Welcome to issue twenty one of the Competitive Edge Newsletter. I know it’s been a while since issue twenty, but hope you’ll agree that the wait was worthwhile.
This issue looks at the subject of improving your website’s conversion rates; of turning more visitors into customers. It explores some of the options for doing so, and some of the mistakes to avoid. If you’re interested in selling more without spending more, you want to read this article.
Be seen, be relevant, be sold.
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Feeding your visitors and changing their world
Here’s an easy question: why do you have a website? Most would say that their website is there to sell their products or services.
So let’s try a slightly harder question: What is the purpose of your homepage?
That one might be a little trickier to answer, so let’s look at what the homepage isn’t.
The homepage isn’t there to welcome your site visitors, to communicate your aspirations, visions or goals, or to introduce the history of your company. A main page trying to do so is wasting time, diluting their message and losing sales.
If your homepage gets it wrong, as most do, then the majority of visitors arriving at your website simply won’t stay. And of the few who do, many won’t understand that you have what they’re looking for. And of the very few who do, many will fail to be convinced. And of the miniscule remaining few, some won’t be able to find the reassurance they need to purchase.
So instead of functioning as an effective marketing tool, and turning visitors into customers, many homepages serve as a series of hurdles that force visitors to leave your website in search of your competition. Ouch.
If your homepage gets it right, and very few do, then most of the visitors arriving at your website will instantly understand what you’re selling and why they need it. The homepage can’t possibly communicate everything about your product, but it has to highlight the pertinent information and steer your visitors towards what they’re looking for. And the most important facts, such as links to more information, the price, how to buy, reassurance and contact information have to be clear and easy to find.
Appearance vs. functionality – strange but true
This is where things start to get a little odd. A bizarre fact is that the majority of websites are designed more from an aesthetic point of view than functionality. In other words they are built to look good instead of work well.
Do you hire employees on the same basis?
Perhaps such companies should consider whether they’re trying to gain approval for their design skills or sell their products.
For the majority of websites, looking good is not enough to sell the product. We’ve all seen many thousands of ‘very cool’ websites, yet it’s safe to say that you’ve bought from very few of them. Striking a balance between functionality and appearance is required, and most people will be put off by an overly basic or ugly website. But even websites as ugly and old-fashioned as Jakob Nielsen’s do a good job of selling his name and services. Although you might argue that a better looking website could work wonders.
Stranger still, once a website has been redesigned, most companies will not spare a thought for how effective they may or may not be, let alone actually consider improving them. Once the major redesign is over and implemented, most websites are left alone (from a design point of view) until it’s time for the next redesign in another five years or so.
This is little short of madness. There is no such thing as a website or a page whose performance cannot be improved; often quite dramatically. Assuming that the website has a reasonable volume of traffic, and sells a good product at a reasonable price, improving performance is fast, easy to measure, and can produce truly staggering results.
Text sells
More good news: we’re not talking about a major redesign here, we’re talking about changing, tweaking and reworking different elements of the page. And for most of the websites that we’ve worked with, we’re mainly dealing with changes to the text.
Text isn’t there to fill the blanks spots between the screenshots, logos and graphics. Don’t take the idea of a picture being worth a thousand words too literally. A good image may boost the selling power of words, but ultimately pictures reinforce while text sells. And minor changes to wording can sometimes have an extraordinary impact on how well a page performs.
So how can it be changed?
As in most areas of marketing, there are a small number of ways of doing it right, and many ways of doing it wrong. Let’s look at the most common scenario first.
The kneejerk reaction is almost a panic. The company realises that their homepage could do a lot better, and they are missing out on sales. After a quick look at some of their competition they rewrite the content of their homepage from top to bottom – new headlines, new explanations, different wording, different links and even different text in their website navigation. They wait for a few weeks, compare the old data with the new and find that their new homepage has cut exit rates by 5% and improved conversions by almost 10%.
The company might be forgiven for being delighted, and a celebratory drink after work might be in order. However this is the wrong approach. By changing so many elements of their homepage, it’s completely impossible to say what has worked, what was ineffectual and what might have had a negative impact on performance. For example the new headline might on its own have generated a 25% improvement, yet at the same time, the introductory paragraph actually puts people off the product, and might be responsible for a 15% decline in performance. Together there is still some improvement, but if the company was able to spot these issues they would be seeing a 25% performance boost, instead of 10%.
Another common mistake is not waiting for sufficient data. So, for example, the same unfortunate company makes a small number of alterations to their homepage, but then only waits a week to decide whether the changes have been effective. If the number of downloads and sales typically fluctuate on a weekly basis, the short amount of time would be insufficient, and mistakes might be made.
So let’s look at how the company can go about it correctly.
The first option would be to engage in split testing. At its most basic, this involves a number of different pages being served in rotation, more or less evenly. After a period of time, the data is collated and analysed, and the best performing page is set as permanent.
The main advantages of split testing are that it is fast and straightforward to set up, and can even produce results for websites with modest volumes of traffic.
The disadvantages are that it is impossible to see what individual changes produced the best result, just which page. And the aspiring web experimenter may be taking five steps forward and two steps back, or worse.
A second and more effective approach would be to employ multivariate testing. Instead of displaying different pages each time, multivariate testing delivers different versions of individual elements. For instance three different headlines, three different introductory paragraphs, three different link texts and so on. These different elements are then rotated in conjunction with each other, allowing not only the performance of individual elements to be measured, but also their combinations. So, for example, headline 2, introductory text 1 and link text 3 might be seen to have the best impact on conversions when displayed together; far greater than their individual improvements when tested in isolation.
The advantages of multivariate testing are that it’s more effective at identifying what works, can produce more dramatic results and ensures little or no working in the dark.
The disadvantages are that it can be slower to measure, greater levels of traffic may be required, can be complex to setup, and a level of expertise is required to correctly analyse the results.
It’s worth bearing in mind that irrespective of which method is used, two quite separate core skills are also required. The first is a means of setting-up, delivering, tracking and analysing the different versions. Get any of these steps wrong and the website performance may be impacted, errors may be generated, and wrong conclusions may be drawn.
The second component is skill. Whether split or multivariate testing, the system is merely a tool; effective and compelling copy still has to be written.
In conclusion…
Never believe that the performance of a given web page cannot be significantly improved. At the time of writing this article, the lowest performance gain that we achieved through multivariate testing was almost 35%, and the highest was over 400%!
Even if your homepage is performing terribly, a dramatic site redesign may not be required. A new website is time consuming, costly, and the end result may even perform less effectively than what you started with.
Work more with what you have, put your text to work for you and start improving how your web pages work.
Be seen, be effective, be sold.
The Competitive Edge newsletter is a monthly in-depth look at the issues faced by independent software developers today.
If you’d like to comment on any of the information within the newsletter, please email Dave Collins directly atdave@softwarepromotions.com.
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