- We've all had that experience.
You open a website, you're scrolling around,
Oh, pop up.
Let me just close that.
(squeaks)
Okay, good.
(squeaks)
Can't close the pop up.
(squeaks)
Okay, forget it.
(whooshing)
Oh, can't go back either.
(whooshing) Forget it.
Forget, forget it.
You, my friend have just found a conversion blocker
just like forgetting to wear clothes to your wedding.
Conversion blockers cause misery
and sadness for you and your visitors.
But unlike forgetting to wear clothes to your wedding
this video is gonna show you how to find
and remove that misery and sadness.
(crashes) (whooshing)
(chimes)
Okay, first up, what is a conversion blocker?
A conversion is when someone lands
on your website and does the thing you want them to do.
So buys a product, submits a form, becomes a lead for you
takes the action that you want them to take.
And a conversion blocker
is something that gets in their way of doing that thing.
Now for the purpose of this video,
we can broadly break conversion blockers
into two categories.
Firstly, we have technical conversion blockers.
So these are things like broken bits of code,
buttons and links that don't work,
forms that don't submit,
checkout processes that are broken
basically something to do
with the technical implementation of your website.
Then we have content or information conversion blockers.
So these might be little pieces
of information that your visitors don't get.
So aren't able to make the decision to convert with you.
For example, you're not telling them
about your delivery terms.
They don't know which areas you serve, that type of thing.
We're gonna have a look at how to find both of them.
I also wanna say before we start
the conversion blockers can range in severity
from minor niggles that might stop people from converting,
if they're right on the edge to major conversion destroyers
like checkouts not working,
forms not loading on particular devices,
pages not loading, really slow page speed.
That type of thing.
Now the process we're gonna go through
is a three-step one
because everyone loves a three-step process.
The first step is working out
if you have a conversion blocker.
So I'm gonna give you some of the signs to look for
that tell you
that you might have a conversion block on your website.
Next is identifying where that conversion blocker exists
or the specific page that that thing is happening.
And then the third thing that you need to do
is identify exactly what the conversion blocker is.
So we're gonna look
at each of these stages in turn, starting with identifying
if you have a conversion blocker.
Now we're gonna be using Google analytics
as our main conversion blocker, red flag.
There are other tools that you can use
and other methods that you can use as well
but we're gonna be using Google analytics today
because that's the tool that most people
have had their disposal.
Obviously a really serious conversion destroying blocker
is gonna be very obvious.
You're gonna log onto your site one day,
realise that you've got no conversions at all.
That's gonna be fairly clear,
but for conversion blockers
that are a little bit more subtle,
let's have a look at some
of the key metrics that you might use to identify
that there could be an issue on your site.
(laughs creepily)
For example, here we are on an e-commerce site.
And what we can see from this
is the landing page that visitors are coming
onto the site through.
Now, if this all looks a horrendous for you
let me just point out some key stats.
Firstly, the number of sessions,
this is basically the number
of visits to this page as the first page on the website.
Okay, so someone comes in from any sort of traffic channel.
They might come in from search or social
or they might come in direct.
We're looking at the first page that people land on.
So that's this first column.
The column I'm most interested in
from a conversion blocking perspective
is the e-commerce conversion rate.
This is the percentage of people that buy
having landed on this page first.
And what we can see from this data
is something quite interesting.
This first page, which is the homepage
on the site has a 5.14% conversion rate
meaning someone who comes on to this site
through this page has a one in 20 chance
of turning into a purchaser.
If we compare that to this page
which is a product page on the website.
So this is a page listing a particular product.
We can see the conversion rate
of this page is 2.72%.
Round about, one in 40 of the visitors to this page
is going to buy.
If however, we contrast it with these two pages here
both of these also are product pages
but we can see their conversion rates are much lower.
For example, this page has a conversion rate of 0.39%.
This page has a conversion rate of 0%.
Now that tells us something
about these two pages isn't working
because clearly the site process is working.
People are coming onto the site
and they're turning into customers, but there's something
about these product pages, which is turning visitors off.
So potential conversion blocker alert.
Now it's not as simple as saying
there's a conversion block on this page.
You need to understand the traffic source
that's driving people to this website.
For example, if people are coming onto this site,
looking for pictures of Kylie Jenner,
they're gonna be disappointed
because this is a B2B e-comm site.
Now this site has a very different problem.
Here, we're can see the different traffic channels
that are driving traffic to this site.
We can see that page search is the top performing channel.
We have social, which happens to be social ads
as the next performing channel.
There's one thing that all
of the traffic channels have in common.
In fact, there are two things that all
of the traffic channels have
in common for this particular site.
That is a high bounce rate.
Meaning the people that are landing
on these pages are almost immediately leaving.
They're not taking any action.
And also crucially, a low e-commerce conversion rate,
i.e. they are not buying.
So this is an example
of a site that might have a site-wide conversion blocker
because nobody is able to convert.
So mission critical for a site like this is to identify
what's stopping people from buying
because even with 1500 visits
over the course of this period of time
you would have expected some sales.
If you have it set up in your Google analytics account
you can also use a shopping behaviour analysis
which will show you the different checkout steps
on your website and the number of people
that drop out at each one.
So if you're an e-commerce business
this can be very useful.
So, and by the way, if you're not an e-commerce site,
i.e. your website is here to generate leads
you can use exactly the same metrics to understand
if you have a conversion blocker.
So looking at the primary landing pages on your site
having a look to see what sorts of percentage
of traffic is converting through them
and also looking at different traffic channels to see
if you have a site-wide conversion blocking problem.
In the most extreme examples of conversion blockers,
If you have live chat on your website
you will actually get people complaining.
I can't do this.
This is really annoying.
Just another reason why you might want to have live chat
on your site.
Okay, so we think we may have an issue.
Conversion rate is really low bounce rate is really high.
We've noticed there are particular landing pages on our site
which are underperforming.
Now it's time to identify exactly where
that conversion blocker is.
Now the first suggestion I'm gonna make here
is actually nothing technical at all.
And that is to have you,
your friends and your work colleagues,
people in the office,
use your website as if they were a customer
go through and try to do the thing
that you're expecting your customers to do on your site.
This isn't a particularly technical solution
but guess what?
It can often be the fastest way
to identify conversion blockers.
Now, a couple of things I'd suggest here,
firstly don't just test your website on the device
and the browser that you're always testing it on.
Sometimes you'll find that you're actually looking
at a cached version of your site
and the version that everyone else
is saying has this conversion blocker in place.
So try testing it in a private browsing mode,
try clearing all your cache, clearing your cookies,
try testing it on different devices.
You can even call up that friend
who's still got an iPhone 4S
and bangs on about it as if it's some kind
of Luddite claim to fame,
get them to use it as well.
If your website works on a 4S,
it's gonna work on anything.
If you're an e-commerce business,
you might wanna set up 100% voucher code that you can give
to people that are testing your site
so they can follow your sales process all the way
through to checkout completion.
Now, if you don't already have live chat
installed on your site,
it can be a good idea to get it installed
so that if people are having a problem,
they can let you know
particularly during a checkout process.
If you notice that people are lingering
through your checkout process
you can have a little pop-up that says, hey,
just wanted to check that you've got everything
that you need.
Remember the golden rule with live chat
for every one person that tells you there's an issue,
there's at least 20 to 50
who haven't told you that there's an issue.
So don't dismiss the odd objection over live chat.
Get to the bottom of it, find out what's causing that issue.
So if you still haven't found the exact location
of your conversion blocker
based on the data from your Google analytics and yours,
your colleagues and your family and friends using the site
then you might want to try user testing.
Watching the general public
use your website will be an epiphany.
It'll be epiphanating.
Epiphanizing, epiphanation.
It will be amazing.
And it may also damage your faith in humanity.
Now, if you still haven't found the location
of your conversion blocker, fear not.
We can use a couple of tools
in step three to get to the bottom
of exactly what is stopping conversions on your site.
If your friends, colleagues
and family haven't helped you find the location
of your conversion blocker
then there may be nothing else for it.
We may just have to recruit (snaps) the general public.
Apparently no one was hurt.
There's a few different ways to recruit the general public.
A couple of tools that we love using,
firstly Hotjar.
Now Hotjar is a heat mapping software
that allows you to see how people are using your page.
There's a couple of really useful tools
that allow you to diagnose
using Hotjar where your site might be leaking conversions.
So the first is click mapping.
This will show you where people are clicking
on your page, really useful.
You'll be amazed to see
how people are clicking on headlines.
They're clicking on things
that aren't a button, they're falling down holes.
They're clicking on your logo more
than you could possibly imagine.
It's really interesting to see how the general public
are using your site
and often the things that you want them to click on,
aren't being clicked on.
So that can mean re-looking
at how you're positioning the information on your page
or how you are using the kind of hierarchy
and layout on your page to force people
into the areas that you want them to go.
Now, a really key conversion blocker can be requiring people
to understand information before converting on your site,
but not giving them that information in time.
Let me show you an example.
Now on this page, the scroll that shows us that few of them,
50% of people get to this point on the website,
the main call-to-action button.
The thing that we want people to do is above the fold here.
Now some sites require people to know information
from below the fold before they are ready to convert.
So you can see the issue there.
We're asking people to take an action
but half of them aren't even getting
to the information that they need
in order to take that action.
Now it's not necessarily a bad thing
to have a short scroll depth.
If you've got a really descriptive clear call to action,
and people just stay on your page and immediately convert.
That's great too, but having a low scroll depth
with a low conversion rate can be an indication
that something is stopping them
from scrolling down that page.
i.e. it's boring.
It doesn't do the job it needs to
or you're not actually signposting
that there is information below the page.
Hotjar will also allow you to record your user sessions
so you can actually see them moving around
on your website and using your site.
Now, obviously you've got to watch each of these one by one.
So you're hoping that people fall down
the particular conversion block up,
but if you've got time to jump through a whole bunch of them
it can be a great way to get an understanding
of how people are using your page.
The next tool that you might wanna use
to identify the specific conversion holes
that people are falling down is user testing.
So you can go to a site like Userbrain
or usertesting.com and fill in some info
about what you want people to do on your site.
You will then recruit people
that are gonna test your site
and record their thoughts as they're going through.
So it's a great idea to set them little challenges
like imagine that you are this type of person
and you wanted to buy an X, what would you do?
And then they will talk
through the process as they're going through your site.
And one of the thing to be careful of
with user testing is quite often
the testers actually want to please you
or want to please the platform.
So they can sometimes be a little bit artificially kind.
So what we tend to do, would be to ask them questions
like what would stop them from using your site?
What would stop them from buying you?
What would make them choose a competitor instead of you?
Because that might give us the information
that we really need to identify (snaps finger),
this as a problem.
Okay, so you've looked through your analytics.
You've identified that you've got a conversion blocker.
You've found the page that it's on.
You've used user testing,
your colleagues, your family, your friend
with the iPhone 4S
to identify what the conversion blocker is.
And you fix that.
What can you do
in the future to make sure that if this thing reoccurs
or other conversion blockers reoccur
you are notified quickly?
Well, glad I asked.
Aside from leaving live chat
on your site and letting your team know
that if they spot any website issues at all
to let you know immediately
the other thing that you can do is inside Google analytics
you can do set up alerts at the bottom.
And then in the final column underneath view
then you can click on custom alerts.
What you can do here is set up an alert that pings you
if conversion rate,
for example goes underneath a particular threshold.
So let's say for example
we wanted to make a conversion rate
which was conversion blocker alerts.
It tells us within a day, if our conversion rate dips
below a particular conversion rate
that we know is fairly average for our site.
So you can save this alert.
And what will happen is Google analytics will email you
if your conversion rate falls below a particular number.
Now you can segment this down even further.
For example, to set up an alert.
If traffic through a particular landing page
is converting less than a certain number.
Now, the important thing to know is Google analytics
is only gonna tell you this,
with a day's delay.
So if you're driving a lot of traffic
you need to be more on it than this.
And obviously you're gonna be running checks
on a daily basis.
But if your site is relatively low traffic
than having alerts set up like this
can just help notify you that something might be up.
The other thing that you can do
to identify conversion blockers is request a free website
and digital marketing review from exposure ninja.
You were wondering how I was going to slip that in there.
weren't you?
If you're a regular viewer
you saw that coming a mile off.
If you need some help with your digital marketing
and you wanna increase the leads
and sales that your website generates them
then our agency exposure ninja,
offers a free service that will help you to do this.
It's really simple and really useful.
All you need to do is go to expouserninja.com
and click the big button to request your free website
and marketing review.
You'll need to fill in a short questionnaire
that asks about your business
and your goals for the next 12 months.
Our team will then analyse your website.
They'll analyse your competitors.
They'll analyse the digital marketing
that you've been doing,
and they will map you out,
a set of digital marketing priorities to get you
to your goals over the next 12 months.
They'll record all of this in a 15 minute video
which they'll send over to you by email,
usually within a couple of days.
It's awesome and it's totally free.
So go to explosureninja.com to request your review today.
(smacks)
So I hope you've learned something today.
If you haven't learned anything,
I hope it's been entertaining.
And if it hasn't been entertaining
then why are you still here?
Don't forget to click, subscribe
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Leave a comment.
Just leave a comment.
Just tell us something.
Tell us about your day. (chuckles)
Tell us what your most frustrating conversion blocker is.
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and marketing review from exposureninja.com yet,
what are you doing?
Go to exposureninja.com,
request your free review today.
Until next time, see you soon.
(crashing) (whooshing)