Conversion Marketing and Improving the User's Experience

A conversion can be defined as almost anything. Most commonly I define a conversion as a sign-up, a sale, a form completed or something similar. In this posting I’m gong to elaborate on the optimization of a sign-up process and the marketing that is involved. This type of work I have termed Conversion Marketing, the science of increasing conversions through optimization.

This is such a broad topic that I could go on and on about it. For now, I have narrowed things down to some areas where a lot of companies could improve on. My December 4th posting has specifics, below are general, bigger-picture improvements.

A very common opportunity for improvement that I see most landing pages or marketing campaigns lacking is that they lead users into dead ends. Confirmation pages and thank you pages should have more links, resources, info, etc… If someone reaches a confirmation page you should have links to other areas of your site. Leading your visitor to a dead end is your own fault and they have a very high likelihood of leaving your site all together, possibly going to a competitor’s site.

Something else that I frequently see is a lack of information about what is going to happen next. Inform your visitor regarding what they should expect after entering their name and information. (i.e. Tell them the frequency the newsletter comes out or tell them that with X amount of time a representative will get in contact with them to address their customer service question.) If the visitor knows what to expect then they are more likely to enjoy their time interacting with you and your brand.

Always have a consistent feel and branding across all of the areas where people are interacting with your site, campaigns and emails. Even the unsubscribe process. People who are unsubscribing are not happy with you and a malfunctioning unsubscribe process or one that is clunky and a poor user interface only digs you into the hole further.