User intent, trust, and a clear understanding of how close your visitors are to the ‘cash register moment’ are key to creating a successful strategy. Learn how to use psychology and data analysis to shape or improve your CRO strategy.
A glut of algorithm changes (such as Google’s Penguin & Panda) and an increasingly complex social landscape is making audience creation more difficult than ever. This means that the inherent value of those clients or customers that currently interact with your site has drastically increased.
User intent, trust, and a clear understanding of how close your visitors are to the “cash register moment” are key to creating a successful strategy. Understanding how all these factors influence each other is what I would call conversion rate optimization (CRO).
However, that’s not to say that adding a few percentage points to your conversion rate is easy. In many respects conversion rate optimization requires as much specialist skill as technical search engine optimization (SEO); with an acute understanding of buying psychology and data analysis at its core.
Great CRO starts with understanding your visitor and their intent when visiting your site.
In order to understand their intent, we must first investigate the concept of “the buying cycle” and the psychology and motivation behind “wanting” something in the first place. Otherwise, without a clear and concise view on their motivations and the stage in the buying cycle in which your customer is at, converting them is simply guesswork – which, needless to say, isn’t a strategy.
The psychology of buying is a subject that has attracted a lot of interest over recent years as marketers search for ways of fine tuning campaigns.
The first thing to understand when attempting to build a clear picture of your visitor is what influences affect their purchase decisions.
There are, of course, a plethora of different internal factors that affect our decision-making, but the key segment to understand is what types of consumers you’re dealing with in the day-to-day running of your business.
In general we face four types of buying decisions:
The four types above isn’t simply a reflection of their propensity to spend – or cut costs more than a low cost airline – but instead where they are in the buying process.
Image credit: SEOmoz
The above classic conversion funnel explains how we move from stage to stage in the process. It’s pretty self-explanatory, but it tells us that we begin the process by discovering a product or service before moving into the realization phase, when we learn that we need it in our lives.
Before we buy though we will consider and research that “thing” and here we use everything from friends’ advice to expert reviews to help understand what the “right” choice looks like.
This then leads us into conversion; where we’ll also research the best place to buy, based on trust signals, price, and other factors.
Purchases can often be swayed by many factors, such as the product being out of stock, a competitor offering an incentive at the point-of-purchase, the customer lacking the necessary funds (e.g., credit card not working), or members of the consumer’s reference group taking a negative view of the purchase (e.g., friend is critical of purchase).
It is for these reasons why your CRO project is so important. CRO makes that process as hiccup free and frictionless as possible.
I had always taken a “tick box” approach to CRO. One where you have either read the tips or had learned through personal experience what works and what may not.
It worked, too. To a point and clients had always seemed happy. Something was missing though and that something was the process; a way in which to structure CRO in a way that ensured I was not simply doing “the right things” but also in the right order with the conversion funnel at the center of the strategy.
Why was this so important? Simple: Because great marketing is about getting the right message to the right person at the right stage in the process.
The perfect tool to use as a base for this structure is of course the sale or conversion funnel as shared above.
Our job is to map the individual businesses’ needs against each of those stages, along with any objections the buyer may have and the content required to help them “get over it” and continue to the next stage.
The steps then are relatively simple to map out and will help you hugely in the battle to provide the best user journey once they hit the site.
Let’s look at a fictional example to make it easy to understand how it works. The key is then to repeat this process for each stage in the funnel so you can create a strategy for each part. That way this becomes not just a CRO tool but also one for your entire marketing strategy.
For this example we’ll stick to the key conversion part of the funnel and we can assume that our buyer is on the site and is now close to the “cash register.”
First, you must identify the motivations and stages that the visitor may be in when getting to you. Broadly they will fall into one of the following stages of the buying process (we are using climbing frame purchase as an example):
For each of the above the key next stage is then to note their motivations and possible concerns and fears. This will enable you to create content to alleviate those fears and break down the barriers in precisely the right place.
We are spending $500+ per year on visits to play centers for our children. We need to find a way of keeping our children entertained while we look after the garden
Concerns may be something like “we haven’t got time to put it together or collect it” or “I don’t know whom the best companies are in this space to buy from”.
The longer the list here the better as these questions will supercharge your understanding of how you might go about structuring a world class CRO strategy for your site. Work through each stage and get other involved to really wring out every last drop of insight.
Armed with those questions your job now is to come up with answers and ensure those barriers are invisible. And that’s where the tactical stuff comes into its own.
You now need real, proven CRO tactics that will remove those fears and reinforce the motivations for the good. Below are my list of favorites to do just that in different niches and with various kinds of sites.
They are broken down as to fit with the buying process, to make it easier to find solutions for each constituent part:
The buyer here is establishing a need and will be surfing around looking for who the main players are and who should be “trusted.” Play to those fears and ensure you’re there when they look for answers.
The decision to buy has already been made in stage two. Your job now is to stand out from the crowd as a thought leader and trusted expert to help them decide which frame is best for them.
The buyer has researched the “what,” they now need to decide on the “where,” which means that your thoughts need to be on hand holding and engendering trust.
You’re close now to that sale. The key here is to ensure they do not escape and complete the purchase by making it as easy and comfortable as possible.