The following two ‘tweaks’ have the potential to increase online sales, opt-ins, subscriptions, sign-ups, and other types of ‘web conversion’ by up to 300% or more (example below).
It’s so simple, any website owner should be able to take advantage of it. (Most decent web developers will be able to do either of these tweaks with their eyes half shut and for a low fee.)
The irony is that I suspect few website owners will be able to do the following, for one main reason — they don’t know the opportunity is there because they’re not reviewing their website statistics.
Anyone who doesn’t have access to — or regularly review their website statistics — won’t be able to use the following tactic. If that applies to you, I strongly recommend you start tracking website statistics and online activity as soon as possible. (And if you don’t know where to start, check this out.)
Okay, let’s look at the technique.
Goal Conversion Funnel Reduction.
If you own Stats Faceslap! you should have been given online access to a video about this. Please contact customer services if you’re missing the link to the resources page.
Nearly all commercial websites feature one or more forms where visitors are asked to submit information. Sometimes there is a whole sequence of pages that visitors have to step through before the complete the data submission.
Many ecommerce sites (online shops) have a sequence of pages customers need to step through to go and pay for whatever items have been added to their online shopping basket.
Many corporate sites may have enquiry and quote requests pages. News websites may have a set of pages people step through to pay for a subscription. And so on.
Assuming your website has one or more pages where people submit information, here’s how to increase how many people successfully make it all the way through that sequence.
First of all you can…
1. Reduce the amount of information you ask people to submit.
Only ask for the minimum information required for you to be able to fulfil. If you have a website form that asks people for their personal information in return for access to a downloadable report or whitepaper, don’t also ask them for postal address if you can avoid it.
The rule is that the more information you ask for, the less people will want to fill in the form. If you ask for any information that is not absolutely necessary, conversion almost always drops.
Secondly…
2. Reduce the number of pages in the sequence.
If your sales or enquiry forms are spread over more than one page, (like a ‘checkout’ sequence for an e-commerce store, or a complicated quote request form), you may want to find ways of not only simplifying the data capture forms, but also reducing the number of pages.
If you are able to simplify and reduce the number of pages your prospects have to step through, you may see a significant increase in how many sales or enquiries you get.
Here’s an extreme and quite compelling example… (Source: The Marketing Experiments Compendium, Volume 1. Sherpastore.com).
A large online publisher was experiencing a low rate of online subscription. Out of 10,245 visitors they got 27 subscribers… a visitor to subscription conversion rate of 0.26%.
Then they reduced the number of pages in their online subscription process — a long sequence of 9 pages — down to just 3 pages.
After the change — another 10,314 visitors passed through the site, resulting in 107 subscriptions… a visitor to subscription conversion rate of 1.04%.
That’s a 300% improvement… they tripled their sales by reducing and simplifying online forms.
What forms and sequences can you simplify or reduce on your site?
-Ed.
June 9th, 2008 at 2:34 pm
Hi Ed,
Re your question: none really, we always try to ‘shorten the decision cycle’ for our visitors (and it shows in the number of question and quote forms submitted, or leaflets and PDF-files requested).
Can I add one other item, specially if you are using AWeber to capture prospect details. After submitting their details, redirect your visitor to a specific page that explains what’s going to happen now – this will definitely increase the numbers of confirmations (Verified-opt-in method).
Karin H. (Keep It Simple Sweetheart, specially in business)
June 9th, 2008 at 9:11 pm
Hi Ed,
Very interesting best practice… that I can confirm. With Holistis, you can test and personalize content in real time. With our clients we focus on aquisition funnel with great success too. With holistis, Publishers can do live testing and adapt their content purely on measured performance… that’s the way forward for Marketers: Test, Measure, Optimize but they need a solution to implement such a test in a simple way. On average, 98% of website visitors leave a site without making a purchase… despite huge investment in online ads to drive traffic. This will have to be adressed over the coming years.
With Holistis, we can go one step further than “just” A/B and MV testing as we can combine testing with the power of content personalization. People are different with different intentions, interests and environment and most of time adressed the same way, that’s another reason we developped Holistis.
Ed, I will be really happy to have your views on our solution, methodologies and impact on Marketers.
Cyril
June 10th, 2008 at 9:14 am
@Karin – great tip for everyone thank you. I think this is such a critical tip I’ll blog about it (and mention the person who stimulated the post
@Cyril – Thanks for your comments. I just had a look at your site — I’ll email you privately to discuss the service you offer — at first glance it certainly looks like something my readers will benefit from.
Thanks for your comments.
June 10th, 2008 at 9:16 am
Hi Ed
As long as you ‘keep it simple’
Karin H.
June 10th, 2008 at 12:41 pm
I’ll do my best… I’m trying to rack up another K.I.S.S. award!
June 12th, 2008 at 1:42 pm
Your second suggestion is especially important for shopping cart procedures.
The more pages there are, the fewer orders you’ll get.
Often, one of the greatest opportunities to improve conversion is in the order checkout process.
Also, it’s helpful to indicate how many steps are in the order checkout process by using an indicator at the top of the page.
If your process is only 3 steps, but you don’t tell the customer, he/she won’t know. And maybe they’ll bail out on step 2… just because they didn’t know they were so close to completing the transaction.
Great post, Ed!
Ryan