Best Practices for Increasing User Conversion
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New user conversion is obviously a hugely important aspect for any company, and is one of the strongest ROI arguments for better user experience. To create this presentation I scoured UX blogs and over a hundred different websites to gather information on what user conversion practices work and what practices to avoid.
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Best Practices for Increasing User Conversion
- 1. Best Practices for Increasing User Conversion Ashkaan Khatakhotan Aspiring UX Design and Developer
- 2. Overview Why is this important? Increasing new user conversion Building brand trust Increasing perceived value Calls to action User onboarding process Wrapping up / Questions
- 3. Importance? Successful companies follow similar patterns across these different areas Companies need users to buy in to stay afloat, and by optimizing user conversion you have increase profits By following certain practices you can lower your cost of customer acquisition while converting more customers In todays competitive market following these steps can give you a edge on the competition
- 4. So how can we do this?
- 5. Building Brand Trust Survey of 1000 US consumers finds that 88% are at least “a little” worried about data privacy (GfK.com) We need to understand consumer concerns to help implement smarter solutions to build trust
- 6. Don’t: Rely on consumers to believe your words Where is the proof? Lacking name or uniqueness Consumers will not just take you at your word. You need to provide them with evidence.
- 7. Try: Using social proof What is it? Phenomenon where people assume the actions of others to gauge what to do in a given situation We are hardwired to learn from others It’s the new way of marketing Consumers trust social proof 12X MORE than manufacturer description Different kinds Expert, Celebrity, Crowds, Friends
- 8. Using social proof cont. Wow, look at all these tweets 150,000?! And I recognize these brands
- 9. Try: Humanizing your brand “People connect to humans – not logos” – Amy Jo Martin, CEO Digital Royalty Appealing to customers on a human level is increasingly important A little human touch gives your brand a sense of transparency, engagement, and honesty Social media must be leveraged
- 10. Humanizing your brand cont Look at these happy people The people behind the product The face of the company
- 11. Don’t: Ask for data without providing justification for it Are you going to spam me if I give this email? Probably. If you do not provide a valid reason to ask for visitor information this will be a huge turn-off
- 12. Try: Explicitly stating how you will and will not use information They say why you should give an email. And that they won’t spam me. Nice! Everyone recognizes that check. Helps me believe my info will be safe.
- 13. Don’t: Drown users with ads and noise “Less than 25% of online consumers trust ads” – Carlton Doty, VP of Forrester Research
- 14. Try: Telling a clear story A clean narrative tells me about the company, the product and why I should trust them.
- 15. Don’t: Try and attract users with “30- day” trials Read the fine print. Almost got me… Still has a place. But consumers are now rightfully wary. Dishonest companies make it notoriously hard to cancel these trial offers.
- 16. Try: Allowing instant accessibility So… you don’t need anything from me? I can just start playing around? Awesome! Helps cultivate a level of engagement with your users before trying to upsell them.
- 17. Increase Perceived Value Need your visitors to see the value of your product as greater than the value of the money or information they need to give up to get it.
- 18. Don’t: Force your user to sign up right away This example again? Yes, its that bad. I want to see some of these 70% of deals before I commit anything. Why? Because I value a clean inbox over deals I can’t see.
- 19. Try: Using freemium model How inviting! Lets the users come in a see what you have to offer, which gives you a chance to upsell them later on all your amazing features and products!
- 20. Try: Clearly communicating and remind users about the benefits of premium access All I have to do is give an email For this great information? Wow look at all those features! Giving free access can be a great way to attract a lot of users, but you need to continuously remind them what they are missing out on.
- 21. Call(s) to Action You need to give your visitors and users a clear indication of what they should do next.
- 22. Don’t: Have an unclear CTA Wait? So what do you want me to do? I’m out of here.
- 23. Don’t: Let your CTA be boring and impersonal Yawn.. So what is it you do again? Your CTA should give a sense of what your product is, why you should use it, and get visitors excited about starting
- 24. Another Example Why oh why are you using THREE different search bars instead of a filter This makes it very unclear what you want me to do from here.
- 25. Try: Making your CTA prominent and personable Ahh much better: clean, visually pleasing, and one clear CTA. Using a combination of visuals and short but sweet text Is a good way to send an unambiguous message to visitors about what to do next.
- 26. Another Example My eye is immediately drawn to the Call to Action Within 5 seconds I know what the product is and what they want me to do next.
- 27. Don’t: Show your CTA in one place Well that was a good pitch… but now I am unsure how to proceed so… see ya! Ensure that you have multiple CTAs across different pages or even on the same page so that If visitors lose site of your initial CTA they can still know how to proceed.
- 28. Try: Repeating your CTA Okay well know that I know what your all about I can go here or here to proceed
- 29. Try: Placing your CTA on relevant pages Well I am not ready to commit but I’ll look around Wow what a deal lets check it out! If I am willing to click instant book I am probably willing to at least sign up You need to align your CTA with the content of the page or the stage of the sales cycle the user is at.
- 30. Onboarding new users This is the process by which you can help users quickly and easily sign up, Learn an unfamiliar interface, convey benefits, and overcome a blank profile.
- 31. Don’t: Overcomplicate your form No way I am filling all this out….. Initial sign up forms should only gather absolutely necessary information. Everything else can be gathered later when the users engagement is higher.
- 32. Yahoo’s sign up now Wow, so much cleaner.
- 33. Try: Exposing, simplying & validating form fields 40% of US consumers prefer social login over creating new/guest accounts All you need is an email and password? I’m in! Inline validation also helps reduce errors and progresses the onboarding process.
- 34. Don’t: Have a lengthy tutorial 13 steps for a note taking app?! Are you kidding? You don’t need to teach your new users everything at once. Just teach them the basics to get them started and everything else will come later. This will help reduce friction.
- 35. Try: Getting your users to the “Wow” moment as soon as possible The “Wow” moment comes when the key benefits of your app become clear to the user, and the value they garner is much greater than the effort they put in. Optimizely lets users start testing without so much as an email. The “Wow” moment is when new users realize that all you need to do to launch manage and track a test is a single line of embedded code. That really is WOW!
- 36. Don’t: Try and teach everything at once Your fooling yourself if you think anyone is reading that… Why not mention a few basic things that I can do at first to get me started. Too many options may lead to none at all being taken.
- 37. Try: Exposing user to key features Screen overlays are a good way drawing my attention to a few key features. And it’s nice that they prompt me on what to do next.
- 38. Try: Customizing the user experience off the bat Avoid the issue of the blank slate profile. You can do this by providing a walk through of key steps users need to take to begin their experience. Pintrest requires you to like a few things And pin something before releasing you into The wild.
- 39. Wrapping Up No one thing will make or break a your user conversion Some tradeoffs inevitably will need to be made, make sure that the pattern you try is most applicable to your company There is a common theme of what the best practices are but they can change quickly – look at UI from even 2 years ago
Notes de l'éditeur
- As most of you likely know my name is Ashkaan Khatakhotan and I am a web dev intern on the coresite team. The topic I will be discussing today is best practices for increasing user conversion. I chose this topic because over the course of my summer project I had to deal with issues of user conversion and believe that a strong understanding of conversion techniques is key for any internet company.
- First I will explain why I think this topic is important to Whitepages as well as internet companies as a whole. Then I will be going into detail on my exploration of four of the key factors user conversion, with a discussion of patterns and anti-patterns employed by companies across the web. I will then wrap up with what this means for Whitepages heading forward. Talk about overlap between these
- Internet companies rely on getting users to sign up and use their application, and the successful ones flow similar patterns in their user conversion technique. Following these patterns will reduce your bounce rate and develop a user base that frequents your site. Whitepages rebranding effort places a greater emphasis on authenticated users which means we are going to have to begin employing practices to convert our anonymous users into ones with registered accounts. Doing so will help the push for better data and will give us a larger base of people who will use new features like Groups as they roll out.
- And before I begin let me clarify something: I will be referencing the words free and premium a lot throughout this presentation. When I mean free it can mean either financially free or free of commitment of information (i.e. sign up) and when I say premium I mean either a paid subscription or a registered account. Talk about how there is going to be overlap
- Building brand trust is an incredibly important aspect to encouraging users to sign up. In this day and age with so many competing companies it is essential that upon first contact users feel that they can trust you with their information. Gfk, a German market research company, recently conducted a survey of 1000 US consumers and found that 88% are at least “a little” worried about their data privacy online. While it is a small test group the results do allude to the fact that many users are worried about their information being online, which makes it critically important for a internet company to take steps to gain users trust.
- You all should recognize the page above. It is the portion of our webpage below the hero image and while I think it looks great we ask visitors to our website believe a lot based on our words alone. “The largest and most trusted source for …” is a very bold statement. But there is no evidence from experts, certification services or users to back it up. Anyone can say that but it would be far more impactful if it was back up with evidence, same goes with WP current, where we include a lone generic sounding testimonial that does not even include a name. This does little to convey a sense that we should believe that users words. The current caller app has over 180000 reviews on google play and a overall very high rating all we display is one user testimonial Whitepages.com has over 50 million monthly users and over 90,000 likes on Facebook, these are impressive numbers that should be displayed on the website to potential consumers because it sends the message hey if all these people are on board I should be too.
- A powerful way of gaining consumer trust is social proof. Social proof is a phenomenon where people assume the actions of others in or to gauge what they should do in a given situation. Basicly people are wired to learn from the actions of others, and this can be a huge driver in consumer behavior. There are many different kinds of social proof including: industry expert, user testimonials, wisdom of the crowds (approval from a large group of other people), wisdom of friends(practice of showing how many of your facebook friends have ‘liked’ a brand), and one that unfortunately has more power than it should celebrity social proof. Techcrunch.com wrote an article documenting various statistics where social proof has been known to help consumer buy in. Such as a 1-star increase on a yelp rating driving up sales by 5-9%. Balsamiq is a does a good job of employing social proof to further their brand trust. On the left is a live feed of tweets of people about balsamiq which is actually really cool because it is recent tweets and shows many user testimonials instead of just one. And on the right it mentions the sheer number of companies that use balsamiqs mockup software and some of the most recognizable are highlighted.
- By humanizing your brand you can build an emotional connection with your consumers and are more likely to convert them into loyal users. There are many different ways you can do this such as images showing consumers happily using your product, displaying a message from your CEO or showing them the team of people that work to put the best possible product out there. Your brand will gain a sense of honesty, transparency and engagement and a bit of human touch. Something like a welcome email instead of a confirmation email. Furthermore your copy editing should phrase terms in a way that is relatable to your users and make the information easy to consume. As Digital Royalty CEO Amy Jo Martin says “humans connect with humans, not logos”
- You generally do not want the first thing your consumer sees to be a form field asking for their information. Especially if there is no clear indication of why is data is necessary to give. When users first come to touch of modern it immediately asks for for an email. Before they see what the website has to offer or commit to buying a single thing. And without an mention of what is email is going to be used for. This is a big turn off for users and will lead many to leave your site before they even see your product.
- People do not like giving out information, and are not going to blindly give it out for fear of misuse. But websites can help assuage these fears but directly telling users when asking for information what they will not be using it for. When you reach their sign up screen dailytekk triggers a screen overlay drawing users attention to a message that says they are not asking for an email to spam or sell out their users. By explicitly stating that you will protect their information you put accountability on your brand to uphold your promise and take worry of how the information is going to get used off the consumer. A very strong way to gain a users trust is to acquire a certified security seal to display to your users. For example FileThis is a site that allows you to connect various services that you use each month such as banking, credit cards, utilities, etc. Obviously if someone is trusting all this information to one website that site needs to take steps to put customer fears to rest and make it clear that all their data is safe. These seals are an extremely recognizable and powerful way to let consumers know that you are protecting them and their information.
- If a site devotes too much space to ads then the user will be drawn away from where it should be going. Carlton Doty a VP at Forrester research says that “less than 25% of online consumers trust ads” so if too much space is committed to ads it is counterintuitive to building brand trust. Instead of focusing in on the message you are trying to communicate they will notice a bunch of ads trying to direct them somewhere they might not want to go. Now your website might need to generate ad revenue but it is important to understand what it is costing in terms of consumer loyalty and experience. Maybe find less extreme example. Aftonbladet is a Swedish news site that devotes a notorious amount of space to ads.
- Getting the users to follow a clear narrative in your site is a good way to impart a message about how your brands mission for its consumers, and its trustworthiness.
- The Federal Trade Commission, the nation’s consumer protection agency, encourages people to be wary of free trial offers. And anytime a user is wary that is not a good way to gain trust. Consumers nowadays are careful of free trails because dishonest companies will make it notoriously hard for users to cancel a trail which taints the use of this tactic for most other companies.
- It can often be a good idea to let consumer jump right in and begin using your product. It lets your consumers know that your not trying to get anything out of them or sell them anything, at least not yet. It helps your consumer build a rapport with your product and trust your brand so when do make the pitch on signing up or upgrading users already have a sense of engagement with the product. Pandora is a good example because when you first come to the site nothing is required of you except to search for music that you like and this immediately gets you using the product.
- Next we will be discussing how to increase perceived value. This is an important part of user conversion because you need to pitch your product in such a way that they see it value as greater than the information or money they will have to give up for access.
- This is espeically true if you try and force a user sign up without pitching a sufficient amount of benefit for doing so. People do not like commitment especially when there is a little apparent value in such a commitment being made. Back to the example of touch of modern, the only value communicated to users is 70% off deals without any examples or evidence. This may not be enough to convince users to give up their email to see the deals, especially when there is no promise of not getting spammed. This will drive away a lot of potential users you value a clean inbox or viewing deals that may or may not be that good.
- Instant accessibility also serves as part of the freemium business model. This business model allows users access to basic features at no cost or commitment while trying to upsell them on richer functionality with a sign up or paid subscription. If you believe in the quality of your product then giving users a taste of what you have to offer will leave them wanting more. Soundcloud does an excellent job doing this because they initially invite users to first “explore trending music and audio” as opposed to signing up for the site. Once people begin finding music they like they will realize that if they want access to the other great features of the site such as saving music to their favorites, creating playlists, and getting recommendations they will have to sign up. By allowing restricted user access (like feature limited, capactiy limited or time limited) you can drive up the perceived value of your premium product. And once you get people using your product you can begin pitching them on why they should upgrade to the premium product or make an account. The key to this is to simply starting people using the product. CEO of Evernote Phil Libin says that the longer someone has been using Evernote the higher the conversion to premium goes. The percentage of people who pay in the first half is .5% this goes up to 7% after a year of use and up too 11% after two years of use. The freemium model relies on the fact that as your consumers use the application more and more they will see added benefit of your premium product.
- In order for the freemium business model to work users need clear notification of what the benefits of premium access are, whether or not this involves a paid subscription. It does not have to all be explicitly stated at once like in the spotify example above, but as consumers are using the “free” it is important to continue to remind them that there is premium option available, and prompt them to upgrade by making your pitches at opportune times when users time you can capitalize on the number of users you convert your premium product. The other example app cue lets you peruse the site for a while but then pops up a sign up pitch once you reach the bottom of the article. It says the email is not for spam but to help improve adoption, retention, and profitability of your product. If all they see is a “sign up for more” post they have very little incentive to explore what that mean. Free features are a strong marketing campaign and is a good way to get a lot of people to start using your product. CEO of Evernote Phil Libin says that the longer someone has been using Evernote the higher the conversion to premium goes. The percentage of people who pay in the first half is .5% this goes up to 7% after a year of use and up too 11% after two years of use. The freemium model relies on the fact that as your consumers use the application more and more they will see added benefit of your premium product.
- A Call to Action is a prompt that gets visitors to do something you want them too, like start using your application or sign up for your site. They are usually an important part of beginning the onboarding process. Without a clear and convincing CTA visitors to your site will never be converted into user. In the next part we will be discussing characteristics of weak and strong CTA’s
- Can anyone tell me what the call to action on this page is? If it is unclear what your CTA visitors will spend precious time on your page trying to figure out what to do next before becoming confused and frustrated. This makes it less likely for them to take the action you intend them to them, in turn leading to a higher bounce rate and lower conversion rate. Forrester is an independent technology and market research company but nothing on this homepage stands out as a clear call to action. A CTA should invoke a immediate response and nothing on this page does.
- While not necessarily wrong, a boring CTA is less likely to inspire users to want to take the action and fails to create a sense of engagement with visitors right away. A CTA should give visitors a sense of what your product is all about, how people use it, and get them pumped to begin themselves, if it is boring none of this will happen. The images are a perfect example of a CTA failing to grab a users attention and make an impression on them.
- Instead the CTA should be instantly identifiable, aesthetically pleasing, and give users a sense of what your product is. Even better if you can rephrase your calls to action as a compelling question or by posing your offer as a challenge.
- Instead the CTA should be instantly identifiable, aesthetically pleasing, and give users a sense of what your product is. Even better if you can rephrase your calls to action as a compelling question or by posing your offer as a challenge. Evernote has a great example of strong call to action. Their CTA is the first think you notice when you go to their page, it clearly stands out and is very approachable. Furthermore the text and visuals together deliver an unambiguous message to the visitor about what the product is and what the next course of action will be.
- If visitors are willing to explore your site this usually means they are at least somewhat interested in what you have to offer. However if they leave the landing page, scroll to the bottom page or lose site of your initial call to action in some other way they may be confused at what their next step should be once they are done exploring. It is usually not a good idea to leave it up to visitors to find out how to take the next step themselves. Group.me is a good example of this, they have a large bold call to action at the top of the page however if you scroll all the way down to find out more about the product you will find no similar CTA at the bottom.
- Instead you should make sure that your CTA is repeated across different pages, and even on the same page as longer web pages become the norm and the idea of squeezing everything above the fold is fading. If the user does not act on the first CTA at the top they may be interested once they scroll down and learn more about your product. When visitors reach the bottom of the page they usually pause and think what to do next, this is a ideal time to try and get them to continue down the conversion funnel. A prominent CTA will help do just that. Intercom does a good job of this by implementing a fixed header that display a sign up CTA. It is visible no matter where you are on the website.
- It is important to align your CTA with the content of the page or stage of the sales cycle that the user is at. A visitor may not be ready to buy something off that bat but may be more willing to click on a call to action that lets them explore the site. Multiple call to actions should be used to help guide visitors through the different stages of the website, if you use a call to action at a step where it does not belong it may confuse your visitor and cause them to leave the site, but if you place them correctly then it can clearly indicate what the next step is and help visitors on their path to becoming converted users. Airbnb does a good job of this, at first all there are asking for people to do are simply search for “where they want to go next” a low commitment call to action that can get users to begin exploring the site. Once someone has selected an option there is a big book now for visitors ready to make a commitment, and if those visitors are not signed in they are redirected to a page where the call to action is telling them to sign up with facebook and complete the process of converting this user.
- Onboarding is the process by which you can help users quickly and easily sign up, learn a new and unfamiliar interface, teach them what the functionality of your product is, and help them overcome an initially blank profile.
- Forms are typically an early step in the onboarding process and present a good first chance of conveying to users how easy and simple it is to sign up. However a good way to scare off users is with lengthy sign up forms. Most of these fields are entirely unnecessary to get users up and running with your product and can be attained down the line when your users have a higher level of engagement. Talk about unnecessary form fields http://uxmovement.com/forms/innovative-techniques-to-simplify-sign-ups-and-logins/
- Instead of this cumbersome and lengthy sign up forms you should only require the bare minimum requirements for getting your user into the app and on their way. It can also be a good idea to expose your form field in your call to action if it is exceptionally short. If users see just an email and password are required to sign up then they’ll feel more inclined to begin down that path. Furthermore if you include inline validation with your forms so that users are notified of an error before submission then you can smooth the process even further.
- There is no better way to put off a new user than to make them jump through hoops to begin using your product. Trying to either explain or make the user try every possible action without an opt out feature will bog down your onboarding and cause unecessary friction. The example above is a note-taking app called noted. And it has a 13 step tutorial before the user is finally released into the wild. The tutorial requires the user to do things like pick a color and repeat the same action twice, these needlessly convolute the users experience for what should be a relatively easy app to learn.
- So what is the ‘wow’ moment? It is when the user recongnizes either actively or subconsciously that your product or service is a must have experience. This usually occurs when the key benefits of using the app become apparent and the user garners much more value than effort required. For example optimizely.com allows users to jump in right away and begin creating an A/B test on their website without even entering an email. And once users are there the wow moment comes when they can launch, manage, and track A/B tests by embedding a single line of code. Getting users to the ‘wow’ moment is a crucial way to present the benefits early on and increase user engagment. This will also help users get past any remaining friction in the onboarding process.
- Known for its flexibility and wealth of features Evernote is a wildly successfully app but new user onboarding is one area that they can improve. New users of the app are shown a text list of all the different features and the value of each. Its overwhelming and most users won’t be bothered to read it let alone remember it.
- Instead of drowning the user with all the amazing features of your app it is better to initially expose the user to core experiences and features and introduce secondary features later when the context is more relevant. After figuring out the basic stuff a users willingness to learn will be higher. A screen overlay is a good way of drawing attention to the features that you want your users to learn first.
- To avoid the issue of an initially blank slate when the user signs up you can provide a walk through of functions that are key to the experience and help get the user up and running. This can be done through a walk through which will help avoid the blank slate issue with new profiles or a screen overlay that encourages users to check out the most basic features first. Pintrest does a good job of this because they require you too “like” a certain amount of things and “pin” one thing which custom populates the users UI before they can start exploring.
- Show specific changes that whitepage made before and after– include some numbers Show before and after for some of my other examples as well Try and find more hard data Change importance to be more relevant – less about encouraging authenticated user more about establishing a relationship with our consumers, trying to engage our user base