What are Your Visitors Thinking When They Should be Clicking?

What if you could read the minds of your visitors? Why they didn’t convert, what confused them in your campaign message?

Finding a Reason to Change

Landing page optimization is an exercise undertaken based on a desire to make your pages convert better. The changes you make are typically based on either a new idea, or the result of an expert critique. Rarely is it in direct response to customer input.

Seems like a great opportunity is being missed here…

Using Feedback for Landing Page Optimization

The simplest way to find out why your page isn’t converting is to just come right out and ask.

There are a couple of cool products out there that let you do this, either via a survey or live chat.

  • KISSinsights: This is a survey tool that pops up after a customizable period of time and asks your visitor a question (or multiple questions) about the page. This is great for reporting purposes as you have a finite set of questions, allowing you to gauge changes in sentiment over time (assuming you add positive and negative answers to your question).
  • SnapABug: This is a live chat tool with several interaction modes. It can popup with a question after a pre-determined time, to prompt the visitor into having a discussion. Or it can be user activated via a “help” label at the tide of the page. Great for SaaS pricing pages or a landing page that involves a purchasing decision, as you can be there to answer questions in real-time and help nudge people towards a sale. Has the ability to send a screenshot of the page to you, which is awesome for debugging issues (such as cross-browser CSS bugs).
  • Olark: This is another live chat tool with a great client list. Like SnapAbug, it lets you chat in real time using most common instant messaging apps including Google Talk. They have a great feature called ChatLinks that gives you the functionality without having to embed any code on your site.

The Effect on User Experience

Both interaction methods (survey and live chat) could be considered interruption devices, and as such they may infuriate some people. The question is, what is the impact on your brand and user experience worth? From using these tools on unbounce.com, we’ve noticed a few things:

  • Some people hate it: I’ve seen the occasional rant about “those annoying widgets”. How seriously should you take this type of negative feedback? Very, if you are seeing a lot of it. So far my experience is showing only occasional negative reaction.
  • Some people love the personal touch: When people have a genuine problem, the instant connection to a real person (with live chat) can leave a very positive impression with the visitor. Especially when you get to talk to the CEO (being a startup, we all rotate interacting with the feedback tools).
  • Lots of people asked us what the tool was: I’ve had a ton of people say they love the interaction and want to know what software it is. Great word of mouth marketing.
  • It can be really entertaining: With survey tools like KISSinsights the feedback is anonymous, resulting in some hilarious responses. Reading a blistering rant or drunken review can be great for some light relief and always gets a laugh around the office. You’ll be surprised at how candid people are when they have that shield of anonymity. A couple of choice outtakes for you:

    In response to the question: “Do you understand our pricing?”

    The cow talked to me once but I didn’t understand what he said.

    soooo confusing dudes! you need some monkeys in there! Pick a plan – screw that – pick a banana!!!

Get In – Get Feedback – Get Out

To maximize the effectiveness of your feedback loop, don’t leave it active indefinitely. Turn it on for a test group (for example: only hit up 10% of your email list), ask some questions to gather feedback, update the page to address any major issues, then take the feedback widget down again. This way 90% of your potential visitors will benefit from an improved conversion experience, and you’ll enjoy a more successful campaign as a result.

Adding feedback mechanisms to a landing page

Adding this type of tool to a website is typical, but it’s a fairly new concept to add them to a promotion-specific standalone landing page. I’m excited to see what the results turn out to be, and I’m pretty optimistic that it will prove to be a valuable conversion aid. As such, I just whipped up a video to show how you can add a KISSinsights widget to an @Unbounce landing page. Check it out, and watch out for the cop car coming to get me near the end of the video :)

What do you think?

What are you thoughts on these feedback mechanisms? Is it an acceptable level of interruption? Is it a genius way to feed input into your optimization efforts? Let me know in the comments…

Oli Gardner

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About Oli Gardner
Unbounce co-founder Oli Gardner has seen more landing pages than anyone on the planet. He’s obsessed with identifying and reversing bad marketing practices, and his disdain for marketers who send campaign traffic to their homepage is legendary, resulting in landing page rants that can peel paint off an unpainted wall. A prolific international keynote speaker, Oli is on a mission to rid the world of marketing mediocrity by using data-informed copywriting, design, interaction, and psychology to create a more delightful experience for marketers and customers alike. He was recently named the "The 2018 Marketer to Watch," in the under 46 category, by his mother.
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