MiniDegree Review CXL 6

We′ll continue to talk about some other issues and points that we should take into consideration when we develop our website or landing page. All right? Everything that does not contribute to people taking “that particular action” might serve as a distraction, and we’re probably better off either removing those completely or minimizing them pushing down in the visual hierarchy. We should ask ourselves: Are there any moving, blinking elements such as banners, automatic sliders? Which elements on the page are NOT contributing to people taking most wanted action? How many of them could be distracting? What could we remove from the page without compromising its performance? In the checkout (conversion funnel) pages, are there navigation elements that could be removed? Is the top header compact, or is taking up too much valuable screen space? Are there visual elements of lesser importance high in the visual hierarchy? Is there a copy that is not about the specific action we want people to take? Are we doing a good job communicating why they should do a specific action? Here in the team we think that is mostly about the copy. Is there a clear, benefit-driven offer? Do I understand WHY I should take action? Are features translated into benefits? Is it clear what people are getting when they click a button / fill a form? Is it something that’s desirable / useful for the target audience? Is there enough product information? Is the content interesting? Does it use simple language? Is the sales copy persuasive? Could we apply some persuasion principles here that would be a good match, such as social proof, urgency or scarcity?

And for the purpose of CRO (Conversion Rate Optimization) 3 stages work fine: Awareness – when a customer first becomes aware of your product. Or could also refer to the point where a customer first becomes aware of a need that they want to fulfill. Consideration – when a customer starts evaluating solutions to their needs. Purchase – people are ready to spend money. So this is a process. And is something that I just added into my business presentation. Why? Because when we work with entrepreneurs clients, most of these kinds of customers want to get immediate results.They could don′t have the brading chip to understand the process. But it's ok. Cause for us, we believe that the first meeting is not just to present us, it's also to start a future customer relationship where we can express that time, patience, investment, attitude, research and strategy will make us work together like a partnership. And this is going to let us grow. Cause after all, obviously we want our clients to gain more audience, connections and money. We want too! But that is the basic staff. Everybody or every business wants money. But there should be some other goal. An intangible goal focused on people's necessities and desires. Then we sell. 

So, that's why Hard Selling them will just make them leave. Instead of selling them, we should help them do their research, capture their contacts so we could bring them back. Ok. If the user is not ready to buy, do we help them in their research and evaluation process? Are there secondary calls to action to learn more about the product in the key funnels? Is there an effective email capture process? Does it have a proper lead magnet? Email capture is important to bring people back and Develop a Relationship is to capture their email address.

Definitely we can not forget to ask for the sale eventually. This is the part that I got impressed. Talk to the sales team, let us understand the business better. How is that possible? Well, we observe and analyse the frictions, what is the target looking for, the insights, maybe this course cost too high and 60% of the people feels that a virtual course doesn′t has the same value that a face-to-face course, or people are afraid of make an online purchase in our website because nobody knows us yet. So, in these kinds of conversations we can get a lot of information which will help us to communicate effectively and exactly to reduce friction and increase awareness and relationships. 

In this process, when I have a meeting with any new client, I use an analogy to understand the digital sales process better. It's something like this. When we met someone for the first time we don't engage with this person and have a couple relationship immediately. “Except maybe in movies”. Now, first we hang out and share several dates, dinners, whatever we decide. We want to know better this person to know if she or he is material for a relationship, and obviously it's about what we are looking for. Then 3 or 6 months, or 1 year, whatever the time could be, we feel that it's time to get into this relationship. Why not? Sorry guys, it's not that we don't believe in love at first sight, we love those stories, but in the real world other things happen. So, we want to know these people better. Why? Because if we know their desires, necessities, what they are looking for, their issues, their complaints we can start to give them VALUE and SOLUTIONS focused in each of those frictions. We need to map out their “areas of interest”.

And when we start to communicate on our website or landing page we need to analyze each page to make our headlines to impact that people, create copywriting more clarity and eliminate any kind of distraction. Because if our site is difficult to use or hard to understand (means it has usability problems), it will result in poor conversions.

So, we can make an Usability Evaluation: First, Learnability: How easy is it for users to accomplish basic tasks the first time they encounter the design? Efficiency: Once users have learned the design, how quickly can they perform tasks? Memorability: When users return to the design after a period of not using it, how easily can they reestablish proficiency? Finally Errors: How many errors do users make, how severe are these errors, and how easily can they recover from the errors? Satisfaction: How pleasant is it to use the design?

Important: USABILITY EVALUATION IS NOT USER TESTING. User Testing is about be insight into the user's mind. If a website (or a process on the website – like checkout) is complicated to use, people won’t buy from it. If they can’t find a product they want, they can’t buy it. 

If they can’t figure out what the site is about, they will leave.So, we need to identify bottlenecks. The main value is understanding what stops people from doing something. Is that they can’t find the key stuff? Something distracts them? The copy is not clear enough? 

USER TESTING it’s great for determining if a process makes sense or if the functionality of a page contains a lot of friction or anxiety.

But, has its own limits. For example: 5 to 15 users will not discover all issues. What they discover depends a lot on the tasks we give them. Testers know that they are testers, they don’t have to part with their money and buy something. They might not comment on everything as they don’t even know when something is bothering them (while it is).

So, we should observe how real users use and interact with our website, pay attention to their experiences and try to spot patterns.

Conversion Research / Usability Evaluation Lesson by Peep Laja