Author: AB Tasty

AB Tasty is a complete tool for website and conversion rate optimization. We serve as your digital lab, equipped with everything you need to create experiments that will help you to better understand your users and customer journeys so that you can create the clearest and most engaging user experience possible, ensuring your website performs well and yields the maximum results.

Article

May 15, 2020

9min read

15 Practical Tips to Boost Your Call to Action Click-Through Rate (CTR)

AB Tasty

Call to actions (CTAs) count. In fact, more than 90% of consumers who read your headline will also read your CTA copy.

A well-crafted call to action will result in more click-throughs, which typically translates to more conversions.

Your CTA should inspire action, telling your audience what to do next in a way that’s clear, direct, and offers real personal value. If you fail to make an impact with your CTA messaging, then more often than not, the rest of your content will be rendered redundant (or at least become diluted).

So, to help you increase your call to action click-through rate (CTR) and boost your bottom line, here are 15 practical tips.

1) Make your CTA buttons appear ‘clickable’

While this may sound glaringly obvious (making your CTA buttons clickable is the aim of the game, after all), it’s vital.

To ensure that your CTA messaging stands out on the page and appears clickable to your audience, here are some fundamentals you must consider:

Make sure that your CTA button doesn’t clash with other visual elements on the page.

Opt for a rounded or rectangular button.
Create text and button colors that have a clear contrast. If prospects can’t see your text, it’s unlikely they will take action.

2) Put your CTA buttons in the right places

When it comes to boosting the click-through rate of CTA buttons, placing them in the right place is essential.

An eye-tracking study discovered that most users follow an F-shaped pattern when browsing web pages. That said, there are areas of a webpage where your CTA button will perform better.

Source

Placing your CTA button above the fold will often prove effective, but it’s certainly not compulsory. Providing you place your CTA button in a logical place somewhere in that ‘F browsing shape, you will entice more click-throughs.

Look at your page as if you were a consumer. Follow the browsing pattern and it should become clear (within the context of your content) where to place your CTA button.

3) Focus on your short button copy

Most effective CTAs are concise yet impactful. So, if you focus on your short button copy, you will increase your CTA click-through rate.

Your CTA button will have limited room for text, so you have to make your copy count. Here are some solid short copy examples for inspiration:

Get started
Subscribe
Try for free
Join us
Join the family
Let’s work together
The time is now
Start your journey

4) Evoke emotion or a sense of enthusiasm

Concerning your CTA click-through rate, the more urgency you create, the more influential the result.

If you create a sense of urgency or generate enthusiasm with your CTA, you will prompt people to click-through.

For instance, if your landing page is focused on selling a brand new product, then once you’ve told your story and highlighted the USPs, you could sign off with, ‘…but they’re selling like hotcakes. Order yours now before it’s too late.’

This level of urgency will prompt click-throughs.

5) Use action words

Certain words or phrases will encourage action. Known as marketing action words, these particular terms are punchy, impactful, and will encourage consumers to click-through.

This glossary of marketing action words will boost the success of your CTA click-through rate—and there are plenty to choose from.

glossary-CTA

Source

6) Utilize FOMO

FOMO (fear of missing out) is an approach that will help you boost your CTA click-through rate exponentially. If you’re running a promotion or marketing a new product, the FOMO trick will work wonders.

By producing a CTA that makes your audience feel like they’re going to miss out on something worthwhile (or be the only one left out), you will motivate them to click-though and, potentially, convert.

Phrases like ‘don’t miss out’ work well when it comes to FOMO marketing, as does letting your audience know how many people have bought your product or signed up to your service. And, considering that 69% of millennials have severe FOMO, the fear of missing out card is certainly worth trying.

7) Customize your CTA according to device

The concept here is simple: to ensure a healthy click-through rate for your CTA, you must make sure that it’s optimized for every device.

Whether you’re talking about a CTA button or a powerful text-based sign-off, you must always test your call to action across every device (desktop, mobile, tablet, etc.) to ensure that it’s functional, legible, and creates maximum impact.

If you fail to do so, your CTA click-through rate is likely to dwindle, fast.

8) Use numbers where you can

There is a science related to numerics and the human brain. It appears that we can process numbers more intuitively than words at a glance.

That said, if appropriate, use a number rather than a word as this is likely to help with your click-through rates.

For instance, rather than ‘Shop now: only two days left,’ you should try ‘Shop now: only 2 days left.’

9) Step outside the box

This is a phrase that is used so frequently it’s become a cliche. But regarding your CTA CTRs, stepping outside the box will yield positive results.

What we mean here is that when it comes to a call to action, getting a little creative will encourage more engagement.

Here are some tips that will help you step outside the (CTA) box:

Hit your reader with a hint of unexpected messaging. PointBlank SEO’s ‘Be Awesome’ CTA is an excellent example.

Experiment with conversational language or regional phrasing (tailored to your target audience).

Weave your brand name into your CTA copy. Greetings card brand, GiftRocket, did this well with the CTA copy: ‘Send a GiftRocket.’

Source

10) Build suspense and anticipation

In addition to creating a sense of urgency or taking the FOMO approach, generating suspense will also benefit your CTA CTR.

By creating an air of mystery or somewhat of a cliffhanger with your CTA messaging, you will encourage your readers to click-through and find out more.

As humans, we’re a curious bunch with an affinity for storytelling. Create suspense, sign off with a cliffhanger, and people will have no choice but to click through.

11) Add images where appropriate

Using a powerful or striking image in conjunction with your CTA will help to encourage click-throughs.

But if you want your image to boost your CTA success rather than hinder it, you should follow these best practices:

Choose an image that aligns with your call to action goal.

Avoid imagery that is too bright or busy as this will detract from your CTA message.

Select images that are likely to evoke the emotion you want your reader to feel. For instance, if you’re a wellness service provider, looking to make people feel uplifted, then using a more animated image of smiling faces might work well.

12) Experiment with colors

When it comes to CTA buttons or text, experimenting with colors will help you increase your click-through rate.

Studies suggest that bold, bright colors are effective for CTAs, so start experimenting with a vibrant palette and see what fits best with your blog post, landing page, or product page.

13) Use white space

Another click-through rate-boosting design tip comes in the form of white space.

By placing a healthy amount of white space around your call to action text or button, you will grab the reader’s attention on the page.

As a result, your readers will focus more on your messaging, in turn prompting them to click through. This approach will prove especially effective for mobile screens.

14) Follow a natural progression

As we touched on earlier, the human brain responds well to storytelling. To give your CTA a click-worthy punch, your page elements should follow a natural progression or narrative.

When you’re creating your page content, consider the F-shaped scanning pattern, using this logic to tell a story that ultimately flows towards your CTA.

But whatever you do, make sure that this natural progression doesn’t jar the reader and make them bounce off the page. For example, you wouldn’t put a ‘register now’ CTA button above your event or webinar details.

Follow a natural progression that focuses on strong storytelling and the rest will follow.

15) Don’t forget to A/B test

If you want to optimize your CTA performance and maintain consistently high click-through rates, then A/B testing is essential.

By testing two versions of a web or landing page, you can gain a wealth of performance-related insights that will help you make the best possible decisions based on CTA design, copy, and placement.

If you know which elements best resonate with your audience, you will be empowered to create CTAs that will boost your click-through rate time after time.

Regardless of your niche or industry, creating a strong call to action is essential to your ongoing business success. Follow these tips, test your choices, and you will boost your click-through rate sooner than you think. You can do it!

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May 12, 2020

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Drive Digital Transformation With Client-Side and Server-Side Optimization

AB Tasty

The further your company is on its digital transformation journey, the more critical experience optimization (EXO) becomes. After all, you want your digital products to deliver the best customer experience to meet your business goals and stay competitive. Marketing and product teams can use a variety of tools to conduct and measure EXO experiments. Most of these solutions fall into two categories: server-side and client-side experimentation tools.

But which is the right solution for your use cases? How do they differ, and what can they do? Let’s find out in this blog post!

What’s the difference between client-side and server-side?

You may already be familiar with the technical concepts behind client-side and server-side tools. In short, client-side solutions operate in your users’ browsers, while server-side tools run on a physical or virtual server.

Client-side tools allow you to test visual or structural variants of your website or web app to optimize the customer experience. In most cases, these tools use JavaScript – a programming language that runs in the browser – to put a new UI layer over your existing website.

Client-side solutions usually don’t require programming skills since they generate the experiment code themselves and don’t modify your site’s code. Instead, they often offer a visual editor in the admin interface, which lets you comfortably alter your website’s look and feel. This makes client-side EXO solutions particularly popular with marketing teams who use them for conversion rate optimization.

Server-side testing require technical expertise and coding skills as you need to incorporate experiments into your code and deploy it. For example, you can use server-side EXO solutions to test business transactions, algorithms, and new functional variants. They’re also incredibly valuable when you want to conduct experiments that shouldn’t be influenced by browser quirks or user devices.

Yet, these solutions aren’t only relevant to tech teams. Often, non-technical staff team up with product teams to define experiments, which are then executed by the engineers. Once implemented, an experiment can usually be controlled, monitored, and analyzed via a dashboard (if provided by the solution).

The pros and cons of client-side and server-side tools

Now that we’ve covered the two variants in more detail, let’s look at their general advantages and disadvantages.

Client-side pros:

Technical independence. Marketing teams can create and edit experiments as they see fit without relying on development and IT resources.
Available to everyone. Non-technical teams can quickly and effortlessly set up, modify, and analyze experiments using visual editors.
Efficiency. Gain valuable insights and streamline your product’s or service’s customer experience while investing little time and money.

Client-side cons:

Flicker effects. Users may notice a brief flicker while the webpage loads. This happens when the experiment’s UI layer is placed on the original website, and the user sees it.
Performance. The more JavaScript you load, the slower your website can become. Also, the generated experimentation code’s quality can harm the user interface’s loading speed and responsiveness.
Security and secrecy. Everything a browser can read is public and can be read by anyone – if it’s not encrypted. If you want to keep experiments or their logic a secret, it’s usually safer to opt for a server-side solution.

Server-side pros:

Flexibility. Tech teams have full control over their server-side code, so they can build experiments precisely as needed without being constrained by the tool.
Robustness. Code that runs through deployment processes and QA should meet your company’s quality standards. Experiments cannot be influenced by browsers or devices used and are therefore stable.
Omnichannel experiments. You’re not limited to testing websites and web apps in a browser. Conduct experiments on any channel, be it native mobile apps, email, IoT devices, etc.

Server-side cons:

Long implementation time. Server-side experiments require code releases. Depending on your deployment and QA strategy, you need to involve different teams and processes, increasing implementation time.
Demanding. If the use cases for server-side tools are unclear, you may be using them for the wrong ones. Hence, you may waste time and money implementing and running tests that would have been much easier with a client-side tool.
Expensive. Because server-side experiments require many resources to implement, edit and remove, the cost is typically higher than client-side experiments.

As you could see, each solution has drawbacks that you need to consider before choosing the one fit for your use cases. However, should you choose one over the other at all? We believe that the advantages and disadvantages of the tools complement each other well and, if used correctly, can result in significant benefits.

Let’s find out how you can get the best out of both worlds!

How you can benefit from both methods with AB Tasty

Using client-side and server-side functionalities for experience optimization gives your company the needed agility to meet your consumers’ changing and demanding expectations. Yet, to set up productive workflows, you need to determine when and how which experiments should be utilized by whom.

We recommend splitting up tests and experiments between your marketing and product teams. AB Tasty‘s client-side feature helps your marketers optimize conversions and increase user satisfaction. Product teams use our server-side feature to enhance the functionality of digital products and services. It relies on features flags that could be used in many different ways.

Client-Side vs. Server-Side Experiments [Infographic]

Ultimately, knowing who is responsible for which experiments can save your teams a lot of time and headaches. Let’s paint a clearer picture by talking about how our customers use AB Tasty’s client- and sever-side functionalities to optimize customer experiences.

Temporary changes to your website’s UI

Valentine’s Day, Christmas, and Black Friday provide the perfect opportunity to pamper customers with sales and specials. For the occasion, you may want to give your website the proper festive look or display banners and other new UI elements. However, these events are time-limited, and you want your website to return to its usual look and feel at midnight sharp.

Temporary changes to your website’s UI are the ideal job for client-side experimentation solutions. Marketers and designers can make changes themselves without consuming development resources. As a result, they can put their strategies into practice exactly as they imagined and have full control over what is displayed when.

Experimentation

Experimentation is a big subject and involves many different methods and strategies for client-side and server-side tools. In theory, you can utilize some of these techniques using both solutions, such as A/B tests. As a result, it may not always be clear how you should proceed. Here are a few tips:

Use client-side experiments for anything that focuses on user experience, user engagement, conversion rates, and content personalization. AB Tasty’s client-side experiments offer a quick way to test your ideas to ensure they are getting the ROIs you expect. Conduct A/B tests, Multivariate tests, Split tests, and Multipage tests, and analyze their impact in your ROI dashboard.

Our server-side experimentation feature is primarily used by product and engineering teams. It helps you conduct robust and secure experiments that focus on modifying your products’ functions. For example, you can use it to test a new payment method with a subset of users and see how they adapt. Introduce new features to a specific user group and take the appropriate next steps based on live user feedback and selected KPIs in your dashboard.

Keep reading: how to run sophisticated experiments using feature flags.

Personalization

Personalization is a powerful way to improve user satisfaction – and something that your consumers may already take for granted. You can utilize personalization on the client and server-side, with each option presenting different possibilities and challenges.

Client-side personalization is based on non-identifiable user data, data segmentation, and data processing by the AB Tasty AI. Put simply, our AI enables marketing teams to create general personalizations based on user group clusters, such as users’ browsing behavior. Let’s say you want to generate personalization campaigns in your electronics web store for users who are interested in Android or Apple. With client-side personalization, you can find and address the right groups of people with ease.

Server-side tools are usually more powerful for 1-to-1 personalization (also known as individualization). The goal is to create unique omnichannel experiences for each user group or even each individual user. For this, however, you need to collect, store, and process assignable user data, e.g., from a logged-in customer. Hence, you need to keep up to date with the latest data protection regulations in your country, such as the GDPR, and make sure that your website or app complies with them.

Wrapping up

Server-side and client-side experimentation are really two sides of the same coin. They are strategically important as they allow marketing and product teams to focus on their core competency for maximum impact. Use both AB Tasty’s client- and server-side functionalities to empower teams to develop a common approach to experimenting, personalizing, and continuously optimizing digital assets.

Want to learn more about how you can effectively use client-side and server-side experience optimization tools together? Send us a message – we’re happy to help.

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Mar 11, 2020

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Everything You Need to Know About the Freemium Business Model

AB Tasty

“Freemium is like a Samurai sword: unless you’re a master at using it, you can cut your arm off.” – Rob Walling

Scary as this may sound, you’re in the right place to learn what it takes to work the freemium business model in your favor.

Definition of a Freemium Business Model

A freemium business model is an extremely popular customer acquisition strategy among SaaS business owners. Think Dropbox, Spotify, Venngage, Trello, MailChimp, Buffer, Grammarly, etc. Without spending a penny subscribers can experience the product and test out basic features.

Basically, a freemium offering helps companies not only amplify their reach and popularity (Network Effect), but also create conversion opportunities. How? By activating cognitive biases.

Let’s say you’re a steadily growing small business subscribed to a freemium plan of ‘product X.’ Owing to free plan limitations you agree to upgrade. But there’s more to this than meets the eye. You pay willingly, because thanks to the Endowment Effect, you want to avoid loss of any kind and continue owning the product you’ve become familiar with.

That said, not every business successfully converts prospects into paying customers. There are some inherent challenges, but more on that later. For now, let’s cover the basics.

Differences Between Freemium and Free Trial

Unlike the freemium business model, the free trial plans give prospects complete or partial access to the product—free of charge, but for a limited amount of time.

The idea is to get people to experience the product completely and eliminate doubts within a reasonable time frame. A classic example is Netflix.

When to Opt for the Freemium Business Model

Freemium might seem like a good fit for your product, but only if:

#1 You have a problem-solving product with a huge market

Phil Libin, CEO of Evernote once said: “The easiest way to get 1 million people paying is to get 1 billion people using.”

Certainly makes sense. For viral adoption of your product, it should have a huge market and address freemium users’ pain points. This combination will generate positive word-of-mouth marketing, resulting in engaged customers and improved conversions.

#2 If your product is easy-to-use

The easier it is for users to get around, the less intervention on your part. Besides that, users should understand what they’re getting for free as well as the advantages of upgrading. This essentially means you can spend more time and resources on other important aspects of your business.

#3 If your product isn’t way too expensive

Consumers are price sensitive. To motivate them to upgrade from freemium to a paid plan, your product has to be within an affordable range, justifying the fee and the value you’re delivering. At the same time, it shouldn’t cost you a lot to support a large, non-paying user base.

What Should Your Target Conversion Rate Be?

Generally speaking, freemium conversion rates are low and hover between 2-5%. But that’s not to say that anything lower than that is bad. In fact, you’re better off as long as you’re consistently improving month on month.

Problem is if your conversion rates are either too low or too high. Here’s why:

A low conversion rate means you’re offering way too many features for free and giving prospects no reason to convert. Conversely, high conversion means your freemium offer isn’t exciting which then threatens future customer acquisitions. So ideally, go after a number that’s neither too low nor too high.

How to Increase Your Freemium Conversion Rate

Convinced that the freemium model is good for your business? Great. Though for it to work, understand that it doesn’t deliver on its own. Put simply, freemium subscribers don’t magically convert into paid users. Yeah, sorry, but someone had to burst your bubble.

So draft a solid plan to compel prospects to open their wallets and also passionately endorse you. 😉

Let’s see how you can position yourself better and maximize freemium conversions.

#1 Review your freemium limitations

To let users test out your product completely and get a taste of exclusive features of the premium plan, get rid of the limited features restriction. Instead, limit the users or usage.

On Slack, for example, there’s a limit placed on the number of users, messages, and app installations. Then there’s Dropbox where users are given only a certain amount of storage before they’re asked to pay to upgrade.

Slack freemium - limitations on usage and features — Slack’s a perfect example of how to make paid plans enticing.

#2 Send subtle reminders

Stop bombarding freemium users with pushy sales emails and in-app pop-ups to upgrade. This ‘money talk’ can wait, especially if they’re still new to using your product.

On the contrary, go the subtle, non-aggressive route. Integrate your upgrade message intelligently into the product. Sure, it could take longer for users to really consider upgrading, but your subtle hints won’t go unnoticed.

Spotify does this well, allowing freemium users to skip only 6 songs every hour. The seventh time users are nudged to slow down or get premium.

Spotify Freemium — Spotify’s message prompt is simple yet packs a punch.

#3 Conduct thorough customer research

Products are created with users in mind. The only way yours will be noticed is if you understand who your customer is and what they want. So as step one, conduct solid customer research. Think customer interviews, email surveys, analytics, social listening, discussion forums, heatmap tools, etc.

Finally, let your findings guide you to create and/or improve your product that immediately addresses users’ problems. Not only will they engage better, but they’ll also provide a plethora of insights on how to keep innovating, show value, and stay relevant.

For instance, if you notice a consistent spike in demand for certain features, test those to statistically determine which results in maximum conversions.

#4 Personalize freemium users’ journey

When freemium users are left to their own devices they don’t learn a lot about the product features. To fix this, tailor your potential customer’s journey because each one of them walks a distinct conversion path and has different reasons for why they sign up.

Using a marketing automation platform, contact them early and often so they learn how the product can add value to their professional lives. And when they complete a task, send them encouraging emails and cross-promote other useful features to help them get more work done.

Also, personalize the journey of inactive users and stop them from churning. Trace their previous activity and motivate them to get back in action.

Before you know it, you’ll have helped them build muscle memory, a new habit of using your product. Let’s say your prospect used your product to create a quiz. Congratulate them and get them to explore other offerings, such as creating a poll.

#5 Create product/feature-focused content

Make self-learning easy. Produce a vault of content, including blog posts, videos, tutorials, and FAQs. Your efforts to educate your prospects will be appreciated and result in quick adoption of your product.

Besides, as mentioned earlier, the more they get used to using your product, the stronger the Endowment Effect and the possibility of them becoming paid users will be.

Freemium Buffer email updates to engage users — Buffer sends product updates over email to engage users and set them on the path to feature discovery.

#6 Create a sense of urgency

Urgency triggers fear-of-missing-out or FOMO which makes it a powerful conversion tactic.

One of the ways to create urgency is by giving your highly engaged users an attractive, time-limited upgrade discount. Make sure you highlight what they’re going to miss if they don’t go premium. It’s bound to work since they know their way around the product and might want to keep using it.

Grammarly freemium plan - create urgency with discounts (1)

#7 Make way for friction-free payment

This one’s a no-brainer. Get rid of every possible barrier on the payment page and make it easier for your customers to start using the product right away. It’ll create an excellent customer experience (hopefully resulting in more referrals), reduce payment abandonment rates, and increase your revenue.

What you can do:

Auto-fill data you already have in your database.
Do not kill their buzz with hidden fees.
Give multiple/preferred payment options.
Recap what’s included in the paid subscription.
Mention when the renewal is due.

Dropbox freemium strategy - easy transition to paid plan — Dropbox’s no-nonsense payment page.

However, despite this, if you notice users step away multiple times from signing-up, reach out to them and discuss why they’re hesitant in coming onboard. You’ll surprise yourself with the kind of customer intelligence you might uncover.

Conclusion

Hopefully, this guide has helped you get a handle on the freemium business model.

Now to sum it up and before you wrap your SaaS product as a freemium offering, make sure it has a huge demand, is easy-to-use, and doesn’t burn a hole in either your or your customers’ pockets. Aside from that, implement the best practices discussed in this post to run a sustainable business.

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What Exactly Does Customer Experience (CX) Mean? And How Can We Measure It?

AB Tasty

It’s a competitive world online. In order to beat your competition, you need world-class customer experience (CX).

But what exactly does customer experience mean, anyway?

This is a non-technical guide to customer experience; we’ll cover what CX is, why it’s important, how it benefits your business, and how you can measure it.

By the end of the article, you’ll have everything you need to start measuring, improving, and delivering an exceptional experience for your customers.

The Definition of Customer Experience

Customer experience is a big deal.

So much so that a study by Econsultancy found that the number one priority for more than 2,000 marketers was customer experience when asked the question:

“Over the next five years, what is the primary way your organization will seek to differentiate itself from competitors?”

So what is customer experience?

Customer experience (CX for short) is the perception of your customers’ experience with your business or brand.

Every time a customer interacts with your brand and everything your business does, it has an impact on how your customers perceive your business.

Customer experience is the culmination of all of these experiences and interactions, impacting your decision whether to return to the business or make a purchase.

Simply put, the key to your success is epic customer experience.

The Importance of Customer Experience for Your Business

The core benefits of improving your customer experience include the following:

Increase the loyalty of your customers
Increase the happiness and satisfaction of your customers
Increase positive reviews and recommendations
Reduce returns
Reduce complaints
Reduce churn

There is no doubt that to be a successful business, you need to put your customers first. If you do, it’s not only good for them, but it’s also good for your business.

The Customer Journey and Customer Experience

As we’ve seen, customer experience is concerned with the holistic experience of your customers with your brand.

This means that every step of the customer journey has the potential to impact on your customer’s experience.

In terms of customer experience, the stages of a customer’s journey include discovery, research, purchase, and post-purchase customer support.

It should go without saying, but in terms of customer experience, there’s one extremely important caveat to the customer journey.

Instead of considering each stage of the journey from the business’s perspective, it’s imperative to consider these touchpoints from the perspective of the customer.

To improve customer experience at each stage, we need to understand how and why they are different, and what we can do to improve the experiences of your customers.

To better understand customer experience, let’s break down the customer journey into stages.

Stage One: Consideration

When a customer changes from an observer to a potential customer, they enter the “Consideration” phase.

It’s at this stage that a customer is making a choice whether to consider your brand or exclude it from their buying journey.

nike brand

At this point, branding is hugely important. Well-known brands have the upper hand at this point, but if you own a smaller company, the best way you can make an impact is by having a clear message that solves a customer’s problem.

Stage Two: Evaluation

There are two ways in which a potential customer can enter the evaluation stage.

First, they may have “selected” your brand during the consideration stage or, interestingly, they may enter the cycle fresh in the evaluation stage.

While this may seem odd, it’s common sense. As a potential customer researches products similar to yours, it’s likely that they stumble across new brands, as well as the brands they’ve previously considered.

The way you advertise to customers at this stage of the cycle should, therefore, reflect both of these types of customers and you should take into account the fact that many people have not yet interacted with your brand at all.

Stage Three: Buying

Hooray! This is the stage we’ve all been waiting for. And it’s more than likely the stage that most marketers focus on.

Everything from the text on the ‘Buy’ button to the copy on the product page is A/B tested, iterated, and scrutinized.

Of course, this is highly important, but by placing too much emphasis on this one stage of the cycle, it could be detrimental to the customer experience overall.

Stage Four: Post-Purchase

Often overlooked, the post-purchase stage is an equally important part of the customer experience journey.

How you treat your customers after they have bought from you will affect whether they choose to repeat the process…or not.

The effect of customer satisfaction after a purchase can have a huge impact on your bottom line. Consider these statistics:

It can cost up to 25 times as much to acquire a new customer than to retain an existing one
If you increase retention rates by 5%, then you can increase profits by 25% to 95%

And here’s the punch line: only 18% of businesses focus on customer retention.

This represents a huge opportunity for you to beat your competition, increase your profits, and improve your customer experience. Win, win, win.

The Importance of Website Personalization

“Website personalization is the real-time individualization of a website to suit each visitor’s unique needs and guide them through a custom conversion funnel.”

And it goes hand in hand with customer experience.

Personalization can be done at any stage of the funnel, from personalized email marketing to exit-intent popups and discount offers.

A well-targeted personalized message evokes an emotional response and creates a stronger, more memorable connection with your brand.

How to Measure Customer Experience

Instead of measuring the ROI of customer experience, which will likely take the focus off customer satisfaction, you should use one or more of the following industry-specific metrics:

NPS (Net Promoter Score)

The Net Promoter Score, or NPS, measures customer experience and can also predict business growth.

It’s a simple measurement, but it’s been adopted around the world and is seen as one of the best ways to measure your customer’s experience.

To run the test, ask your customers on a scale of one to ten whether or not they would recommend your brand or business to a friend.

Respondents are then grouped into “Promoters” (score 9-10), “Passives” (score 7-8), or “Dectractors” (0-6).

Once you’ve collected your responses, subtract the percentage of Detractors from the percentage of Promoters, and you have your Net Promoter Score.

It’s simple, straightforward, and it works.

CES (Customer Effort Score)

Like the NPS, CES is another way to measure customer experience.

Also using a survey, it asks customers to rank their experience with the business ranging from “Very Difficult” to “Very Easy.”

The theory is, if you make it easy for your customers to make a purchase or solve their problem, then it’s more likely that they will continue to pay for your product or service.

The easiest way to increase customer loyalty is not through “wowing your customers,” but rather through making it easier to get their job done.

CSAT (Customer Satisfaction Score)

The final customer service metric is the Customer Satisfaction Score.

It’s a basic test and, due to the difference in opinion over what is classed as “satisfactory,” its validity can be questioned.

Nevertheless, it’s simple to do and can offer insight into how well your customers experience your brand.

The survey asks the question “How satisfied were you with your experience?” in order to gauge customer satisfaction with their purchase or interaction with your business.

The response should be on a scale from 1–3, 1–5, or 1–10.

TTR (Time to Resolution)

Time to Resolution, or TTR, is the average time it takes for your customer service team to resolve an issue raised by a customer.

One of the best ways to reduce customer frustration is to ensure the timely resolution of their issues.

Unfortunately, if you don’t measure your response times, it’s impossible to know whether or not you’re hitting the mark.

To test your TTR, simply add up all of the time it takes to resolve issues and divide the total by the number of tickets addressed.

TTR is the average length of time it takes for customer service teams to resolve an issue.

Conclusion

In a digital world, customer expectations are higher than ever, and word of good (or bad) service travels at the speed of light. Customer experience requires constant care and attention. Focus on a long-term customer experience strategy and always offer a customer-centric strategy.

By understanding your customer experience journey and testing your customers’ satisfaction levels, you can improve your customers’ perceptions of your brand and, in turn, improve brand loyalty, increase retention, and achieve higher profits.

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5 Examples of Personalization Done Right

AB Tasty

2019 is officially a wrap. To get 2020 off to a good start, we wanted to highlight some of the best personalization campaigns we’ve seen over the past few years. Some are oldies but goodies, others hot off the press. From the travel to media industries and more, here are some great ideas to help you bring even more relevant experiences to your customers.

SaaS: Spotify Still at the Top

Spotify has gotten a reputation – like Netflix and Amazon – for being at the top of the personalization game, and with good reason. Their personalized lists of music, not to mention their hilarious ads, are savvy uses of consumer preferences and data.

In 2019, they didn’t disappoint. A nicely curated ‘Your Top Songs 2019’ list appeared at the end of the year on the app, to help ring in the New Year with just the right tunes.

Spotify Personalization

Travel: EasyJet Tells Personalized Client Stories

2015 was a big year for the airline easyJet, as it marked their 20th anniversary. If you’d flown with the company, you may have received an email like the one below. It outlined all of the destinations easyJet had taken you to, and suggested some for the future, like a visual scrapbook:

We like this kind of personalization approach – it tells a pleasant story, reminds you of all the good times you had with the brand, and is very social media friendly.

Recently, easyJet announced more personalization plans for their new package holiday plan to be rolled out in 2020.

Digital director for easyJet and easyJet Holidays, James Hardy, told Marketing Week, “We will also be launching a raft of new features over the next six months, with the aim to be the most personalised booking site in travel.” We can’t wait to see what they’ll be offering!

Media: The New York Times Perfects its Personalization

This past spring, according to Nieman Lab, the NYTimes went a step further than ever before in the name of personalizing the experience of their readership. The creation of their ‘For You’ section – at launch, only available on iOS – aimed to make it simple for readers to access more of the content they’re interested in. The benefits of this kind of personalization range from creating more engaged readers (which equals more subscriptions and sales), as well as potentially exposing them to a wider range of journalism. In other words, “consider For You one effort to widen the reader’s awareness of stories that would otherwise seem hidden…”

What we like about this campaign is its conscious effort to avoid ‘filter-bubbles’, and the fact that it’s based on active personalization. The judgment of journalists is still taken into account, and the preferences of readers, used to determine the content shown in ‘For You’, is based for the most part on what they purposely choose:

NYTimes personalization For You Personalization

Fashion: UNTUCKit Knows how to Customize

More of a product customization approach than a standard personalization campaign, the fashion brand UNTUCKit lets you build your own shirt on their site. With their simple sizing approach and online customer profile, the store already makes it easy to find exactly the right match for you. But if you want to go a step further and build a shirt to your particular specifications – from fabric to styling to pockets – they make this easy, too.

Customization Untuckit

Want to make that purchase extra special? The company even offered free (limited time) monogramming. We like the simple, no-frills approach to customization from a brand that’s all about helping customers get the right look and feel for them.

untuckit monogramming

Social Media: Facebook Year in Review

Like the easyJet example above, Facebook has for a while now offered a nice overview of users’ top moments showcased on the platform, called the Year in Review.

You can access a nice video of the highlights of the year that you can share on your wall if you like. With many people using Facebook and other social media sites as personal scrapbooks, this is a simple, feel-good way to round of the year that we can get into.

Takeaway

Personalization doesn’t have to be overly complex or ridiculously data heavy. Even simple ideas can go a long way in increasing brand awareness, loyalty, engagement and sales. It can also just be pure fun. Whatever your business, we’re sure you can find some inspiration in these examples and get your personalization strategy flowing in 2020.

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Dec 9, 2019

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5 Website Optimization Tools that Every Marketer Needs

AB Tasty

A fully optimized website is imperative if you want to rank in the search results, attract website visitors, and generate valuable leads or revenue from sales.

Simply put, website optimization is essential for your website to thrive.

But what is website optimization?

Website optimization means improving all of the elements on your website used to “acquire traffic, engage visitors and then convert them into prospects or buyers using a clearly defined method which meets a number of predefined goals.” (AB Tasty)

As it encompasses factors affecting both the traffic your website receives and the conversions your website generates, website optimization covers a wide range of specialties, including the following:

Search engine optimization: website content, on-page SEO, and backlinks
Technical performance optimization: speed, mobile optimization, page errors, and hosting performance
Conversion rate optimization: user demographics, bounce rate, conversion rate, and abandonment rate

Search engine optimization and conversion rate optimization are inexorably linked. Traffic without conversions is worthless.

And conversions without traffic is impossible.

To generate traffic, you need to make sure that your website is properly optimized for SEO.
To generate conversions, you need to make sure that any traffic that lands on your website is compelled to take action.

Each one complements the other and they both work hand in hand to improve the performace of your website in terms of your business goals.

Why are Website Optimization Tools Important?

With such a wide range of skills required and the growing complexity of modern websites, it’s no longer possible to manually optimize websites.

Website optimization tools automate the process of making your website more visible in search engines and make customers more likely to convert.

Tools range from website speed tests and mobile-friendly analyzers to A/B testing tools and data insights as to how you can improve your website to ensure that it’s successful.

For instance, a mobile-friendly tool helps you uncover which fonts are illegible on smaller screen sizes and which page elements are not displayed fully on the screen.

A/B testing tools allow you to compare two versions of a page against each other to determine which one performs better.

The list goes on.

There are a wealth of tools available that can help you improve your website and generate more traffic and conversions.

The tools allow you to see what’s working and what’s not — and offer recommendations to improve your processes.

With so many tools available, which one should you use to make your website rank higher in the search engines and convert more visitors into paying customers?

Let’s find out.

#1 PageSpeed Insights

Google’s Speed Update was released in January 2018. While desktop speed was already a ranking factor, the update meant that a website’s speed on mobile was also taken into account.

As well as being an SEO factor, site speed has a huge impact on a user’s behavior. The slower your website loads, the more likely a user is to bounce and the less likely you are to get a conversion.

Many studies have shown that a faster page speed means a better conversion rate, but how quickly should your website load?

Google aims for a website load speed of less than half a second and it states that two seconds is the absolute maximum for e-commerce websites.

Studies by AI healthcare software company mPulse Mobile found that:

pages that loaded in 2.4 seconds had a 1.9% conversion rate;
at 3.3 seconds, the conversion rate was 1.5%;
at 4.2 seconds, the conversion rate was less than 1%; and
at 5.7+ seconds, the conversion rate was 0.6%.

Fortunately, Google offers a PageSpeed Insight tool which allows you to test your website load speed, as well as offering actionable recommendations.

Enter your domain name into the search bar and hit ‘Analyze.’

Page Speed Insight Tool

The tool allows you to analyze your website speed on mobile and desktop and provides a list of recommendations to improve your results, such as minimize main-thread work, remove unused CSS, and so on.

Page Speed Improvements

#2 Google Search Console

The Google Search Console (formerly Webmaster Tools) offers a wealth of information to optimize your website.

The console is a free tool to monitor how Google views your website and provides recommendations to optimize its organic presence.

The platform shows you how many referring domains link to your website, how your website performs on mobile, your search queries, and your highest traffic pages.

In order to set up Google Search Console, follow these simple steps:

Log in to your existing Google account
Go to Google Webmaster Tools
Click “Add property now”
Click “Add property”
Enter the URL of the website you would like to add
Choose a way to verify that you own your website:
1. HTML file upload
2. Domain name provider
3. HTML tag
4. GA tracking code
5. GTM container snippet
If your site supports both http:// and https://, add both as separate sites
Add each subdomain and domain (e.g. abtasty.com, blog.abtasty.com, and env-abtasty-newwebsite.kinsta.cloud)

One of the most useful elements of the Search Console is its mobile usability test. It quickly checks that all pages and posts on your website are responsive, quick to load, and that the elements fit on the page and the fonts are legible on mobile screen sizes.

Once you’ve analyzed your website in the Google Search Console and worked through the recommendations, make sure to hit “Validate Fix” and re-run the test.

Once your pages are fixed, you can provide a better mobile experience for visitors and, of course, increase the chances of your pages ranking higher in search results.

#3 AB Tasty

A/B testing is the process of experimenting with different page variations on a website to test which pages get the best results.

In other words, it tests which version gets the most conversions for your business, such as quote requests, appointments scheduled, more traffic, sales, and so on.

In order to optimize your website, you need to understand what works for your audience, website, and business goals.

This means understanding your customers’ behaviors, how they interact with your website, and where in your funnel they drop off.

AB Tasty – that’s us! – allows you to understand your website visitors’ behavior. (Along with a range of other CX optimization options), you can build A/B tests, split tests, multivariate tests, and funnel tests with our visual editor.

It’s also possible to conduct advanced targeting to test other criteria like website URL, location, user demographics, the weather, and more.

Finally, it’s also easy to use. Once you sign up, you can begin running tests as soon as you’ve installed the AB Tasty tag on your website, which you can do in minutes flat.

#4 Yoast SEO

Yoast SEO is an easy-to-use tool for optimizing the on-page SEO on your website. It’s a WordPress plugin which offers a traffic light system to ensure that you’ve correctly optimized your pages and posts.

The first step is to install Yoast on your WordPress website and then activate it. Once that’s complete, every time you create a new page or blog post, you will get an SEO rating of the page.

By entering your focus keyword and synonyms, Yoast will tell you whether the page is well optimized or even over-optimized.

The plugin also gives you the following recommendations to improve your SEO rating:

Add your keyword to your SEO title
Add your keyword to your meta description
Increase or decrease the number of times your keyword is mentioned in the text
Add internal or external links

Yoast SEO

It’s so simple to use and allows you to stay on top of your SEO optimization for individual pages – it’s really a no-brainer.

#5 SumoMe

Conversion rate optimization is a huge part of the website optimization process. If traffic doesn’t convert, then there’s little point getting more traffic to your website.

Building an email list is important for most businesses nowadays. Whether it’s to generate a lead for a service or to build a list to market to at a later date, SumoMe can help.

Use SumoMe to gather email addresses from website visitors using exit intent popups, lead magnets, discount codes, scroll boxes, CTA popups, and more.

The paid version also offers A/B testing and data insights, but it’s to a much lesser extent than a dedicated tool (like AB Tasty).

Where SumoMe excels is by retargeting your website traffic. For example, if someone browsed your store but wasn’t in a position to buy, then you could send them an email with a discount code a few days later, and that could be enough to encourage them to convert.

Best Website Optimization Tools for 2020

If you want to attract more traffic to your website and convert it to a lead or sale, you need to optimize your website. Make sure you’re working on SEO and CRO – you need both to thrive online.

Website optimization tools make your life easier by automating many of the backend tasks. While the tools are designed to automate many of the tasks, most of them require input, so schedule a regular routine to check the tools, run reports, and make updates.

And most importantly, use your findings to improve your website. With the help of a handful of tools, you can attract and convert more traffic than ever.

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Nov 19, 2019

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How to Get More Instagram Followers for your Travel Brand

AB Tasty

It’s no secret that social media has changed the way businesses conduct their marketing strategy. These platforms are excellent ways to influence potential customers, spread brand awareness, and share their expertise in their market.

Instagram particularly can be especially advantageous for businesses. Currently, over 25 million companies use Instagram, and about 200 million people visit at least one company page every day.

Not only does Instagram have less competition, but it also maintains some of the highest audience engagement of any platform.

Brands are more likely to succeed when more people know about them, so cultivating an online following is essential. Not only will it attract new customers through word of mouth, but it will also build brand loyalty.

For travel brands, a photo-centric platform like Instagram may be the best thing ever to happen. It’s the perfect way to capitalize on visual connections that inspire and motivate people to explore new places.

With so many people using Instagram to explore interests and find inspiration, there’s a lot of opportunities for travel brands to connect with more followers.

Here’s how to get more Instagram followers for your travel brand.

Use Hashtags to Attract New Followers

Just like retail brands, travel businesses can also use hashtags to reach new users and get more Instagram followers.

Hashtags make it easier for users to search and explore, so using the right keywords is crucial.

Websites like IconoSquare make it easier to find hashtags that will help get your company noticed in search results.

By making an Iconosquare account and connecting your company’s Instagram account, you can search the hashtag you want to use and check its relevance and popularity against other posts while suggesting other terms.

Use a spreadsheet to keep search results organized and easy to track later on.

Travel brands can begin by making a unique hashtag for their business included in every post.

The next step is creating a marketing campaign with a hashtag that entices people to participate and engage with your brand. Promoting a special offer and inviting followers to use the hashtag in relevant photos and videos is one way to get your brand’s hashtag noticed.

An example of an effective Instagram campaign is the #CruiseLikeANorweign from Norwegian Cruise Line. Currently, it has 37,758, all of which advertise this company and boosts its visibility across Instagram.

Know When and What to Post

Even if your company masters the hashtag, your brand may not appear in searches because of post timing.

When trying to get more Instagram followers, an important step is finding social media monitoring tools that help you review post history and see what worked and what didn’t.

Sites like IconoSquare have tools to break down how well older posts have done for engaging users. There, you can also optimize the best times to post down to the time of day.

Make a monthly posting calendar that includes the day, time, and week for each post. It will help keep you from publishing duplicate or similar content and track engagement for each type of post.

Scheduling posts in advance is a great way to keep your profile relevant. It makes it more likely to appear in searches, and lets followers regularly know what you can offer them.

Also, make sure to keep the content high-quality. Followers want to see things that are new and interesting, so try to create entertaining posts.

Consider learning about storytelling as a tool for digital marketing. Doing so will help you make content that doesn’t just appeal to your Instagram followers–it resonates with them.

This type of high-quality content will get users to pay attention and eventually follow your profile.

Additionally, there are many free analytics tools for businesses, both from Instagram and other websites.

Target the Right Demographic

Many travel brands have the luxury of appealing to a broad audience. Not only do many people rely on travel companies when planning trips, but the desire to travel is something that appeals to many users.

However, forming an effective social media strategy to gain more Instagram followers still needs to appeal to the right audience.

Your brand might get a lot of online engagement with young adults, but they might not be the ones buying your products.

Using analytics resources is helpful for travel brands to find which users are more likely to purchase products as well as engage with posts and hashtags.

Once you identify the target audience, it will be easier to curate content that incentivizes them to look into your offers. 48% of consumers expect brands to know them, but with the right outreach strategy, it will be easy to meet that order.

Make sure to link to your company’s website whenever possible to funnel users to your page.

Follow Other Brands

If your company is still in the beginning stages and hasn’t yet gained much brand awareness, mass following is one way to pull in more Instagram followers.

While this method isn’t for everyone, it is one way to get the ball rolling and start building that follower count.

Instead of blindly following other accounts, use it to your advantage by studying how other travel brands interact with their followers and what posts create the most buzz.

Taking note of travel trends and following popular influencers will help your brand stay relevant.

It’s a good idea to follow smaller accounts, as they are more likely to check their notifications and follow back. Comment and connect with their posts to boost your visibility.

As you start to gain a fair number of followers, it will boost your company’s credibility and encourage others to follow as well.

It also doesn’t hurt to ask for more followers occasionally. Just like YouTube content creators request viewers to subscribe to their channel, travel brands can invite users to follow them, so they don’t miss out on new products, offers, and more.

Use Geotags

Like hashtags, geotags highlight any Stories, photos, or videos you post by including your location.

Geotags can be particularly beneficial for travel companies because it strengthens the visual connection that users see between the brand and the country, city, or venue they could discover with your business.

Also, using geotags allows you to contribute to that location’s Story and elevate your brand to other users.

Don’t be Afraid to Self-Promote

Hashtags and geotags are two ways to make it easy for people to discover your company on Instagram.

If you are also using other platforms, use those to raise awareness about your Instagram profile. Share a link while providing an incentive for users to click it, such as a unique offer code.

Take it to the next step by adding a link to your account in newsletters, on the company webpage, or in your email signature.

In the same vein, Instagram for company profiles has the option for sponsored advertisements that are useful for promoting your travel brand and getting more Instagram followers.

Photo, video, carousel ads, and Stories are all effective formats for advertising and building brand visibility.

Consider reaching out to influential users who can alert their followers to your brand. Begin by making a list of accounts that are relevant to travel and following them.

Look for a large following and an email address in the profile description. These are a good indication that the influencer is willing to do sponsored posts or give your brand a shoutout.

Even paid promotions are likely to be positively received by followers if the post appears more natural and genuine.

45% of people say they are more likely to unfollow brands that talk too much about their products, but striking the right balance with engaging content will help keep their interest.

Conclusion

Photos are one of the best ways to get people excited about traveling, and Instagram is perfect for connecting users to travel companies looking to expand awareness about their brand.

There are many ways to get more Instagram followers for your travel brand.

Using the right hashtags will help your brand stay relevant and connected to the latest trends. It will also help your profile appear in more search results.

Posting at the right time will ensure that when you publish a video, photo, or Story, people will see it. No matter how much content a profile produces, posting at the wrong time means no one will see the content.

Using analytics tools to find your target demographic will help you learn which content is more relevant to users and what leads to the highest engagement with your brand.

Following other travel brands, as well as popular influencers, will help you stay in the know when it comes to what’s trending.

Geotags, like hashtags, are beneficial because they help companies become more discoverable. They are an excellent way to stay relevant and boost engagement with existing followers.

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Nov 18, 2019

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Pushing the Right Buttons: Do Green CTAs Always Work Better?

AB Tasty

Did you know it only takes users 90 seconds to form an opinion about your brand? What if we told you that they base the greater part of this assessment purely on the colors you employ? When it comes to call-to-action buttons, we tend to home in on three specific aspects: color, location, and copy. Today, we’ll guide you through… drum roll, please… the best hues for your CTAs!

That being said, what do Yoda, Kermit the Frog, and the wonderful Emerald City have in common? The color green, of course! Plenty of positive associations are linked to this color, transforming it into every run-of-the-mill marketer’s preferred choice when designing their websites.

Now, we know that when it comes to call-to-action best practices, nothing is ever black and white. Does green always prevail? What other alternatives produce the highest CTR rates? Is there truly one color to rule them all?

Let’s see if it’s CRO myth, fact, or fiction that green CTAs produce the best results.

The Power of Color Psychology

Any marketing professional worth their salt can rant for hours on end about how social proof, retargeting, and urgency are surefire ways to boost conversion rates. Yet the answer to which is the best hue to use for call-to-action buttons remains contentious.

Colors play an essential role in our day-to-day decisions by awakening a variety of unconscious impulses. If a debate about the hues of a dress was enough to break the Internet, it’s pretty obvious that they’re a vital element for defining your brand perception.

Are a product’s colors capable of compelling us to purchase one item over another? What about the ones in their logo? Or even the color of a call-to-action button? The answer is yes! If you play your cards right, you’ll find that guiding customers’ choices can be easier than you ever imagined.

How Color Psychology Influences Buying Decisions

Before we dive into the world of CTAs – and the hues that love them – let’s take a look at how, exactly, colors can affect users’ emotions.

“Painting is a blind man’s profession. He paints not what he sees, but what he feels, what he tells himself about what he has seen.”

– Pablo Picasso

Color psychology explores, in a nutshell, how the different feelings and associations each color is linked to affect the decisions people make. Marketers have been in on the secret for decades, capitalizing on this knowledge to improve purchases and optimize their personalization efforts.

There’s a variety of reasons why many companies opt for green CTA buttons: due to all of the positive associations linked to the color (it represents safety, balance, trustworthiness…), many put their money on its capability to coax jittery shoppers down the purchase funnel.

For e-commerce, persuasion is a key component for guiding users. Since we are visual creatures, a strategic design could very well be the key to a new era for your brand! This infographic from Ecommerce Nation and Kissmetrics breaks down the effect of hues on customers’ behavior:

Colors and CTAs: Best Practices

The color green rules over clickable buttons: it seems inevitable that most of the sites you visit will be littered with said shade. Day after day, we’re surrounded by constant reminders of its overwhelmingly positive associations; from traffic lights to checkmarks, users have one message drilled into their brains: in green we trust when going forward.

As we’d mentioned previously, it seems like a pretty safe bet; but before you throw caution into the wind and go with the flow, keep in mind that one size does not always fit all. Take, for example, luxury brands: when was the last time you saw a green CTA on their sites? Hard to put your finger on it, huh? That’s probably because supermarkets and discount stores transformed big green buttons into one of their main identifiers, thus forcing high-scale companies to abandon the design.

Before you take the plunge, let’s review four points to keep in mind when choosing a color for your call-to-action button:

Context is king: Take a deep breath. Knowing how much is riding on this single decision makes deciding seem like a daunting task – not only does it have to be appropriate for your buyer persona, it must also fit in with your brand’s colors, the website’s design… And, on top of that, it’s nearly impossible to know whether the new CTA is behind the increase in conversions! Thankfully, you can always turn towards A/B testing to significantly optimize your efforts and get data-driven, conclusive evidence.
Make sure it pops: How can you catch your visitor’s eye? With a call-to-action button that stands out, of course! Increasing the contrast can be a good idea and is likely to increase conversion rates. Complementary colors (the one which is placed on the opposite side of the color wheel from your dominant color) and triadic colors (one of two placed one-third of the way from your dominant color on the color wheel) are your best bet.

color wheel complementary

Coherent designs: Marketers can play with the meanings that customers associate with certain colors. One common example is the use of blue tones for hyperlinks – the link (pardon the pun ☺) between the two makes us assume, automatically, that said text will direct us to another site. Due to this, it’s crucial to follow those guidelines for every single page on your website: respect the colors employed for each action and remember that happy websites equal happy users.
Keep it simple: How many times have you encountered mismatching, aggravating and downright jarring colors on a website? These careless attempts from lazy marketers do manage to capture their users’ attention… for mere seconds, after which their design spirals into a bottomless pit of damaged credibility and brand images. Invest in your design, and watch the conversions come rolling in!

Conclusion: Which Color Converts the Best?

A call-to-action button may be one of many elements in any successful CRO strategy – but it’s a crucial one, nonetheless. Bear in mind that every website is unique – as a result, the colors which will work best for each one will vary! What may double or even triple your transactions may be a flop for your competitors. Oh, what’s a marketer to do?

Bear in mind that the basic principles of color psychology (for example, green incites feelings of confidence, health, movement…) can be used as a starting point for your hypotheses. You need to test and see if this principle applies well to your particular audience and website, taking into account your website design and graphic guidelines (will the color stand out enough? Will it clash or fit in nicely?); your brand’s context (take, for instance, the aforementioned example of green CTAs being associated with grocery stores and, as a result, being shunned by luxury brands); and your audience (each culture interprets colors differently, so it’s important to take your users into account when designing your site).

In any case, if you’re feeling a bit overwhelmed about how to use colors for your call-to-action buttons (and which ones to choose), you have nothing to fear: A/B testing has got your back! Even though it’s a myth to believe green CTAs will always work better, you can use them as a solid starting point for your tests since they can often work!

CRO Myth Busters is a mini series for conversion rate optimization professionals. We take a quick look at commonly held CRO beliefs and determine if they’re true, sometimes true, or simply CRO myths!

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Nov 8, 2019

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How to Conduct Usability Testing for Mobile Apps

AB Tasty

Did you know that 90% of the time people spend on their phones is in mobile apps? Creating an app for your business is a great way to ensure that people can easily find your services right on their phones.

However, a lackluster app can sour your relationship and brand image. Regular usability testing of your mobile app helps you see how this handy marketing tool can be improved.

Read on to learn how you can conduct high-quality usability testing for your mobile apps.

Good Usability Testing: The Benefits

Usability tests for mobile apps are designed to observe test-subject users while they use your app. The purpose of testing is to measure the app’s user-friendliness and learn about how it can better support your brand’s key marketing objectives.

Usability testing helps to ensure that your app is adding value to your business, as well as meeting the expectations of the final users. Ensuring you have good usability for your mobile app will help your business improve customer satisfaction, decrease time on customer support, and increase your sales and revenue.

Seven Steps to Run an Effective Usability Test

Decide on your Objectives

First and foremost, come up with specific objectives for your usability test. When designing your objectives, keep the five usability attributes in mind:

Once you have the big idea objectives, nail them down to specifics.

One objective could be determining what aspects users enjoy about your mobile app. Perhaps they find it easy to use, or they like the colors you’ve assigned. Another objective might be seeing if a new feature helps or hinders users from completing a specific task.

Whichever way you decide to do it, make sure you have some core objectives and some flexible ones. Core objectives should be questions you ask every time you run a usability test. Flexible objectives are ones that depend on new updates or changes that didn’t exist before.

Design the Tasks

Next, it’s time to design the tasks that you’ll ask your users to do. There are a few key guidelines you should follow when designing usability tasks.

First, even if your mobile app is still in development, remove placeholder text like “lorem ipsum” with a draft of what should be there. This will help you get a better sense of how people navigate the site and decide which information is important. If they see placeholder text everywhere, you’re not getting a good sense of how they weigh the information presented to them.

Avoid providing clues in your instructions. Offering extra hints and tips might lead them to take actions they wouldn’t have otherwise figured out.

Before you run your test, check that there isn’t any ambiguity in your instructions. If you leave instructions up to interpretation, your results might make it seem that your app isn’t user-friendly.

Choose Between Lab Settings or Remote Testing

There isn’t one right option when choosing between a lab setting or running your test remotely. However, there are pros and cons to each choice.

You don’t need an actual lab to run a test in a lab setting. This just means that you’re running the test yourself in a controlled environment.

In Lab settings, you have the benefit of gaining extra observations. Even small things like hesitation or scrunched eyebrows can tell you a lot about their user experience. You also gain complete control over their experience and the environment in which the test is conducted.

One downside of lab settings is that you risk muddling the results with the framing effect. If you accidentally ask a question in a leading way or provide too much information, you’ll end up getting results that reflect your knowledge and experience with the app – instead of your users.

The advantage of remote testing is that you don’t need to schedule a time and place to host your users. The users do the test on their own time, and you get sent the results, which saves time for your team. And like we mentioned, remote testing is a great way to avoid the framing effect.

There is a range of testing tools available for mobile UX, so be sure you choose one that supports the measurement of your key objectives.

Ready, Set, Run the Test

Now that everything is ready, it’s time to run your test. There are a few different moderation methods you can choose from.

One option is to ask your participants to think out loud as they work through the tasks. “Oops, didn’t think it’d do that” is great feedback. If you’re running a test remotely, this can give you extra information about their thought process. One downside to this is that having to speak out loud might be a distraction or cause the user to complete the test slower than they would otherwise.

If you’re doing a lab test, you can take advantage of being in-person to ask them questions as they progress. However, it’s important to ask questions in a non-judgmental and non-leading tone.

Finally, you can moderate retroactively. This type of moderation asks your user to watch a replay of themselves and explain their actions, or you ask users to elaborate on certain decisions they made.

Organize and Analyze Your Data

Now that you’ve collected your usability data, it’s time to organize and analyze it. Drawing meaningful conclusions is arguably the most important step to boost the impact of your testing.

It’s best practice to review the testing sessions one at a time. Look at all the materials you have for that user, including notes on recordings, transcripts, and other info you might have.

Organize your data in an easily digestible way. Some standard categories for reporting might include the user’s name or ID number, task title, and encountered problems. You might also want to categorize problems for easy sorting – confusion, broken links, or disappointment might be some examples.

Regardless of how you choose to analyze your research, don’t forget to look at both quantitative and qualitative data. Quantitative data is great for giving your app an overall scorecard and providing summaries to higher-ups. But, keeping the qualitative data is important for remembering the details of your testing.

Work to identify positive trends and patterns, as well as challenges and roadblocks that your users faced. Be sure to cross-check your data against different metrics to help reveal if certain patterns only revealed themselves on certain devices or demographics of your audience.

Try to get in the habit of developing a standardized report so that you can easily compare changes over time. This will help ensure that you and your team can easily review progress and setbacks you’ve faced from your last usability test.

Time to Act: How to Improve Based on What You Learned

Running usability tests on mobile apps can be overwhelming. You receive so much information at once that it’s like drinking from a firehose. The first step to avoiding feeling totally overwhelmed is to prioritize your feedback.

Look at your data and choose which aspects should be the biggest priority. You can rank priorities from one to ten or categorize them from low importance to critical. Distribute these tasks in order of importance.

Take careful notes of what your team achieves and what still needs to be completed before the next test.

Which brings us to…

Plan Your Next Test

For salespeople, the slogan is “ABC – Always Be Closing.” For developers, it’s ABT – Always Be Testing.

Usability testing should happen on a regular and scheduled basis. These tests can guide choices for new design features, and updates to improve functionality.

Based on what you learned from past usability tests, you should check that major issues from before have since been resolved. Through A/B testing, you can test your newest update to your older version.

Regardless if your mobile app is in development or you’re undergoing an update, you should keep an eye on competitor mobile apps. This can help you stay ahead of the curve and keep up with usability expectations for your industry. It can also inspire changes that take advantage of the familiarity principle.

Getting feedback on the usability of your app can be a difficult pill to swallow. It’s important to remember that a lot of feedback means you ran a successful usability test, and not that your app is a failure. Every test you run will bring you closer to perfecting the user-experience and supporting larger business goals.