You Should Test That

Do you see your site as a piece of art; every page element, animation, link, and headline are put together to create a balanced and stunning sculpture?

That is an enticingly romantic idea, however, this won’t help get your site to help your company.

What you actually need is a site that operates as smooth as it can; you want it to be more like a motorcycle than a sculpture. Therefore, you constantly have to test it and make adjustments by adding new parts or getting rid of old ones as well as fixing or changing up old ones all to make the entire machine work much better.

In this text we will outline what it is that you can do in order to make your site match up with your wider business goals. This is accomplished by focusing on one of the most crucial metrics: the conversion rate. You will also find out about which certain features of your site can help boost your conversion rate as well as how you can ensure that your site is consistently getting better.

You will find out:

How come SEO is the best friend rather than the enemy of your conversion rate
What you can do to get your visitors to remain on your site for longer
What Wordpress found out in order to get its users from ever getting anxious

Optimizing for a higher conversion unlocks hidden profits for your business.

In the Information Age of today, companies have to have a solid web presence if they’d like to succeed, regardless of whether they are selling most of their items in physical stores. Indeed, based on a study done by Experian, 90 percent of shoppers do some research online prior to buying them in physical stores.

As you can see, you need a site. However, you don’t just need any old site. In order to be a successful company, it won’t be enough for you to just optimize your site so that you end up getting lots of traffic. You want the traffic to convert into monetary value right away.

Therefore, your objective is to get your site visitors to turn into actual customers. That’s exactly what the conversion rate revolves around.

The conversion rate outlines the percentage of site visitors that do a specific action that you’d like them to do. Some actions include making a purchase or signing up for the newsletter, for instance. In other words, the conversion rate of your website is the number of visitors divided by the amount of those visitors who end up doing the action that you’d like them to.

Afterward, your objective is to sell the greatest number of items to the visitors that you’ve already got with the help of conversion rate optimization (CRO).

CRO directly impacts your conversion rate as well as assists you with steering clear of the halo effect that you get from a site that’s not made well. The halo effect occurs when the bad experience of a customer with your site negatively impacts their attitude towards your items.

The author, for instance, remembers a time when he had gone onto BlackBerry’s site. It had been very slow because because they had used big images. As soon as the page finally loaded completely, the author saw their collection of all of the newest BlackBerry phones under their header, “Unbelievably fas., Unmistakably BlackBerry.”

If you put the irony to the site, the slow loading time could make it more difficult for shoppers to truly believe that BlackBerry phones are as fast as they say that they are. Despite the fact that the site’s loading time isn’t related to the phone, that overall feeling of slowness keeps on hanging over the product like a halo.

Many websites are optimized based on false assumptions.

Whenever businesses are optimizing their site, they go after design agencies. The issue, though, is that you can’t depend that a solid design agency will even optimize your website for neither conversion rate nor revenue. Even though they may be good at making a sleek and visually stunning site, they typically aren’t aware of what your site’s business goals truly are.

Indeed, a lot of design agencies don’t know which criteria is the most important for making a successful site. This is proved through the first question that those agencies as their new clients: “What would you like your site to look like?”

Clients who aren’t very knowledgeable often look at their rivals’ sites in order to gain some inspiration. However, what if those sites are just as badly optimized as yours currently is? If you don’t have access to conversion data, it is very complicated to figure out the true effectiveness of their sites.

As a result, firms are only able to judge those sites based on the way that they look. However, in reality, the most crucial criteria is how the site actually works and how it impacts revenue.

Another big mistake that designers make whenever they are redoing the site of their client is that they use the HiPPO Method whenever they make decisions. This ends up yielding to the “highest-paid person’s opinion”.

Whenever designers present their ideas to the client, the final decision made ends up being made by a single person like the department head, or a C-level executive. However, even though they’ve got big names, they many not always have the knowledge necessary to make those types of decisions.

As a result, designers and businesses need to use the Customer Tested Method, which is based on the scientific methods of both hypothesis and testing.

With the help of that method, you create hypotheses about which page designs well help create the greatest conversion rate and then try it out to see if specific designs and layouts help produce more conversions.

If you’ve got a strong layout, there’s no need to argue about how effective it is. Instead, just test it out!

CRO goes hand in hand with SEO.

Whenever businesses remake their site, it looks as if all that they talk about is SEO. Through the obsession with their search engine rank, a few people are afraid that CRO will end up undercutting all of the work that they had put into ranking number one on Google.

Focused on search engine rank, they often end up prioritizing SEO over CRO. That being said, you need both of them if you’d like to create a successful site as they actually work hand in hand.

For example, one CRO goal is to get users to remain on your website for as long as you can in order to get them to perform a certain action while they are one it. Therefore, websites that are optimized for CRO end up being more user-friendly, which incidentally, is also good for SEO.

In order to see how this works, acknowledge that solid sites have got and understandable content hierarchy, relevant pictures, as well as relevant content. All of this helps ensure that users remain engaged. Fortunately, that’s some of the same criteria that Google utilizes when figuring out a website’s ranking on their search engine.

Therefore, by getting rid of things such as complex animation, which needs 90 seconds in order to load, visitors won’t end up frustrated with the never ending loading, therefore, they won’t leave your site after only being there for a couple of seconds. As a result, you will get a better conversion rate and Google will see the faster load-time and use it to enhance the ranking of your site.

A few people are afraid that the constant testing will cause website elements to change or to get deleted, the elements that had given you the nice ranking in the first place. However, this can be simply steered clear of via a few easy tricks.

First of all, use the right CRO tool with JavaScript Redirect, which will make the test invisible to search engines.

Ext, you want to make sure that you’re using the same title tags, meta tags, as well as heading content from your previous page onto every page that is subject to CRO testing. All of this is just as important for SEO.

Now that you have a very good idea of how come CRO is so crucial, down below, we’ve outline what you actually need to do in order to optimize your conversion rate.

Define your website’s goals before you start testing.

You shouldn’t be creating a site “just because”. You need to make sure that you’ve got a clear reason as to why you’re doing it, meaning you need to have clearly defined goals. If not, you’ll just be wasting your precious time as well as energy. Those goals have to be a whole lot more significant than just “increase sales”!

Begin by defining how come your site exits in the first place. Did you create it in order to provide information about your business and your items? Do you want to produce leads for your sales teams? Is this for Facebook and Twitter engagement? Are you trying to create a special brand image?

Regardless of the reason, it needs to be clearly defined prior to when you are able to actually optimize in order to get the results that you’re going after.

Afterward, create a list of site goals that go from the top-down goals waterfall that you’ve got. With the help of this system, higher-order goals notifies lower-order goals. Those then notify your certain goals for conversion-optimization tests.

For instance, you list could potentially look as follows: the initial goal is to boost item sales, the next one is to boost white paper downloads, the third is to produce more blog comments, and then the last one is to increase social media activity.

Through that entire chain, the goal of optimization needs to be to boost product sales.

That system will get the layout of your website to be simpler as well. If you understand that your main goal is to boost sales, then every element on your site that increases them needs to be enhanced first. Those elements that work in the direction of your next goal come second, and so on.

Now that your goals are clearly defined, you need to figure out which site elements are actually able to boost the conversion rate for those goals.

The LIFT model will help to identify the factors that influence conversion rate.

So, how are you able to figure out the factors that impact your conversion rate? One solid way to figure this out is by utilizing the LIFT model: Landing page Influence Function for Tests.

The LIFT model has six factors in it: value proposition, relevance, clarity, anxiety, anxiety, distraction, and urgency. Every single one of those factors can be enhanced in order to increase the conversion rate.

Value proposition is what your website provides your visitors. It is the basis of conversion rate optimization. If they realize that the advantages of your item are greater than the costs, then they will end up proceeding forward with it!

If you’ve got a solid value proposition but then have difficulties to convey it, then you have the best point to start optimization. That being said, if the value proposition isn’t strong, it won’t be easy to enhance conversion rates, even in the case that you’ve got a great site. If the item isn’t great, then you’ll need to go back to the drawing board.

Now that you’ve got a nicely communicated value proposition, you can begin optimizing other factors:

If you are relevant, then it means that those who have come onto your site are able to easily find whatever it is they are looking for. Whenever people come onto your site looking for something in particular, they scan through your website quickly trying to find any signal words, therefore, you have to take into consideration the best way to display them.

For instance, if they had found your website while they were searching for fountain-pen ink, then it needs to be simple for them to locate the section on the page where that ink is sold.

Clarity revolves around speaking what you are actually trying to say. This is easy; just make the content very understandable.

Anxiety describes the hesitation that potential customers get prior to making a move. A solid way to deal with this is by making yourself credible that way visitors feel. Make it clear that you will never send them any spam or that you would never take advantage of their private information.

Getting rid of distractions revolves around getting rid of products on your website, whether they are animations or large images, as they could take the attention away from the main message.

Lastly, inspirational urgency the visitors feel as if they’ve got to make a move right at the moment. You can make that sense of urgency via limited-time offers.

Formulate a testable hypothesis for each factor.

A few companies only pay attention to one factor to boost their conversions. That being said, this is a big mistake because steering clear of any single factor will cause you to end up missing out on some potential conversions. Therefore, the greater the number of factors that you’ll make better, the better the conversion rate will be.

However, to begin enhancing the factors that impact conversion, you’ll have to create hypotheses for them. Begin by analyzing every factor on the page you’re on right now and then come up with how they could be enhanced.

The concept in this case revolves around turning your weaknesses into strengths. For instance, suppose that you’ve evaluated your wine website for relevance, and then you realize that your heading doesn’t even talk about wine! Figuring this out provides you with the opportunity to make your weak headline into one that is able to keep the customers on the page.

At this point, you are ready to work on creating some hypotheses.

Every hypothesis is a statement that follows this formula: altering [an issue or weakness] into [what you’d like it to be] will enhance the conversion rate for [the goal you’re going after].

When we go back to the wine example, you could hypothesize that by repeating “wine” or any other wine terms inside of the headline will boost the amount visitors that end up staying on your website, thus enhancing conversions.

In addition, you are able to test out a solid hypothesis, which means that you can single it out to check and see if it’s true or not.

For instance, “Our visitors would rather see Helvetica font” is not a hypothesis that you can test. On the contrary, “Changing the headline font from Arial to Helvetica will boost the conversion rate for newsletter sign-ups” is something that you can test as you can say if that’s true or not post testing.

Privacy and ease are the keys to reducing anxiety.

Have you ever gone to a business’s site that had given you the creeps as it didn’t seem safe or reliable? That is the anxiety that will negatively impact your conversion rates, even for the best items that you’ve got. THerefore, it’s important that you do whatever you can in order to get your visitors to feel at ease.

We live in a time of WikiLeaks, identity thefts, as well as social-media privacy policies that are controversial, therefore, people are more worried about their private data than they ever have been before. As a result, businesses need to attempt to prove that they are trustworthy to the shoppers as well as let them know why they need the information that they do.

In order to make this even more understandable, take a look at the research done by Forrester Research in 2009. Through their online retail survey, they found out that by asking for too much information, 12 percent of ecommerce shoppers end up abandoning their online shopping carts.

Something that you are able to do in order to decrease privacy anxiety is to the lower the amount of form fields that potential customers need to fill out in order to sell an item on your site.

Another thing that you can do is put text that outlines why it is that you need to gather data and how you will end up using it. You could either choose to put it directly in the form or in a special privacy policy section that you placed at the very bottom of your pages.

Customers are also able to get usability anxiety that comes from the frustration that they end up feeling whenever it’s difficult to use your site. A form that isn’t well designed can end up confusing your visitors, even making them feel stupid. That is all that needs to happen in order for them to never come onto your website again. You need to also make the assumption that even the forms that are the most understandable will end up in user error. One was to minimize usability anxiety is to pinpoint any mistakes that are made on the phones in a gentle and nice manner.

For instance, when you try to sign up at WordPress.com with a username that has already been taken, the italicized message, “Sorry, that username already exists”, appears. When they apologize and use lowercase letters that don’t intimidate, people won’t feel dumb about their error and get the encouragement that they need to try once more.

Try to keep your visitors from getting distracted.

Users typically walk through two stages whenever they go onto a new site: the first impression stage and the message-consumption one. Distraction is a danger during each one of the stages and whenever you let their attention steer away from the value-proposition message as well as your call to action, then you’d end up with a much smaller conversion rate.

Distraction in the first impression stage can get your visitors to go away as soon as they’ve entered.

The first impression of a site comes about around seconds and it is based entirely on visual stimulus. At this stage, users have to make decisions fast about the action that they’ll take next; do they remain on the page as it looks good or inviting or will they end up leaving as it doesn’t look good?

When you know this, it is crucial that you try out various elements on your landing page, meaning what they page visitors end up seeing first whenever they come onto a site.

Test out various layouts and headlines that catch the eye and there’s no need for too many pictures. You also want to be meticulous as even the smallest details such as background textures as well as asymmetrical designs can cause distractions to occur.

If your pages is cleared for the initial impression, then you still want to minimize distraction that may occur during the message-consumption stage. In this stage, it is crucial to focus on the quality of both the messages and the interactions.

There’s no need to overwhelm the visitors with messages as they will cause them to be in competition for the attention of the visitors. On the contrary, pay attention to several messages on every single page.

This concept is very well known; even politicians end up with the best results whenever they just talk about a few points and then repeat it. The same goes for advertising messages.

It’s also important to note to decrease the amount of choices that visitors get on every page. For instance, if you are selling laptops, it would be much smarter to showcase only some basic options at the start, instead of showing the whole catalogue right away.

Test your hypotheses and analyze the results.

We have talked a lot about creating a hypothesis. However, how do you actually test it out?

Begin by creating a test plan. This include the test goals as well as the form of the experiment.

The test goals will range depending on the CRO goals. For example, if the CRO goal is to produce a great number of leads, then the test goals could potentially be boosting online brochure downloads or even newsletter sign-ups.

In order to measure the goals, you will have to set goal triggers which are certain user actions that show that the goal was reached.

If the objective is to boost brochure downloads, for instance, then the goal trigger could potentially be a “Thank you” page which shows up after a download was successful. When you count the number of people that have come to the page, you can figure out the amount of times that your brochure has been downloaded.

So, how long should that test go for? Several days isn’t enough time to collect data. Instead, the test should occur for a minimum of 10 days over a couple of weekends in order to control for various variables. For instance, it’s completely possible that the greater conversions on Sunday are not related to the test objective, but rather that people just end up with more time during the weekend to go shopping online.

As soon as you’ve done your tests, now’s the time to evaluate the data and then turn your findings into an action. Keep in open min in regards to any conclusions that you end up with that’s based on the data. You may even figure out that the changes that have occured on your site, which you initially thought would be elementary, actually ended up making the largest influence on conversions.

Lastly, don’t forget that CRO is a process that happens continuously. You will have to have more than just one test if you want to optimize your site. In addition, the needs and wants of your customers will change with time, therefore, you have to be ready to change alongside.

If you end up doing everything properly, you will make testing a regular part of your opersion that way you can continuously push and enhance conversions.

Final Summary

The best conversion rates come from a whole lot more that simply a solid item. Instead, they come from the continuous process of difficult testing, scrutinizing, as well as experimentation.