Conversion Research Cont. | Week 11 | Review

Qualitative and Quantitative Research

This is blog post #11 as part of the series of blog posts in which I will sum up my learning experience with CXL Institute attending their Growth Marketing Minidegree.

Last week I started talking about Experience-Based Assessments in Conversion Research. Today I will continue with Qualitative and Quantitative Research summing up my learning experience and review the following key takeaways: 

> Conversion Research | Qualitative Research 

In the Qualitative Research we will go through: 

• Online surveys with recent customers
• On-site polls
• Phone interviews
• Live chat transcripts
• Customer support insight
• User testing
  
  

> Survey Design Theory

Feedback, in general, is extremely important for development and growth, so in business too. Surveys ensure you as a business owner get feedback on your company, product and process to make sure your efforts are focused on what really matters. 

A well-written Survey that can help get REAL feedback from your customer should have questions that are close-ended, not asked in a leading way and directly addressed the desired info. 

> Online Surveys with Recent Customers

In order to increase the conversion rate for your business, you have to figure out who exactly is your primary target audience, what they want, what matters to them and what are the sources of friction for them. 

Qualitative research is mostly about learning who the customers are, what they want and the language they use which is really important when copywriting. understanding the friction that users may face when visiting your website is extremely important too, learning what matters to your users about the products you sell, and so on. 
Conversions are all about relevancy, if what you offer and how you present it matches their state of mind, you have gained a customer.

When surveying your recent buyers make sure to send out the survey promptly, 1 day to 1 week after purchase and don’t expect everybody will respond.
Respond Rate can be determined based on two factors: A) How good your relationship with the customer is? is he/she a repeated customer, big fan or loyal customer? B) Incentivisation, how good you are at motivating the customer to complete the survey, offering a free product, voucher or a small reward may help. 

When sending a survey via email, you can use tools like google doc (FREE) or Typeform and ask Qs between 8-10 more than that will be boring and less won't be insightful. 
How many answers/responses is enough? ty[ically  between 200 to 250 responses will give you a good sample size

> On-Site Polls 

Poll Website visitors, to understand what’s holding website visitors from buying. You can try triggering poll when user time spent on site = 10+ secs of staying on this page or Above the average engagement rate you have or upon exit when the user is showing an exit behaviour trying to close the browser window for example. 

When phrasing the Qs try to create a sense of urgency, for example, you can ask questions like "What’s holding you from purchasing this product right now?" and Qs differ per page, every website webpage should have different Qs. Also, it's wise to run one poll at a time, for instance on the product page first then on the cart page and so on. The main goal here is to identify sources of friction. 

Ask 1st a simple Qs with a yes or no answer then level up asking for more open Qs, you can read more on "Choline Commitment and consistency model". Response rate typically is between 2% to 4%, aim for 200 responses, if you are a low traffic website aim for 100 or so

> Live Chat Transcripts 

A lot can be found in live Chat Transcripts. Using a live chat is very useful to answer a pre-sales and also to understand what Qs users have before they are ready to make a purchase. So digging up transcripts would be extremely useful for your conversion research, you can look at transcripts from the previous 30 days (Making sure websites hasn0ot changed in this given period of time). 

Categorising transcripts can be extremely beneficial as it will help you see patterns and figure out the bigger picture then use it for your own advantage.

> Customer Support

The amount of info you can gather out of customer support can be a gold mine for your business. Why? because customer support is the 1st line facing the customer, therefore, they possess great valuable info on what customers like/dislike about your product or service also they get to face customers frustration which is good to understand the whole customer experience. 

You need to know what's going, What are the top 10 to 20 Qs you get? What are the top concerns, hesitation and doubts they have? Understanding what’s friction regarding the sales process, Which response tends to be effective as an answer for their objections? "use it in copywriting and sales".
The best way to handle sales conversion is to prevent them from happening. The Qs the doubt they have, you address it right away? Through copies, landing pages and sales staff.

 

> User Testing 

User testing is about getting insights out of the user's mind, 

observing how real users use and interact with your website, paying attention to their experiences and trying to spot patterns. Once you have the results, iterate your site design and sales copy to minimise any barriers to accomplishing their on-site goals. This, in turn, will also lead to an increase in conversions.

When to conduct user testing? As a marketer whenever you decide to optimise a new website or When you’ve done a design makeover for a website, but before you make it live (note that when creating a brand new design, keep usability principles in mind from the get-go), Also Whenever you change a critical part of your website (check the checkout, change category filters etc).

What about Sample size? well, The minimum number of people to conduct user testing with is 5 and the maximum is 15. Ten people will find 95% of your problems. 15 will find all of them. Due to the law of diminishing returns, it’s typically not cost-effective to use more than 10 people

Difference between user Testing and A/B Testing: 

• A/B testing is done on a live website with real visitors who have no idea that they are part of a test.
• User testing on the other hand usually involves people observing recruited testers to complete a given set of tasks on the website.
  User observation can take place in-person or it can be remote, online – recording users’ screen and voice as they comment their thought process out loud.
  
  
• User testing is different from A/B testing, but not a replacement for it. Use both. Conduct usability testing to identify any issues, fix them and test the impact.

> Conversion Research | Quantitative Research 

In the Quantitative Research we will go through: 

• Web analytics analysis
• (e.g. Google Analytics and other quantified data tools like Adobe Analytics, MixPanel, Heap Analytics)
• Mouse tracking analysis

I will be continuing with Details of Quantitive Research and More in next's week blog post.