VBO – The Missing Piece in Your Optimization Puzzle

WebFadds has added VBO service as an essential process both during new site development and redesigns, and in all landing page optimization work. Contact Us for a Quote today — WebFadds VBO services start at $599.  Read below to learn how this service helps you better serve visitors, and increase your ROI.

Why Optimize for Visitor Behavior?

If you have a website, and you’re serious about getting the most out of it, you probably have already done some SEO work. You’re using some form of Social Media to connect with prospects. And, you’re watching those Analytics for actions you can take to guide visitors toward desired business outcomes.  Good… you’ve got Metrics.

But, what are your site visitors not doing — that they could be doing — and which would convert more visitors to prospects, leads, and customers? Answer: Your customers have those answers… not metrics.  Metrics in a good Analytics package (we use Google Analytics alot) will answer WHAT, visitors are doing and not doing — but not WHY.  So, ask them what they understand about your site, and watch them interact with it. Then, you can review the results to look for tweaks and tactics to help visitors get what they need at your site. That’s how you’ll get what you need.

Sounds like a good plan — even essential when you’re designing a new page, or sales funnel of pages? Of course. You need to know what your visitors are thinking, and why they are clicking, or not clicking — their motivation factors missing from cold hard analytics. Addressing those factors will increase your ROI.  This assumes you have defined the desired business outcomes for your site, and are actively monitoring them.

We call understanding visitor thinking and adjusting for it, VBO – Visitor Behavior Optimization. Ask yourself — are you optimizing your website, or optimizing the way visitors think about your website? Remember when everyone used “Submit” as the button text for a form? “Submit” means you are forcing someone to do something. Conversion testing shows consistently that changing the button text to something friendlier results in more desired outcomes because of what your visitor thinks and feels about your site. That’s VBO.

Types & Steps in  VBO Testing:

Here’s an overview of the steps we recommend in a good VBO process, followed by some examples:

• Actions in Analytics – learn visually where visitors are clicking on your pages, and how much each click was worth to you.  With regards to visitors, it answers “WHAT” are they doing and not doing.
• Click plus Memory Testing - What attracts clicks, and what do visitors remember about the items they clicked.  This helps more with “WHAT” (what do they click on), and begins to answer “WHY” (impressions of your site).
• Exit Surveys and Polls -  This is very important because it is one cost-effective way to answer “WHY” visitors do what they do.
• Usability Review - what is in the mind of your visitors as they interact with your site — another way to understand the “WHY” of site visitor behavior.
• Sort it out and apply Usability, Advertising & Marketing Principles - Review, analyze and strategize new tactics.
  After you complete the above, and implement new tactics based on what you learned about the WHAT AND WHY of your site visitor behavior, then you need to optimize for your solutions…
• A/B Test, or Multivariate Optimization Test – Test a number of persuasion variables (Headlines, Persuasive Images, Calls to Action, etc.) as you upgrade your site for more conversions.

1 – Click and Conversion Metrics:  Above [click to enlarge]  is a click overlay from Google Analytics, showing the percentages for each item clicked on our home page.  Hovering over a link also reveals a conversion tracking box showing the $ value for those visitors that completed a conversion on our site (floating box).  But we don’t know yet why visitors clicked on a particular link, what caught their attention, visually, and what they remembered on leaving.

2 – Click (Heat) plus Memory Test: Above is still another test in the VBO process (click to enlarge) we did on our home page.  It is a “5 Second Test” from fivesecondtest.com, and reviewers are asked to look at a static image of your site, then click on the areas of interest, and describe what they were after 5 seconds.  Above we got a high number clicking on the linked flash intros, and two on a “Latest Report” link at middle right.  Only one reviewer recalled, the correctly spelled our company name.  Did anyone hesitate to locate an item on a page?  Why did they choose one Blog Post over another?  These questions cannot be answered in a simple clickmap (sometimes called a heat map) test. TIP:  In order to understand what you are getting from this test, we recommend you, and your makreting team, take at least 10-15 tests (takes a couple of minutes) there before you interpret your data.

3 – Usability Review Testing: To answer the questions the first two tests could not, we need to have at least three reviewers look at the site, and talk their way through it as they interact with it.  Above (click to hear video of actual test), is an actual review done for Clearwire.com’s website.  There are generally two kinds of reviewers — those that are typical prospects you are seeking, and those that have a level of usability expertise so they can identify and advise on issues you need to consider fixing.  This used to be pretty expensive — you had to hire a company who paid reviewers to come into their office, then they videotaped their site interaction and provided a transcript with recommendations.  It’s more affordable, nowadays, as there are a number of reviewers and reviewing services available online.

Steps 4 & 5 – Analyze, then test Revised Combinations: Now that you’ve “got inside the head” of visitors and site reviewers, you should identify elements you want to tweak — headlines, graphics, and calls to action.  Then, your final step is to run software on the landing page you want optimized that will swap in each revision element — in different combinations, and tell you which one converts best.  Usually, you will use a PPC (Pay Per Click) advertising campaign to drive enough unique visitors to the page to get a good reading (around 1,000).    Below is Google’s Overview of their “Optimizer” software — one way to carry out your test: