cass public

Doing A Conversion Assessment

Steve Jackson

Senior Consultant

Trainers’ House Analytics

My Story

25.9.2008 2 Copyright © Trainers’ House 2008

• 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... ”

My Story


• 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....

800% Conversion Improvement

Qualified Leads went from 1-2 a month to 16-20 a month.

Business deal average value was €150,000

The Insight Model

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?


Insights

Competitive Data

Clickstream Data

Experience Data

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.

Persona definitionHeuristic persona


�� Goal Purchase broadband connection for home use

Scenario

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 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.

Tasks priorto purchase

• See what kind of broadband offers are available. Because Tapio knows the brands he goes direct to the homepage to check out the deal information.

• Compare prices to that of competing brands which he does through Google.

• Compare the full service offer across competing brands which he does through Google.

Conside-rationsand questions

The are a variety of broadband deals in Finland so it is important to find out which suits his needs best.

• What is the price per month?• How many service/price (speed to MB ratio) options are there and are they

clearly differentiated?• Does the cost vary based on usage? If so how? If not is the price fixed or

could there be hidden surprises?• Tapios wife doesn’t want to use cables to connect to the Internet. Is the

broadband connection wireless? Does this cost more?• 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? • Tapio heard that a full system contract including Digital TV could be

purchased with broadband access to the Internet? Does this come with the deal?

• Does it come home fitted? Is it manual installation? If so is it easy? • Are there service guarantees? Money back options or trial periods?

Pain points

• Neither Tapio or his wife have any idea how to install broadband and don’t know anything about the technology.

• Tapio heard he needed a 100MB connection because it’s fast but doesn’t know how much benefit he will get for the extra money.

• Tapio doesn’t understand how broadband can work with digital TV

Searchterms

• Laajakaista (Broadband)• Laajakaista Yhteys (Broadband

connection)• Laajakaista Nopeus (broadband

speed/fast)• Laajakaista Hinnat (broadband pricing)

Competitive analysis

Insights

Competitive Data

Clickstream Data

Experience Data


1. Designed to find out if competitors

are offering the same or better than

you to the persona with his

previously mentioned pain points,

needs and desires.

2. Overall score is a weighted

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.


Competitive analysisScoring: 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


Competitive analysisScoring: Answering the need of the persona


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.

Competitive analysisScoring: Keyword relevance – unique factors

• 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.


Competitive analysisNotes


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

Competitive analysisNotes


• 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.

Competitive analysisConclusions


• 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.

Competitive analysisRecommendations

Clickstream Analysis

Insights

Competitive Data

Clickstream Data

Experience Data


• Overall score is a weighted average

of the scores from ”Reach –

Search”, “Reach Referrers” and “Site

Engagement”.

• Looking primarily at bounce rate and

exit rate as indicators of lack of

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.


Key findings

• Opportunities to

improve across reach

referrers and direct

traffic.


improve site

engagement across

average bounce

rates, Broadband

(subject) bounce

rates and process

abandonment rates.

Clickstream analysisScoring: Overall score and unique factors


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)

Clickstream analysisVisitor behaviour in Broadband Online Store

FunnelHow did the visitors proceed in the purchasing process?

Number of visits on each page during the past 4 weeks


• 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.

Clickstream analysisVisitor behaviour in Broadband Online Store


• 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.

Clickstream analysisSolid conclusions


• 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.

Clickstream analysisRecommendations

Experience Analysis

Insights

Competitive Data

Clickstream Data

Experience Data


• Overall score is a weighted average

of the scores from ”Usability”,

“Psychology” and “Nurture methods

scored”.

• Designed to find out if your website

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.


Key Findings


improve across error

handling. (71% and

47% bounce rate

search engine and

404 page

respectively)


improve interactivity

and influence.

Experience analysisScoring: Overall score and unique factors

* Scale used is 0 – 5. Exact descriptions for each value are presented in the appendix.

• Scored 2 points for having search engine in the not found page result as

shown:


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



• The internal search error:



• Simple things that could improve bounce rates:

Things like this could help

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’.


Experience analysis Notes – Interactivity

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.


Experience analysis Notes – Influence

• 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.


Experience analysis Conclusions

• 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.



Experience analysis Recommendations

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)


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)


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.



The Story Continues...

• Conversion assessments start at €6K (in Dutch)

• Steve Jackson

• Senior Consultant

• Trainers House Analytics Unit

• +358 50 343 5159

• [email protected]

Upcoming book (publish date April 09);

The Cult Of AnalyticsDriving online marketing strategies using web analytics

Pre-register your interest free at;

http://www.blackbeak.com/the-cult-of-analytics/


cass public

Economy & Finance

clickstream

improve keyword

incentive

broadband

key findings

develop broadband

helped tapio

find individual