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Call to Action: Why More Choices Mean Less Action

Thu, 12 Aug 2010 22:33:10 -0500

The Gist

To increase your conversion rates, try dropping the number of calls to action you've got on a page.

Too many choices can create customer anxiety, watering down your call to action

One of the biggest reasons most websites don't make more money is because they're not using calls to action effectively. A call to action is simply asking the site visitor or reader to do something. This could be to share the page on Twitter, or buy a product, or sign up for an email newsletter.

The Number One Reason Your Calls to Action Suck

Here's the number one way most websites use their calls to action wrong:

They have waaaaay too many on a single page.

Ever gone to the supermarket and trying to decide on ice cream? Or cereal? The sheer number choices for cereal alone can make shopping a time-consuming and frustrating event.

The Paradox of Choice

Barry Shwartz's book "The Paradox of Choice" tells us that eliminating consumer choices reduces anxiety for potential buyers.

Less anxiety means happier web visitors.

Websites try to cram as many buttons, links, and other calls to action all over the page, blindly thinking that their visitors will happily click them all because they're there.

The problem with this mentality is the paradox of choice: The visitor is given so many options that they end up taking no action at all. Having to choose is too big of an undertaking that the visitor ends up doing nothing and leaving.

Here's an example: You've seen blogs that have post footers littered with social media buttons, right? You have options to email, tweet, digg, save, stumble, share, reblog and tag, all at the end of the article.

The number of people who actually pick one of those bazillion buttons that have a call to action with them are very, very few.

But if the reader is given only one option, the conversion rate jumps through the roof.

The Jam Test

The University of Columbia actually ran a study to test the theory that too much choice is demotivating. The study worked like this:

First the team set up a tasting booth in a store. For the first day, they only offered six jams. 40% of the customers stopped to taste, and 30% of those tasters bought jam. On the second day, 24 jams were offered for tasting. 60% of the customers stopped to taste them, but only 3% bought some.

Let's put some numbers behind this. For simplicity, let's say there were 100 customers that walked by the booth each day. Here is what it looked like for the number of people who actually stopped to try the jam:

Day 1: 40 tasters, 12 bought jam.
Day 2: 60 tasters, 2 bought jam.

The study proved the team's suspicion that choice can be a demotivating factor.

Ask Your Visitors to Do One Thing

As site owners we assume that web visitors need plenty of choices. Different subscription methods, different purchasing options, and so on. But in reality, site visitors want you to lead them.

As much as we hate to admit it, we don't like choices.

When you're writing focused copy for your site, you're crafting content so that your reader only has to do one thing by the time they're done with the article, or web page, or newsletter. You're writing for one purpose, and one purpose only.

And this purpose is the only call to action you should be worried about.

(Fortunately for you, Howdy helps you figure out what each visitor wants to do on your site.)

Ways to Improve Your Call to Action

We've already covered the biggest way to improve conversions: remove extra calls to action. Ruthlessly go through your site's design and page copy and start cutting other calls to action that aren't important. They could be

social sharing links
excess navigation
low-performing ads

... and on and on. You can dig through your analytics program and check out which links have actually been clicked. (CrazyEgg can give you heatmaps showing you exactly what your visitors clicked.)

After you've eliminated the extra fluff in your design, here's how you can improve your call (see how how it's not plural?) to action.

1. Test different calls to action

Not all visitors are created equal, and each one has a different goal in mind. You can use services like Google Website Optimizer multivariate test different types of calls to action. You won't know which call to action converts best until you test each one, and multivariate testing allows you to test multiple options at a single time.

Of course, having a solid idea of what your visitor is going to find appealing is a nice advantage. Howdy allows us to show different messages to different types of visitors, so this will also help with your conversion rates.

2. Test variations of a single action

There are plenty of ways to test different variations of your call to action. Sometimes the smallest details can make the biggest differences with conversions, and you won't know until you test them.

You can try testing:

link text (ie. "Click Here" or "Buy Now")
fonts
link or button colors
position on the page
underlined or non-underlined links

There are plenty of other elements of design and layout you could test as well. Really, the sky is the limit when it comes to testing your call to action, but make sure that you're not obsessing over details.

If there's one thing that you should take away from this article, it's this:

Less choices = More conversions.

Simple, isn't it?

Photo by Orin Zebest

A Comprehensive Guide to Improving Bounce Rates

Sat, 27 Mar 2010 16:35:58 -0500

Here's to hoping your bounce rate
isn't this high.

Bounce rates are an often misunderstood site statistic, and discarded way too quickly. They're a mysterious beast, because they mean something different to each website.

For example, a site selling a product will have vastly lower bounce rates than a blog. In fact, different pages on your site should have different bounce rates as well. It totally depends on the goal of the page.

So it's no wonder that most people ignore the bounce rate altogether.

What a tragedy! The bounce rate can be one of the most important metrics in your site's statistics.

If you understand how to analyze bounce rates, you can improve your sites in these ways:

learn more about who visits your site and why
improve your "landing pages"
improve organic SEO campaigns
improve keyword bidding in PPC campaigns
improve user experience across the board

(For more info check out Avinash Kaushik's article that has 5 ways to use bounce rate to improve your site. Classic.)

In short, improving your bounce rate improves your overall conversion rate.

Bounce Rate Definition

So what's a bounce rate? To put it in an equation:

Bounce Rate = Total Number of Visits Viewing One Page / Total Number of Visits

Or, to put it simply:

The Bounce Rate is the rate at which people leave your site after viewing only one page.

Simple enough, right?

What Causes High Bounce Rates?

Bounce rates are caused by any of these actions (thanks Wikipedia)

Clicking on a link to a page on a different web page
Closing an open windows or tab
Typing a new web address
Clicking the “Back” button
Session timeout (ie. left the browser open to go watch more Desperate Housewives)

But on a more birds-eye level, high bounce rates could mean that your site has some issues with user experience. High bounce rates could mean that there's

lack of trust qor a
lack of overall interest to the user

Lack of interest is something that can't always be helped. You're not going to please everyone who comes to your site. But lack of trust is something that you definitely should be worried about, and can easily be fixed with design. (More on this later. You might want to subscribe.)

The Caveat

Like we mentioned earlier, not every site will have the same bounce rate. This is especially true with blogs.

Avinash Kaushik says that blogs will have a much higher bounce rate than a normal site, and that's fine.

"They are a unique beast amongst online experiences: people come mostly only to read your latest post, they'll read it and then they'll leave. Your bounce rates will be high because of how that metric is computed, and in this scenario that is ok.

You don't want the bounce rate to be 98%, new visitors to your blog will still come and look around and read different posts etc. But I would not worry if my bounce rate for this blog is 50%.

Analyzing Bounce Rates

Jacob Neilsen shows us that every site has four sources of visitors that make up your bounce rate:

Low-value referrers. These are your bounce rate killers, and you don't need to worry about them. These visitors come from places like Digg and other social news sites, and are historically not going to be your target audience. They're fickle and flighty, at best. They just don't stick around.
Direct links. Scoring direct links from other sites as a recommendation are pretty good at visiting multiple pages on your site, and might be good candidates for subscribing to your content.
Search Engines (aka "cha-ching!"). These are highly motivated visitors, and the most likely to buy products, click pages, and engage. They usually carry a low bounce rate, and if they don't you have some seriously bad mojo with your site in terms of user experience. These users should be gobbling up your pages, learning more and more about your site and performing some call to action (subscribing, buying, etc.).
Loyal users. These visitors come regularly, and their bounce rate will vary. While they may engage (comments, etc.), they might also only have one or two page views before leaving. This could be because they're sharing the page, or they've already read your recent stuff.

A visual representation of the types of visitors. Graciously lifted from the usability mastermind Jacob Neilsen.

How to Improve Bounce Rates

Improving the bounce rate of a site can be done in many ways. It all depends on where the site is failing the visitor.

Improve your design

Oftentimes the most powerful thing a site can do is improve their overall design. Neilsen references a site design that improved bounce rates from 30% to 2.5%. Here are some ways to spruce up design for better conversions and bounce rates. Cleaner, clutter-free designs work best with clear navigation.

Deep linking

Deep linking is an art. Just because you've already written an article doesn't mean you can't update it with more relevant internal links to newer content.

Better calls to action

Are your calls to action weak? Are they not telling your visitors exactly what to do? If not, you should. People like being told exactly what to do.

Analyze what does and doesn't work

It's important to drill down in your analytics and figure out what's causing people to take action on your site, and what's turning them away. Go into your analytics programs, (Google Analytics is free and great), and check out the bounce rate of your pages. First sort by most successful bounce rate (low), and take note of the pages that are doing well. Then sort by worst bounce rate (high) and narrow in on what's causing visitors to leave.

Do you have titles that don't mesh with your content? Do people leave on pages with shorter copy, or longer copy? Where are they going when they leave? These are all important questions that your site analytics should tell you.

Look for patterns in the data. You can learn a lot about your visitors and what works best for them just by digging deep into the bounce rate information of your site.

Add Related Content

This is similar to deep linking, but still worth it's own bullet point.

Showing related content at the end of the copy or post is something that can boost the bounce rate considerably.

If your site sells products, upsell. Show related products, or other items "they might like". If you've got a blog, show related posts at the end of entries. The best part about showing related content is that it usually happens automatically with plugins. Aside from installing them, they just work.

If you've got a blog, there are plugins that do this for you automatically (Wordpress, Drupal). Most shopping cart software has this feature too, either through modules or by manually specifying related products.

If you're wanting a bit more information on bounce rate and how to use it, check out Avinash Kaushik's 5 minute presentation below.

How to Drastically Improve Blog Copy: Write for One Goal

Wed, 24 Mar 2010 08:49:26 -0500

Focused blog posts are the most potent posts. Photo by dsevilla

The end goal of your writing should always be to provide the highest-quality information, as simply as possible. It's the second part of that sentence that usually trips writers up.

Too often bloggers fail massively in a couple ways when creating content. They either

try to throw too many goals on the reader or
don't have a specific goal in mind when they write.

Too many goals

People like simplicity when it comes to digesting information, and the more complex and unfocused your content, the less likely readers are going to be drawn to it.

Great content is easily lost when it's nestled in a thicket of unfocused writing.

Hazy goals

When you create content without pointing to a specific goal, it's like closing your eyes and aiming a gun at seven targets. At one time.

If the reader can't figure out what you're trying to accomplish in the very beginning of the copy, then they're gone. And most visitors won't make repeat visits to your site.

The only universal truth to conversions is this:

Visitors who leave don't convert.

If you're going to make the most of your visitors, each post should have one goal, and one goal only.

List Wars Don't Work

Writing with one goal in mind is such a simple concept that oftentimes we overlook it when we're writing. It's tempting to follow "expert" wisdom that says we have to fill a certain word count, or have at least a bajillion list points in our articles.

You don't.

How do I know? Simple. When's the last time you actually read an entire post that had over 20 bullet points? If you're like me, you make it to about number 6 and leave.

List posts are great for search engines and social media, but not great for engagement.

Search engines like focused content

Tightly focused content will beat an unfocused, wordy list post every time. The more focused your content, the more focused the searches that come to your blog.

More focused searches mean better conversions.

Isn't helping the reader find exactly what they want the point of the copy anyway?

How to write more focused content

I'm going to be honest: writing for only one goal is incredibly hard to do.

It takes a disciplined writer to sit down and really focus on the the most important thing in each post without deviating from it. So here are a few tips to start writing more tightly focused posts.

Figure out your goal before you start writing. Seems obvious, right? Yet many writers start writing without an end goal in mind. What results is a meandering, incoherent post. Figure out the main takeaway before you start writing.
Simplify! Evaluate ever word, every sentence, and every paragraph. If it doesn't fit into the one goal of the article, drop it. Be ruthless, because your readers will be even more critical.
Make your headline obvious. The headline is possibly the most important part of your content. If the user clicks the title and starts reading only to find that that the title has nothing to do with the article, the user looses trust and leaves.
Be repetitive. How many times have I used the phrase "one goal" in this article? Could it be any more apparent what this article is about? People love repetition, almost to an annoying amount. Never be afraid to repeat yourself and bring the point home.
Replace clever with simple. Writing should always be simple. Dead simple. Often bad writers use complex sentences and clever phrases with substance. Readers should never leave your site more confused after visiting it.
Break apart long paragraphs. There's something refreshing about breaking bits of information down into smaller bits. It helps with usability as well as makes the content more digestible.
Sleep on it before hitting "publish". Take a break after you've finished the article before publishing. It's amazing what simply waiting a day can do for adding perspective. You'll find phrases that don't make sense, and words that never fit.

If you take great pains to simplify your message and only focus on one main thing in each post, your blog will prosper. Search engines will love you, and more importantly, so will your readers.

How to Make the Most of First-Time Visitors

Tue, 16 Mar 2010 13:51:02 -0500

An interesting study found that 80% of business blog traffic comes from first-time visitors. I'd imagine that number is pretty close to most other blog types as well.

Let that sink in for a minute.

This means that for most of the people that touch your site, most of them will never come back.

Most bloggers and site owners blissfully think that if someone pays a visit to your site, then they'll most likely keep coming back. Unfortunately, this couldn't be further from the truth.

People have been sharing more news and articles with social news sites like Digg and social media networks like Twitter and Facebook. (You can see the stats from AddThis on how sharing keeps rising.)

These social services have become great platforms for sharing links because of the trust factor. Because you know and trust the person sharing the link with you, you're more likely to follow it.

Don't Wait For Repeat Visitors

One way that many sites get large readerships is by getting their content in front of the same people multiple times. For example, if I repeatedly keep seeing your blog on the front page of Digg, then I might eventually subscribe to your feed.

But why wait for someone to visit your site more than once before convincing them to subscribe? We already know that most people won't come back to your site a second time anyway.

So let's start turning some of those "one-and-done" visitors into subscribers and active members of your community.

How to Hook Newbies

The number one reason most new readers leave your site and never come back again is because they can't figure out what the site is really about. Because most new visitors don't visit your homepage, it's hard for them to understand what your site is about in a single visit.

You've got to hold their hand and show them.

And the best way to start is with a "New Here?" page.

The "New Here?" page

If you're really wanting to appeal to first-time visitors, give them content that is specifically for them.

After all, they make up most of your overall visitors.

The best way to do this is to create a "New here?" page. The goal of this page is to (at the very least):

Tell the casual visitor what your site is about and give her a strong call to subscribe.

The page could have these elements:

Ways to subscribe to your feed
A "Best Of" list that highlights some of the best content, or showcase certain series, etc.
A quick bio about yourself and the site
What the site hopes to accomplish

If you can give the visitor a quick overview of your site and some of the best content, then there is a better chance you'll win over a subscriber.

Here are some other effective ways you could gear your site towards welcoming new visitors.

1. Tease what you're about at the top of the page

UXBooth.com has text at the top to give users a better idea what their site is about.

Dedicate a little space at the top of your header to describing your site. This can immediately give your new visitors a snapshot of what your site is about, before they start reading the article.

2. Beef up your About page

Jared Christensen has a creative about page.

Too often about pages are bland piles of mush. Most sites don't take advantage of about pages and write them off as one of those features of the site that should be put together in five minutes.

A great about page can make a huge difference to any site. They add credibility and can tell a story that endears the visitor to your brand.

Here's a tip: don't write in 3rd person. There's nothing weirder than seeing a one-man blog with an about page that sounds like a book jacket bio. Be authentic and write about you.

As consumers want more and more transparency and authenticity, they're going to become more wary of posturing and chest-puffing. If there's only one person writing in your blog, don't act like you're an entire newsroom of writers. And if you've simply got to write in silly 3rd-person, at least make it humorous.

3. Add a strong call to action at the end of the post

Jonathan Fields uses a strong call to action to subscribe at the end of his posts.

Most sites don't take advantage of the valuable space at the end of the post. Many people think that the best place to put a subscribe link (or other calls to action) is at the beginning of the post. However, if a reader has made it to the end of the article, it means they probably liked it. And if they liked it, they're more likely to share the article with friends or subscribe to the site.

Use this valuable area to give visitors a strong call to action like subscribing to your site. Just make sure you don't push too many choices on your visitors. One or two specific calls to action (ie. "Subscribe to the newsletter or follow on Twitter").

A word of caution: Don't push too many choices on the visitor. If the paradox of choice is too great, then the user will be overwhelmed and just leave.

4. Add Related Content

FreelanceFolder uses images and text with their related content recommendations.

If you've got a blog, adding related content to the end of a post is a fantastic way to hook new visitors. The more interaction they have with your site, the more likely they'll become regulars. Related content adds a "sticky" factor to your site, and adds exposure to the rest of your great content.

The more of your content you can get first-time visitors to see, the more they'll see what your site is about, and eventually give them more reason to subscribe to your site.

Photo by 27147