What Does the Browser Say About Your Site?
You should always be aware of what your sites look like in different browsers, and check your Web of Trust rating.
The other day I was looking around at CrowdSpring, a website that is fairly trustworthy and does not have any major security flaws that I’m aware of – definitely not a site that is trying to infect your browser. The site worked just fine in FireFox and Internet Explorer. However, I was using Chrome (one of the fastest growing browsers that is already up to 10% market share) the browser stopped me from even continuing to a section of the site and told me there was something wrong with the servers and that a hacker might be involved and that I should really leave the site.
It turned out it was a server configuration error on crowdspring’s side that was fixed fairly quickly. However, if they had not been alerted by someone – or worse, never check their site in multiple browsers – they may have just continued to lose new customers without understanding why.
This is why it is so important to look at your site in different browsers. Don’t just look at the the homepage, look at your internal pages, especially your conversion pages.
If you do not want to maintain multiple browsers and machines, Cross Browser Testing is a paid solution that can help you out.
Testing your site in multiple browsers is easy. Fixing some of the issues might be difficult – but at least you’re aware of the problem. Not looking around you site in multiple browsers is an easy way to isolate visitors and lose customers to your competition.
You are Not Your Target Market
Way to often I hear statements such as:
- I don’t click on ads, I bet no one does
- I wouldn’t do that; therefore, I’m not going to market that way
- Why would someone search for our products that way?
- Of course our site is easy to navigate, we have conversions
- What do you mean we are a bad judge of our website?
These statements tell someone that you are not looking at things from the customer point of view; but your own.
In every Google AdWords seminar, I end up going on a rant about about how most people are bad judges of their website. Once you know something so well, you do not think about how to use the product; you just do it by instinct.
- Have you ever driven to work and could not remember actually driving?
- That does not happen when you take an unfamiliar route
- When the familiar is routine, we cease to notice the small details
The same can be said for your website. You know that your phone number is in the upper right hand corner inside your navigational banner. Ask someone to find that same phone number, and there are times a searcher stares at the page and says they can’t find it.
You know that to access your shopping cart, there’s a small icon at the top of a page. I’ve been on sites where I added something to the cart, and then couldn’t figure out where my cart was.
- This happens because often designers create a website for themselves.
- Or they create it for the marketing team.
- They are not always creating websites for the consumers.
While these are basic principles, we all forget them sometimes. A good designer never forgets this principle.
I have 6 different Firefox profiles on my computer and often have 3 Firefox profiles open, all with different plug-ins and navigation, along with Chrome and IE. To me browsers are a tool to be customized so each one helps you become more productive. I don’t think about saying something like, “Make a new Firefox profile that just uses GTD & the Better Plug-ins and then layer over a Grease monkey script based upon your email navigation preferences and then you can have have a dedicated email browser for your hosted apps so that you can be more productive.”
I said that a couple weeks ago to a very techie audience, and more than half of them stared at me blankly. I’m not my target audience.
I would guess that more than 90% or more of people who read this blog know what a browser is. However, what about your audience who is wandering the streets of New York City? Do they know what a browser is – the fundamental access point for the web?
Here is an enlightening video that asks those on the street a simple question: What is a browser? For many of you this is your target market. The answers might surprise you.
If you’d like to see all of Google’s videos; and our favorites such as the above video - subscribe to our YouTube channel.
4 Hours of Video that Will Increase Your Conversion Rates
Google has quite a few excellent YouTube channels that are relegated to the back corner of YouTube in favor of short, non-informational clips. If you ever want to see all of Google’s YouTube Channels, you can subscribe to the bgTheory YouTube channel, and look through our subscriptions as we subscribe to all the official Google channels.
There are four excellent videos that range from 30 minutes to more than an hour, which contain excellent tips on creating, testing, and analyzing landing pages to increase conversions. Learn form both experts in the field to Google employees about possible ways to increase conversion rates.
The first video is by Tim Ash. If you like the video and would like to learn more, Tim, Brian Massey, and myself are conducting a training session at Pubcon in November.
Enjoy the videos.
Learn from Nuance (the makers of Dragon Naturally Speaking) in Making Customer’s Not Contact Your Business to Learn More
How many barriers do you have to providing pre-sales customer support? Even one can stop a sale from happening. Read just one consumer’s thoughts (mine) about trying to buy a product and what the potential barriers are. Have you evaluated your sales process through your customer’s eyes?
I’ve always wanted to test out Dragon Naturally Speaking (a speech to text program), and it’s on sale right now. However, their downloads are by Digital River, possibly one of the worst customer support offices ever. My last time I dealt with Digital River, my experience went like this (and all consumers have bad experiences in their past with some provider):
- Bought the software where you have 30 days to install
- The install failed due to an error on the manufacturer’s side
- Repeated attempts to contact manufacturer went unanswered for weeks
- Repeated attempts to contact digital river are still unanswered
- This resulted in my first, and only, chargeback
- Avoiding any software downloads that involves digital river
However, all Dragon Naturally Speaking downloads appear to be by Digital River, so I wanted to contact Nuance real quick before buying the product just to see if there were alternatives to the download process.
It turns out you have to make an account to contact Nuance by email. And what’s worse, you actually leave Nuance’s site when you hit the contact customer support button (while this screenshot is for technical support, you have to create an account on nuance’s site for standard customer support. And since they are on different sites, you have no idea if you need to create multiple accounts to contact different departments).
Suddenly the trust factor drops significantly, and questions go through the buyers mind:
- A different site?
- So does someone else do your technical support?
- Can I understand the person doing support?
As customer support satisfaction is dropping in many places due to the outsourcing involved, this could be a big issue. And secondly, who wants to create an account just to email technical or pre-sales support?
Post sale support is almost always worse than pre-sale support. Post sales means the company already has money from you, and usually does not support items nearly as well as getting you to buy the product in the first place. So, if your pre-sale support requires this many hoops; what are you imagining your post-sales experience will be?
Suffice it to say, while I was ready to buy the product this morning and test it out. However, after finding:
- Potential barriers to download
- Barriers to customer support
- Barriers to technical support
- Poor experience with their technical backend download system
- A website that auto plays videos with sound (really? That turns off everyone in an office setting)
I’ll wait another day to try out Dragon, or take a good look at some of their competitor’s reviews.
While I’ve rarely ever used customer support for post-sale software; and probably will never need it – it’s the fact the barriers seem so high if I ever needed to use it.
That’s what customers think. If I need this, will you be there?
While most may never need support; if a customer thinks you won’t be available when they need you – then it’s time for your potential customers to move on to your competitors.
Is Your Website Built for Credibility or Conversions?
A website can have signals of trust where others often refer to the site.
A website could have a high conversion rate, but not necessarily be a credible site.
Or a site could be both.
What website elements are most important to consumers?
I recently came across a fascinating report (note PDF file) that tried to measure what aspects of a site (broken down by a few verticals) were more discussed when addressing website credibility issue. The chart is excellent (and pulled from page 23 of the previously mentioned document):
If this were the overall look and feel of a website, it’s a pretty good list to work from.
However, what if you have dedicated landing pages?
While affiliations only make up 3.4% of all comments regarding credibility; highlighting affiliations on a landing page can often dramatically affect conversion rates.
If someone has not done business with you yet, then 6.4% focus on customer service is immaterial.
If they are doing business with your company, I’d rarely suggest spending 8x more time on your website design than on customer service. Customer service, or past site experience, is paramount to increasing a customer’s lifetime visitor value.
If you are an educational site, and do not focus on Information Clarity (only 3.7% of comments) you might be considered credible, but you will not see many conversions. Information clarity is of high importance when trying to teach concepts.
Note on Aggregate Studies
Studies are good information to make you think and to compare your website against some larger benchmarks.
Never assume that just because the information is in a study that it applies to your business. Studies are often aggregates of information across several businesses and then the information is averaged.
Don’t try to be average, find the data points that matter to your business.
Are you a converter or credible?
Do you want to be both? Do you care if your site is credible? If you are in an industry with zero reoccurring revenue, no repeat buyers, and a limited product set – the conversion probably matters to you much more than being trustworthy.
If you have repeat buyers, create relationships with your customers, then being both credible and a converting site is important.
Are you a reference source that does not really have conversions? Your conversions are page views where you show CPM ads? In this case, focusing on credibility is much more important than conversions.
Take a look at the above chart and examine your website. Does your website have great content but an average design? That might be a signal that you could increase your credibility with some redesign work.
Take a look at the chart and ponder your conversion rates. If you’ve found that certain aspects affect conversions – do not lose sight of those statistics. If you rely on conversions to turn a profit – spend your time testing.
Determine your website’s positioning – then choosing which aspects to focus on (such as credibility vs. conversions) becomes a logical exercise.
And if you really want to dive into this study to get even more ideas, here’s the study’s home page (non-PDF).
Do you Execute Properly on Your Fantastic Ideas? Learn from Delivery.com’s Mistake.
I recently received what appeared to be a fantastic marketing campaign from Delivery.com. However, the great idea failed in execution due to some very simple fundamentals – lack of targeting.
Consider the timing of this offer?
The temperature in Washington DC is suppose to be 2 degrees this weekend, which is exceptionally cold for DC. Delivery.com is going to give me bonus points for every degree under 25 if I order from them this weekend.
Sound Perfect. Who wants to go out in freezing temperatures to pick-up food?
I’ve ordered from delivery.com before. They have my name, zip code, location of nearest metropolitan area, etc. Enough information to make a truly personal offer.
This great idea failed in execution due to 2 simple mistakes:
Here’s a screenshot of the email:
Failed Reason 1 – Offer Targets Incorrect City
The promotion is based upon the temperature in Central Park (New York City). Why do I care about the temperature in NYC? I live in DC. Just because it’s cold in NYC doesn’t mean it’ll be cold where I live. What do people in Miami think about a cold weather alert email?
If this promotion would have instead shown the upcoming temperature’s in DC and based the rewards points on the temperature in DC – it would have been locally relevant, and the offer would have been personal. Instead, it just says it’ll be cold in some city where I won’t be this weekend.
Failed Reason 2 – Poor User Experience After the Offer
There is an easy to see call to action to browse the restaurants in my area. Delivery.com knows my zip code. Clicking that link should take me to restaurants that deliver to my area. Instead, it takes me to the home page. Search 101 says take someone to the most relevant page for your ad copy. The same goes for email.
The link should have taken me to a page that:
- Reinforced the offer (same images at the top of the page)
- Displayed the restaurants that actually deliver to me
- Had an option for ordering this weekend
- Showcased the discount code (reminded me that not only do I want to order because of the temperature, but that I also will get bonus points for doing so)
Never Forget to Connect with Your Customers
If you have information about your customers; use it to target properly.
If you don’t have information, at least make a landing page (for the ad or email) that blends the look of the initial message so that someone is continuing along the same messaging lines.
Reinforce the offer on the landing page.
The premise of this campaign was fantastic. It was a good idea.
The execution was bad due to a simple mistakes.
Take a look at your offers. Are you connecting with your consumers?
Friday Fun – What not to do on a website
These two sites are pretty self-explanatory. Everything you shouldn’t do in a website in two easy to see examples.
Usability? Readibility or Navigation?
Please turn the sound on, this site had me laughing for quite some time.
Landing Page Testing – Are you sending traffic to the correct page?
On page landing page testing has been well discussed and talked about this part year. From blogs like GrokDotCom to programs such as Google Website Optimizer.
However, talking about on page optimization can only be tested if you’re sure that the traffic is going to the correct page in the first place. It is easy to get caught up in conventional wisdom of where to send traffic (usually the most logical page that is furthest in the buying cycle) without testing if that was the correct page to begin with.
One good example of this is for informational queries. A query such as ‘Candle burning times’ is often linked to from a PPC ad to a candle product page. However, that is not the question the searcher asked. If one thinks about a consumer making that query, they are probably buying candles for an event. They do not want to see a candle taper product page, the searcher is looking for a page that discusses the different candle types and how long each one will burn.
This is where you can combine information giving with eCommerce. If you sent the traffic to a page listing your candles and how long they burned; and then linked those candles to your product pages suddenly you can monetize those informational queries.
This step can be repeated with several different query types.
Local business queries
For a query such as ‘Chicago kitchen remodeling’. Conventional wisdom says to send traffic to the ‘before and after’ picture page of a kitchen. However, it is not unusual for a small business to see that when someone visited the ‘about us page’ where we discuss our 25 years in business, our 10 testimonials, and our Better Business Bureau involvement that suddenly the conversion rates increases. Test sending them to the conventional wisdom page along with the about us page.
Narrow Theme Sites
I’ll never forget working on a site where the homepage had double the conversion rate of the most appropriate page of the site for the query. It was a site that connected families with nannies. The most specific page for a search such as ‘Chicago Nanny Services’ would be a page about Chicago with actual nanny resumes. However, the front page of the site conveyed trust that the site worked with both nannies and families thus ensuring your data wasn’t being sold or random nannies were being assigned to the families. While conventional wisdom says the home page is never the best page, their home page’s cost per conversion definitely said otherwise.
Ambiguous Queries
Generally the search ‘merchant account’s’ will send you into a form that will help you apply for a merchant account. After committing to 3 pages of form fill out there’s a question that stops the user in their tracks – ‘what type of merchant account do you want?’. It turns out the query ‘merchant accounts’ wasn’t so specific after all. In cases where the searcher needs more information to take action, take them to a segmentation page where they can learn more information before choosing their route. This is also useful for larger forms where measuring where someone is abandoning the form can help you pinpoint issues to either rephrase the question, change the landing page, or put informational text around the question.
Thank You Pages
While the Thank You Page is the most underutilized page on the web, it is also worth testing. What types of pages lead to longer Lifetime Visitor Values? Should your page have a newsletter signup, a whitepaper download, or related products? It should not be a page that says ‘Thank you for contacting us, now go away’; it should say ‘Thank you for contacting us, we’ll get back to you shortly; but while you wait – here’s some other information that may interest you’. It is much more expensive to gain the first customer than to keep a customer. Use trust pages (of which the thank you page is one as someone trusted you with either their contact information or their credit card). Test these pages to see which leads to most involved customers.
Final Thoughts
On page testing is important. Changing pictures, forms, layout, color, etc can lead to higher conversion rates. However, if you don’t pick the correct page to send traffic to in the first place, on-page testing is a waste of time. Take a step back, examine the conventional wisdom of where you should send traffic, and then test a few different pages before taking the time to optimize the on page experience.
Does your website speak your visitors language?
Many websites exist in multiple languages. However, the way you institute language switching (or country detection and language selection) can make a large impact on your visitor’s ability to interact with your website.
I was recently in Italy. When I visited Google Reader, I was forced to interact with the page in Italian. There was no way I could find to change the language back to English. Google reader exists in many different languages; however, they had taken my language choice away from me and forced me to read the site in Italian (which I don’t speak).
As a comparison, this was also an issue with Google Analytics first launched. However, now on the homepage of the site is an easy to find drop down box that allows you to select the language to view the website.
Having your site in multiple languages can be very useful – if you don’t forget about the visitor.
As a reminder, if you allow someone to switch languages, please reload the exact same page in the new language. Too many sites bring you back to the homepage again, and force you to find the exact same page again in the new language.
If you are working on SEO efforts, you should not be changing the site’s language based upon user location – please have separate, spiederable pages for each page and language combination.
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