When Tim Ash and Bryan Eisenberg chat conversion tools, it’s a must attend event. Even if you’ve seen them chat on the subject before; you’re going to pick up something new. So here’s how it went (originally written live yesterday in the present tense but Internet issues kept it from publishing):
Tim Ash from Site Tuners is chatting about his favorite conversion tools and explaining why.
CrazyEgg is a favorite tool of his. For $9 you can get great information on what visitors doing on a specific page. It tracks the mouse and click behavior and provides an image of that visitor’s experience there. I’ve used it, it’s not my favorite of such tools but at that price you won’t get this kind of information elsewhere.
Of such tools it’s a fantastic first step.
ClickTale allows you to play back a visitor experience to view how far your non-converting traffic (or your conversion traffic for that matter) to view what they did and why they acted the way they do. It also provides key data on while form functions and other key site aspects are causeing hiccups, what people are stopping at and help you correct these issues.
Pricing is from $99/mth and this allows you to record 20,000 sessions.
UserTesting.com is a service I’ve personally used and highly recommend. This is a service that enables you to send visitors through your site and be sent a video of their behavior with audio of their experience.
You give them a task (what do you want the visitor to do? what is their impression after viewing your site for 5 seconds? etc.) and from there you’ll learn how a real person interacts with your site and the issues they face. Do they click the wrong links? Does it take them a while to find what they need to do? OR (if your really really luck) they’ll just engage your site in the way you want but at least you’ll know you’ve got a good thing going and not implement tweaks that may negatively impact your conversions.
Tim brings up the interesting idea to run the traffic through your competitors’ sites. A fantastic idea that may provide unique insight into how to beat them.
Cross Browser Testing – Test different OS, browser, etc. They allows you to have different configurations tested for compatibility and to view what your site looks like.
You can rent the service by the second.
Offhand Tip – a line of product description text should be around 40 characters.
Attention Wizard – Is Tim’s own product and I’ve used it. Very good.
Tim started the discussion here by noting graphics designers can kill conversions trying to make a site pretty rather than keeping the focus on the conversion.
Attention Wizard algorithmically predicts from an image with hotspots of how a visitor will likely view the page. It’s not flawless but it’s a great first step.
Bryan Eisenberg is up next chatting conversions. A very bright guy.
We’re about to whip through a whole slough of tools so buckle up. 🙂
Three things you need when doing conversion optimization are:
- Tools to give you and analyze the data to determine what to do.
- People for insight
- A process to fix the issues.
Bryan Notes: $56.8 billion will be spent on traffic with only a 2 to 3% conversion rate due to a 92:1 ration of dollars spent on traffic vs dollars spent on conversion optimization.
Stay focused on testing the imprint variables early on and worry about fine tuning later (ex – color changes). Basically Bryan asserts that if you test too many things you’ll lose track of what works and if you start fine tuning before the major issues are dealt with you’ll reduce the effectiveness of you efforts.
Every keyword is a campaign and needs a different message. Having the same landing page for large segments of phrases will result in an ineffective campaign.
Need a structure approach to conversion rates. Need a structured approach
Interesting fact: 48% of people don’t believe they can impact conversions.
Important Conversion Points:
Videos – boost conversions by 9% for retail
Increase odds of first page rankings for products by 95%
Usertesting has a PPC test
(code ses2011 to get a $75 credit)
Wirify – turns your page into a wireframe so you can mor stuff around
Mockflow to create wireframes to get ideas
Get premise – landing page generator for wordpress
5 second test – quick feedback on a fast test
Free behavioral targeting – by buckets segments out different visitors so you know what demographic is doing what.
Google website optimizer – get good at free tools, then pay
Should test – headline, images, body copy, form layout
Quick points –
Message consistence across media (PPC to landing page, etc.)
Limited time deals, new products, etc badges overlaid on product image improves conversions by up to 55%
Email acquisition – the money is in the list. Get their email address.
Boost CRT – competition for Ads. You only pay when they do better than you.
Bryanses is the coupon code
don’t write an ad your landing page can’t cash.