[Build Backlinks Online] A Product-Based Approach to CRO

Build Backlinks Online has posted a new item, 'A Product-Based Approach to CRO'

Posted by CraigBradford
Before joining the world of digital marketing, I was a product design engineer.
Most of my clients at Distilled are now CRO projects and I've found my
background to be surprisingly useful. There's a lot of overlap between designing
physical products and designing websites that convert well. I'd like to share
some of the research methods that I use for CRO that I learned while designing
physical products. I like to use a framework of Learn, Look, Ask, and Try.

I first came across this while at university. It's the design research methods
used by
IDEO. They released this as a pack of playing cards. In their own words:
"IDEO Method Cards show 51 of the methods we use to inspire great design and
keep people at the center of our design process."
There are 51 cards each with a research method that belongs to one of the above
categories. The cards have since been made into an app. I find it useful when
trying to come up with new ways to get customer insights. You can download the
app
here.

Design methods in the learn section are about analyzing the information you've
collected to identify patterns and insights. One you might not have heard of is
error analysis.Error analysis
In simple terms you can think of error analysis as going around your site and
saying "what happens if I do that?" In product design you might hear this called
failure mode effects analysis (FMEA).
"Failure modes" means the ways, or modes, in which something might fail.
Failures are any errors or defects, especially ones that affect the customer.
"
Effects analysis" refers to studying the consequences of those failures.
While a lot of FMEA is overkill for designing a website (hopefully nobody is
going to die if they click the wrong button) I think the principles can be used
to help proactively find faults. Every website is different so you'll need to
think of your own scenarios but here are some to get you started:What if I use
my email instead of username to login?
What if I press the back button in the checkout funnel?
What if I need a refund?
What if I want to get the product delivered to my work address?
What If I order the wrong product?
You can see that these potential errors can be a mix of usability and customer
service. The point is to be proactive and anticipate what could go wrong. You
can then fix true errors (things that are just broken) or put processes in place
to ensure mistakes can be fixed easily when they do go wrong.
Extra tip
Google analytics has a great report that can help you find some of the most
common errors or problems. Look at the reverse goal path report and pick a goal
(for example people reaching the thank you page).
The report will then show you the most common routes that people take on their
way to that page. The image below shows this report on one of my client's sites.
I've had to blank a lot out for privacy reasons, but the point can still be
seen: Out of the top 10 routes to the thank-you page,4 included people visiting
the terms and conditions page, and
2 included people visiting the FAQ page.
What are they looking for? If we can find out, we can make that information
clearer and hopefully stop them having to go to those pages. Which brings me to
my next section:

The "Ask" section is pretty simple; it's about asking people to explicitly tell
you what they do or do not like.
For the terms and conditions example above, the solution is an easy onelive
surveys. I'm sure everyone has heard of
Quaraloo by now so I'm not going into detail on this. The solution is to ask
people that leave the funnel via the T+C page what information they're looking
for using Quaraloo. Once we find out the reason, we can add that information to
the pages leading up to the conversion and hopefully reduce anxiety and
distractions leading up to the purchase.
The real research method I want to talk about for this section is extreme user
interviews.Extreme interviews
Any golfers reading?If so, you'll recognise the image below as the famous Big
Bertha.

Source
Big Bertha is one of the bestselling drivers, so how did Callaway come up with
the design? They did it by focusing on a particular demographic. While
competitors were all focused on asking
golf players what they wanted, Callaway focused on a different set of users.
They surveyed non-golfers. More specifically they wanted to know why people who
loved sports, could afford to play and already belonged to country clubs chose
not to play. In other words, why do people whom on paper should like and play
golf choose not to?
By interviewing lots of people who fit that criterion, they were able to find
the answer. People don't want to feel embarrassed. If you've ever tried golf
you'll relate to how frustrating and embarrassing the first couple of years are,
especially if you're used to being good at other sports. This is where Callaway
gained their insight and competitive advantage.
It turns out that consistently making contact with the face of a small driver
is hard, really hard. If you fail, the ball can end up anywhere. Callaway
decided to focus on the need of these people (people that should play but don't)
by designing a driver that had a massive club head and huge face. The result was
it was much easier for beginners to hit the ball and avoid embarrassment of
constantly losing the ball. To this day Big Bertha is one of the most successful
drivers on the market.
So how do we use this for CRO? Extreme interviews? Instead of just surveying
the people that do buy from you, or that are familiar with your brand, survey
two groups of users.Experts:Repeat buyers or people that are familiar with your
brand
Novices:People that have never been to your website but that at least understand
what your product or service does.
The hard thing about this is recruiting these people. You can't just ask
members of the public; you need to ask people that are on your site. A tool I
like to use for this is
Ethn.io.
Ethn.io lets you recruit users for user testing and pre-qualify them. For
example, in the above you can create a popup that looks something like this:

Image source
You can then ask users a qualifying question and group them appropriately.
Fly on the wall
Your customers are liars. Harsh, but true. Even in the extreme interviews
technique you might not get the right insights that you're looking for. If you
ask people why they don't convert, they might not be able to tell you. There are
two reasons for this:The reasons are subconscious so they actually don't know
the answer.
They don't want to tell you for fear of embarrassment.
That's why using the techniques in the look category is a great idea.
Here's a scenario. Imagine for a second you gave someone this:

Source
If you were to ask someone how they would open this package, you'd likely get a
sensible answer like "I'd use scissors", but as soon as you leave the room and
they don't think you're looking, you're likely to see something like the scene
below:

Source
If you've ever tried to open one of those blister packs, you'll know how
annoying they can be to get into. They've led to the
many injuries and the emergence of the term "wrap rage".
Anyway, the point I'm trying to make is you can't always trust your users to
tell you all of the reasons they don't do the things you want them to.
In the offline world, designers use a technique called "fly on the wall". This
involves watching people in the environment or using the product that you're
trying to design. Sometimes the subject is aware that you're watching them
(shadowing), other times (ideally) they're not (fly on the wall). Watch this
scene from Madmen and you'll get the picture:




So how do we do this in the digital world? We can't sit over everyone's
shoulders as they use your website, but there are some tools that come close.
Both of which I'm sure you've heard of.
Shadowing: Usertesting.com
I like usertesting.com but my one complaint is the sample of users is unlikely
to be representative of your customers. Even if you select the options like low
level of internet experiencethe fact they are on a UX testing website already
puts them above the average internet user. They're also not your customers. One
way around this is to combine Ethnio with uerstesting.com. Recruit real users
then set them tasks using usertesting.com or just watch them live using some
kind of screen sharing tool.
Fly-on-the-wall: Clicktale
Clicktale might be above many peoples' budget, but if you can afford it I'd
recommend it. Clicktale records anonymous sessions on your website. Obviously it
would take a long time to watch all sessions, but you can segment by things like
location, browser, or even sessions that had errors. Using these tools you can
dig into why certain segments of traffic may not be converting as well.
Another tool that I've heard of, but not personally tried, is
http://www.uxcam.com/ It's like Clicktale but with a specializationin mobile
usability testing. I spoke to the founder at one of our meetups about a month
ago and was impressed by the features. It's also still in beta so it's free at
the moment if you want to give it a try.
Empathy tools
As a product designer, your most powerful tool is empathy. If you can empathize
with your customers and understand what they really want, you'll create great
products. The best way to empathize with your customers is to do what they dotry
it.
In the offline world, product designers go to great lengths to understand
users. For example, when designers are creating a product where the primary
audience is the elderly, they might use empathy tools like those shown below:

The image above is a picture of me with coins strapped to the back of my
knuckles. This can be used to simulate the limited dexterity that can come as a
result of arthritis.

Source
The designers in the image above strapped up their legs using a kind of split.
Again, this one done to simulate reduced mobility when trying to climb stairs.
Finally and probably the one that could most easily be applied to the online
world is a pair of empathy glasses. These can come in various types depending on
the condition you want to simulate. If you want to get an idea of how various
eye conditions can affect vision, look at the side-by-side comparison of healthy
eyes to advanced stages of cataracts and glaucoma below. You can see the tools
here:
Cataract simulator, Glaucoma simulator.
Cataract simulation

Glaucoma simulation

So if you're not designing a website for the elderly, can you still use this
technique? Absolutely. I like to use "scenario empathy." This works by enforcing
criteria on your users under test conditions, the most popular being a mix
of:Time: You have six minutes to book a flight to London. GO!
Money: Find the best product X for under $50.
Product criteria: Find me a hotel that has a spa and is dog-friendly.
Technology restrictions: You're on a mobile with a slow edge connection.
You can then mix any of the above to create powerful scenario simulation. If
you can make someone that's short on time, has a low budget, really specific
requirements and a slow connection happy, chances are the rest of your customers
will also be happy.
That's it.
In summary, there's a lotof research techniques out there that can give you
excellent insights about why your customers aren't converting. Try them
out;don't just stick to the same techniques that you see on CRO blogs all the
time.
For more ideas, take a look at the presentation I gave a few weeks ago at our
meetup. Also, for those in the UK, I'll be presenting on a similar topic at
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