MindValley Labs Internet Marketing Blog

Great Tips for Increasing Online Conversion Rates - Educate and Guide Your Customers

How Many Online Stores Kill their Conversion Rates by Adopting Outdated Catalog-style Websites?

Forget about displaying your entire inventory to your customer. Think of your store as a “guide” and not a “catalog”. Educate and guide your visitors to make the right choices and you’ll see greater boosts in your conversion rates. Here’s how…

In a previous consultation we showed you how to make sales online by directly answering your customer’s biggest questions. Now we’ve just carried out a similar consultation on a client suffering from a similar misfortune.

Are you making the same cardinal sins that 90% of ecommerce sites are?!

HERE’S A NEWSFLASH FOR YOU - Catalogue style sales websites simply don’t work on the Internet in many niche areas. Too much choice and too many products on a page can actually reduce sales.

Get out of the dark ages and step ahead of your competitors by educating them and guiding them on a journey deeper into your sites. This Case Study explains how.

The Client

Our client is a specialist in products for feeding cats and dogs and wish to remain anonymous, so for the sake of this post we’ll refer to them as Autopetcare.

Here’s their Landing Page. . .

This webpage actually does ok when it comes to getting traffic . . . BUT their conversion rate is horrific. Of the 15,000 unique visitors they only get 70 sales!!

You do the math (OK, that works out at a miniscule 0.046%)

The main reason for this . . .

THE PARADOX OF CHOICE!

A customer who comes to this site is looking for info on a pet feeder. They have a particular breed of dog or cat and want to know what type of automatic feeder they should purchase. A typical search query is “dog feeder” or “automatic cat feeding”.

Remember - people search for INFO and not for PRODUCTS. Yet when the visitor arrives on this site what they see is little info and instead 11 product pics.

By having 11 products, complete with pictures and vastly differing prices, on your landing page you’re offering an abundance or  plethora of choice that  - in fact it has the effect of raising more and more questions rather than answering the customer’s biggest questions.

The customer might see several brands with no discernable difference except price.

Feeder Deluxe - $148

UltraFeed - $127

But the customer doesn’t care about brand names! What they want is INFO.

Here’s what could be going on in their mind:

Are feeders different for cats vs dogs?

Is there a difference between feeders for pets that stay indoors vs outdoors

If I have 3 dogs, can I get one gigantic feeder rather than three smaller ones?

When you present them with products pics without answering their question - here’s what they do.

They click the BACK button, head back to Google, and do another query to learn more.

Raise more questions in their head, and you force them back to Google and perhaps on to another competitor.

Think about it . . . Why not offer your customers a helping hand and simply guide them into making the right choice from a host of products.

Here’s What We’d Do

We reckon the best way for this landing page to convert would be to serve up a cocktail of emotion, answering the customers’ biggest questions and offering them a helping hand to the sale . . . avoiding the paradox of choice.

When a customer types in, for example, “auto pet feeders” they should be led to a page that is simple, highly targeted to their needs and has excellent navigation so that they are most likely to convert.

Here’s what we mean - notice how important the cocktail is engage a customer and not give too much choice.

Below I’ve outlined 3 Great Ways for them to improve their landing page:

1 - Establish trust

2 - Answer the customer’s Biggest question

3 - Offer them a helping hand to the sale

 

 

 Increase Conversion Rate  . . .

1) Establish Trust and Appeal to people’s emotions

Tests have proven that a customer is more likely to make a purchase, and also a larger purchase, when they make the decision on an emotional basis rather than a logical one.

Autopetcare’s initial page has no element of trust in it whatsoever - there is by no means a connection likely to be made between the customer and this website on a personal level. By tinkering their site and adding a picture of the founder with their dog this will instantly have a dramatic effect on the conversion rate.

The text towards the left could read:

Hi I’m Jimmy, the founder of Autopetcare and this is my beautiful 5 year old Golden retriever Lucy. I also own a cat called Geoffrey and a Budgerigar called Tweetie. When it comes to keeping your pets healthy and well fed you couldn’t wish to meet anyone more passionate than myself.

I’ve been in the pet feeding industry for the last 8 years and know everything possible there is to know about which pet feeder is right for your pet . . .

This will engage with the customer on a personal level, trigger emotions and in the process also establish the founder as the expert in the field and an authority on the subject matter. This will develop great trust for your site in the process.

2) Answers the customer’s biggest question

We showed you the importance of this in the previous post. When someone types in “automatic pet feeders” into Google they are searching for information not for products. This new page gives the customer really good information without bombarding them with prices and endless products. Instead, by answering the customer’s most important question, in this case, whether they are a dog or a cat owner, it allows you to give them specific targeted information and products deeper into your website.

3) Offer them a helping hand to the sale

By offering general, authoritative information to customers you then have the opportunity to lead them to the sale. The links on the new page allow you to target customers once you have established a relationship through emotion, trust and quality information.

If they click on the dog owners link then they can be introduced to specific dog owner products and recommended items. The same goes with the cats link.

The paradox of choice has still not been avoided!

So you’ve got a great landing page but the job’s certainly not done there. The linked to pages of your site have to answer the further questions your customer has and to target and segment them in such a way to convert and get value per customer, the best way to do this is to answer the questions comprehensively and make 1, yes 1, recommendation.

The Next Step - A Targeted Sales Page which delivers all the answers and makes solid Recommendations

You need to continue to educate and guide your customer

If they’re a dog owner you still need to find out certain questions. The site could read like this:

“Welcome fellow dog lover! Before we see which products are best for you we need to find out your exact needs, what kind of feature you’re looking for  . . . Are you looking for a water or a food feeder?

Are you looking for an indoor or an outdoor feeder?

What size of dog do you own? Large or Small?

How many dogs do you own? One or Many?”

 Only once you know the answers to these questions can you make a strong recommendation safe in the knowledge that they have all the information at their fingertips.

Recommendations

#small dog, water feeder, indoor - 1 recommendation

#small dog, water feeder, outdoor - 1 recommendation

#large dog, water feeder, indoor - 1 recommendation

#large dog, water feeder, outdoor - 1 recommendation

#small dog, food feeder, indoor - 1 recommendation

#large dog, food feeder, outdoor - 1 recommendation

etc. etc.  I’m sure you get the picture.

What you’re effectively doing is showing off your products, but you’re doing it in such a way that it is so highly targeted and specific utilizing all the info from your customer that they are likely to convert.

The Key to avoiding the paradox of choice:

• Use emotion to develop trust and a relationship
• deliver high quality information
• answer the customers biggest question
• target and segment through guiding and educating
• then make 1 recommendation

 

Do you find it impossible to choose from the 100 different brands and types of salad dressing in your local supermarket?

Find out more with . . .

- Is too much choice making us miserable? >>

Read more:

• Tips for Increasing Online Conversion Rates

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About the Author

Prior to MindValley Media, Mike was the Head of New Ventures Strategy at eBay where he conceived of the strategies that led to the investment in Craigslist, the launch of Kijiji.com and the acquisition of Skype. Mike has an MBA from Stanford and previously worked for the Boston Consulting Group. He is also a certified Google AdWords Professional.

Check out other posts by Mike

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