I had finally tracked down that hard to find item online.  It was the right size, the right shape, the right finish, and a tolerable price…and free shipping!

I clicked the nice, big, obvious “Add to Cart” button to dive headlong into the conversion funnel.  ERROR.  Some gobbledegook that only a developer would understand.  No phone number.  I did what anyone in the mood to buy would do - I clicked the back button and tried again.  ERROR.  I clicked back again, and luckily for this eTailer, the toll free number was prominently displayed in the active window, AND I didn’t have any of their competitor sites top-of-mind.

Rep:  Welcome to [store with error-ridden website], how can I help you?

Me: Well, I’m trying to buy [Item X] on your website, but I can’t, so can you start by checking whether it’s in stock.

Rep: OK, I can help you buy [Item X] no problem.

Now, let me imagine that conversation as it should have been…

Rep: Welcome to [store with error-ridden website], how can I help you?

Me: Well, I’m trying to buy [Item X] on your website, but I can’t, so can you start by checking whether it’s in stock.

Rep: Oh no, I’m so sorry to hear that!  What happened?  Can you describe what you were doing when our website failed you?  Did you get an error message?  What browser were you using?

A little empathy would’ve been effective and memorable…maybe even blog-worthy. Don’t sound matter-of-fact that your website blew up, or I’ll never use your online channel again, and your brand has been damaged.

And I’m sure the technical team behind that website would’ve LOVED to get their hands on the error code that I’d written down and done some tinkering.  And they should’ve, because that website was bleeding money yesterday.

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I just finished Web Form Design by Luke Wroblewski, and I’m glad this useful book came out.  It’s not only a useful guide to designing better online forms, but a reminder that forms are the “bread and butter” of almost every website!

Whether it’s the Contact Us form on a B2B site, the Sign Up form on a social networking site, or the Checkout of an eCommerce site, they all have forms in common. And in every case, forms are what stands between our site visitors and the action we’ve persuaded them to take.

The irony is that companies spend thousands, sometimes millions, on making their sites functional, accessible, usable, intuitive, and sometimes even persuasive, but don’t always spend enough on making their transactional pages (forms) as optimized as possible. Add to that the money spent starting a relationship with customers via online or offline marketing.  And when it’s time to take that relationship the next level and close the deal, online forms have the responsibility.

So like the title of this post, I have questions:

• How much have you spent on your homepage and landing pages in the last 12 months?
• How much have you spent on your forms?
• How many resources work on your homepage and landing pages? Designers, testers, marketers, copywriters?
• How many resources work on your forms?
• Do you test your homepage and landing pages?
• Do you test your forms?
• Do your homepage and landing pages employ the latest technology like flash, video, AJAX, and widgets?
• Do your forms employ the latest technology?

Of course homepages and landing pages are important, and deserve lots of attention.  But don’t forget that the bottom of your conversion funnel is where all the serious action is.  It’s where dollars either flow into your bank account or…elsewhere.

So what can you do, short of reading the whole book yourself?

1. Start a “Forms Task Force” within your company–make it cross-disciplinary–and take a good, hard look at your forms.
2. Look at every question on your forms.  To paraphrase Web Form Design, consciously decide to “keep,” “cut,” “postpone,” or “explain” every question you ask your customers.
3. Once you’ve revisited your forms, begin the ongoing process of testing and optimization.

Editors note: You can also learn more about the book and read the author’s book blog here.

Our good friends at Rosenfeld Media, were kind enough to extend a 10% discount to our readers on their books; just use coupon code GROKDOT for your 10% off.

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Readers of this blog, and especially those involved in testing, know that conversion rate optimization is the goal we’re after.  It’s a great feeling to know that a test you worked on increased conversion, especially when it’s a “Home Run.”

We define Home Runs as triple-digit increases in conversion rate.  When we help our clients hit home runs, we ring the bell and celebrate.

But one of the dangers of early testing efforts is the problem that some baseball players have: “swinging for the fences.”  (Apologies for the baseball references, but it’s getting to be that time of year.)  What if your test, or series of tests, doesn’t appear to raise conversion rate?  Do you dismiss the tests as failures because they’re not home runs?

Of course not!

Worst case scenario is that you’ve learned something about executing meaningful tests, and about what does or doesn’t resonate with your customers.  But more often than not, you are affecting your website in more subtle ways.  Remember that conversion rate is often a blended, averaged, blunt instrument.  Especially when it’s averaged across large volumes of organic search traffic, SEM traffic, email house list traffic, different product lines, etc.

Here are some things you can monitor when your tests aren’t having huge impacts on your overall conversion rate:

1. Micro-conversion rates - If you’re testing product detail page layouts and “Add to Cart” buttons, check if those test variables are having an effect on the micro-conversion rate of adding products to the cart.
2. Funnel conversion rates - If  you’re testing lots of minor copy changes to your shopping cart, check for changes in your funnel conversion rate.
3. Bounce rates - If you’re testing images, copy, or other changes designed to build up the credibility of your site, watch for changes in bounce rates.

These types of incremental improvements are tests results to get excited about!  If your micro-conversion rate increases, and your funnel conversion rate stays the same, that’s still more money in your bank account.  If you reduce the bounce rate, you’ve gained the chance to convert that customer later, instead of your competitor.

So don’t dismiss the base hits because you’re disappointed about not hitting a home run (this time.)  Take it from a patient analyst who’s favorite baseball player was famous for lots of base hits and not all that many home runs

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If you were to walk through the offices of FutureNow, you would get a sense that while we were in college any one of us could have been cast in the movie Revenge of the Nerds. A few of us got made fun of for being socially-awkward “bookworms.”

While it may not make you popular with cool kids, fancy book reading does have its benefits. So I couldn’t help but laugh when I read about a new study published in the latest issue of New Scientist magazine (subscription required).  It shows that “readers of narrative fiction scored higher on tests of empathy and social acumen than those who read non-fiction texts.”

In other words, reading fiction helps us empathize with others and grok them better. By the way, I just finished Ask the Dust by John Fante…have you read any good fiction lately?

Now let’s head out to the business world – a world dominated by analytics, numbers, feasibility studies, ROI, and other non-fiction information.  All the “non-fiction” stuff is absolutely essential to running a business, especially in a soft economy.  But, when it comes to understanding your customers, and getting them to interact with your business in profitable ways, a little fiction helps.

You can probably guess where I’m heading with this…Wouldn’t it be great if there were fictional representations of your target customers that allowed you deeper empathy and understanding of their behavior online and off? Harry Potter readers would realize Dumbledore and Voldemort wouldn’t be motivated the same way or want the same things and this would influence how you marketed to them.

P.S. Today is Harry Potter’s birthday.

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I used to run websites for a living.

I was responsible for the performance of those sites, and I was the de facto “web analytics guy” within my company.  But I wasn’t a full-time Web Analyst, and I had lots of other strategic and operational things to do.

Sound familiar?

When I did look at my web analytics, I often skimmed the information contained in my default “dashboard,” and rarely dove into the real data unless someone came to me with a specific question, or I had to produce a report.

There’s an obvious downside to that approach: The data in the dashboard is very “averaged out” and may lead us to miss more specific data points that we can leverage to do a better job.  But how do we get at the juicy money making data, while not spending too much time getting buried in minutia?

The solution? Scheduling in regular, recurring “data dives” to make sure you are not getting addicted to the dashboard view of your website.  Maybe start with once a week, and put it in your calendar. (If you don’t you’ll likely never find the time ☺)

Note: I am using Google Analytics in these examples because of its ubiquity, but they should all be applicable to any modern web analytics system:

Here are 5 tips to get you started:

1. Instead of the default “last 30 days” view of your analytics, try exploring different extended date ranges.  For example, I used to keep a rolling, 90-day dashboard.  Using the “timeline” function in the date selector tool is good for this.  So is selecting “date range” in the comparison dropdown menu; that way you can compare the same date range in the prior year, for example.
2. Make sure you assign goals and dollar amounts to every conversion on your site.  Most sites have a primary conversion like becoming a lead, subscribing, or purchasing, but micro-conversions are important, too.  Tag your primary conversion goal with your average order value, your lead conversions with a value per lead, etc.  For micro-conversions, figure out what percentage of your visitors that take that action eventually leads to sales.  If 1% of blog subscribers turn into deals, and the average deal is worth $500, then that micro-conversion goal value should be $5.
3. Explore the Traffic Sources reports to get a better understanding of your traffic “mix.”  Segmenting by traffic source can often yield quick, actionable insights.  Try looking at your organic traffic over the last 6 months, or your referral traffic over the last 3 months.  What does the traffic graph look like?  How well or poorly are they converting?  Has that KPI remained consistent?
4. Dive into your Top Content reports, and try sorting by “$Index.”  Note: This value is only calculated if you’ve assigned goal values and e-commerce revenue values across your site.  And believe it or not, there are ways to assign e-commerce values to your site pages even if you’re not running an e-commerce site.  $Index calculates the values of pages according to how often they’re accessed en route to a conversion.  It works kind of like the plus/minus point system used in the NHL.  If a player is on the ice when a goal is scored, they’re “+1,” and if they’re on the ice when a goal is scored against, they’re “-1.”  So if a page is very regularly visited by customers who convert, it will have a high $Index value.  It’s a great way to figure out which high-impact pages you should start testing and optimizing.
5. If you have site search, spend some time hooking your web analytics up to your in-site search, then dive headfirst into the very valuable data the Site Search reports can provide.  Are you able to see which keywords are delivering “zero results”?  What keywords are being used most often in search?  Are visitors who search more likely to convert?  Do they spend more per transaction?  Are there products are services your visitors ask for that you don’t offer?  Should you?

I know there are more handy tips around, but I limited this to 5 because I’m sure our readership has some brilliant ways they can share on how to do healthy and productive “data dives.”

And if this was useful, let us know, and maybe we’ll do a part two.

One final note:  Data diving is healthy and fun, but just remember to come up for air once in a while ;). Even more important, don’t let the stuff you learn from your analytics just sit there, turn your learnings into action and let’s move our conversion needles together.

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I recently attended a presentation put on by the good people from a great new SEO blog called Janeandrobot.com. Their mission is great: “Design for people, be smart about robots, and you will achieve long-lasting success.”

They’re bringing a balance back to the sometimes-crazy world of SEO enthusiasts.

I’m not an SEO expert, but it’s an interest of mine. I attended with a friend who’s a talented web/software developer, so I enjoyed seeing him “nerd-out” in his element of very, very technical folks.

It was a great set of presentations about AJAX, JavaScript, and making sure the major search engines can easily index your websites. In other words, making all the great technology you worked so hard to build play nice with the major search engine robots.

But it had nothing to do with FutureNow’s mission of helping businesses market better, conversion rate optimization, and Persuasion Architecture…or did it?

I walked away with a few impressions, and hopefully useful insights, about the material that we discussed. By the way, some real heavy-hitters in the SEO world were represented: we had an ex-Googler, Microsoft Live Search, SEOmoz.org, and Amazon.com represented.

First, I was blown away and happy when the Live Search representative, in the midst of everyone talking about JavaScript and sitemap files, reminded the room that the IT changes the developers applied to increase their organic search rankings should be tested to see if they increased conversion. Score one for Microsoft!

Second, it was mentioned that search engine robots don’t like it when you hide your site’s category structure inside a dropdown menu. Picture the dropdowns on many of our sites that are shortcut ways to drill down into site content. They often say things like, “I want to…” and then the menus contain options like, “Get a price quote,” “Talk to a salesperson,” “Read customer stories,” etc. These dropdown options are usually (and should be) redundant ways to navigate without using the site’s top/global navigation or its left or right-hand navigation links. I started thinking about this common web design “convention” and where it came from. It came from some so-called experts and design gurus a few years ago telling us users will only click three times. You need to get them to what they want in three clicks.

Fallacy! It wasn’t ever tested to see its effect on conversion rate! Might work for some, but how many?!? I file this one with the “users won’t scroll below the fold” nonsense.

Us younger web design folks thought to ourselves, “Well, if we have to get visitors to everything they might want in three clicks, the only way to do that is to put a million links on the homepage, or to put them in dropdown menus.” So we ended up doing something that wasn’t that great for visitors, and was never tested or proven to be more persuasive to our customers.

And now, the SEO “revolution” has brought attention back to the fact that search engines rank our sites based on how good of an experience we give visitors. Search engines want to see your site’s information architecture in a readable, no-frills format. Maybe our visitors do, too!

So while I don’t always agree with the amount of frenetic attention site owners give to Search Engine Optimization efforts, it’s nice to see that the SEO game is forcing us to clean up our web pages, clean up our code, and question design decisions that are perhaps past their prime. It even appears to be causing folks to focus on making changes for the sake of conversion, not just for the sake of getting more traffic to our sites.

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A new report entitled Information Overload: We Have Met the Enemy and He Is Us was written up recently in the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times. Commissioned by Basex, it details how information overload, particularly task interruptions, costs the Enterprise $650 billion a year in lost productivity.

That’s a very large price to pay for having everything at our fingertips, all the time, in any format.

Our decision-making processes can’t always keep up with our choices. The same challenge applies to website design and content. The Web is a fantastic place to shop, research, and be entertained, but sometimes when I’m online, I notice physical fatigue when I’m trying to figure out where to go next!

When I’m evaluating a vendor’s Services page, should I:

• Sign up for their newsletter?
• Read about the awards they’ve won?
• Look at a list of clients?
• Read the CEO’s blog?

When I’m shopping for a health supplement, should I:

• Read about related products?
• Read about their latest “green” program?
• View my empty shopping cart?
• Become an affiliate?

Even though we come to a website with the best intentions, we’re by nature drawn to the shiny distractions that marketers and designers put along our path. We go down rabbit holes in websites and sometimes by the time we find our way back to the trail, we’ve lost our momentum . . . or maybe we’ve been interrupted and have to go back to work

So I’m wondering: How much money is lost each year because we overload our potential customers with information on our web pages? How many visitors are driven away by cluttered designs, too many messages, too many offers, and too many choices?

Here’s the problem: Marketers naturally want to use messaging, offers, promotions and more to persuade web visitors. But in their efforts, they often contribute to information overload, which is proven to hamper the decision-making process. Also, companies tend to add more content to their websites over time and rarely retire content that’s outdated or irrelevant.

The solution: Most web pages should have only one primary goal. If there are alternate options, offers, or next steps, that’s fine. But don’t interrupt the task at hand, and don’t overload your visitors with distractions.

The one exception I can think of is the homepage, which should, at a minimum, a) communicate Unique Value Proposition, and b) route visitors.

Should you remove these secondary goals and choices? Maybe, but sometimes making them less prominent is enough to move the needle. It comes down to a business decision whether your “Sizzlin’ Hot Summer Giveaway” promotion is worth distracting a certain percentage of visitors from their primary goal.

What if you don’t know the goal of all of your site’s pages? You could start with rediscovering who your customers really are, or some analysis of your website’s “data dump,” or you could hypothesize and run some tests. Sometimes the purpose of a page is simply to present options. That’s fine, but don’t distract visitors from understanding their options and making a decision.

So let’s get practical here:

• Category page primary goal = route visitors to sub-category or product page
• Product page primary goal = persuade visitors to purchase
• In the News page primary goal = build brand credibility
• Shopping cart page primary goal = get the cash!
• General content page primary goal = build persuasive momentum

Although it seems hard at first, it’s actually pretty easy to find a single, primary goal for most pages on your site. Then you have the harder task of deciding how to do away with unnecessary distractions, get rid of design clutter, and allow visitors freedom without information overload.

Sometimes having a new pair of eyes look at your site can really speed this process up.

If you’re overloading customers with info, you’re not alone. Many world-class, million-dollar sites are guilty of information overload, and even the best online marketers need to work on it constantly.

Best of luck. To avoid information overload, let’s focus on answering the three essential questions of Persuasion Architecture:

• Who are your visitors?
• What action do you want them to take?
• What will persuade them to take that action?

. . .

About the Author: Brendan Regan is a Persuasion Analyst at FutureNow, Inc. This is his first GrokDotCom post. Welcome to the blog, Brendan!

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