, isnt it? You get a feel of it. Theyve also
managed to take those photos in a way that show character and carry a brand. Well done
indeed.
Context
Context matters. Dont just show the product, show it in context. Let me imagine using it.
Remember the photo of the couch above? They also show a person using it:
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Sell earrings? Show me what it looks when Ill be wearing it. This is how Wild Gems does
it:
Its so easy to use, even the kids can do it. Even better to communicate that via
contextual image:
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Zoom
Zooming in / using a digital loupe can be a nifty feature if your product has ornate details
your customers might want to look at. Like in the case of this $1,400 leather case for
your iPad:

Avoid cheesy stock photos
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Usability tests by Jakob Nielsen show that people always pay a lot of attention to images.
When it comes to people, real people get a lot of attention while stock photo people are
largely ignored. Dont use cheesy stock photos.
I wont go on a rant, but if youre using shiny people and suits shaking hands, youre
stupid and you think your customers are too.
Most phones have decent cameras today, almost any random picture will be better.
Draw attention to products
Images can be used to draw attention to your product or copy, as this well-known
eyetracking study says:
Heres another post with great examples that prove the same.
Men are pervs, women are gold diggers
Miratech conducted an eye tracking study to measure how men and women look at the
photo of a sexy young woman.
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Source
Conclusion: the men look at the womans chest and the women look at her ring.
Also, people in different countries act differently. For instance French women stared at
the chest more than 2.7 times more than British women! Men who looked at the breasts
the longest were also from France (and Denmark). Some cliches seem to hold water.
Try 360 rotating images
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DueMaternity.com, an online retailer of items for pregnant women and new mothers,
boosted their conversion rate by 27 percent thanks to 360 rotating images. In the past
they used conventional two-dimensional images on their website, such as the front and
back of a model wearing a maternity dress.
After adding 360-degree spin to the images that rotate automatically when shoppers visit
a particular merchandising page, the conversion rate on products sold on those pages is
about 27 percent higher than for standard two-dimensional images.
Golfsmith.com claims that products with the special spin feature have conversion rates at
least 10 percent and sometimes as much as 30 percent to 40 percent higher than
products without it.
360 degree rotating images are usually created by taking a series of pictures (frames)
with a product, or any object, on a computer controlled turntable. Heres a more
technical blog post of how one guy did it, but there are also service providers around
(such as this or this).
Product images in site search window boosts conversions
After online retailer BrickHouse Security added an automated drop-down menu of textual
results that appear when shoppers enter terms into its site search window, it boosted
conversion rates.
With the product images in the site search drop-down window, we get a 100 percent lift
in conversion rate among shoppers who use site search.
About 8 percent of buyers use search on their site , and about 25 percent of that group
click among the new image-based search results in the automated drop-down list instead
of completing the entry of a search term and clicking the search button. This results in a
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15 percent lift in the overall site search conversion rate.
Human photos on a landing page increase sales and conversions
Medalia Art sells Brazilian and Caribbean art online and using photos of artists on their
homepage increased conversions by 95 percent. They had these paintings of artists:
When they replaced the painting with actual photos almost doubled the conversion rate
(conversion in this case was clickthrough, not sales):
Source
This article tells a story of how adding photos of real people to their customer service
phone number increased visitor-to-call rates by 21 percent:
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37Signals started to use photos of their customers on their landing pages, and
conversions went up:
Source
Will any photo of people boost conversions? GetElastic mentions a split test where using a
photo decreased conversions, but the they used cheesy-to-the-maximum stock photo, so
that explains it.
I recommend always starting out with a photo of real people and never using cheesy
shiny stock people. In case you have to use models (e.g. to show off merchandise), Flint
McGlaughlin from MarketingExperiments said this:
A strong face as the primary means of greeting visitors gets a strong reaction that
polarizes conversion rates. Never put up a face photo that hasnt been thoroughly tested.
It needs to be the right face.
This was the image in question (screenshot of narscosmetics.com):
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Want more CTR on your Facebook ads? Beer helps.
One Facebook advertiser, who was not in the business of selling beer, observed that an
ad containing a picture of beer delivered its best CTR. In fact, it performed 57 percent
better than any other ad tried:
Another company tried to replicate that and found the similar success with CTRs, but alas
the traffic did not convert. In fact, only one of those 1,250 clicks actually produced a
conversion. Ouch.
Their business is selling merchant accounts, so its extremely specific customer theyre
after. My guess is that a consumer good with broader appeal might be able to convert
that beer traffic.
Images on blog posts
I couldnt find any conversion research on this, but I am sure of it: using quality images in
your blog posts makes you sell more of your stuff. Why?
Images improve readability and general user experience (breaks patterns, catches
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attention, eye candy, worth a thousand words etc). Posts without images are boring, and
lead to less reading.
The more people read your stuff, the more they like you, the more they develop a
relationship with you, the more they trust you and that all moves them further along in
your sales funnel (doesnt even matter what the funnel is like).
My advice: always use images in your blog posts.
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Online video keeps getting more and more popular. This years Black Friday and Cyber
Monday saw huge growth in in video views with major retailers.
Treepodia says video is one of the few strategies that seems to work well regardless of
the category in which it is deployed. The following chart shows the conversion rate
increases that were witnessed for shoppers who watched product videos:
Even if there wouldnt be any proof, I would believe instinctively that video increases
conversions. Using just the right images boosts your conversion rate, but a video is so
much better than a photo. Its the closest you can get to seeing the product in person.
If the product is complicated, using video to explain how it works causes less friction than
reading a bunch of text. You can present a ton of information with just a 30 second video
equivalent of half a page of text, if not more.
Videos dont need to be directly about increasing conversions. HSN features a lot of
educational videos on their site. Emery Skolfield, HSN.com director of digital content:
Videos can be educational and build trust in our brand. If they do they add value and give
the sense that HSN.com can help a consumer even after shes made her purchase.
How to Use Video to Increase
Conversions
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Educational videos have another advantagepeople actually want to watch them. More
content = more engagement. When I look at YouTube Insights data for my own videos, I
can see a clear trend: content videos are watched WAY longer than commercials /
product pitches. Most dont watch the latter past the few first seconds.
Put a video on your home page
Dropbox put a video on their home page and conversions went up. Vidyard increased
conversions by 100% by using video on their home page.
What should the video be about? Perhaps a short overview works best. Last year Think
Vitamin replaced an example tutorial video (5:50) on the homepage with a 50-second
overview of the serviceand increased conversions by 24.4%.
InDinero spent two months split testing between a more traditional landing page design
and a page with basically just a big video and a simple signup form. The page with just a
large video has increased inDineros signups by almost double from 6.8% to a whopping
11.2%.
Buy Real Twitter Followers produced a case study after experimenting with a small video
explaining their service on the homepage. This little change helped them increase their
sales by 216% against control, but the new version of their home page is again without
video. Go figure.
No best practice is guaranteed to work on your site. Always split test.
Use videos on your product pages
Video on product pages is getting more popular. According to the etailing groups 13th
Annual Mystery Shopping Study, usage of online video on product pages among the 100
leading retailers studied increased by 18 percentage points between Q4 2009 and Q4
2010.
Voted the best jewelry e-commerce site of 2011, Ice.com has product videos for every
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product. Zappos is killing it with video.
Putting videos on product pages is just a smart business decision. When a consumer sees
how a product works, she is much more likely to convert. Sometimes already offering the
option to play video will increase the conversion rate (even if they dont actually watch
it!).
In the fourth quarter the conversion rate for consumers who watched a video on eParty
Unlimitedonline-only party supplies retailerwas 8.3%, 43.1% higher than the 5.8%
conversion rate for other consumers.
Living Direct added video to its product pages of household items ranging from tankless
water heaters and wine refrigerators to solar-powered cell phone chargers, and has seen
conversions increase for those products. The same has been confirmed by Stacks and
Stacks and Swimwear Boutique.
Premiere Game Tables saw a significant jump in conversion rates: it went from 1.2% to
4% when a product video was watched.
E-retailers can use vendors like Treepedia or Inovo to produce product videos, and pay
$300 to $500 per video + monthly bandwidth. This is out of reach for small businesses,
but given the access to digital video cameras these days any etailer can make their own
videos and host them free on video sharing sites.
Online gemstone jewelry company Wild Gems produces their own videos and hosts them
on YouTube for free (has access to video analytics via YouTube Insights). Its hard to
show off the sparkle of gemstones via photos, so for them video actually helps them to
present their products better.
Male or female narrator?
This is something you have to test for your site, but online eyewear retailer
EyeBuyDirect.com discovered that consumers prefer a male voice for the videos
narration.
The retailer tested the effect of a change in narrator for two product videos running
approximately 30 seconds each that feature the type of chunky black frames.
In this case, the male-narrated product video produced more sales. That video achieved
a 9.28% conversion rate, compared with a 2.78% conversion rate for the female-
narrated video. Quite a huge difference!
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Video thumbnail matters
We doubled the number of video plays on Traindoms home page just by changing the
video thumbnail.
The thumbnail used to look like this, and around 10% of the visitors watched it.
The new thumbnail contained the text Watch this video because its only 2:18 long. I
thought to mention the duration of the video, so people wouldnt worry about it taking too
long. The word because was used as it triggers an automatic compliance response (as
per Cialdini). The new thumbnail looked like this:
Twice the amount of people watched the video now. Test your video thumbnails.
Video can reduce return rates
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After adding product videos to their ecommerce site, Diamond Jewelry Limited realised a
60% reduction in returns, which significantly increased their revenues and margins.
Video can show product more accurately and hence people are less likely to buy stuff
under false assumptions.
Try a video-only landing page
Fitness trainer Carl Juneau managed to increase his conversions by 46% by switching to
video-only landing page. He tried a long-form sales letter underneath the video, but
conversions were much lower.
Why did video-only work so well? Carls best guess:
Im guessing visitors were intrigued by the sales video and clicked through to the
price/guarantee page to get more info. They may have been turned off by the long
salesletter when I added it to the video and lost the excitement created by the short,
punchy video.
He also tested a landing page without a video, but a with a call to action mentioning
video:
This produced a 14.18% improvement over control. Hes not the only one boosting
conversions with mentioning video in the call to action.
Mention video in your call to action
A split test on this landing page was trying 2 different call to action buttons. One said
Free Instant Access and one said Watch The Video. See images below:
Version A: Get Instant Access (11.9% conversion rate)
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Version B: Watch the Video (15.3% conversion rate)
Watch the video button increased conversions from 11.9% to 15.3%. A total increase of
28%! Image source
Use video testimonials
Testimonials reduce friction like nothing else. People trust other consumers and social
proof is powerful. When the testimonials are believable, that is.
Few will believe testimonials when just the first name or initials are mentioned. Full name
and photograph is the minimum, but even that can be faked (Ive seen an abundance of
stock photos served as actual people). Whats really hard to fake is video. Therefore
video testimonials are powerful.
Justin Nassiri from VideoGenie says video testimonials get watched for 100 seconds on
average. Thats pretty good.
See how video testimonials are used by Intuit, Priceline and Shoedazzle.
How to get more views for the video?
Research conducted by Invodo says that videos get more views when
they are placed above the fold,
the video player is fairly large (480x720px sized player got more views than
250x140px),
there is a text call to action (e.g. click to play).
Treepodia says you should embed the video rather than just provide a link to it. If you add
a simple link to video from any given product page, you can expect something between a
5%-15% video view rate, while a video player embedded on the same page will deliver a
view rate ranging from 10%-35%.
Most viewers will NOT watch the video to the end. An average 2 minute video gets
watched half way. What does that mean for you?
Make your videos nice and short30 seconds if you can, but definitely shoot for under
2 minutes.
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Present the most important information first, leave additional details for later.
Heres a useful infographic on increasing your video viewership.
Measure video
I dont mean split testing (but you definitely have to test video vs no video), but video
analytics. How long are they playing the videos for? Are they watching them to the end or
just the first seconds?
Most video platforms provide analytics these days, even YouTube. YouTube Insights
shows you the general statistics, attention span (how long are they watching for), location
and even demographics of the viewers.
I recommend you also do a split test of 2 videos and measure the video analyticswhich
video actually gets watched and which video helps to produce more leads or sales.
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A landing page is the first page that visitors see after clicking on your banner ad, PPC ad,
or promotional email. It can be a specific page on your website or a separate page
created exclusively for search engines. A landing page is designed to direct visitors to
take a specific action, such as making a purchase, completing a registration, or
subscribing to your mailing list.
Your landing page pretty much determines the success of your ad campaign. Good
landing page = good ROI. Crappy landing page and you have just (needlessly) wasted
your money.
Three rules you dont want to break:
Rule 1: Never send traffic from an ad to your home page
You should never drive traffic from your promotional campaignswhatever they are
onto your websites home page. Home pages are usually cluttered with information,
there are many possible actions a visitor can take, and the most important one might be
missed. Hence you want to drive traffic from your promotional campaigns to a page that
is aimed at only one thinggetting them to take the action that is the goal of your
campaign.
An effective landing page is a crucial component to helping you convert browsers into
buyers.
Rule 2: Clarity and relevancy will make it or break it
Visitors spend just seconds looking at a landing page before determining its usefulness
and relevance to their needs. If they cant find what theyre looking for, or if your site has
functional or usability problems, they will abandon the page.
Rather than let that happen, make the few seconds you have their attention count and
answer the questions that are on their mind:
How To Build A High Converting
Landing Page
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Does this place have what I am looking for?
Is there enough information?
Can I trust this site?
How long will this all take?
Your landing page must entice visitors to stay and complete the desired action for
conversion, whether its filling out a subscription form or buying a product.
Rule 3: Good landing page follows a certain structure
1. A benefit oriented headline
The headline is the most important part. If the visitors came by clicking on an ad, it must
correspond to the ad text that triggered the page. If your banner or PPC ad said
Breakthrough meditation system, then this phrase should also be included in the
headline of your landing page.
2. Relevant and short copy
Make it clear, relevant, concise. Dont put too much text on the page, as the visitor has to
be able to read it quickly. Use bullet points to drive the main points home. Make sure the
language in the ad is also present in the copy of the landing page. Content relevancy to
ads is now a more important factor in Google AdWords.
3. The focus is on getting visitors to take one specific action.
There should be only ONE possible action for the visitor to takebe it subscribing to
something, making a purchase or something else. Dont offer options or the conversions
will suffer.
4. There are no distracting navigational links.
Remove all extra clutterlinks, menus, buttonsthat have nothing to do with the
particular ad/campaign. The point is that the visitor cannot ignore your message by
navigating away, and therefore focuses on only that page.
5. There is a prominent subscription form or checkout option.
The one action you want the visitor to take has to be big and obvious. Put a large sign-up
form on the right side of the landing page, make it stand out. If the landing page is long
enough for scrolling, duplicate the form or button in the very bottom of the page.
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6. Maintain your brand.
Dont make your landing page look different from your overall website and brand. Keep
the same colors, fontthe overall look and feel of your main site. This helps to enforce
the brand awareness.
A good landing page also loads fast. People just dont have the patience with slow pages.
Use Google Page Speed to measure the speed of yours. It will also give you
recommendations for improving page speed.
Four step process to start designing your landing page
Before you talk to your designer to create the landing page, draw one on the paper.
Follow these four steps to get it right.
And make sure the designer works with the actual copy, not lorem ipsum. So write the
copy first.
1: Identify your audience
Make sure the landing page talks to a specific audience. Know the problem, the need and
want your target audience has.
Write the copy with a specific person in mind.
If you drive traffic to the landing page via advertising and run many different ads, then
create many different landing pages. They can mostly be the same, but with a different
headline and tweaks in the copy.
2: Define your most wanted action (MWA)
MWA is the one action people should take on the landing page.
What that is depends purely on your product and strategy. Generally speaking if your
product is somewhat expensive and complicated, it is better to just get their e-mail
address and to start forming a relationship with them via email.
If you are selling cheaper and/or more straightforward products like wine or newspaper
subscription, it makes more sense to go directly for the sell. If your product is software, I
recommend offering a free trial version.
3: Define your Message
You know the audience, the problem they have and the solution you can offer. Now craft
that into an easy to understand message. Theres no way to know for sure in advance
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what will work, so create a few hypothesiss and split test them.
Clarity trumps persuasion is a good maxim to go go by.
4: Design Your Landing Page
You have your most wanted action in place, you understand your target audience and
have a hypothesis as to which offer will appeal to them. How do you design a landing
page that will motivate them to take action?
The first thing to do is to make a list of all the elements you need to have on your landing
page.
What You Need to Include
a headline that speaks to the target audience
your company logo
a quick explanation of your offer above the fold (the fold is the portion of the screen
that can be seen without the
average user having to scroll down)
a longer explanation of the offer below the fold if needed (depends on the complexity
of your offer and product)
an image of the product being offered
a simple form, with ideally just one to three fields (usually just name and e-mail, but do
you actually need the name?).
a buy button or signup button depending on your pre-defined most wanted responsea
link to your privacy policy (to keep people on the page, this should open up in a pop-up
window and not load a new page)
Remember, the more fields you ask the visitor to fill in, the more friction you create and
therefore the less people will fill out the form.
What You Should Leave Out
a navigation menuremember to focus only on your offer
links to other parts of your sites such as about
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any pictures or images that dont relate to the offer; these will only serve as
distractions
hard to read text, anything less than 12 px is bad
any links along the lines of click here to subscribe or click here to read more. If
you cant cram all your content into the upper fold of your landing page, just let the
user scroll down. Scrolling is almost always better than clicking to the next page.
scary forms with unnecessary fields such as title or fax
clear fields button
There are always exceptions and you usually cant copy best practices to use on your
site, but this advice given here should be your starting point. Get the essentials in place
first, and tweak from there.
5: Putting it All Together
Once youve created your page layout and the copy, the next step is to put it all together
and upload it to your site. We recommend using simple URLs that users can easily
recognize. Sometimes its a good idea to register a whole new domain for your landing
page all togetherexact keyword domains get more PPC traffic.
If your landing page is about job offers to work on an oil rig, your URL could be either
www.OilRigJobOffers.com or www.somesite.com/oilrigjoboffers.
Such URLs often generate better than normal click through rates on targeted Google PPC
ads. A searcher who types oil rig job offers is more likely to click on an ad with a
keyword URL.
Length of a landing page
Long or short? There is no one size fits all answer. In most cases when the offering is
free, a short copy works better and if you ask for money, longer copy performs better.
The more money, the longer the copy.
As per Bob Kemper from Marketing Experiments there are three factors affecting the
efficacy of body copy length on a landing page:
Nature of visitor motivation
Initial level of Anxiety about product/company
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Level of cost/commitment associated with conversion.
So in a nutshell short copy performs better when the offer is free, very cheap or in some
other way not intimidating. Also, when its an impulse buy or gives an emotional
satisfaction (concert tickets, candy, something beautiful).
Long copy is more suitable for expensive or complex product. When rational thinking and
analysis are factors for purchasing something, longer copy helps you make a more
compelling case by adding explanations, proof, testimonials. Products where more
information can help people make up their mind.
Many people avoid using long form copy as they associate it with hype, spam and cheesy
get-rich-quick type of landing pages. Dont hate the length, hate the content.
In a case study by Conversion Rate Experts where they tremendously improved the
conversions of SEOMoz landing page, one of the key changes they made was the length
of the copy.
Theyre not the only ones, of course. Take a look at product pages on Amazonthe copy
for Kindle is VERY long. Amazon is known to test everything.
There are some long form landing pages for free offers that convert well, but the one in
the example is a rather complex product, so thats why a longer copy could work better
here.
When using long copy, make sure its obvious that people can and should scroll down
encourage them to do so. You can use CrazyEgg or Clicktale to see a scrollmap that
shows how far down the page people are scrolling.
Test, test, test
Once everything is up and running, make sure you test the effectiveness of the landing
page based on your pre-determined most wanted response. You should always create at
least 2 alternative versions of the landing page, test them, measure and improve.
Read our article on conversion optimization to learn how to do it all.
Landing page critique
I just googled a bunch of keywords and clicked on some ads to find different landing
pages. I couldnt find a truly perfect landing page during my limited search, but thats life.
I skipped the totally awful landing pages.
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Here they are, along with what they have done well and what Id recommend changing.
University of Phoenix
What they have done well
An emotional headline and image
Easy and clear call to action
Clear branding
What I would change or test
I would decrease the orange area and make the form more prominent
Increase headline and form font size
White text on orange is difficult to read. I understand the branding part, but still.
Too much information, the important stuff is not emphasizedwhich means I wont
read any
Unless that link to program disclosure is required by law, Id remove it.
Zoho
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Benefit oriented headline
Social proof
Hero shot of the product
Key benefits listed
Clear call to action
Clear branding
Remove the pricing linkI think thats distracting. Sign them up for a free plan and
they have the option to upgrade later. Its important to get the customer in right away.
Put privacy info into a popup or a folding text box on the same page, dont link out
Reduce the number of checked items to 3, make the font darker
A different call to action text on the buttonindicate what happens after they click
CreateSpace
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Concise, key benefits brought out
Call to action evident
Clear branding
Design. This looks like a noob created it with FrontPage
The headline sucks, lacks a value proposition. No point using the brand in the headline.
The Request a Free Consultation button takes to a page with the same form as on
the right. Why duplicate?
Request a Free Consultationon what? Instead of selling me the consultation, they try
to lure me in with a free booklet on promotion. But I am on this page because Im
interested in publishing!
The form is too long
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I would try a whole new call to action / offer all together, something more related to
publishing. Consultation causes too much friction, Id be afraid of high pressure sales
situation.
Allstate Auto Insurance
Brand reinforcement
Plays on the key issue: saving money on car insurance
Clear and totally friction-free call to action
Cheesy and badly photoshoped stock photo. Try a more real image.
I would test a different wording on the image. (The important to you part along with
a photo of a car bothers me, and Im sure Im not alone.)
Text Link Ads
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Clear branding
2 key benefits outlined
Most important call to action emphasized
A screenshot that gives an idea of how it works
What does it exactly do? Should be explained in a paragraph on the page.
Get rid of the menu on the landing page
Remove additional calls to action and links
Try a more conventional layout: this one looks cool but is complicated and requires
visitors to think. Its doesnt play to natural eye movement on the site.
Separate landing page for different audiences (publishers and advertisers)
Add (social) proof. When its about advertising, people are worried about ROI.
Tools for building landing pages
There are many great tools for building landing pages. Check out these options:
Unbounce. Most powerful. Heres a Landing Page Design Kit you can use with
Unbounce.
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InstaPage. They do automatic A/B testing for you.
KickoffLabs. Viral landing pages.
LaunchRock is for launching soon type of landing pages.
For WordPress landing pages check out Premise and MaxLanding.
Any other good ones you can point out? Post in the comments.
Getting visitors to subscribe is just the first step.
Getting a customer to subscribe to your offer/newsletter is not enough. After a customer
subscribes, you must sell her on actually consuming your content.
A large part of your visitors that complete signup forms WILL NOT actively consume your
offer.
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Sometimes A/B testing is made to seem like some magical tool that will fix all problems at
once. Conversions low? Well run a test and increase your conversions by 12433%! Its
easy!
Setting up and running tests is indeed easy (if youre using the right tools), but doing it
right requires thought and care.
1. Most A/B tests wont produce huge gains (and thats okay)
Ive read the same A/B testing case studies as you have. Probably more. One huge gain
after anotheror so it seems. The truth is that vast majority of tests are never published.
Like most people who try to make it in Hollywood are people you wont ever hear about,
you dont know about most A/B tests.
Most split test fail in the sense that they wont result in a lift in conversions (new
variations produce either no change or perform poorer). Appsumo founder Noah Kagan
has said this about their experience:
Only 1 out of 8 A/B tests have driven significant change.
Its a good expectation to have. If youre expecting every test to be a home run, youre
setting yourself up for some unhappy times.
Think of it as process of continuous improvement
Conversion optimization is a process. And improving conversions is like getting better at
anythingyou have to do it again and again. It often takes many tests to gain valuable
insights about what works and what doesnt. Every product and audience is different, and
even the best research will only take us so far. Ultimately we need to test our hypothesis
in the real world and gain new insights from the test results.
Its about incremental gains
A realistic expectation to have is that youll achieve a 10% gain here and 7% gain there.
In the end all of these improvements will add up.
Failed experiments are for learning
3 Hard Truths About A/B Testing
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Ive had a ton of cases where I came up with a killer hypothesis, re-wrote the copy and
made the page much more awesomeonly to see it perform WORSE than the control.
Probably youve experienced the same.
Unless you missed some critical insights in the process, you can usually turn failed
experiments into wins.
I have not failed 10,000 times. I have successfully found 10,000 ways that will not work.
Thomas Alva Edison, inventor
The real goal of A/B tests is not a lift in conversions (thats a nice side effect), but learning
something about your target audience. You can take those insights about your users and
use it across your marketing effertsPPC ads, email subject lines, sales copy and so on.
Whenever you test variations against the control, you need to have a hypothesis as to
what might work. Now when you observe variations win or lose, you will be able to
identify which elements really make a difference.
When a test fails, you need to
evaluate the hypotheses,
look at the heat map / click map data to assess user behavior on the site,
pay attention to any engagement dataeven if users didnt take your most wanted
action, did they do anything else (higher clickthroughs, more time on site etc).
Heres a case study on how they turned a losing variation around by analyzing what
exactly doesnt work on it.
2. Theres a lot of waiting (until statistical confidence)
A friend of mine was split testing his new landing page. He kept emailing me his results
and findings. I was happy he performed so many tests, but he started to have results
way too often. At one point I asked him How long do you run a test for? His answer:
until one of the variations seems to be winning.
Wrong answer. If you end the test too soon, theres a high chance youll actually get
wrong results. You cant jump to conclusions before you reach statistical confidence.
Statistical significance is everything
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Statistical confidence is the probability that a test result is accurate. Noah from
37Signalssaid it well:
Running an A/B test without thinking about statistical confidence is worse than not
running a test at allit gives you false confidence that you know what works for your site,
when the truth is that you dont know any better than if you hadnt run the test.
Most researchers use the 95% confidence level before making any conclusions. At 95%
confidence level the likelihood of the result being random is very small. Basically were
saying this change is not a fluke or caused by chance, it probably happened due to the
changes we made.
If the results are not statistically significant, the results might be caused by random
factors and theres no relationship between the changes you made and the test results
(this called the null hypothesis).
Calculating statistical confidence is too complex for most, so I recommend you use a
tool for this.
Beware of small sample sizes
I started a test for a client. 2 days in, these were the results:
The variation I built was losing badby more than 89%. Some tools would already call it
and say statistical significance was 100%. The software I used said Variation 1 has 0%
chance to beat Control. My client was ready to call it quits.
However since the sample size here was too small (only a little over 100 visits per
variation) I persisted and this is what it looked like 10 days later:
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Thats rightthe variation that had 0% chance of beating control was now winning with
95% confidence.
Dont make conclusions based on a very small sample size. A good ballpark is to aim for
at least 1000 page views per variation before looking at statistical confidence (although a
smaller sampler might be just fine in some cases). Naturally theres a proper statistical
wayto go about determining the needed samples size, but unless youre a data geek, use
this tool (it will say statistical confidence N/A if proper sample size not achieved).
Watch out for A/B testing tools calling it early, always double check the numbers.
Recently Joanna from Copy Hackers posted about her experience with a tool declaring a
winner too soon. Always pay attention to the margin of error and sample size.
Patience, my young friend
Dont be discouraged by the sample sizes requiredunless you have a very high traffic
website, its always going to take longer than youd like. Rather be testing something
slowly than to testing nothing at all. Every day without an active test is a day wasted.
3. Trickery doesnt provide serious lifts, understanding the user does
I liked this tweet by Naomi Niles:
I couldnt agree more. This kind of narrative gives people the wrong idea about what
testing is about. Yes suresometimes the color affects resultsespecially when it affects
visual hierarchy, makes the call to action stand out better and so on. But green vs
orange is not the essence of A/B testing. Its about understanding the target audience.
Doing research and analysis can be tedious and its definitely hard work, but its
something you need to do.
In order to give your conversions a serious lift you need to do conversion research. You
need to do the heavy lifting.
Serious gains in conversions dont come from psychological trickery, but from analyzing
what your customers really need, the language that resonates with them and how they
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want to buy it. Its about relevancy and perceived value of the total offer.
Conclusion
1. Have realistic expectations about tests.
2. Patience, young grasshopper.
3. A/B testing is about learning. True lifts in conversions come from understanding the
user and serving relevant and valuable offers.
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Somebody asked me the other day, what are all the possible ways to increase the
conversion rate? Is there a library of all the things that have made the difference? I
looked for one, but couldnt find it. So I decided to put one together myself.
Heres a list of 53 ways to increase conversion rate, along with an example for each case
of how somebody did it.
In no particular order.
1. Find and communicate proof. Adding proof to the home page contributed a lot to
the 400% boost in voices.com conversion rate.
2. Use proactive live chatinitiating live chat with the visitors. Intuit got a 211% boost
just by using this tactic.
3. Live chat in general can have a positive impact. Abt Electronics has found that live
chat boosts conversion rateswhich are 10-20% higher on Abt.com for shoppers who
engage live chat, compared to those who dont.
4. Change the headline of your site. CityCliq got a 90% increase in conversions after
changing their positioning.
5. Provide your leads more middle of the funnel content: case studies, eBooks,
more email marketing. Content that would push people down the funnel. Diteba Research
Laboratories did that and soon they saw a 3x increase in conversion rate.
6. Focus on your key traffic referral source. Quanticate focused on Linkedin, posted
more and better content there, used Answers and Groups, and achieved a 10x increase
in traffic and a 10x increase in conversion.
7. Add Google Site Search to your site. Waterfilters.net increased their conversion
rate by 11% by doing so.
53 Ways to Increase Conversion
Rate
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8. Use a guarantee security seal. OrientalFurniture.com increased their conversions
by 7.6% by employing a seal that shows it guarantees the delivery of purchases up to
$500, offers up to $10,000 of protection if a consumers identity is stolen via the site and
ensures that if the retailer drops the price they will pay the difference up to $100.
9. Use red color on your call to action buttons to establish a sense of urgency. BMI,
a leading UK airline, increased their conversion rate by 2.5 percent by adding a red
background behind their message Hurry! Only XX seats left.
10. Design a clear user flow. Zen Windows increased their conversion rate from 0.75%
to 2.95% by redesigning the website flow so that it was easier for the user to find what
they were looking for.
11. Show product videos on product pages. Ice.com got a 400% lift once they started
to do it.
12. Change the color of your button to red. Performable changed it from green to
red and got a 21% increase in conversions.
13. Use testimonials. WikiJob added testimonials to their site and improved their
conversion rate by 34%.
14. Try a different image. HawkHost multiplied their conversions just by changing the
image on the home page.
15. Use a different way of presenting your pricing. BaseKit made their pricing page
Bolder, brighter, clearer, nicer, more obvious and a 25% increase in conversions was
achieved.
16. Add reviews to your site. Figleaves improved their conversion rate by more than
35% by adding reviews to their website.
17. Put a trust seal on the site. Petco.com increased sales by 8.83% after adding the
Hacker Safe seal to their site.
18. Change the wording of your call to action button. TextMagic changed their
button text from Buy SMS Credits to View SMS Prices and saw an 37.6% improvement
in conversions.
19. Simplify your home page. Preceden made theirs simpler and got a 37% uplift.
20. Show a discounted price. The Corkscrew Wine Merchants got a 148.3%
improvement on product page after they featured a discount sticker.
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21. Improve the usability of your site. Following a usability best-practice (of having
a navigation menu) increased conversions by 34% for Slideshop.com
22. Place the call to action with a price within the content area. Nature Air added
a contextual call to action within content and witnessed a whooping 591% increase in
conversions (from 3% to 19%). Easy-to-find and clear calls to action do work.
23. Reduce the number of fields in your forms. ImageScape reduced the number of
form fields from 11 to 4. The number of forms submitted increased 160% and the
conversion rate increased 120%.
24. Selling an e-book? Use a 3D virtual cover. Code Monkeyism got 43% more
downloads from the page with the 3D image version.
25. Use a stronger command with a literal callout. Dustin Curtis got 173% more
clickthroughs for his Twitter link after using a stronger command to invite followers.
26. Improve your value proposition. The Sims 3 website did that and got a 128%
increase in game registrations.
27. Have a single page checkout. Official Vancouver 2010 Olympic Store changed
their multi-step checkout into a single page checkout and saw a 21.8% improvement.
28. Use huge customer photos on your homepage. At least it worked for Highrise.
29. Focus on a single action. The Weather Channel watched conversions jump
225%after decluttering their home page and presenting a clear, single action.
30. Have the call to action on the left. Less Accounting test showed that a layout
with calls-to-action on the left hand side worked better than a reverse layout.
31. Make the copy action oriented. LAxelle changed the tone of their copyFeel
fresh without sweat marks became Put an end to sweat marks and so on. The wording
of headline and copy had a huge impact when it came to convertinga take-action feel
performed 93% better.
32. Use bullet points to outline benefits. Unionen tested mentioning benefits in a
bullet point list vs paragraph of text. Bullet points resulted in a 15.9% improvement.
33. Increase the size of your call to action button. SAP BusinessObjects turned
their regular blue link into a big button, and improved conversions by 32.5%.
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34. Make your signup forms a single column. This eye tracking study showed that
single column forms work better.
35. Try a Mad Libs style form. Vast.com increased conversion across the board by
25-40% by doing that.
36. Use buyer personas. RightNow Technologies increased their conversions 4x by
building a persona focused site.
37. Dont ask for the sale too soon. One company removed the sign up call to action
from the top of the homepage, and sign-ups increased 350%.
38. Add a phone number to your site. LessAccounting saw a 1.8% increase in
conversions after placing a phone number on their site.
39. Put a video on your home page. Dropbox boosted their conversions over 10% by
doing that.
40. Test a different video thumbnail. Yobongo got a 70.9% conversion uplift after
changing their video thumbnail.
41. Make the video short. Think Vitamin replaced an example tutorial video (5:50) on
the homepage with a 50-second overview of the serviceand increased conversions by
24.4%.
42. Show product images in site search box. After BrickHouse Security added an
automated drop-down menu of textual results that appear when shoppers enter terms
into its site search window, it boosted conversion rates.
43. Do a radical makeover. This is when you go beyond testing one element to create
an all together new and different version. SEOMoz got 52% improvement in sales and $1
million dollars increase in revenue after a radical change.
44. Show product videos. Product videos boosted jewlery site conversions by 247%.
45. Use badging on your products. Sheplers got a 1.63 percent increase in the add
to cart rate with badging and curation.
46. Add a Free Trial button. Email marketing software GetResponse showed a
Free trial button instead Buy now and increased trial signups by 158% (while not
decreasing paid signups).
47. Use popup sign-up forms. Popups are known to boost email subscriptions, but
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Visual Website Optimizer got 50% more signups thanks to a popup signup form.
48. Cut some content on your landing page. AssessmentDay cut the amount of
content on their landing page, and sales went up by 62%. Dont cut too much
insufficient information is a conversion killer.
49. Offer next-day shipping. SmileyCookie increased sales by 41% by promoting next-
day shipping (Order Today > Ships Next Business Day).
50. Make your links red. Usability studies say that blue link is the best, but Beamax
boosted their link clickthroughs by making the links red.
51. Show (real) humans. Using photos of real people (not stock photos) on your
landing pages boosts your conversions.
52. Use aspirational imagery and copy. A nutritional supplement company realizes a
50% sales conversion rate lift by including benefit-oriented copy, images reflecting the
target market engaged in aspirational activities, and a large call to action button placed
visibly above the fold.
53. Beef up on credibility factors. An American Express travel representative got 48%
more phone calls after testing a credibility focused version.
Note: what worked for them, might not work for you at all. Do your own testing.
You should not approach testing by starting to test random ideas. You need to learn
about structured approach to conversion optimization, do that here.
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III.
Design
How to Build Websites that Sell:... Design
Design
Design
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Dont design your own website. No, really. It will suck.
You might think that since WordPress or Weebly are so easy to use, you can design your
own killer website. Nope. It will suck.
Ive seen it time and again. You think you will save money by doing it yourself. You might
even think the outcome is not so bad. Youre wrong.
Let me ask you this:
how many hours does one need to drive a car before theyre ready to race?
how many games of chess does one need to play before they can kick butt?
how many practice sessions on a guitar before one could woo girls with it?
A lot. 10 000 hours if you want to be among the best.
The thing is that web design is like most skillsit takes a long, long time and a ton of
practice before youre any good. Even if youre gifted, it will take you many tens of sites,
if not hundreds, before you can show off your stuff.
I won a web design competition back in 2001, but I still dont do it (only tiny bits). Why?
Cause there are people that can do it much better. I focus on the stuff Im really good at,
and leave design to the pros.
When your car breaks down, you take it to a mechanic. You need a new roof, you call a
roofer. Yet, for some reason a lot of people think they can design their own website.
Your website is your #1 marketing tool. Dont ruin it by designing it yourself. And dont
hire the cheapest provider or your cousin. The site will suck. Cant afford it? Its a matter
of priorities. You can always find a way to pay for things that are truly important to you.
We live in the era of design. Good design sells, bad design doesnt. Theres lots of
researchout there saying that people trust beautiful websites more. Heck, people trust
beautiful everything more. Beautiful people make more money, are more successful and
Design Like Jagger
Design
Design
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and justhave it better. We like pretty cars, houses and clothes. The same goes for
websites.
If the 80s and 90s taught us to take quality for granted, today good design is the barrier
of entry.
(And no point mentioning Craigslist. First of all it would never take off if it would launch
today looking like this, and secondly there are always exceptions).
If you build your own site, it will be ugly and it will hurt your business. You will lose money.
Every day will be a wasted opportunity.
Every week I come across websites that offer something I or my clients might need, but
the website is just so ugly I cant take them seriously, and will look elsewhere. If you
designed your own site, this is happening to you all the timewhether youre aware of it
or not.
Mick Jagger can move, but hed probably get somebody else to design his site.
Design
Design
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The design of your website is more important for conversions than you think. You can
implement any conversion boosting tactic in the world, but if it looks like crap, it wont do
you much good.
Design is not just something designers do. Design is marketing. Design is your product
and how it works. The more Ive learned about design, the better results Ive gotten.
Here are eight web design principles you should know and follow.
1.Visual Hierarchy
Squeaky wheels get the grease and prominent visuals get the attention. Visual hierarchy
is one of the most important principles behind effective web design. Its the order in
which the human eye perceives what it sees.
Exercise. Please rank the circles in the order of importance:
Without knowing ANYTHING about these circles, you were easily able to rank them. Thats
visual hierarchy.
Certain parts of your website are more important than others (forms, calls to action,
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value proposition etc), and you want those to get more attention than the less important
parts. If you website menu has 10 items, are all of them equally important? Where do you
want the user to click? Make important links more prominent.
Hierarchy does not only come from size. Amazon makes the Add to cart button more
prominent by using color:
Start with the business objective
You should rank elements on your website based on your business objective. If you dont
have a specific goal, you cant know what to prioritize.
Heres an example, its a screenshot I took of the Williams Sonoma website. They want to
sell outdoor cookware.
The biggest eye catcher is the huge piece of meat (make me want it), followed by the
headline (say what it is) and call to action button (get it!). Fourth place goes to a
paragraph of text under the headline, fifth is the free shipping banner and the top
navigation is last. This is visual hierarchy well done.
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Exercise. Surf the web and consciously rank the elements in the visual hierarchy. Then
go look at your own site. Is there something important (key information points that
visitors are likely seeking) that is not high enough in the hierarchy? Change that.
More about visual hierarchy.
2. Divine Proportions
Golden ratio is a magical number 1.618 (
) that makes all things proportioned to it aesthetically pleasing (or so it is believed).
Then there is also the Fibonacci sequence where each term is defined as the sum of the
two previous terms: 0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21 and so on. The interesting thing is that we
have two seemingly unrelated topics producing the same exact number.
Heres what the golden ratio looks like:
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Many artists and architects have proportioned their works to approximate the golden
ratio. A famous example is Pantheon built in Ancient Greece:
Can you use it on web design? You betcha. Heres Twitter:
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Image source
Heres a comment by Twitters creative director, @stop:
To anyone curious about #NewTwitter proportions, know that we didnt leave those
ratios to chance.
This, of course, only applies to the narrowest version of the UI. If your browser window is
wider, your details pane will expand to provide greater utility, throwing off these
proportions. But the narrowest width shows where we started, ratio-wise.
So, if your layout width is 960px, divide it by 1.618 (=593px). Now you know that the
content area should be 593px and sidebar 367px. If the website height is 760px tall, you
can split it into 470px and 290px chunks (760/1.618=~470).
Additional reading
Heres a Golden Ratio calculator you can use to apply it to your site.
How to apply Golden Ratio to typography
3. Hicks Law
Hicks law says that with every additional choice increases the time required to take a
decision.
Youve experienced this countless times at restaurants. Menus with huge options make it
difficult to choose your dinner. If it just offered two options, taking a decision would take
much less time. This is similar to Paradox of Choicethe more choice you give people,
the easier it is to choose nothing.
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The more options a user has when using your website, the more difficult it will be to use
(or wont be used at all). So in order to provide a more enjoyable experience, we need to
eliminate choices. The process of eliminating distracting options has to begin from the
get go of the web design and should be carried on throughout the design process.
In the era of infinite choice, people need better filters! If you sell a huge amount of
products, add better filters for easier decision making.
Wine Library sells a huge amount of wine. They do a good job with the filters (on the left):
Learn more about Hicks Law.
4. Fitts Law
Fitts law stipulates that the time required to move to a target area (e.g. click a button) is
a function of the distance to the target and the size of the target. In other words, the
bigger an object and the closer it is to us, the easier it is to use it.
Spotify makes it easier to hit Play than other buttons:
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They also place it (on the fullscreen Desktop app) in the bottom left corner, which is
considered the most valuable real estate since the corners are technically the most
accessible. This does not, however, apply to web design (due to scrolling and the way
operating systems are).
It doesnt mean that bigger is always better. A button that takes up half the screen is not
a good idea, and we dont need a mathematical study to know this. Even so, Fitts law is a
binary logarithm. This means that the predicted results of the usability of an object runs
along a curve, not a straight line.
A tiny button will become much easier to click when given a 20 percent size increase,
while a very large object will not share the same benefits in usability when given the
same 20 percent boost in size.
This is similar to rule of target size.
The size of a button should be proportional to its expected frequency of use. You can
check your stats for which buttons people use the most, and make popular buttons bigger
(easier to hit).
Lets imagine theres a form you want people to fill. At the end of the form, there are two
buttons: Submit and Reset (clear fields).
99.9999 percent want to hit submit. Hence the button should be much bigger than
reset.
More about Fitts Law.
5. Rule of Thirds
Its a good idea to use images in your design. A visual communicates your ideas much
faster than any text.
The best images follow the rule of thirds: an image should be imagined as divided into
nine equal parts by two equally-spaced horizontal lines and two equally-spaced vertical
lines, and that important compositional elements should be placed along these lines or
their intersections.
Using beautiful, big images contributes to design as it is (not withstanding the growth of
Pinterest), following this rule will make them more interesting and thus your website
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more appealing.
6. Gestalt Design Laws
Gestalt psychology is a theory of mind and brain. Its principle is that the human eye sees
objects in their entirety before perceiving their individual parts.
Heres what I mean:
Notice how you could see the dog without focusing on each black spot that the dog
consists of?
The key takeaway here is that people see the whole before they see the parts. People
always see the whole of your website first, before they distinguish the header, menu,
footer and so on. As one of the founders of gestaltism Kurt Koffka said: the whole exists
independently from the parts.
There are eight so-called gestalt design laws that allow us to predict how people will
perceive something. Here they are:
1. Law of Proximity
People group things together that are close together in space. They become a single
perceived object.
In web design, you need to make sure things that do NOT go together, are not perceived
as one. Similarly, you want to group certain design elements together (navigation menu,
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footer etc) to communicate that they form a whole.
Craigslist uses this law to make it easy to understand which sub-categories fall under for
sale:
2. Law of Similarity
We group similar things together. This similarity can occur in the form of shape, colour,
shading or other qualities.
Here we group black dots into one group and whites into another one, becausewell, the
black dots look kind of similar to each other.
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Codeschool makes all the testimonial boxes similar, so we see all the testimonials as a
single group:
3. Law of Closure
We seek completeness. With shapes that arent closed, when parts of a whole picture are
missing, our perception fills in the visual gap. We see two squares overlaid on four circles
even though none of these shapes actually exist in the graphic.
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Without the law of closure, we would just see different lines with different lengths, but
with the law of closure, we combine the lines into whole shapes.
Using the law of closure can make logos or design elemets more interesting. A good
example of this is the World Wide Fund For Nature designed by Sir Peter Scott in 1961:
4. Law of Symmetry
The mind perceives objects as being symmetrical and forming around a center point. It is
perceptually pleasing to be able to divide objects into an even number of symmetrical
parts.
When we see two symmetrical elements that are unconnected, the mind perceptually
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connects them to form a coherent shape.
When we look at the image above, we tend to observe three pairs of symmetrical
brackets rather than six individual brackets.
People prefer symmetric appearances over asymmetric ones. Balanced three columns
and the curve add to the enjoyment of BootB web design:
5. Law of Common Fate
We tend to perceive objects as lines that move along a path. We group together of
objects that have the same trend of motion and are therefore on the same path.
People mentally group together sticks or raised hands pointing somewhere, because they
all point in the same direction. You can use this to guide the users attention to something
(e.g. a signup form, value proposition, etc).
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For example, if there is an array of dots and half the dots are moving upward while the
other half are moving downward, we would perceive the upward moving dots and the
downward moving dots as two distinct units.
6. Law of Continuity
People have a tendency to perceive a line as continuing its established direction. In cases
where there is an intersection between objects (e.g. lines), we tend to perceive the two
lines as two single uninterrupted entities. Stimuli remains distinct even with overlap.
Fixel uses this to connect faces to bios:
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There are other gestalt laws as well such as Figure and Ground or Law of Good
Gestalt (objects tend to be perceptually grouped together if they form a pattern that is
regular, simple and orderlylike the Olympic rings), but I think the ones mentioned here
are most useful to know.
7. White space and clean design
White space (also called negative space) is the portion of a page left empty." Its the
space between graphics, margins, gutters, space between columns, space between lines
of type or visuals.
It should not be considered merely blank spaceit is an important element of design. It
enables the objects in it to exist at all. White space is all about the use of hierarchy. The
hierarchy of information, be it type, colour or images.
A page without white space, crammed full of text or graphics, runs the risk of appearing
busy, cluttered, and is typically difficult to read (people wont even bother).
Enough white space makes a website look clean. While clean design is crucial to
communicating a clear message, it doesnt just mean less content. Clean design means a
design that makes the best use of the space it is in. To make a clean design, you have to
know how to communicate clearly by using white space wisely.
Made.com does white space well:
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The fine use of white space makes it easy to focus on the main message and visuals, and
the body copy easy to read.
White spaces promotes elegance and sophistication, improves legibility and drives focus.
Read more about white space and simplicity.
8. Occams Razor
Occams razor is a principle urging one to select among competing hypotheses that
which makes the fewest assumptions and thereby offers the simplest explanation of the
effect. To put it in the design context, Occams Razor states that the simplest solution is
usually best.
In a post about their Angelpad experience, Pipedrive guys say the following:
The Angelpad team and mentors challenged us in many ways. You have too many
things on your home page was something we didnt agree with at first, but were happy
to test. And it turned out we had been wrong indeed. We removed 80 percent of the
content, and left one sign-up button and one Learn More link on the home page.
Conversion to sign up increased by 300 percent.
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Its not just about the looks, but also about how it works. Some companieslike 37Signals
have turned simple into a business model. Heres a quote from the book
Rework (written by their founders):
Lots of people hate us because our products do less than the competitions. Theyre
insulted when we refuse to include their pet feature. But were just as proud of what our
products dont do as we are of what they do. We design them to be simple because we
believe most software is too complex: too many features, too many buttons, too much
confusion.
Simple, minimal design does not automatically mean the design works, or is effective. But
in my experience simple is always better than the oppositeand hence we should strive
to simplify.
Conclusion
Design and art are not the same. You should design for the user and by having a business
objective in mind. Using these web design principles you can get to aesthetically and
financially rewarding results.
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People make snap judgements. It takes only a tenth of a second to form a first
impression about a person, and websites are no different. It takes about 50
milliseconds (thats 0.05 seconds) for users to form an opinion about your website that
determines whether they like your site or not, whether theyll stay or leave.
This number comes from specific studies. In the first study, participants twice rated the
visual appeal of web homepages presented for 500 milliseconds each. In a follow-up
study, they reduced the exposure time to 50 milliseconds. Throughout, visual appeal
ratings were highly correlated from one phase to the next as were the correlations
between the 50 and 500 milliseconds conditions. Thus, visual appeal can be assessed
within 50 milliseconds, suggesting that web designers have about 50 milliseconds to make
a good first impression
This first impression depends on many factors: structure, colors, spacing, symmetry,
amount of text, fonts, and more. All the website screenshots below are for illustrative
purposes only.
Users form design opinions even in 17 milliseconds
Recently Google confirmed the 50 milliseconds number in their own research. In fact,
according to their study some opinions develop even within 17 milliseconds (though the
effect was less pronounced on some design factors).
The key findings from their study were that websites with low visual complexity and high
prototypicality (how representative a design looks for a certain category of websites)
were perceived as highly appealing.
First Impressions Matter: The
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Key takeaway: Make your web design simple and familiar (follow conventionse.g.
people have a fixed idea what an e-commerce site should be like). If you go for
innovative, unconventional layoutspeople are less likely to like them.
Eyetracking study identifies key elements
It takes 2.6 seconds for a users eyes to land on that area of a website that most
influences their first impression.
The researchers monitored students eye movements as they scanned the web pages.
The researchers then analyzed the eye-tracking data to determine how long it took for
the students to focus on specific sections of a pagesuch as the menu, logo, images and
social media iconsbefore they moved on to another section. They discovered that the
better the first impression, the the longer the participants stayed on the page.
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The website sections that drew the most interest from viewers were as follows:
The institutions logo. Users spent about 6.48 seconds focused on this area before
moving on.
The main navigation menu. Almost as popular as the logo, subjects spent an
average of 6.44 seconds viewing the menu.
The search box, where users focused for just over 6 seconds.
The sites main image, where users eyes fixated for an average of 5.94 seconds.
The sites written content, where users spent about 5.59 seconds.
The bottom of a website, where users spent about 5.25 seconds.
Key takeaway: Good first impression leads to longer visit duration. Make sure the 6
elements listed here look great.
First impressions are 94 percent design related
British researchers analyzed how different design and information content factors
influence trust of online health sites.
The study showed clearly that the look and feel of the website is the main driver of first
impressions.
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Of all the feedback the test participants gave, 94 percent was about design (complex,
busy layout, lack of navigation aids, noring web design especially use of color, pop up
adverts, slow introductions to site, small print, too much text, corporate look and feel,
poor search facilities). Only 6 percent of the feedback was about the actual content.
Visual appeal and website navigation appeared had by far the biggest influence on
peoples first impressions of the site.
At the same time, poor interface design was particularly associated with rapid rejection
and mistrust of a website. When participants did not like some aspect of the design, the
whole website was often not explored further than the homepage and was not
considered suitable.
Similar results were found in a study research for Consumer WebWatch, conducted by
Stanford University credibility experts. They found that what people *say* about how they
evaluate trust of a website and how they *really* do it are different.
The data showed that the average consumer paid far more attention to the superficial
aspects of a site, such as visual cues, than to its content. For example, nearly half of all
consumers (or 46.1 percent) in the study assessed the credibility of sites based in part on
the appeal of the overall visual design of a site, including layout, typography, font size and
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color schemes.
Key takeaway: Great design gets people to trust you and to stick around. Poor design
creates mistrust and makes people leave.
Inspiration drives better first impression
A study looking into the role of first impressions in tourism websites found that
inspiration-related elements had the greatest impact on first-impression formation. This
suggests that visually appealing stimuli is a very important tool for getting people to stay
longer on the site and thus converting more visitors into buyers.
Usability was the second most significant driver of first impression formation, followed by
credibility.
All in all this tells us that travelers want to get inspired about a destination (inspiring
imagery), they dont want to waste mental energy on figuring stuff out (usabilitydont
make me think) and they want to be sure this travel provider is legit (credibility).
Key takeaway: If youre selling a dream (e.g. the idea of going on a holiday to Fiji),
inspiring photography is the leading first impression creator.
Positive first impressions lead to higher satisfaction
In an experiment conducted to study the effects of product expectations on subjective
usability ratings, participants read a positive or a negative product review for a novel
mobile device before a usability test, while the control group read nothing.
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The study revealed a surprisingly strong effect of positive expectations on subjective
post-experiment ratings: the participants who had read the positive review gave the
device significantly better post-experiment ratings than did the negative-prime and no-
prime groups. This boosting effect of the positive prime held even in the hard task
condition where the users failed in most of the tasks.
Key takeaway: if they instantly like your site, theyre ready to cut you some slack for
any hiccups down the line. It only makes sense to assume that this kind of priming works
also the other waynegative first impression decreases the overall satisfaction with your
site.
Visual appeal more important than usability for user perception
A study examined the effects of visual appeal and usability on user performance and
satisfaction with a website.
Users completed different tasks on websites which varied in visual appeal (high and low)
and usability (high and low). Results show that first impressions are most influenced by
the visual appeal of the site. Users gave high usability and interest ratings to sites with
high appeal and low usability and interest ratings to sites with low appeal. User
perceptions of a low appeal website were not significantly influenced by the sites
usability even after a successful experience with the site.
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Key takeaway: Invest in designits what matters the most for pulling users in. Funny
enough, great visual design will lead to higher usability ratings even. And actual usability
will matter much less if the overall visual appeal is low.
First impressions can last for years
A research by two economistsBarry Staw and Ha Hoang (Administrative Science
Quarterly, 1995)looked into the impact of draft order in NBA. They observed players
career over five years after they were drafted. Five years is enough to prove yourself in
many ways, so draft order shouldnt play a role, right? Wrong. According to the study the
playing time players get is exactly related to their draft order.
Results showed that teams granted more playing time to their most highly drafted
players and retained them longer, even after controlling for players on-court
performance (how well they played matters much less!), injuries, trade status, and
position played. Even after controlling for other factors, in a given season every
increment in the draft number (e.g., getting drafted ninth instead of eighth) decreased
playing time as much as 23 minutes. Incredibly, draft order continued to predict playing
time all the way through a players fifth year in the NBA, the final year measured in the
study. Players drafted in the first round had also longer careersthey played for 3.5
more years than the rest.
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Another study looking into the persistence of first impressions discovered that new
experiences that contradict a first impression become bound to the context in which
they were made, whereas first impressions still dominate in other contexts. Our brain
stores expectancy-violating experiences as exceptions-to-the-rule, such that the rule is
treated as valid except for the specific context in which it has been violated.
Key takeaway: If their first impression is negative, it might cause the user to have
prejudice against you for years.
Make sure above the fold area rocks
Over the years above the fold issue has been hotly debated. Todays research indicates
that people have no problem scrolling and in fact prefer it to diving the content into many
pages. Whats this got to do with first impressions?
Heres a new dimension of thinking to the above the fold issue: it needs to be the best
part of your website. First impressions are formed in 0.05 seconds. Theyre not going to
scroll down in that time. Hence, what they see immediately without scroll is what
determines whether they even want to scroll down.
Conclusion
Visual appeal matters a lot. My best advice: dont try to save money on design, ever. Ive
seen time and again how a plain design overhaul resulted in significant conversion
boosts.
People form their opinion about your site in milliseconds. The first second on your website
might matter more than all other seconds that follow. Make sure that second makes a
great first impression.
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The home page of your website is the most important page. When you look at the traffic
statistics of pretty much any website, the home page gets more traffic than any other
page. Your home page also has the best chance to rank high in the search engines since
most people link to your home page (as do your internal pages). So better make it good.
Heres how to go about designing a home page that converts.
This is the process Im using when evaluating or designing home pages.
1. Map out buyer personas
2. Craft a value proposition
3. Build a connection
4. Use proper visuals
5. Define most wanted action
6. Create call to action
7. Write user oriented copy
8. Add trust elements
9. Test length
10. Check load speed
Ill touch upon all of these points below.
Lets start with the obvious stuff
Logo
People expect to see your logo in the top left corner. Clicking on the logo takes you to the
How To Design A Homepage That
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home page from every internal page. Dont mess with it.
You dont need to hire an expensive logo designer. Text logos are just as good, only with
1 percent of the cost.
You can create a beautiful logo by using text. Pick a beautiful font and a background
color you likeand voil! A designer from Edicy took just 15 minutes to create this logo
for an imaginary company:
Image credit: Tajo Oja
Navigation
People are used to two kinds of menus: horizontal and vertical. Dont innovate here
familiar layouts work best.
Remember people spend most of their time on OTHER websites. People dont need to see
a menu to know where the contact link is atby default they look for it as the last link in
a horizontal menu or the bottom link in a vertical one. Ensure they find it there.
Keep it simple and obvious:
The Personal MBA menu:
All is clear, right? No surprises here.
Now lets look at a menu gone wrong. Clever innovation? Not! They make you move your
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mouse onto a number to reveal what link it is. Not many will have the patience:
Footer
People expect to find your contact information in the footer. Make sure its there.
Mapping buyer personas
What are buyer personas?
Buyer personas are essentially a specific group of potential customers, an archetypal
person whom you want your marketing to reach.
Optimizing your site for buyer personas gets you away from an egotistical point of view
and gets you to talk to users about their needs and wants. What people care about are
themselves and answers to their problems, which is why buyer personas are so critical for
marketing success.
Why use them?
Essentially its about knowing who you are selling to, what is their situation, what are they
thinking, their needs and hesitations. If youd know the exact person youre selling to and
the problems they have, youd be in a much better position to sell them. RightNow
Technologies increased their conversions 4x by building a persona focused site.
How to build them?
The truth is that most companies have only the faintest idea what lies behind the buying
decision. We presume an awful lot. The buyer persona is a tool that can help you see
deeper into the buyers thinking.
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Use interviews with existing customers to map out different personas. To get more
information on this read The Buyer Persona Manifesto (free pdf). Heres a free webinar
recording on buyer personas I recommend checking out.
When personas fail you
Ideally the value proposition and everything else you present on your home page (and
other pages) come from the buyer personas. That being said, some products are
betterdefined by the job they do than the customers they serve.
Value proposition
This is the most important part of your home page. Your value proposition is a concise
chunk of text (headline, sub-headline and and maybe a few bullets points) that should
address these questions:
What is this site about?
What can I do here?
How is it useful to me?
Why should I buy from you instead of the competition?
Peoples attention span and patience are extremely limited. The world suffers from
attention-deficit disorder. If they dont get the answers from your home page within
seconds, they will leave. Nobody will TRY to understand what youre about nor read long
pages of text. If you havent captivated them on your home page, youve lost them.
There are several ways to craft and present your value proposition.
Campaign Monitor:
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What I like about this value proposition
Bold headlinestating what it is and who is it for
A specific, benefit-oriented paragraph underneath describing the service
Big visual to support the text
What Id improve
Clarify how is it different from the competition
300 milligrams:
What I like about this value proposition
Big, clear headline you cannot miss
A specific, benefit-oriented paragraph underneath describing the service
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Visual to support the text
What Id improve
Increase the font size of the descriptive text and remove the company name from it
(needless waste of space). Id make the first sentence user focused like the second
one.
Make the visual more clear, add descriptive arrows and texts perhaps
Dowce.com changed the wording of their headline and added bullet points to improve
their value proposition, resulting in 24. 5 percent improvement in conversions.
Build a connection
Lets do an exercise. I wont ask you to write anything down, but make a mental note.
How tall are you? How much do you weigh? Where do you normally walk (city streets,
gravel, etc)?
Now lets say Im selling shoes and you need a pair. You have two options. The first pair is
designed for everyone. The second one is designed exactly for people your height and
weight, and for walking on terrains you normally walk on. The price is the same. Which
pair will you buy? No doubt about it, right?
This is why you have to state who your product or service is for, and it has to be
true. If youre trying to sell to everybody, you will lose (unless you have a gazillion dollars
to spend). Talking to everybody in your copy works for almost nobody.
Look again at the above example of Campaign Monitor. They have included the target
group in their value proposition.
Stripe:
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Theres no doubt who this service is designed for, is there?
If your current offering is NOT catered to a specific customer group, I recommend you
re-think your strategy.
Most wanted action
Remember paradox of choice: the more choice you give somebody, the easier it is to
choose nothing. Choice paralyzes. If you think people will invest time to figure out where
to click next, think again.
Thinking is hard, and you should not make your customers think. Instead, clearly indicate
the next action you want them to take. In one experiment they changed the home page
to focus on a single action, and saw the users doing exactly what they wanted them to
do. It works.
Before you can do that, you need to figure out what that action should be!
If you ask for the purchase or sign-up too soon, you will lose them. In most cases its a
good idea to direct them to reading more about your service or checking out a demo
before asking for a commitment (signup, purchase etc).
Making the button bigger is not gonna helpin most cases they just dont care yet!I ts
about focusing on what people really want, in the order that they want it. You dont ask
somebody to marry you on your first date.
Look at the screenshots above, all of them make this mistake (Campaign Monitor does
offer View Features button too). People are not ready to commit after just reading a few
sentences, so dont force them. You can of course have a buy/sign-up button, but try
making it less prominent and put the focus on a different step.
Try to think of the questions that are going through your customers mind while theyre
on your homepage and whether the content on the page does a great job of answering
them. Guide them to the next logical step in their usage lifecycle.
Joshua Porter makes a good case for burying your signup or buy button, I recommend
reading it. One company removed the sign up call to action from the top of the
homepage, and sign-ups increased 350 percent.
Trying the product without signing up
I love how Codecademy is doing this:
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They pull you right in and make you use their service without asking for a signup or
anything. The friction is usually high for any kind of signupfree or notand here they
have completely eliminated that.
While they do have a Get Started button, it only sets focus to the console:
So how do they get people to sign up? After playing around a bit, they offer you to create
an account so you could save your work. By this time youve toyed around with it and
fallen in love.
Call to action
Call to action wording matters a lot. I yet have to see a case study where a wording
containing the word buy converted the best. In e-commerce, add to cart always kicks
buy nows butt.
In this split test they changed Buy SMS Credits to View SMS prices," and saw an uplift
in conversions. This change along with minor added trust elements resulted in overall
conversion rate improvement of 37.6 percent.
In another test they achieved a 83.4 percent improvement after changing the wording of
their button from Play right now! to Instant demo!." Test your call to action.
I recommend making the calls to action benefit-oriented and indicating what happens
when they click. Avoid empty words like submit.
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Scrapblog:
Icondock:
Web Copy
Copywriting is super important and a huge topic on its own. Heres one tip.
Most people on your website know what they are looking for in a product or service. If
they find something that looks similar to what they want, they will follow it (read more,
buy etc).
Consequently, having relevant information with the exact wording your customers would
use is very important. Talk to your customers and see what language and exact phrases
theyre using when talking about your products. Use it on your website.
When Im looking for a project management software that has features like task
assigning, time tracking and client management built in, those are they keywords Im
after when browsing different sites.
More on copywriting: what the science of persuasion says and seven tips for effective
sales copy.
Above the fold and below the fold
Above the fold is the part of a page thats visible without scrolling. People do scroll and
are not afraid of it, but make sure the most important elements are visible without
scrolling:
Value proposition,
Some visual,
Call to action.
Ideally the part above the fold answers the most important questions the visitor has, and
the rest is supplemental reading.
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How long the part below the fold should be largely depends on your business. Guys over
at Pipedrive told me that when they shrunk their home page, their conversions tripled.
Make the contact information visible
Easy to find contact information is one of the key things to making your website more
trustworthy. Display your email, phone and live chat options on every page.
LessAccounting saw a 1.8 percent increase in conversions after placing a phone number
on their site. Flowr added a phone number to their siteand also observed a slight
increase in conversions.
Leave room for text
Ignoring search engines is not wise. As I mentioned it the beginning, your home page has
the best chance among all the pages on your site to rank high in search engines.
This, however, wont happen unless there is substantial amount of text on the page (500+
words). Use the room below the fold also for SEOwrite useful stuff about your products,
services and address questions your users have, but make sure the text is optimized.
No text, no ranking.
Visuals
Thousand words and all that. Neuroscience tells us that people get images hundreds of
times faster than from text (our reptile brain doesnt even know how to read).
I firmly believe that using images is a powerful way to boost up any value proposition.
Imagine this website without the large image:
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Blu Homes sells prefab homes, and nobody is going to buy one without seeing it. How
many words would you need to describe the picture above? Too manynobody would
read that.
Even if you sell less tangible goods, like software, people want to get an idea what its
like.
Project Bubble gives you an overview of their software via short video. I think video is
great for more complex products, because watching a 1:30 minute video is less hassle for
the user than reading a whole bunch of text.
Using video can provide an uplift. Dropbox boosted their conversions after adding a video
to the home page. Not all the videos are samevideo thumbnails can make a huge
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difference. Yobongo got a 70.9 percent conversion uplift after changing their video
thumbnail.
Read more on how to increase conversions with video and how to boost conversions with
images.
Trust and security
People dont buy from you if they dont trust you. In addition to showing off your contact
information, its a good idea to use trust marks to reduce friction.
Heres what Ice.com put in their footer:
Notice the mention of money-back guarantee, trusted since 1999 and two trust logos.
Dont ignore load speed
Speed matters. Slow sites cause frustration and make people leave, thus obviously
hurting conversions. Speeding up sites increases conversions.
Google knows it and has included site speed as one of the ranking factors.
Googles own nifty Page Speed Online tool is terrific for providing you insights into your
site speed and what you can do to make it faster.
If you use Google Analytics, their Site Speed report will help you learn which of your
pages are underperforming, so you can address this potential barrier to your
conversions.
If youre not terrified by technical discussions, read how to optimize your site with HTTP
caching.
Its never done
Your home page should be living and breathing organism, always evolving. Keep on
testing different hypotheses and see what makes the difference. In the end, testing is not
just about converting more customers, but learning.
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Make it your goal to understand why a change made a difference and what can you learn
from this that you can apply elsewhere in your business.
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If youre Amazon or Applecongratulations! You dont have any credibility issues. Most of
us arent so lucky. Almost all but the biggest companies have an uphill credibility battle
ahead of them every time a new visitor lands on their site.
Whats website credibility and why is it important?
BJ Foggthe worlds leading researcher on web credibilityhas said that web credibility is
about making your website in such a way that it comes across as trustworthy and
knowledgeable. Your website is often the first point of contact for the customers,
responsible for first impressions and of course sources of revenue. Companies that
design for credibility have a strategic advantage over competition.
Fogg says there are four types of credibility:
Presumed credibilitygeneral assumptions (e.g. a brand weve heard of is more
credible, unknown brand less)
Reputed credibilitythird party reference (e.g. your wife said its good or your friends
said service X sucks)
Surface credibilitywhat we find on simple inspection (e.g. the website looks quality or
this seems confusing)
Earned credibilitypersonal experience (e.g. friendly customer service or text full of
typos and factual errors)
In this post Ill focus on what you can do right now to boost the credibility of your site.
Would you like a new iPhone 5its just $20?
Lets say youre walking down the street. A twenty-something dude comes up to you
hey, are you interested in a new iPhone 5? Ill sell it to you for $20. He pulls it out of
his pocket and it looks legit. What do you do?
Website Credibility Checklist
Factors
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My guess is that you wont buy iteven through the price is amazing and you know its a
good product. Why not? Because of lack of trust. Does it work? Is it stolen? What if it
breaks the next day? Why so cheap? Youll get all these questions in your head and since
you dont know the guy, youll probably pass.
Same goes for your website.
Your goal is to talk about your offer in a way that makes people feel theyre getting
iPhone 5 worth of value for just $20 bucks (not by deception, but through communicating
the value of your product). If youre credible, you have yourself a customer.
Credibility leads to money. Four in five users say that being able to trust the information
on a given website is very important to them. You dont buy from someone you dont
trust, do you?
A credible website makes people,
trust what it says,
feel comfortable sharing their personal data,
confident its worth spending their money here.
Website Credibility Checklist
Go over this list and see which of the following items you could add to your own site to
boost credibility.
1. Web design matters. People judge the book by their cover and your website by its
design. If you designed your website yourself and youre not a designer, it sucks. Like
many others before him, Dr. Brent Coker studied the impact of attractive websites on
human behavior. This is what he said: As aesthetically orientated humans, were
psychologically hardwired to trust beautiful people, and the same goes for websites. Our
offline behaviour and inclinations translate to our online existence. Websites that are
more attractive and include more trimmings create a greater feeling of trustworthiness
and professionalism in consumers.
2. Make your address and phone number visible at all times. Include it in the
footer (a must), but depending on your site also in the header (especially if your business
depends on incoming calls) and on the sidebar, in the microcopy.
3. Make it very easy to contact you. Contact link should be always in your
navigation menu as the very last link.
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4. Message relevance and tailoring. A website that displays relevant information to
the visitor is instantly more credible in their eyes. If possible, use content tailoring based
on user profile and behavior.
5. Simple language. People dont trust what they dont understand. Write like you talk
using the same language your customers do.
6. Correct spelling. Broken grammar and incorrect spelling certainly make you seem
less credible. Its more forgivable in blog posts, but unacceptable on your home page,
product pages and other more static pages.
7. Link to external websites that reference your organisation. If NY Times,
Techcrunch, or OC Weekly has written about you, link to those stories. It doesnt have to
be a well-known outlet necessarily (but it helps), what matters is that somebody other
than you has written about you and possible said some good things.
8. Provide staff bios and photos. People dont trust anonymous websites. If you dont
show your photo, are you hiding something? Is it that you dont want people to recognize
you on the street? People want to look you in the eye, enable it. Always use photos of the
actual staff.
9. Show photos of your office. If you have a real office with real people and stuff
inside, Ill believe you more. You dont need to make yourself appear a bigger company
that you are. Avoid stock photos.
10. Avoid cheesy stock photos. Nothing says Im fake like suits shaking hands or
smiling customer service people with the headset.
11. Visible return and refund policies. What happens if Im not happy with your
service? People want to know in advance before making a purchase.
12. Email policy. What will you do with my email address once I give it to you? Will you
rent it, share it, sell it, spam people?
13. All statements and claims should be backed up by third-party evidence, neutral
experts or verified (scientific) studies. List sources.
14. Avoid superlatives. Dont say youre the best, no-one is going to believe you
anyway. Be specific (Fastest pizza delivery in town vs. We deliver your pizza in 10
minutes).
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15. Detailed product information. 50 percent of the online purchases are not
completed due to insufficient information. Are there enough details for a reasonable
conclusion about the information?
16. Show prices. Many companies (and not just B2B) dont reveal their prices, and
make people get in touch instead. People always want to know how much a product or
service costs. If your competitors publish their prices, theyre getting the business.
17. Show client list. This is social proofnobody wants to be the only idiot buying your
services.
18. Mention the number of your clients. If you have an impressive number of
customers, say it out loud for social proof (12,457 happy users, etc).
19. Show a link with a reputable organization. Are you somehow connected to a
university, a governmental agency, a research lab, or another reputable organization?
Perhaps youre service provider, reseller, partner, sponsor, advisor or what not. If yes, tell
the world.
20. Use testimonials. Testimonials work well if theyre by real people. Real people
means that there are photos, full names, what they do, their employer. Well-known
people are even better. Video testimonials are the best.
21. Case studies of your work. Use case studies to prove the benefits of your services
and to show off your expertise. Both make you more trustworthy.
22. Put customer reviews on your site and elsewhere. People still trust them. Its the
upper hand Amazon has on everyone else.
23. If you take credit cards online, is it safe? Provide the information about your
secure channels, 256-bit encryption and what not.
24. Display trust marks. Take credit card payments? Prove me its safe (256-bit SSL
encryption etc). Use The Verisign Seal or equivalent. Have people opt-in to your email
list? Put a TRUSTe privacy seal on your site. And so on. Find out whats a known trust
mark on among your customers, and use it.
25. Maintain a blog or a latest news section. This does two things: 1) it shows your site
is constantly updated and 2) provides free information to prove your expertise. A note of
caution: if your latest news item was published two years ago (We launched a new
website!) or your last blog post was written a year ago, it communicates that you might
have gone out of business. So if you cant regularly update your news or blog, you can do
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one of the two things: 1) not have one, or 2) remove the dates.
26. Get an authority recommendation. When Oprah recommends a website, its
instantly credible. Get someone your audience knows and trusts to approve your
message."
27. Articles in (online and offline) publications. Credibility is not only what your
website is like, its also what people read and hear about you *before* they get to your
site. If theyve seen or even read articles by you in different magazines or newspapers,
you have more credibility.
28. Guest blog. This is basically the same as the previous point. If your users have
come across your posts on blogs they read, youve more credible to them. Also, you can
mention and link to the blogs that have your posts.
29. A jobs page. You must be a real company if youre hiring :)
30. Make sure it works. Dead links, non-functional forms and everything else that
might seem broken will take away from your credibility.
31. Have a social media outlet. If you have an active Twitter account or Facebook
page, it furthermore shows there are real people behind the organization.
32. What does WOT say about you? WOT user community has rated over 36 million
websites. Some people might check you out there.
33. Your brand on Google. When they Google you (and they will), what will they find?
Besides searching for just your brand, theyll probably also check [yourbrand] reviews
and possibly also [yourbrand] sucks. Make sure you like those search results.
34. No hype, blinking banners nor popups. If your site looks like a Christmas tree,
you need to change that. Make sure the copy is hype-free, nothing blinks and just know
that people hate all kinds of pop-ups. Dont use them unless you want to annoy people.
35. Keep ads to a minimum. Too many ads kill the user experience and communicate
that the user does not come first. Might also make you seem desperate. If your main
income does NOT come from ads, dont use them at all.
36. Website speed. If your website is slow and seems to takes forever to load (10+
seconds), people will certainly get doubts about you and leave. Use caching or a CDN. I
personally use Cloudflare and am very happy with them.
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37. Ranking in Google. If you rank high in Google (say in the top five), you must be
there for a reason (Google says so!)
38. Signs of community. If you have an busy forum, lots of comments on your blog
posts or any other visible signs of an active community, youll come across more credible
people must be hanging out here for a reason!
39. Be a good and honest person. If youre an a** and treat your customers bad, it
will come out eventually. Be friendly, generous and honestalways.
Sources
http://credibility.stanford.edu/
http://www.webcredible.co.uk/user-friendly-resources/
http://marketing.yell.com/web-design/why-visitors-trust-some-websites-more-than-
others/
http://econsultancy.com/us/blog/5303-e-commerce-trustmarks-do-they-matter
http://lorelle.wordpress.com/2012/02/06/prove-it-what-makes-you-trust-a-website/
What makes a website credible?
Attack Resistant Trust Metrics
Understanding How Internet Users Make Sense of Credibility
Personal, hands-on experience
Dont overdo it.
Note that you dont want to overcrowd your pages with credibility elements. It will have
the opposite effect.
The other day I hired a cleaner from Craigslist. She came over, and her first words after I
opened the door were: Dont worry, Im not gonna steal anything." Guess what my first
thought wasIs she gonna steal something?
I wasnt even thinking about theft, but she planted the thought in my head. Now I started
to look for clues to confirm my theoryand her tattoos didnt help my suspicious mind.
The same applies for your website. If you scream Trust me! Im not gonna rip you off!
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people will get suspicious even (or especially) when they werent before.
Everything in moderation. Whats the right quantity? Follow BJ Foggs maxim for credible
design:
To increase the credibility impact of a website, find what elements your target audience
interprets most favorably and make those elements most prominent.
How do you personally determine whether you trust a site or not? Have you given it any
conscious thought?
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A major factor affecting your conversions is user flow. Its the path a user follows through
your website interface to complete a task (make a reservation, purchase a product,
subscribe to something). Its also called user journey.
In order to maximize your conversions, you have to get the user flow rightbuild one that
matches users needs.
The wrong way to go about designing your site
You need to decide what your new website will be like. Two most common ways people
approach it:
Scenario A
You keep everything as it is on your current / old site, but just make it look better."
Scenario B
You start with the building blocks.
Okay, the logo goes in the top left corner. Lets put the menu to the right. A nice image in
the header. Cool.
And so on and so on.
Both of these are the wrong way to get going.
Start with the objectives
Your primary aim is to fulfill the business objectives (either your own or the one set by
your client). Business objectives might be getting users to sign up for something, getting
people to purchase products or join an email list.
Just as in real life, quickies are very rare. People dont just come to your site, and right
away do what you want them to do. In most cases, they need to go through a set of steps
leading up to the action.
Next time youre thinking about designing a site (note: design is not just how it looks, but
How To Design User Flow
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how it works), start with figuring out what user flows you are trying to create through the
website.
In order to do this you need to know two things:
1. Your business objectives. Its the action you want visitors to take on the site.
2. User objectives, the desires or needs that they want to satisfy.
So start with being clear about your own goals and identify each user objective to create
design flows that meet all of them.
Source/medium determines the message
Customers dont arrive on a particular page on your site from nowhere. The first step in
a flow is mapping out how they get onto your site.
Once they land on your site, they wont immediately perform the action you want them
to. Specific sequences of actions lead visitors through your website as they try to
accomplish their tasks.
Match users needs with your business objectives
Your goal is to map users pathsflows that take users from their entry pages through
conversion funnelstoward the final action (signup, purchase etc). The final action needs
to provide value both to the user as well as the businessotherwise the conversion wont
happen.
If the user wants to clean their car, and your goal is to get the user to order a car
cleaning service, you have a meeting of goals and the conversion can take place. On the
other hand, if they want their car cleaned (right away), and you want them to join your
car-related newsletter, there isnt a match.
Designing user flows
In order to come up with the user flows through your site, you need to establish possible
entry points, and the flow from there on toward the final goal.
Some typical entry points:
Organic search. A user comes via Google, after searching for a particular keyword.
Often lands on a deep link.
Paid advertising. Visitors that come via PPC advertising (AdWords etc), banner ads or
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other kind of promotions. Arrives on your landing page.
Social media. A user coming from a friends post on Facebook or Twitter, or via social
news site like Reddit.
Email. A user coming from an email newsletter or a link they saw in an email sent to
them.
Press or news item. Visitors who come after a mention in the news or a blog post.
Direct link. A regular visitor, has been on your site many times and knows the URL by
heart.
How they end up on your site largely determines their needs, expectations and what they
know of your product or even the general category. This means you need to treat
different people differently.
Sample user flows
So what do these user flows look like? Here are three sample flows.
You get the idea.
Stacked user flows
Sometimes you want them to join the email list on their first visit, but ultimately you want
to sell them a product. In those cases, you should map stacked user flows: the first one
that is completed by joining the email list, and the second one that starts AFTER the first
flow has been completed.
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The user who has already been through the first flow, is much more knowledgeable than
a first-time visitor, has some kind of a relationship with you and you should treat her
accordingly.
The steps in the flow depend on your users and the product
In order to design the best possible user flow, you need to understand the visitor and his
motivations. Start by answering these questions:
What needs or desires do your visitors have? Which problem do they want to solve?
Why do they need it?
What qualities (about your product or service) are most important to them?
What are all the questions they have about the product?
What are their doubts or hesitations?
What information do they need to take action?
Whats their emotional hotspot to propel them towards taking action?
In order to answer these questions, you need to talk to your customers (or your clients,
if youre a service provider). You cant just pull the answers out of thin air. Yes, you
should use buyer personas, but those should be based on actual customers and their
needs.
Heres an interesting case study detailing how customer journey maps were used in
Boeing.
Another article you might want to read is about designing a hotel booking experience.
The answers to the questions above determine how things are presented on your
website. You have to demote certain things and emphasize others. You cannot be all
things to all people, your website cannot be about 10 different actions. You need to build
focus into your site.
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Present sufficient information
The flow must fill in the gaps of information by providing the user with the information
they need at the moment they needed in order to eventually be converted.
The mistake a lot of websites make is asking for the sale (signup, etc) too soon. Theres
little we people do without the adequate amount of information.
Your goal is to keep them moving down the funnel, towards the desired action. Optimize
the content on each screen for conversions.
In each step, present a clear, benefit-oriented value proposition.
Explain how your offer is useful and how it all works. Invite to read more detailed
information.
Back it up by easy-to-digest proof points (references, testimonials, studies etc).
Minimize friction. Ask for the minimum amount of information, reduce the number of
fields, extra clicks and page-loading time. Use trust elements.
Create clear and attractive calls to action that guide them to the next step
Designing users flows does not mean that you forget about all the other conversion
stuff,au contraire.
State diagrams
Flows are made out of individual screens where interactions take place. A screen offers
some possibilities and the user chooses one. Then something happens, and the screen
changes. Its an ongoing conversation.
In each moment in a flow, their (computer) screen is showing something and the user is
reacting to it. A good and understandable way to map steps in the flow is to use state
diagrams:
what the user sees
what the user does

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what the user sees next
what the user does next

Above the bar is what the user sees. Below the bar is what they do. An arrow connects
the users action to a new screen with yet another action. These are called state
diagrams in computer science.
Using these diagrams help you focus on the most wanted action on every screen the
users lands on. Its also very useful when explaining the flow to your colleagues or clients.
Example
Lets say its a website for a car detailing service.
service description
click book now

booking form
submit valid data

booking confirmation message
Do this for every page on your site. Define the key content you want to present to the
user and a most wanted action. The next action from a screen doesnt have to be just
one thing, the flow can break into two or three alternative paths. The important thing is
that you plan ahead for each path, and design each screen accordingly.
Doing this requires ruthless focus on your part, but the boost in conversions will make it
all worth your while.
User flow that supports Flow
Flow, as a mental state, was first proposed by psychology professor Mihaly
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Csikszentmihalyi. Its a state of being that makes an experience genuinely satisfying.
Everybody has experienced it. Most people refer to it as being in the zone or in the
groove."
During flow, people typically experience deep enjoyment, creativity, and a total
involvement with the task at hand. Theres a book about it.
Ideally your user flow helps to nurture the flow experience in your users. Three
ingredients for the flow experience are challenge of the right level, immediate
feedback and a skill that can be mastered.
In order to design your site for flow, according to Jim Ramsey, you must:
Have clear goals for users that help them understand where theyre going and each
step theyll take to get there.
Provide immediate feedbackwhether they click on a button, fill a form or navigate
from one page to anothertell them how theyre doing, and whats going on. The
messages and copy have a critical role here.
Maximize efficiency Once a user becomes familiar with your site, theyll want to start
using it more efficiently. When theyre experiencing flow, users want to work more
quickly and want the site to feel more responsive. Heavily use the key features of your
site and see if there are any annoying, repetitive tasks. Pay close attention to the
feedback you get in your user tests. Think hard about how to turn the experience
frictionless.
Allow for discovery. Once a user has begun to work with maximum efficiency, theres
a chance that theyll feel less engaged and grow bored with their experience on the
site. In order to avoid this, you should make content and features available for
discovery.
When the smooth path is interrupted, or something doesnt seem to fit, users notice and
the flow is broken, which means that the experience is also momentarily broken. These
small episodes of friction are cumulative. Unfortunately, the breaks in flow weigh more
heavily on the experience than the positive, frictionless moments. Experimenting and
testing are key to getting it right.
Clutter, animation, and surprises may interrupt and be disruptive. Online, people dont
like surprises (especially the kind where they go now what?," how do I or whats
that?). Take out or improve that might cause friction. Less is more: remove visual and
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navigational noise that might seem like clutter to users.
Im an Amazon user and have bought a million things from it. Im very familiar with their
interface and while on it, its a flow-like experience for me. Today I was browsing Home
Depot website looking for certain things, and it was a pretty bad experience. No flow over
there.
Examples of sites that have great flow
Invest 5 to 10 minutes in each of these sites. Youll learn something.
Tastebuds
Codecademy
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Going through it: creating a sample flow
Lets pretend I have a client, a company that manufactures mini infrared saunas (such as
this random one on Alibaba).
Business objective: get people to buy those saunas online, or at least get a solid lead.
First thing I would do is talk to the client, and learn all I can about their business and their
customers. Next, I would compile a list of questions that I would ask from their 20 or so
last customers (whose buying experience is fresh).
Questions to my client:
Tell me about your typical / ideal customer. Who are they, why do they buy, where are
they going to use it?
What matters to them when theyre looking for a sauna?
How do they compare different products?
What matters the most?
What happens after they buy? Describe the process in detail from the moment they
place an order to when the sauna is all set up for use
What do your customers say about your products?
How is your product better or different from the competition?
What kind of praise have you heard? Can you forward me the *exact* wording they
used?
Questions to their customers:
Why did you want to buy an infrared sauna?
What were the main questions you had when you were looking for one?
What was most important to you? Which parameters did you compare?
What kind of doubts or hesitations did you have?
What kind of alternatives did you consider?
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What made you decide to buy from us?
Now that you have bought it, what do you like the most about it?
Based on the answers I get, I would develop follow-up questions and ask even more. The
point is to really understand the customer, and their approach to buying this product. We
need to know why they want it, how theyre going to use it and the qualities that are most
importantthe answers they need before making a purchasing decision.
Where are the users coming from
My client tells me that theyre after SEO traffic and plan to do AdWords advertising. This
means I must map user flows from landing pages (PPC traffic), the home page (direct
and SEO traffic) and direct from product pages (long tail SEO traffic, direct links and
mentions).
In the sales process, wed go for a direct purchase (as opposed getting their email first
and then warming up the lead) due to the nature of the product.
Heres the user flow I drew on my whiteboard.
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Now I have established the most wanted action for each page, I know what I want the
users to do next on each step and can prioritize and demote content accordingly.
The content for each screen is super important and has the biggest impact on
conversions. The sales copy to emphasize all the details that are important to potential
buyers in the purchasing process, address all their questions and doubts.
When deciding what content should go each screen, I also have to look at how they got
there and what they already know. The user who arrived on a product page from the
home page, is more knowledgeable than the one who came via direct link.
Hence, I must make sure that the the direct link people wont leave due to insufficient
information, and I have to re-emphasize the key points from the home page again on
product page (especially if the brand is not known and the majority of the visitors are
first-timers).
Test, test, test
Naturally the flow itself, layout and the contentvalue proposition, product info, calls to
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action etcneed to be tested. I construct the first hypothesis as well as I can, based on
the best information available to me, but its still a hypothesis. I immediately create
alternative value proposition and copy to test.
Measure, observe, and improve
Which step in the flow does a good job taking users to the next step? In which step do a
large part of the users drop out? You can measure this by using goal funnels. If you use
Google Analytics, you can easily set up goal funnel tracking (as you can in most web
analytics tools) for your user flow steps.
Goal funnel report will tell you which step of the flow is performing well, and which is a
flow stopper, so you can take action.
Also, check out the Visitors Flow view to get another insightful overview.
Test how they use it
To make your user flow really work for boosting conversions, you must base it on
customer personas. Use actual customer behavior and research to determine the tasks
that customers want to perform, what matters to them and why.
Do what you can to experience a day in the life of a customer. Once you have your first
flow done, conduct user testing. Watch people use the website trying to perform a task,
and have them comment out loud. Ideally you recruit test subjects who match your ideal
customer profile and observe them in person (over their shoulder), but you can also use
services like usertesting.com.
User testing will help you find bottlenecks and sources of friction, so you can remove
those. It will also help you understand the users better, and how they would want to use
the site (so you can adjust it accordingly).
Even if you put a ton of effort into designing the flow, what you come up with is still a
hypothesis and you need to test it. Pay close attention whether it seems youre missing a
step in your flow, or you have one too many. If you get the flow right, focus on optimizing
different screens.
Resources you should check out
Product planner. It has a free gallery of user flows.
Web sequence diagrams. Easy way to build user flow diagrams.
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Tools for sketching user experiences
A collection of customer journey mapping resources.
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The easier your website it is to use, the more people use it. An essential part of easy to
use is intuitive. Intuitive design means that when a user sees it, they know exactly what
to do.
The main thing about intuitive design is that its invisible. Design is intuitive when users
can focus on a task at hand without stopping even for a second. Intuitive designs direct
peoples attention to tasks that are important. In the end, an intuitive design focuses on
experience.
Imagine that youre at a car rental place and youre pointed out the car youre getting.
You walk up to it, and want to get in. You arrive to the car, reach out your hand to open
the drivers doorbut theres no handle! How do you get in?
This is an example of non-intuitive design. A non-intuitive design steals the focus from the
user. He was trying to get in the car, but the process was interrupted by an unfamiliar
situation with no obvious solution.
The same goes for web design. As long as the users can complete the tasks they want
without interruption and thought, its all good. Intuitive design is invisible and non-intuitive
design is a disruptor. Since intuitive design is invisible, people will not actually appreciate
it (since they wont even notice it)but they will immediately take notice if it is not there.
Unintuitive design forces people to focus on elements not related to their tasks.
The problem with designing intuitive interfaces: intuitive for who?
Why are there so many websites that make people cringe? Why not make all websites
intuitive? Thats what everybody wants, right? The thing is that building intuitive websites
is hardpeople are different. Whats intuitive to one person is not intuitive to another.
The design itself cannot be intuitiveits whether the person using it feels its intuitive or
not.
Intuitive Web Design: How To
Make Your Website Intuitive To
Use
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I believe most websites are designed with good intentions. Theyre meant to be intuitive
but usually for the designer! The average developer or designer doesnt spend any time
watching people use the things they are designing.
People see the world as they are, and when they design something, they unconsciously
design it for themselvesfor people that have the same level of computer skills,
experience using this type of interfaces and what not.
Getting intuitive design right starts with understanding your users. You need to figure out
whats intuitive for them.
An important concept to understand here is current knowledge vs target knowledge.
Current knowledge vs Target knowledge
People come to your website pre-loaded with existing knowledge (from previous
experiences and so on). This is what Jared Pool calls Current knowledge. Then theres
Target knowledgeits how much the user needs to know in order to use your website
or application.
The difference between the two is called knowledge gap. Your job is to build an
interface that minimizes the knowledge gap between what the users know prior to
coming to your site and what they have know in order to use it properly.
What makes this difficult is that you might have all sorts of users. Some are tech savvy
computer nerds and some are computer illiterate grannys plus everything in between.
The narrower your target group is, the better for you. The wider your audience, the
bigger the design challenge.
Conceptual models
If users have never used your site, it doesnt mean that their Current Knowledge about it
is zero. They have probably used other, similar websites or product before. Some
havent, but everybody has a conceptual model about it.
Lets say youve never shopped onlinebut you have done it offline millions of times. So I
sit you down in front of a computer and show you Amazon.com, telling you that you can
buy stuff here.
People will now use the conceptual model of offline shopping and will aim to replicate the
same experience. Their expectation of what online shopping is like is derived from the
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mental model of offline shoppingthe closest experience theyve got.
But lets say theyve bought stuff online before, just not from Amazon. Now their
conceptual model will be different, as their expectation to shopping on Amazon.
If the majority of your users have never used the kind of website or online service that
you have, you need to deal with the conceptual model. This is why you have to figure out
their closest experience to using your site. If the website doesnt match the users mental
model, the user will find the website hard to use, unintuitive.
Know thy user (study them!)
In order to design websites that our users find intuitive, you need to learn where the
current and target knowledge points are. What do users already know and what do they
need to know?
There are two great ways of finding this out:
1. Field studies. You go to your customers and observe them using the web in their
natural habitat. Youll get an idea of their Current knowledge.
2. Over the shoulder usability tests. Get people to use the site, have them perform a
set of tasks and ask them to comment their thought process out loud. This can also be
done remotely (over the internet). This will identify the Target Knowledge.
In both cases you observe and take notes without interfering. You will quickly identify the
main issues. Ten test subjects will normally already reveal over 90 percent of the
challenges.
From here, proceed to build personas based on what you learned.
When is a website intuitive to use?
Broadly speaking, that design is intuitive when current knowledge equals target
knowledge.
Jared wrote that in their research they discovered there are two conditions where users
will tell you an interface seems intuitive to them:
1. The current knowledge point and the target knowledge point are identical. When the
user walks up to the design, they know everything they need to operate it and complete
their objective.
2. The current knowledge point and the target knowledge point are separate, but the
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user is completely unaware the design is helping them bridge the gap. The user is being
trained, but in a way that seems natural.
In other words, you either make it so easy that it doesnt require any learning, or add
instructions, tips and microcopy that is easy to spot and follow.
The best example for the first condition is Google search. You can not use it wrong.
Theres no learning curve. Its as obvious as it gets.
A good example for the second condition would be Wufoo. When you log in and start
building your first form, the instructions make it easy and the learning process seems
natural.
So you have two options for an intuitive design. You can either reduce the target
knowledge requirement until it meets current knowledge by simplifying the design. Or
move current knowledge to target knowledge through instruction. Or a bit of both.
Intuitive navigation (and search)
76 percent of consumers say the most important factor in a websites design is the
website makes it easy for me to find what I want.
So how do they go about finding the stuff they want? Navigation of course. Heres where
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it gets tricky: if your site has a ton of content, how do you structure it so it would make
sense?
A great method for figuring out which content goes under which menu item is card
sorting. Card sorting is a great, reliable, inexpensive method for finding patterns in how
users would expect to find content or functionality. It will also help you with choosing the
wording for menu items.
Its important to call your menu items by the right names so people would know whats
behind the link. Use trigger words.
The interesting thing is that 50 percent of all users dont buy because they cant find what
theyre looking for. This is why search is super important. You need to have search on
your site, and it has to be easily found. Amazon has a huge inventory and theyve made
search the centerpiece of their site. Can you imagine it any other way?
Oh, and make sure you turn Site Search tracking ON in Google Analytics. You will also
find that users that use search will usually have a higher conversion rate (searchers have
intent, they know what theyre looking for).
People spend most of their time on other websites.
A good thing to bear in mind at all times is that people spent most of their time online on
OTHER websites. So theyre used to websites being a certain way (Current Knowledge). If
you mess with convention, youre asking for trouble.
Typical convention items:
A click on the logo (in the top left corner) should always take back to the home page,
The last link in a horizontal navigation menu should be Contact (or the bottom one in
a vertical menu),
You should have contact information in the footer,
Strive for consistency: navigation and other important elements will remain in the
same location throughout the website,
Links should be easily distinguishable from regular text,
If users can and should scroll down, the scrollbar has to be visible,
Left-aligned text is easier to read than right-aligned (since westerners read from the
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left),
Display descriptive help messages and notifications,
Use plain language terms throughout the interface that users can understand (e.g. use
Contact instead of Communication).
Yes, there are always exceptions to the rulebut innovation is difficult and risky. In most
cases, dont re-invent the convention. Have the stuff work like people expect it to work.
Be careful about redesigns
Luke Wroblewski took notes at a recent An Event Apart conference in Chicago where
Jared Spool made this point about redesigning websites: they can mess with the
knowledge gap.
20 percent of the users spend 80 percent of the revenue on a site, and its those top
buyers that are most affected by redesigns. They know how things work, and when you
redesign the website, you change it up on them.
Its not that people hate change. They just hate change that takes away their current
knowledge. An intuitive design happens when we dont force our users to attend to
change.
A major retailer launched a $100 milion redesign and saw conversion drop 20 percent. A
law firm had to shut down. Doctors offices and airlines experience significant delays.
Their site/application was no longer intuitive for their most important users.
You need to focus on your most important users buyers. The design needs to be most
intuitive for them. Dont try to please everybody.
A good way to go about redesigns is by using the Lean Design methodologyreduce the
time it takes to go through the build-measure-learn cycle. Little changes to a site over
time are often a better approach than major redesigns. This enables you to measure and
thus learn quickly whether a change brings positive or negative results. Well be
successful if the day we go live, no one notices.
This applies when youve got a large repeat audience. If your site has little traffic and the
current design is flawed, dont hesitate to do a complete overhaul.
Conclusion
Aim to make your website intuitive for your core users, and you will be rewarded with
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higher conversions and user loyalty. Study your users behavior, and always perform user
testing on your interfaces.
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IV.
Understanding Users
How to Build Websites that Sell:... Understanding Users
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Design impacts behavior. If you know how to impact behavior, you can design for
behavior. Heres how to do it.
Do you know BJ Fogg? You should. Dr. BJ Fogg founded the Persuasive Technology Lab at
Stanford University and has done some amazing research on credibility and behavioral
design. Behavioral design is where psychology and technology meeta systematic way to
influence a desired behavior, one step at a time.
His model for driving behavioral changescalled The Fogg Behavior Modelexplains that
three elements must come together at the same time for a behavior to occur:
motivation, ability and trigger.
When a behavior does not occur, at least one of those three elements is missing. Bottom
line is this: Behavior = motivation x ability x trigger. Before Ill go into how to apply
it for boosting conversions, you need to understand the model itself. (All credit goes to BJ
Fogg.)
Heres the model:
How To Use Behavioral Design For
Boosting Converstions Using the
Fogg Behavior Model
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Used with permissions by Persuasive Tech Lab
You want to aim top right (high motivation, easy to do, a trigger in place). If you have
high motivation and low ability (difficult to do), what youll get is frustration. If its low
motivation, but easy to do (e.g. take out the trash), you get annoyance.
Everything starts with defining the specific desired behaviorin our case its what we
want the user to do, our conversion goal. It might be getting people to buy our product,
sign up for our software and so on. Using this model as a guide, we can identify what
stops people from taking the desired actions. For example, if users are not requesting
quotes on your website, the model helps us evaluate what psychological element is
lacking.
Lets look at the elements individually.
Motivation
Ideally the user is already motivated to do the behavior (which is why he came to your
site to begin with), and your role now is about helping people do what they already want
to do (see Ability). The more motivated people are to do a behavior, the more likely they
will do it (duh).
You can increase motivation with an effective sales copy and what not, but if youre
trying to artificially *create* motivation to make a behavior happen, youre swimming
upstream (and the current is strong).
Motivation is a term thats used widely across various fields. BJ Fogg created a framework
for motivation that has three core motivators, each with two sides.
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Motivator #1: Pleasure / Pain
There are two sides to first motivator: pleasure and pain. How this motivator is different
from others is that the result of this motivator is immediate. Theres almost no thinking or
anticipating. People are responding to whats happening in the moment. Pleasure and
pain are a primitive responses related to self-preservation: hunger, sex, and other stuff
related to keeping the humankind going.
Pleasure and pain are powerful motivators. Its the first thing you should consider when
trying to boost levels of motivation. This motivator type may not be the ideal approach,
especially pain, but a thorough review of motivation means at least acknowledging these
options.
Motivator #2: Hope / Fear
The second core motivator in the this model is a dimension that has the following two
sides: hope and fear. This dimension is characterized by anticipation of an outcome. Hope
is the anticipation of something good happening. Fear is the anticipation of something
bad, often the anticipation of loss.
This dimension can be at times more powerful than pleasure/pain. For example, in some
situations, people will accept pain (buying home insurance) in order to overcome fear
(anticipation of your house burning down). However bear in mind that theres no ranking
of core motivators, so you should always give it some thought as to which one is the most
appropriate to use.
Hope and fear have long been powerful motivators in persuasive technology. For
example, people are motivated by hope when then joining a dating web site. They are
motivated by fear when they update settings in virus software.
BJ Fogg himself considers hope as the most ethical and empowering motivator.
Motivator #3: Social Acceptance / Rejection
The third core motivator has these two sides: social acceptance and social rejection. It
impacts everything from the clothes we wear to the language we use.
As you probably know well from your own life experiences, people are motivated to do
things that win them social acceptance and status. People are especially motivated to
avoid any negative consequences like being socially rejected.
The roots of this are again deep in the history of human racewe depended on living in
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groups to survive. Regardless of the origin of the social motivator, the power over us is
undeniable. We dont need to look far to see evidence for thiseven a simple thing like
posting pictures to Facebook is driven significantly by the desire to be socially accepted.
Ability
Ability is all about whether the task at hand is it easy to do. If you want them to sign up
for your product, but it takes filling 10 fields to do so, youre setting yourself up for
failure. Remember the $300 million dollar button story? A classic example of how taking
action was made too difficult by forcing buyers to create an account first.
Ability is more important than motivation. If Im committed to eat healthymy motivation
is super highbut theres no healthy food around when Im hungry, its very difficult to
take desired action and Ill probably grab something unhealthy instead. Motivation alone
is not enough.
Its easier to increase conversions by making it easier to do, not by increasing motivation.
If you have to choose what to optimize for, always choose ability over motivation.
Become a master of simplification, not motivation. Have it as your goal to always make
taking action as easy as 1-2-3.
The more work prospects need to do to understand and/or buy what you offer, the
higher motivation is needed. Some think they need to teach or train people to use their
software to address the ability issuewhich is a good idea on paperhowever most
people dont want to be taught and trained. They want single click and done behaviors.
Alsodont ask people to do something thats against their routine. If they put their kids
to sleep at 8 P.M., dont have your webinar at 8pm.
Trigger
Without an appropriate trigger, behavior will not occur even if both motivation and ability
are high.
Lets say you read a blog post on this blog. You find it useful (motivation), and decide to
share it with your followers on Twitter (abilityeasy to do). Once you hit the tweet
button, you see this:
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Thats a triggerurging you to follow me on Twitter. You werent thinking about following
me, but now its right there. You probably have the motivation since you just shared my
content, and you definitely have the abilityit just takes one click.
Trigger is what prompts you to take action: green light at the intersection, a lady in the
supermarket asking you would you like a sample? or an email from your spouse saying
Call me right now."
A call to action on a website is a trigger. Be careful what the content of the trigger. You
need to trigger the right sequence of baby steps. If youre selling $50,000 cars, the first
trigger should not be buy now."
BJ Fogg likens this to the metaphor of swimming. You wouldnt expect a person to just
jump in the water and start swimming. Instead, you need step-by-step instructions and
build up. BJ believes this is how we should approach health behavior; providing individuals
small steps towards large success.
An example of a successful trigger would be getting an email from Facebook saying your
friend tagged you on a photo. Who hasnt responded to being tagged on a Facebook
image?
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Obsess about triggers like your business depended on it (since it does)
If you want your business to thrive and keep the sales coming in, you need to obsess
about triggers! Dont be afraid to use thema trigger is not a nag, youre helping them.
You just need to make sure that you focus on triggering people that have the ability or
motivation:
If you trigger people at the right time, they will thank you.
If you trigger then when they lack ability, theyll get frustrated.
If you trigger people when they dont have motivation (e.g. asking people to shop for
Christmas present in September), youre annoying people.
Two kinds of triggers: hot and cold
Hot triggers are things you can do right now (e.g. buttons saying Get immediate access
or Download now). Cold triggers are things which one cannot act on right now (e.g.
billboard ads for a website you spot while driving).
BJ Foggs mantra for effective website design is: put hot triggers in the path of
motivated people.
Dont try to artificially create motivation, but instead tap an existing motivation people
already have. Its very difficult to motivate people to do something they dont want to
already do. Understand what motivation already exists then make it easy to get than
done.
The importance of drip email campaigns
Are you requiring your users and prospects to remember stuff? If so, youre doing it
wrong. Build your trigger mechanisms as if people would never do anything without you
asking them to do so. If your business sucks at trigger design, youre going to fail.
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Almost no behavior happens without trigger. This is why its important to send out
promotional emails during Christmas and other holidays. Theyre not going to just think I
think Im gonna go to somestore.com and buy stuff! Unless youre Amazon and have
occupied a large portion of their brain space, its not going to happen. You need to trigger
their behavior with an email or other media.
Understanding behavior types
First step is understanding the target behavior. It has to be as specific as possible if you
want to boost conversions. Second step: understand target behavior type. BJ Fogg
describes 15 ways behavior can change. Each of the 15 behaviors types uses different
psychology strategies and persuasive techniques. Types of behaviors:
DotIt happens just once (e.g. they buy your e-book)
SpanIt happens over a period of time, like for seven days (e.g. they take part of your
7-day course)
PathIt happens over and over, from now on. (e.g. they join your social networking
site and start hanging out there)
There are five sub-types for each three:
Source
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Most online conversions (join email list, sign up, buy product) are either green dot (taking
a single action for the first time) or blue dot behaviors (taking a familiar single action).
Optimizing for green dot behaviorfirst time single action
Green dot behaviors are often used in the beginning stages of complex behavior
inductions. For example, if a company is interested in creating a loyal, repeat customer,
they might start off with a small introductory offer. This can then lead to more extensive,
prolonged relations and, eventually, habitual purchasing behavior.
The main challenge that we face while triggering a Green Dot behavior is a lack of ability.
Since Dot behaviors occur only once, the subject must have enough knowledge to
successfully complete the action on the first attempt. Otherwise, frustration, and quitting,
may occur.
Couple the trigger with a motivational or facilitative element.
Increase the ability of the subject by explaining the novel behavior in terms of one
that is familiar.
Increase the motivation of the subject by explicitly highlighting the benefits of the
action.
Optimizing for blue dot behaviorfamiliar single action
Blue Dot Behaviors are among the easiest to achieve. Thats because the person, by
definition, is already familiar with the behavior. They know how to perform it (such as
exercise, plant a tree, buy a book). In addition, they already have a sense of the costs
and benefits for the behavior.
Three core motivators: sensation (pleasure/pain), anticipation (hope/fear), and
belonging (acceptance/rejection)
Best trigger: tell the visitor person to do this behavior now.
Conclusion
Understand that desired behavior takes place when motivation, ability and trigger
converge.
In order to boost conversions you need to:
help people do what they already want to do,
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tap into the right motivators,
understand the types of motivation,
make taking action as easy as possible,
focus on simplification,
put hot triggers on the path of motivated people,
and generally obsess about triggers like your business depended on it.
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If you think people might buy your products or services without checking out the
competition first, think again.
Research says that on average consumers visit three websites before making a purchase.
Another insight by the same study was that the more sites a consumer visits, the more
money they are likely to spend. In other words, the more expensive the product, the
more time people take to comparison shop.
More and more consumers are savvy enough to understand how to compare options, and
they look at other places where they can buy the same or similar goods. Even if they
want to buy stuff in retail outlets, 83 percent of U.S. consumers go online to research
electronics, computers, books, music and movies before buying those items in bricks-
and-mortar stores.
Product category matters. When it comes to people shopping for smart phones for
instance, 72 percent of shoppers considered more than cell phone models and 57
percent visited more than five different brand sites before purchasing (either OEM,
retailer, or carrier). They also took their time researching, with 60 percent of online
shoppers starting their research more than two weeks prior to purchase.
A study by the e-tailing group concluded that consumers are invested in finding the
lowest price:
94 percent of online shoppers invest time to find the lowest price for commodity
products.
36 percent spend more than 30 minutes comparison shopping before making a
decision on purchasing a commodity product; 65 percent spend more than 16 minutes
doing so.
51 percent visit more than four sites before finalizing a purchase.
Efficiency of price comparison and the ability to merely Google it, check Amazons
prices or visit a few competitors is core to current consumer shopping behavior.
People Comparison Shop, Stupid
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TCO (total cost including shipping and handling) and product price are the two most
important influencers for online purchase decisions.
58 percent would expect all retailers of commodity products to incorporate a kind of
onsite comparative pricing tool into their shopping experience.
People want better product information
A study by Oracle revealed that people want above all more detailed and visual product
information (37 percent), better search (29 percent), and easier access to a customer
service representative via live help options such as click-to-call or live chat (20 percent).
This is especially important if you market to men. A study on gender differences
concluded the following:
Males and females differ in how they utilize a product page. Males intensely research
the page, viewing all the product details and pictures, while women quickly scan the
product page and go to the next product they want.
Males tend to search by product while females search by brand.
Newegg competes in a very difficult market. Their advantage over the competitors is that
they dont solely rely on manufacturer product information, but write their own sales
copy for each product. Providing better product information is how they manage to stay
in business while competing with giants like Amazon, Walmart and Best Buy.
Do this: Gain advantage over your competition with better, more thorough product
information
Compare yourself with the competition before they do.
Fact 1: People do their homework before purchasing a product or service.
Fact 2: People are lazy.
When comparing options, people usually only look at the most obvious things like price
and key features. For example when choosing a web host, they look at the server space
and monthly fee and thats it. Youas an expert in your fieldknow that many other
things should be considered and perhaps your advantages are less noticeable at first.
In order to combat this you should compare your offering to the competition on your own
website, so you can point out the things you feel are your biggest advantages over the
alternatives. If your product is more expensive than others, then this is your chance to
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explain why. If some of the specs are lower compared to the competition, point out that
maybe your support is way better or you provide personal consulting or its more green or
whatever.
This is how InMotion Hosting is doing it:
This is how SugarSync does it:
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Wont the customer now find out my competitors?
If you think they dont already know them, youre naive. So lets say you keep on being
naive and wont include the comparison on your site. Then what?
They go to your competitors website anyway. Now imagine if your competitor is openly
comparing your services and making it look like their offer is superior. What will happen?
A large number of people will take that competing offer.
Research says clearly that people visit on average 3 websites (means some do a lot
more) before making a decision. Having a comparison table can keep people from
leaving your website. They can already do the comparison on your site, so why leave? It
wont keep all of them on your site, but youll definitely win over a good portion of
visitors.
Service 1 vs. service 2
This is a common way how people compare servicesthey google it. Bluehost vs
Hostmonster. Ducksboard vs Geckoboard. You get the point.
If youre smart like Vzaar, you plan for it and create dedicated pages for these
comparisons.
If you google vzaar vs viddler," this is what youll see:
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Thats right. The number one result in Google is a page created by Vzaar itself. It looks
like this:
If you search for vzaar vs vimeo," youll find a page for that ranks number one again. It
looks like this:
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Do this: Figure out which competitors your customers are most often comparing you
against (you can do this by typing [your service] vs and seeing what Google offers) or
which competitors you want to be compared to, and create a dedicated page for those
comparisons. Approach those pages like landing pages for a specific customer persona
(comparison shopper). Make sure the on-site SEO rocks, and you should be good to go.
Apples to apples or apples to oranges?
There are two schools of thought. One says that since customers comparison shop, you
should make it easy for them to compare. So you structure your product or pricing page
in a similar fashion to the competition.
Another school of thought is that you should intentionally make it difficult to compare, so
theyd spend more time looking into your product.
Heres an example. Compare these two competing products and tell me which one is
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cheaper (you have five seconds!):
Its pretty difficult to figure it out, and heres why:
their pricing plans do not matchthey compare different number of monthly visitors
the last example shows 10 percent off prices by default (which you only get if you pay
a year up-front)
So what will the user do? A) take our the calculator and calculate cost per 1000 visitors or
something, or B) pay more attention to other things besides pricing.
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Do this: Create a page with easy-to-compare plans and a page with difficult-to-compare
pricing plans. Test them (of course, the results will not only depend on the competition,
but a myriad of other factors).
Should you show competitors prices on your site?
Since everybody always wants to know the pricesperhaps you should, especially if you
sell commodities. For things people buy all the time (e.g. batteries, beer, jeans) they
already have a pretty good idea whats a good deal. But not always, and not for things
people buy online.
A study exploring why exploring why consumers leave websites before buying found that
the second most common reason for leaving the site before buying was I was not sure
that the site provides the best price." Parago Shopping Behavior Survey from Q1 2012
said 70 percent of consumers are more price sensitive than they used to (due to
economy etc), and 96 percent shop for the best price for things they need.
This means that youre more likely to get the sale if you manage to instill confidence to
prospects about your price.
You can experiment with
best price guarantee type of promises,
drumming up the value of your product,
using urgency,
emphasizing the extra value they get if they buy from you (and not the competition),
free bonuses / gifts to go with the purchases,
or even showing openly how much your competitors charge (most suitable if youre
competing on price).
Scan Cafe features prices of their competitors on their site:
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Furthermore, shoppers positively perceive a retailer that shows competitors prices on
their websiteas convenience, complete information, and time savings are important to
their online experience. 78 percent would be likely to return to a retailer that shows
competitors prices on their website. 53 percent of consumers would no longer feel
compelled to comparison shop elsewhere if merchant would feature prices of their
competitors.
People check competitors prices even offline34 percent of in-store
consumers compare prices on mobile devices. Another study backs this up and says its
mostly iPhone users that do so.
Listen in on social media
Another common way people comparison shop is by asking around in social media.
Whats the best software for X? Is there anything better than Y? Has anyone used Z?
These types of questions are posed by people seeking validation and insight from their
peers.
According to a study, 47 percent of respondents look to other social media users when
considering a home furnishings purchase, and 25 percent seek advice on social
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networking sites when contemplating an apparel purchase. According to the data, 32
percent of social media users say they have recommended a product/company to a
friend through a social networking site.
This is a great opportunity for you. Monitor relevant keywords on social media platforms
like Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn, or monitor related topics on sites like Focus or
Quora to find people who might be looking for what you sell. Once you find them, make a
case for your product or just inform them.
When I used to work on Traindom, we did that all the time and stole lots of customers
from people unhappy with our key competitors. Most of them werent even aware that
we exist, so it was a great way to market our product.
Entrepreneur Magazine has a story of how someone looking for an iPad case sent out a
tweet:
Looking @DODOsays iPad casesand *this close* to pulling the trigger Any opinions
out there?
As it happened, there were. Matt Winslow, co-founder of Dodo competitor Beacon Cases
in Raleigh, N.C., fired back a suggestion to check out his product. In a subsequent e-mail,
he discussed pros and cons of various cases and particulars of Beacons unique tab and
gate design."
So have somebody in your team monitor social media real-time, so you could add your
product to their comparison. Heres a list of free social media monitoring tools.
Whats the main motivation for people seeking out opinions online?
A study looked into it and found that these are the top reasons:
reduce the risk of bad purchase they will regret,
find the cheapest price,
it takes too much time to research,
to appear cool and build relationships with peers.
Knowing this will help you to plan your angle when you approach people on social media.
If theres no difference, people will choose based on the price
Remember: if your product is not unique, you are always going to compete on price. If
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there are no significant differences between your product and competing products,
people will choose based on price. If the product is the same, why should they pay more ?
That can work to your advantage.
The most proven pricing strategy in a competitive market is doing it cheaper than others.
People like to get stuff cheap. This is often the best strategy to choose if your product is
very similar to the others in the market.
Do this:
If you sell commodities, see if you can offer the best price on regular basis.
If you cant win price wars (most small businesses cant), you need to focus on the
extra value you add in your offer (store warranty, free shipping, free installation,
bonus gifts etc).
Reduce barriers to first purchase, make it smooth for future purchases
If your business model relies on regular repeat purchases by the same customer (e.g.
youre not selling real estate or pianos), there are two things you must do.
1. Incentivize first purchases. The hardest thing in ecommerce is winning over people
whove never bought from you. They are unsure about your trustworthiness, the level of
service and wary about unexpected hassles. You have a significant disadvantage
compared to stores where they have shopped before. In order to overcome this, you
need to compensate with extra incentives. You can do it by:
offering free shipping (at least for first-time buyers),
giving a coupon for first-time buyers,
beefing up on credibility elements,
minimizing their anxiety and pain by asking as little details (minimal number of form
fields) as possible when buying,
reducing friction by having an on-page FAQ to address common fears and doubts,
making sure your product copy leaves no question unanswered (50 percent of
purchases not completed due to insufficient information),
not forcing them to sign up (you can create an account for them automatically based
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on their email address + autogenerated password)
2. Make it convenient to do repeat purchases
I personally buy more stuff from Amazon than from anywhere else. Besides them having
my full trust, the best selection (in most cases), lots of reviews and good pricesits
about convenience. My credit card (three of them, in fact) data is stored there and buying
stuff that I need is easyI dont have to type anything.
Heres how you can make repeat purchases convenient:
Keep people logged in so they dont have to log in each time,
use persistent shopping carts (contents of shopping cart never expire or not before 60
days),
store their shipping and billing information.
Conclusion
So whats a marketer to do?
Acknowledge that people compare options, and plan accordingly.
State your case as good as possible, provide adequate product information.
Help them do the comparison by having comparison tools on your site.
Make sure their comparison research will result in them understanding what your
advantages are and why they should buy from you.
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Eyetracking and research have studied how people look at websites. Here are 10 useful
findings you can use.
1. Top left corner gets the attention first
When users land on your site, their eye path starts from the upper left corner, and moves
on from there. According to this eyetracking study these areas get the most attention:
Similar findings came from a study by Yahoo. Check your site and see what you have in
these zones. Move the value proposition to the top left zone. Yes, there can be
exceptions, but use this as a starting point and test from there.
Are you familiar with the Gutenberg diagram? It describes a general pattern the eyes
move through when looking at (usually text-heavy) content. It fits this zoning conclusion
pretty well, with the exception of the bottom right area.
10 Useful Findings About How
People View Websites
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Source
The fourth, bottom right terminal area is where you should place your call to action. Note
that this is not some universal truth, but a good starting point.
Designers can download a useful Gutenberg Diagram PSD overlay here.
2. People read in F-patterns
Most people dont read, but scan. A 2008 study concluded that on average only 28
percent of the text is read.
Eyetracking visualizations show that users often read website content in an F-shaped
pattern: two horizontal stripes followed by a vertical stripe. Another study confirmed this.
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This is why you want your value proposition in the top and why your menu should be
either top horizontal or on the left, vertical.
How to design for F-patterns? Read here.
A similar study called this the golden triangle.
3. Use visibly bigger introductory paragraphs for improved attention
Make introductory paragraphs in boldface or larger font size. When the test subjects
encountered a story with a boldface introductory paragraph, 95 percent of them viewed
all or part of it.
Every SmashingMagazine article starts with an intro paragraph:
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Keep the paragraph line lengths short and in a single columnthats how people are used
to reading text.
The font that you use doesnt really matter. Oh, and people like linksthe number of
clicks on the links goes up as you add more links.
4. People wont look past the first search results
If youre not in the top two or three in Google for a keyword, youre losing out. In an
eyetracking study by Google most users found what they were looking for among the first
two results and they never needed to go further down the page.
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As its increasingly harder to get the top spots, using long tail keyword strategy is very
important.
5. People do scroll, but put most important content above the fold
Web users know how to scroll look below the fold, but not nearly as much as they look
above the fold. Make sure the above the fold part contains your value proposition, but
dont try to squeeze everything in there.
Scrolling is still better than slicing up lengthy content to several pagesit provides better
usability. Just make sure you guide people to scroll down.
Wiltshire Farm Foods gives a hint in the bottom right corner:
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Interestingly several studies point that the very bottom of a page also gets a lot of
attention. Thats a good place for a call to action.
6. Left side of the page gets more attention that the right
With some exceptions, people read from left to right. This is also why the left side of your
web page gets more attention.
Web users spend 69 percent of their time viewing the left half of the page and 30 percent
viewing the right half. A conventional layout is thus more likely to make sites profitable.
Amazon is known for their left side menu:
If you have a vertical menu, put it on the left. Navigation placed at the top of a homepage
however performs best (seen by the highest percentage of test subjects and looked at for
the longest duration).
7. Use high quality, large images
Use large, crisp imagesrecommends usability guru Jakob Nielsen based on his
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eyetracking studies. Image quality is a significant factor in drawing attention. People in
pictures facing forward is more inviting and approachable.
Highrise features huge photos of customers, looking at you:
Fuzzy, small images are less inviting as are big glamor shots. Nielsen said the eye-
tracking study also surfaced a counter-intuitive findingpeople who look like models are
less likely to draw attention than normal people.
A call center ad with model in it on the phone may be a good picture technically, but it
will more likely be ignored, Nielsen said. Images appearing unneeded, at least
peripherally, will be tuned out. Avoid cheesy stock photos.
8. Need to show pictures of smartphones? Stick with Apple products.
A study by EyeTrackshop that recorded consumers looking at groups of smartphones and
tablets discovered that Apples iPhone 4S and iPad 2 drew more glances and held
peoples attention longer than Google Android devices from Amazon, HTC, Motorola and
Samsung.
Conduit Mobile:
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The iPhone commanded the greatest amount of attention2.3 seconds, on averagein
its group. Among tablets, the iPad tied with the Amazon Kindle Fire for the lead, at 2.4
seconds each.
Full story here.
9. Dominant headlines draw the eye
An eyetracking study observed that big headlines most often draw the eye first upon
entering the pageespecially when they are in the upper left corner.
Present a whole value proposition with the headline. Keep in mind that clarity trumps
persuasion.
Rekko greets you with a dominant headline:
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When you list a bunch of headlines on a page, most often its the left sides of the
headlines that get the attention. People typically scan down a list of headlines, and often
dont view entire headlines. If the first words engage them, they seem likely to read on.
On average, a headline has less than a second of a site visitors attention. This means
that the first couple of words of the headline need to be real attention-grabbers if you
want to draw attention.
10. First impressions take less than a second
When viewing a website, it takes users less than two-tenths of a second to form a first
impression, according to an eye-tracking research conducted at Missouri University of
Science and Technology.
Researchers found that their subjects spent about 2.6 seconds scanning a website before
focusing on a particular section. They spent an average of 180 milliseconds focusing, or
fixating, on one particular section before moving on.
The website sections that drew the most interest from viewers were as follows:
The institutions logo. Users spent about 6.48 seconds focused on this area before
moving on.
The main navigation menu. Almost as popular as the logo, subjects spent an average
of 6.44 seconds viewing the menu.
The search box, where users focused for just over six seconds.
Social networking links to sites such as Facebook and Twitter. Users spent about 5.95
seconds viewing these areas.
The sites main image, where users eyes fixated for an average of 5.94 seconds.
The sites written content, where users spent about 5.59 seconds.
The bottom of a website, where users spent about 5.25 seconds.
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80 percent never leave home without their phones in hand. They do everything on it,
including shopping. Whatever your business is, an ever growing chunk of your target
customers are using their mobile devices instead of computers to go online.
Heres what you need to know about mobile internet users and their purchasing behavior.
Smartphones are the future
By 2013, more people will use mobile phones than PCs to get online, according to
Gartner. The number of mobile devices is set to more than double in the next years.
Worldwide Smartphone and Media Tablet Shipments, 2010-2015:
Source
Most of the cellphones are already smartphones. While Android is the most common
platform, and wealthier users prefer iPhones, your website should work equally well on all
platforms.
Mobile users spend money
It is estimated that Google is generating $7 per year from each smartphone (and tablet).
Googles mobile ad revenues are expected to more than double from an estimated $2.5
billion last year to $5.8 billion in 2012.
Mobile Internet Users And Their
Shopping Behavior
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eBay expects customers to buy and sell $8 billion of merchandise (roughly 10 percent of
all sales) in 2012 using their mobile (theyve even seen a house being snapped up by
someone using a mobile). PayPal expects to see $7 billion in mobile payment volume in
2012.
More than 25 percent of smartphone users are making purchases online, Japan and US
leading the pack. The number is almost twice as high for young consumers.
Smartphone users buy often
According to Googles Our Mobile Planet: Global Smartphone Users study, 20 percent of
smartphone users purchase on a daily basis, while 14 percent do so a weekly basis.
60 percent of US smartphone shoppers purchase products or services at least monthly. In
fact, a majority of smartphone shoppers across the six countries studied (US, UK, France,
Germany, Spain, and Japan) purchase on their device at least monthly.
As you would expect, wealthier people shop over three times as much. 67 percent of
wealthy smartphone users shop on their devices and 63 percent regularly buy goods or
services. Half of them make purchases at least monthly, with almost 80 percent spending
more than $100 on mobile phone transactions in the past year, and 25 percent spending
in excess of $1,000. Event tickets (39 percent), gift cards (29 percent), and food and
electronics (both 27 percent) are the top purchase categories.
You need a mobile optimized site
80 percent of customers abandon a mobile site if they have a bad user
experience.Limelight Networks, Inc., 2011
Smartphones and tablets arent small desktop computerstheyre new devices being
used in entirely new ways. This also means that the mobile version of your website needs
to be different. A mobile-friendly site will provide a smooth experience and can increase
sales.
Although consumers are ready and waiting with their mobile devices, only 20 percent of
senior marketing executives in the UK say they have a mobile optimized site, 18 percent
had a mobile app. I bet the number is closer to two percent when you take into account
all businesses.
People will want the mobile websites to load as fast as desktop sites (in three seconds or
less)even though the bulk of mobile users are on a 3G network thats slower than
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broadband internet. So you need to cut the excess fat.
A lot of people use smartphones while waiting (in line to get a dose of Starbucks,
supermarket checkout line, etc). They dont want to wait while waiting.
Whether you need a separate mobile version or responsive design is a debate to be had,
but Id say it depends on your business (or more precisely, on your customers and how
they buy).
Heres a good list of mobile site best practices:
Men are more likely to buy services, women physical goods.
Market Strategies interviewed a national sample of 2,000 consumers aged 18 to 85
between October 3 and October 11, 2011.
They found that men are more likely than women to make purchases with their
smartphone, and they are more likely to buy services. Women, on the other hand, are
more likely to buy physical goods. 44 percent of men in the study have made purchases
with their smartphones, compared to 37 percent of women.
Tablet owners spend more money
A new report from Adobe Digital Marketing Insights suggests that tablet users spend over
50 percent more per purchase at online retailers when compared with smartphone
visitors, and 20 percent more when compared with traditional laptop and desktop visitors.
Another study noticed a similar trend.
Tablet visitors were also nearly three times more likely to buy products and services
online than smartphone visitors and were nearly as likely to purchase as desktop/laptop
visitors.
The findings are based on roughly 16.2 billion online transactions from 150 top U.S.
retailers in 2011.
Why is that?
Austin Bankhead, director of Adobe Digital Marketing Insights, suggests that when making
purchases, the large tablet screens are easier to use than smartphone screens, and he
also noted that the high price point of most tablets means that owners may be more
affluent than other visitors.
Most tablet owners are men between the ages of 18 and 34. Outside research indicates
that men are often earlier adopters of technology, Bankhead said.
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While this is significant, the number of tablet owners is still relatively smalljust around
54 million consumers, but its expected to grow to 90 million by 2014.
Tablet users active in local search
Tablet owners are the most active local searchers with 64 percent using their devices at
least weekly for local searches and 86 percent making a purchase from their most recent
tablet-based local search, according to a report from Localeze and 15miles.
The reason might be that people are more likely to keep tablets at a fixed location
(home) due to bigger size compared to smartphones.
How tablet users differ in behavior
Smartphone and tablets users are quite similar in their behavior, but not identical. Heres
a graph by Nielsen that summarizes the differences:
Smartphones are our primary shopping companions
Havent we all done it? We go to a store, see a product we consider purchasing and then
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go online (usually Amazon) to read the reviews?
Offline users used to be blind, but thanks to smartphones they can see. If you sell crap
products, they will know. In-store salespeople are no match for online reviews and
comments. In fact, 67 percent of men and 54 percent of women said they would reach
for their mobile phone before asking a salesperson for help.
Research says that over 79 percent of smartphone consumers use their phones to help
with shopping, from comparing prices, to finding more product info, to locating a retailer.
Once theyre in the store, what do they do?
33 percent take pictures
32 percent search for better prices
27 percent search for reviews
26 percent scan a barcode
23 percent use a coupon or look for a coupons
20 percent use the store application
and 11 percent pay for a purchase at the register.
Women are more socially engaged in the in-store shopping experience than men.
78 percent of smartphone owners have visited a brick-and-mortar store with the intent to
buy, and instead bought the item online. The reason: inadequate information,
overwhelming choice and poor assistance choosing products.
On average 37 percent of users end up purchasing online and 32 percent prefer to
purchase in-store after having conducted research on a product or service on their
smartphones.
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Source
So if you run a brick and mortar store, make sure that:
your store is on every possible online map out there,
people are able to find (positive) reviews about the products you carry,
there is ample amount of information on product you sell,
you dont sell crap.
Pay attention to these stats:
As you can see from the graph, most of the research is done prior to arriving at the store.
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What golden opportunity does this give us? Offer extra incentives or coupons to mobile
users to get them into your store.
Different Stores Mean Different Smartphone Shopping Behavior
A study by Nielsen indicates that consumers use their smartphones differently depending
on the type of store.
For more complicated stores people spend more time reading reviews. In case of simpler
products like food, theyre more interested in coupons.
Deals trump loyalty
Mobile shoppers appreciate a good deal. 82 percent of 25- to 34-year-old shoppers say
they would switch brands if they received a mobile offer for a competing product while in
a store.
According to a nationwide survey of more than 1,000 shoppers, almost all (90 percent)
young smartphone users are interested in real-time mobile promotions delivered to their
smartphones while shopping in a store.
Given that a majority of shoppers enter stores with only rough shopping lists, they are
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incredibly impressionable when they are in the aisle. As brand marketers look for new
ways to feature their products when shoppers are considering the competition, they
should look no further than something consumers already have in handtheir
smartphones.Andrew Paradise, AisleBuyer
In-store, shoppers purchasing decisions are based on:
price/everyday low value (76 percent),
promotions/getting the most for their money (58 percent),
coupon availability (51 percent).
15 percent of smartphone owners report having redeemed a mobile coupon, with women
being more likely than men to do it (18 percent compared to 12 percent).
Targeting smartphone users
According to this study, email is by far the most effective mobile marketing trigger of
purchases. 55 percent of smartphone users have made at least one purchase after
receiving a mobile promotional email.
Receiving the message via smartphone doesnt mean that theyre going to complete the
purchase using it. 43 percent of actually did it later via computer. Another 35 percent
have done so in person, slightly more than the 34 percent who have done so via
smartphone browser.
People might prefer completing purchases on a computer due to habits and security
concerns. Consumers still think of PCs/laptops as secure devices. Only 11 percent of PC
users hesitated to part with money, fill in their personal details and purchase goods online
whereas the figure for mobile phone users was 37 percent.
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List building still the key
So if you want to send a marketing message out to mobile users, do it via email or text. It
still pays to focus on growing your email list, but you might want to take a serious look at
getting started with text message marketing.
You need to be on the first page of search
Search matters on mobile devices too. Mobile users do a lot of research, and
61 percent of smartphone users only look at the first page of search results. This makes
SEO even more important, especially local SEO.
89 percent report noticing mobile ads.
Conclusion
1. Smartphones and tablets will take over
2. People spend money while surfing on mobile devices
3. You need a mobile optimized (version of the) site
4. Coupons and other in-store incentives work
5. You need to be found and your products need reviews.
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I wrote this short rant. Isnt it fun? Its totally cool! Yes, its that easy!
Its annoying when a website (or anyone for that matter) tells you what you should feel.
Especially when youre not feeling the feeling the website is telling you to feel. Dont do it.
You can guide the user, you can make your site easy to usebut you shouldnt assume
how the users feel. If the visitor uses your site and thinks boy, this is easy!great! But
YOU shouldnt make that statement, the user should.
Dont assume how people feel about using your site. Making statements like wasnt this
simple!? doesnt make them change their mind if it wasnt (nor happy when it was). You
will just look arrogant and presumptuous.
You dont control how users feel about the site
Peoples feelings and opinions are not up to you. Yes, you can influence both and
facilitate them feeling a certain way, but in the end its not in your control. Hence, dont
make any assumptions about how they feel. And certainly dont put it in words on your
website.
Unfortunately, many websites do this. Make sure yours is not one of them.
Why You Shouldnt Assume How
Users Feel About Your Site
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Whats user experience got to do with conversions? Everything.
Great user experience is a means to an end. You dont create awesome user experiences
just to make somebody happy. You want it to lead to somethingbe it sticking around on
your social networking site or buying your stuff.
Whenever users land on your website, theyre having an experience. The quality of their
experience has a significant impact on their opinion (do I like it?), referral possibility
(do I tweet or talk about it?) and ultimately, conversionswill people do what we want
them to do.
User experience matters a lot. More than most people realize. The best designed user
experiences get out of the way and just help people get sh*t done. Less is more. If you
have to explain it, youve already failed.Jason Goldberg, founder and CEO of Fab.com.
So is their focus on user experience paying off? Seems to be. In just two years they
reached $150 million in annual sales.
Heres a great animated video that explains how UX design delivers ROI:
Getting things right: what UX is and what its not
Great User Experience UX Leads to
Conversions
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First of all, UI (user interface) is not UX (user experience). A car with all its looks,
dashboard and steering wheel is the UI. Driving it is the UX. So the interface directly
contributes to the experience (beautiful car interior makes a better experience sitting in
one), but is not the experience itself.
Heres a great infographic on the differences between UX, UI and more.
Visual beauty is important for websites, but visual design is only one step in the process. A
beautiful website might make a great first impression, but if it has terrible usability, users
cant figure out what to do, forms on the site dont quite work, the error messages are
not helpful and the copy on the website is vague, the overall experience will be quite bad.
Experience is also personal and subjectiveand is greatly affected by our past
experiences, personal preferences, mood and a myriad of other things.
User experience is not something new that was invented along with the internet. Since
the beginning of times great designers have understood the importance of experience
(Sistine Chapel, anyone?), and how the object of design was going to used, in what
context and for which end-purpose. By using the abbreviation UX it just sounds new, but
none of it really is.
All in all, the user experience is a shared responsibility of all those who contribute and
support a productfrom the UI designer to customer support people.
The user experience honeycomb
Peter Morville and friends developed the user experience honeycomb to describe all the
facets of UX:
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Heres what it all means:
Useful. Is your product or website useful in any way? The more useful, the better the
experience.
Usable. Ease of use. If its too complicated or confusing to use, youve already lost.
Usability is necessary (but not sufficient).
Desirable. Our quest for efficiency must be tempered by an appreciation for the
power and value of image, identity, brand, and other elements of emotional design.
Findable. We must strive to design navigable web sites and locatable objects, so
users can find what they need.
Accessible. Just as our buildings have elevators and ramps, our web sites should be
accessible to people with disabilities (more than 10 percent of the population). Today,
its good business and the ethical thing to do. Eventually, it will become the law.
Credible. Websites need to be credibleknow the design elements that influence
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whether users trust and believe what we tell them.
Valuable. Our sites must deliver value to our end-users. For non-profits, the user
experience must advance the mission. With for-profits, it must contribute to the
bottom line and improve customer satisfaction.
There are three ways to use this honeycomb:
1. It enables you to have a meaningful conversations about improving and creating
experiences
2. You can assess your site through a specific lens, and get specific ideas as to what to
improve
3. If you cant improve all of your website due to lack of time or budget, why not do a
single-facet makeover?
So how do you design a good experience?
As per Ryan Singer from 37Signals, you need to cut it down into three steps:
1. Know what is common to all people. Understand how the brain works, how people view
websites, what makes people tick, how to boost readability, keep attention, come across
as credible and so on.
2. Know what is special about your users. How is your target group different from
everybody else? What is it that they are trying to get done by using your site or product?
You need to understand their purpose for using your product, how they talk about it, their
points of reference and so on. This is called domain knowledge. If you dont know this,
you need to first identify your audience.
3. Be empathetic to to your users. See it from the users perspective. If you know the job
they want to get done, you can put yourself in their shoes in order to make the right
decisions.
Some people say you cant design user experiences, but instead you can only design
for user experiences. Bryan from Zurb has this view on it:
The designers that work on Amazon.com dont create the experiencetheyre
responsible for building the system, product and service that allowed those different
experiences to happen. The designers work to understand how the user interacts with the
website to create the most desirable and profitable experiences. We call that interaction
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design.
I hope we can all agree that user experience is a subjective feeling as people are
different. The total experience of the user depends on huge amount of things starting
from how their day started to their socio-economic status to personal preferences.
So when we talking about designing an experience, first of all we need to be on the same
page that design is problem-solving, not making things pretty." The goal of a design is
coming up with a solution aimed at achieving a specific outcomelike getting people to
sign up for something or checking availability in a hotel.
Experience design is deciding on the experience you want people to have with a website
or a product (how someone feels, behaves, thinks as they interact with).
Examples of great user experience
Lets look a few sites that provide a really good user experienceand analyze them using
the UX honeycomb.
#1 Hipmunk
Our main philosophy is that we want you to spend as little time on our site as possible
with the least amount of pain.Hipmunk cofounder Steve Huffman
Useful? Very much so. The focus is on finding flights, sorted by hassle.
Usable? Amazingly easy to use.
Desirable? Fun, great design.
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Findable? The core functionality is in your face, cant look past it.
Credible? Their modern and uncluttered design helps to come across credible. No
credibility blunders here.
Valuable? Tons.
#2 Nest:
Never before has a thermostat got people so excited. More or less a year has passed
since the original Nest Learning Thermostat made its debut, and recently Nest Labs
announced the successor to its smart thermostat.
Useful? A smooth flow to complete a purchase
Usable? Great usability.
Desirable? Looks awesome! The photography and videos make it extremely
desirable.
Findable? Yes.
Credible? High profile mentions in the press right on the home page. Kickass video
(seeing is believing).
Valuable? Totally builds up the value Nest offers.
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#3 Foodily:
The Webby Awards named Foodily the best food and beverage website (won against
tough competition like Blenderbox and The New York Times).
Useful? Very.
Usable? Really good usability.
Desirable? Superb design and photography
Findable? Slick and easy to navigate.
Credible? Social proof (33k likes) + constantly updated content + great design.
Valuable? Very much so.
I suggest you browse all these three sites and take notes. There are of course many
other sites that have grown really fast due to awesome user experienceMade.com,
Pinterest,Airbnb, Stripe just to name a few.
How do you measure the effectiveness of user experience?
Its simple. While some of the designers might disagree with me, I say its all about
achieving the business objective. The user experience is a means to an endto achieve a
goal. The simplest and most objective measure is the conversion ratewhether changes
in the experience design will boost or reduce conversions. And the action of conversion
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might be whatever (purchase, signup, quote request, repeat logins etc).
Conclusion
Great user experiences can lead to great results. However, its dangerous to play with the
label UX design or a position called UX designer. This suggests that the only folks who
need to worry about user experience are the designerswhich is not true at all.
In fact, companies need to treat user experience no different than they treat increasing
revenue, improving customer service or corporate culture. Its essential for sustainable
success. The success of your company cannot rely on a single designer, it needs to be the
mindset and focus of the whole organization. So treat it accordinglystart discussions
about the experience your provide every step of the way.
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Whats more important, traffic or conversions? If you send me 50k people from a classic
tractor repair website and 500 from a prominent marketing site, which one is going to be
better for my business?
Unless youre in the pageview business, what you should first and foremost care about is
conversions. Conversions take place when targeted traffic meets relevant offer. It all
starts with knowing who is your target audience and what they need or want.
The aim of marketing is to know and understand the customer so well the product or
service fits him and sells itself.Peter Drucker, influential business thinker of the 20th
century.
If you want to increase conversions, you have to figure out who exactly is your primary
target audience, what they want, what matters to them and what are the sources of
friction for them.
If you say your target audience is pretty much everybody or anyone interested in my
services," you dont have much of a chance to boost conversions.
Why identifying your target audience matters
If you know
who the people are, you know how to get to them (the blogs they read, the sites
they visit, the stuff they search in Google etc)
how they describe the type of services they offer, you can word the copy on
your site to match the conversation in their head (very important!)
how they choose and compare products in your category, you know how to
structure and prioritize content on your site
what they want, your value proposition can state exactly that and the whole site can
How To Identify Your Online
Target Audience and Sell More
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be 98 percent relevant to them
what they dont care about, you can dismiss and cut it from the site
how their life is better thanks to your service, you know which end-benefits to
communicate
and so on and so forth. Its all about relevancyif what you offer and how you present
it matches their state of mind, you have gained a customer.
If your customer is everybody," youre making it extremely difficult for yourselfnobody
will identify with everybody."
If you dont have hard data, start with assumptions
If you have no paying customers yet, youre dealing with assumptions and educated
guesses based on your first-hand experience and anecdotal evidence.
Traditionally, defining a target audience involves determining their age, sex, geographic
locations, and their needs. The data you need to know depends on the product and
whether you have a B2B or B2C business.
This approach, however, is not very helpful. Online the location matters much less (if at
all). Age is not what it used to befifty-year-olds get just as excited about new tech
gadgets as twenty-somethings, and 30-year-olds may still be living with their parents.
More than demographic data, you want to look at the lifestyle.
You want to have answers to these questions:
Who are the target customers? Describe their life (or business) situation
What do they want? Whats the pain?
What are their needs that arent being met?
In order to have a business case, you of course need to think about market size and
disposable income as well. You might have a problem/solution fit, but it doesnt
necessarily mean youre in the money.
Talk to people
There are no facts inside your building, so get outside, is one of the mantras of Steve
Blank, the father of customer development and author of The Startup Owners Manual.
When I talk to people starting a new business and they complain about conversions, the
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first question I ask is how many customers have you talked to? Usually the answers is
none." Hmm?
Once you have your first customer profile written down, go out and meet these people or
businesses. Talk to them, observe them in their natural habitat and learn all you can.
Austin-based startup Food On The Table started with a target market assumption, and
found a mom who plans meals and uses coupons, and spent three weeks shadowing her
as she made lists and pushed her cart around the local supermarket. Her feedback
helped create the first version of the website.
They reached one million users last springtalking to your customers pays off.
What if you learn that your current business assumptions are wrong?
Its not uncommon at all that a company starts with an assumption of who the target
audience is and what they want, and changes course once they learn more about the
market. In Lean Startup methodology, its called a pivot.
Many well-known companies have changed direction, from Paypal to Groupon. Heres a
summary of 10 types of pivots.
If youre just starting out and figuring out how to grow to the next phase, dont do
anything before reading this book.
Survey your customers
If you have paying customers, the best thing you can do is to survey them. What you
want is to get in the heads of your customers, learn why and how they buy.
Dont survey all of your customers, just the last 20 (minimum) to 100 (maximum) who still
remember their purchase experience. If you ask somebody who made the purchase 6
months or more ago, they have long forgotten and might feed you with false information.
I recommend asking the following questions (adjust the wording as you see fit):
Who are you? Get the demographical data and see if there are any trends (e.g.
generational). If youve got a B2B business, ask about their industry and position in the
company (and who makes the decision!)
What are you using [your product] for? What problem does it solve for you? Here
you want to make sure you understand their problem. You might discover some
unintended uses as well.
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How is your life better thanks to it? Which tangible improvements in your life or
business have you seen? This will tell you the end-benefit your product provides in the
words of your customers. If some say really nice things, hit them up for testimonials or
case studies.
What do you like about our product the most? Learn what your customers think
is the best part of your product, and mention it prominently in your copy
Did you consider any alternatives to our product (prior to signing up)? If so,
which ones? You want to know who people compare you to. Next step is that you
need to build a compare page where you compare yourself to the competition and
make a case for your advantages
What made you sign up for our product? What convinced you that its a good
decision? Why did you choose us over others? You want to know whats working for
you in your current website + identify some advantages you might want to emphasize
more.
Which doubts and hesitations did you have before joining? Identify main
sources of friction, and address them (or fix them if theyre usability problems).
Which questions did you have, but couldnt find answers to? 50 percent of the
purchases are not completed due to insufficient information. This helps you identify
some of the missing information your customers want.
Anything else you would like to tell us? Leave room for feedback you dont know
to ask.
What else would you like to buy from us (if we were smart enough to offer it)?
Ideas for new products or services your customers are ready to pay for,
Tips for the survey
If you can, keep it short: the more questions, the fewer responders and poorer quality
responses. Make your questions, then weed them out.
Make sure the information you collect is actionabledont ask questions just because
your curious. Once you have written your questions, go through them and ask yourself:
What am I going to do with this information once I have it? Make sure each question
contributes something unique and is necessary.
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Keep it neutral: try to use language that doesnt lead the customer any particular way.
Imagine that you are taking this survey as a person with a particular set of answers. And
then go through again with a different (or opposite) set of responses, and see if the
question is easier or harder to answerthen adjust the wording so that it is neutral.
Avoid multiple choice
Note that all the answers should be free-form, not multiple choice. You want the
customers to be able to express themselves without constraints. You dont know what
you dont know, and multiple choice will never reveal those things.
Another thing you want to pay attention to is how they word things. Your website has
to speak the same language your customers do. Notice how they describe the problem,
the solution, the benefits.
Often I copy and use the exact wording from a survey answer in a value proposition or
other key part of the website copyand it works the best.
Pressure and incentivize
When sending out surveys, remember to put some time pressure on them (fill this out in
the next three days) to get data faster and reward each and everyone who answers the
survey (free product or service, Amazon gift card etc).
What you can discover from Google Analytics
If you have correctly set up goals and/or e-commerce tracking in Google Analytics, you
can get some insightful data.
Below are some useful reports that show you stuff like which traffic sources convert the
best. Invest more time, money and effort in high-performing traffic senders, ignore low
performers.
If guest blogging is part of your content marketing strategy, pay attention to which blog
send you the best-performing traffic and try to become a regular poster on those blogs.
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Google Analytics custom reports are highly useful. Here are some reports you can plug
right into your own analytics profile just by clicking on the links.
Best converting traffic sources
Where is the traffic that converts coming from? Get the Traffic Report.
Best performing content
Which content works and what doesnt? Get a clear overview. Get the Content
Efficiency Analysis Report.
Best converting keywords
Which keywords are your money makers? Aim to rank better for these and similar
keywords. Get the Keyword Analysis Report.
Best converting landing pages
Where is the incoming traffic landing on and does it convert? Get the Best Converting
Landing Pages Report.
Ecommerce report
If you run an e-commerce site, you want to see which channels are performing the
best. This GA custom report will show you visits per source along with revenue and
visit value data. Get the Ecommerce Traffic Report.
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More great Google Analytics custom reports:
http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2175001/7-Time-Saving-Google-Analytics-
Custom-Reports
http://www.kaushik.net/avinash/best-downloadable-custom-web-analytics-reports/
http://www.seobook.com/maximizing-google-analytics-insight-seo-custom-reports
Test your assumptions
Learn qualitatively, test quantitatively.
Whatever you learn, your conclusions are still a hypothesisyou need test it in the real
world. If your organic traffic is low, you can run a PPC campaign on Adwords or LinkedIn
(or wherever is a good way to reach your target audience) to get enough people on the
site for statistical confidence.
Speed up the time it takes to test assumptions, no reason to waste sales by waiting.
Conclusion
Remember, conversions take place when targeted traffic meets relevant offer. So your
job as a marketer is to find the right sources traffic and to make sure your website is
relevant for them. Relevancy leads to sales.
Use the findings from talking to people, surveys and analytics data to write the copy on
your site and decide on the information architecture. Use it for your product development
(and for deciding what to sell in the first place).
When your target audience arrives to your site, looks at the content and goes Hey, this is
exactly what Im looking for," youve nailed it.
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The best kind of visitor is the one looking to buy. She knows what she wants and has a
credit card in her hand. Now its your job to seal the deal.
If youre dealing with a motivated customer, you just need to make taking action
easy and present a competitive and compelling offerand answer the magic questions.
What are magic questions?
Magic questions are the most important questions that prospects wants answers to. If you
sell packaged vacations to the Caribbean, the magic questions might be
Does the price include airfare?
Are the sheets on the bed soft?
What activities can I do over there?
Does the all-inclusive fee include drinks?
How will I get from the airport to the resort?
How old will the people be there? Will I fit in?
Is it dangerous?
If theyre shopping for clothes, the questions might be
Does it fit me?
Whats the return policy like?
Is there free shipping?
How would I look in it?
Are You Providing Answers to
Magic Questions?
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Will my spouse like it?
Whats it made of?
Whenever people are about to buy something they havent bought before, they have
fear. The higher the cost of the product, the bigger the fearas the price tag is also the
cost of a potential mistake. Magic questions are the questions that help people decide
that this is really what theyre looking for and help them reassure themselves its not
going to be a mistake.
Figure out your magic questions
Nobody can tell you what the magic questions are for your business or productyou
need to figure this out by observing your target customers in action and talking to them.
Observe your customers in their natural habitat
Lets say you run an ecommerce site selling trendy clothes to hip grandmas. Your goal is
to boost conversions. Where do you start?
You arrange to go their house / work / etc (wherever they normally shop for clothes) and
have them use your site. Tell them to shop on your site AND other similar sites (your
competitors), and have them comment everything out loud. Your goal is to understand
how they shop, what they look at, in which order and which questions they need answers
to when looking at a product or when starting to order.
Its kind of like over-the-shoulder usability, but more than thatyou want to understand
how your users shop for your category products in general, not just how they use your
site. Once you understand the process they use, you can optimize for that process on
your website and make sure the copy (and the images!) provide answers to their magic
questions.
Customer interviews
Another way to do it is to conduct interviewseither face-to-face (ideal) or over
phone/Skype.
The goal of these interviews is to figure out which questions they need answers to when
shopping for type of products you sell. How do they compare different options? Are the
newbies? Experts?
Questions you might want to ask:
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Whats their typical process of shopping for X?
What do they like about their current solution/process?
What are they doing immediately before and after their current solution/process?
Which parameters / features they pay attention to?
How important are X, Y and Z?
When was the last time they bought X? Have them describe the process and the
experience they went through
Again, the goal here is to fully understand why and how they buy. More importantly, you
want to identify the magic questionswhenever theyre looking to buy X, what
information do they want about it?
Additional tips for interviews
Take notes like crazy, or better yetrecord the whole interview. Otherwise you WILL
forget
Have more than one person do interviews at the same time, youll get interesting
insights and can follow up with discussion
Ask unplanned questions. You cant plan everything ahead of time. Sometimes the
interviewees will say something unexpected and you can follow-up with off script
questions.
Make it funtalk to them as if you were having a conversation.
Weave the answers into the copy
Once youve identified the magic questions, you need to write them downand share
with everybody whos working on your site (your copywriter, designer, wife etc).
Next you need to make sure your overall copy or product copy gives answers to them.
Take the paper with the magic questions, and use it as a checklist to go over each and
every product page on your site. Make note of all the products that have some answers
missing, and add them.
Furthermore, depending on the product and questions, it might be a good idea to create
an on-page FAQ to answer the questions. FAQ is always most effective if the answers are
provided at the moment when the questions come up.
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provided at the moment when the questions come up.
Start with a relevant value proposition
When people arrive on a page, theyre immediately looking for answers to the magic
questions.
The universal magic questions for your home page or landing page are these:
Where am I? (Am I in the right place?)
What can I do here? (Can I do what I need?)
How is this useful? (Whats the benefit of doing it here?)
If people dont get right away what youre selling and why thats good, youre essentially
blocking a huge chunk of people from entering your sales funnel. Focus on clarity above
all.
Metrics of magic questions
There are 2 metrics that you should pay attention here.
First is bounce rate. If the bounce rate is high (over 50% for a non-article), its likely that
the magic questions are not being answered. Its of course not as straightforwardthere
might be other things driving up the bounce rate like false expectation, poor design,
terrible overall copy. But if your overall site is more or less okay, its the magic questions
that do the trick.
Second is conversions itself. If people are considering buying a product, but cant have
their magic questions answered, theyre not gonna buy it. Easy as that. Answering magic
questions is an essential part of your copy (and value proposition).
Conclusion
Magic questions is a simple, yet crucial concept. If you dont know what your magic
questions are, figure them out now.
Whenever youre conducting conversion analysis or trying to understand how to lift
conversions on any page, start with checking whether the answers to magic questions
are there.
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V.
Email Marketing
How to Build Websites that Sell:... Email Marketing
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Email drip campaigns can be effective in achieving many things: building a relationship,
increasing customer retention and increasing salesall good things that any smart
marketer wants and so should you.
In case you dont know what email drip campaigns are, let me go over that for a
moment. An email drip campaign is basically a series of messages that are sent or
dripped in a predefined order at a predefined internal. So, for example, if someone
joins your email list, they receive email #1 on signup, email #2 three days later, email #3
five days after they joined and so on. All of this can be automated via email
autoresponder software (i.e. GetResponse, MailChimp, and so on).
Each email in the campaign stands on its own but also builds on the emails that have
come before it. All of the emails are strategically thought out and sequenced. The goal of
such a campaign is to encourage a specific action (start using your product, warm up the
lead etc).
So how do you go about creating an effective email drip campaign?
1. Figure out your goal
First things first. If you dont know what you want to accomplish, how can you possibly
achieve it? You need to decide whether you want to warm up the email leads, get them
to buy your product, or something else that serves your overall goals. Be specific when
How To Creative Effectvive Email
Drip Campaigns
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talking about the end-goal so that you are able to measure it.
2. What they see in those emails is what matters most
Just having an email drip campaign wont do much. The content of those emails needs to
be really good. If you send lousy emails, the result will be lousy as well. If the emails dont
add any value, the effect may actually be the oppositepeople will consider it spam and
become hostile toward you.
Also dont make the emails too long or people wont read them. Be aware that most of
your users are not reading your newsletter as much as they are scanning through the
information, so make your information scan-able.
3. What is it that your leads need in order to make a decision?
When you start working on creating content for the drip campaign, ask yourself this: what
do my prospects need to know in order to take the step I want? So for instance, if your
goal is to get them to use your online software, you might want to create emails that
explain its best functionality and show case studies of how other people used it with
great success.
If your goal is to sell them something, you should aim to increase peoples trust in you
build up credibility. You can do this by teaching them something useful, addressing their
hesitation (removing friction) and providing proof of how your stuff helps them achieve
their goals.
4. Set timing and frequency
Once you know what you want to achieve and you have created the emails you want to
send out, it is time to set the frequency and timing of the emails. There is no one-size-fits-
all rule here. Generally you should start with higher frequency and slow down as time
goes on (start with every day, then every few days, then once a week, then once a month
and so on). As for the email sending timescheck your newsletter statistics and see if
any particular times of day produced more open rates.
Note that you can also send drip campaigns to people whove already been on your list
for a long time. Campaigns can be sent daily, weekly, or monthly and can be used to
keep your brand on the top of the mind when subscribers are ready to take action.
You can set up drip campaigns for white paper delivery, quarterly release updates,
specialized holiday campaigns, monthly invoices, annual subscription notices, or anything
else that keeps subscribers informed and interested in your stuff.
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5. Segment your campaigns
A way to further increase the effectiveness of your campaigns is to segment them.
Create several parallel campaignsmost of the content can remain the samebut tailor
them as much as possible to the specific segments, addressing their concerns, needs and
wants.
For instance you can create two different landing pages for two different segments and
so that when they join your email list on a particular page, you send them particular drip
emails.
6. Measure stuff!
Besides the obvious (open rates and clicks), measure the impact on your bottom line and
the total clicks on your landing pages. If you want to drive traffic to your sign up page,
measure the total traffic you get from the drip campaigns to the desired page and look at
the conversions.
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Compared to social media and content marketing, email is a mature channel for
engaging online consumers. Its longevity is a testament to its ability to convert leads into
buyers and buyers into repeat customers.
In fact, according to a Forrester report put out on September 24, 2012 email continues to
be the top factor in influencing repeat purchases:
Forrester Research report showing emails positive influence on repeat customers.
Regardless of whether your business is in the B2B or B2C space, your email marketing
effectiveness can be optimized.
Because you read this blog, you already know you should be conducting a/b testing on
your landing pages and website to increase conversions, but did you know the same
principles apply to your emails?
Conduct A/B Testing on Your Emails
When it comes to email campaign optimization you can test and optimize many of the
How To Generate More Sales From
Your Email Marketing Campaigns
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same components you do on a landing page. For example, it is a good idea to test the
call-to-action, offer and layout of the email. However, there are some components
unique to email marketing that you should also test. These include:
Subject line
Sender name
Day of the week to send
Time of the day to send
Subject Line:
According to research by Dan Zerella of HubSpot and MailChimps Email Genome Project,
there are specific words that tend to increase open rates. You should consider these
keywords when putting together subject lines to test:
HubSpot chart showing best keywords to use in email subject lines.
The graph from Zarellas presentation on the Science of Email Marketing is a little small,
so here are the top five words that affect open rates in a positive manner: posts, jobs,
survey, weeks and e-newsletter.
According to the same report, the keywords that will get you reported as spam include:
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confirm, features, upgrade, magic and raffle. You can certainly test using these keywords
in your subject line, but the research suggests its best to leave them out unless you have
built up a list that really trusts you and your brand.
Sender Name:
Another important aspect to test in your email campaigns is the sender name. The most
common sender names include the actual name of a person within your company or the
name of the company itself. Test both to see if one increases your open rate.
Day of the Week:
Next youll want to a/b test the best day of the week to send your emails. According to
MailChimps Email Genome Project more emails are sent on Tuesday and Thursday than
any other day of the week.
You should test sending emails on one of the other days to see if less competition for
inbox space increases your open and click through rates. Research by Zarella at HubSpot
suggests that doing so can impact your results pretty drastically:
HubSpot Chart Showing Best Day of Week to Send Email for Max Clickthroughs
The team at What Counts decided to test what the best day of the week to send their e-
newsletter was. Traditionally they would send it on Thursdays; however, they wondered if
sending on Tuesdays would be more impactful.
When the team ran their test they learned that sending on Tuesdays increased their open
rates; however, sending on Thursdays resulted in higher clickthrough and conversion
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rates. If they had simply started sending the e-newsletter on Tuesdays without A/B
testing the send day they would have missed out on conversions.
Time of Day:
The final key aspect for testing and optimizing your email campaigns are send times.
According to the Email Genome Project, subscribers are most likely to open email
between the hours of 2 P.M. and 5 P.M. I asked the MailChimp team is these hours are
time zone specific and was told they are not; the times represent the best times to send
in whatever your local area is.
MailChimp Graph Showing Best Time of Day to Send Emails for Max Open Rates
That being said, Zarellas research suggests that while open rates may be highest in the
afternoon, click-through rates are highest in the early morning, peaking around the 5 to
7am marker.
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HubSpot chart showing best time of day to send email for max clickthrough rate.
To find the best send times for your emails the best thing to do is to run a/b tests. Youll
want to track the email and click through rates of course, but even more important the
conversion rate on those emails.
Your email marketing software should come equipped with a/b testing capabilities. If it
does not I recommend switching to a platform like GetResponse, MailChimp,
Aweber orCampaign Monitor.
To take your campaigns even a step further you could tailor your send times to each
individual recipient based on their history like Mint.com did. Mints senior director of
marketing worked with her email provider to analyze recipient behavior on a rolling basis
and predict the best delivery time for each address on the mailing list.
According to MarketingSherpa which put together a case study around Mints behavioral
targeting:
If recipient A displayed a tendency to open emails at 5 P.M., Mint.coms campaigns,
alerts and triggered messages would be sent at that time.
If a recipient B often opened emails at 3 A.M., all messages would be sent at that time.
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If recipients started opening the emails at different times of the day, the system
adapted and began sending according to this newly exhibited behavior.
This approach lead to a seven percent increase in open rates and 13 percent increase in
click-through rates.
Another company called eBags also took this approach and they saw a 20 percent
increase in click-through rates, 65 percent increase in conversion rates and 45 percent
increase in average order value.
Create a Dedicated Landing Page for Each Email Campaign
A/B testing your email marketing campaigns on the email side is really important in your
effort to increase revenue. However, its also important to think beyond the email to the
landing pagethe place you link to from the email.
There are three typical places you might choose to send your email traffic:
Your website homepage
A deep link in your website such as a product or features page
A dedicated landing page
The best option and the one that will convert the highest is the dedicated landing page.
MarketingSherpas 2011 Landing Page Optimization Benchmark Report showed that
dedicated landing pages are highly effective when it comes to email marketing:
MarketingSherpa Chart on landing page optimization effectiveness for email campaigns.
Why are dedicated landing pages so effective? The answer has everything to do with
visitor expectations, increased relevance and reduced leakiness of a page.
This means the messaging on the landing page should reflect the messaging in the email,
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the offer should be specific and relevant to the same offer mentioned in the email and
the page should have limited or no navigation so that the visitor cannot click-away get
lost in a different part of your site.
When you send email traffic to your homepage or a deep link in your site you miss out on
the opportunity to tailor your message and offer. Additionally, when sending visitors to
the homepage you put the burden on the consumer to find the right page on your site to
take action on. Doing any of these things will result in reduced conversion rates.
The VP of marketing at Tafford Uniforms knew that 1:1 message match between the
email offer and the landing page would increase conversions but he didnt have the
resources to create a dedicated landing page.
As a quick fix he started creating a banner to add to the top of each product page that
reflected the offer mentioned in his email campaign.
According to a case study completed by Marketing Experiments this lead to a
10 percent increase in Taffords email conversion rates. If the VP of marketing had the
resources to create a dedicated landing page with controlled or completely removed
navigation his conversion rates would be able to soar even higher.
Encourage Social Sharing in Your Email Campaigns
Optimizing your emails and their landing pages is important to convert the subscribers
you already havebut dont forget about their friends. Very often the company your
customers keep would also make great customers for you.
In a study by GetResponse as reported by eConsultancy, email messages that include at
least three social share buttons generated 55 percent higher clickthrough rates than
messages with no social share buttons.
Additionally research conducted by Brightedge Technologies, shows sites with Twitter
buttons drive seven times more link mentions on average than sites that did not have a
button.
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BrightEdge Technologies chart showing social buttons increase online mentions.
While you should not use social share buttons on your actual landing page because it
introduces a competing call to action, the thank you page presents a great opportunity to
increase awareness through social sharing.
Conduct A/B Testing on Your OffersOften
In order to continuously push the envelope by learning more about your audiences
desires while simultaneously increasing revenue you need an on-going a/b testing cycle.
Its not enough to conduct one a/b test showcasing two different offers (e.g. free shipping
vs. $5 off) in your email campaign and think youre done. Your first test is only the
beginning! You should test different offers and different ways to present those offers over
the course of time to truly optimize for maximum conversions!
Here are just a few a/b testing ideas for your special offers:
Pricing ($30 vs. $29)
Placement of the offer on the landing page
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Free shipping vs. percent off
Heres an example of an a/b test inbound marketing software company, HubSpot, ran in
an effort to increase the number of people who sign up for their free trial:
Version A: Try HubSpot free for 7 days
Version A of a HubSpot A/B Test: 7 day free trial
Version B: Try HubSpot free for 30 days
Version B of a HubSpot A/B test: 30 day free trial.
The treatment, or version B, in this test increased conversions by 110 percent simply by
extending the length of time for the free trial! Would you have guessed that the
treatment would have performed so much better? Thats the beauty of testingyou dont
have to guess, you can experiment and know for sure!
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The really important thing to remember is that your email offer must match the offer on
the landing page. So, for example people who received an email about a free seven-day
trial should be sent to the landing page for the seven-day free trial.
When there isnt clear message match between the email (or ad) and the landing page
you lose trust with your visitor and introduce the opportunity for confusion. Cohesiveness
in your email campaigns is really, really important.
Use Landing Page Segmentation to Qualify Your Email Leads
You probably already know that email list segmentation can lead to better results, but did
you know that segmentation on the landing page can help you further qualify your leads
while increasing email conversions? Its true.
Jessica Collier, Director of Optimization at ion interactive, states there are 4 key ways to
segment visitors on the landing page:
Segmentation by Audience
Segmentation by Place in Buying Cycle
Segmentation by Need
Segmentation by Business Size
Here we see a B2C example of segmentation by need:
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Example of landing page segmentation for B2C.
The visitor can select whether he or she is an owner, renter or commercial business and
receive highly targeted information based on that simple click.
And here is a B2B example of segmentation by business size:
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Example of landing page segmentation for B2B.
Segmentation on the landing page not only helps you provide specific information to
visitors based on their self-identification, but also allows you to further qualify them.
For example, if your business only provides services for small and mid-sized businesses
but not enterprise level ones, you can provide targeted information for the audience
whose needs you do meet, while politely directly all others out the door. Theres very
little value in spending time and money marketing to people who are out of your zone.
Instead focus your time on high quality leads.
Sharepoint Solutions allows visitors to segment by their experience with Sharepoint (Just
Starting, Immediate or Advanced):
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Example of Landing Page Segmentation
According to their case study, this segmented landing page converts at 25 percentwell
above the PPC conversion rate average of just 3.5 percent.
The best way to create these segmented landing pages is to come up with a template.
The immediate landing page will have one look and feel but each of the pages that the
visitor clicks through to should have the same basic layoutonly the copy and images will
need to change.
Heres an example from the New England Journal of Medicine:
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Example of landing page segmentation.
The visitor lands and self-segments him or herself and the lands on a second page
tailored to his or her needs:
Example of the type of page where you would send segmented traffic.
You can work from a landing page template purchased on a site like ThemeForest.net
and then use a/b testing software like Visual Website Optimizer that allows you to run
tests on your own website, or you can use a/b testing software that works off of a
templated landing page software system like Lander and Unbounce (small business
friendly) orLiveBall (enterprise-level).
I recommend Unbounce and Lander because they comes pre-populated with templates
that you can edit through a WYSIWIG/HTML editor. This means non-technical people can
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that you can edit through a WYSIWIG/HTML editor. This means non-technical people can
get their landing pages set up without hiring a web developer.
A few of Unbounces landing page templates.
Not only does it allow you to start with a conversion-focused template, but they integrate
with other software like GetResponse, MailChimp, AWeber, iContact, Salesforce and
more.
This is perfect for making sure your email software can talk to your landing page
software, so no leads fall through the cracks.
Final Thoughts on A/B Testing for Email Campaigns
Because email marketing is still such an effective channel for reaching first-time and
repeat customers it is really important that your campaigns are optimized. Without
conducting a/b testing on both the email and landing page side of the campaign you are
leaving leads (and revenue) on the table!
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People will not buy your stuff on their first visit. The more expensive and/or complicated
the product, the more time they need to think and decide.
People like to buy from people and businesses they know and like. This is why its a good
idea to capture emails and build a relationship before you even ask them to buy anything.
This post is about getting the most out of your relationship building efforts with your email
list.
Mistake #1. You dont use double opt-in
Double opt-in means that after someone subscribes, they get an email with a
confirmation link ensuring they want to receive email communications from you.
While you do get a little less subscribers, you actually get people you want on your list.
People who click the confirmation link are dedicated and interested enough to complete
the subscription process. This in turn leads to higher open rates, clickthroughs, better
deliverability and much less spam complaints.
My own personal experiments have shown that if your lead magnets is attractive enough,
youll get pretty much the same number of subscribers as compared to single opt-in.
When I switched T1Q over to double opt-in, I got maybe five percent less subscribers, but
open rates shot up three times.
My hypothesis is that by having to work a little bit harder to join the list (one additional
intentional click), theres more engagement and thus youll get a larger stake in their
mindshare.
Mistake #2. You think more interaction is better
First off, interactions dont build relationships unless you have shared values. Talking to
somebody you have nothing in common with does not make you closer (in fact, you just
get more and more annoyed).
7 Mistakes That Hurt Your Email
Relationship Building Efforts
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So it all starts with common interests and shared values. Once this is place, you can
proceed to interactions. However, interactions dont build relationships.
Even so, theres no real correlation between interactions with a customer and the
likelihood that he or she will become your loyal customer and a brand champion. Still, too
many marketers behave as if there is a continuous linear relationship between the
number of interactions and share of wallet. Thats why you see many brands sending
customers over 300 emails annually (#overkill).
What you need to know is that consumers suffer from cognitive overload. Theyre
bombarded with messages and choices. The best thing you can do to your business is to
keep everything simple.
Instead of relentlessly bombarding customers with emails and demanding their attention,
treat the attention you do win as precious. Dont waste the attention on a message that
doesnt add value.
Before sending out an email, ask yourself whether its going to reduce the cognitive
overload consumers feel? If not, dont send it. There is no universally best frequency to
send emails to your list. You have to test it.
How to figure out the best email frequency
The simplest way to test email frequency is this:
1. Set up two email lists (A and B).
2. A/B test your email subscription forms, so that 50 percent of the subscribers are added
to list A and the other half to list B. Forms itself can be identical.
3. Now send different amount of emails to each of those lists (e.g. once a month to A and
4 times a month to B).
4. Three months (and/or later) down the line check the stats: compare average open
rates, clickthroughs, unsubscribe rates and if you can, most importantly look at the sales
figures.
Mistake #3: You dont know why people unsubscribe
This has been studied a lot. Long story short, people unsubscribe from email lists for two
main reasons:
1. irrelevant or boring content (e.g. mainly sales promos),
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2. too many emails.
Thats it. Hence two rules for you to ensure a long email relationship:
1. Email only when youve got interesting stuff to say. Dont send for the sake of sending.
2. Dont send too often. More than once a week might be too much (with some
exceptions).
Mistake #4: You think using the subscribers name is personalization
Im sure you receive plenty of Hello, [YOURNAME] type of emails. Do you feel
personally touched? Didnt think so. Internet is filled with email marketing articles from
2006 saying you should personalize emails with subscriber names. Whoever says that
today is just re-hashing the old mantra.
According to a new study some 95 percent of customers respond negatively when an
email starts off with a greeting that includes their name. The study drew from ten million
marketing emails sent to 600,000 customers. Thats a decent sample size. So stop doing
it.
Not very personal:
Even when every now and then using peoples name in the subject line might boost your
open rates, they will be disappointed when they see it was actually not a personal email.
People are not idiots. They know the difference between actual personal emails and
masspersonalization customization. Dont try to fake being personal when youre not.
Nobody expects you to email every subscriber manually anyway. True personalization is
about relevant content. The more you can segment your list and send tailored emails to
each segment, the better.
Mistake #5: You follow the rule of seven
All over the internet you will find websites stating this in one wording or another:
A prospect needs to see or hear your marketing message at least seven times before
they take action and buy from you.
Its referred to as The Rule of Seven. Its a myth.
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The truth is that there is no research to back this up. Its a well-spread rumor. Its an
attractive idea and you want it to be true, since its a shortcut, a sure thing to do to help
you to improve your marketing efforts.
It originates from the late internet marketer Corey Rudl who made this observation about
his own business, and started to promote it. He even suggested the following schedule:
Immediate response
3 day follow up
7 day follow up
2 week follow up
1 month follow up
2 months follow up
3 month follow up
Its outright silly to think this schedule is the holy grail of email marketing, or that a
marketing observation from pre-2005 era would carry much weight today or that one
size fits all.
Do your own testing and dont assume anything about the magic number seven.
Mistake #6: You stop talking to subscribers once they buy
Relationship doesnt end with the purchase, in fact it should be the opposite. Too often
businesses focus on building relationships with potential customers, and ignore the
existing ones.
Since its so much easier to sell to existing customers than new ones, I say thats where
your main focus should be at.
You wont build a relationship strong relationship with emails only. You need them to
actually use your products and services, and benefit from them. Once they do and you
keep adding more value via email, youre on your way to creating champions.
I like how Olark is starting the relationship over email. Once you sign up, you get this
email from them:
HiI saw you just signed up for olark.com, let me know if there is anything I can do to
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help.Ben
Its short and feels personal. Could have been even sent manually, but you never know :)
In any case, the very best thing you can do after they sign up / buy is to continue talking
to them. Educate them about your product, give them know-how to get the maximum out
of it.
Further reading:
How to Create Effective Email Drip Campaigns
How to Get Subscribers to Actually Consume Your Content
Mistake #7: Your emails dont add value
Theres no magic sauce to relationship building. Relationships get built over time by
adding value to each other, just like in real life. This value can be many thingsteaching
and educating, entertaining and informing.
A guy that works in an email marketing company told me this story. He was reviewing the
promo email his client wanted to send out and saw its a totally dull offer. Would you
yourself want to buy this?," he asked the client. Oh so you mean it should be
something people are interested in?
True story, and not very uncommon. What happens is that marketers send out
newsletters and promo emails that dont add value to their subscribers. The results is that
they will sooner or later unsubscribe, and thats that.
If I had only one tip for building relationships over email, Id say be insanely
useful/cool/entertaining and youll do all right.
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More than 95 percent of your visitors wont buy anything on their first visit. Theyre either
just browsing, still in the research phase or not entirely sure yet your offer is what they
need. It takes time to build trust, instill confidence and build a relationship.
So if we know that the overwhelming majority wont buy anything on their first visit, why
push it? Youre just going to turn them away faster.
Instead, you should try to capture their email address and start forming a relationship.
Money is in the list, as they sayand theyre right.
Having an attractive lead magnet will accelerate your email list building like its on
steroids.
If youre currently getting five subscribers a day, and youre able merely increase it to
eight per daythe difference in 30 days would be almost a hundred new subscribers (150
vs. 250). If even small improvements like that can make a difference, imagine what a
killer magnet can do for your list building.
What are lead magnets?
A lead magnet is the (free) offer you make to get visitors email addresses.
Getting their email is a transaction. You want their email, so you have to offer something
they want in return. Your job is to sell the idea of subscribing to your list, and you need an
attractive offer to do it.
If what you offer is something people want and it seems to be worth going through the
hassle (typing the email address, worrying about spam etc), you will get their email.
The speed of your list building depends mostly on the lead magnet. Lousy, unattractive
lead magnet = very few sign-ups. Attractive lead magnet = tons of sign-ups.
Yes, the design, location and usability of the email capture form all matterbut the lead
magnet is what makes the biggest difference.
Lead Magnets: Email List Building
On Steroids
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This is NOT a lead magnet:
Nothing magnetic about it. No reason whatsoever given for joining. Probably a good
indicator that they dont take email marketing seriously.
This is a lead magnet:
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Theres a clear offer in place and its communicating the value subscriber will receive. It
has a somewhat spammy feel to it (a bit much hype), but all in all its pretty good.
Naturally you need to deliver on your promise of value. Under delivering will result in
useless emailsmoney is not just in the list, but in the relationship with your list. You want
to have an impressive start.
How to build an attractive lead magnet
Your goal is to come up with a magnet that makes them super excited.
Ask yourself: whats the one thing that would be insanely useful to your audience, and
that you could even charge money for (but wont)?
The truth is that a lot of websites try to capture leads. Many have a lead magnet in place,
and out of those most offer free reports or whitepapers. Me-too is a terrible strategy
and you dont want to sound like everyone else (Get seven tips to ).
Be a rebel and a contrarian. See what your competitors are doing, and do something
different.
Five steps to an attractive magnet
Understanding what your ideal customer wants is essential and goes without saying. You
want people to go through the lead magnet, and learn somethinggain something
useful, experience aha moments.
The bigger the positive impact of your lead magnet, the better push you have given the
prospect down your sales funnel.
Take your current lead magnet or the new idea that you have for one and check it
against this list, and improve it.
1. It has to add as much value as possible. The better the offer, the more people
will take it. A free car to every subscriber? Thatd be a guaranteed 90+ percent
conversion (there are always skeptics that wont believe a good offer when they see one).
As this one is not that targeted and might get a bit expensive, try something less
extravagantbut start with the best possible idea and downgrade from there, rather than
thinking whats one notch above join to get free updates."
2. For free, really!? I want that! Thats the reaction you want them to have when
they see it. Emotional reaction is very important.
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3. Be ready to work hard. There are no shortcuts. The more effort you put in, the
better the outcome. If you want to create a killer magnet, be ready to sweat.
4. Do not lie or set false expectations. Nothing worse than broken promises. Fool
me once, shame on me. And I wont risk being shamed twice.
5. Is this really the best possible idea? Look at the lead magnet idea youve got and
ask yourself whether its possible to come up with a better one? If yes, go back to 1.
Building the best possible magnet takes time. Its okay to start with something NOT as
good as it ideally could beso you can capture at least some emails while youre working
on the killer magnet. That one will take time, and youd just be losing the visitors that are
coming now if you have nothing while you are working.
Temporary solutions have the annoying ability to become permanent ones. Dont settle
for a mediocre magnet.
How to structure the offer
Start with the hook: why this should be important to them. Craft a benefit-oriented
headline.
Promise: what theyll get when they subscribe
Connect: why you created this and for whom
Key points: issues & solutions, could be in bullets
Call to action: what they should do next
Dont ask them to fill in too many fields. In most cases just email is enough. Read this post
about the design of the form.
Your magnet as a sieve
You dont want the magnet to be attractive to everyone, just your ideal clients.
Sure, you could give free movie tickets for anyone who joins your list, but how many of
them will want to buy your product? Lead quality is very important and you only want to
focus on your target group. Offer something that clearly leads to your product.
Make the magnet highly specific to your target clients. Try to come up with ways that it
would turn off the rest. Being ultra-specific is the best way to capture a specific audience
(e.g. If youre a left-handed single woman in Minnesota, you owe it to yourself to watch
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this).
Turning leads into customers
Most sites on the internet convert at less than five percent. This means that 95 percent
(and more) are not buying your stuff on their first visit.
Selling is often about trust and relationship building. The process of relationship building
is essential to getting the customer to trust you, to try out your product without the
pressure of a tough sell, and to form a marketing relationship that will allow you to later
sell to your customers.
In order for this to work you need to send them something that adds value and helps
subscribers make a positive purchasing decision. And eventually you will ask for the sale.
When should you ask for the sale?
There is no one right answer.
The internet is filled with claims that it takes seven touchpoints (e.g., emails) before
theyre ready to buy. This originates from the late internet marketer Corey Rudl (he
passed away 2005) who said that he had to connect with a customer at least seven times
via email before they were willing to purchase his online marketing courses.
That worked for him in his business, which doesnt mean it will work for you. Above all
make sure youve added value, proven your expertise and influenced the purchasing
decision in a positive way.
Consider product complexity and price
The more complex and/or expensive the product, the more time and information
prospects need before theyre ready to commit. Its all about risk.
If the product is a box of matches, its very easy to understand and very cheap. Low risk.
People can make a decision immediately.
There is no simple formula to figure out the optimal sales cycle (you can hire a bunch of
McKinsey consultants, if you like), you have to base it on observations and testing.
How to test the length of the sales cycle
An easy way to go about it is by split testing. Use the exact same offer to get them to opt-
in, but add them to different lists (or use a different reference code, some identifier).
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Have a different drip email campaign (autoresponder sequence) in place for each,
varying the messages and the time before you ask for the sale.
You should measure sales conversions within a time period to determine which one works
better.
Ideas for a lead magnets
People often ask me for ideaswhat should someone use as a magnet? You can usually
create pretty awesome stuff with the essentials and proven angles: root causes for
clients problems along with solutions, useful findings and research data, personal stories
and client case studies.
If you want more, here is a short list of suggestions for different categories, so you can
get the idea and get the ball rolling. All of the listed items are what youd give in
exchange for an email address.
Experts
These are coaches, trainers, consultants and everybody else who sells intellectual capital.
E-books and whitepapers
Minicourses via email
Video or video series
Audo recording, podcast
(Free education in any format)
Free course / webinar
Assessment or test
E-commerce
Getting the very first purchase is the biggest challenge. This is especially true for smaller
stores that the buyer has never heard of. If their first buying experience is positive,
theyre much more likely to repeat it.
Free coupon
Free shipping
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Free gift with the first order
Educational content on how to achieve / build stuff with what you sell
Guide to saving money when shopping for X
Membership (make prospects feel special, invite them into your VIP group that
provides bonuses, advice etc)
Educational material related to the need they will solve with your product.
Service business
Hair salons, vets, plumbers, mechanics and others who trade parts and labor for money.
Free coupons
Educational content for DIY projects
How to be a smart buyer of X
Things you need to know before buying Y
Free online tools (home decor planner, pet optimal nutrition calculator, car online
custom tuning etc)
Software
Free trial
Freemium account
Demo
Get the user in and doing stuff, ask for the email to save (check out how
Codecadamy is doing it)
How test a lead magnet ideas (before creating them)
Ive covered this before in another post, but its very important to outline again.
Way before you come up with a couple of magnet ideas to test on your site, you can do a
lot of pre-work. The risk of immediately running with the first ideas is that you might end
up putting in a lot of effort to develop the content for the magnets, and in the end nobody
wants it. To avoid this possible waste, use this process.
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The process of coming up with attractive lead magnets
Before you start, you need to think hard about your customers, their end goals and how
you can help them.
1. Start brainstorming ideas on your own. Theres strong some evidencethat group
brainstorming results in fewer (and lower quality) ideas.
2. Write the better ideas down, and format them as headlines or value propositions (e.g.
21 ways to lose 10 pounds in 2 weeks," 8 things that better leaders do differently).
3. Scrap the crappy ones, select the best 6 to 10 ideas. Write them down on a single
sheet of paper.
4. Next up: survey your ideal customers (the more the better, statistical significance
matters). Use face-to-face meetings or Google Docs Forms. The best way to find them is
to turn to your existing / former customers. Ask them which option are they most
interested in (which article theyd most like to read, which video theyd want to watch etc)
from the list.
5. Now you get some winners, and you can actually create those lead magnets (the
actual content, tool or whatever it is). Put them up on your site, and split test them
against each other. If no idea gets an overwhelmingly warm reception, go back to the
drawing board.
Killer lead magnet examples
Here are some great lead magnet examples to get your creative juices flowing:
Quicksprout
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Comments
Clear value proposition
Emphasis on exclusivity, making the free offer seem limited and valuable
Confidence boost via logos
Overlays / popups can be highly effective
Hubspot Marketing Grader
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Comments
People just love tests and assesments. This one grades your website marketing
efforts, compares it to the competition and gives you suggestions for improvement.
Pretty irresistible.
Social proof via social media numbers
The One Question
Comments
Highly specific, catering to a particular need
Again, people love tests
Disclaimer: the site is mine. Which is how I know it converts very well (roughly 30 percent)
Independent Practice Growth UK
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Comments
While this magnet has several problems (design, readability, length, number of fields),
I like it because its specific: a marketing book for opticians. Nobody but opticians
would be interested in it.
Its a physical book. Definitely more attractive than a pdf.
Clear value proposition.
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Clear value proposition.
Timothy Sykes
Comments
Clear value proposition, great layout
Strong proof and trust elements
General Linguistics
Comments
Simple, clear value proposition
Specific to the target audience
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VI.
Writing Copy
How to Build Websites that Sell:... Writing Copy
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Read any copywriting manual or article and you will learn that the headline is the most
important thing in your sales copy. And its true.
The sad thing is that the advice that follows is often severely outdated and originates
from the snail mail sales letter people from the 1950s and beyond. I researched 500
headlines of successful online businesses and figured out which formulas work today.
Just so were on the same page: which headlines do I mean
First of all lets make clear that Im NOT referring to blog post or any other type of
editorial content headlines. Cosmo-style headlines may work just fine for your personal
blog, but its not going to sell your products. What Im talking about is the headline on
your website home page or product page.
Like here the headline is Work the way you want to (which could be betterits way too
vague):
Or here its Design your Mobile App or Landing Page in 7 Days (potentially a very good
Writing Homepage Headlines For
The Modern World:3 Formulas
That Work
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headline):
The bad advice youre usually given
Most articles on copywriting tell you to use Cosmo-style headlines (The $4 Beauty Trick
You Need to Steal From Rachel Bilson) or those age-old Who else wants to learn killer
sales secrets? headline formulas. Theyre cute, but weve evolved past that. Decades of
ad bombardment and cheap sales tactics have made people uber-sensitive to anything
cheesy and self-important jargon.
Here are the kind of headlines you usually get recommended to write:
The Secret of Successful Writing (that only successful writers know about)
At Last! Scientists Uncover the Secret to Preventing Ugly Wrinkles
These are headlines I copied from a copywriting article. Who in the real world would not
be thrown off by this? If your target market is uneducated get-rich-quick with-a-click kind
of people, it might work for you. If youre marketing a real business to real people, think
twice.
The secret of type headlines might go down on blogs and newspapers, but dont use it
on your respectable company blog. One of the copywriting blogsCopybloggerhas tons
of articles on writing as cheesy as it gets headlines for blog posts, but they themselves
use the solid say what it is approach:
People yearn authenticity. Our bullshit detectors are always on. The attention span of
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people has significantly gone down with the digital age, people are too impatient to
bother figuring stuff out. If your headline sucks, many wont give you another chance.
One of the goals of the headline is to build a rapport between you and the reader.
Nobody identifies with a cheesy snake oil salesman pitch. Heres another headline writing
tip I found:
Internet Marketing Exclusive is Pure GeniusOur Sales Have Increased by 40 percent!
Headlines written in the form of a testimonial are very effective, as they instantly begin
building trust.
Oh really? Instant trust you say? NOT! Sounding like a cheesy fake salesman does not
increase, but kill your sales by 40 percent. As Ogilvy said, The consumer isnt a moron;
she is your wife.
So my advice is to wake up and realize its not 1964 anymore. You cant rehash that old
stuff. Dont use scandalous blog headlines on your business website if you want
conversions. Talk and write like a real person.
Two key questions to weed out bad headlines
When pondering a headline, see if you can answer yes to both of these questions.
1. Imagine your website would be just your headline and a call to action (sign up, learn
more, call now etc). Would anyone take action based on the headline?
2. Would you use the exact wording of your headline in a conversation with your friend
where you explain the product/service?
Yes there are always exceptions, but use this as a guideline to get you on the right path.
Three headline formulas that work today
I hate the word formula as much as the next guy, but Im gonna call these formulas
anyway.
How did I come up with these? Not by rehashing age-old formulas or copywriting truths. I
actually analyzed more than 500 headlines of successful web companies.
Definitions:
Web company: companies that get all or most of their business online (so the headline
on their website is important)
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Successful: I looked at graduates of top startup incubators (Y Combinator, Techstars,
500 startups) that have achieved commercial success and businesses that made it
onto the Inc 5000 list. I avoided looking at companies that are already huge and very
successfullike lets say Google, Amazon or Facebookthose guys operate on totally
different terms.
Im not saying all of the companies that I looked at have great headlines. Absolutely not
many have a really sucky headline, or dont have one at all. A headline does not make or
break a business (but it can help a lot if you nail it). What I discovered looking at these
headlines were trendsformulas that were working for these businesses.
Disclaimer: while I did extensive analysis for this, its not a scientific method. Also, I did
not have their a/b testing data nor con version data available. That being said, I strongly
believe the formulas I derived from this will work very well. I use them in my work all the
time.
Here are the formulas for writing headlines along with three examples for each:
Formula #1: Say what it is
Brain is a questioning organ. Whenever we see something new, our brain asks what is
it?." This formula addresses this fundamental question.
Heroku: cloud application platform
Next Big Sound: Analytics & Insights for the Music Industry
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Adroll: #1 Retargeting Platform
Formula #2: Say what you get
This formula is a benefit oriented statement that sums up what you get when you sign up.
RocketLawyer: Everything you need to make it legal
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Songkick: Be the first to know about concerts
Crazyegg: The Astonishing Power of Eye Tracking TechnologyWithout the High Costs
Formula #3: Say what youre able to do (with it)
This is where the headline makes it clear what youre able to accomplish if you use this
product or service.
Rekko Toolbar: Attention folks, deliver any message, to anyone, on any page
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Airbnb: find a place to stay
Otterbox: Find your perfect case
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Notice how all of the headlines here are reinforced with a supporting image? #smart
Important: these headline formulas are merely blueprints to help you craft a good
headline. Theres no way to know in advance which headline will work for youyou HAVE
TO split test it.
Better than headlines: make it a unique value proposition
A good headline alone is not enoughit needs help. Thats why you should always use
headline as a part of a larger value proposition. Include a sub-headline to boost clarity, an
intro paragraph to explain the service and bullet points to emphasize benefits. The sum of
all of them will help you deliver a more effective message.
Rememberpeople scan, they dont read. The structure I just described is extremely
scan-friendly and enables to you to quickly deliver your main message to the visitors.
Another important pointyou dont want to be a commodity. Google project
management software and look at the different sites. Easy project management,"
Fast, Easy and Efficient Project Management," Online project management made
simple and so on. It all sounds the same.
People comparison shop. They want to be able to tell different options apart. You have to
be different in an obvious way, or youll be like all the others and your headline will fall
flat.
Ive written about value propositions in detail here.
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The formulas Ive outlined here are working for a lot of very successful companies. And
they might work for you too (or might not). But they most definitely serve as great
starting points for getting your headline split testing going.
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We live in the age of distrust. Our bullsh*t detectors work at full speed and anything fishy
gets caught. Any claim you make without showing proof is destined to fail. Were all
skeptics.
Even if you mean well, people find it hard to believe you. Here are a few principles and a
three-step sequence you can use to make your writing more believable.
Principle #1: Dont use superlatives, be specific
I was delivering a conversion optimization workshop the other day, and one person asked
about how to talk yourself up on the website. Should I say Im the best? The answer is
no. Theres nothing that makes people more skeptical than hype.
Compare these statements, and pick the claim you believe more:
Fastest pizza delivery in town vs We deliver your pizza in 10 minutes."
We have the best italian restaurant vs Our restaurant has won 6 Golden Spoon
awards in the Italian Food category
Cheapest web hosting plans vs Our monthly plans start from $1.99."
Best tasting coffee, guaranteed vs Major competitions have voted Esmeralda the
consistent winner five years in a row
I bet you found the second option more believable in each case. People dont believe
superlatives, they believe specifics. I understand the urge to want to use superlatives, but
always translate them into specifics.
People are not idiots. They wont believe youre the best just because you say so.
How To Get People To Believe
What You Write
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Principle #2: Back up any claim with proof
Your restaurant makes the best omelet in town? Says who?
When you praise yourself, its not very believable. When a neutral third-party says
something good about you, you can use that as a reference and instantly make your
claim much more believable.
This is why you need to use:
customer testimonials (full name + photo or video),
neutral expert opinions,
third-party reviews,
verified (scientific) studies
to back up any claim you make.
Papalote uses tweets and testimonials to praise their food. This makes it much more
believable:
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Principle #3: Use simple language
Read this:
In the present report the results of a series of experiments are described in which wine
and beer drinkers were tested to measure their peripheral competency.
Did you get that? Me neither.
If you want people to believe you, they need to understand you first. Forget jargon and
corporate speak. People have a natural tendency to believe people like them. If you
speak to them like they speak, you have a far greater chance of success.
MailChimp gets it:
Complicated language confuses and frustrates people, and neither one helps your sales.
The text on your website is there for people to read and understandwith ease.
It doesnt matter whether youre doing B2C or B2B marketing, theres always an actual
human being reading your stuff, so the text has to connect with that person.
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If you use overly complicated languageit just shows youre out of touch and dont really
understand yourself what youre doing.
Note: dont confuse this with using technical language. When a gene technology company
talks to professionals in its field, theres no need to dumb it down. Know your target
customer.
Do this: Go over the texts on your website and read them out loud. Imagine its a
conversation with a friend. If theres a sentence you wouldnt say to a friend, re-word it.
Further reading: Quick course On Effective Website Copywriting (my guest post on
Smashing Magazine).
Principle #4: Make it about them
Its about your customers. They want to make sure youre on their side and care about
their problems.
If the CEO of Goldman Sachs would say: invest all your money with us, youll get rich
how many people would believe he has their best interests in mind? Not too many.
People believe you when they can be sure youre putting them first.
In the 2008 Democratic primaries, Obama campaign focused on we (Yes we can),
Clinton focused on I (The Strength and Experience to Make Change Happen). Accoring
to this book, one analysis found that Obama used the word we 6x more than I." In
Clintons case, it was the opposite. We know how that played out.
After a public scandal about people overdosing on Tylenol, they had a responsible dosing
campaign. It said something like if you dont use our product responsibly, better dont
use it at all. Lots of people thought the campaign is going to flopbut it didnt. People
felt that Tylenol put people before profits, and they ate it right up. Crisis averted.
Whats in it for me?
Every visitor on your site cares the most about themselves (and their family). They dont
really care much about you.
Hence, avoid language thats about you and make it solely about them and how they can
benefit.
The process
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Use this three-step sequence to get people to believe what you write.
1. Engage first
When was the last time somebody changed your point of view about something? People
rarely do, especially when someone is trying to make them change it.
People believe messages that already represent their world view, that validate
their beliefs.
Politics is the best example. When you hear a party you dislike make a statement, youre
almost certain to disbelieve them. And vice versa.
Morgan Stanley screwed up the Facebook IPOand many people went I knew the banks
were rotten to the core!." They were interpreting the news in a way that validated their
beliefs about the huge financial corporations.
Since you cant target everyone anyway, its definitely a good idea to target people by
their beliefs, by their world view. If you are like your customers, theyre much more likely
to do business with you. If you dont know what their world view is, you better start talking
to them to find out.
If your target group has various belief systems, the best way to get through
to them is to start with engagement.
Get them to agree with you first, find common ground before proceeding.
Lets say you want to reform the tax code. People have very different ideas about how it
should work. But pretty much everybody can still agree that the tax system should be fair
and support economic growth. Once we have established that, we can continue to a
constructive discussion.
So engage first.
LessAccounting draws you in with a statement a lot of people resonate with: All small
business accounting software sucks, but they quickly do themselves a disservice by
claiming we suck the least." People dont believe superlatives (see above).
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2. Get them to agree with the problem
Its difficult to agree on the best way forward if we havent agreed on the problem first.
Once you have engaged the prospect and drawn them in, the next step is to validate the
problem.
As neuromarketing research has shown, you have a much better chance of closing the
sale when you get people to acknowledge the pain (the greater the pain, the higher the
chance of sale).
Its important to know the language your customers use when describing the pain.
Conduct user surveys and pay attention to the exact wording they use. Remember, you
need to join the conversation in your customers mind.
3. Avoid hard sell, help them find the right solution
The days when aggressive closing techniques and hard sell prevailed, are pretty much
over. Nobody likes to be put under sales pressureit makes people want to run away,
and it boosts their skepticism. The best way to close the sale is to provide neutral,
objective information and let the customer decide for themselves.
The old school method is to say we are the best. The new school is to ask what are
your needs?, to listen, then point out your strenghts and mention all the other suppliers
out there along with their advantages. This is the way to win customers trust.
People want somebody they can trust, not somebody who says trust me.
While your competitors claim theyre the best, the fastest, the cheapest, you can stand
out by helping customers make the best choice for them (even if its using somebody
elses products).
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Never claim that your solution is the ideal fit for everyone. Its not and you know it.
Instead, listen to them and suggest a solution that is best for their situation.
Red Cappi claims to be the best email marketing tool to boost my business. Finally! I was
looking for the one thats best for meIll sign right up! Or on second thought not
gonna happen.
Be honest about your weaknesses
One of the best things you can do to build trust is to be honest about your shortcomings.
No product in the world is the best for everybody, and the customers know it. Be
straightforward about your weaknesses and mention which competitors can offer the
value that you cant.
Im sure you know the famous Listerine ads from the 1970s that said the taste you hate,
twice a day." When the competing product Scope was touting its great taste, Listerine
people responded by admitting the terrible tasteand making a point that its a
necessary trade-off to achieve the superb effectiveness.
Or maybe youve seen this ad:
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Volkswagen people knew well that the bug was ugly, and they were upfront about it. They
mentioned itmaking it thereby a non-issueand focused on its mechanical qualities
and durability.
People know that ideal, perfect products do not exist. Theyve never bought one. So stop
saying yours is.
Research confirms that balanced arguments are more persuasive.
Bottom line: If youre honest about your weaknesses, youre more human and more
trustworthy.
Be honest, always
The best way to come across honest and authentic isby being honest and authentic.
Always and over a long period of time. If you always stick to your word, people will
believe you.
A great way to build a business is by building an audience who is looking forward to your
messages (permission marketing at its best). The foundation of this is always being
honest.
People yearn for authenticity and honesty, and will reward you for that. We hear about
corrupt politicians and business executives all the time. Theres an inherent distrust
against businesses.
The world is flooded with scammy internet marketers that send you fake urgency
emails and what not. Dont be that guy.
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Should you say read more or product information in your product category view?
Which is betteradd to cart or buy now?
Theres a lot of information out there on call to action buttons (size, color, location etc),
but with this post I want to focus on a single thing about themthe wording.
Im giving you four rules for naming your call to action buttons and links.
1. Use trigger words
While people are browsing your site, theyre having a silent conversation in their mind.
Theyre asking themselves where is X? or how do I do Y? In most cases, people are
looking for a specific wording.
Trigger words are the words and phrases that trigger a user into clicking. If the user is
looking for pricing, and your link says pricing, theyre going to click on it. So in this
case pricing would be the trigger word.
Lets say you want to find pricing information for backup service Crashplan. Where would
you click?
What To Call Your Call To Action
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People wont go for the free trial without knowing what its going to cost them after the
trial period is over. Dont do this at home.
When people scan your web page and cant find what they want (either the content or
the link to it), you have a problem.
Dont be clever, dont re-invent the wheel
Remember, people spend most of their time on OTHER websites and are used to
common wordings like pricing or login. If you try to be original and use see how cheap
it is and entry instead, youre doing yourself a disservice.
So first thing, talk to your user base and try to understand which particular words they
are looking for.
2. Call it what it does
The web is filled with bad call to actions (CTAs). The reason is that most people dont
think for themselves, but just copy others. Or just dont know any better.
Here are some you will recognize.
Submit. Nobody wants to submit. Perhaps they want to subscribe to a newsletter,
send a message or post a questionbut definitely not submit. Always call your form
CTAs by the specific action they perform. What happens after the users clicks? If they
sign up for something, make that the call to action!
Read more. About what? Make it specificwhats there behind the link.
Next. What comes next? I dont know! This causes click fear. Say what comes next.
When calling the user to action, instead of the above mentioned vague words, use brief
but meaningful link text that explains what the link or button offers.
There is one exceptionclick here (now). Ive seen many tests where click here
performs really well. Heres a MarketingSherpa study that found the same. Also note that
this only applies to the call to action. You should not turn click here into a link in the
general body copy, always use contextual wording.
Owen and Freds email capture box has subscribe as the call to action. I think everybody
gets what happens after clicking the button. (But they should work on the value
proposition of the form).
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Also, avoid CTAs like click here to discover X or learn more about how we got started.
Avoid the click and learn more part, theyre just plain unnecessaryuse just discover X
or how we got started.
Dont be verbose. Use terms people understand.
3. Dont rush commitment
Most people are commitment-averse. The bigger the commitment that is being asked of
us, the less likely we are to go for it.
Volunteer at a homeless shelter for a day? Hmm.. well, I guess I could Volunteer three
days a week for one year? No, thanks (some excuse).
Following the same principle, dont ask for a commitment when you can delay it. The best
example would be buy now vs add to cart. When buy now seems awfully final, add to
cart seems kind of risk-free and leaves the door open for changing the mind.
Seminole Sitters have this call to action on their site. The funny thing is that when you
click pay now, you actually cant pay! A clear case where a much better call to action
could be made.
When you write your next call to action, evaluate the level of commitment youre asking
and see if you can lessen it.
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4. Add benefits
If its not just another link, but a call to action on your landing page (or any other
important page), you might want to add some punch to it.
You should definitely have a great sales copy before the CTA, but since people dont read,
you should communicate some value also next to the call to action itself.
Vimeo Pro says Get PRO Now! (I like how clear it is, but Id lose the exclamation mark),
and adds that its only $199/year!. Since that really is a good deal for professional video
hosting, it adds to the attractiveness of the CTA.
Ganttic addresses customer anxiety by adding no credit card required to their call to
action:
Conclusion
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Make your call to action link or button texts clear, use trigger words, go easy on the
commitment and add some extra motivation to take action.
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Value proposition is the number one thing that determines whether people will bother
reading more about your product or hit the back button. Its also the main thing you need
to testif you get it right, it will be a huge boost. If I could give you only one piece of
conversion advice , test your value proposition would be it.
The less known your company is, the better value proposition you need. When I reviewed
a bunch of websites, the conclusion was that missing or poor value proposition is one of
the most common shortcomings.
What exactly is a value proposition?
A value proposition is a promise of value to be delivered. Its the primary reason a
prospect should buy from you.
In a nutshell, value proposition is a clear statement that
explains how your product solves customers problems or improves their situation
(relevancy),
delivers specific benefits (quantified value),
tells the ideal customer why they should buy from you and not from the competition
(unique differentiation).
You have to present your value proposition as the first thing the visitors see on your
home page, but should be visible in all major entry points of the site.
Its for people to read and understand
Value proposition is something real humans are supposed to understand. Its for people
to read. Heres an example of what a value proposition is NOT supposed to be like:
Revenue-focused marketing automation & sales effectiveness solutions unleash
collaboration throughout the revenue cycle
Would you be able to explain to your friend what the offer is and how theyd benefit?
Didnt think so. Unfortunately its no joke. Such meaningless jargon-propositions are
Value Proposition Examples
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Didnt think so. Unfortunately its no joke. Such meaningless jargon-propositions are
abundant. Avoid blandvertising at all costs.
Use the right language
Your value proposition needs to be in the language of the customer. It should join the
conversation that is already going on in the customers mind. In order to do that you
need to know the language your customers use to describe your offering and how they
benefit from it.
You cannot guess what that language is. The way YOU speak about your services is often
very different from how your customers describe it . The answers are outside of your
office. You have to interview your customers to find it out, or use social media.
What the value proposition is NOT
Its not a slogan or a catch phrase. This is not a value proposition:
LOral. Because were worth it.
Its not a positioning statement. This is not a value proposition:
Americas #1 Bandage Brand. Heals the wound fast, heals the hurt faster.
Positioning statement is a subset of a value proposition, but its not the same thing.
What the value proposition consists of
The value proposition is usually a block of text (a headline, sub-headline and one
paragraph of text) with a visual (photo, hero shot, graphics).
There is no one right way to go about it, but I suggest you start with the following
formula:
Headline. What is the end-benefit youre offering, in 1 short sentence. Can mention
the product and/or the customer. Attention grabber.
Sub-headline or a 2-3 sentence paragraph. A specific explanation of what you
do/offer, for whom and why is it useful.
3 bullet points. List the key benefits or features.
Visual. Images communicate much faster than words. Show the product, the hero
shot or an image reinforcing your main message.
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Evaluate your current value proposition by checking whether it answers the questions
below:
What product or service is your company selling?
What is the end-benefit of using it?
Who is your target customer for this product or service?
What makes your offering unique and different?
Use the headline-paragraph-bullets-visual formula to structure the answers.
How to create a winning value proposition?
The best value proposition is clear: what is it, for whom and how is it useful? If those
questions are answered, youre on the right path. Always strive for clarity first.
If your value proposition makes people go hmph?," youre doing it wrong. If they have to
read a lot of text to understand your offering, youre doing it wrong. Yes, sufficient
amount of information is crucial for conversions, but you need to draw them in with a
clear, compelling value proposition first.
Research by MarketingExperiments says that the key challenge companies have is
identifying an effective value proposition, followed by communicating it clearly.
What makes a good value proposition:
Clarity! Its easy to understand.
It communicates the concrete results a customer will get from purchasing and using
your products and/or services.
It says how its different or better than the competitors offer.
It avoids hype (like never seen before amazing miracle product), superlatives (best)
and business jargon (value-added interactions).
It can be read and understood in about 5 seconds.
Also, in most cases there is a difference between the value proposition for your company
and your product. You must address both.
Heres a value proposition worksheet you might find useful.
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How to craft a unique value proposition
A key role for the value proposition is to set you apart from the competition. Most people
check out 4-5 different options / service providers before they decide. You want your
offering to stand out in this important research phase.
So how do you make your offer unique? Often its hard to spot anything unique about
your offering. It requires deep self-reflection and discussion.
If you cant find anything, you better create something. Of course the unique part needs
to be something customers actually care about. No point being unique for the sake of
being unique (the ball bearings inside our bicycles are blue).
All supermarkets are pretty much the same, right? Well, no. Heres an example from
Austin, TX of how a supermarket can be unique.
Here are two articles that can help you with finding a theme or an angle for your value
proposition:
Value Propositions That Work
The Five Propositions that Help Companies Create Value for their Customers
The key thing to remember is that you dont need to be unique in the whole world, just in
the customers mind. The closing of a sale takes place in a customers mind, not out in
the marketplace among the competition.
Boosters for your value proposition
Sometimes its the little things that tip the decision in your favor. If all major things are
pretty much the same between your and your competitors offer, you can win by offering
small value-adds. I call them boosters.
These things work well against competitors who do not offer them. Boosters can be
things like
Free shipping
Fast shipping / Next day shipping
Free bonus with a purchase
Free setup / installation
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No setup fee
No long-term contract, cancel any time
License for multiple computers (vs 1)
(Better than) Money-back guarantee
A discounted price (for a product)
Customizable
You get the idea. Think what small things you could add that wouldnt cost you much, but
could be attractive to some buyers.
Make sure the booster is visible with the rest of the value proposition.
Example
Notice the free shipping signs on the left and top right? Those are boosters.
Good value proposition examples
Its tough to find perfect value proposition examples. Probably because its hard to create
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a great one. I find flaws or room for improvement with most value propositions I came
across.
Im also fully aware that Im not the ideal customer for many of the examples shown
below, and all my critique is, is an educated hypothesis (that should be tested).
Here are some good examples along with my comments:
CampaignMonitor
Comments
Very clear what it is and for whom
Specific lead paragraph
Key features outlined above the fold
A relevant image
Features a booster100 percent rebrandable
Stripe
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Comments
Its clear what it is and for whom
Specific benefit oriented sub-headline
Relevant visuals
Smooth transition into features and benefits
Geekdom
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Comments
Clear statement about what it is and for whom
List of benefits
Relevant image
Evernote
Comments
A different kind of layout, but well done. It tells a story of what and how . Easy to
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follow.
Key features / benefits listed along with relevant imagery
Remember everything is a good slogan, but Id add a specific sub-headline
underneath it for improved clarity.
Square
Comments
Very clear headline
Benefit and action oriented sub-headline
Key benefits clearly listed
Relevant image
Missing: comparison with the competition
Meetingburner
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Comments
The headline is very clear
The text paragraph is decent, but shouldnt start with a call to action
Comparison with the competition done (5x faster, free, mention of unique features)
I would definitely list the key benefits / features in bullets for improved readability
Prey
Comments
The headline does communicate an emotional benefit, but its not clear enough and
should be better. Its the first thing people read. Clarity would get an instant boost if
the headline would be something like Keep track of your laptop, phone or tablet. Get
it back when it gets stolen or lost.
The following paragraph does a good job explaining what it is.
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I would use an actual screenshot of the product to better demonstrate what it does.
It uses boosters like social media proof and respected logos.
Extra note: last week my laptop was stolen. 5 days later I got it back because I had Prey
installed on the laptop and I could track its location. I passed the info to the cops, who
retrieved it. Its awesomeinstall it on all your devices.
Poor value proposition examples
Some lessons from the department of dont do this."
Cloudflare:
I use this service myself and think its great, but they really need to do a better job.
Comments:
Dont rely on just the video to do the job. Your value proposition has to be in words
people can read. Video is extra, supplemental information.
Awful clarity: well supercharge your website? Nobody will understand what that
means.
Continuum Financial
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Comments
No proper value proposition in place at all. The readability is extremely poor. The text
is for reading, it should be minimum 14px.
Dont ever waste precious attention on useless headlines like Welcome to our
website." Have you ever seen a website where the visitors are not welcome?
The text is all about them." We are, we offer, we have. It should be about the
customer.
Jargon!
Image is relevant, but kind of cheesy stock photo. Use a more authentic image.
Testing value propositions
You definitely have to test your value proposition. How?
1. A/B testing
The best way is to craft two candidates (or more, if you have tons of traffic) and split test
them. Ideally you would measure sales conversions (for most accurate results), but if that
is not possible lead conversions or even clickthroughs will do.
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2. Pay per click advertising
A fast and cheap way to go about it is using Google AdWords or Facebook ads.
Basically you would split test ads with different value propositions, targeting the same
customer. The ad with higher CTR (clickthrough rate) is obviously a better attention
grabber and interest generator, although it doesnt necessarily mean higher sales
conversions.
Send the traffic to a corresponding landing page and test conversions, too.
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Why is it that some books become bestsellers and other can hardly sell a 100 copies?
Why is it that some books you read with passion and interest, with some you cant get
past the first 10 pages? Whats the difference.
Its simple: the choice of words. Which words you use in what order make all the
difference! It doesnt matter if its books or websites, but words do matter, so pick your
words carefully. As Mark Twain said, the difference between the right word and the
almost right word is the difference between lightning and a lightning bug."
Here are the principles of writing good sales copy.
1. Who are you talking to?
Look at the three pictures below. A skater dude, a busy mom and a backpacker. If youre
writing sales copy for a product, you should always talk to a specific person in mind.
You should talk differently to all of the people belowno brainer, right? Still most people
try to write copy that works for everybody. Try to figure out what is the common
denominator between all the potential buyers.
Create a customer persona, describe this person and give it a name. Imagine what this
person is like, how he spends his days and what are the key issues for him. Your sales
copy will be much better if you write it with a specific person in mind.
2. Youre writing to your friend (wife, colleague etc)
Dont forget youre dealing with people. Even if you sell B2B products, theres always a
person with a name and an identity reading your copy and making decisions.
7 Principles of Effective Sales Copy
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If you know this, then why are you writing business jargon? Forget buzzwords (social
media management system) and nonsense that doesnt mean anything (flexible
solutions). Say it as it is.
Use the friend test. Read your copy and if you spot a sentence you wouldnt use in a
conversation with your friend, change it.
Human relationships are about communicating. Business jargon should be banished in
favour of simple English. Simplicity is a sign of truth and a criterion of beauty. Complexity
can be a way of hiding the truth.Helena Rubinstein, CEO, www.labgroup.com.
3. Work hard to create a compelling headline
People dont read, they skim. The main thing they DO read is the headline, so make it
good. If the headline does not capture their attention and make them interested to read
further, the rest of the copy doesnt matter.
On the average, five times as many people read the headline as read the body copy.
When you have written your headline, you have spent eighty cents out of your
dollar.David Ogilvy, ad guru.
Questions to think about while coming up with a great headline:
What does your prospect care about the most?
What her biggest problem?
Biggest goal or dream?
How can you help her achieve it or solve it?
The best headlines communicate a direct benefit.
Its hard to know off the bat which headline will work the best. Test them.
4. Dont make them think
Thinking is hard. Most people dont want to do it.
They look at your copy and want to understand what is it that youre offering here. If its
not obvious in first seconds, they will move on.
Your main headline might be benefit-oriented, but underneath it describe in 2-3 lines
what your product is, does and who is it for. A photo or screenshot of the product is a
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smart idea to add, people get images much faster than text.
5. AVOID ALL CAPS AND DONT USE EXCLAMATION MARKS!!!
There are no good reasons to put your text in all-capital-letters. Putting a lot of words in
all caps or all bold slows down reading, comprehension, and interest.
Since there are more shape differences with lower case letters than with capitals, texts in
lower case are recognized faster than all caps.
Also, using more than one exclamation mark in a row shows youre 12 years old. Nobody
wants your stuff more just because you add exclamation marks. Au contraire.
6. Readability matters
If you want people to read your text, make it readable. Even the most interesting copy in
the world is not read if the readability is poor.
Key things to improve readability:
Font size minimum14px, preferably 16px
Line height 24px
New paragraph every 3-4 lines (empty line between paragraphs)
Use sub-headlines as much as you can (at least after every 2 paragraphs)
Use images to break text apart. People read more if patterns are broken.
Line width max 600 px. If your lines are too long, people wont read them.
Dark text on a light background, ideally black text on white background.
7. Long or short?
Tests have shown that 79 percent of people dont read, they just skim. However, 16
percent read everything.
Those 16 percent are your main target group, the most interested people. If people are
not interested in what you are selling, it doesnt matter how long or short your sales copy
is. If they are interested, you should give them as much information as possible. A study
by IDC showed that 50 percent of the uncompleted purchases were due to lack of
information.
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They can always skip parts and click the buy button once they have the information
they need. But if they read through the whole thing and theyre still not convinced or
have questions, then you have a problem.
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If youre ever going to sell anything online, copywriting is a much needed skill. The
conventional copywriting wisdom says that you should more or less try stick to the
following formula:
1. Tell the reader you understand their need,
2. Tell your prospect why your product is the best solution they can buy,
3. Offer all kinds of proof like testimonials, charts and so on,
4. Explain all the ways the product will benefit the customer,
5. Present the price in a way that makes it sound like a great deal,
6. Give a (better than) money-back guarantee,
7. Add bonus products to really motivate the customer to buy,
8. Make it a limited time or quantity offer,
9. Ask for the sale and tell them exactly what steps to take.
Is the exact sequence that persuades people or why should this work? What scientific
data is available to use about persuasion? Which research can we rely on to make our
writing more persuasive?
Heres a summary of the most prominent books and publications on the matter.
The work of Robert Cialdini
Mr. Cialdini is undoubtedly the biggest authority on the field. His books are bestsellers and
have been in the must-read list for marketers and copywriters for years.
Cialdini came up with six scientific principles of persuasion that will help guide you to
become more effective at getting people do what you want. In case you have no idea
Copywriting Based on the Science
of Persuasion
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what those principles are, then heres the summary:
Principle 1: Reciprocity
People feel obligated to give back to others who have given to them.
How to use it: teach your prospect something useful in your copy, give away free stuff
and better yetadd value to your prospects long before you even start to sell them
something.
Principle 2: Liking
We prefer to say yes to those we know and like.
How to use it: talk/write like a human, connect with the reader, share details about
yourself. Blog. Be friendly and cool (like Richard Branson).
Principle 3: Social proof
People decide whats appropriate for them to do in a situation by examining and following
what others are doing.
How to use it: show how many others are already using your product. Show off your
numbers. Use testimonials. Link to 3rd-party articles.
Principle 4: Authority
People rely on those with superior knowledge or perspective for guidance on how to
respond AND what decision to make.
How to use it: Demonstrate your expertise. Show off your resume and results. Get
celebrity (in your niche) endorsements.
Principle 5: Consistency
Once we make a choice/take a stand, we will encounter personal and interpersonal
pressure to behave consistently with that commitment.
How to use it: Start small and move up from there. Sell something small first (a no-
brainer deal), even if you make no money on it. They now see themselves as your
customer, and will be much more likely to return to make a larger purchase.
Principle 6: Scarcity
Opportunities appear more valuable when they are less available.
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How to use it: Use time or quantity limited bonuses. Limit access to your product.
Promote exclusivity.
SEOmoz has a great illustrated article on all of these principles. Naturally you can get the
full picture of these principles from his book Influence. His other bookYes! 50
Scientifically Proven Ways to Be Persuasivebuilds on that and adds some practical
ideas. See the list of these 50 ways here.
Robert Gifford and five elements of an effective message
Mr. Gifford is a professor of Psychology and Environmental Studies at the University of
Victoria. He is co-author of a relatively recent American Psychological Association
reportthat examined the interface between psychology and climate change.
He explains what makes people receptive and how to get messages across effectively:
It has to have some urgency.
It has to have as much certainty as can be mustered with integrity.
There cant be just one message: there must be messages targeted to different
groups.
Messages should be framed in positive terms. People are less willing to change their
behaviour if you tell them they have to make sacrifices. If you tell them they can be in
the vanguard, be a hero, be the one that helpsthat works.
You have to give people the sense that their vote counts and that their effort wont be
in vain.
While his work focused on the message of climate change, it will work in your sales copy
too.
The art of persuasion by Angela Lee and Brian Sternthal
Research by Kellogg professors Angela Lee and Brian Sternthal offers insight into
effective messaging. In a study in the Journal of Consumer Research, Kellogg professors
say the key to an effective message is finding the fit between the consumers goals and
the level of abstraction.
The researchers found that when consumers aimed to fulfill aspirations and satisfy
achievement goals, more abstract messagesfor example, those highlighting the
freedom TiVo providesstimulated favorable brand evaluations. On the other hand,
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consumers who sought to fulfill their responsibilities and satisfy their security goals were
more persuaded by concrete messages, such as those emphasizing TiVos replay and
slow-motion features.
So this means that first you have to figure out the emotional vibe of your prospector
figure out what kind of motivations youre targeting with your product. If you get it right
and the level of abstraction fits the goal, people understand messages better and are
more easily persuaded.
Messages that stick
Mark Twain once observed, A lie can get halfway around the world before the truth can
even get its boots on.
Isnt that true? Some storiesespecially urban legends, conspiracy theories, and scandals
circulate effortlessly. Meanwhile, people who really try to spread their ideas
businesspeople, scientists, politicians, journalists, and othersstruggle to get anyone to
remember what they said.
Two brothers, Chip Heath (a Stanford Business school professor) and Dan Heath (a
corporate education consultant at Duke) found after extensive research that the ideas
that stick all share the following six principles:
1. SimplicityYour message has to be simplestripped down to its core intent. You
must come up with a profound compact phrase that would summarize your whole
premise.
2. UnexpectedIn order to capture someones attention, you need to break a pattern
in other words to present the unexpected. You need to understand and play with two
essential emotionssurprise and interest. Surprise gets our attention and interest
keeps our attention. Got a conventional product? Get a new one.
3. ConcretePeople wont remember vague stuff. What helps people understand new
concepts is concrete language. Concreteness is an indispensable component of sticky
ideas. Dont say fast acceleration, say 0 to 60 mph in 3 seconds.
4. CredibleYou need somebody who people trust to confirm your case. The
trustworthiness of your source makes all the difference. People need something /
someone credible in order to believe you.
5. EmotionalFeelings inspire people to act. If you story does not invoke any emotions,
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youve lost.
6. StoriesHow do you get people to act on your idea? A credible idea make speople
believe. An emotional idea makes people care. Put both of them together into an idea
as stories have the amazing dual power to stimulate and to inspire.
Remember to read their excellent book Made to Stick.
Buy buttons in the brain
Research in neuromarketing (put together in this book) reveals interesting things about
our brains. As it turns out, we have 3 brains. Well, not really, but the brain does have 3
layers. Each layer has its own functions: the New Brain thinks, the Middle Brain feels
and the Old Brain decidesit reviews input from the other two brains and controls the
decision making process.
The Old Brain is the part that humans (and its predecessors) have had the longestlike
160 million years or so. So the part of the brain that controls decisions is pretty primitive
and mostly concerned with survival.
Were usually trying to talk to the New Brainthe sophisticated onebut its the brute
that makes all the decisions, so we need to dumb it down. Heres the formula:
Selling probability = Pain x Claim x Gain x (Old Brain)3
First you need to identify the prospects pain (the greater the pain, the higher the chance
of sale) and make sure they acknowledge the pain before you start to sell them anything.
Second, youve got to differentiate your claims from your competitors. The strongest
claim is the one that eliminates the strongest pain.
Next you have to show convincing proof of these claims. The Old Brain is resistant to
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new ideas and concepts, so your proof must be very convincing. Show tangible evidence,
data, testimonials, case studies.
And finallydeliver to the Old brain. You need to start with a grabbersomething that
really gets the attention (if youre selling fire extinguishers, start with fire, like Ogilvy
said). Secondthe Old brain is visual, hence start with a big picture.
Rememberthe Old brain is concerned with survival. So it only cares about itself and
not anyone else. Your message needs to be entirely about the prospect.
Get the book to find out about all the other ways to push the right buttons in the brain.
Last but not least
You can find lots of good stuff from a book that is now freely available (as it was written
in 1923)Scientific Advertising by Claude C. Hopkins. Heres the link to the free pdf
download.
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No, its not a modern day phobia. Its when people are not sure what will happen after
they click. So in most cases they wont.
If you want to get people to click on your buttons, make them feel in control. Its the
uncertainty that kills the clicks.
People like to feel in control
People feel much more comfortable when they know exactly whats going to happen.
Thats why most people go to places theyre used to and use things theyre familiar with.
People fear the unknown.
Go over there and say hi
And then what do I say?
This hypothetical conversation between teenage boys is about click fear. If you come
across a new situation for the first time, you feel anxious. The way to overcome it is to be
preparedto know what will happen and what you can do.
One of the chacters in the book The Game told me the #1 benefit that nerds get from
learning pickup artistry is confidence of knowing what to do.
Knowing what makes us feel at ease.
People want to know why they are being asked to do something
If somebody comes up to you and says roll your eyes 3 times and then look down. Are
you going to do it? Most people would probably say why?. People always want to know
the why.
So the best way to combat click fear is through clarity: answer the what and why.
Examples of click fear
Electricity Wizard:
Click Fear and How to Avoid It
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They want my name, phone and zip code. Call to action says get a fast quote. Question:
Do you know what will happen after you click? Is it clear? No (= click fear).
Many bad things might possibly happen. Anyone who has gotten insurance quotes online
knows that all hell might break loose and you might get 20 sales guys calling you the next
second. Nobody wants that.
If you ARE going to call, its also better to say itit sets the expectation. Now when your
salespeople call, they (probably) wont be hung up on (as fast). When people get
someone selling to them over the phone, and theyre not expecting the call, theyre not
going to want to listen to it.
What they got right is answering the why part.
CareOne:
This is is a landing page for a debt relief service. They ask for sensitive data, and the call
to action is extremely vague get solutions now.
They do include the text find out how much you can save and no commitment, but I
still dont get a picture what exactly will happen after I fill the form. Will you show me the
answer instantly? Will somebody call me? Email me?
Firebase:
Build a sample app in 5 minutes is quite descriptive, but I still dont have a clear picture
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of whats going to happen when I click. Since no data is asked, I bet they get a lot of
clickn'backs (click, then hit back).
Suggested improvement: add a line below the call to action to explain what awaits on the
other side.
Good examples
Polls.io:
Click fear is removed by not asking for a click. Instead, they merely ask you to write a poll
question.
Once you do it, the form gets extended (whats up is what I wrote there):
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Now the call to action says Create this poll. Im very clear what will happenIm
creating the very poll I just wrote a question for!
Nest:
They use clarity (no doubt whats going to happen) and low commitment. This is of course
a much simpler case compared to asking for a signup.
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Chatenvy:
Clear description of what happens after clicking the button. Clear call to action.
Britannica Online:
Very clear copy and call to action. Additional fears mitigated with the risk free thing.
Conclusion
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Do a quick usability test for each call to action. Ask a stranger (preferably your ideal
customer) what they think happens after they click? Do they have any fears, doubts?
Make it clear what happens after the click, why they should do it and address any fears.
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VII.
Pricing
How to Build Websites that Sell:... Pricing
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If you run a SaaS (software as a service) business or only sell one product (with some
options), you probably have a dedicated pricing page for the whole thing. Heres how to
get it right.
1. Simple is best
Some fundamental truths:
People dont read, they skim.
Nobody likes complicated stuff. Nobody enjoys figuring stuff out.
People prefer things that are easy to understand.
Conclusion: make your pricing simple, and the pricing page easy to understand.
When you start building your pricing page, the #1 question you have to ask yourself is
how can we make this as easy as possible?
LessMeeting improved conversions after simplifying its pricing. Ash Maurya found that
simplest pricing sold the best.
Can you figure out how much Vimeo Plus costs?
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Simple = #winning.
Subway found success with its $5 footlong sandwich campaign. Fiverr probably wouldnt
have become known if it hadnt had the $5 pricing policy. Apple gets it. The new iPad
costs $499. Old one $399. Simple pricing works.
Tiered pricing is the standard for SaaS companies, and many follow suit blindly. But
maybe you should get rid of it? Assistly (now desk.com) did just that.
Todays businesses want to buy SaaS services like they buy apps in the Apps Store. We
saw an opportunity to simplify our pricing and drive customer satisfaction through the
roof.Matt Trifiro, senior vice president of marketing.
My point is not that you should get rid of tiered pricing, but that you should strive for
simplicityeven if it means disrupting the norm.
2. Make it easy to compare
People do research, and compare your offer to a couple of alternatives. You want to
come out as a winner from these comparisons.
Lets say Im looking for a social media monitoring service.
Im an educated buyer, I know what my needs are, so Im not going to read through the
websites, Im just going to quickly look at the pricing of different options out there. This
is how most users compare options. They will only pay extended amount of attention
when the first conditions have been met.
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Plans have another role to play besides getting people to sign up. Theyre also there to
help people understand what they want. As Dan Ariely put itmost people dont know
what they want unless they see it in context. The options on different plans should
communicate whats possible.
Trackur is doing many things well, and some things not so much. The prices are hugeso
they get more focus than the features / benefits. If youre not competing on price, might
not be a good idea.
What I like is the how the features are presentedwell built for the browsers doing
comparison shopping (and +1 for the tooltips).
On the negative side, the feature list is kind of long and doesnt even fit on the same
screen with prices. Its a tough challenge for the designers, I know. Theyve still done
much better than some horrible examples.
Oh, and lose the exclamation marks.
Some companies make it hard to compare on purpose
Of course, you could try a radically different approach and make it very difficult to
compare. Supermarkets and airlines do just thaton purpose. The cost of flying from
point A to point B is not that straightforward.
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point A to point B is not that straightforward.
For most travelers, the air fare is now the starting point rather than the end point in
calculating what your trip cost will be, said Henry Harteveldt, an analyst at Forrester
Research. You cant rely on average airfare data anymore.
Theres the price of the seat, then fees for checked luggage (often different for 1st and
2nd), sometimes even for carry-on bags, food and so on.
Why do they do this? Nickel-and-diming you is one, but also so you wouldnt be (easily)
able to compare their offer to the competition, and decide on the price.
A common way to confuse people is to see in bulk. We know more or less how much a
carton of eggs should cost. What about a bulk offer of 48 eggs? People assume that
buying in bulk is cheaper, but often its actually more expensive.
While it may work for some companies, I advise against it. As simple as possible pricing
will work the best for 9 out of 10 companies.
3. Help people choose a plan
When you offer a choice of plans, people need to make a choice. The easier it is to
understand the differences between plans, the easier it is to choose.
I like how Viddler explains who is which plan for:
What theyre doing a lousy job with is communicating the features of each plan.
Their competitor Vzaar is using meaningless names for their plans, which is unfortunately
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pretty common. Professional? As in not amateur? Blaah.
What Vzaar is doing well is emphasizing one of the plans. It draws the eye and suggests a
safe option. When in doubt, the user can pick that one.
Which plan to emphasize?
There is no single best way to go about it. I would test these options:
The middle option. It makes sense to suggest the middle plan as most people
usually prefer something in the middle anyway.
What fits most users the best. From user experience perspective you should
suggest the plan that (honestly) fits the majority of the visitors the best. Hopefully
youve planned your plans well.
The most expensive one. Price anchoring! Lets say your most expensive option is
$990/mo. If you emphasize this plan, thats the first price they will see. Nextthey see
the middle plan is just $59/mo. Suddenly it looks cheap.
Free / Trial. Suggest the plan with the least amount of friction. Get them to sign up
and see for themselves that your product is wicked (and its worth it to upgrade).
4. Address FUDs
FUDsfears, uncertainties, doubts. Whenever you ask for money, there is friction. You
cannot remove friction, but you can minimize it.
The best way to overcome objections is to prevent them from happening. First, make a
list of all the possible reasons why somebody might NOT want to buy your thing (better
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yet, survey your leads and customers). Identify which FUDs are most common. Second,
write an answer to all those fears and doubts.
The result might be something like this:
What if its not what Im looking for? -> We offer a full 30-day no questions
asked money back guarantee. If you dont like it, you get all your money back.
I dont think it will work in my case. -> Show or link to testimonials / case studies
where people like X have used it successfully.
and so on. Now work with your designer to find a place on your pricing page to include
this.
See how Kajabi is doing it. Notice the guarantee, testimonials and FAQ section right below
the pricing plans:
Trust and security
Will my credit card data be safe? Am I the only idiot buying this stupid thing?
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These might be subconscious questions, but theyre there for a lot of peopleso address
it.
Sprout Social shows customer logos for social proof (and some testimonials):
5. Offer currency options
Its a global world. If you offer your product in euros, pounds or Canadian dollars to
Americans, this will cause some friction. And probably US dollars are difficult for some
Europeans.
I dont have exact data on how many people are negatively affected by seeing prices in
foreign currencies, but reading this thread on HackerNews (predominantly US audience)
gives some idea:
Would you buy a service that bills only in ?
is OK70 votes
is OK but I would really prefer $ if possible65 votes
is not OK at all19 votes
I would not buy in $, but only in 5 votes
So out of a total of 159 votes 84 (~52.8 percent) would want to pay in dollars instead of
euros. Foreign currency is definitely causing some friction. Whats the todays rate? Do I
need to use a calculator? Does my bank take a cut? Since exchange rates change, and
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how much will I get billed each month?
People want to know how much theyre really paying!
The solution: give the option to see the prices in different currencies.
Basekit is a UK company. They show their prices both in pounds and dollars. Notice the
currency change icons.
6. Limit choice
Too much choice paralyzes.
Most popular number of pricing plans offered among SaaS companies seems to be 4.
While the linked article says it must be the wisdom of the crowds, I bet most of those
companies just decided on four plans on a whim, and never tested it.
RingCentral had 4 plans on their pricing page, and they decided to test it. The page that
showed three plans increased conversions from the control (four plans) by more than
37 percent. The page that showed two plans decreased conversions.
However, when you go to RinCentral pricing page today, it has four plans again (couldnt
find a case study to explain why). They must have conducted new tests and found a new
winning page. Do your own testing.
You might have heard that choices should always be limited to 7 +/-2. Its a myth.
Three options is definitely safe and not too much. Animoto pricing page:
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7. Incentivize up-front payments
Cash is king, and having users pay up front for a longer period (year, 2 years) is good for
cash flow.
The main goal for the pricing page is to get users to sign upso dont be too aggressive
with the upsell.
Optimizely offers 3 options right above the plans, and defaults to one year (10 percent
off). I like how subtle, yet insistent it is.
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GetResponse inserts the up-front payment price right into the plans. The users will focus
on the annual price first.
I wonder how many are so bummed when they find out they have to pay more for
month-to-month that they leave altogether. Only one way to find out!
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8. Add playfulness
People like to play. They like to press buttons, drag stuff, and watch cause-and-effect
take place.
A great way to increase engagement on the pricing page is to add some playfulness.
Heres Herokus pricing page. You can drag the Web Dynos and Worker Dynos sliders
and the price changes before your eyes. Click on the link and go play.
Was it fun?
Many people think so. One guy on a HackerNews thread about Herokus pricing page:
I literally spent ~15 minutes just playing with it!
Talk about engagement! How many other pricing pages do you know where people hang
out for 15 minutes?
We did something similar for Traindom. People can drag the slider to see their
hypothetical monthly payment.
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People absolutely love it, and almost every visitor spends some time toying with it. The
problem we had is that the numbers we showed were too confusing for some, and live
chat was bombarded with clarifying questions. Simplify!
(And use live chat for instant feedback).
9. Clear call to action
The call to action button design, size and wording matter.
The best starting point is to make the CTA buttons big and avoid saying buy now. I yet
have to see a test where buy now performed better than the alternatives (add to cart,
get started, choose plan etc).
Mixergy just uses the names of the plans as calls to action:
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Once you have the fundamentals in place, you can test colors and other minor things.
10. Tell them what happens next
People like to feel in control. Thats why the elevators include the close doors button. (It
doesnt actually do anything).
On the pricing page, they want to know what happens next. Make it clear what are the
next steps, whats going to happen after they pay. Put them in control of over the
process. Youre dealing with their hard-earned money, nobody likes surprises in this
phase.
Awe.sm is getting it right by showing a liner flow of steps above the plans:
What about having the sign-up form on the pricing page?
Its something you have to test, but usually from the user experience point of view you
shouldnt include anything on the page the user doesnt expect. Remember, people
spend most of their time on OTHER websites. Most pricing pages dont have a form right
there, so people are used to expecting a call to action.
Seeing a sign-up form right there might seem like a sales pressure, a distraction. It will
take away the focus from choosing the right plan (and will cause some people to flee).
Do your own testing
Dont just copy and assume stuff. Interview your customers. Try to understand how they
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shop for the things you sell. Simplify.
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Somebody asked me the other day how can they charge more for their product. Like way
more than people are used to paying for products in that category. The solution: create a
new product category.
Many companies have done this successfully. All you have to do is call your product
something else and build a different kind of experience around it.
People have generally a pretty good idea how much things should costmostly because
they remember how much theyve paid for it.
If you create a new category, theres no price reference and people are much more likely
to accept any price you name.
I dont want a coffee, I want iced caramel macchiato
How did Starbucks get away with starting to charge $3 and more for coffee, when most
other cafes were charging $1 or so? They changed the experience of buying coffee, so
the perception of what people were getting, changed. It was like a different category
product.
Since the opening, theyve aimed to become the Third Place." Were in the business of
human connection and humanity, creating communities in a third place between home
and work, said Howard Schultz, CEO.
The Third Place concept informs the design of Starbucks shops. While coffee takes center
stage, the design is meant to make customers comfortable by mixing upholstered chairs
and sofas with hard-backed chairs around tables. Cool music in the background. Free
electricity and wifi.
This is the norm among coffee shops now (as is paying $3-$4 for coffee), but it didnt
used to be. Its category Starbucks built along with a price tag for it.
They also changed the name. Not just coffee, but Pikes Place brew or Skinny Iced
Invent A New Category, Charge
More
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Caramel Macchiato.
Can I borrow your writing instrument?
Mont Blanc doesnt call their product a pen in their catalog. They sell writing
instruments."
Reason: people will pay $680 for a writing instrument.
They can buy a perfectly functional pen at Wal-Mart for a dollar or less.
We dont sell used cars here
. we sell certified pre-owned vehicles." And that totally changes the game.
Vehicle sounds more impressive than car
Pre-owned removes the stigma of used and old
Certified directly addresses any fears and doubts regarding quality, wear and tear
In reality certified doesnt often mean much and you will find forum threads like
thiseverywhere, but it sure sounds good.
Which one would you wanta used car or a certified pre-owned vehicle?
While its not a new or changed category, its an example of how wording can help.
Theres a great book about this kind of stuff, called Words That Work.
Verizon LTE 4G
Did you see this SNL skit? Avoid this kind of product jargon:
This is a lesson that just putting a fancy names on something doesnt create a new
product category, but a whole lot of jargon.
Setting up a new successful product category
Creating a new category or niche means that, at first, you own it. Market development
and associated costs can be high, time horizons long, and you might fail miserably.
To be successful, you need a ton of money, the product category needs to be very
narrow (think gloves for touchscreen) and perceivably different from anything else in the
marketplace. This means you need to choose a product category where there is no-one
else (or if there are other players, they are unknown).
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Should you succeed, owning it means high eventual ROI. Once the category is
established, your brand will be the dominant oneenjoying high and profitable market
share.
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Lots of entrepreneurs struggle with pricing. How much to charge? Its clear that the right
price can make all the differencetoo low and you miss out on profit; too high and you
miss out on sales.
Dont ask, cant tell
Asking people what theyd pay for and how much rarely works. For one thing people will
tell you what they WANT to paywhich is obviously much less than what your product or
service is actually WORTH. Second, what people say and what people do are very
different things.
When it comes to money, people are unable to predict accurately whether theyd pay or
not. Its much easier to spend hypothetical dollars than real ones.
Also its worth remembering that people really dont know how much things are worth,
whats a fair price (which is the reason TV-shows like The Price is Right can actually
exist).
William Poundstone, the author Priceless: The Myth of Fair Value says this:
People tend to be clueless about prices. Contrary to economic theory, we dont really
decide between A and B by consulting our invisible price tags and purchasing the one that
yields the higher utility, he says. We make do with guesstimates and a vague recollection
of what things are supposed to cost.
People are weird and irrational, and theres much we dont understand. Like why do
shoppers moving in a counterclockwise direction spend on average $2.00 more at the
supermarket?
Why does removing dollar signs from prices (24 instead of $24) increase sales?
What will work for you depends on your industry, product and customer. When you try to
replicate what Valve did to increase their revenue 40x, it might not work for you, but then
Pricing Experiments You Might
Not Know But Can Learn From
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again, why not give it a try?
Heres a list of pricing experiments and studies you can get ideas from and test on your
own business.
The Economist and decoy pricing
Dan Ariely describes this famous example in his amazing book Predictably Irrational. He
came across the following subscription offer from The Economist, the magazine (hes
also explaining this in his TED talk here):
Both, the print subscription and Print and web subscription cost the same, $125 dollars.
Ariely conducted a study with his 100 bright MIT students. 16 chose option A and 84
option C. Nobody chose the middle option.
So if nobody chose the middle option, why have it? He removed it, and gave the
subscription offer to another 100 MIT students. This is what they chose now:
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Most people now chose the first option! So the middle option wasnt useless, but rather
helped people make a choice. People have trouble comparing different options, but if 2 of
the options given are similar (e.g. same price), it becomes much easier.
The same principle was used with travel packages.
When people were offered to choose a trip to Paris (option A) vs a trip to Rome (option
B), they had a hard time choosing. Both places were great, it was hard to compare them.
Now they were offered 3 choices instead of 2: trip to Paris with free breakfast (option A),
trip to Paris without breakfast (option A-), trip to Rome with free breakfast (option B).
Now overwhelming majority chose option A, trip to Paris with free breakfast. The
rationale is that it is easier to compare the two options for Paris than it is to compare
Paris and Rome.
A graph to describe this:
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So if you add a slightly worse option that is similar to A (call it A-), then its easy to see
that A is better than A-, hence many people choose that.
How you can use it: Add a decoy package or plan to your offer page, next to the offer
you really want them to take.
The magic of number 9
Go to Wal-Mart and you see prices ending with 9 everywhere. Does it really work? Surely
all intelligent people understand that $39 and $40 are basically the same.
Well, in eight studies published from 1987 to 2004 charm prices ($49, $79, $1.49 and so
on) were reported to boost sales by an average of 24 percent relative to nearby prices
(as per Priceless).
In one of the experiments done by University of Chicago and MIT, a mail order catalog
was printed in 3 different versions. One womens clothing items tested was sold for $39.
In experimental versions of the catalog, the company offered the same item for $34 and
$44. Each catalog was sent to an identically sized sample.
There were more sales at the charm price of $39 than at either of the other prices,
including the cheaper $34. $39 had both greater sales volume and greater profit per sale.
People used to download music for free, then Steve Jobs convinced them to pay. How? By
charging 99 cents.
The explanation of why numbers ending with 9 work better has been much debated over
the years. Mental rounding alone cant explain it. Seems that 9 truly is a magic number.
Is there anything that can outsell 9?
Researches found that sale price markers (with the old price mentioned) were more
powerful than mere prices ending with the number nine. In the following split test, the left
one won:
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9 not so magical after all? Not so fast!
Then they they split tested the winner above with a similar tag, but which had $39 instead
of $40:
This had the strongest effect of all.
Im wondering whether the effect of this price tag could be increased by reducing the
font size of $39. Say what?
Marketing professors at Clark University and The University of Connecticut found that
consumers perceive sale prices to be a better value when the price is written in a small
font rather than a large, bold typeface. In our minds, physical magnitude is related to
numerical magnitude.
Oh yeah, when you go to Nordstrom, you dont see any prices ending with a 9. The
subliminal message here is expect to pay."
Anchoring and the contrast principle
Do this test at home. Pour water in three bowls. Fill one bowl with cold water, the second
with hot water and third one with lukewarm water. Now stick one hand in the cold water
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and the other one in the (not too) hot water. Keep them there for 30 seconds or so. Now
put both of your hands into the lukewarm bowl. One hand will feel the water is warm, the
other one that its cold.
Its about the contrast. The same principle applies to price. Nothing is cheap or expensive
by itself, but compared to something.
Once youve seen a $150 burger on the menu, $50 sounds reasonable for a steak. At
Ralph Lauren, that $16,995 bag makes a $98 T-shirt look cheap.
Whats the best way to sell a $2,000 wristwatch? Right next to a $12,000 watch.
This mental process has a name. Its called anchoring and adjustment.
Anchoring
In the 1970s by two psychologists by the names of Tversky and Kahneman theorized that
suggesting an initial figure to a test subject caused that subject to use that number as a
starting point for estimating unknown quantities.
In their study test subjects were told the number 65 and then asked to estimate what
percentage of African nations were members of the UN. The average response was 45
percent. They then tested a second group but salted them with the number 10 and their
average response was 25 percent. Amazingly the group that was primed with the number
65 estimated nearly twice the true answer (23 percent) while the group primed with the
lower number estimated a lower percentage (much more accurately).
Anchoring influences prices
Poundstone describes an experiment done with real estate prices. The researchers
invited real estate experts and undergrad students to appraise a home for sale. All the
test subjects were given the information a buyers would normally have, including a list of
houses that recently sold, nearby houses currently for sale and so on + what the seller
had listed the house for.
The subjects were divided into four groups, each given a different listing price, and were
then asked to estimate what the home was worth.
These were the results:
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Anchoring worked even on real estate pros that had been selling properties in the area
for 10+ years. Next time somebody asks you for a rough estimate or a ballpark figure,
make sure its high!
How you can use it: Start throwing out high numbers. Add some very expensive
products to the selection (that you dont even intend to sell). If the final price of your
service / product is a result of negotiations, start high. If youre competing on price, state
how much others are charging before revealing your price.
Straightforward pricing
Ash Maurya, a startup entrepreneur, published an article on VentureHacks describing his
pricing experiments with a photo sharing service.
He tested a single, straightforward $49/yr offer vs 2 plans ($49/yr and $24/yr) vs 3 plans
(added a freemium plan).
The result? Surprisingly the single price offer won. Why? His own guess:
It does pay to align pricing with your overall positioning. Our unique value proposition is
built around being hassle-free and simple and people seemed to expect that in the
pricing model as well.
It might also be that in these complex and fast times we live in, people yearn for
simplicity.
Note: His freemium plan actually converted 12 percent more, but had the lowest
retention. Be careful when offering free plans. You might just end up with a ton of free
users to support and pay for.
How you can use it: Consider your positioning and see if you can align your pricing to
it. If youre offering different plans right now, experiment with a single plan.
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Pay what you wish
Pay what you want is a pricing system where buyers pay any desired amount for a given
product, or nothing at all. In some cases, a minimum is set, and/or a suggested price may
be indicated as guidance for the buyer. The buyer can also select an amount higher than
the standard price.
Suggested price
Suggested price can be a good idearemember anchoring? Setting a fair suggested
price gives the customer a true sense of value. It wont prevent low offers, but it will keep
more buyers in your ballpark.
What about counter-offering lowballs? The danger here would be to appear that youre
just toying with them and its not really pay what you wish." GetElastic brings this
example:
Coming back with counter-offers is merely e-bargaining. It reveals you have a reserve
price, and instead of offering a sale, customers must guess how low youll go. At worst,
customers may feel they are being gamed into pay more than a sale price.
Ashampoo Software (thats not a typo) gets downright insulting when you sink too low
below regular price. The snarky dialog box reads a condescending This offer is much
too low. Please enter a reasonable price. Users dont have time to play guessing games
about what is a reasonable offer only to be ridiculed by a script.
Gap tried a variation of this too. They offered customers a one-day opportunity to name
their price for certain styles of khaki pants on the www.gapmyprice.com microsite.
Lowball offers were returned with slightly higher prices by the Gap, which the customer
had one chance to accept or decline.
Since theyre not doing anymore, it probably did not go too well.
Well-known PWYW examples
In October 2007, the British band Radiohead launched their latest albumIn Rainbows
on the Internet. The band allowed fans to download the album freely and offer, in
retribution, any amount of money they would like. Later they disclosed that the download
of their new album generated more profit than the accumulated downloads from all
previous albums.
Panera Bread Co. used this same idea when it opened its first pay-what-you-want
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restaurant in Clayton, Mo. The company ended up making over $100,000 in revenue in
the first month alone. It opened its fourth restaurant of this kind in Portland, and said at
the time that about 20 percent of the visitors to the cafes leave more than the suggested
amount, 20 percent leave less and 60 percent pay what is suggested.
But nine months later its not doing so well. The Portland caf is only making about 60
percent of the revenue of a regular, full-paying location, compared to an 80 percent take
in the politer climes of St. Louis and Detroit. Also, the homeless tend to camp out there
and stay all day if they arent shooed away, so Panera had to hire a bouncer.
Its important to have fair minded customers for this model to work (homeless and
hungry people probably care more about being fed, than being fair).
Combine pay what you wish with charity
Theres some research that pay what you wish pricing works best when combined with
charity. Ayelet Gneezy, a marketing professor at the University of California-San Diego,
conducted a field experiment at a theme park (sample size: over 113,000).
Customers were presented four different pricing schemes for souvenir photos: a flat fee
of $12.95; a flat fee of $12.95 with half going to charity; pay-what-you-wish; and pay-
what-you-wish with half going to charity.
At a flat fee of $12.95 per picture, only 0.5 percent of people purchased a photograph;
when customers were told that half the $12.95 purchase price would go to charity, a
meager 0.59 percent purchased a photo. Under the simple pay-what-you-wish variation,
8.39 percent of people purchased a photo (almost 17 times more than before), but
customers paid only $.92 on average.
The final optionpay what you wish, with half the purchase price going to charity
generated big results: purchase rates of 4.49 percent and an average purchase price of
$5.33, resulting in significant profits for the theme park. This is a substantial result,
especially since it came from a real setting.
Of course, the anonymity of the Internet removes the social pressure one feels after
being served personally by a human being. Its one thing to have the amount you choose
observed and another thing to download stuff without being seen.
The book Smart Pricing suggested that successful pay what you want programs are
characterized by:
A product with low marginal cost
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A fair-minded customer
A product that can be sold credibly at a wide range of prices
A strong relationship between buyer and seller
A very competitive marketplace.
If this describes your business, give pay what you wish a go. Let us know the results.
Offering three options
The old truth about offering 3 pricing options holds water. Heres a pricing experiment in
selling beeragain from W. Poundstones amazing book Priceless.
People were offered two kinds of beer: premium beer for $2.50 and bargain beer for
$1.80. Around 80 percent chose the more expensive beer.
Now a third beer was introduced, a super bargain beer for $1.60 in addition to the
previous two. Now 80 percent bought the $1.80 beer and the rest $2.50 beer. Nobody
bought the cheapest option.
Third time around, they removed the $1.60 beer and replaced with a super premium
$3.40 beer. Most people chose the $2.50 beer, a small number $1.80 beer and arounf 10
percent opted for the most expensive $3.40 beer. Some people will always buy the most
expensive option, no matter the price.
You can influence peoples choice by offering different options. Old school sales people
also say that offering different price point options will make people choose between your
plans, instead of choosing whether to buy your product or not.
How to test it: Try offering three packages, and if there is something you really want to
sell, make it the middle option.
Price perceptions
Im sure you know the classic pennies-a-day effect: it costs less than $1 a day!." NPR
stations ask people to donate by joining their dollar-a-day club. Framed in that manner,
the donation seems quite reasonableabout the cost of a cup of coffee. Contrast that
with what would happen if they asked people to join their $365 a year club.
Neil Davidson writes this about price perceptions (in his book on software pricing called
Dont Just Roll the Dice):
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People base their perceived values on reference points. If youre selling a to-do list
application, then people will look around and find another to-do list application. If they
search the internet and discover that your competitors sell to-do list applications at $100
then this will set their perception of the right price for all to-do list applications.
If your product is more expensive than the common reference points, you need to
change the perception of the category youre in.
How did Starbucks get away with starting to charge $3 and more for coffee, when most
other cafes were charging $1 or so? They changed the experience of buying coffee, so
the perception of what people were getting, changed. It was like a different category
product.
They also changed the name. Not just coffee, but Pikes Place brew or Caramel
Macchiato.
If youre creating a new category, theres no price reference and people are much more
likely to accept any price you name.
How you can use it: If you want to charge more than the market average, look at the
competition: how they package their offering; whats the user experience like, and
change that. If you look like a new category, people are more likely to pay up.
On the other hand, if you can profitably sell something much cheaper than the other
guys, great. Use their pricing as the reference point and youll win.
Context sets perception
You are stranded on a beach on a sweltering day. Your friend offers to go for your
favorite brand of beer, but asks whats the most youre ready to pay for the beer?
This was the scenario for a pricing experiment conducted by Richard Thaler.
They tested two scenarios. In the first one the friend was going to get beer from the only
place nearby, a local run-down grocery store. In the second version, he was going to get
beer from the bar of a fancy resort hotel. The ambiance of the hotel was irrelevant, as
the beer was to be consumed on the beach.
Invariably, Thaler found, subjects agreed to pay more if they are told that the beer is
being purchased from an exclusive hotel rather than from a rundown grocery.
It strikes them as unfair to pay the same. This violates the bedrock principle that one
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Budweiser is worth the same as another, and it suggests that people care as much about
being treated fairly as they do about the actual value of what theyre paying for.
Thaler considered what his imaginary grocer could do to boost beer sales. He advised
investing in seemingly superfluous luxury or installing a bar." This would raise
expectations about what the proper price of beer would be, resulting in more purchases.
We happily pay $80 for 6 things in Whole Foods, but would consider that way too much in
a regular supermarket.
How you can use it: Invest in seemingly superfluous luxury. Use web design or
packaging that says expensive."
Can I split test the price?
Technically you can, but A/B testing your price is a dangerous territory. A number of
companies (Dell, Amazon and others) in the past have been caught and got in trouble for
doing just that, showing different price for the same product to different visitors.
A better and safer approach is to test the price across objects. Dont test the same
product for $19 vs $39. Rather you should test two different products that essentially do
the same thing, but just have a different price tag.
Before deciding on your pricing strategy, its worthwhile to read Cindy Alvarezs
article where she makes the point that price is not the only cost to consider. When
customers consider what something costs," theyre actually measuring three main
drivers: money (cost), time (how long will it take to learn?) and mental energy(how
much do I have to think about this?). Take into account the profile of your buyer.
Combine research from this article
It seems to me that you could combine a lot of the research covered here into a single
pricing experiment. How about this:
1. You create three different plans/packages, and intend to sell mainly the middle one. If
your product is expensive, make your website look expensive.
2. The first plan is a decoy. Its similar to the middle plan, but offers visibly less value
while costing almost as much. Think of it as A- (as per The Economist example).
3. Second plan, the one you want to sell, offers good value for money. The price ends
with 9. Maybe it even shows that it has been reduced from a previously higher price or
its a sale (either way, it has to be true/ethical).
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4. Third plan is to serve as a contrast to the middle one, its role is to anchor in a high
figure. Make it much, much more expensive than the middle plan. You dont actually
intend to sell it, but there always the type that wants the most expensive planso make
sure you can actually deliver on it.
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Product pricing can be one of the hardest things for entrepreneurs. How much to charge?
How much is too much? Am I selling myself short? This article gives you some crucial
things to know about product pricing strategies and techniques.
The basics
In product pricing you have to make a decision what kind of a pricing strategy are you
going for. The strategy of choice depends quite a lot on your product itself and its
competitors.
Expensive pricing
People generally have a pretty good idea what is cheap and what is expensive. If youre
going for expensive pricing, your product has to feel expensive. Your role here is to
increase its perceived value.
Do this exercise: think of a few luxury brands, and a few discount brands and write down
the characteristics of each. What makes the difference? What do the expensive brands
have that the cheap ones dont?
Things that drive up the perceived value of a product:
1) Packaging & Design
Every high priced item you buy comes in a fancy box. Your product has to look
expensive. You can do this also with digital products, just spend time on some high-end
products websites and take note of what makes that website look expensive. Start with
making your website look expensive, and make your product look fancy too.
When it comes to information products, then pdf e-books will always seem cheap.
Everybody knows how to create a pdf document and know it doesnt take much. We
recommend against it. Online courses, e-learning environments and information products
shipped on physical media (DVDs) will always seem more valuable.
Product Pricing Strategies and
Techniques
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2) Format
Product differentiation! Dont be like most products in your category. Repackage it into a
different format, one that no one else is using. For instance if everyone else is selling e-
books on your topic, do your product in video.
Video products always look higher class compared to text-only products.
3) Uniqueness
Expensive products have to be one of a kindthe only one that does what it does. If your
product has no unique differentiating characteristics in a crowded market, you really
cannot charge more than the market average.
4) Availability
You can charge a higher price is you have a very limited quantity, e.g. a coaching
programs that only accepts 25 people.
If all these four points are met, choosing an expensive pricing strategy can be very
profitable. Things to remember about expensive products:
It is one of the three strategies to increase profits (the other two are to sell more
products and to sell to more customers),
Charging more money for a product makes people instantly think it is better. Example:
I bought 2 cars last month. One of them cost $10,000 and the other one $85,000.
Which car is better? Seeyou dont even need to know anything else to answer that
question.
Different + expensive = desire.
Once you have successfully established your product as an expensive, your income
will go up significantly every time you have a sale (but dont do it too often or youll
end up pissing off the customers that paid the higher price).
Cheap pricing can sometimes be better
Remember: if your product is not unique, you are always going to compete on price. If
there are no significant differences between your product and competing products,
people will choose based on price. That can work to your advantage.
The most proven pricing strategy in a competitive market is doing it cheaper than others.
People like to get stuff cheap. This is the best strategy to choose if your product is very
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similar to the others in the market.
Cheap product pricing does not necessarily mean that you have to be the cheapest in the
market. Testing a higher-than-average price for your product is a good thing to do. If you
test a higher price and it brings in the same number of responses as the lower price, you
immediately increase your profits.
Generally higher price should reduce the number of sales. The theory of market elasticity
says that the number of sales will go down when the price goes up, and vice versa. The
question is: by how much? If its just a modest decrease, you will do better at a higher
price becuase you will generate more profit and possibly bring in higher-quality clients
that will spend more money later.
If you make the price too high, your sales will drop precipitously to a point where you are
bringing in too few new customers to maintain cash flow. This is usually easy to notice
and fix.
When you enter an existing market with a product that is not significantly different or
better than the competitive products, the market experience is that you usually find more
success when selling the product at a discount. When there is an established price for the
same type of products then it is easy for the customers to figure out what is the average
price. If you can sell at a significantly cheaper price, you can sometimes enjoy a very
strong response.
The question you need to answer is whether you can afford to run your business like that.
Niche product pricing (when youre unknown)
So how does being a nobody relate to pricing? Well one would assume that if you dont
have a big name that you cant charge a high price. Even better, you cant charge a high
price if you have a small information product.
The truth is that you actually can sell your infoproduct for a nice price, even if your
readers dont know who you are. You can also do well regardless of the size of your
product.
Write down the prices of as many comparable information products within your
niche. By comparable I mean products that target the same vein of information that
you do.
Create a list of the top three information products. Those products you feel would be
most likely to compete directly with your type of reader.
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Now ask yourself these questions: Does your information product introduce a brand
new theory? Is it something that nobody else is teaching? If its a product geared
towards consumers, charge 20 percent-50 percent more than the highest priced
product. If its geared towards business people, charge 30 percent-100 percent more
than the highest priced product.Does your information product explain a topic
differently than your competitors? Charge a median price. The average price between
the lowest and highest products. Are you selling an audio or video product, where
everybody else is selling a print product? Choose a price between the lowest and
medium priced product. If you offer a brand new theory, go higher than the highest
price.
Online buyers comes from all walks of life. Some people perceive free as being poor or
inferior quality. Maybe theyve been misled by free information, so theyre weary of it.
Likewise if you price a product too low some buyers get suspicious. Quality = high price in
many peoples mind.
The rationale I hear from quite often from infoproduct creators is that if you price low,
youll make it up in volume. Not always. Most people overestimate the number of people
they think are going to buy their product. You might guesstimate 1,000. When in actuality
you may only have the capacity for 500. Thats a big difference in the bottom line if
youve decided to sell for $9.95, instead of $22.95.
Optimum pricing strategy
Before you set your price, you have to gain some insight into how much room you have
to maneuver. A good way to start is to get a clear overview of your costs. Costs can be
divided into variable and fixed costs.
Variable costs are the costs you incur that are directly linked to the product you sell. For
example if you sell a instructional video course How to grow health houseplants on a
DVD, your variable costs per item would include the cost of the DVDs, the rights that you
might have to pay per video and the shipping costs.
In the online market, you are usually also paying to acquire the customers. If you pay 20
cents per click to Google and you convert every fiftieth visitor into a customer, youd
have to add $10 to your variable costs per product.
Fixed costs are the costs you incur to keep your business running. These include
employee wages, the rent for your office, telephone costs, utilities and so on.
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Lets say that in the case above, your fixed costs amount to $1,000 USD a month. Your
variable product costs come to $25 USD per DVD. You are expecting to sell 500 videos a
month.
Fixed costs: $1,000
Variable costs per video = $25
You are expecting to sell 500 videos so your total costs will be:
(500* variable costs + fixed costs) 500* 25 + 1,000 = $13,500
To break even, you will have to charge $27 per video. (13,500 / 500 = 27) At this price
you are not making or losing any money. This is your lower limit. The highest price you
would be able to ask for is the markets ceiling price. Look at your major competitors to
estimate what this price could be.
The price you charge for your product has a major impact on sales. Choosing the price,
like choosing the media or the product, is fairly easy to do. Start by finding out what the
competition is doing. If your competitors are selling their widgets for $195, you should
consider selling yours for $195 too. You can safely assume that any product that has
been selling well at $195 has been tested at other priceshigher and lowerand that
$195 is where the money is.
To be successful you will need to find this optimal selling price: a price at which the selling
campaign will yield the greatest profits. This optimal price can change during the life
cycle of the productbeing higher when the product is hot, for examplebut it is always
important to know. If you deviate from it significantly, you will reduce profits or even
create losses where profits should have been.
Once youve taken stock of your costs, your products value and your competitive
positioning, its time to select a price. Here are some guidelines to keep in mind:
Better to charge more than less. A higher price increases the perceived quality of your
product. If your price starts on the low side, youll meet more resistance from your
customers as you try to increase your price than when your product is a little
overpriced.
If you are a small business dont compete solely on price. For a smaller ecommerce
business its normally a better idea to compete on added value than it is to compete
on price. In a price fight, larger competitors with deeper pockets and lower
operational costs wipe you off the field.
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When marketing to the global market, think about the US market and in US dollars
($USD). Undoubtedly, the US dollar is the currency of the internet; the majority of all
transactions on the internet occur in US dollars. With almost 200 million internet users
in North America, the US constitutes one third of the worldwide internet market.
Price points matter. Never charge $100, charge $99.95 instead! If you want to charge
over $100, then dont go up to $101, go to the next natural bracket such as $109.95.
When possible and your product is expensive, offer installments or financing. Many
people are short on cash so offering them a special deal can work wonders to
motivate sales. Why do you think there are so many retailers that offer ZERO MONEY
DOWN! Giving customers the option to pay in installments or to receive financing can
increase sales.
Advanced pricing techniques
The contrast principle
Do this experiment at home. Fill three bowls with water: one with cold, one with hot and
the third one with lukewarm water. Put one of your hands in the cold water and the other
one in the hot water. Keep them in there for like 30 seconds. Now put both of the hands
in the lukewarm water. One hand feels cold, the other one warm. This is the contrast
principle.
Nothing is expensive or cheap, its what you compare it to. The best way to sell $800
shoes is to place $3000 shoes next to them. This works very well with expensive products
as you can make them seem not as expensive compared to other products.
Go to any high end retail store and see how this is done effectively. The only reason
watch stores carry $50,000 watches is to make the $3000 watch seem like a reasonable
price.
Decoy pricing
Decoy pricing is a method of strategically pricing products so that consumers will choose
the one that you most want to sell to them.
Dan Ariely in his book Predictably Irrational explains this. When people were offered to
choose a trip to Paris (option A) vs a trip to Rome (option B), they had a hard time
choosing. Both places were great, it was hard to compare them.
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Now they were offered three choices instead of two: trip to Paris with free breakfast
(option A), trip to Paris without breakfast (option A-), trip to Rome with free breakfast
(option B). Now overwhelming majority chose option A, trip to Paris with free breakfast.
The rationale is that it is easier to compare the two options for Rome than it is to
compare Paris and Rome.
A graph to explain this:
How to use this in pricing? Here comes another example from the book.
An ad for an Economist subscription gave three options
1) Print-only for $59
2) Web subscription only access for $125
3) Print and web access for $125
Obviously 3 looks like the best deal. In an experiment Dan ran with this setup, 16 subjects
chose option 1, zero chose option 2, and 84 chose option 3.
What if we remove option 2 and have people choose between print-only and print and
web access, leaving the prices the same?
The results should be the same as the prices did not change, right? Instead, the results
changed dramatically. 68 chose print-only and 32 chose print and web access. It was only
by option 3s relation to option 2 that made option 3 look so good.
Option 2 in the Economist pricing served only as a decoy price and they didnt even want
to sell it.
Three packages
The old truth about offering three pricing options / packages holds water. Check out this
Pricing
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401 401
test they did with selling beer.
People were offered only two kinds of beer: premium beer for $2.50 and bargain beer for
$1.80. Around 80 percent chose the more expensive beer.
Now a third beer was introduced, a super bargain beer for $1.60 in addition to the
previous two. Now 80 percent bought the $1.80 beer and the rest $2.50 beer. Nobody
bought the cheapest option.
Third time around, they removed the $1.60 beer and replaced with a super premium
$3.40 beer. Most people chose the $2.50 beer, a small number $1.80 beer and around 10
percent opted for the most expensive $3.40 beer. Some people will always buy the most
expensive option, no matter the price.
Moral of the story: you can influence peoples choice by offering different options. Old
school sales people also say that offering different price point options will make people
choose between your plans, instead of choosing whether to buy your product or not.
Three packages with decoy pricing + the contrast principle
Now lets put all of these options together for maximum effect.
Lets say you want to sell your product for $59. The best way to do it is to add a cheaper
decoy price option and a more expensive contrast option.
It could look something like this:
The magic number nine
Its true. Prices ending with the number 9 sell better. Test described in the pricing
strategy book Priceless said a product was sold for three different prices: $34, $39 and
$44 dollars. The highest volume of sales took place when the price was $39.
Everybody understands that $39 is basically $40, but in our subconscious mind it still
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402 402
Everybody understands that $39 is basically $40, but in our subconscious mind it still
seems to be a lower bracket price.
Better than nine
There is one way of displaying the price that is even more effective than prices ending
with 9. Its the former pricecurrent price technique. When selling the same product with
these two price labels, the $40 price will win.
Crossing out the previous price is very effective. Have you noticed how Amazon uses it all
the time?
Value before price and always explain your price
Never publish your prices before communicating the value of your product first. You have
to put the price into context.
If I say the price for the loaf of bread Im selling is $50, it seems expensive. If I had
communicated first that it was hand-made from fair trade organic wheat and rye by
Angelina Jolie herself, the $50 price tag would not seem that steep anymore.
Always sell the value before publishing your price.
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403 403
Peep Laja
Im the face of ConversionXL. My unusual name (to most people) is
actually pronounced Pep Laya. I am from Estonia, but live mainly in the
US these days.
Im an entrepreneur and a conversion optimization junkie. I run a unique conversion
optimization marketing agency called Markitekt (we make existing sites better and build
new conversion optimized websites) plus several niche internet businesses like T1Q and
others.
I conduct workshops on conversion optimization and internet marketing, consult for
businesses in need, and plan the architecture of websites that sell.
About The Author
How to Build Websites that Sell:... About The Author
About The Author
About The Author
404 404
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