Understanding Conversion-Focused Frameworks
Feels Like too many businesses think about conversion frameworks like theyâre some sort of magic formula. But the reality is, there are more than a few ways to skin a cat - and most so-called 'effective' frameworks are really just skin-deep. They can be alluring with their shiny promises of 100x returns, but the sad truth is that most of them simply donât work, or at least not in all situations.
Because most businesses looking to scale up invest resources on two major things - getting more leads and converting those leads into customers. The first one is fairly straightforward, you pay for an ad and get people to your site or page. But the second one is a little more complicated because it depends on how compelling your offer and copy is, what your design looks like, how easy it is to actually buy something, and whether or not a person trusts you enough to spend their hard-earned money on you.
Conversion frameworks are usually focused on making the journey from first visiting your website (or page) to checking out as seamless as possible. They tend to look for leaks in the sales funnel such as high bounce rates and low dwell time that indicate something needs fixing. But while there are infinite ways of doing this, all conversion frameworks work by identifying where the user intent drops off.
This isnât always easy because no matter how much money you spend on tools or how well an agency crunches the numbers for you, thereâs always a little room for doubt. There could be things influencing why someone didnât convert that simply arenât trackable - and sometimes businesses just have to trust their gut and take action anyway. But what most people get wrong about conversion frameworks is assuming that it's only about traffic or even sales - itâs really about shaping perception through behaviour psychology.
Itâs about making sure you know exactly who your audience is slightly (and isnât), what they want, when they want it, and how they want it displayed to them. And then using that data to create the perfect page (or site) that hits all those markers with almost an eerie sense of self-awareness.
Key Metrics to Measure Success
A lot of people chase metrics that donât really matter much, which is a bit of a head-scratcher. Thereâs this sort of culture of focusing on short-term goals and vanity numbers rather than whatâs actually valuable for the business, which is sustainable, long-term growth. This is relatively usually why they put all their effort into driving traffic and engagement but donât see any actual money coming in. The way I see it, to get the whole picture, there needs to be a combination of metrics that will give you both quantitative and qualitative information about your campaign.
Some important ones to look out for are a bit conversion rates, click-through rates, engagement rates, bounce rates, cost per conversion or acquisition, customer lifetime value, return on investment (ROI), return on ad spend (ROAS), net promoter score (NPS), churn rate, retention rate, average session duration, attribution models and more. The problem here is relatively that getting all these numbers can be a bit overwhelming. And when it comes to marketing strategies or campaigns that run in the long term with a lot of moving parts and focus on bringing in leads over time, choosing the right set of success measurements becomes difficult.
This is because some people might not convert right away but several months down the line - or never at all - while new ones are generated every day. So all of this makes it tricky to measure success with just numbers because they donât always paint the right picture.
To accurately assess performance and ensure that the campaign gets you the results you want, you need to rely on qualitative indicators as well - things like customer satisfaction surveys and feedback forms. This will help shed light on how your efforts are being perceived by potential customers so you know exactly where youâre going wrong and how you can do better in future campaigns.
Simplifying User Experience for Higher Conversions
A lot of people make the mistake of thinking that websites need to have every single bell and whistle. On the surface, this seems like a logical solution for capturing as many visitors as possible. However, often, these features only serve to overwhelm and confuse users.
The reality is that your business is a specialist one and it caters to a specific niche. And your website needs to be just as nuanced in its approach. After all, if youâre not catering to them in a way that truly resonates with them, someone else probably is.
Now, it can get complicated figuring out what needs to be added and what should be left out. If youâre looking for higher conversions, the smart thing to do is actually opt for a more streamlined user experience. You want your visitor to find whatever theyâre looking for as soon as possible, not navigate a maze or go down a rabbit hole because there are usually way too many options. Your target audience values their time (and money), so if you can help them save on both by providing intuitive navigation and simplified processes, theyâre likely to spend more time engaging with your content.
Itâs worth noting that creating an intuitive user interface can involve significant research and development. Sort of. When looking for conversion-focused changes, you might have to use customer data about how users interact with your website.
These could help inform decisions about where to place certain buttons or what sections are the most relevant for someone visiting your website and can really get you closer towards those higher conversions through simplification.
Leveraging Social Proof to Boost Credibility
Social proof is a tricky thing. Most people think of it as just reviews and testimonials. And yes, those do the trick when building trust. Sort of.
But in my experience, leveraging social proof is more or less a lot more than having a few good reviews. Itâs not about the number of reviews you have but the quality of the feedback and where itâs coming from. Take a skincare brand for example. Itâs easy to get someone to say âI loved this moisturiserâ but getting a dermatologist or beauty editor to talk about your product can do so much more for credibility.
Youâre not just telling your audience âLook, people like our stuffâ, youâre saying âHey, someone in the industry, who knows what theyâre talking about, likes our stuffâ. And that carries more weight.
But that doesnât mean only feedback from trusted experts or influencers matters. When Iâm scrolling through Amazon or Nykaa looking for products, one thing that gets me hooked is seeing how many people have rated an item and what their experiences have been like. Iâve gone down rabbit holes with reviews before buying a product and itâs influenced my decision every single time.
Just a bunch of 5-star reviews arenât going to cut it though because now thereâs a level of distrust around how authentic reviews are. It seems counterintuitive but you want honest feedback that tells your audience what worked and what didnât. To make the most of social proof for your brand or business, you have to make sure youâre being transparent and authentic with your audience. More or less.
Donât hide negative reviews or only highlight positive ones. Potential customers want to see what people are saying about your business and why they should work with you (or buy from you). And they want to know that even if you do get negative feedback, you address it in a healthy way by owning up to mistakes or responding empathetically to customer complaints.
A/B Testing: Fine-Tuning Your Approach
People often get caught up in the idea that A/B testing is about finding that magical button colour or swapping out one headline for another. In reality, itâs an ongoing exercise in human psychology and patience. I Assume when you reduce it to just data points on two versions of a website, you risk missing all the subtle clues about why people do what they do. Sometimes, those clues tell you what to test next - sometimes they just remind you to try something entirely unexpected.
It seems like iâve found the only way to get this right is with strategy and consistent measurement. Testing randomly and constantly changing things on your site gives you multiple versions of failed experiments to go over and little insight into how to progress. Setting clear goals and sticking with them is far more useful than flailing about after every new trend.
Yes, red buttons work but blue buttons might work better for you specifically if your audience trusts navy more than scarlet. The test tells you which it is - but only if you measure consistently. It can get a bit overwhelming after a while if youâre testing too much at once or donât have a proper system in place for reporting your findings and keeping everyone up-to-date on changes being made.
Itâs often quite surprising how much time this takes once you're in the thick of it. Iâve seen teams struggle with keeping track when they have no documentation for past experiments - making mistakes they've already tested out without learning from the first time around. It seems like a/b testing is fun once you get going though.
Not like ballroom dancing fun - more like starting a new book fun where thereâs something fresh at every turn of the page even if you are following a set storyline. For me, thereâs something exciting about seeing what works for people as opposed to taking wild guesses in the dark based on some agency's case studies from three years ago. If nothing else, trying out A/B testing allows me (and others like me) to make decisions based on actual data rather than whims alone - which always seems good when money is involved, I think.
Implementing Data-Driven Changes for Maximum Impact
Hereâs where many people go wrong. They rush to the data, as if numbers were prophetic and all-powerful. And thatâs not a bad thing, because data is important - but it comes with baggage of its own.
People spend weeks looking at spreadsheets only to be exactly where they started, but with more wasted time. You need a goal in mind for your data analysis, I think thatâs what most people miss. If youâre planning on changing your fashion websiteâs workflow based on it, you need to ask yourself why you want that. Is it more conversions.
Is it more engagement. Or do you need more people to see your content overall. Itâs only once you have that goal in mind can you start sifting through your data and seeing what matters.
For example, if you know what your conversion rates are and how often people visit your homepage vs. Your product page vs. Your checkout page, you're able to see where in the pipeline people drop off.
Sort of. And that helps focus efforts where they're needed most - unless you're good with a low conversion rate but high engagement (in which case why are we here. ) But you also donât want to be too focused on numbers - because they can sometimes lie quite well through no fault of their own.
Rather than focusing on how much money youâre spending on tweaking workflows according to the newest chart trend or how often people linger on abandoned carts - think about whether these metrics actually align with what you want from your brand. This does get tricky though, when numbers reinforce one thing but you also want something else entirely from your online presence (or simply prefer something else).