Customer Data: The Solution to Lead Generation

More leads, please.

In most companies, it's an ongoing process to generate interested buyers to your product and services.

We want qualified leads that move effortlessly throughout the sales cycle.

But the problem lies in our preparation. Some of us just don't have enough information about our prospects.

The CSO Insight study reported that “42 percent of sales reps feel that they don't have the right information before making a call.”

Use accurate customer data to prepare your team. Knowing key insights can make or break the deal.

Power up your data profile. Leverage it to produce more qualified leads.

Gathering Reliable Data

Based on an Ascend2 study, “35 percent of those surveyed said the biggest barrier to lead generation success is the lack of quality data.” Your data should tell a vivid story of your customer.

To gather reliable data, track anonymous users who visit your website. Watch leads interact with your content via session replays.

Ask for feedback from current customers. Monitor the trends of loyal consumers.

B2B marketers must also “embrace more third party and real-time data sets to really understand buyer's across the entire customer journey.” For example, that may include using social logins to access a prospect's profile information.

Data is widely available. Your team must decide which acquisition channels work for your company.

What's the best way to collect email addresses? Or how can you quickly accumulate customer preferences?

“Understanding who your customers are and, in turn, what they like, will undoubtedly enable you to increase conversions and sales. Make it easy for your customers to share their data with you, and use that data to keep them engaged with your business,” says Josh George, a senior applications engineer at Lyons Consulting Group.

Know who you're serving. Collect valid data for better results.

Enhancing Buyer Personas

Get inside your prospects' minds. Map out your ideal customer to understand their reasons for buying.

But, what's the point?

Buyer personas are roadmaps to navigating through your prospects' interests, dislikes, and habits. If you're aware of their behaviors, your team can create targeted solutions.

“By developing research-based buyer personas, you can create effective, highly targeted marketing campaigns. Each piece of communication ties back to your buyer personas so that every message addresses relevant pain points and positions your software as a viable solution,” states Brie Rangel, Account Strategist at IMPACT.

Knowing the basic demographics of your buyer is a given. Your team's goal is to dive deeper. Learn your customers' goals, challenges, and personal story.

Below is an example of a buyer persona for a specific startup founder. The story section offers a complete picture of the prospect, everything from the stage of his product to what he does for fun.

The role of customer data is to provide accurate information for your buyer personas. You don't want to waste time selling enterprise-level B2B SaaS software to a B2C startup.

Moreover, inaccurate buyer preferences and habits will leave both the prospect and sales rep frustrated. So, double-check your personas.

Because in the end, your mission is to match your product with a qualified lead. That's how you bring in sales.

“Use personas to spend more time with qualified leads, because they're the ones who are most likely to turn into those long-term customers you're looking for,” says Nicole Dieker, freelance writer and copywriter.

Enhance your buyer personas. Use data to add a face to the customer.

Segmenting Your Audience

After learning your customers distinct behaviors, it's time to serve those individual needs.

It makes no sense to group everyone together.

If Sally specifically likes apples, why send her emails about oranges and grapefruits? Instead, educate her about the difference between gala apples and pink lady apples.

That's a mental hurdle for most SaaS teams. We assume if our customers like X; they will definitely love Y. It isn't always that simple.

Segmentation comes in many shapes and sizes. From geographical to behavioral differences, your customers vary. And it's up to your team to discover how to connect with them.

You might consider a city in a particular state or the buyer's readiness to purchase. Work with your team to develop a goal.

Define your reason for segmentation. Experienced marketing and product leader Doug Goldstein offers the following common segmentation objectives:

• Create segmented ads & marketing communications


• Develop differentiated customer servicing & retention strategies


• Target prospects with the greatest profit potential


• Optimize your sales-channel mix

Segmentation is impossible without customer data. Add insights derived from analytics to guide how you group prospects.

And don't be afraid to experiment. Testing is how you'll discover the right messaging for your sales reps. Plus, it can help you market product information on your site.

“When practicing website optimization, leveraging customer segmentation provides a framework for running intentional, well-hypothesized experiments on your website that drive value,” writes Junan Pang, a solutions architect at Optimizely.

Segment your audience to deliver more personalized and timely experiences. With a segmented list, you'll be able to target the right services to interested buyers.

Building The Relationship

You can collect the data, create the buyer personas, and segment your audience. But all that data can't substitute customer relationships.

And that's where most businesses miss their opportunity.

“[C]ompanies often manage relationships haphazardly and unprofitably, committing blunders that undermine their connections with customers,” states Jill Avery, a senior lecturer at Harvard Business School.

Customer data is intended to facilitate the relationship between the sales rep and the buyer. However, research shows that companies without sophisticated data management tools “derive erroneous results that annoy customers, resulting in a 25 percent reduction in potential revenue gains.”

Don't attempt to foster a customer relationship with poor-quality data. If you do, prospects will seek out your competitors.

TechTarget executive editor Lauren Horwitz and SearchCRM site editor Tim Ehrens agree:

“Customer data management often falls to the bottom of the priority list. Organizations get bogged down with more pressing issues, such as cutting costs or keeping daily operations running. But relying on poor-quality customer data almost always frustrates customers - and many of them take their business elsewhere.”

Relationships are built on human-to-human contact. That means being genuinely interested in your buyer's concerns.

How can you make their lives better? Where can you offer convenience?

And sometimes your product won't be the solution. Yes, your SaaS service may not be the best option for that particular person.

Sales teams must recognize that it's okay to remove unqualified prospects from the pipeline. This action should be commended, not frowned upon.

Use customer data as a tool to score leads. Then, gain insight on how to target prospects that matter to your company.

Data shouldn't supplant the customer relationship. Make the human connection.

Go for the Data

Your team needs qualified leads. Focus on customer data as a solution.

Gather data from reliable sources. Use buyer personas to target your audience. Segment their behavior to create a personalized approach. And focus on building relationships throughout the sales cycle.

Want more leads? Go for the data.

About the Author: Shayla Price lives at the intersection of digital marketing, technology and social responsibility. Connect with her on Twitter @shaylaprice.

9 Ways For Marketers To Do Amazing Technical Things Without Knowing Code

As a marketer, you are always looking to do more with less. You may get the sense that technology can help you do better and you're right. Follow along as I explain exactly how you can harness this force without writing a single line of code.

1. Do A/B Split Tests and Personalization You've probably heard of all the merits of A/B split testing and of being data-driven, but how can you implement these different tests on each of your pages without consulting the tech team?

It's easy enough with solutions like Visual Website Optimizer and Optimizely that allow you to drag and drop your changes across the website by simply copy and pasting a snippet of code across your website (or getting somebody technical to help you do that). Both tools allow you to customize your website for different types of visitors, and they'll allow you to run controlled experiments to see which variations of your web pages perform best.

Optimizely allows you to drag and drop different variations of your web page without any code.

2. Build Landing Pages

Maybe you don't want to optimize your website – you want to build some new pages. Maybe it's a new campaign announcing a new product launch, or maybe you're running an event you want to collect an email waiting list for. Whatever it is, you'll need a web page that describes what you're doing, a landing page. Thankfully, you don't have to build anything in HTML or CSS. You can use drag and drop editors in Unbounce or, if you're really looking to maximize conversion, marketing-based solutions like Leadpages.

3. Build Entire Websites

Don't want to stop at just building a web page? Maybe you want to look to build an entire website for a new product. Thankfully, you don't have to call a web agency to do everything for you at a high price! You can use solutions like Squarespace or Wix to build everything in your website without a line of code. And if you want to get even more customized, grab a theme from Themeforest and learn the basics of WordPress! You'll soon be building beautiful websites with layers of personalized complexity–without a line of code.

4. Scrape Links, Content and More with Python (but use with caution!)

By downloading Anaconda and using the iPython Notebook contained within, you can use Python scripts and copy + paste the outputs.

The easiest and most powerful use of this is to take links and data from other websites. Be careful though, a lot of websites will have terms of use that prohibit the use of their content. Nevertheless, it might be a good tool to use to get raw data, or to get useful links that point to certain resources. You might, for example, want to get all of the links of your competitors profiled in a certain blog post, or you might want to get all of the links of different services in a directory.

This script above will take all the links from a sample page (in this case the Wikipedia page for the Python language)

Here's the raw script you can copy + paste in Python 3.5 mode:

from bs4 import BeautifulSoup

import requests

r = requests.get(“https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Python_(programming_language)”)

soup = BeautifulSoup(r.text,”lxml”)

for link in soup.find_all('a'):

print(link.get('href'))

5. Send Newsletters and Automate Emails

Email is one of the most effective marketing channels out there, and the best for return on investment. If you can get people coming back by filling their inbox with valuable information, you've reached marketing nirvana.

Instead of doing all the messy work coding up HTML-rich emails, you can use the drag & drop and email list capabilities of MailChimp. If you want to automate emails a layer beyond, and take people through an in-depth series of automated emails, you could use a solution like Drip.

6. Get Data

Ever needed to take a quick look at certain data, like the demographic traits of a certain country? Need to source the latest financial data? Look no further than Quandl. You'll be able to find all sorts of data, from the average age of first marriage for women to life expectancy at birth. Best of all, you can export that data directly in Excel, stepping away from all of the code if you needed.

7. Filter Through Data

Most people think of Google Apps as a great way to collaborate with others, but they don't know about the full power of this suite of tools. Google built a way for you to add layers of functionality on top of their powerful software, allowing you to do so much more with different types of data. Best of all, you can copy + paste pre-made scripts and benefit from the effects without being technical!

Check to see if your website is online or save all tweets that match a certain hashtag to a spreadsheet. You can do that or a variety of other tasks through scripts that will save you time and money.

Use these scripts for good, not evil.

8. Building Popups and Other Interactive Elements on a Website

Sometimes, you want to add an additional layer of interactivity to a website, whether it's a popup to highlight a brand new feature, or a walkthrough that will help guide users. Thankfully, with tools like Engage and HelloBar you can add different modals or elements to your website that can help you collect emails, direct traffic elsewhere, or dictate what users should look at in a web page.

9. Dig Deeper into Websites, and See How Your Website Looks in mobile

Most people don't know about the handy Google Chrome Inspector or its equivalent Firebug on Firefox. While most of the time it is used by developers to spot errors or mock up certain changes in the code, you can use the Inspector to check into the exact URLs of images, and how your website displays on different screen sizes, from iPhones to tablets.

The responsive design tool in these inspector tools will allow you to simulate what your website looks like from device-to-device, a crucial need to see if your website is mobile-friendly. This is a factor that's critically important for websites with mobile traffic, and one that Google uses to rank webpages.

Conclusion

By harnessing technology, you'll be at the cutting-edge of digital marketing. You won't even need to learn how to code to get an awesome array of new powers. Save yourself time and money, and make sure you use your new capabilities for good!

About the Author: Roger is a digital marketer who self-taught himself to code but recognizes when code is useful and when it isn't. He manages Growth for edtech company Springboard, and will often write about new technologies at his own personal blog code(love). You can find him on Twitter.

Are You Handicapping Your Conversion Rate?

As humans, we tend to believe that if we like something, it must have value-how else do you explain our obsession with celebrities?

I mean, I've never met Tom Brady, but he's one of my favorite athletes…so he must be a good guy, right?

Unfortunately, this sort of thinking doesn't end with pro athletes or TV stars. As online marketers, we make a lot of assumptions about how certain website elements affect our conversion rates.

After all, if we like a certain page element or approach to site design, then everyone else must like it too, right?

If only that were true…

The fact of the matter is, you are not your target audience. So, even if you love your sidebar and hate your developer's favorite widget, you really have no idea how either of those site elements are affecting your conversion rate.

But, the good news is that with a few simple tests, you can easily discover how different elements on your site help or hinder your conversion rate.

Much Ado About Nothing?

Eliminating website elements allows you to get a good feel for how those elements are affecting the performance of your site.

In a lot of ways, it's like comparing Tom Brady's performance with deflated balls to his performance without deflated balls.

If Tom only wins Superbowls when he plays with deflated balls, that must be a big contributor to his performance. On the other hand, if he still wins without the deflated balls, air pressure probably doesn't affect his throwing ability much.

The same idea applies to your website.

If you remove an element and your conversion rate goes up, that element was probably hurting your conversion rate. If your conversion rate goes down, that element was probably helping your conversion rate.

Simple enough, right?

It may be a simple idea, but it's one that can make a big difference to your business.

For example, EA got rid of the promo banner on their SimCity microsite and improved their purchase rate by 43%. Impact deleted their sidebar and their conversion rate went up 71%.

It's easy to fall into the trap of believing that what we like, everyone likes. But, if you aren't testing your site elements, you may very well be doggedly hanging on to an element that is ruining your conversion rate.

How to Determine the Value of Your Site Elements

If you really want to know how specific site elements affect your conversion rate, there are two easy places to start: your pages and the elements on those pages.

Which Pages Do You Really Need?

One of the simplest things you can test on your site is how your homepage affects your conversion rate. Is your homepage an important part of your conversion process? Or does it distract and frustrate your site visitors?

To test this, all you have to do is send traffic to another page.

In fact, most companies do this without even realizing it when they send campaign traffic to landing pages…instead of their home page.

Essentially, when you send traffic to a landing page, you're running an A/B test. The homepage is your control and the landing page is your variant.

In general, a good landing page that matches the messaging of the marketing that brought someone to your page will convert better than your homepage. However, this isn't always the case.

For some companies, their homepage is actually an important part of their conversion funnel.

For example, we had a client who wanted to send traffic to two landing pages (each one was focused on a different product) to see which one performed the best. Out of curiosity, we also threw in the homepage for comparison's sake.

To our surprise, the homepage won.

As it turned out, this client's customers were actually interested in both products and a variety of our client's other products. Since the homepage featured all of those products, potential customers didn't want a product-specific landing page-they wanted the homepage.

For this client, the homepage was a key part of their conversion process.

Simply adding or eliminating pages from your customer journey can be a great way to determine how different pages are contributing to your conversion rate. It's simple, easy and it can teach you a lot about your audience.

Which Parts of Your Page/Site Matter?

Once you've identified how your pages are affecting your conversion rate, you can start looking at the specific elements on those pages.

For example, for one of our clients, we removed the sliding promotion header from their eCommerce site. As a result, their revenue-per-visitor increased by 25%. Similarly, when we nixed their navigation sidebar, their monthly revenue increased by 19%.

Together, eliminating these pet design elements increased their yearly profits by $2 million!

To set up a test like this, you'll want to build a second version of your page that is identical to your current page-with one exception. Your new page won't have the page element you are evaluating.

Typically, this is pretty easy. Just duplicate the page you want to test and then go in and delete the part of the page that you want to test. In some cases, though, this can mess up other parts of the page, so be sure to proofread your new page before you start your test.

As an added bonus, you can use what you learn from eliminating page elements to come up with further testing ideas.

For example, if you know that a page element on one page is hurting your conversion rate, you can try eliminating it from other pages too. Alternatively, you can try tweaking or replacing the element to see if you can get it to perform better.

On the other hand, if a specific part of your page is really boosting your conversion rate, you may want to replicate that element across your site. You can also try to milk even more from high-performing elements by tweaking things like copy, color, size, imagery or location.

Regardless of how you use your findings, eliminating page elements can teach you a lot about what your audience really wants from your site.

Conclusion

No matter how much you might like a particular page or page element, what really matters is how those aspects of your site affect your traffic.

Unfortunately, if you don't test your specific site elements, you'll never know whether or not they are helping or hurting your conversion rates.

However, by simply eliminating specific site elements, you can very easily discover what your target market values on your site and what they hate. And, once you know what your audience values, you can make sure your website delivers exactly what your potential customers want.

You've heard my two cents, now I want to hear yours.

How do you feel about this approach to website optimization? Are there additional factors that should be considered in this analysis? Is this something you've tried or would consider trying?

About the Author: Jacob Baadsgaard is the CEO and fearless leader of Disruptive Advertising, an online marketing agency dedicated to using PPC advertising and website optimization to drive sales. His face is as big as his heart and he loves to help businesses achieve their online potential. Connect with him on LinkedIn or Twitter.

Two Birds, One Stone: How To Increase Conversions While Building Your Brand with UX

Every digital business wants to build a brand that attracts more customers, converts them, and turns people into brand advocates. Unfortunately, not all websites and apps persuade people to become customers, let alone brand advocates.

That's where the hot trends Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO) and User Experience (UX) Optimization come in. CRO is closely tied to attracting new customers, while UX Optimization is closely tied to creating a more human experience that engages people with a brand.

I imagine you're feeling a bit like Alice…tumbling down the rabbit hole?

Both CRO and UXO can and should be done in conjunction. Without one, the other suffers. Great CRO by itself is useful to convert more people, but if the experience suffers then people quickly abandon your product, leave a bad review, and will definitely not recommend you. On the other hand, a great UX by itself might build some loyal brand advocates, but growth will be snail slow until you hit a critical mass of users.

With that being said, it's time for us to jump in and learn how to harmoniously apply both CRO and UX Optimization together.

The Importance of UX Prep before Conversion Rate Optimization

Let's talk about the effect of great user experience design on branding. Brands like Uber, Kleenex, and even the infamous Blackbeard are very easy to recognize. Why? They understood the importance of creating a lasting impression. This lasting impression, or brand success, is widespread and as a result, their business potential is nearly unlimited.

The reason why these entities became recognizable brands is because of great products, great service, and people enjoy talking about them. Since people trust their friends and families most, it is word-of-mouth marketing that can be one of the most powerful marketing methods. If you hear it from a friend, you're more likely to try it. And when you hear it from many friends, you become keenly aware of a brand. In today's competitive marketplace, it is listening to customers and thoughtful user experience design that pushes companies to the branding level.

Where does brand building start? And how?

Brand building starts day 1, when you start to think about how your product or service will benefit people, and continues for as long as you are in business. This way of thinking is the core of UX.

Customers Pave the Way

So how do we get started with user experience? And what about conversion rate optimization? Well the fact of the matter is that without some basic understanding of how people use your digital product, CRO techniques are taking a stab in the dark, and are likely a waste of time and budget. What's the point of optimizing a web page or a flow of actions if they are fundamentally broken, confusing and frustrating people? Before focusing on conversion optimization, it's important to understand what people need so that we can then optimize it. There's two ways to apply user experience thinking so we can then learn what to optimize. The first way is to have an expert catch “low-hanging fruit” issues, and the second is to gather customer feedback.

Applying What We Already Know

Luckily for us, the psychological science behind user experience is nearly 80 years old (originating during World War II!), which means there is a wealth of knowledge about how people think and act with computers and interfaces. By using this knowledge, a UX expert can fix many of the “low-hanging fruit” problems with a website or application, even before it is launched to the public! When an expert runs through an interface to find issues and suggest quick interface wins, this is called a user experience Review, or UX Review. The findings of the review are built into a report that ranks solutions in terms of severity and priority, so that developers know what is most important.

To get your own UX Review, there are a variety of agencies and freelancers who are a Google search away, or who can be found on freelance websites such as UpWork. For a quality report, it will cost you anywhere between $250 and a few thousand dollars, depending the complexity of your website or app, and how extensive the review is. Generally, the more extensive the review, the more costly it will be.

Applying Research Tailored to a Specific Product

The second way to apply user experience is to actually get customer feedback. And I'm not talking about A/B tests, but actual live tests or discussions with actual customers, called usability testing.

The best part about customer feedback is that it might lead to BIG changes in the right direction. After speaking with 3-5 customers, we might find out that people aren't clicking that call-to-action because the website has major trust issues, beyond something we can resolve with simple copy or CTA changes. Or we might test 3-5 customers on our application, and find out that people don't understand the value of the product, because it isn't what people are used to.

It's not the people, it's the product! Make sure to fix all of those low-hanging fruit issues and test with real people before thinking about conversion optimization techniques.

CRO: What You Should Know

Now that we've first covered our bases with user experience research, it's the perfect time for conversion rate optimization! With a better understanding of our customers, and with an interface better designed for people, we can focus on converting more people into happy customers. Conversion optimization is also a big part of branding, because first impressions count.

Let's talk about some of the basic tools and techniques of CRO, and the effect of CRO on branding. The first tool of any CRO expert's arsenal is analytics. With analytics, we can gain useful insights about how people first interact with our brand. Are the majority of people leaving quickly? Are they willing to provide their email address and continue the conversation? Are they exploring the website or app store to learn more? Most of us know about negative conversion metrics (bounce rate, low time on page, etc), and thinking of these as a first impression with our brand will allow us to come up with great solutions.

Once you pinpoint drop-off points and areas with low engagement, conversion optimization focuses on A/B testing copy, imagery, call to actions, and the value proposition to determine which combinations lead to the highest conversions. The goal is to create more compelling content, and a seamless flow, to encourage more people to open up a conversation with the company (conversion).

We won't dive too deep into the actual tools and techniques of CRO, as that is widely covered on the Kissmetrics blog and around the net. Here is a list of common CRO tools, and here is a list of common CRO techniques to use with those tools.

UX Optimization: What You Should Know

With CRO successfully underway, it's time to revisit UX. User experience Optimization focuses on improving engagement metrics such as active users, frequency of use, number of shares, churn, repeat purchases, perceived ease of use, etc. It's important to define what engagement metrics are key to growing business in the short-term, and the long-term. User experience experts can then work with customers to research and design digital products that create the emotional and behavioral responses that fit customer needs AND improve the target business metrics.

So what UX techniques are important to improve customer engagement? Similar to CRO, UX Optimization should start with Analytics, taking a look at key pages and action flows to see where engagement metrics are low. Most companies have some form of analytics set up. We can either ask for access to take a look ourselves, or request reports of key metrics for an important time period. Some of the standard analytics tools include: Google Analytics for websites, Google Analytics for mobile apps, and Kissmetrics for SaaS applications.

In the analytics tool, we'll want to look for acquisition, behavior, and flow data. Acquisition is conversion information about how people arrive at a website or application. Behavior includes engagement information such as bounce rates, time on task, downloads, active users, frequency of use, etc. Flow data maps out the typical flow of pages that people common access, such as home page -> product -> cart -> purchase. Each company has different metrics that they prioritize, along with a goal to reach (such as less than 50% bounce rate). Find out what pages and flows are underperforming, and you've found potential problem areas!

With a general idea of problem areas, we can conduct a thorough expert UX Reviews to identify low-hanging fruit, and conduct usability tests to pinpoint usability issues and customer frustrations that are often overlooked in an expert UX Review alone. With basic issues fixed, we can build rapid prototypes to test engagement metrics against current designs, which is somewhat similar to A/B testing during CRO.

To conduct your own UX Review, there are many free UX checklists available that cover common principles, best practices, and recent trends. Some of the most important principles today include:

• Persuasive design


• Color psychology


• Usability.gov's extensive guidelines


• Nielsen's usability heuristics


• Fitts' Law


• Navigation best practices


• User onboarding


• Social proof


• Trust & credibility


• Gradual engagement


• The power of human faces in imagery


• Gamification


• Conversion optimization


• Engagement optimization

An expert review is an important part of the UX optimization process. It can be done quickly and affordably, and catches both major and minor issues that can be fixed quickly.

Well that was obvious, how did we miss this one?

When it comes to usability testing, there are a wide variety of remote usability testing tools, and laboratory tools (Morae is the most common lab tool) that we can use to measure engagement metrics.

Some tools such as UserTesting and Validately allow you to recruit test participants directly from their pool of testers. However, if the demographics of the testers don't fit your customers, you can recruit participants with a tool like User Interviews. The beautiful thing about usability testing is that we are able see how people actually use our digital product, as opposed to only analyzing metrics. Sometimes the best design solutions are discovered when watching people in action (NOT focus groups)!

Usability testing also reveals what's really important to customers, so your CRO experts can offer people better products, services, and promotions (and a custom bonus or gift to customers might be more profitable than a straight discount offer)!

You've discovered customer values from UX testing. So what value can you offer them, besides JUST a massive discount?

After the UX Review and usability tests pinpoint interface improvements, it's time to build a rapid prototype to test to see if the improvements increase our key engagement metrics. Tools such as Axure and UXPin make rapid prototyping easy. Once our prototype is set up and ready to go, it's time to set up another set of usability tests and compare engagement metrics with the prototype to those with the current live version of our digital product. If the design changes offer an improvement, implement them!

Marrying CRO and UXO

CRO and UX Optimization have great synergy together.

As more people convert to customers, it's important that customers stay engaged with the digital product. Engagement comes in many forms: more active hours using the digital product, downloading and sharing content, visiting/logging in more frequency, referring people (colleagues, friends, and family), completing tasks seamlessly, and more.

The better these “metrics”, the stronger the relationship between the company and the customer, the closer a company comes to building a brand relationship with people. And as more people get to know a company brand, the more diverse the conversion funnels become! A larger company has a larger audience, and must continuously grow to meet wider needs.

CRO and UX Optimization are meant to be together

Takeaway: Conversions Don't Always Lead to Engagement, and Vice Versa. Think Big. Think Branding.

CRO and UX Optimization are the twin pillars upon which a company's branding rests… CRO and UXO experts working together will push a digital product leaps and bounds beyond what either one can do alone. Both are equally important in the early stages of a startup, to help convert more customers and ensure the experience is as intuitive and seamless as possible. As a company grows, both have a strong impact on the company's branding through first impressions, conversions, engagement, and word of mouth marketing.

So the formal user experience and conversion rate optimization process is:

1. Understand customers first via customer feedback.


2. Optimize low-hanging fruit with a UX Review before spending budget on optimization.


3. Optimize conversions, to attract customers.


4. Optimize engagement, to retain customers.


5. Rinse and repeat until your company creates a lasting impression on the world.

If a company follows this process from day 1, they will enjoy more conversions, build brand advocates, create an experience that people find useful, build something people remember, and create something that people will share.

With that, I'll leave you to share this article with your colleagues, friends, and family ;) I hope it was insightful and fun to read!

About the Author: Ryan O'Connor (Ryan's LinkedIn), the co-founder of GobySavvy, is on a mission to help companies discover the balance between creating delightful digital user experiences while achieving business goals. He created the GobySavvy UX Optimization blog to discuss hot trends in conversion and engagement focused design.

How One SaaS Company Increased Demo Signups by 19.22% With a Product Wizard “Quiz”

Are you struggling to get more people to sign up for your product demos?

If you are, you may want to take a cue from the grocery industry. Here's why…

Giving away a free sample can increase sales up to 2,000%, as it did for Marsh Supermarkets. In fact, 68% of their customers said it persuaded them to make a purchase.

A 2011 study by Carrie Heilman found that free samples can encourage someone to switch from their planned product purchase to the promoted product. It was found to “draw” people in and encourage a sale if they didn't have previous plans.

But to get prospects to bite on these offers, you have to make it as easy and compelling as possible for the user to say “yes.”

That's why quizzes are an incredibly powerful way of generating leads. In a recent example, the Worth Global Style Network used a “What's your customer type?” quiz to generate 243 leads with just 1,415 visits.

We did this ourselves with a product wizard quiz and increased our client's demo sign up conversion rate by 19.22%.

In this article, you'll learn exactly how we did it and how you can use a quiz to achieve similar results for your product.

The Problem: Product Line Expansion Caused Confusion

Our client, a B2B software company, had recently acquired a competitor in their industry. This acquisition expanded our client's product line from one to three.

This shift caused a huge brand confusion issue. Specifically, customers and prospects familiar with the old product weren't familiar with the new ones.

From the new options being presented to them, the client's prospects were confused on which product was right for them. To make matters worse, the product options weren't exactly easy to explain, causing users even more confusion.

These were the different choices users had to pick from. As you can tell, it's not exactly as simple as choosing an ice cream flavor!

As you can see, users had to decipher the vague wall of text above to figure out which option was right for them.

Here's the bottom line:

Potential customers were abandoning the demo sign up and not taking action because they were confused.

This begged the question: how can we clarify these options for users to reduce confusion, boost demo signups, and drive more sales?

The Solution: A Product Wizard Quiz!

We decided to make the demo sign up experience more intuitive (and enjoyable) for the user by guiding them to the option that was the best fit.

To accomplish this, we created a product wizard to ask users a series of questions that would help them figure out which product was right. As an added bonus, it allowed the user to give us information in a fun way, almost like a game.

This was the first version of the product wizard quiz. It was a clean, simple quiz to help the customer decide which product was best.

At the end of the quiz, the user was offered a free demo version of the right product based on the responses they provided.

As a finishing touch, we removed the names of the products at the end of the quiz to sidestep the brand confusion issue.

The Results: Better Customer Satisfaction, Less Confusion, and More Demo Signups

Our usability testing showed that users found the quiz to be easier to understand and use. The clean progress bar helped as well, propelling users through a clear sequence of steps.

Even better, we achieved a 17.39% uplift in total demos signups and a 19.22% uplift in the overall demo conversion rate.

Not bad - but we weren't satisfied. We knew that through a little bit of testing and tweaking, we could potentially achieve even better results.

So we aimed to improve on the original with a second version of the quiz. Here are a few of the key points we tested:

• “Smart” Quiz Options: Version 2 of the quiz gathered data from previous user answers so they would have to fill out fewer form fields at the end of the quiz. We were ultimately able to remove four form fields, using the “smart” functionality to input data the user had already provided. (Pro-tip: You can also get the form to pull in data dynamically through the user's IP. Examples include the user's state and country information.)

The quiz gives options to choose from based on the user's previous answers.

• Embedded Forms: In Version 1, the wizard redirected users to a separate page to sign up for the demo. This added extra load time, which increased the chance of users abandoning after being pushed to that page. Instead, we embedded a form directly into the last step of the product wizard quiz.

This was the last page of the second version of the product wizard quiz. Based on previously input data, there were fewer form fields to fill out at the end.

With Version 2, we saw another healthy increase in performance. Overall, the conversion rate of demos increased by 14% and demo submissions increased by 27%.

Conclusion

If there's any chance your customer is confused by your product offerings, a product wizard quiz could be the solution you're looking for.

If fact, if you're looking to segment your audience in any way, a quiz may very well be the perfect tool for you to test.

Here's why:

• It provides an immediate value proposition and clear path to solving your user's problem.


• Users get a chance find out exactly which of your solutions work best for their unique situation.


• It removes distraction and makes it clear what the user's next action step is.


• It helps and delights your audience, which is what you should always strive for.


• It makes your users even more inclined to sign up for your demo.


• It leads prospects to buying a conclusion rather than telling them what to buy - a powerful strategy that's also more honest and ethical.

The truth is, your users don't want to do any extra work. They want you to tell them what's best.

This isn't new advice - Companies have been using quizzes to great effect in SaaS and other industries for years. But we hope this article has shed some light on how you go about implementing quizzes on your website to boost your SaaS conversions.

If you're ready to build a quiz for your site, it's easier than you might think. For instance, we had our own developers create a product wizard without much trouble. And even if you don't have developers, there are plenty of “plug-n-play” services out there that can do this for you, such as:

• LeadQuizzes


• Qzzr


• Interact

So, what are you waiting for? Try this tactic out for yourself & let us know what you think!

What obstacles have you had in your journey to boost demo signups? Have you tested quizzes as a conversion tactic and if so, what were the results? Let us know in the comments and we'd be happy to help.

About the Author: Will Chou is a digital strategist at WebMechanix, a digital marketing agency specializing in AdWords PPC marketing and focused on providing real business results. Get a free case study as a gift: How a Healthcare Company Tripled Paid Search ROI in Three Months.