Closed Loop Marketing Blog - thoughts on SEM, SEO, usability and conversion

Pop This! How To Manage Visual Hierarchy For Conversion

2011-02-02T19:11:43Z

Establishing a clear visual hierarchy is key to creating a well-optimized web page. But how do you achieve the right balance? In this article,I’ll look at nine visual “toggles” you can use, with examples of their effects.

I’ll start by saying that every designer I’ve ever met despises the word “pop.” It’s one of those squishy, non-technical terms clients use when they’re unhappy with a design. It can mean almost anything, including and not limited to:

Just make it red, already
Could we get more cleavage in that photo?
It doesn’t look enough like [insert name of another web site]
Where’s the animation? I thought there would be animation.
I hate gradients.

In other words, as actionable feedback, the word “pop” has no use. But as a conversion design concept, it can be very powerful, helping you improve your page’s visual hierarchy, message clarity, and conversion rate.

Things That Make You Go “Pop”

Luckily for designers, the qualities that affect “pop” are predictable, because of the way our visual systems are wired. We tend to quickly scan and analyze many bits of visual information such as edges, contrast, sizes, and motion in order to assess and understand our surroundings. This is true whether we’re looking at a field or a web page.

Here’s a quick visual (of course) reference of nine characteristics that have a strong influence on visual hierarchy:

[See full article and example graphics on SearchEngineLand, HERE >]

Should You Blame Your Designer for Poor Conversion Rates?

2010-12-08T19:28:48Z

Recently, I’ve noticed a disturbing trend in the conversation rate optimization (CRO) community—blaming low conversion rates on web designers. Designers are being caricatured as either “clueless” or unable to restrain their conversion-killing creative impulses. How valid is this view? In my experience, there’s plenty of blame to go around for poor CRO performance. Let’s name some names.

Blame Expectations

Admit it: nobody really knows what a “web designer” does. Does she code? Set up e-mail accounts? Create logos? Write copy? Personally I know web designers who do all of the above and more, as well as those who specialize in a single, thin disciplinary slice.

The point is that web designers come with a wide variety of skills and training, and yet, somehow, there is a general expectation that all web designers should know how to design for conversion. It’s simply not realistic, and here’s why:

[ ... See the full article posted on SearchEngineLand, HERE > ]

The Niehaus Wireframe Technique - Methods to Conversion-Optimize New Projects

2010-12-03T02:04:27Z

When developing website projects there is often a disconnect between the target audience’s needs and priorities, the hypotheses to be deduced from them, actual implementation, and the crucial question of whether it is possible to specifically plan ahead for conversion, or merely improve it later. The Niehaus wireframe concept presented here provides a possible answer to these disparities.

[Note: this is a translated guest post written by Matthias Henrici, a usability expert and senior consultant for Web Arts AG. See the original German-language version here >]

In May, 2010 at the Conversion Conference in San Jose, California, designer Sandra Niehaus (co-author of the book “Web Design for ROI”) presented an exciting wireframe concept that has since been used successfully by various conversion optimization practitioners in the course of website relaunch or design. In honor of the inventor, this type of wireframing has been termed a “Niehaus wireframe” by many CRO specialists.

In her presentation, Niehaus pointed out that although normal wireframes are useful for the purpose of orientating the organization systems of a website and for communicating the basic principles and structure of the content, they nevertheless have tremendous weak points. The weak points are: focus, relevance and conversion optimization. Sandra suggested that wireframes be given a conversion strategy component beyond that of mere structure.

This conversion strategy component can be divided into:

Target audience relevance (Pareto principle)
Object relevance (perceptual psychology)
Organization of content and structure

Specifically regarding object relevance, Niehaus proposed grading page elements in order of importance and then assigning specific shades of gray to each. The most important element would be given the darkest shade of gray and all the others correspondingly lighter shades. According to Niehaus the result would then be a wireframe consisting of various gray areas that could be better structured according to their relevance in the run-up to a website relaunch or design.

The special quality of a Niehaus wireframe becomes particularly apparent if one sets certain rules, such as restricting the use of calls-to-action to a maximum of two. At this moment one is acting not only as a designer and concept creator, but above all as a strategist compelled to think more about target audience clustering, the quality of representation, and product variety; one is forced to be relevant.

A minor weakness of the Niehaus wireframe, namely that it does not really deal specifically with future content, forces you as a result to fill the gaps with additional wireframing. Logically, it makes sense to look more closely at the target audiences before creating the Niehaus wireframe because relevance basically depends on what customers expect and focus on.

As a result the proposal was made to create the wireframing in three stages as a matter of principle:

Stage 1: Create a Pareto wireframe (target audience)

Stage 2: Create a Niehaus wireframe (relevance)

Stage 3: Combine into a final storyboard wireframe

1) Pareto wireframe

The Pareto principle (also known as the 80/20 rule) describes the principle whereby the application of 20% of all possible solutions is sufficient to achieve 80% of the potential.

What does that mean in terms of wireframes? The idea is based on the use of existing target audience definitions, which are taken from prior studies such as Sinus milieus, forecasts, or even exploratory typologies in order to roughly formulate and describe in smaller “working” units the basic elements, tools, user aids, navigation, and content requirements for each system template.

Figure 1: Exploratory personas

Without any priority weighting, this could become hundreds of elements or objects; they need to be prioritized according to the Pareto principle. In order to achieve prioritization, in the second step the various target audiences are assigned value creation potentials (Figure 2) and in the third step all the personas are allocated the corresponding relevance values (Figure 3).

Figure 2: Value creation

Figure 3: Pareto wireframe

Here is an example: you should not clutter up 100% of the area of a start page with tools, objects and elements; or, if you have 100 arbitrary elements, they should not each be assigned exactly 1% of the space on the page. It is firstly necessary to introduce a kind of “5% hurdle” to obtain a place in the “tool parliament”.

So, if the various personas are assigned relevance values, they then pass on this relevance to the various tools and thus the prioritization of the tools changes. There are, of course, mandatory elements which must be included irrespective of relevance value, such as the link to the imprint or certain SEO elements, without which the page could not function. SEO tools are not, however, necessarily relevant for the user.

Already at this point, the result removes unnecessary tools that are not relevant for the core target audience. This can mean, for example, that the social media plug-in or ad banner much loved by the Marketing department could be banished if it turns out that only a small percentage of the target audiences actually uses them. In the marketplace of attention, there is not sufficient space to carry out every experiment.

2) Niehaus wireframes

The Niehaus wireframes are initially intended to focus the attention of the designer on the essential elements. Without this ingenious system, unimportant elements quickly mutate into important ones and things that should not be above the fold shoot out of the ground like mushrooms. As Tim Ash so aptly said: “Your website is a growing field, and sooner or later it’s overgrown!”

Ideally, it is good to use four levels of gray in Niehaus wireframes. Each level denotes a different attention value that is “triggered” in the user:

Light gray: All must-have elements such as the logo, meta-navigation, possibly some important content and the main navigation
Mid-gray: Tertiary focus. These can include main navigation, contact info, input fields, trust signals, etc.
Dark gray: These areas represent the secondary focus. This grayscale is assigned to all elements that are either meant to lead to the primary focus or that provide another important contribution justifying this attention value
Black: Primary focus. The direct CTA (call-to-action)

Figure 4: Legend

With each gray level the quantity, size, or space assigned to the elements declines, for example: 60% of the page becomes light gray, 30% becomes mid-gray, 8% dark gray, 2% black. But be careful! This depends entirely on the previous target audience analyses and the page type. In the case of a landing page, for example (see figure 5) the ratio may be different. It must also be decided whether an element should be positioned above or below the fold.

The really exciting thing about the Niehaus wireframe is that it could facilitate an early eye tracking simulation. Figure 4 shows that in an eye-tracking test all the elements are indeed focused on according to their importance.

Figure 5: Niehaus wireframe, taking a Frontlineshop.de landing page as an example. The product image is assigned a significantly larger secondary focus.

Storyboard wireframe

The storyboard wireframe is actually the “classic” wireframe. It already represents a detailed and carefully executed prototype of the actual website. Here the strategic part of the previous findings is tested with real content and enriched with details.

Figure 6: An example of a classic wireframe. Of course there is an abundance of other possible alternatives here, but we cannot demonstrate them all at this point.

When executed professionally, conceptual weaknesses are again eliminated at this point:

Translation issues, for example the typically much longer word structure of the French language can be tested; of course this also applies to all languages with non-Latin letters
Content which is non-existent or overpowering can be expanded or reduced
Rare system or user dialogs such as B2B partner forms can be worked over and optimized for the last time

Figure 7: Final version

Conclusion: The wireframe concept presented here fills the gap between target audience requirements and prioritization, the hypotheses to be deduced from them, and actual implementation. The Niehaus wireframe helps designers keep track of the user focus and not get carried away by the variety of tools and alternatives. The wireframe concept is ideal for new conceptions, independent landing pages and relaunches.

About the author:

By the early nineties Matthias Henrici (46) was already developing value-creating multimedia projects for German and international companies. For ten years he has taught usability as a lecturer at German universities, and also works as Senior Consultant and Neuromarketing Specialist at Web Arts AG in Bad Homburg. In addition, he is an independent author, for example for the HighText publishing house. His current clients include DKV, Hotel.de, Bertelsmann, Amadeus International, Springer-Verlag, Brita Wasserfilter, Runnerspoint, SAGE and Apetito.

Matthias Henrici is married and has two children.

3 Essential Traits of Conversion-Optimized Design

2010-11-10T21:06:47Z

We regularly perform expert CRO reviews of web designs for our clients. What informs these reviews? Is it just our aesthetic opinion? Must a design look a certain way to be effective at conversions? No. But whatever their appearance, conversion-optimized designs do share some common traits, and in this article I’ll discuss three I consider to be fundamental.

Trait #1: It’s Usable

Usability is the underlying framework for every conversion-optimized design. Think of it this way: if a web site were a house, usability would be the building code requirements that make structures work for human beings; doors must be so wide, ceilings so high, light switches wired in such a way that they don’t electrocute you when you visit the bathroom at night. It might not be glamorous or edgy, but usability makes things safe, easy, and efficient for users.

Since usability is so foundational, its fundamentals underlie much of what I look for during a CRO review. Take, for example, the basic usability concept of “affordance.”

… [Read the complete article on SearchEngineLand.com > ]

3 Reasons NOT To Run Conversion Tests

2010-10-14T18:08:54Z

Testing is a hot topic. But before you decide what to test and which kind of test to run, step back and ask an even more basic question—whether to bother testing at all. In this article, I’ll take a quick look at three situations where the answer to “should I test?” is most likely a big, fat “no.”

Don’t Bother Testing If…

[See the full article on Search Engine Land, here > ]

Landing Page Optimization Tools to Watch

2010-09-01T18:33:32Z

In this article on imediaconnection.com, Lance Loveday weighs in on the tools currently available for landing page testing, and why companies aren’t making more use of them to increase conversion rates and business results.

Article Highlights:

Advertisers often spend countless hours and hundreds of thousands of dollars only to direct traffic to a sub-par landing page
Landing page testing leverages technology to test various design combinations in order to find the best recipe for success
These platforms are not easily interchangeable and have different capabilities that might or might not be in line with your marketing philosophy

Read the full article here: http://www.imediaconnection.com/content/27475.asp

Conversion Zen: Transforming Errors into Opportunities

2010-08-18T18:44:24Z

Who’s responsible for your site’s error messages? Who decides what they say, when they appear, and how they look? It’s a key question—because if you haven’t paid attention to how your site treats visitors when things go wrong, their experience is much more likely to be negative—and talked about.

This article is second in a series I began in July. In that first article, I examined some ways to not only improve the effectiveness of error messages, but even go a step further and optimize them for conversion. Here, I’ll take a look at why so many sites have terrible error experiences, and who should be in charge of fixing it.

(Read the full article here, on Search Engine Land > )

A/B Split Testing Versus Multivariate Testing - Interview with Lance Loveday

2010-08-13T16:39:23Z

In this video interview, conversion expert Lance Loveday explains the pros and cons of simple A/B split-testing vs. the much more complex multivariate testing:

We’ve found, says, Loveday, that A/B testing tends to deliver the largest gain. Of course, he adds, that this could be A/B/C/D testing - 4 variations of a single factor -as opposed to testing a large number of different factors at one time.

The advantage of A/B testing is that it tends to cause you to rethink the entire user experience as you look for elements to test — layout, visual hierarchy, messaging, etc. Multivariate testing, on the other hand, often leads to testing smaller incremental variations that don’t make as much difference. A/B testing forces you to be more creative about what you’re testing.

Loveday explains that his firm’s process is to start with some A/B testing to find an effective layout for a client. Once that’s established, they’ll do multivariate testing to get some additional incremental gains.

See the original full post here, on Web Marketing today >

What to Test on Non-Landing Pages - with Lance Loveday

2010-08-03T00:00:35Z

In this video interview by Web Marketing Today, conversion and design expert Lance Loveday discusses why it’s important to test non-landing pages.

Historically, he says, the first emphasis was on optimizing clicks to the site using SEO and paid search. The next emphasis was on optimizing landing pages to get the click-through. But there are other points at which a site can profit by optimizing. E-commerce sites, for example, should optimize the check-out process, since some customers leave before completing the checkout.

See the full interview here:

Building Better Landing Pages - an Interview With Lance Loveday

2010-07-26T23:23:03Z

[Interview and Article by Kevin Newcomb, Editor, Internet Marketing Institute]

Many companies spend tens of thousands of dollars to acquire customers, but ignore what happens next. Paying attention to your landing pages — whether it’s for pay-per-click (PPC) ads, email campaigns, or banner ads — is one of the most-neglected online marketing tactics. But creating custom landing pages, then testing and optimizing them, holds a lot of potential for increasing conversions, and therefore revenue.

“People don’t fundamentally believe that conversion optimization will work. If they did, they’d jump all over it,” said Lance Loveday, CEO of Closed Loop Marketing and co-author of Web Design for ROI. “The truth is, it can have a game-changing impact on revenue and profitability.”

Most marketers have heard the buzz around landing page optimization (LPO), a part of the larger discipline of conversion optimization. Many marketers have also heard hyped-up claims of two- or three-fold jumps in conversions, and are not convinced that small changes can have a big impact on their conversion rates.

While those kinds of returns are possible, in extreme circumstances, such drastic increases are not necessary to make conversion optimization worthwhile, Loveday said.

[... Read the complete interview on PPCSummit.com > ]

Conversion Optimization Touch Points: Turning Errors Into Opportunities, Part 1

2010-07-22T16:59:44Z

On the web, errors are seemingly inevitable, and there are plenty of best practices for minimizing their negative effects. But what if we treated errors as an opportunity? What if we deliberately designed our customers’ error experience—not just for basic usability and clarity, but with conversion in mind?

In this article I’ll take a look at the concept of error experience design, why it’s important from a business perspective, and a few ways to turn an error into a conversion opportunity.

Why focus on errors?

I have to admit that part of my motivation here is purely selfish, as usual. I, personally, want a better, more enjoyable web experience. And errors, as the myriad stinging gnats of the web environment, should be made better so I can be happier. Simple as that.

I’m tired of seeing ugly, unfriendly errors like this one: …

[CONTINUE READING the complete article on Search Engine Land, HERE > ]

How to Plan Landing Page Tests: 6 Steps to Guide Your Process

2010-07-20T19:02:31Z

We all want to find a change that will turn a lackluster landing page into a monster. Will it require a bigger button? Or perhaps a different image?

Find out how to pick the right tests to improve your landing pages from an expert with years of experience. See why the most obvious test is not always the best to try.

“People are looking for easy answers, and the answers, unfortunately, are not easy,” says Lance Loveday, CEO, Closed Loop Marketing.

Loveday’s team has utilized a data-driven approach to landing page tests for as long as modern A/B testing software has been available. Below, we outline the steps he suggests for planning tests that can improve a page’s performance.

READ THE FULL ARTICLE on MarketingSherpa.com >

Conversations on Conversion Podcast: Interview of Sandra Niehaus by Ion Interactive’s Anna Talerico

2010-07-14T20:04:17Z

[Excerpt from the podcast notes:]
As the VP User Experience and Creative Director at Closed Loop Marketing, Sandra Niehaus is a passionate advocate for usability and design and she brings it all together to create, test and measure conversion-focused experiences for a long list of interesting companies. Sandra is also the co-author of Web Design for ROI with Lance Loveday, and you all know he’s a cool conversion dude as well.

I think you’ll find Sandra as fascinating as I did. She just knows how to create effective experiences. Listen in as she shares her thoughts on how to sell conversion optimization, why you need to know the numbers and what makes for a successful test.

—————

You’ll find the full recorded podcast here: Conversations on Conversion podcast with Sandra Niehaus >

Conversion-Optimized Touch Points: The Thank You Page

2010-06-25T18:02:10Z

In the field of conversion optimization, there’s an understandable focus on landing pages. But why stop there? Every single touch point is an opportunity to improve the user experience and the bottom line. In this article I look at ways to optimize one of these oft-overlooked points: the thank you page.

READ THE FULL ARTICLE on SearchEngineLand >

(In the full article, you’ll find 10 examples of 4 different conversion optimization approaches for Thank You pages. Enjoy!)

Evil Conversion: When Optimization Goes Too Far

2010-05-26T20:46:34Z

As online marketers and conversion experts, we want our sites to be effective. No, it has to be said: we want more than that—we want to turn our sites into kick-butt conversion machines, leaving competitors in the dust with our screamin’ throughput and sales. But when does conversion optimization go too far? When does it stop being useful and become, well, evil?

Most of you know what I mean, because you’ve experienced the evil firsthand. Maybe you’ve even designed it. Experiences like these litter the internet, raising blood pressure around the globe:

[Read the full article on SearchEngineLand > ]

“Not Done Yet” – A Tale Of 2 Years, 3 Landing Pages & 6X Conversion Improvement

2010-03-31T17:19:14Z

Quick question: how much conversion improvement is enough? Would hitting your industry’s average conversion rate convince you to rest on your laurels? If you doubled your old performance, would you stop there? Hopefully not. This case study is an example of why you should never consider your conversion work done, even after impressive gains.

Case Study Summary

Client: Ifbyphone, Inc., a provider of automated telephone applications.

Overall project goal: Increase the quantity and quality of their phone-call and click-to-call leads.

Challenges:

Complex offering
Poor prior experiences with landing page optimization
Wide variety of audiences
Difficulty in attributing phone calls to a marketing source

Success measurement #1: Percentage of landing page visitors who contact Ifbyphone by phone.

Success measurement #2: Lead quality, as measured by the phone call length (longer calls were correlated with higher close rates).

Results:

… Read the full article on Search Engine Land >

Interview of Lance Loveday, by RKG’s George Michie

2010-03-11T17:37:51Z

It was a real treat for me to meet Lance Loveday at Shop.org Annual last fall. He’s been a favorite columnist of mine for some time, and getting to know him since then has been a pleasure. Closed-Loop-Marketing specializes in conversion optimization services, and Lance’s team is on the leading edge of fine tuning the shopping experience.

Lance shares our “No Bull” approach to marketing his services and I’m glad to share this Q & A with our readers.

George: How do you know when your site isn’t converting as well as it could?

… (for the complete interview, please visit http://www.rimmkaufman.com/rkgblog/2010/03/10/interview-with-lance-loveday/)

Roundtable Podcast on Testing for Conversion Optimization

2010-03-10T18:01:51Z

This podcast discussion includes conversion optimization experts Brian Eisenberg, Lance Loveday, Anne Holland, and Chris Goward. Some of the topics discussed:

Where should someone new to testing begin?
Does method matter?
Is suboptimization a risk?
Can we trust the statistics behind tools?
What test result has been the most surprising?

To hear the complete podcast, please visit : http://www.webanalysts.info/webanalytics/roundtable-podcast-on-testing/

Conversion Conversations - Anna Telerico Interviews Lance Loveday

2010-03-08T18:15:38Z

My next guest’s tweet from yesterday evening says it all:

We just doubled conversion for a longtime client, for whom we’d previously tripled conversion. Thrilled.

And that’s why he’s next in the line up of Conversations on Conversion. If you don’t yet know Lance Loveday, CEO of Closed Loop Marketing, take a run over to Amazon and pick up a copy of his book, “Web Design for ROI: Turning Browsers into Buyers and Prospects into Leads”. Lance’s twitter bio says he’s: a “CEO - Closed Loop Marketing, Author - Web Design for ROI, speaker, cyclist, husband, father, online advertising freak, usability geek. Not in that order.” I’ll add to that list and tell you he’s a super nice guy, a good conversationalist and a conversion optimization enthusiast to boot. Listen in as Lance and I talk conversions!

Listen to the complete interview here: Conversion Conversations, Episode 2

3 Ways to Leverage Time for More Conversions

2010-03-03T18:52:47Z

Time, they say, was invented to keep everything from happening all at once. Whether we’re performers, filmmakers or UX designers, time allows us to organize events and engineer an audience’s experience.

Time is also a conversion lever that can be as powerful as messaging, placement, color or any other user experience factor—and as deserving of its own study and focus. Three areas in particular are, I think, important to test and optimize in regards to time.

1. A need for speed

Some events just can’t happen quickly enough. The end of Lost and the final, complete obliteration of IE6 certainly come to mind. From a conversion perspective, however, the same is true. The faster certain events happen, the more likely your website visitors will convert. This includes:

The least sexy factor: page load time.

Page load time isn’t very sexy or hip, but it’s fundamental. It’s the plain, beige, lace-free foundational garment of your conversion optimization efforts. All other factors being equal, this single lever alone can improve your conversion rate and customer loyalty.

The conceptual keystone here, of course, is the phrase “all other factors being equal.”

… Read the complete article on Search Engine Land >