Conversion Research

[00:00:00] Divyansh Shukla: Rich is a proven master of conversion research, and lets see what he has prepared for all of us today. Rich, all the best. 

[00:00:18] Rich Page: So yeah, great to be here. Unfortunately, I don’t have any comedy videos so it’s gonna be a big letdown for everyone after that great presentation. Interestingly enough, User Testing, which is what I’m going to talk about actually can be very funny when you watch some of the user testers complete some of your tasks.

[00:00:38] The funniest one I ever had was shared prototype in Figma and ask them to log in and they actually try to log into Figma. Which was hilarious, so derailed the whole user test. So, that’s the funny side of user testing. Anyway, that’s what I’m here to talk to you about today.

[00:00:59] And that is the best user testing questions to gain much better A/B test ideas that you probably aren’t asking. Okay. So, let’s get going. 

[00:01:11] Who am I? This is the boring part, I guess. I’ve got 15 years experience with CRO – increasing conversion rates for websites like ManlyBands, JosephJoseph, and Unbound Merino.

[00:01:20] How I’m different is that clients get high impact CRO recommendations and A/B test ideas exclusively from me not from a CRO agency team who may have different levels of experience. I’m also, the author of two popular CRO books, including ‘Website Optimization: An Hour a Day’. And I’m focused on conversion research including user testing, which is why I’m thinking I decided to do this talk. 

[00:01:45] So first of all, I want to talk about why you’d even want to use a test anyway, particularly for those who don’t do it. So actually, it’s not just for gathering website bugs and finding out what’s broken on your website. It’s actually a key part of conversion research if you do your user testing better. And it’s because you should use it to discover the issues, doubts, and hesitations of your target audience.

[00:02:08] And I actually do that. And, and as a result, that many of my highest converting A/B test ideas have come from my user testing techniques. But unfortunately, many businesses use questions that are very ordinary and therefore they give very poor insights that might make them think, oh, I don’t want to do this. User testing is a waste of time. 

[00:02:32] So anyway, here are seven better questions for gaining better insights, better A/B test ideas and better results on your conversion rate and revenue. 

[00:02:42] So, first one. Do you feel there is anything unique about what this website offers? When to ask us? Actually, you should ask this as one of your first questions, and it’s ideal after they’ve visited your homepage.

[00:02:56] Why to ask us? Well, it’s because your unique value proposition is one of the key commercial influences on pretty much any website. And what’s so good about it is that it will reveal if users notice and and understand why they should buy from your website because obviously if they don’t, then there’s going to be a high chance of them going somewhere else to purchase, which you don’t want.

[00:03:17] And the insights from that will help you create A/B tests to get users to notice your unique value preposition more and also to understand it better. So, for example, you may do a user test and ask this question, you might find out that they’ve missed your lowest price guarantee at the footer, which is all the way, not the footer, but all the way down your product page.

[00:03:40] So, like, oh, okay, great. So, let’s make our lowest price guarantee more prominent. So, that’s just a quick example of that. 

[00:03:49] Next question, is any information missing that you would that would be useful to know to help you decide whether to purchase. When to ask this is when you’ve asked them to visit your product page or any of your other key pages really. Why you should ask this because this is going to help you reveal what useful additional content that you should add or make much more prominent on any of your pages that they’ve mentioned this on. And by adding that content or making it more prominent it’s going to help users convert much quicker you easier and hopefully much more often.

[00:04:21] So, for example, here they might say that they don’t really understand some of the key features and they wanted more information regarding that, or they don’t really understand what your returns detail is or they can’t find your dimensions, or they’re not very clear. So, that’s the type of information that would help them purchase.

[00:04:44] Next one, please use the navigation or internal search to find a product you are interested in. How useful were those options? I actually suggest doing this in the middle of the user test. Don’t do it too soon or at the end, because there’s some more important questions that I’ll cover in a second.

[00:05:03] Why you should ask this? Because the insights that you’ll get from this will help you create better A/B test ideas that help users browse better on your website and find what they want faster. That’s obviously ultimately going to increase your conversion rate and your revenue. Just some examples of this you might find out that your mobile navigation is hard to use in your use test because obviously you want to do your use tests on desktop and mobile or you may find that your internal search doesn’t work for them because they’ve actually accidentally put a typo in for what they want to search for.

[00:05:37] Or you may find that they’re using a completely different way of describing what they want for your product. And you get no search results for it, you know, like a simile. I think that’s the word. So that’s a good reason why you should focus on your navigation and internal search. 

[00:05:56] What are your biggest doubts or hesitations about this website or business? I think really this is if you didn’t ask any other question and you only had time to ask one question, this will give you the best insights. When to ask this I would always do this after they viewed your product page or any of on any other of your key pages. Don’t do it off on your home page because they probably won’t know yet or at the beginning of the test. But why you should ask this because really it’s really important to understand what your users most common doubts or hesitations are. For example, they were unclear what product was best for them because you may have too many that are too similar.

[00:06:36] They didn’t really understand how it works. And they also could have doubted you because that you don’t have enough reviews. So therefore they may not have trusted you to buy from you. And why this is so good is because the insights you get from this will help you create better A/B test ideas, that will reduce the chances of other visitors on your website, having those same doubts or hesitations. And therefore you’re going to convert more of those users into money. 

[00:07:09] Next one, what would increase the chances of you purchasing other than reducing price or discounts? This is one that’s best asked towards the end of the user test.

[00:07:18] And why you should ask this? Well, it’s an improvement on an actual common question that people ask. But really the last part of it is the most important because that’s where you ask other than reducing price or user discounts. And it will give you some really interesting ideas. For example, if you didn’t add that last part, many will just say that they’ll just say all low price or discounts would have made me purchase. So, for example, they may say if product came with feature X or whatever, or if you had a rewards program, or if you had cheaper delivery. So, that’s a good question to ask towards the end. 

[00:07:52] Next one is to it would be try to find a similar website in Google, visit it, and then describe what you prefer on that website. And this is best used as one of the last questions, and this is really good because it’ll help you understand what users like on some of your competitor websites. And the insights can actually help you improve some of your A/B test ideas that you’re thinking of. Obviously, don’t just copy other people’s websites, but it’s a good way of gathering some ideas there.

[00:08:18] Then some examples of this is they may prefer the category filters on one of your competitor websites or they may prefer the product imagery on there. The other interesting thing on this is that it helps you understand the user testers usage of Google. It’s interesting to see how people use Google is not always the way you might expect them to do and also what search terms and sometimes it will even reveal to you like oh, they they’re searching it for that way I didn’t expect that so it can be quite eye opening. And then lastly, this is a really good question to end with any time remaining, look around for other products or content that interests you while giving feedback.

[00:08:55] And this is the really good for the last, cause the last task on why you should do it as the last time, the last task is because it will maximize the feedback that you get from each of your users session test times, which means that you will need fewer user tests. Which will often save you money, which then you can do future user tests with.

[00:09:12] This will stop you from getting, when you do a 20 minute user test, you only get 10 minutes worth of feedback. And then it’ll fill up a lot of that empty testing session time there. And it’s also good because it lets users click around to whatever interest. Without any guidance from you and reveals interesting insights that you wouldn’t have otherwise got, for example, they may end up going to your about us page and give you some interesting feedback.

[00:09:36] Maybe they don’t like it, or they think is lacking imagery or they want to know who you are, or they may end up on your FAQ and not think it’s very good. So you can get some great feedback that way. And that’s it. So I suggest you ask some of those questions on your next user tests, and you hopefully will get much better results.

[00:09:58] So any questions? 

[00:10:01] Vipul Bansal: Great. That was insightful, Rich. I do see there are a couple of questions that have flown in. So Dan Golding has a question. It’s a really long question. Dan, would you like to come up on stage and ask the question with more context? Maybe we have a bit of time on hand at hand. Here he is.

[00:10:22] Hi, Dan. How are you? 

[00:10:24] Dan Golding: I’m good. Thanks. Thank you for this. It’s been a really great event so far. 

[00:10:28] Vipul Bansal: Thank you so much. Please ask a question. 

[00:10:31] Dan Golding: Hi, Rich. Thank you. That was really informative. , I just have a quick question, which is that when I’ve done user testing before, something I found was that people would hold back from telling me, or I got the sense that people were holding back from telling me what they really thought because they didn’t want to upset me.

[00:10:46] I was just wondering if you have any tips or advice on getting sort of good honest feedback from people 

[00:10:53] Rich Page: Yeah, that’s a very good question. So that’s why I would always advise you can write a scenario to begin with to actually say we’re looking for honest feedback. Don’t worry about trying to impress us, that type of thing, because ultimately we want actionable feedback and please be honest.

[00:11:12] That type of wording to begin with that helps people think a bit better. And I think it depends on which tool you use as well, like some of the kind of some tools out there don’t have such good panels where they might just be looking to get five star ratings and might not give you particularly good results and always want to please you. So really just be as honest as possible in the scenario to begin with and also even include in some of the questions as well just say look there is no right answer we’re not going to judge you. We just want your honest feedback don’t worry about offending us that type of thing

[00:11:47] Vipul Bansal: I have a few more questions.

[00:11:49] There’s one interesting question from Lisa. Let me see if Lisa, would you like to come up on stage? Here she is. Hi, Lisa. How are you? 

[00:11:57] Lisa: Hi. Nice to be here. Thank you for having me. 

[00:12:01] Vipul Bansal: Thank you so much. Please ask your question. 

[00:12:04] Lisa: I was just curious Rich when you do your user testing or user surveys, which platform do you use? Or do you do more in person interviews? 

[00:12:17] Rich Page: Yeah, good question. So I used to use usertesting.com, but unfortunately they went to a very expensive subscription plan. So I did a lot of looking into what other tools are out there. One of the best tools that I use is Userfeel. And they actually do page to-go user testing.

[00:12:34] So it’s from $60 per user test, which is a 20 minute unmoderated test. So that’s the one I use. And it’s great for if you don’t do, you know, user testing every month rather than you to pay very expense annual fee with things like user testing, or use Zoom. 

[00:12:53] Lisa: Awesome. Thank you for that info. Thanks again for answering my questions. It’s been great so far. 

[00:13:02] Rich Page: Thank you. 

[00:13:03] Vipul Bansal: Thank you so much, Lisa. I will now guide you off the stage and we’ll take one more question because we have two minutes. We started off a bit early on the presentation. I see an interesting question from Devaraj Sundaram.

[00:13:16] So, Rich, here’s the question from Devaraj. He’s asking, when would you use interview style versus giving them a prototype and ask them to perform a task and observe what they do? And they ask them, why they did that? Did you understand the question? 

[00:13:31] Rich Page: Yeah, so, I mean, there’s two different ways of using user testing.

[00:13:37] The way that they’re kind of alluding to there about showing a prototype and then just asking them to do a task and observe is more of a traditional way to do it. And you’ll just watch what they do and you’ll be able to see session completion times and all that, but it doesn’t really get to the key part that I was just alluding to in my test, my user testing session there was that you really need to figure out what their doubts, hesitations and issues are.

[00:14:07] And you’re not really going to get that from them. If you just perform that type of task. You may get lucky and they may give you feedback, but they may, because you’re not like giving them questions that make them think in a way to give them actionable feedback that you can use to improve whatever it is that you’re showing them in the prototype, then, I don’t think it works as well. It is valid, but I would do two different ways of doing it. I would get it to a certain point in the prototype. And then once you think it’s good enough, then I would potentially do that as well just to see if they’re using it fast enough at task completion time, all those different types of things.

[00:14:49] Vipul Bansal: Awesome. I hope that answers the question, Devraj. Feel free to post your follow up question or anything in the chat itself. And yeah, with that, thank you so much, Rich. We have all that time for now. Thanks.