Conversion Rate Optimization: The Art & Science of Guiding the Drunk – Becky Davis

0:00[Music] [Music] talking about conversion reauthorization and I'm gonna be making it very easy for you to optimize your visitors experience regardless of how much traffic your website your landing page or your funnel is currently getting and to do that I'm gonna be adapting a video some of you have gotten a preview of will'd ables the user is drunk highly recommend it i've already tweeted it out and I call this CRO the art and science of guiding the drunk and again if you want to read that it's a my twitter twitter handle now first thing you might be asking why drunk people i mean other than the fact

0:52that it's funny well drunks are easily lost they're easily distracted they're lazy it's my favorite one and they do some pretty strange things a lot like your website's visitors here's one of Twitter's users he got on Twitter to tweet about the fact that he had ordered a pizza that was only bred and managed to do this before figuring out that he had opened the pizza box upside down and not only that this is Wednesday at 3 p.m. so if he's already hammered I'm pretty impressed yeah so since this is a perfect example of the visitors that you will be dealing with I'm you talking through four different principles on how

1:40to actually cope with this reality and here to help me out is everyone's favorite drunk Homer Simpson so start out homers gonna help me demonstrate what we're actually trying to optimize so in this we have Homer Simpson who has just become aware of this enticing aroma and what do you know he's holding a bag of money so he wanders over and finds out that there's this amazing grill that makes the best barbecue that he has ever tasted which since it's Homer is saying and what do you know the grill is for sale so here he's trying to decide if he actually wants to purchase this grill

2:21and then because it is Homer Simpson we have him happy with his purchase of a new grill and this is factly what we want to make sure our marketing is doing we want to entice them draw them in attract them walk them through that decision-making process and then see them happy with their new product or service very important process that is really guiding your drunk it's important because I know because without a guide it'll look something like this yeah and to me this looks like a bad landing page I'm really not sure what I'm supposed to be looking at do I actually have to read all of this um I don't know if I have

3:06the patience to count that high I am millennial and then I have to make a decision on it well when you asked as drunks to make decisions bad things happen or in the case of your landing page it's gonna look like this instead let's have a guided experience just make sure we know where they're going so everybody has a safe good time so instead of going everywhere and then leaving let's make sure we have a nice path through every single point that I want to make so that that way our drunk is exactly where we expect them we know what's going on with them we know where

3:48they are and we know where they end up at the end where I want to talk to them about making a decision about my product when I tested this particular tweak 80% increase in conversion powerful when you can actually guide people through this process and plus you know where they're gonna end up safe and sound not honking a bush first off we have to meet them where they're at because I guarantee you they're not gonna meet you where you're at they can't even find you there's a few different spots that they could be in in their decision-making process they could be completely unaware this is before he tried the barbecue he doesn't

4:29know what he's missing doesn't know that life could be better doesn't know that there's a pain that he should be feeling or maybe he's problem aware in this case nuke plants melting down doesn't know how to stop it knows it's an issue and this is when you want to make sure that they become solution aware in this case maybe homers discovered that uh oh yes there aren't codes that I can enter I just don't know where they are what they are so he knows what the solution is or more likely he is just gonna go home and forget about it and drink a beer cuz that's easier and at this point when

5:04they are solution aware you want to make sure that they become product aware you want to talk to them about the unique benefit and why your product is a perfect solution in dust case it's there now I had a client recently that was dealing with an issue with this decision-making process and being able to guide their drunks through this particular series these are actual metrics from what they're producing for their clients pretty impressive you'd think they'd be lining up down the street to buy this product what do they need with a CRO consultant right turns out they're having a lot of trouble filling out their sales pipeline so I

5:45looked at the product product was pretty cool ai business intelligence all those buzzwords real-time reporting really cool stuff okay product was cool product was good so then I took a look at their users in their target market and these guys were baddest tech-savvy is Congress talking to Zuckerberg I'm not exaggerating some of these people were still using paper reports and they didn't know why this was a problem that the paper report on their desk was already outdated by the time they like printed it didn't see why this was a problem why did they need real-time reporting mmm they were completely unaware right and to top it off this is

6:24a cloud-based solution and they didn't get it they didn't like the concept of cloud-based because they wanted to be able to walk down the hall but their hand on a server and reassure themselves that it was actually running now if you described the benefits of cloud-based not mentioning the C word then they were totally cool with that but the minute you said cloud-based freak out people are completely and utterly unaware and my clients marketing funnel was not doing a lot to address this they started out with a pretty cool non analytics in the industry relevant download people really like this it was unique content it was new it was

7:01original it was a benchmarking report something that was very hard to get ahold of that was great they moved to a large metrics related download talking you through calculating different valuable KPIs these people probably didn't know what kpi's meant and then they were talk about their credibility credibility was great then they would pitch the demo they might as well have not even pitched the demo though because as you can see from the engagement chart people were really excited about that big I'm sorry the industry-relevant download people really liked that but then they would either not take you up on the metrics related download or they would download

7:40it and never complete it and then just kind of drop off the face of the earth so we wanted to reformat this so I said okay let's keep industry relevant download they're used to it let's tweak it a little bit make it more actionable but people were really gonna like this so we kept it something something usual and then we would talk about their credibility and a dollar value throughout the whole thing the credibility was awesome because this founder had been extremely successful in a very difficult niche in his target markets industry so they instantly recognized that he had been successful and started wondering how they how he

8:15did it and we talked about hey you buy this product and here's the value you're gonna see when you die in an actual dollar amount to it so we got people thinking yeah oh ah we said okay try some data and if they were like yeah then we were like cool try another shot of data and by the way if you like that we have a really cool product that you'll never have to think about calculating these manually again it'll do it all for you not only that it's got some other cool features that a modern tech savvy business like yours would like yeah but if we pass them that first

8:52shot of data and they were like that's cool too we'd give them some more of the usual it was something they were used to and something they would still find value of and they would keep talking to us so that way we could continue to talk about our credibility continue to build value continue to build trust and then we'd say okay hey yeah it's cool you can have that but this data's really good you're like yeah let me be like cool we got this product and if not they're like no that's cool too we passed them some more than usual and we would keep the conversation going

9:29because this was their journey through their product decision or their decision-making journey and that way we had to meet them where they were at we couldn't force them to get on our level we just had to continue that conversation and meet them at every point so that way we understood eventually where they would get to so you want to plan your journey you want to make sure you're meeting them where they're at not where you hope they're gonna be cool so got their journey we're good right alright let's deal with the fact that these people are impatient and easily distracted have you ever seen this bartender at bartender can I get a drink

10:07can I get a drink and then you get there and oh this is my song I gotta go dance they're gone they're not around anymore you gotta meet them where they're at you gotta meet them where they're at fast you got to keep them engaged this is not engaging oh you know don't make me think because if I can't figure out what to do I'm gone if I can't find what I'm looking for I'm gone too much boring looking text I'm gone so alright cool we know what not to do what does our drunk like well as with most things the Internet has the answer short funny to the point cute

10:48oddly relatable and then have you ever seen somebody dance Gangnam style that wasn't drunk now well it's puppy and it's repetitive drunk people love that and really good news for you guys people really like to shop drunk and now you're like okay hey yeah all right my product is not getting hurt kittens flying through space on a curtain nor is it a Nicholas Cage face shirt let's say it mine's a little boring it's insurance it's got a list of the legally mandated taxes no it's not fun meet lemonade lemonade is insurance for renters and homeowners and these guys are awesome look at this page to the point I know immediately what it is

11:39oh that's a fun color it's also hiding all that scary legally mandated text and then it's a lot of personality and because that form and text are gone I actually get to know these people and three through and talk to them and understand who they are before they start asking me for my personal details so if we go back to the previous example I would suggest that they take this form and wait until I actually know you to start asking things about that whenever I run the test run actually hide the form we see about a 10% increase in conversion or more so next problem with

12:15this page you want to be clear before your clever your family's future is uncertain paired with a beach scene makes me think a shark attack is imminent so let's look at lemonade again life and life and or sorry insurance for the price of a latte protect the stuff you love in 30 seconds or less really clear very easy to understand all right let's try this with life insurance life insurance protects their future now we could try being clever or maybe not but the point is drunks can have a meaningful conversation you just have to meet them where they're at and you have to make sure that you keep them engaged

12:59keep them with you do that by keeping each point short and engaging all right cool we're guiding them we're keeping them engaged now we need them to go ahead and make some decisions right we want them to eventually buy our product well more good news because drunks do not hesitate to make decisions when it feels like it's right drunks do not make boring decisions drunks do not apply for mortgages until you have mortgages for drunk people push button get mortgage yeah it works it's low effort drunk people really like to push big red buttons it's low effort like Facebook lead ads this is great I see the thing I want

13:45I hit get it it's already got my information or fill it out so that removes the friction I hit submit and I got the thing I don't actually have to think friction is gone drunks also do not like applying for insurance until you have lemonade lemonade works because it's low commitment instant couldn't be easier faster 90 seconds done perfect it's not low commitment here because I have let's see this is probably really great material but I have 24 steps I need to take I have like I have I think it's 1100 accounts I have to set up I have to build a mailing list and then I

14:27have 12 must-have elements all before I even publish my book that sounds like a lot and I'm sure this is a really great process I'm sure if I followed this I would probably be successful maybe I don't know it sounds hard and I'm just getting anxiety thinking about it because what if I can't get through it and as Homer says if at first you don't succeed give up this is low commitment alright all I have to do is pick the webinar topic that's going to attract my perfect audience not only that she's got a sheet that's gonna walk me through it that seems low effort I can do that

15:01right and she's gonna help me and when I first take that first step on my journey to having my perfect audience I'm like yeah I can do this I can get money and you know what that's perfect because she sells a course called webinars that convert so now that I have my topic for my perfect audience she's going to teach me how to actually create that webinar and because I already trust her because she's already giving me that first taste of success I am that much more likely to buy because I believe that she can do that again I trust her to continue giving me success

15:33and continue me down this path no drunks do not make decisions about stocks sorry Ted you look really boring stop drunk people do likes well investing small investing works because it's easy all I have to do is pick what percentage of my portfolio I want to go to healthy living clean water and renewable energy and then I'm making money and I'm feeling good about it I'm probably missing the fact that it's relatively expensive compared to other portfolio management options because if you make it so easy a drunk can do it it probably will great example of this I had a company that wanted to increase phone calls because they they

16:20got a better conversion rate or sales rate on phone calls versus form submits they'd had a lot of trouble with this and they had tried actually like decreasing a prominence of the form field and increasing phones and it hadn't worked out the numbers just hadn't worked so they said okay can you give it a shot I said okay I added a large orange button right next to the visitors thumbs 150% increase in calls no decrease in form fills you want to make it really really easy though because the minute you throw up a barrier you're gonna have issues I had a problem with another client where she

16:58had she had an ebook series and she had a contract with a distributor and the distributor had two more months left on the contract and the issue was she couldn't sell the ebooks for less than they were selling it and it wouldn't have been a problem except they were doing a really bad job of selling it so she wanted to try giving away the first book in the series for free and hope so buy the next one okay not a problem we would just put it up for download on a page on her website wouldn't list it in the navigation they would never find out it would be fine and we'd send

17:29Facebook traffic to it so the only issue is that Facebook's in-app browser does not place my nice with not with dot mobi files which is what you need to download to get a book on your Kindle or Kindle app no problem I am expert in online behavior I this too quick step download first opening Chrome Safari or Firefox because it will not work in Facebook's and app browser and then click the button to download two steps I even drew them a chart or a graphic with with arrows pointing exactly where they needed to click on the screen that they were looking at and then it would open this

18:04and they click open and Kindle and BAM done 29 percent people may I should follow my instructions and this is twenty nine percent of people who actually like click the button followed my instructions so this isn't the conversion rate once I hit my site this is the number of people who managed to click the button correctly yeah ok no worries I got this maybe they're just scrolling really fast or missing the first step so I added a won't work and face back the books in at browser to step two and below the button so that way we would see that they had to go back to step one also I increase the

18:39size of the image thirty percent of people may have to follow my instructions okay I got this they're just scrolling really fast and I clicking the big orange button they aren't reading anything so I made it a link text now they have to read right and 30 percent seven percent of people managed to follow my instructions not only that I started recording these sessions and I was watching them and I felt really guilty because some of the people a lot of the people actually were really trying to figure out what I was asking them to do and it was hard and they were failing and I felt really bad

19:15about it cuz I don't want to frustrate people I just want give him a free book so I was like ok not for the website what we're gonna do is we're gonna use Facebook Lita has to collect email addresses well email them a link they'll click it it will immediately open in their native browser problem solved and it worked great until the author forwarded me this email Jenny said the Kindle download will not work the Kindle download did work I had tested it on all the devices we were targeting I had had other people tested on their devices Kindle download definitely worked but that didn't matter

19:49because if Jenny had actually taken the time to email us and tell us that she was having trouble with the download imagine how many people had trouble who just hadn't acted me yeah so I was like okay let's get a third-party integration that knows how to deal with Facebook's in-app browser and actually process dot mobi files we'll just use that it'll be okay and it was it was fine but at this point I'm like and I'm imagining her user target audience like this but again that's not fair because if your visitor can't figure it out it is not their problem it's yours because they're frustrated for like I don't know 30

20:37seconds but you're failing to sell your product it's an issue and user experience is always your problem it's never your visitors problem so make sure to keep it easy and appealing because otherwise you're gonna run into some serious issues so we're guiding them keeping it short engaging making it easy but would you buy this yeah just because you tell a drunk your product is great doesn't mean they're gonna believe you because they're drunk not stupid if your sleazy ex-boyfriend comes up to you in a bar and says you should try again for the third time because this time is gonna be different you're gonna say no because I'm drunk

21:23not stupid just because a drunk just because they're drunk doesn't mean their IQ is actually lower it just means you know they're a little more impatient and a little less a little less likely to focus on what you're asking them to do so if you don't want your drunk looking at you like they're sleazy ex-boyfriend stay away from this kind of cringy sales copy and instead actually ask them and get to know or ask questions and get to know them you want to start with exploratory interviews that have open-ended questions like what so for instance what has this process been like what made you want to find your solution

22:02and how how did that work for you how did it was this experience for you not yes and no or why questions those those people off or demand single word answers I had a company that ran a survey said why didn't you buy from us and then the customer visitors got to choose which box they wanted to be shoehorned into and you know what the company got back when they finished the survey exactly what they expected because they were asking about issues that they already knew her problem and if they knew there were a problem and they could have fixed them they already would have done so so it wasn't very

22:42helpful so they asked me to basically redo it so I went in I started with exploratory interviews and I contacted people and I talked to them for about 15 minutes on the phone I think I did this with 20 different people said what frustrations have you experienced overall so I asked them about not just their experience with this product but overall arching overarching question what has your experience been like and then I asked a few other questions just kind of like what will affect what will factor into your decision how has your experience been how could we have earned your business so that was actually the really

23:19the only business Pacific question I asked because I was trying to understand them and I got back some pretty cool responses very thoughtful very unexpected and I took all of these and I compiled them into a few different few different categories and these were all new a lot of these were things that they hadn't seen before and some of them are gonna take a little while to address you know like creating an onboarding I'm boarding series since this was dealing with a call center not just not just a SAS solution and some of them though we're thinking that they are already set up to fix they just didn't know her

23:59problems product comparison and a lot of confusion researching this was literally what the service was offering and people were having trouble with this and they still weren't buying so instead I just took this and with their own words which I know you heard Liana say I took their own words and I rewrote the headline of what we were offering compare X Y & Z would ask to understand the best option for you use specific and rel language because really your visitor is not actually drunk probably what they are is really freaking busy and with everything going on in their lives they do not have time to sit there and try to

24:40figure out your product or service or trying to navigate your website figure out what's going on they just want to know that you're you understand their problem and that you can solve it and they that's all they want to know and they want to know immediately so next steps booze and design review absolutely not I would never suggest anything like that I'm Becky Davis a new conversion Airy optimization and user experience you can find me at spilled tea not consulting or on twitter at barely remarkable drop the e or I'm currently running a poll as to whether or not Ben should get his ears pierced on the strip and I hope you all

25:14vote thank you a lot of customers you are talking about seemed a little bit more consumer based sore like drunk consumers how drunk do you think like small and medium businesses getting larger businesses um so the one where I was actually talking about they didn't understand cloud-based and they the for the marketing funnel with the wine and the shots those were actually lawyers running very large companies and they're probably the drunkest consumers I have ever interacted with yeah so the answer is very especially because if you want to think about it the more they have going on and the more they're having to like you know multitask and go through

25:58like everything that they're having to do how many hats are having to wear all of the competing priorities the less attention they have to devote to your website and to what you're talking about so being extremely clear being engaging just gets more and more important I have a question should I do both ears or just one I believe Chris proposed both ears okay all right good to know both yeah all right good other questions

26:28so you mentioned that get to know the your drunk your own drunk people first and didn't hide the forms you know after that step so if we're since we are at the beginning step most of us trying to validate things so if I take that step I take the joiners beta to the next page so I can get to know my drunk people what happens like if they still don't sign up how would how would you encourage us to get them to let's say there's like two fours once I know for a beta and then there's another formula tell me where I screwed up you know how

27:08how were you how can i guide them to be to puke there yeah so I really a big fan of exit intent pop-ups and so you can find like wise pops does I'm a hot jar has a new installation they'll do like a little poll there so I've used that a lot when they're exiting to say hey what were you looking for today so to understand if they're abandoning because it's not the right product or to ask you know like hey um you know basically why are you leaving you know so that's a very useful piece to ask them what's going on in their mind to understand why

27:44they're leaving to understand if it's you like is it you is it me like what is it and they'll they'll generally give you some pretty useful information there another thing to do is to at the end of if somebody actually has signed up to ask them hey what almost prevented you from signing up because you know that person is your target audience since they did convert so you can say hey what did you encounter that discouraged you from signing up with me so that way you can catch things that may be discouraging other people force okay all right thanks Becky [Applause]