UX Techniques

Solve Problems with Low Conversions

and Make Your Website Sell

UX TECH NIQU E S 1
Table of contents

Introduction    3

Evaluate Your Site and Get to Know Your Users    5

UX Issues Causing Conversion Problems     6

Clarity of Message    6

Navigation and CTAs    7

Too Many Options    9

Mobile Optimisation    11

Onboarding     14

Collecting Credit Card Details    15

Free Trial Length, Support, and Content    18

Slow Website Speed    20

Summary    22
Introduction

You want to provide your website visitors with the best user experience
(UX) possible, don’t you?
Of course you do. At the end of the day, user experience (UX) is everything.
Just one single bad experience – be it slow load times, unclear naviga-
tion, a lengthy and complex checkout process, or something else – can
lead to a visitor leaving your site. And of course, they won’t just be leav-
ing – they’ll be leaving with a negative feeling about your brand.
This is bad news for your business. No matter if you’re in ecommerce,
SaaS, or apps, your customers today have a lot of options, and if your
site’s UX is at all subpar, they won’t hesitate to go elsewhere.

UX, however, isn’t just about design, as is so often the assumption.

Though important, design is just one element that impacts how easy
and enjoyable it is to use your website, and thereby how successful it is
as a conversion-driving machine.
Indeed, no matter how beautiful your web pages are, when it comes to
UX, you need to understand user intent – i.e. what your users are trying
to accomplish when they visit your site – if you are to successfully pro-
vide them with what they need, and map out a conversion funnel that
really makes your website sell.

In this short ebook, you will learn what makes for good UX, and what
tweaks you can make and techniques you can use to improve the expe-

UX TECH NIQU E S 3
rience for users as you strive to achieve your most important business
goals – increasing conversions and making more sales.
Write a note (see the table below) + explanation why it is important to
keep your software up to date.

UX TECH NIQU E S 4
Evaluate Your Site and Get to
Know Your Users

If you’re struggling with conversion problems on your website, you first

need to understand where it is that those problems are occurring, and
particularly what it is that’s causing visitors to drop-out instead of tak-
ing the next step along the path to conversion.
To do so, you need to take a data-first approach to your enquiries, which
will ensure that you’re not relying on gut feeling or guesswork to inform
your UX decisions.
Begin by consulting the analytics features on your CMS (content man-
agement system) and any other tools you already use. If you’re run-
ning an ecommerce site on Shopify, for instance, you’ll be able to glean
plenty of insights into your visitors’ behaviour with Shopify Analytics,
through which you can analyse the paths they take towards each and
every bounce and transaction.
For other sites, various all-in-one website analytics tools such as Goog-
le Analytics, Hotjar and Piwik will all unearth sheer treasure troves of
data that will reveal precisely how your visitors are interacting with
your website.
In addition, you should also be conducting heuristic evaluations, cogni-
tive walkthroughs, and conversion-oriented evaluations of your site to
gain a better understanding of where the blockages in your conversion
funnels are, and how they are affecting the user experience.

UX TECH NIQU E S 5
UX Issues Causing Conversion
Problems

So – what are you likely to discover when analysing all this data?
Remember, UX isn’t only about design, but everything involved with the
experience of using your website, including the site’s structure, its navi-
gation, content, and more besides.

Clarity of Message
When a visitor lands on your site – be it your homepage, product page,
or bespoke landing page – it has to be clear from the outset that you
are providing a solution to a problem.
This is your value proposition, and is what will set you apart from the
competition. The messaging on your site should immediately show how
your product will empower users, how it will help them and change
their lives – not just highlight its features or functions. If you’re running
an ecommerce store with multiple products on offer, your value propo-
sition needs to make it clear why the user should buy from you and not
a competitor. As such, you should focus on consumer benefits, such as
quality, affordability, or luxury, and your messaging should promise to
deliver value to the customer in these terms.
To give you an example, MailChimp’s homepage is completely designed
around its value proposition – “Your business was born for this. Become
the brand you want to be with smarter marketing built for big things.”

UX TECH NIQU E S 6
Just few little words – but that’s all that’s needed to tell you what you’ll
get with MailChimp. It’s simple, direct, and bold – use these services
and you’ll improve your bottom line.

Image source: MailChimp

In this sense, it is often the best choice to let your copy lead the design
of your website, rather than the other way around. Decide on your con-
tent first – your unique value proposition – and then design your web
pages around that central message. After all, no one will buy from your
site because it looks pretty, it’s your actual content that will convince
them – provided, of course, it is properly aligned with your client seg-
ments.

Navigation and CTAs

Users must know intuitively how to navigate your website, and that
means putting your menus in the places where people expect them to
be – usually at the top of the page – and that your tags are labelled
clearly.

UX TECH NIQU E S 7
For ecommerce stores with lots of products, use categories and subcat-
egories to guide users through their options and help them find exactly
what they’re looking for – and ensure you have a powerful search func-
tion as well.
Lifestyle stores, for example, does a great job of using categories, sub-
categories, images and clear copy to guide visitors to the products
they’re looking for. All of which makes for an easy, intuitive, and enjoy-
able user experience.

Image source: Lifestylestores.com

For SaaS and apps, make your Call-To-Actions (CTAs) that direct users
to your product page crisp, clear, enticing, and unmissable.
Basecamp has always had a great eye for UX and for creating pages
that convert. The latest version of its homepage features a big, colourful
image, a huge value proposition (“Wish Granted”), lots of white space
(which makes the navigation menu at the top clear and unmissable),

UX TECH NIQU E S 8
and two CTAs – one in black and white at the top (“Try it FREE”), and
one big green button just above the fold, complete with social proof
(“Join the 4,099 businesses that signed up last week”).
Everything is clear. The user knows exactly what he/she has to do to
get started, and the benefits they will enjoy. A great UX indeed on this
homepage.

Image source: Basecamp

Too Many Options

As psychologist Barry Schwartz explains in his TED talk, when we are pre-
sented with too many options, we experience paralysis due to the pressure
we feel to pick the right one, and the fear of choosing the wrong one.

UX TECH NIQU E S 9
 This sort of combined fear and pres-
sure doesn’t lead to a good user
experience, and can cause people
to exit your site without making a
purchase.

For ecommerce stores, good navigation will help people narrow their
options down, but it will likely pay not to have too many alternatives for
the same product on sale in the first place. Indeed, even if you do make
good use of categories and subcategories, there’s a danger of your
menus becoming overly complex if there are just too many to contend
with – and complexity does not equal good UX.
If you’re selling SaaS subscriptions, keep things simple – just two or
three plans with all features and services clearly labelled. Video-mak-
ing platform Shakr does a pretty good job of this – three plans, clearly
labelled and priced, and on each users can see exactly what they get,
and what they don’t.

UX TECH NIQU E S 10
Image source: Shakr.com

Mobile Optimisation
Mobile purchases are now becoming commonplace, and, as such,
your customers simply expect your website to be optimised for the
small screen – and it needs to be if you are to maximise sales and
conversions.
Data from eMarketer reveals that over 60% of digital buyers in the UK
will make an ecommerce purchase (excluding travel and event tickets)
from their smartphones in 2018, and forecasts this figure to rise to near-
ly two-thirds (64%) by 2021.

UX TECH NIQU E S 11
Image source: Internetretailing.net

As such, it’s imperative that you test your site’s UX on screens of all siz-
es – desktop, mobile and tablet – and ensure that users are getting an
optimised experience.
This is particularly crucial for ecommerce stores, where space is limited
for content, images, links and buttons. When elements are too small
they are almost impossible to click, and when they’re too big it be-
comes arduous to scroll up and down, which harms navigation.

UX TECH NIQU E S 12
Forms and Checkout Process
It’s also important to ensure that your forms and checkout process are
both simple and easy to use – especially on mobile devices.
With forms, keeping the number of fields to a minimum is particularly
important – the less there are to fill out, the easier and breezier it is
for the user, resulting in more conversions. And this holds true no mat-
ter if someone is signing up for your service, downloading a piece of
content, or creating an account. The right process of form validation
is also an important thing. Validating fields before submission causes
users to make more errors, and more errors leads to user frustration
longer completing time and very often to abandoning the form.
And when it comes to creating an account – do you really need every-
one to do so? Perhaps you do if you’re in SaaS, but in ecommerce, why
not include a guest checkout option? This can vastly improve the user
experience for those that know what they want to buy, and don’t want
to have to go through the whole rigmarole of creating an account.
According to Marketing Land, companies lose $18 billion in sales rev-
enue each year from shopping cart abandonment, and research from
the Baymard Institute reveals that the average abandonment rate
stands at 69.23%.
The top three reasons for cart abandonment are extra costs, the need
to create an account, and too long/complicated checkout processes.
Improve these factors, and you’ll improve your website’s UX and enjoy
more sales and conversions.

UX TECH NIQU E S 13
Data source: Baymard Institute

Onboarding
Onboarding new users is one of the most precarious stages of the con-
version process – particularly in the realms of apps and SaaS.
You’ve already made your value proposition clear, tidied up your navi-
gation, reduced the number of options, optimised your site for mobile,
and created a smooth sign-up and checkout process – but a good UX
doesn’t stop there.
Now you need to encourage actual use of the product, and ensure that
your users have all the information they need to get the utmost value
out of it.

UX TECH NIQU E S 14
Never underestimate the awesomeness of a free trial, as this will allow
your prospects the opportunity to get to know your product and learn
first-hand how it will enrich their lives. Today, users simply expect to be
able to take advantage of a free trial, so it’s imperative that you include
this option if you are to provide a stellar user experience.
There are a couple of things to consider, however.

Collecting Credit Card Details

The first is whether or not to collect credit card details at the free trial
sign-up stage. There is much research into this subject available on the
web, though unfortunately the results are somewhat conflicting.
Notejoy’s Ada Chen Rekhi conducted a study last year, and found that
demo and free trial conversions in SaaS ranged from between 1% and
10% to as much as 40% and 50%, depending on the business, the tar-
get customer, and the “try before you buy” model.
The three models considered were freemium (where the product can be
used for free, but additional charges are incurred to access advanced
features), free trial without credit card, and free trial with credit card
– i.e. when credit card details are collected before the user is able to
access the free trial.

UX TECH NIQU E S 15
The results are shown below:
Freemium Conversion rate

CVR Company/Source Year

30% Slack 2014
Insight Vanture Partners article on companies like 37 signals, Drop-
1-10% box, Evernote, GitHub, HootSuite, New Relic, Survey Monkey, Weebly, 2012
Zendesk
4% Dropbox based on % total registered userbase 2012
6% over 2 years;
Evernote from FastCompany (2010) & TechCrunch (2009) 2010, 2009
4.9% of MAUs
3% Lincoln Murphy from Sixteen Ventures on SaaS and B2B web apps 2010

Free Trial to Paid Conversion Rates - Without CC

CVR Company/Source Year

25% Recapture.io 2016

10-18% Justuno 2016

15% Chargebee 2016

2-3% 3 Minute Optimizer 2015

6-10% Customer.io 2014

10% Gultensite 2013

15% Totango study of around 100 SaaS companies 2012

2-4% GoToMyPC / GoToMeeting 2011

3.75% Salesforce 2008

Free Trial to Paid Conversion Rates - With CC

CVR Company/Source Year

30-40% 3 Minute Optimizer 2015

56% Moz 2012

50% Totango study of around 100 SaaS companies (2012) 2012

40-45% GoToMyPC / GoToMeeting 2011

40-50% Callwave 2011

Source: Ada Chen Rekhi, adachen.com

UX TECH NIQU E S 16
It’s a mixed picture, though it does seem from these results that collecting
credit card details up-front does indeed increase trial conversion rates.
However, data from customer experience software company Totango
tells a different story – one that seems to suggest that it is a better
strategy not to ask for credit card information up-front, though it is a
slightly complicated picture that’s painted.
What’s so complicated about it? Well, Totango’s research reveals
that asking for credit card information up-front reduces the amount
of free-trial sign-ups SaaS companies can expect in the first place. In
fact, those that don’t ask for credit card information see website visi-
tors signing up for free trials increase from 2% to 10%.
The plot thickens, however, for the results show that the free trial-to-
paid conversion rate is 50% for SaaS companies that do ask for credit
card details, compared to just 15% for those that don’t.
But there’s yet another twist in the tale. The end-to-end conversion rate
– which includes users who are still a customer 90 days after converting
from free trial-to-paid – doubles from 0.6% to 1.2% for those compa-
nies that don’t ask for credit card information.

UX TECH NIQU E S 17
Data source: Totango.com

Overall, the Totango data suggests that it’s a better strategy not to ask
for credit card information – however, with such a wide range of results,
the only way to be sure of the most effective strategy for your particular
product is to conduct your own trials and see what works best for you.

Free Trial Length, Support, and Content

For some reason, 30 days has become the industry standard for free
trial duration – but this is an arbitrary number and may well be too long.
The reason is that most people will decide after just 2-3 days wheth-
er or not your product has value in it for them – so why wait a whole
month before going for the sale?

UX TECH NIQU E S 18
The truth is that the vast majority of free trial users won’t convert into
paying customers. This means that you’re left with a small yet crucial
group of people who do see the value in your product, and may be will-
ing to pay for it – but you need to act quickly.
Consider this advice from CRM provider Close.io.

Image source: Blog.close.io

In order to give that small group of users who are likely to convert the
best user experience possible, you need to reach out to them sooner
rather than later. You will have captured their email addresses when
they signed up. So, send them a message asking how they are getting
on with the product, if they have any questions, and ensure that you
have plenty of content available to send in follow-up emails that will
help them discover its true value and functionality.
You need to do this after just two or three days – not after more than
four weeks. By this time, if you’re not improving the user experience
by showing these leads that you are on-hand and ready to pro-

UX TECH NIQU E S 19
vide guidance, tutorials and support, many potential new customers
will have gone cold. Remember, though, the frequency of the emails
should be appropriate to avoid spamming the clients with too many
details.

Slow Website Speed

There’s one fundamental issue left to address. Website speed.
Website speed is of utmost importance for user experience. In fact,
Google penalises slow websites by lowering quality score in pay-per-
click (PPC) ads – meaning you’ll pay more per conversion – and slow
speeds also affect organic ranking.
No matter if your visitors come from desktop or mobile, they will simply
refuse to hang around waiting for your pages to load.
“
2 seconds is the threshold for ecommerce
website acceptability. At Google, we aim
for under a half second.
“
Maile Ohye, from Google

One of the main causes of low website speed is images – and if you’re
running an ecommerce site, you’ll have plenty of them. This means that
you will need to optimise your images by reducing file sizes without, of
course, reducing image quality, as this will have a negative impact on
the user experience.

UX TECH NIQU E S 20
Last year, Google updated its “Test My Site” feature with a new tool
that enables you to see just how many visitors you’re losing due to slow
page load time. Simply copy and paste your site’s URL into the field
provided, and you’ll be furnished with a report that breaks down the
performance of your site.

Image source: Testmysite.withgoogle.com

The scan will provide you with information on the following:

• Your site’s mobile speed (50% of people expect a site to load in less
than 2 seconds)
• The number of visitors you may be losing (for each additional sec-
ond it takes for a pavge to load conversions can drop by as much as
20.4%)
• How your site compares to the competition
• What steps you can take to make your site faster.

UX TECH NIQU E S 21
Summary

As a business owner, you need to be thinking about UX every step of

the way. Today, in a world where there is practically unlimited choice
for customers, it is ultimately the experience that you offer that will set
your brand apart from the competition.
So, begin by running an in-depth analysis of your website and furnishing
yourself with as much data as you can about your customers, and then:
• Ensure clarity of message, and that your value proposition sings loud
and clear from every page
• Optimise your site’s navigation and CTAs
• Eliminate options paralysis by reducing the number of choices you offer
• Ensure your website is optimised for all devices – mobile, tablet, and
desktop
• Optimise your sign-up forms and checkout process
• Optimise the onboarding process, paying particular attention to
free-trial duration and whether or not to collect credit card informa-
tion at the sign-up stage
• Optimise your whole website to speed up loading times
Join Or Hire Us

If you need a helping hand improving the user experience of your site,
or indeed a complete overhaul, get in touch with the UX experts here
at Netguru today. Our UX Services will steer your online business in the
right direction, solve problems with low conversions, and make your
website sell.

by Netguru