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How Does Customer Anxiety Impact Conversion?
As we continually test and tune our sites, significant gains get more
and more difficult to achieve. Often we, as marketers, become focused
on a small set of site attributes, such as a banner or button design,
and satisfy ourselves with moderate incremental gains. It is the case
however, that much greater gains are possible by recognizing the
preconceptions and visual prejudices of customer prospects and match
our sites to them in order to reduce purchase-related anxiety.
MEC Labs has identified five essential elements to website conversion,
which are brought together in the MEC Conversion Formula. Attention to
each element is necessary for optimal performance. In this brief, we
identify eight key ways to increase site conversion by reducing
customer anxiety.
:: Case Study #1
Company: A diversified company offering online people-
search/background-check services.
Problem: How to increase conversion of an already well-optimized
site.
Background: The online people-search/background-check company’s
home page design was already well optimized from many
prior tests of key conversion elements. Analysis of
recent test results, combined with other site activity
and competitive analysis data suggested that customer
anxiety related to the look-and-feel of the site might
be a significant factor.
Objective: To increase conversion by reducing customer anxiety
through matching the look and feel of the site to
prospects’ industry-specific expectations and visual
prejudices.
Here is what the top of the original page looked like:
http://www.marketingexperiments.com/images/sc-nd-control-pg.jpg
We tested an official-looking page against the (already highly
optimized) baseline product offer page, which had a professional,
though "commercial" look and feel. The new official-looking page
was intended to better match the expectations of target customers
related to color, page layout, copy tone, and other visual attributes
for this industry and product category.
Here is the top of the experimental page:
http://www.marketingexperiments.com/images/sc-nd-official-pg.jpg
Here are the results:
Offer Page Performance - Control vs. "Official
Offer Page Conversion Rate Estimated Monthly Gain/Loss
Control Page 2.69%
Optimized Page 3.03% $30,582.30
% Gain/Loss 12.67%
***> What You Need To Understand: The official-looking offer page
conversion rate was 12.7% higher than the baseline page. This
gain translates to a projected annual increase of $366,988—at
no increased cost in marketing budget.
As this case illustrates, matching the overall look and feel of the
site with prospects’ visual biases will reduce anxiety and increase
conversion. Once this is done, there are other measures you can take
to further allay the fears of prospective customers.
Credibility indicators, site ratings, and third party testimonials can
reassure visitors about your trustworthiness and stability, as we
reaffirmed in our second case study with a company in the financial
services sector.
:: Case Study #2
Company: An investor services company
Problem: A crowded trust-intensive product market and a skeptical
customer target segment.
Objective: To increase conversion for the company’s online
newsletter subscription offer.
Background: The company’s newsletter offer page was professional
looking and resembled those of other large-scale
competitors.
Indications from site navigation logs, test results, and demographic
research suggested that customer anxiety was contributing to drop-out
in the subscription order process. Consequently, a number of
anxiety-reducing elements were incorporated into the optimized order
process, including customer testimonials, third party credibility
indicators, adjustments to language and tone, message personalization,
and placement of the satisfaction guarantee near the call-to-action.
Following are the results:
Free Trial Offer Page Test Results
Free Trial Offer # of Visits # of Orders Conversion
Original Page 904 12 1.33%
Optimized Page 972 22 2.26%
***> What you need to understand: Optimization of anxiety reducing
site elements yielded a 70.5% increase in conversion.
How visitors to your site perceive you plays an essential role in
determining whether they buy from you or move on to your competitors.
The primary factor at play in customer perception is anxiety. Two of
the time-honored principles of sales are that fear of loss is greater
than the desire for gain, and when appearance and reality clash,
appearance always wins. The objective is to make appearance and
reality the same.
For more on this principle, read the MEC Labs Journal brief
"Transparent Marketing" at
www.MarketingExperiments.com/tmta.html.
_____________________________________________________
Through our research, MarketingExperiments has identified five
essential elements to website conversion, which are brought
together in the formula below:
MEC Conversion Formula:
C = 4m + 3v + 2(i-f) - 2a ©
We will teach the full meaning and practical application of this
formula in our upcoming class on landing page optimization. You
can learn more about this course here:
https://www.marketingexperiments.com/ge3/offer.php?id=3
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Marketing Experiments Journal
http://www.MarketingExperiments.Com
Members Edition
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Contact WingsDove for affordable and effective small business web design and
web site optimization.
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