Review of Conversion Optimization Minidegree Program (pt. 4)
Imagine being able to deeply know your customer better than they know themselves.
You could do this to the point where finding what triggers your prospect’s emotions and what makes them click would be as easy as doing a one hour research.
The best part is…
you don’t even have to do any work, because your competitors have done it for you.
Want to know how?
To tell you about it, you’ll need to know what I’ve learned and where.
This week, I went into Developing & Testing an Emotional Content, and Influence and Interactive design as part of the course in CXL Institute.
It was in the first course where I learned about how to “steal” what to use in your landing page. You should look for things like the colors they use, what messages they use and what emotions they trigger.
Here’s how to do it
First, you should study all of these components in 10–15 competitors. This is very important and you should aim to study the more competitors that you can.
By doing this step, you’ll be able to know where they market is emotionally, and where your company fits in.
From there, you should go into an Emotional SWOT.
What this step does is help you understand whether you should take a similar approach as your competitors, or go completely opposite.
Third, we go into the Emotional content strategy. You go and see what the competitors are dong with the SWOT analysis and see what are the common issues people have + address them in the content.
But once you have come up with thiese ideas, you should start testing. That will determine what happens and if the variants change their behavior (AKA increase conversions/sign ups…).
Being able to get testing ideas from your competitors is great, yet that’s only part of the story.
Identifying the desired outcomes and achieve all of them through a unique design strategy is another part of this whole picture.
To do this, you first need to understand one thing… you should take decision science into account.
This is only half of the framework, as knowing the design strategies underlying that lead to these outcomes is what matters to use the most (from a practical point of view).
There are 6 steps in total that will help you achieve this.
- Directing attention:
From the different ways to direct attention with design is using Pre-attemptive Processing.
Desing has 9 ways to do this: presenting different numbers, enclosing, difference in size, orientation, additional elements, contrast, curvature, subtracted elements, and change in shape. - Educating customers
No, this doesn’t mean to go and tell why you’re so great and why you’re so unique. What you’re doing in here is to simulate the experience of having your product/service as much as possible.
Think of features vs. benefits (the most basic step in marketing). There’s this old saying “Features tell, but benefits sell”… it’s true. Just keep in mind you’ll have educated buyers as well who want the features, so always show both. - Evoking emotions
This should be the first thing you should do. The way you do this is by showing and having a strong Value Proposition.
Always focus on motivation (and the biggest levers in each one) for both avoiding pain and seeking pleasure. - Decision making
So at this point you’ve interested your prospect/lead into what you have. That doesn’t mean they are going to buy regardless of how difficult it is. For instance, having too many choices will give them analysis-paralysis. That’s why you should focus on both the rational and irrational impact, where you use things like heuristics, cognitive biases or behavioral economics to help them decide. - Trust and credibility
Did you know you only have less than a second (50ms to be precise) to capture someone’s attention. So that means you can take advantage of the Halo effect to make a first positive impression, therefore making people stick longer to your website. Plus, keep in mind that design impacts first impression, so it’s always important to have great design in place. - Creating a path
This is the ability to make them buy, such as the checkout page. Always make your prospect know how many steps he has to complete and in what step are they currently in. Think of Amazon. Whenever you buy something (that’s not 1-click buy), you follow a number of steps and you know the step you’re currently in.This is a way to reduce friction as well
In all of these steps, there’s one important aspect to consider.
Not every prospect will stay in it and be in it forever, either.
That’s why so many people abandon their carts… and reasons can vary.
From having a call to actually forgetting it are some options.
To be able to re-engage with these people who leave, the best way is to use both motivation + ability. Try to put more emphasis on the ability side, since you have control over it.
Lasly, reminding a consumer why they engaged with you in the first place is a great way to reactivate their motivation.
…Ok, that covers quite some ground.
It’s important to point out that no matter how many discounts you offer or even how great you think your product is (I’m sure it is), but…
there’s a process to learn more.
By learning more I don’t mean about marketing knowledge.
I mean about having a better understanding of your customers. When you know so deeply your audience, then having more wins will become easier.
That’s why things like the emotional SWOT or how to use design to pull people into the page are important.
Still, many businesses believe that constantly doing promos, new offers and discounts are the solution to their problems.
That’s a quick fix, but the wound is sitll open.
You need to go and learn about who is the people who is interested in you and how to target your message and desing so that you attract your ideal client instead of repel them.
Well, that’s it for this week.
Next week I’ll be sharing about how to actually start using Google Analytics in great detail. Also, I’d learn about how to optimize a landing page the right way with a process.
Let me know what you think of today’s week below.
Ivan
