80% of the the success of Conversion Rate Optimisation is down to the discovery process. Craig Bradford proves that CRO is more than just coloured buttons but about conducting deeper research and not just sticking to traditional UX methods.
61. 1. You’re on mobile device with slow
connection
2. You need to book your flight in the next 30
minutes
3. You want to get a product delivered to your
friends address not yours
4. You’re not going to be home for delivery
5. You want to buy online but pick up in store
Explain CROBefore that I had quite a different career..
Explain previous jobBefore that…
Now I know what you’re thinking…
What the hell is that?
Made up of a few thingsExplain pictureIt also included…
Explain biomechanicsThe final part of the course was…
Product design, Use the research to make commercial products…
So why?
Because that’s what I want to talk to you about today, taking a product approach to CRO…I’ve realised there’s a large overlap between CRO and product designWell a typical CRO process will look something like this
There’s 3 phasesDiscoveryExperimentsReviewWe’re just going to focus on this part today…
The discovery phase, Specifically the data gathering phaseIt’s by far the most important part
At least 80% of the success of a CRO project is down to the time and effort that goes into the discovery phaseAnd you know what..
Product designers are really good at that bit
It’s not about changing the colour of buttonsThat’s fine for low price products but try that with a £2k productCRO is about reducing barriers to people buying your product
Explain imageCRO in summary is…
Process of maximising lift
That’s what I’m going to cover todayThe process of getting deep customer insights
Who are IDEOI like their process
Learn look ask and try
When they first designed this process I was at uni and they released them in the form of a deck of cardsNow they actually have it on an app
It’s quite handy to have for research and it only cost a couple of quid so it’s worth it.I’m going to talk through 11 of these today
Let’s start with learnLearning is about analyzing the information you’ve collected to identify pattern and insightsWith that in mind, the first one we’re going to look at is…
Collect, compare and evaluateGood for benchmarking and understanding critical featuresThere’s a bunch of ways to do this:
It depends on what the service or product is but some ways areFace to face, online surveys or over phone/skype
Explain goalsBiggest distractions are errors – when things go wrong...In product design this is called…
Post-it notes sign of bad design Error analysis is a good way to prevent problems happeningYou can do it by asking WHAT IFCreate a list of potential errorsThe point is to minimise surprises
Timed outChose wrong productWhose wrong quantityWrong delivery data
I loved thisSo the goals of error analysis
This brings us onto the final tool within the learn category…
Good to identify bottlenecksMost analytics packages will have some kind of flow analysis reportThis allows you to see the most common paths through your site,You can then map it out like this:
You can then decide where you’re likely to get the highest ROI and should spend your time.For those of you that use GA – there’s a hidden gem of a report called…Source: http://conversionxl.com/how-to-design-user-flow/#.
5 out of 10 routes contain T+CThat’s a massive distraction! 2 of the 10 also included the FAQ pageWhat do they want to know that’s on those pages? If we can answer that, I bet we’ll increase conversions.This is actually on-going at the moment, so, the goals of flow analysis are:
So in the case of that insight we just found about the T+C pageHow do we find out what those people are looking for?That takes us onto the second research form…
We ask…And the best way to ask people online is…
Great if you know how to use themThere are a couple of key factors that depend how useful surveys will be for you
explainLet’s look at timely firstI love Quaraloo…
Quaraloo is really easy to install, really affordable…
And just asks them what information they’re looking forIt’s small and not annoying like a real popupIn the case of the T+C page, we’ve set up a trigger that only shows the question when someone arrives on the T+C pageIt pops up like this…
It starts from around $63 per month and is excellent.Next is what’s the right questions to ask?...
This is a really good presentation form conversion rate experts that talks through some good questions to ask and why they workBut for example a couple that I like are:
Ask people on thankyou pages if there was anything that almost made them not buy..Also ask them…
On product pages ask…
What was your biggest challenge or frustration when trying to choose the right X?You’ll get some great results - as I said check out that presentation for more detailsHow do we make sure people are qualified to ask?
I like to use a tool called ethnio to conduct what IDEO call “extreme interviews”Extreme interviews are designed to ask two groups of usersThose that are really experienced with your site/productThose that have never used your site beforeThis let’s you get great insights into different kinds of users and what they like or don’t’ like -hopefully by catering to the extremes everyone in the middle will be happy tooEthnio is great because it allows you to ask qualifying questions, if they fit into the type you want you can bucket them for more testing. They also handle the payment side as well which is great.A final tip on surveys…
Ask the 5 whys to really dig into the real reasonsPeople normally don’t mean what they sayAsking the 5 whys digs deeper – this only works on the phone or face to faceAnother tool that I like to use in the “Ask” category is…
Card sorting, If you’re not familiar with card sorting it’s a really good tool for designing navigationYou place each navigation element on a card – for example, contact us would be on one, terms and conditions on another, products on another etcYou then ask participants to group and sort the card into groups that make senseI really like a tool called Optimal sort that lets you do it onlineThe results are really comprehensive but they look something like this…
This lets you see the most common groups that people thought were relatedSo the goals of card sorting are…
Interestingly, although I’ve just said to ask users what to do, my next suggestion goes against that…
The final method of research is actually to watch rather than ask.People are funny, they don’t always tell the truth….
Who’s ever had a product come packaged like this?If you ask people how they would open a package like that, you’d probably get a sensible answer like…
I’d use scissors…But, if you could be a fly on the wall for a day, what you’d actually find it they’d be more likely to open it like this…
They’d chew it, use kitchen knifes and basically anything except scissors!So people lie..
How can we be a fly on the wall online?One method is called shadowing…
This isn’t perfect because the people still know they’re being watched, that tends to impact how to behaveIt’s still really useful though ad we like to use user testing.comThis let’s you ask people to complete tasks which dictating what they’re doing, what’s hard to do/confusingTheir screen is also recorded.As an extra benefit this is also really good to get buy inThe next step up from this is to do it when people aren’t looking…
This is the full fly on the wall impact onlineFor this we use clicktaleThis records people using your site and tracks things like errors, as well as other data like browser language, location etcYou can then watch back the recordings to see what exactly they didThis brings us onto the final section…
Try is all about creating simulations in order to empathise with your customersIn product design we take this a lot further than just going through the process of using a websiteWe use…
Empathy toolsEmpathy tools are tools to help you really understand the needs of your customersThey typically focus on a particular theme or requirement,For example, you might say you wans to empathize with the elderly,
And you could do things like this where you’re simulating reduced mobilityYou could also…
Simulate reduced dexterity by doing things like thisThis is actually me trying to use a phone with coins strapped to my knuckles…But obviously these aren’t really applicable online but there are some things you can doInstead of empathising with ailments or illnesses (which you can still do)Try..
For example….The whole point in doing this of course is to accommodate a wide range of customers while simulating extreme casesMake it as easy as possibleThe final tool for trying is one that you’ll all be familiar with…
PrototypingBut instead of making physical models like this we make digital oneI like to use…Source: http://cfnewsads.thomasnet.com/images/large/031/31021.jpgpt
BalsamiqIt’s really affordable and can help you create things like this…
Remember that prototyping is an iterative process so what you want to do is sit down with people and ask them to describe how they would use the appor websiteGo through scenarios,Ask them what they would click, is there anything that’s missing etcActually use different pages once they say what they’d click onLet them do the talkingOne more quick tool that I like to validate where people would click is…
TreejackExplainThat’ it
Learn look ask and try
Well a typical CRO process will look something like this