As wide-eyed children, we all remember our parents telling us to quiet down, cut the clutter or stop acting like a child. These familiar phrases were meant to benefit not only us but also everyone around us. It’s funny to think that as we grew up and became adults, we tend to still repeat some of these same behaviors over and over, though (hopefully) on a different level.
Now, of course, we don’t walk into a board meeting screaming or become big crybabies when told to resend a memo. We think we are grown up and smarter, yet we still tend to create a lot of noise that may be completely unnecessary. This is especially true in our online world where chatter seems to be just what our social doctors (or besties) prescribed.
Perhaps social media has trained us to create a lot of unnecessary noise, but it has become normal to see websites and media completely flooded with jargon and an overload of useless information. At a certain point, companies realize this noise is affecting their brand in a negative manner instead of driving in traffic, so they come for advice and guidance on what to do. We have worked with many global brands to help them “cut the crap” and drastically improve their conversion rates.
So how do we cut the noise, restore sanity to brand managers as well as customers complaining of lackluster experiences due to the noise overload?
A/B Split Testing
One of the simplest ways to determine how added noise affects a certain landing page or online experience is to split-test the Before/After. Over time, websites and information tend to grow like wildfire, but this isn’t necessarily bad if the creation of sources contains value-added content. However, we just let the content grow in most cases, but we don’t come back and “clean” or evaluate our presence as often as we should.
Testing the Before/After pages over a 2-week period will give us clear indications on whether the pages are too long, overloaded, or becoming too cumbersome to convert. Bounce rates, time spent, and other factors can be indicative of problems within the user experience. The data rarely lies and in almost 95% of situations, removing “the noise” will clarify the user’s focus, creating a simpler browsing session and buying experience, which leads to higher conversion rates.
Testing the Before/After pages over 2 weeks will give us clear indications on whether the pages are too long, overloaded, or becoming too cumbersome to convert. Bounce rates, time spent, and other factors can be indicative of problems within the user experience. The data rarely lies. In almost 95% of situations, removing “the noise” will clarify the user’s focus, creating a simpler browsing session and buying experience, leading to higher conversion rates.
The most important pages for any brand's eCommerce SEO strategy are the homepage and the sales pages. In other words, these landing pages usually display and promote the highest revenue products and services. These are your biggest assets and should be treated as such.
Cut the Clutter & CRO
Source: Justuno
If we are certain the content is centered and poised, we must still focus on the remaining web elements. The most important elements to test are buttons, headlines, and pop-ups. Have you ever been to a website that attacked you with a refer-a-friend pop-up, a sale ad, and then an e-mail subscribe call-to-action? Yes, we all have.
It may seem like a fun and productive activity to launch four apps that promise increased sales, but with four of them running in parallel, you are actually eliminating interest with four different layers of ‘annoying.’
Remove the fluff, focus on the most important areas, and bring clarity to the UX.
Heat Map Testing
Most people tend to be highly visual. Sitting in Google Analytics can drive even a data scientist mad sometimes, so we look to educate our clients and partners by using visualization tools. Systems like heat map analytics drive home the fluff-ball message by showcasing where users are and are not clicking.
When technical, sales, and management teams have an easy visual representation of how users interact with the online setup, the entire conversation becomes simple. To learn more about heat map technology, check out this resource on the best heat map tools for eCommerce.
Work with an agency that can combine heat map testing with A/B split testing for awesome CRO wins each and every time.
