August
29
2007
well, maybe not everyone but certainly you can sympathize with the sentiment. We all dream of getting that rare GTO (ok, that’s just me) but the point is, we all dream about owning a great car but not buying them. Why is that? Well, the dealership is a high-pressure sales environment. Every move, statement and eye wiggle is scripted to get us to buy a car.
"I’ll have to check with my manager"
"What will it take to get you to take this baby home with you today?"
<endless waiting designed to make you willing to do anything to leave>
<forms, upon forms, upon forms>
Any of this sounding familiar yet? Why am I bringing this up and making you sweat, cringe and shiver all at the same time?
-glad you asked-
Over on the Lunametrics Blog, Robbin Steif has published part four of her interview with Avinash Kaushik about his book "Web Analytics: An Hour A Day" and at one point she asks
Why do you care so much about the customer experience and discount conversion rate so much? (We can say, p. 340, but you address this elsewhere too) The way that I look at it, there are either other conversions (like applying for a job, or getting help on the website), and the analyst is just forgetting to include those conversions. Or, it’s important that the customer have a good experience so that when he is ready to buy, he will (and it is a long term problem, but it is still about conversion rate.) Or, he will tell other people or write about what a good experience he had, and *they* will come and convert, eventually. So it is still a conversion rate problem. Ultimately, it is always about conversion rate. (Go ahead. Tell me that I’m wrong.)
Avinash goes into a long and informative response detailing why focusing on just conversion rate is a bad idea. For me, it boils down to ‘visitors at your site have all kinds of tasks in mind – other than buying – so optimizing for just one task neglects (or worse) the other visitors.’
However, it got me thinking … well that’s unfair … I had a little flash of an idea and here it is:
"I’ll bet Car Dealerships are massively over optimized for ‘Conversion’"
So, even if you are there to buy, it can be (and often is) a massively uncomfortable experience. If, instead of optimizing for conversion, you optimize the user/consumer experience in effect what you are doing is creating a comfortable and reassuring environment where your visitors can feel confident in doing whatever it is they came there to do.
You don’t want to be the car dealership of the online world do you?
Does anyone have a story about how optimizing for the user (versus a metric like conversion rate) had unanticipated positive results? Please share your story in the comments here.
Hey, I’m equal opportunity – if you have a UX horror story share it here too…
[Sidebar] I bought a new Saturn Aura yesterday – I am very loyal to GM becuase they have given me two jobs in the past when I really needed ‘em – and it is always a good experience at Saturn becuase it is fixed price and no pressure. They have something new. They are not optimized for conversion. This is our third Saturn. [/Sidebar]
Here is my story…..
Through survey responses we learned that people did not care about differences between our products. Yet that was the only comparison chart on the site (becuase it was a effective way to upsell, you see the missing check boxes in the cheaper product and you’ll probably buy the more expensive one).
Some gentle cajoling and “give them bread if they want bread” speeches later a comparison chart was produced that simply stated the difference between the version of the product this year vs last year. It was still feared that this would result in less revenue (lack of upselling), so we were able to beg a 30 day test.
The result at the end of 30 days was that conversion improved by 20% (it was 2.6% originally) revenue improved by gobs and customer satisfaction improved by 6 points (with 2 points being statistically significant) for people who were on the site to “Research” or “Purchase”.
Happiness reigned.
-Avinash.
Hey Avinash – those are both great stories – one showing a dealership that ‘bucks the trend’ and another showing how optimizing for the user had positive results that folks might not expect. Such a simple change with wide-ranging impacts…that’s awesome.
Clint,
When we first started our consulting in 1998 it was all “conversion based.” What we learned after a few years of that was that clients hit a conversion brick wall http://www.grokdotcom.com/2007/03/09/hitting-the-landing-page-optimization-wall/. It was the reason we developed Persuasion Architecture. It focuses on helping people buy the way they want to buy and accomplish all the micro tasks from the click to click level they may need to along the way. Our classic case study which has been written up in MarketingSherpa and in Waiting For Your Cat to Bark is the case of Leo Schachter. Where we uncovered 5 personas and planned they content they needed to have the proper experience based on where they were in the buying cycle. The results they went from a 0.86% conversion rate to a 54.1% conversion rate to locate a jeweler. Focusing on conversion techniques only is like trying to practice your high pressure sales techniques; they used to work but the customer is in control today and the nature of the marketing relationship has evolved so how you “sell” must too.
Bryan,
I love that you built an entire business around a more holistic UX approach as opposed to simple conversion optimization!