Design for Conversion 2008: keynote Steve Jackson

Doing A Conversion Assessment Steve Jackson Senior Consultant Trainers’ House Analytics

My Story • 1996 – 1999 Designer: Making awful websites from brochures handed to me by a customer • 1999 – 2001 Doing SEO & SEM (and in 99 purely by luck got into web analytics) • 2001 – 2003 Conversion became main focus; By changing text like this; “Wireless and wired M2M connectivity solutions offer reliable data communications to remote devices and systems in a number of industry verticals. In this section, you will find some examples of our products in action. We hope this will make it easier to choose which product(s) suit best for your own application.” To this (and measuring the effect); “We design electronic gadgets that we attach to lifts. It makes it possible for you to control that lift from anywhere in the world via the internet. It can save a fortune in maintenance costs. Click here to find out more... ” 25.9.2008 2 Copyright © Trainers’ House 2008

My Story 800% Conversion Improvement Qualified Leads went from 1-2 a month to 16-20 a month. Business deal average value was €150,000 • 2003-2008 – Set up my own company (Aboavista) which in 2006 was acquired by Satama which is now going by the name of Trainers house. During this time by applying what I’m about to show you I’ve saved clients €millions, improved conversion rates drastically and even saved one guys job! • Next.... all based on a true story.... 25.9.2008 3 Copyright © Trainers’ House 2008

The Insight Model Clickstream Data Competitive Experience Data Data Insights 1. Persona - All the evaluation is based on the needs and desires of one persona, a fictional potential customer with his own needs, desires and pain points. 2. Competitive data - How are we doing in comparison to our competition? 3. Clickstream data - How do the visitors currently behave on the site? 4. Experience data - How are we doing in terms of usability and psychology? 25.9.2008 4 Copyright © Trainers’ House 2008

Persona definition Meet Tapio Tapio is a 36 year old Finnish entrepreneur working for himself. Often working on the road, in the office or from home, Tapio has a variety of different needs from his broadband and his mobile service provider. He needs primarily to be able to check email, store contacts and easily upload and download files through secure networks. His wife would also need a good home internet connection for her own home/office lifestyle having even more needs for the ability to upload and download large files. He is in the market for his own broadband connection and mobile phone contract. 25.9.2008 5 Copyright © Trainers’ House 2008

Persona definition Heuristic persona Goal Purchase broadband connection for home use Tapio has decided he needs to get a broadband connection for his own personal home use. He has just moved apartment and needs a new service. He Scenario and his wife both know all the local brands but know through word of mouth that they are in a buyers market and will use the Internet to find the best deal they can. • See what kind of broadband offers are available. Because Tapio knows the Tasks brands he goes direct to the homepage to check out the deal information. prior • Compare prices to that of competing brands which he does through to Google. purchase • Compare the full service offer across competing brands which he does through Google. The are a variety of broadband deals in Finland so it is important to find out which suits his needs best. • Neither Tapio or his wife have any idea • What is the price per month? how to install broadband and don’t • How many service/price (speed to MB ratio) options are there and are they know anything about the technology. clearly differentiated? • Tapio heard he needed a 100MB Pain • Does the cost vary based on usage? If so how? If not is the price fixed or connection because it’s fast but doesn’t points could there be hidden surprises? know how much benefit he will get for Conside- the extra money. rations • Tapios wife doesn’t want to use cables to connect to the Internet. Is the broadband connection wireless? Does this cost more? • Tapio doesn’t understand how and broadband can work with digital TV questions • Do any free accessories (ie wireless modem) come with the service? • Are there any free offers in Finland around broadband? • If so are the free offers comparable in terms of features? • Laajakaista (Broadband) • Tapio heard that a full system contract including Digital TV could be • Laajakaista Yhteys (Broadband purchased with broadband access to the Internet? Does this come with the Search connection) deal? terms • Laajakaista Nopeus (broadband • Does it come home fitted? Is it manual installation? If so is it easy? speed/fast) • Are there service guarantees? Money back options or trial periods? • Laajakaista Hinnat (broadband pricing) 25.9.2008 6 Copyright © Trainers’ House 2008

Competitive analysis 1. Designed to find out if competitors Clickstream Data are offering the same or better than you to the persona with his Competitive Experience previously mentioned pain points, Data Data needs and desires. 2. Overall score is a weighted Insights average of the scores from ”Answering the needs of the persona” and “Keyword relevance”. 3. Scored across 14 individual points across the top 5 competing websites. This is done through Google in the case of this study. 4. Designed to find individual points of improvement. 25.9.2008 7 Copyright © Trainers’ House 2008

Competitive analysis Scoring: Overall score Key findings • Overall Score 1,83 out of 5 • All of your competitors were stronger • Consistent failure to answer persona questions as well as the competition. • Keyword relevance consistently poorer than that of the competition 25.9.2008 8 Copyright © Trainers’ House 2008

Competitive analysis Scoring: Keyword relevance – unique factors Key findings • 1 key phrase (Nopeus) not relevantly represented. Tapio heard 100MB was fast so is SGT Peppers option as fast? Faster than that? Does he need 100MB? Is he being misled? Where are the answers to these questions? • Competition had higher scores due to more ”trigger word” relevance appearing on their landing pages. 25.9.2008 10 Copyright © Trainers’ House 2008

Competitive analysis Notes • Tapio wanted a high speed wireless modem. When trying to buy that via Sgt Pepper he thought he could get it IE (selected); • The only link you can click then takes you to the store with the €19,90 package listed. Tapio was frustrated he couldn’t get the €34.80 package. 25.9.2008 11 Copyright © Trainers’ House 2008

Competitive analysis Notes Beelzebub makes it very simple: • 4 easy to understand offers based exactly around what Tapio wanted. • Simple navigation • No confusing re-directs • The option to downgrade to cheaper offers 25.9.2008 12 Copyright © Trainers’ House 2008

Competitive analysis Conclusions • There is a lot of room for improvement and gaining a competitive advantage because the competition are also quite weak (though better than Sgt Pepper). • The competition is answering more of the target audiences questions more effectively and therefore are likely to be winning business from Sgt Pepper. • Sgt Pepper are failing on everything except the free offers which they advertise effectively. But free offers aren’t everything, indeed only 10% of Tapio’s motivations are driven by free offers. • Pricing is difficult to understand and answered no better than anyone else. In one frustrating case for Tapio an option was advertised which he could find no way to purchase. • More explanation is needed around the service. What service guarantees? How does broadband work? Will Sgt pepper help set things up? Competition is also poor at most of these things. This is a big opportunity. 25.9.2008 13 Copyright © Trainers’ House 2008

Competitive analysis Recommendations • Develop personas for broadband use. • Develop content that answers their needs/motivations. • Improve keyword relevancy on landing pages. • Concentrate on improving answering needs & motivations from your personas across various reach & engage elements. 25.9.2008 14 Copyright © Trainers’ House 2008

Clickstream Analysis Clickstream • Overall score is a weighted average Data of the scores from ”Reach – Competitive Experience Search”, “Reach Referrers” and “Site Data Data Engagement”. • Looking primarily at bounce rate and exit rate as indicators of lack of Insights interest as well as the purchase funnel looking for low hanging fruit. • Designed to find out if your site has any major trends which need further examination and pinpoint things which need to improve. • Scoring shows easy points of improvement, graphs and tables show absolute numbers. 25.9.2008 15 Copyright © Trainers’ House 2008

Clickstream analysis Scoring: Overall score and unique factors Key findings • Opportunities to improve across reach referrers and direct traffic. • Opportunities to improve site engagement across average bounce rates, Broadband (subject) bounce rates and process abandonment rates. 25.9.2008 16 Copyright © Trainers’ House 2008

Clickstream analysis Visitor behaviour in Broadband Online Store Funnel How did the visitors proceed in the purchasing process? Number of visits on each page during the past 4 weeks Key findings • 98.6% store abandonment rate from Broadband online store. Big opportunities for improvement. • Enormous drop off point between Choosing broadband speed and order SGT Pepper PC page. (69% of all traffic that get to the store abandon here) 25.9.2008 17 Copyright © Trainers’ House 2008

Clickstream analysis Visitor behaviour in Broadband Online Store • Potential Disconnect between Tapio and page being viewed. • Tapio is not looking for a new screen, new PC or a new games console. He is trying desperately to find that wireless connection for €34 a month. 25.9.2008 18 Copyright © Trainers’ House 2008

Clickstream analysis Solid conclusions • Bounce rate across the website needs improvement. 20-30% would score 3. Currently over half of all traffic leaves without doing anything at all. • 6/10 visitors hitting broadband pages leave without doing anything. • Search engine marketing works on average better than ordinary (referral) traffic. • Direct traffic is worrying but this data has not been validated. (Further investigation is required) • Abandonment of the shopping cart is 98%. Around 69% abandons from one page. 25.9.2008 19 Copyright © Trainers’ House 2008

Clickstream analysis Recommendations • Improve landing page relevance on top single access pages. There were lots of keywords which were not relevant to the main purpose of the Laajakaista pages (such as webmail, playstation 3 & PS3) • When looking at trigger keywords (based on Laajakaista) you far better than average results (25% bounce). Improve the SEM/SEO to test and target. • Abandonment of the shopping cart is 98%. Around 69% abandons from one page. Test this page – Try removing the ”extras” altogether or put the main call to action higher (and above the page fold) so that the first thing Tapio sees is the click to purchase what he has been trying to find. 25.9.2008 20 Copyright © Trainers’ House 2008

Experience Analysis Clickstream Data • Overall score is a weighted average of the scores from ”Usability”, Competitive Experience “Psychology” and “Nurture methods Data Data scored”. • Designed to find out if your website Insights is following best practices in these three areas. • Scored across 9 individual studies across the Sgt Pepper website. • Designed to find individual points of improvement. • Scores show direct areas of improvement. 25.9.2008 21 Copyright © Trainers’ House 2008

Experience analysis Scoring: Overall score and unique factors Key Findings • Opportunities to improve across error handling. (71% and 47% bounce rate search engine and 404 page respectively) • Opportunities to improve interactivity and influence. * Scale used is 0 – 5. Exact descriptions for each value are presented in the appendix. 25.9.2008 22 Copyright © Trainers’ House 2008

Experience analysis Notes – Error handling • These pages would have scored 5, serious but polite on the left and light hearted but informative on the right 25.9.2008 24 Copyright © Trainers’ House 2008

Experience analysis Notes – Interactivity None of the following things exist that might have helped Tapio make a decision: • Onsite live help – Chat box could help with an instant query • Blog with possibility to read visitor comments and make his own. • Video/audio/images describing the service – ability to download for later use. • Community forum – to read about experiences. • Incentives to download files (IE manuals to help him understand how the system works) in return for contact details. • Online interactive tool or application that helps Tapio find out what he needs – maybe a speed/MB application that allows him to understand what kind of speed he needs rather than rely on word of mouth that ‘100MB is good’. 25.9.2008 26 Copyright © Trainers’ House 2008

Experience analysis Notes – Influence Few of the following things exist that might have helped Tapio make a decision • Opt-in (as previously mentioned – email for downloads/help/information) • Social proof (testimonials to quality of service) – a couple exist in the business site. • easy to understand language, descriptive images, human/feeling images, free helpful downloads. All of these things help to convince Tapio that you’re here to help and have good service. • Links to PR about how good Sgt Peppers Broadband is or partners that use it. Case studies about how people like Tapio have installed and fitted their systems. Newsfeeds to get support. 25.9.2008 27 Copyright © Trainers’ House 2008

Experience analysis Conclusions • Sonera has scored above average because the site is quite well scored for efficiency and general overall experience but there are still areas for improvement. • Interactivity could be improved. • Influence and persuasive methods could be improved. 25.9.2008 28 Copyright © Trainers’ House 2008

Experience analysis Recommendations • Improve error handling as described (slides 37 - 39) • Survey to see whether visitors would use onsite live help. • Develop content like this; http://www.moneysupermarket.com/c/broadband/speed-guide/2/ • Invite members to blog with moderated comments/build support forum. • Develop broadband manual and make it an incentive based download so that you can capture potential email addresses of prospects. • Influence and persuasive methods could be improved. 25.9.2008 29 Copyright © Trainers’ House 2008

Sample Executive summary Improvement categories The Conversion assessment is designed to define areas of improvement that will help improve conversion rates. We categorise potential fixes in 3 levels: • Category Zero – Should and can be done immediately. Category zero means the fix can be made in less than one day in house without budget approvals, longer term site implications or large scale content development. • Category 1 – testing could begin upon budget approval without longer term site implications. It will take time and resources (though less than 1 week in man hours) to set-up the testing. • Category 2 – improvements mid-longer term and require steering group approval and content development. Minimum 2 weeks resources and work required to set-up the tests. SGT Peppers points of improvement This assessment has identified 14 points of improvement: • 1 Category Zero (Slide 29 - 30 explain the problem specifically) • 7 Category 1 level improvements (Recommendations slide 6 & 7) • 6 category 2 level improvements (Recommendations slide 6 & 7) 25.9.2008 30 Copyright © Trainers’ House 2008

Sample Recommendations Category Zero • Abandonment of the shopping cart is 98%. Around 69% abandons from one page. Test this page – (See slides 18-19) Category 1 • Improve error handling as described • Survey to see whether visitors would use onsite live help. • Improve keyword relevancy on landing pages. • Concentrate on improving answering needs & motivations from your current personas across various reach & engage elements. • Improve landing page relevance on top single access pages. There were lots of keywords which were not relevant to the main purpose of the Laajakaista pages (such as webmail, playstation 3 & PS3) • When looking at relevant keywords (based on Laajakaista) you’re far better than average results. Improve the SEM/SEO to test and target. • Direct traffic is worrying but this data has not been validated. (Further investigation is required) 25.9.2008 31 Copyright © Trainers’ House 2008

Sample Recommendations Category 2 • Develop 4 key personas for broadband use. • Develop content that answers their needs/motivations. • Develop content like this; http://www.moneysupermarket.com/c/broadband/speed-guide/2/ • Invite members to blog with moderated comments/build support forum. • Develop broadband manual and make it an incentive based download so that you can capture potential email addresses of prospects. • Influence and persuasive methods could be improved. 25.9.2008 32 Copyright © Trainers’ House 2008

The Story Continues... • Conversion assessments start at €6K (in Dutch) • Steve Jackson • Senior Consultant • Trainers House Analytics Unit • +358 50 343 5159 • steve.jackson@satama.com Upcoming book (publish date April 09); The Cult Of Analytics Driving online marketing strategies using web analytics Pre-register your interest free at; http://www.blackbeak.com/the-cult-of-analytics/ 25.9.2008 33 Copyright © Trainers’ House 2008

Design for Conversion 2008: keynote Steve Jackson

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