I come online and find tons of people complaining about low conversion rates – nothing seems to be working they say.
What have you tried?
What haven’t I tried more like!
Then they’ll go on counting off the things that they’ve done: created a landing page, added opt-in forms, showcased images and videos, etc.
If this conversation reads like something you and I might have if we ever came face to face then you’re making a massive mistake somewhere and you’re failing to identify it.
This is the mistake you’re making. You are not actively seeking the mistakes you’ve made.
Fortunately for you, you’ve come to the right clinic.
I can give you the prescription that will undeniably cure your conversion troubles.
So let’s begin.
What Went Wrong?
Doing everything right but not receiving any results is like an endemic problem that internet marketers seem to be suffering from.
If you’ve made a landing page and it’s still not yielding favorable results, then the best way to find out what went wrong and where is to take the help of the technology that’s revolutionizing internet marketing and decode the way the human mind works. After all it is true that the future of marketing is all too human.
So how do you figure out what went wrong?
The advent of the various heatmap analytics will help you understand and consequently resolve the issues you are faced with.
Without further ado let us see what these tools are and how they are needed in order to gather, organize and interpret the data that will in the end give you the results that you are looking for.
Bringing out the Gadgets
There are tools that you can use to monitor what’s going on your landing page and that is what you should be aiming to figure out.
Here is a list of tools that every internet marketer should take advantage of:
- Click heatmaps
- Mouse tracking
- Attention heatmaps
Heatmaps are like the virtual thermal detectors that tell you using colored patches the density of views or clicks on a particular page.
The varying shades of colours of the heatmaps tell you how the density of clicks or views differ from place to place on a website.
Below I’m going to name and explain the various heatmaps that you can use to help better your landing page conversion rate.
Click Heatmaps
Click heatmaps will show you exactly where visitors on your page have clicked and differing colours will show at what rate.
Different sites have different color codes and a color key to help you interpret the data you have gotten.
You’ll notice how the colored patches are scattered all over the place indicating the clicks on the page.
These things matter because it allows you and other internet marketers to figure out what may be wrong with the design in which you have so heavily invested.
There are some softwares that will not only tell you there were clicks on your page, but will also tell you who they were from. Exciting, huh?
Referrals are those who have come to your page from a link they’ve seen else where, while direct visitors are those who enter your URL either because they’ve heard about you from somewhere or they may have already shopped with you before.
Eye-tracking Heatmap
Next we have eye-tracking heatmap, which also works the same magic as a click heatmap but is different because it detects the not the number of clicks, but rather where visitors looked while they were on the page.
This technology basically allows you to see where exactly your visitors are looking.
In my opinion, this is a better aid than the click heat map because often the visitors leave your page even before clicking. So this tool tells you where your visitors had looked before they left.
This will help you answer whether your visitors had seen your CTAs, had they noticed the ‘special offer’ button, did they see the opt-in form and so on.
With this information you will now be able to rearrange the various components on your page and get better results.
People’s advices about where to place your opt-in form or your other CTAs may not be working for you, so using this tool you can find the correct combination of the various elements for your page.
Eye-tracking studies show that people generally read through the first few lines, then scroll down a bit and look for something useful towards the middle, all the way down and then they finally scroll back to the top.
However, this not need be true in your case.
And I say this because most of the pages are text-heavy and have little to no pictures. If you’ve got a dense text-body then you could be expecting something like this, but if you’re not then this isn’t something you have to worry about.
Again, if you have a layout that holds most of your content in the middle of the page and reserves the left and right side for your CTA buttons or your ‘about’ option you may be in a bit of trouble.
The issue might arise because of a fallacy named banner blindness that prevents your visitors from looking left or right.
Eye-tracking devices have also shown that if you’re using a model to go with your product you could use them to either look at the product, your opt-in forms or CTA.
That acts as a directional cue basically guiding the line of sight towards them.
Here’s an example,
Based on the fact that visitors tend to look in the general direction in which the model is looking Sunsilk changed just one element.
So when you have a model looking at a product, CTA button or a message that you are trying to get through, you’ll have ensured that your visitors will look towards it.
That’s exactly what happened in this Sunsilk commercial.
Mouse Move Heatmap
An alternate to the eye tracking heatmap is the mouse tracking tool that tells us how visitors had moved their mouse over a page.
According to a study there’s a significant difference between the eye movement and the mouse movement.
Your visitor’s mouse could have been hovering in one place, while they look the page over and you have essential information to extract from both these actions.
You need to know how far down your visitor’s are scrolling, for how long they are hovering over a point and at the same time you also need to what has gotten their attention most and where they haven’t looked at all.
For this there’s the scroll tracking heat map that allows you to see the scrolling history on your page.
So I’ve got to say with your best interest at heart, that it’s always safer to get a combination of these tests done so that you know where they clicked and where they looked.
Session Playback
Moving on, here’s an even more awesome tool you can play with.
The session playback tool allows you to basically relive each of your visitor’s time on your page.
With the help of sites that offer these technical solutions such as Zestanalytics you can find out what your visitors were doing in real-time.
So now you can find out what your visitors were up to if they weren’t busy being awed by the superb content that you have created for their sake.
A/B Testing
This is tool slightly different from the ones mentioned above.
The A/B test allows you to try out two or more samples of landing pages that you have created and see which does better with the visitors. It’s a lot like tryouts you had at school before the final soccer match to determine who’d be chosen for the team that’d be playing.
It allows you to narrow down and find the perfect elements and consequently increase your effectiveness.
If you already have a page and you’re struggling not with the number of visitors, but with your conversion rates, then you’re probably going to want to go through the whole process of finding the glitches in your page layout, and get it tested and wait for the goodness to happen.
Not sure what to start with?
Well, these are the things that you could change and conduct the test. You don’t have to spend time creating several designs, all you have to do is make one different layout and you should be good to go.
These are the things that you ought to be testing. Also when creating a second template or landing page make sure you ask yourself these questions,
CTA: Are the CTA buttons placed in the most optimum position? Are your CTAs visible? Are they below or above the fold?
Headlines: Are they visible enough? Can your visitors differentiate the text from the body? Is your headline inviting readers, or intimidating them?
Copy Lengths: Is your description too long? Is all of what you’ve written absolutely necessary?
Images: Are the pictures you have relevant? [Or if you don’t have pictures] should you add some to make the page visually appealing?
These will help you create a second landing page to compare your first one with.
However, I have one last piece of advice for you.
Once you’ve gotten yourself two templates and have started the test, results will start pouring in. Although you’ll be tempted to start comparing your results with your previous performance, or with your competitors, you have to remember that those are NOT the final results.
You should wait until you’re tests reach a statistical significance, where you’ve had like a benchmark number of visits so that you have a substantial number of clicks or views so that you may begin to evaluate your results.
Conclusion
Now that you’re all set with these power tools you should get busy.
All of these are super efficient because it is like getting direct feedback from the visitors themselves as to why they did what they did.
Awesome isn’t it?
If you’ve got queries or comments leave them in the box below.
Realated articles: how cro will kickstart the growth engine, online marketing resources, lead generation strategies
