Sales Funnel Optimisation Phase 4: Total Integration

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This is the final instalment of a five-part series on Sales Funnel Optimisation. [See the introduction here].

Phase 4: Total Integration

After you’ve evolved from internal orientation to objective measurement through to user involvement, you’re ready to enter the phase that can potentially unlock the most rewards: total integration.

This is where the first three phases feed into each other in a never-ending improvement process:

• developing and prioritising strategies internally
• measuring your results objectively
• capuring insights from users to acceleratete the process

These aren’t “steps” so much as never-ending improvement loop.

So the ideal website development and optimisation process goes something like this:

1. Conduct research of your market, competitors and opportunities.
2. Develop your site based on your “best guess” (plus smarts and experience) as to what is most likely to work
3. Measure everything so you can track what’s working and what’s not
4. Try different approaches and if they work, keep them.  If they don’t, revert back to the control.
5. Glean insights from users to add new ideas to the mix.  Selectively test, measure and optimise.
6. Rinse and repeat!

With most optimisation processes, it is normal to reach a stage of diminishing returns, once the most obvious improvements have been made.

But in the case of online sales funnel optimisation, the field is developing so quickly that there are always new opportunities to test new tools and strategies.

Even if your online sales process is relatively “mature”, it’s still possible to generate ongoing improvements of 10 or 20 percent per month using this process.

About Marketing Results:

As Australia’s leading internet lead generation experts, Marketing Results specialises in helping fast-growth companies generate more enquiries and sales online while eliminating marketing waste.  Find out more about our internet consulting services here.

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Sales Funnel Optimisation Phase 2: Objective Measurement

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

Phase 2: Objective measurement

Yesterday we looked at some of the advantages and disadvantages of relying on internal knowledge and resources to develop your online strategy. Today we’ll look at the next phase - objective measurement.

Objective measurement tools tell you WHAT users are doing on your site and whether or not tweaks or changes are working.

I’ve written extensively elsewhere on these “quantitative” strategies, so I won’t expand further here, except to provide some examples of typical objective measurement tools and what you can use them for:

• Google Analytics - broad-based analytics package, great for showing a range of key visitor (’How many visitors did we get last month?”) and conversion (”What percentage of visitors from search engines are downloading our White Paper?”) metrics.
• CrazyEgg - shows you WHERE on your webpage visitors clicked and presents the information as an easy-to-understand “heat map”
• Google Website Optimiser - multivariate testing tool. Use GWO to test different page elements (e.g. headlines, copy, offers or designs) and establish which elements convert best.

According to a survey we conducted last year of 324 Australian small and medium business owners, approximately 4 in 5 Australian companies have NOT yet evolved to this level. If you’re already using some or all of these quantitative tools, you should give yourself a pat on the back!

The great advantage of these tools is that they tell you what’s actually happening on your site — what’s working, and what’s not.

That allows you to test new things and if they work, keep them; if they don’t work, scrap them. This step-by-step process of is the basis of our online sales funnel optimisation service that we implement for SME clients.

The disadvantage of a purely quantitative approach is that you don’t have any insight into WHY users are doing what they’re doing. You have to make a “best guess”.  While you can certainly produce dramatic results from a quantitative approach, these types of tools are relatively inefficient for answering the following types of questions:

• What do prospects and clients really think of our website?
• Which specific elements of my website or sales copy are unwittingly turning new customers away?
• What new ideas should I test to improve user experience and conversion further?

To answer these types of “WHY?” questions, you need to evolve to Phase 3: User involvement.  That’s what we’ll look at tomorrow…

The Evolution of Website Sales Funnel Optimisation - Introduction

The central question of online sales funnel optimisation is, “how do we get better results than we’re currently getting, as quickly as possible?”

While sitting in a banana-chair in Punta del Este, I got to thinking about this question and the distinct but interlocking approaches and toolsets you need to maximise your online lead generation results including traffic, conversions and sales.  Here’s what I came up with:

There is an “evolution” with four phases that can take you from getting poor/average results to excellent/outstanding results from your website.

Over the next 4 days, we’ll look at each phase in detail.  Here’s a quick summary of what’s to come:

• Phase 1: Internal orientation: Many companies and organisations design their websites in line with their own opinions and preferences. While this can be a great starting point for gathering content and ideas, in many cases this can be detrimental to your sales goals.  What’s more, it doesn’t tell you anything about your customers and how they use your website.
• Phase 2: Objective measurement: Objective measurement tools allow you to reduce subjectivity and manage by fact rather than by hunch. Measurement tools tell you who is visiting your website and what they do when they get there. 
  
• Phase 3: User involvement: Measurement tools are very good at telling you WHAT users are doing.  But getting website users to tell you WHY they’re doing it is one of the best ways to gather useful optimisation ideas.  Until recently, professional user testing was beyond the reach of most SMEs at $250+ per user. Now, thanks to a new web-based service, you can buy user tests from only $29 per person!  We’ll look at this in more detail in Phase 3.
  
• Phase 4: Total integration: While each of the previous three phases have a part to play, they become exponentially more effective when used in concert. Give this process the time it deserves and it will reward you with increased sales and reduced marketing costs.

Tomorrow we’ll take a closer look at Phase 1 - Internal orientation.

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Ask Your Website Users How You Can Improve: 4Q Review & Case Study

When it comes to boosting website conversion, I’ve always been in the quantitative camp - “send enough users to different versions of your landing page and look at which version works best (i.e. delivers the best conversion results)”.

And that approach works great, but there’s still plenty of room for qualitative tools to help increase your conversion rate (in fact, the two play very well together.)

Conversion optimisation isn’t about software and tools

The tools you need to do A/B and multivariate testing are relatively mature, and they’re not just cheap, they’re free (try Google Analytics and Google Website Optimizer for starters.)

But the tools aren’t the constraint.  The constraint is knowing what to test.  You not only need to devise the right test elements, but you also need to apply a proven process to increase conversion on an ongoing basis.

Coming up with “stuff to test” happens in a number of ways, including marketing expertise and experience of what has worked in the past.  Another valuable source of information is to rely on the voice of the customer to help you answer the 4 critical site experience questions…

The 4 critical site experience questions

1. How satisfied are my website visitors?
2. What are my visitors at my website to do (their purpose)?
3. Are they in fact completing what they set out to do?
4. If not, why not?  If yes, what did they like best about their experience?

Knowing the answers to these questions can provide you with new optimisation ideas and priorities, straight from the customer’s mouth. You gain insight into WHY visitors are doing what they’re doing (or not doing!) on your website.

How We Used the Free 4Q Survey Tool To Answer The 4 Critical Questions

Late last year we used the free 4Q exit survey tool (a collaboration between Avinash and iPerceptions) to ask our website visitors the 4 critical questions.

Here’s how the invitation process works (from the 4Q FAQ page):

4Q employs a two-stage invitation process. When visitors arrive at your site, they will be presented an invitation to participate in a survey after their session. If they accept, a second, minimized window, which contains the survey itself, will be launched and will wait in the background for the visitor to complete his or her session. 4Q surveys are designed to be collaborative brand building exercises, not annoying browsing interruptions.

The tool is, by design, extremely simple.  Here’s a sneak peak at the control panel:

4Q Exit Survey Control Panel Screenshot

Once the survey is set up, it’s a case of insert-the-code and away you go.

One of the nifty features is the ability to adjust the survey invitation rate — so only a percentage of users are invited to participate.  For our test, we used 20% of site traffic.

4Q Survey Results - What We Discovered

• Over the course of the test, 46 surveys were completed
• The overall “task completion” rate was 75% (i.e. 25% of people who completed the survey were unable to do what they came to do on the site.)
• A few responses were “junk”, but that doesn’t matter.  We are looking for patterns and bright ideas.
• What they liked: a number of users commented on our use of fact-based website optimisation methods and liberal availability of online marketing case studies.
• What they didn’t like: a few users were looking for information/articles and resented being “sold” to.

Bright ideas:

Here are some examples of useful gems from the survey which we have translated into action:

Bright idea #1:

I had trouble finding the right subscription, which a friend forwarded me initially. I suggest having a ’subscribe’ link in your email subscription.

Bright idea #2:

Well, I loved the case studies; I really felt like I was connecting with a business that had succeeded as a direct result of their relationship with you and I wanted to be one of those too. But It wasn’t clear which of your services they had used to achieve those results when I went to look on your Services tab to find out more.

Sample output from 4Q

Final thoughts

Was using 4Q worth the effort?  You bet it was.  It is very quick to set up, provides a good user experience and yields measurable and usable qualitative information.

We have since installed 4Q surveys on several sites for our SME consulting clients and a couple of Enterprise clients as well.  In each case, the results have been well worth the effort. In one case, the results have heavily influenced the direction that a major site redesign is taking.   Better to know this information NOW, rather than after the redesign has taken place.

When you take your instructions directly from end users and marry them with scientific testing and tracking, you can also cut weeks or months of your conversion improvement cycles.  And you know what they say about time = money!

Why not give 4Q a go?  And if you need help with an orchestrated program of traffic and conversion improvement, get in touch and we can explore whether or not we’re a ‘fit’.

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Want To Boost Site Conversion? Increase Your Font Size

Sometimes the simplest website changes can produce the most rapid Return On Effort. One of the easiest ways to make your site convert better is to make it easier for users to read.

In fact, a whole category of website conversion heuristics is based around making your content easier for website visitors to digest.

Here are seven ways you can increase your website conversion right now:

1. Increase font size. For example, change 10 or 11px body text fonts to 13px.  Some people find these larger fonts “childlike”, but our tests have conclusively shown that larger fonts can increase conversion significantly (especially where the original font size was very small to start with).  Graphic designers often specify smaller, “cute” fonts, but you should remember that text content is primarily a means to convey your selling message, NOT a design element.
2. Avoid large line widths. The human eye just isn’t designed evolved that well for reading text on a screen.  One of the things that tends to slow people down when reading is moving they eyes from line to line.  And the longer the line width, the more difficult it is for the eye and the brain to hook up with the next line.   That’s why shorter line widths of 600px or less generally help conversion.  Test 600px vs 900px and you’ll see what I mean.
3. Increase colour contrast. Another thing graphic designers seem to love are font colour choices based on design sensibilities rather than communication and legibility.  Light grey text on a mid-grey background appears to be a designers’ favourite.  On the web, as in print, poor colour contrast = decreased legibility = decreased sales.  By increasing colour contrast (good ol’ black text on white background is my boring-but-effective favourite) you will boost sales.
4. Shorten paragraphs. Long paragaphs make it harder for the eye to navigate text.   Anything much longer than 7 lines and you’ll start to put readers off.  Where your paragraphs are longer than this, break them into two or more pieces.  The occasional one line paragraph can also work well.
5. Give “texture” to long copy. Many of these tips are centred around breaking the monotony of long, “blocky” tracts of text.  One way to do this is by adding “texture” — creating varying areas of white space around lines and paragraphs. For example, you should always leave a “ragged right” edge on paragraphs (i.e not fully justified).  The ragged edge helps the eye navigate.  Indenting the occasional paragraph with a <blockquote>, or placing content in a centred box achieves the same effect.
6. Break the monotony. White space is one way to break the monotony of dense text content — another is to use headlines, sub headlines, colour, “callouts”, bullet lists, numbered lists and text effects (bold, italics, underlines, strikethroughs etc.).  These elements help to focus the user’s attention on key selling points and create variety that keeps the brain engaged.
7. Add diagrams, graphs and images. I believe that copy is the main tool in your persuasive toolset on the web.  But other types of visual content can be a very useful way to augment your central sales argument.  Use images, graphs and diagrams appropriately when they make your point better than text.

This Is NOT A Long Copy vs Short Copy Debate

Please note that this has nothing to do with the long/short copy debate (if you could still call it a debate - the long copy folks won that a decade ago online, and a century ago in print).

This is about recognising that text content can be daunting when presented the wrong way.   By making your text content as legible and digestible as possible, you’ll get higher readership and more leads and sales.  And isn’t that what we all want?

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How To Use Prospect “Filters” To Improve Sales Quality

When I started out in business and started to prospect for new clients, I needed leads. Any leads would do. Even if those leads weren’t highly qualified and ready-to-go, it feels better to be talking to prospects, writing proposals and “keeping busy” than it does doing nothing toward getting new clients.

Pretty soon, lead volume picked up substantially, thanks to the Education-Based Marketing approaches that I have written about on many occasions.

But “mindset-wise”, I was still in the “More Leads = Good” space. I started to get busier and busier, not only performing work for the clients that came in, but also processing and selling to new prospects.

This was when I realised that I needed more efficient ways to deliver hot, ready-to-buy leads to my doorstep to drive up conversion rates and spend LESS time selling to non-clients.

One of the strategies for doing this is the use of “Filters” to pick off UN-qualified leads before they enquire. Here are some examples of the kind of filters I tested:

• Price: “your investment will be in the $7,000 - $10,000 range”
• Aspiration: “if you’re just looking to maintain your current operation, this is not for you. Typical clients aim to increase their business by 50 to 100% within 12 months and have the capacity to do so.”
• Service Exclusions: “this service is designed to generate highly-qualified incoming sales leads via your website. We do not make outgoing cold calls, although your own outbound calling operations can fit into this solution seamlessly.”

An example from the finance industry

Several years later, a client in the finance industry was having a small problem with people who were financially unqualified applying for a specific range of products.

Despite clearly stating the main qualifying conditions on the sales page, a number of visitors were applying directly through the contact form. It was starting to occupy a significant portion of the salespeople’s time just to reply to these people.

The solution was to clearly state just above the contact form that the product was only available to customers who already hold equity in their own home. We even highlighted the relevant phrases with the famous yellow highlighter.

It did the trick.

Overnight, the unqualified leads stopped, leaving the client to focus on qualified enquiries.

One more important thing to keep in mind: occasionally when you employ this strategy, you overdo it and qualified leads get cut out of your funnel prematurely. Obviously you need to keep an eye on your metrics to ensure that this strategy had the desired effect.

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Lead Volume vs Opportunity Volume

For several years now I’ve been asking subscribers and clients to visualise their online sales process as a funnel with knowable metrics. You’re no doubt familiar with the analogy:

1000 visitors hit your website (”Visits”) –> 100 opt in to your Free Special Report (”Opt Ins”) –> 20 enquire (”Leads”) –> 5 become clients (”Sales”)

Whatever the exact number or specific conversion steps are in your business, you get the idea.

But I recently came across a very useful distinction on a Marketing Experiments webinar that dovetailed with a recent experience working with a client.

That is the distinction between Lead Volume and Opportunity Volume.

Lead Volume is the number of people filling out your enquiry form, but Opportunity Volume is the number of viable sales opportunities available to your sales team (or you, if you’re the only salesperson at your company).

Lead Volume is very often a measure of activity. Opportunity Volume is a measure of results and future expected revenues.

I recently dealt with a client whose only metric was Lead Volume: “Just get us more contact form submissions”.

“More contact form submissions is a brief that is relatively easy to fulfil. For starters, you can make the form easier to complete. Second, remove “strings” from the offer or add a guarantee.

When you do this, will the leads be more qualified? Will you create more viable Sales Opportunities? Not necessarily. In fact, you can very often clog up your sales pipeline with unqualified leads that do nothing more than take up your salespeople’s time and detract from closing genuine sales opportunities.

That’s why I’ve now included Opportunity Volume as one of the key lead generation metrics to track. It is a more reliable indicator of the success of your pre-sales marketing activities.

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The Essence Of Lead Generation In One Question

In one of Perry Marshall’s recent newsletters, this gem leapt out at me:

What series of actions is your prospect going to be taken through so that by the time they’re ready to buy, they know you, like you and trust you more than anyone else they are considering?”

That is the essence of lead generation.

Most companies only start to sell when the prospect is ready to buy - by then it’s too late.  Ideally, you need to be there well before your prospect is ready to buy.

Most companies provide too little information and education between initial interest from the prospect and closing the sale. The result is that most prospects are not sufficiently educated about what you do and how you’re different to choose you.

Most companies don’t understand what other options their prospects might be considering, and have a pre-emptive strategy to “unsell” their competitors’ offerings before the prospect has even considered them.

Most companies are too impersonal in their communications.  There’s too many “we”s in their communications and not enough “you”s.

Don’t be like most companies – be like the 1 to 5% of successful companies who do what their competitors don’t and educate and inform prospects prior to, during and after the sale.

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Lead Generation Survey Of 324 Australian Small Business Owners Released

Earlier this year I conducted a survey focused on Australian Online Lead Generation practices, in collaboration with Dr Marc Dussault of Platinum Programs. The results were telling but not particularly surprising - most Australian SMEs don’t know what they’re doing when it comes to generating leads over the Internet.

And that’s understandable.  I don’t know how to perform brain surgery, build a house or prepare a company tax return because that’s not my core business.  But if I want to do any of those things, I find someone who can do it and outsource it to them.

The Survey:

324 Australian Small to Medium sized businesses from a diverse range of industries were dissected, scrutinised and thoroughly examined via an online survey of 28 questions. 81% of the study participants came from organisations with less than $1 million in annual revenue.

Key Findings:

The findings expose the fundamental reasons why a deadly ‘heart attack’ is almost assured for the majority of Australian small business websites and what needs to be done to stop the bloodshed.

• SMEs understand the importance of online marketing – 77% assess their website as being moderately to critically important for generating enquiries and influencing sales at the present time. A WHOPPING 98% predict that their online channel will be moderately to critically important for generating enquiries and influencing sales within two years’ time.
• 82% suffer from marketing blindness because they don’t track any KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) for their website. 65% aren’t tracking ANY conversion rates such as newsletter opt-in rates or shopping cart checkout rates.
• 83% suffer from acute traffic depression and are either moderately dissatisfied or very dissatisfied with the traffic volume their website receives.
• 86% admit they have no clue about their Search Engine Optimisation results and can only estimate their Return On Investment in ballpark figures
• A staggering 83% suffer from major cellular damage, running with online promotions that are actually eating their profits. They never realise the consequences of their actions because they don’t TEST to optimise results when they introduce new website features or content.
• 58% suffer form an embarrassing memory loss that’s costing them tens of thousands of dollars in lost profits, as they hardly ever or never send email broadcasts to their suspects, prospects or clients, thus missing out on a major revenue opportunity that could boost their constitution in a matter of days.
• 96% of respondents assess their website as being only minimally to moderately effective at achieving their revenue generation goals.

Dissection of the answers obtained from this extensive survey lead to the conclusion that one of the main problems lies in the lack of systems, strategies and processes that can create and sustain a profitable online lead or sales generation pipeline.

Most Australian SMEs are not doing the basics right (testing and tracking, keep-in-touch marketing, optin-and-followup), let alone the advanced strategies required to get outstanding results.

From a therapeutic standpoint, we recommend that Australian businesses begin taking a much keener interest in the health of their Internet marketing. Prevention is better than cure and as the saying goes, “An ounce of perspiration is worth a gallon of blood”.

A diet high in well-targeted online advertising with attention-grabbing headlines and clear calls to action that leverage proven Internet marketing strategies such as opt-in email marketing, information and education, testimonials, “proof” elements and sales process automation will ensure a long, healthy and prosperous life for any small business.

The full internet marketing survey diagnoses the source of the ailments and proposes several potential cures, providing that the unsuspecting victims are warned in time and take proactive action to protect themselves.

Download the Full Lead Generation Survey Report Here (PDF)

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The BIG Conversion Rate Difference Between New and Returning Website Visitors

“The average website visitor makes at least 7 visits before making a purchase or enquiry”.

It’s one of those oft-quoted phrases on online marketing that doesn’t seem to have any definite source. While I’m not sure about the number 7 (it will in fact be lower or higher, depending on the industry and conversion strategy), I do know that returning website visitors enquire and buy much more readily than new visitors.

So you need a strategy to keep the conversation going with new visitors; to engage them and get them coming back for more.  I almost always mention this in reports or presentations, yet a quick show-of-hands at a recent 3-day Exponential Marketing Bootcamp revealed that fewer than 3% of the 150 business owners present had a strategy for turning repeat visitors into returning visitors.

The difference between new and repeat website visitors

Google Analytics provides a useful “New vs Returning” report that allows you to segment a bunch of  variables (e.g. conversion rate, average visitor value) by visitor type.

I recently ran this report did this for one of my ebook websites, with surprising results….

Exhibit A - Percentage New vs Returning Visitors

Google Analytics: New vs Repeat Visits for my ebook website

Exhibit B - Conversion Rate of New vs Returning Visitors

Google Analytics: New vs Repeat Visitor Conversion Rates

Exhibit C - Purchase Volume of New vs Returning Visitors

Google Analytics: New vs Repeat Contribution to Purchase Volume

As you can see from the screenshots above, Returning Visitors punch well above their weight, contributing nearly half of all sales on only 11% visitor volume.

But why are repeat visitors really buying?

Are they buying merely because of repeat exposure(s) to the same marketing message, or does the fact that they were interested enough to come back in the first place (i.e pre-qualified) make them a far easier prospect to convert?

In this case, I believe the second factor is more responsible for the conversion leap.

On the other hand, particularly for complex online lead generation scenarios (e.g. B2B, high-end or technical products or services), repeated exposures not to the “same” marketing message but the multiple dimensions of the benefits you offer is the surest way of increasing throughput of qualified, ready-to-buy sales leads.

What this means is: if you want to generate leads online for higher priced / complex / intangible products or services, you MUST have a strategy to get users back to your website again and again (even if your offering is simpler, it is still a very good idea).

In other words, you need an opt in strategy.  It may sound like I’m flogging a dead horse, but remember, fewer than 3% of otherwise very switched on business owners in my mini-survey above had an opt-in strategy in place.

After you’ve enticed prospects to opt in, your next job is to provide value to your list, while “dimensionalising” the value of what you offer over multiple communications. The “hot button” that triggers one client (e.g. speedy delivery) may not be important to another - so you need to cover all bases.

The mechanics and “heavy lifting” of this process can be automated using an autoresponder service such as Aweber. But you also need the right strategy, copy and implementation to make the pieces fit together properly.

One of the keys to successful autoresponder sequences is a balance between information and education (content) and compelling reasons to enquire or buy (salesmanship).  Most sequences fail to find this balance by being either too “stingy” with usable information or giving too much away without tying the content into the sales process.

Designing an effective repeat visitor strategy is one of the things we can help you with (although a waiting period may apply). But whatever you do, don’t do nothing — get those visitors coming back to your website where they’re 6+ times easier to convert into qualified prospects and clients.

About Marketing Results

As Australia’s leading internet lead generation experts, Marketing Results uses sophisticated web analytics to precisely understand how visitors are interacting with your website, then leverage proven traffic and conversion strategies to cut marketing waste, expand your reach and effectiveness and boost website profits by 2 to 21 times based on over 5 years of documented client results.

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