Hey 👋🏿 – Anthony here.
Happy Saturday to you all.
If my content resonates with you, please share this email or send this link for folks to join 😊.
Here are a few tips on how to optimize conversion roadblocks on your website.
Today's issue takes about 5 minutes to read.
Peep the scenario
So a smart fellow by the name of Jeremy Epperson recently spoke about 'conversion roadblocks".
This term caught my attention because "conversion roadblocks" is a term that one can instantly visualize without much thought.
Jeremy's explanation of a conversion roadblock is "what are the things that are preventing people from learning?"
EDIT: Jeremy recently added the following explanation for a conversion roadblock...
"...A conversion roadblock is more something that prevents a person from taking action, which will vary across verticals and businesses".
In other words, conversion roadblocks are issues on a website that prevents people from reaching the end goal".
This illustrious end goal is what we're all after, but it's the way that we go about getting people to this end goal that sets us apart from one another.
When you look around at your competition, you start to think that the more polished brands have more money, bigger teams, or smarter people working for them.
But a lot of the time that is not the case.
Those brands still worry about the same things that you are worried about, except they have a process.
For this email, we're going to talk about common conversion roadblocks and the best way to circumvent these roadblocks.
But as you read through it all think about how you can add this to your own process.
Do the work and continue to iterate on it.
Remember, customer research is gold for any brand that is in growth mode.
Alright, so let's get into it...
Here's 3 common conversion roadblocks with ways to break them down
👉🏿 Roadblock #1: Message Clarity & Value Perception.
Clarity is always a big issue for most websites no matter if it's eCommerce or otherwise.
The reason why is that most of us aren't trained to be conversion copywriters.
We mostly look at what the competition is doing and what they're saying to their customers, and we spin up a variation for ourselves.
But all this does is put us into a "sea of sameness".
What's worse is that your customers become instantly bored because the past 5 websites that they visited are all saying the same thing, and yours is one of them.
But customers will stop at the first sign of a brand that's doing something different.
You want to ask yourself "does my customer see the value in making a purchase with my brand?".
Or "Is my messaging clear and speaks to how we're different than the competition?".
Here are a few ways to combat message clarity issues
- Conduct a review mining matrix. This will help you understand a lot about your customers and you'll find patterns of words your customers use to describe your product(s) or brand. You can click here to understand how to mine reviews.
- Conduct customer interviews and surveys. For all of the same reasons to review mine, you should conduct interviews and surveys. This is the most powerful way to craft messaging that is simple and clear. Simply because you can use the same words that your customers are using. You can click here to understand how to conduct customer interviews, and click here to understand how to conduct a customer survey.
👉🏿 Roadblock #2: Website Bugs
Sometimes we're adding so many plugins to the site, or creating new functionality for a marketing initiative, that we leave other parts of the website open for bugs.
This happens a lot with brands that have small teams, or brands that don't interact with their customers often.
Customers will usually tell you when something is wrong, but sometimes they won't.
And you'll have a broken button, or a hidden link on a popular browser, and you will never know it exists.
What's worse is that conversion will drop and bounce rates will rise, and again...you'll never know it exists.
I deal with these problems all of the time with clients in my agency.
The best part about bugs is that with the right process, you can find them quickly, squish them, and get your conversion rate and other metrics back up almost instantly.
Here are a few ways to combat bugs on a website
- Stay on top of your landing page report within your analytics platform. This will give you an indication that something is wrong on a specific page.
- Hire a quality assurance team that will put together a checklist to go through after big changes are made to the website.
- Put together a device and browser report in your analytics platform to see if any high-trafficked device type or the web browser is getting considerably less conversion than others.
- Conduct a remote user test and see how people that have never been to your site use your site firsthand. Click here to learn how to conduct a remote user test.
👉🏿 Roadblock #3: Customer Objections
This looks easy enough to combat, but most of us are oblivious to objections that the majority of our customers may have.
Why does it look so easy you ask?
Because you're usually helping customers through live chat, email, a knowledge base, and other customer support avenues.
"The shipping costs are too damn high."
This is an example of a customer objection that most of us have dealt with at some point or another.
So most of us generally have a good understanding of what the main objections are and how to best handle them.
But what about the no-so-obvious objections?
These can be complaints about color options, out-of-stock items, or very specific information that would put potential customers at ease.
How do you figure out what your customers really want?
Here are a few ways to combat customer objections and understand what they really want
- Same as message clarity above ☝🏿. Customer interviews, surveys, and review mining will give you all the keys to unlock those objections, except you're going to want to focus on shoppers that has shown interest but never purchased. These people will spill the proverbial beans on all of the objections they made about your brand and/or product.
- Utilize survey polls on your website. I like to add a poll to the product page or cart page with a simple question such as "what is stopping you from making a purchase today". This will give you instant information on their objections right away.
Hopefully, this will help you gain a better understanding of conversion roadblocks and to utilize research to improve the user experience of your website 👍🏿
See you again in 2 weeks.
When you're ready there are 3 ways I can help you:
Work directly with my team to help transform your business into a high-growth brand.
Take my free 3-Day Conversion Breakthrough Challenge to further beef up your messaging.
Follow me on LinkedIn to hear me ramble about all things eCommerce.
