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Sales Funnel Optimisation Phase 3: User Involvement

May 17, 2009 on 9:00 am | In Internet Marketing | 15 Comments

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This is the third instalment of a four-part series on Sales Funnel Optimisation. [See the introduction, Part 1 and Part 2 here].

Phase 3: User involvement

User involvement (also called “qualitative analysis”) simply means getting users’ input into the optimisation process — what they do and don’t like, why they would or wouldn’t buy from you and the “WHY” behind what they do on your site.

There are many ways to get this information, but until recently, the cost or effort was prohibitive, especially for smaller organisations.

Two of the most useful tools for getting this qualitative input are the 4Q iPerceptions exit survey tool and user testing videos provided by UserTesting.com.

I’ve written a previous review of 4Q iPerceptions, but the “Cliff’s Notes” version is that 4Q allows you to understand why users came to your site and whether or not they were able to achieve their main goal for their visit. If not, why not. If so, what they liked best.

Input from 4Q can easily by fed back into your website improvement initiatives (for example: copy ideas to test, pages to emphasise, pages or elements to de-emphasise etc.). And the cost? $0.

Then there’s UserTesting.com — I’m very excited about this because it makes it fast, easy and cheap to get informed end-user feedback on your site.

Here’s how it works: for (only!) $29 per user, a trained user tester will review your site and deliver output in two formats:

A Flash video that records the entire session, showing you every mouse movement, click and keystroke, along with spoken comments.
A written report detailing what they liked, what they didn’t like and what would have caused them to leave your site.

There are a few reasons why this is a very significant development:

Traditional user testing costs around US$250 per user at a fancy usability lab. Now, for around 1/10th of that price, you can get pretty much the same thing, from anywhere in the world, without leaving your computer.
You don’t need to test a lot of users – 1 to 3 users can be enough to give you a good idea of general patterns and trends that you can ACT on.
Crucially, this input is coming from outside your business or sphere of influence. This is nothing like the traditional business owner practice of “emailing a few friends to see what they think of the new site”. Such “insider” feedback is almost always tainted by filters that don’t impact on results.
It’s a good way to introduce fresh ideas into your improvement process which otherwise may not have been considered

I’ve introduced a number of colleagues and clients to UserTesting.com and they are universally impressed with insights and value it provides. I invite you to check it out!

So now you know about internal orientation, objective measurement and user involvement. What’s the next step? Tomorrow we’ll look at Phase 4 – Total integration.

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15 Comments »

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Hi Will –

Great blog post! We appreciate the mention.

Aimee W.
UserTesting.com

Comment by Aimee Williamson — May 19, 2009 #
Thank you very much for the tip on Usertesting. I was about to buy something much more expensive (thinking about it anyway). I knew this was an important part of optimizing a site and increasing conversions. This option is totally affordable. I appreciate it.

Adrien

Comment by Atlanta SEO Experts — May 24, 2009 #
Helpful blog. I was contemplating of buying another third party software. Now i have changed my mind…

Comment by Yuva — June 1, 2009 #
Great post, thanks for the tips I will have to check out user testing. I’ve been looking for ways to improve the usability of my site.

Comment by Sid Savage Auto Dealer Forum — June 2, 2009 #
I’ve tried that iPerceptions tool and it’s pretty good. The one thing folks should be aware of though is that it’s not always a good idea to make changes based on those surveys. The problem is only a tiny, tiny fraction of your visitors will ever fill that out, and in some cases those visitors may not be the ones driving your revenue.

That’s part of what’s tough about fully optimizing a site, you somehow have to figure out what the revenue-generating segment of your visitors wants…and sometimes they don’t speak up.

Comment by Cincinnati SEO — June 5, 2009 #
User testing is always a must. It’s like having someone proofread you writing, and them seeing a misspelled word that you overlooked when you read over it 100 times already.

Comment by CPA Affiliate Network — July 5, 2009 #
Before making sure that they have reached a conclusion, scientist always perform an experiment. They perform a test undifferentiated situations.Here to user testing is indeed very much important. Nice explanation and i am sure that this sure will help many people.

Comment by Harry S — July 7, 2009 #
Great post, thanks for the tips I will have to check out user testing. I’ve been looking for ways to improve the usability of my site.

Comment by New electric socket — July 21, 2009 #
It’s best to imagine a sales funnel as a physical funnel that is triangular in shape. Websites allow site visitors to enter at many different points and have particular conversion goals. The conversion goal of greatest importance is often to gain a purchase. Viewing the path a site visitor may follow before they make a purchase no matter what page they first arrived at helps to understand how easy it is for site visitors to meet the websites goals. Reviewing a websites sale funnel helps to identify areas of improvement.

Comment by web development company — July 23, 2009 #
Hi, this is my first time to visit your blog, your blog is really very professional, and nice . In the future, I really need to learn from you

Comment by clarky — July 24, 2009 #
Hmmm, the interaction with user is something to fear sometimes, but is also a must.

I think this is the hardest of the four stages.

Very good information you put here, congrats…

Comment by Publicidad — August 3, 2009 #
Very useful tip on usertesting. It is much beneficial to other people because of its affordability in comparison to other user testing.

Comment by Dominic — August 3, 2009 #
It’s really important to know what your clients are thinking about your business. From there, you can make necessary adjustments in your business. However, you really need to put an investment in implementing this kind of set-up. Worth investing for.

Comment by Angel — August 8, 2009 #
Before I never knew anything about these tools used for getting feedback from users in the optimisation process..now I know that 4Q iPerceptions and the site UserTesting.com are of great help. Thanks for insight!

Comment by Raymund @ Pinoy Social Network — August 9, 2009 #
Thank for the user-testing website , i didn’t know about this service and it sounds really interesting

The only thing is that to get relevant results the amount of tester has to be quite high and the budget will follow .

But i totally agree with you : it’s worth it

There is nothing more interesting than user-feedback !

Comment by referencement — August 14, 2009 #