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Buying your next ‘Magic Tool!’ Conversion Sweetspots Series

AKA ‘How to select a tool in 7 steps’ by Michiel Jansen

Do you know that feeling? You look around a meeting room and you see an eclectic group of professionals 10 -12 people. Some fixed hires, most flexible hires. Why? Because they have jobs that the fixed hires didn’t knew existed 1 year ago. Programmatic Real Time Bidding, R Big Data-specialist, AI specialist  etc. Then some business owners and the Enterprise Sales Guy and Pre-sales consultant pitching their dream to your CTO, CMO, CBO etc.   

Help! Does anyone know what we are doing here?

More importantly?  Does anyone know what we are doing here? More often than not these meetings are organized around the selection process or recent acquisition of a ‘Magic’ tool. A multichannel tool, a DMP, CRM or Personalisation engine, algorithm.

The marketeers suggest using the Sex in the City Model, the Data scientist suggest first building a database and then the tool will suggest itself what to do. Magic will happen!  

These set-ups are great for dealing with my fear that machines will take over Marketing & Website Optimisation. That I will be outperformed by an algorithm very soon.

The one question to ask

I usually go into these meeting with one question and one question only. This questions reduces all ‘Technology Non-sense’  to one simple thing!

What do we actually want to achieve? You can imagine that this opens up a world of questions, mismatches, opinions, beliefs and errors. The simpler the question the harder for al the Specialists to answer it. Why? This is when you can see that no one knows what the priorities are in the company. Everyone just knows they are not as successful as management has promised the owners they would be. So they seek for the answer in the Enigma: the new tool. While the answer is not to be found there.   

Think like a carpenter, not like a consultant

Next time you think about using a new tool: Ask yourself first! What is the next best action you want a visitor to take? Ask yourself secondly; Can we increase this change by improving our product or reducing friction, adding some piece of mind? Wouldn’t increasing your Value add not be better then adding a new tool. Only if you think you have reached the end of improving your product and service: then think about a new tool.

How to select a tool in 7 steps

If you buy a new tool:  Make sure you actually know what you want it to do. So don’t treat it like an Enigma treat it like: Think like a carpenter, not like a consultant.  

  1. Consider what happend all previous times you bought a magic system: don’t expect a different outcome this time. If it was a disaster then, it will be a disaster know. If it went great then: great you are working in a company that can ‘deal’ with new technology!
  2. Understand what you actually want it to do!!!!!?
  3. Understand what it would deliver if this actually happened.
  4. Consider if you can swap the tool for something else easily in 2 years or that you are stuck.
  5. Don’t listen to the enterprise sales person!
  6. Listen to the employees in your company actually delivering end-customer value
  7. Proof it first, then scale! If they don’t want to do a realistic Proof of Concept: walk away!

What are your experiences with buying Magic Tools: the next big thing?

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11 crowdsourced ideas to start to realise Customer Obsession within the organisation: Customer experience Gerry McGovern Workshop June 13th

Status is onlineMichiel JansenGlobal CRO for Leaseplan Digital – Global Marketing Team (A/B Testing, Personalisation, Product improvement)17 artikelen

Today Gerry McGovern kicked of the “Customer Obsession’ workshop with the following question; “If you had a magic wand and could change one thing in your current company or organization; what would it be?”In the audience: 30 employees, independent consultants working at or for large companies, local and national government, consumer associations & universities.

11 Ways to start to realise Customer Obsession within the organisation:

1.    Get 20% of time dedicated to realising The Voice of the Customer. (Should be more but lets be practical).  

2.    Get a ‘Customer day’: Every day should be customer day…… but for most organisations 1 day would be a great start!

3.    Get people out of the office! Talk to customer not ‘Read about the customer in research’

4.    Fix the fragmentation in organisation. When no one ‘owns’ the whole customer journey, the customer looses out.

5.    Reduce internal ‘marketing’ so department wants to push their own program or product and therefore don’t care about the customer.

6.    Too much focus on future customers instead of on current customers.

7.    KPI’s are to short because of reporting to stockholders every 3 months so they actually know what to do, but they don’t do it because of KPI. Make the management sleepless about the customer: not about the KPI’s

8.    Get different blood groups connected, beginning of openness and curiosity about the customer rather than stay fixed in the beliefs of ‘your own blood group’.

9.    Get a Customer Happiness Officer on the ‘management floor’.

10. Speed up, become more agile. If the organisation is slow -even if you have the customer input needed-You are way to slow to make it happen.

11. Less arrogance and ego at management level: The website department gets treated by the Management as if the management is the customer. 

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The ‘New’ Coke: Market Research Failure. And …. how to avoid it!

How 190.000 user tests couldn’t avoid getting it wrong.  

Helped by a well-aimed marketing campaign and stars like Michael Jackson, Pepsi had been steadily gaining market share in the ’80s. In a market segment that was very threatening for Coca Cola: teenagers and young adults; the consumers of the future. 

Coca Cola had to do something and …. They did. They designed a new formula that would help counter the rise of Pepsi. Coca Cola tested the ‘New Coke’ on 190.000 (!!!) respondents before introducing it in April 1985. They said: “We have never been more sure of anything in the history of the company”.

Yet the ‘New Coke’ failed miserably in its mission. How is it possible to fail in such a spectacular way after testing so much and more importantly: how can you do your research to avoid failures like these?

What if it was your own money?

I often hear: ”yes we checked that, or ‘yes we researched that’ ‘There is a positive business case’ let’s do it already.” Shouldn’t employees and managers be quite a bit more critical and curious I ask myself? As if they were spending their own money? Is ‘a business case’ enough? In many companies, you can become a ‘hero’ by getting things done. But are they the right things? Is a single user test with 6 people enough? Would you cross a very busy street without looking twice? I don’t think so. 

If you look a bit closer at research you soon realize that there are several ways to do research. So it should be clear to everyone that there is a difference in ‘confidence’. For example:

  • Showing a prototype to a random person you know or meet
  • A screenshot in Usertesting.com for 12 respondents that claim to fit a certain profile
  • A professionally guided research with 12 handpicked clients or people that have recently bought a lease car that click through a real demo or a test website.
  • Real behaviour: A set of a/b test that shows a ‘treatment’ performs significantly better or a test in a test shop/country/demographic  

Tested 190.000 blind tests

Coca Cola was so sure of the New Coke because they tested it on 190.000 Coca Cola and Pepsi Cola drinkers. It beat ‘Old coke, Pepsi coke in the tests they had run. So when they introduced the New Coke it is was with a lot of confidence. But, was the test a good approximation of the way people consumed Coke. It turned out. it wasn’t. 

New Coke was launched, people were curious, bought a few bottles, took it home. And …. next time they went to the shop they bought ‘Old Coke’. Coca Cola had to roll back the whole introduction at a cost of hundreds of millions of dollars. They received up to 5000 calls a day with people expressing their anger and sadness about the ‘New Coke’. 

The post mortem

The post mortem* showed: they had run the ‘wrong’ test. They had given participants a small cup of ‘Old Coke’, ‘New Coke’, and Pepsi. A so-called-’Sip-test’ The new coke was much sweeter which put it ahead in the test. But drink a liter of it or 2 liters as many Americans do and it was way too sweet. This begs the question: why did they not test it in a certain area, number of shops (real transaction), or even test consumers but over a longer period? And with real ‘1 or 2 liter bottles’ of Coke? Lessons learned: Always wonder how representative your test environment is of the real world scenario* and do multiple types of tests. 

There is a happy ending though: the Americans discovered how much they were attached to the ‘Old Coke’ and soon after the fiasco the ‘Old Coke’ was US’s bestselling soft drink again!

Testing Confidence Framework

How do you know if your tests are to be trusted?

The short answer to the question “ How do you know if your tests are to be trusted.” Is “you don’t’” There is no 100% secure answer to that question. That is why start-ups fail, pivot, and why large companies find it so hard and costly to innovate. 

Take the Starbucks test which is much used by start-ups; Show a sketch of your product or a prototype to the person next to you in Starbucks. So what if he/she says: “Yes I would definitely buy that.” Does that mean your set for success or is that person just being nice? After all: there is a difference between what people actually do and what they will do. I am not saying the feedback is not valuable. It is! However, I wouldn’t bet my product or company on it. Saying: “yes we tested that!”. 

Without going into all user tests that are available I would like to introduce a simple framework that can help you to ‘rank’ how secure a research method is. I am using it to asses if new features, services or products have been properly tested. By awarding points in these 4 categories we can assess the confidence in a test or sequence of tests:

  • Real or fake transaction?
  • Prototype/Lab or Real situation?
  • Real ‘blind’ significant test
  • ‘Quality of the subject selection

Add up the scores in each category and yes, now we can say with confidence ‘We tested that!’

  • High confidence                        65-100 points
  • Medium confidence                  30-65 points
  • Low confidence              <30 points
  • Just opinion /Common sense  

Real or fake transaction?

25. ‘Real’ transaction/lead 

10. Click through in Live product (to fake page)

5. End result in Clickable demo (lab setting)

1. Interview question

Prototype/Lab or Real situation?

25. Live environment   

10. Clickable prototype              

5. Static screens/designs           

1. ‘Would you be interested in?’ (Opinion)

Real ‘blind’ significant test

35. Proven higher $ or margin/ in pilot market

25. A Repeated live A/B test 99% confidence

15. A single live a/b tests 95% confidence

10. Before/After analysis or Online survey

About the subjects/panel

15. Real customers/real target group

5. Handpicked to be like target group by agency

1. Online self-selected panel (like usertesting.com)   

*There are many accounts of why ‘The New Coke’ went wrong. Some claim it is a branding mistake, others a PR mistake. The source I trust most is Malcolm Gladwell’s ‘Blink’ book (p158) as he is known for the quality of his research.

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Can your website make the Five-second test?

Most website visitors are no 2nd chance givers. Get them in five seconds or lose them. Why would they scroll down your page if what you saw before you scrolled isn’t appealing or clear? AKA The Five-Second test. Does your Site pass the Five-second test, how to find out, and how to fix it if it doesn’t?

Click Maps/Scroll Maps and the ‘Blue Zone of Death’

Click Maps

Click Maps show you color patterns where people click on the website. And more importantly: where they don’t click. Fixing that usually is where ‘the money’ is.

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For example, on the click map, we see that the 4th item on the menu (besides Home) is clicked by 0.51% of visitors. For the main menu that is low. If the behavior is similar on your other webpages it can mean only one thing: You should rethink your main menu!

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Scroll maps

Scroll maps show you which part of the page your visitors reach. Most devices won’t show a whole webpage in a single view.

Red = hot: a large percentage of your visitors see this part of the page.

Blue = cold: only a small percentage of visitors see this part.

Doesn’t need to be a problem if the hierarchy on the page is right. But if you find your most important Call to action in the ‘Blue Zone of Death’ you know you are in trouble. You need to radically rethink your page.

Hotjar or another tool?

No, I do not have an agreement with Hotjar. I use the tool, I like the tool. It is great for making Heatmaps, scroll maps, and doing popup surveys*. An affordable and versatile tool like that should definitely be in every Website Optimizer’s toolbox. But there are good alternatives. Just google it, read the reviews and try them if you don’t want to use Hotjar.com

The 3 most common reasons why people don’t click where you want them to:

Ok, so your Heatmap or Scrollmaps shows you have a problem. Now you need to fix it. Read on to find out what are the most common problems and …..how do you fix it.

TOP 3 WEBSITE PROBLEMS

1. Overkill. Too many choices.

2. The most important conversion is below the fold.

3. Not having enough knowledge of what is keeping visitors from converting

1. Overkill. Too many choices.

Except for a broken form or checkout 😉 there is no bigger conversion killer then, wait for it ……. too many choices. Repeat it, remember it, and practice it!

The problem

Many marketers are so enthusiastic about what their product or service can do that they try to explain it all ……. On page one! And then they give you all these great options to choose from. The visitor is at a loss. They really need YOU to do the hard work and make the choice FOR THEM.

The Solution

Decide what is the main goal and what is the secondary goal of that page. If you are not sure: ask your visitors in a survey? They will tell you! Present those two goals next to each other. High on the page; above the fold supported by a clear design to show these are the most important options to choose from.

Two choices is great. Like if you want kids to eat vegetables. If you ask them “Do you want to eat vegetables?”, or worse tell them “You must eat vegetables!” they will usually revolt, say no! What could happen if you give them a choice? And ask “Would you rather have spinach or carrots ?” They might feel they have a choice and are in control of the situation. This method usually equals success. Kids have the feeling they have made a choice and forget that you are happy with whatever the ‘choice’. This is called “choice paradox”. Go beyond 2 choices and people get lost and postpone their decision (=conversion to later). Yes, I am

2. Most important conversion is below the fold.

Another thing to repeat remember and practise: the fold is sooner than you think’. Putting something important below the lower ‘fold’ of the screen will reduce conversion in no small manner.

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The problem

Designing websites on a 27 inch Mac studio display thinking everyone will see it like you?

The Solution

Check on ‘other devices’. Check out the Chrome plug in “Responsive viewer” or “Mobile Browser Emulator To do so check you sites on the Mobile Browser Emulator.

3. Not having enough knowledge of what is keeping visitors from converting

The problem

If you know what your visitors want you can make them want it more. If you know what is holding them back, you can fix it. When you know their ‘wants’ and ‘fears’ you can come up with an antidote. For example: what would your biggest fear be if you shop for clothes online. That they don’t fit. Or that the color doesn’t suit you. Hence the antidote: free returns. Having 14 days of free returns solved a lot of stress and agony. It did create a new one though: stress to make the 14-day deadline: Hence now 100 days Free returns at Zalando. And these days clothes company even understands that millennials don’t own printers. Hence: they pack a printed return sticker in your package. So by understanding their customers they fix some of the problems and barriers to shopping. This is what you should do to.

The Solution

Check on ‘other devices’. Check out the Chrome plugin “Responsive viewer” or “Mobile Browser Emulator To do so check your sites on the Mobile Browser Emulator.

WRITTEN BYMichiel Jansen

ecommerce & digital specialist

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More from Michiel Jansen

ecommerce & digital specialist

Mar 10

A simple way to place yourselves in the situation of a customer: and sell more.

The N.E.X.T. Model

Optimising websites is done right only if you think from the customer perspective and learn about Persuasion. The hard part, in my opinion, is getting the company to see things from a relentless customer focus perspective and take the risk to make the offer stand out. Remember ….behind every offer like ‘Pay later’, Free cancellation’ is a huge risk model, spreadsheets, and … a gutsy business decision!

The questions in the NEXT model are sure to get you into the head of the customer. …

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NEXT = Getting into the Head of your Customer – Conversion Sweetspot Series

The NEXT model is a simple way to place yourselves in the situation of a customer

Optimising websites is done right only if you think from the customer perspective and learn about Persuasion. The hard part, in my opinion, is getting the company to see things from a relentless customer focus perspective and take the risk to make the offer stand out. Remember ….behind every offer like ‘Pay later’, Free cancellation’ is a huge risk model, spreadsheets, and … a gutsy business decision!

The questions in the NEXT model are sure to get you into the head of the customer. And help your non-optimizing non testing collegues to get into the head of the customer.

The model contains questions that I used to ask myself from the very beginning of my involvement in commercial internet back in the nineties. But there is also a ‘standing on the shoulders of giants’ factor here: Online Dialogue, Conversion XL, Conversionista, Gerry McGovern, Guy Stratermans, Mesut Kareman all work with similar models and questions and all have inspired questions in this model.

The NEXT Model

First the questions themselves. Below you find some context.

1. Next Situation

  • What is the Goal of the visitor?
  • What questions does the visitor have?
  • What is the visitors’ knowledge base?
  • What barrier can we reduce or remove?

2. Next Best Action

  • Next Best Action: What action does the business want the visitor to take?
  • How can I motivate/Persuade?
  • What reassurance or warrantee can we give to reduce barriers?
  • What consideration or fear could be there to NOT DO an action?
  • What consideration or fear could be there to DO AN ACTION

3. Next visit?

✓Success? Okay, great! But how can we arrange & support the next visit/sale/subscription ?

How to use the Model

1. Next Situation

What is the Goal of the visitor?

The Goal of your visitors differ ofcourse. Big difference? Start segmenting!

Example 1 if the goal is ‘open a savings account’, it is a different customer journey from ‘find out where you can get cash in Greece’.

If this is the case you should follow each task through. Finding out what are the top tasks. Want data? That is done with qualitative interviews or even better a McGovern research or a 3 Question research as Avinash describes. You should answer the questions below for each top task-flow.

What questions does the visitor have?

Example 1: ‘Open a savings account’:

Do I need a bank account to open a savings account. Do I need to come into the branch? Do I need a ID or is a drivers license okay. Don’t answer these and you lose out on sales or…. on the cost of answering these in the Service center.

Example 2: Shopping a pair of jeans it could be:

Is this the right size? What if they don’t fit? What if I don’t like them? What would go with those? Is this as dark blue as it appears on my monitor? Is this the best price? When will it be delivered?

Seems kinda strange but…….

A lot of websites do not offer answers to the most fundamental Questions.Or do not offer warrantees to help ease the mind. This will lead to consumers deciding to ‘opt out or ‘decide later’. Remember every ‘decide later’ can lead them to spend they ‘limited resources’ on something else or to them returning to Google where they may be targeted by your competitor. so the name of the conversion game is: make them decide now! The sites/brands that do offer warrantees and answers to any possible doubt include: Zappos/Amazon, Booking.com, Zalando…. I am sure you have heard about those brands and witnessed their growth. They are on a (local) winner take all course and found an answer for the most profitable doubts potential customers may have.

What is the visitors’ knowledge base?

There is a very big difference between the language we internally use and the knowledge of the customer. Brands are constantly busy with a product and have a tendency to overestimate the knowledge that a customer has. I have seen a Lease company use ‘ICE’ in a Social media post. ICE? as in cool? No as in ‘Internal Combustion Engine off course! Do you have to ask?

A lot of sites ‘overcrowd’ their visitors head with options, names, extra conditions etc. Hi welcome, a savings account: sure: just choose from our 17 great savings account! (actual example of Hollands top 3 bank Rabobank)

Reducing choice and complexity is usually the fastest way to conversion. So cater to the maturity of the client (which can differ from orientation phase to buy phase. And……. don’t use lingo!

2. Next Best Action

Next Best Action: What action does the business want the visitor to take?

This is where you really start to see how conversion & product are interwoven;

How can I motivate/Persuade?What barrier can we reduce or remove?

For example: Why does Booking.com have ‘Free cancellation?’ Or ‘Book now, pay later’, ‘Your credit card wont be charged’. Because they understand what barriers are. And how they reduce conversion. Situation. I am booking a weekend in Berlin with a friend but I don’t know if he can make it. Pre-Booking.com I would then …….Not book. Send him a mail, wait for his reply and maybe see a banner of a competitor and be lost for Booking.com. They found out that the cancellations you get are outweighed (BY FAR!) by the extra revenue they get from the extra rooms. So say 10% more bookings at a 10$ premium and only 2% cancellations.

What consideration or fear could be there to NOT DO an action?

For example: Can I afford it? Booking.com solution: pay later. (In ‘the future’ we all have money)

For example: Can I change my mind? Booking.com solution; Yes you can!

For example: is it money well-spend? Is it a good room: Yes it has an 8,9 out of 400 reviews etc, etc.

You analyse and reduce every possible doubt with your product. And take it away.

What consideration or fear could be there to DO AN ACTION?

Think: insurance, fear of missing out, one be part of the in-crowd (social proof). How many things do we buy we don’t really need? Right!

3. Next visit?

Success? Okay, great! How can we arrange the next visit?

One success is…. No success. In e-commerce money is made with the repeat orders. In becoming a destination. And in the ‘winner take all’ strategy. This is where you should think about service quality. About a great my environment.

Example: Dutch Telco Provider KPN already renews subscriptions & sends the latest iPhone months before the contract ends. Telco’s used to want you to ignore the fact that the telco subscription was about to end. Now they have turned it around. They start telling you to renew 7 months before your subscription ends. Why this sudden proactivity? They have found out that even if they don’t remind you, you will start to look for an alternative: on google, therefore signalling every competitor in the market that you are ‘in market’ ready to be targeted with great offers.

Do you find the article helpfull? What model/method do you use to place yourself in your visitors point of view?

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Life is to short for only testing small changes! – Conversion Sweetspots Series

Recognize this? Please leave a comment

UX-ers, marketeers and text & visual editors take 100’s of small decisions while designing & releasing pages; Where does that Unique Selling Point go, is there a Heading and a Subheading, do we show the product below each other or next to each other and many more decisions like that. Usually these are informed by best practises or what Airbnb, Deliveroo or whatever is ‘cool’ with the peer group of the UX-er or marketeer. Sometimes the decisions are informed by sheer ‘divine’ inspiration of the ‘creators’ of the page.

Life is to short for testing small changes

The ‘traditional’ way A/B testers or CRO’s are ‘raised’ by their peers is to make a single change on a page and wait 2 -5 weeks until the 80% power 95% significant ‘verdict’ of the A/B tests arrives. Unless you are blessed with Booking.com, Ebay or ABN Amro like traffic & conversions you will never succeed in staying ahead of proofing their unproven -best practice & divine inspiration based- output.

Radical A/B testing

Be testing super small iterations while being flooded by 100’s of untested assumptions being made by well meaning coworkers in scrum teams? So what to do……..?!!!!  Jump ahead of the curve and do some radical A/B testing; Big Changes First! Why?

  1. You have limited places/time to test; Not every part of your site is a sweet spot for testing. So you need to make it count!
  2. Your colleagues are taking 100’s of unproven small decisions which you can only proof or falsify one test at the time. You need to get yourself in the driving seat: test a few BIG ideas first.
  3. Find a Big winner; then you start testing for small improvements in the BIG winner.

Don’t get stuck in a local optimum!

So realizing life is to short for testing small changes will get you ‘back in control’. Of course A/B testing is about finding improvements, high velocity; climbing the Conversion and Customer Satisfaction Mountain small steps. But never forget you sometimes need to switch mountains because the other one might have a higher top.

The sweet spot: get involved before pages get released. So if a new design is abut to happen. First test important elements on the current website: then launch. You might call this: factbased redesign.

Please share your experience

  Do you recognize this situation? Please share your experiences!