I couldn’t agree more with
headline of this article and it’s one I’m afraid I can’t take credit for. I found this line in Paco Underhill’s book, Why We Buy – The Science Of Shopping, and found myself comparing many of things he has measured in retail world to tests I’ve done with online, visitor-based activity. The conversion rate on a website is easy to measure. Unfortunately, businesses too busy concentrating on their bottom line most often overlook it. The point of this article is to define what a conversion rate is and show you how you can begin to start improving your own website’s conversion rate and therefore your bottom line. At same time, I will relate my observations to Paco’s on offline retailing. In Cyberspace No-One Can Hear You Shop
According to Paco, main problem with websites is that, owing to media attention and love of technology, retailers went online without knowing why. It’s true that in late 90’s businesses were going online because their competition had, or because they feared that they would be left behind by not embracing new technology. Not great reasons to spend time, money and resources on a website. The painful thing is that, since going online, most of these websites have not changed much for better. Yes, they look nicer now, but number of glorified poster sites I still see never ceases to amaze me. In order to combat this lack of purpose, I propose you look at four goals and adapt them to your own business requirements. One of these goals should be primary focus of your entire website design.
1) Prospect Acquisition To deliver qualified leads and prospects through website.
2) Sales/E-commerce To sell products and services online directly through an e-store.
3) In-House Cost Saving To cut costs, usually resources such as printed material or time, by automating in-house processes online such as timekeeping systems and human resource procedures.
4) Customer Service To improve customer service by providing answers to queries and complaints online automatically where possible.
With goal clearly defined, it is easier to measure effectiveness of your site because you know what to look for. Conversion is defined in relation to goal you’ve chosen.
So measure prospect acquisition as percentage of visitors who give you their details out of total number of visitors to your website. Measure conversion on sales as percentage of people buying a product against total number of website visitors. Conversion on in-house cost saving is simply number of people using system as a percentage of number of people supposed to be using system. A good internal policy here will mean this is a 100% conversion rate. The number of people using resources and systems you have put in place as a percentage of total visitors to support web pages can give you your customer service conversion.
So why measure conversion? Because it allows you to accurately measure impact of changes you make by measuring performance of your website before and after change. With that valuable information in hand, you can make adjustments accordingly.
The Butt Brush Factor
In many instances in his book, Paco refers to ‘The Butt Brush Factor’ — way people, women in particular, don’t like enclosed spaces where other people constantly bump into them from behind. It usually led to prospective shopper feeling frustrated or feeling uncomfortable and leaving store or going somewhere else. You might be thinking, “well how does that relate to an online experience?” It is true that no-one usually bumps into you from behind while you’re sitting in front of a computer, but how many times are you made to feel irritated, uncomfortable or just downright frustrated by a website? How often do you leave one and look at another because first one doesn’t have what you’re looking for? This ‘Butt Brush Factor’ is incredibly relevant to websites, more so I think than even in ordinary retail. Here are some examples of common online ‘Butt Brush Factors’ that you will see in many business websites.
1) Latest News. The landing page has latest news about company links. What exactly is point of having a bunch of latest news links on your landing page? What good is that to a browser arriving at your landing page knowing and caring little about your company? A browser wants to know what you can do for him right there and then, not how your company stock is doing. An ‘About Us’ section is a much more reasonable place to put these links.
2) Awards. A landing page with awards screams, look at us, look at what we’ve achieved, aren’t we clever? It also completely wastes space on most important page of your website. It can be compared to what Paco said when he talked about going into a car showroom and seeing manufacturer awards. That is unlikely to make much of an impression on average shopper.
3) Poor Headlines. ‘Welcome to Company Name’ is most common waste of a headline I ever see. Probably company is unknown to visitor so you’re wasting his or her time. A headline, which communicates need of target audience and how you can solve that need, improves reading and click through by up to 35% in recent tests we made.
4) Submit Buttons. Why tell visitor to ‘submit?’ Submit actually means “To yield or surrender (oneself) to will or authority of another” according to dictionary.com, so why ask innocent web browsers to do that in order to read your monthly newsletter? Subscribe to our newsletter is much more friendly, I would say.
5) Bad Use Of Flash. This is a common problem with media companies in particular. I understand why they do these all singing all dancing interactive flash websites, which often are works of art and showcase their ability. However ‘skip intro’ is a common link on majority of these websites. That is because some people find them a waste of time. Why have an intro at all? Why not just have a showcase of what you can do on a normal fast, efficient website which tells me what I need to know quickly? If I decide I have time to look at flash animations I will.
6) Poor Use Of Imagery. I’m guilty of this myself. We used to have a picture of a squirrel flying through air with ‘what’s your objective’ on our landing page. It might have worked had we been selling nuts or seed, but a company improving website conversion? Not really relevant! It was more a result of my ego, pride and photographic luck in capturing said squirrel with my digital camera, and then thinking of a way I could use picture, than thinking of a good picture which was relevant to what we were trying to say and using that. This kind of thing is repeated on many websites — people with briefcases, bridges, animals and other general graphics, which can be turned with words into anything you want image to say. But on first glance, they don’t really show any relevance. All communication should be relevant and, ideally, persuade user to do something.
