If you want to up your conversion optimization game, looking at quantitative data alone might not do the trick. Conversion research is pivotal in getting a deep understanding of user behavior. Based on the insights and findings you can optimize the different website or app elements by enhancing the overall user experience.
Whether you are a beginner or a seasoned UX professional, having an understanding of the fundamental pillars of conversion research and how those can boost your conversion rates will help you craft a winning optimization strategy that will propel your online success.
What is Conversion Research?
Conversion research revolves around the collection and analysis of qualitative and quantitative data surrounding user interaction with certain parts of a website or application. The ultimate goal of gathering those insights is to use them in your efforts to improve your conversion rates.
Conversion research is a process that integrates both qualitative and quantitative methodologies. Looking at your website or app analytics you can identify not only patterns in the user behavior but also areas where the system might underperform. On the other hand, qualitative insights can help you discover the ‘why’ behind those behaviors unearthing potential bottlenecks to conversions.
Hence, by deep diving into the nuances of user behavior, organizations can address issues, refine the overall user experience, and hence increase the likelihood of users taking a desired action on their online platform, such as making a purchase or downloading an asset.
Types of Website Conversions
Before trying to optimize your conversion rates, it is crucial to get a good understanding of the different types of website conversions and how those work. By understanding the nuances of each of those conversion types you can better tailor your optimization strategies and achieve greater results.
Completed Checkout
The completed checkout is one of the most pivotal website conversions especially when it comes to e-commerce websites and platforms. This particular conversion marks the transition of a visitor to a paying user and it is a fundamental metric to keep a close eye on.
There is an array of factors that can have an impact on this conversion. Transparent pricing, a frictionless payment process, and the perception of how secure a process is are just some of those factors that can make or break the completed checkout.
To ensure a pleasant checkout and boost this metric you need to use conversion research to better understand the sticky points of the process as well as ways to build trust with your users to enhance customer satisfaction and loyalty.
Sign-ups for Free Trial
Sign-ups for free trials are another important conversion to look out for. This metric is especially crucial for those businesses that are launching new products and use the sign-up free trial as a go-to-market strategy. When it comes to this particular conversion, a spotless landing page with a clear copy highlighting the benefits of the trial can work wonders.
Conversion research can give you the necessary insights to understand what makes your customer tick and refine the content on the landing page accordingly. It can also give you invaluable insights about the usability of the page and the ease of the signup.
Contact Form Completion
Contact form completion is yet another important website conversion that shows that users are interested in your products or services.
This conversion rate can be impacted massively by the usability of the form, so conversion research is a crucial step to better understand the user interaction in this particular part of the website. Forms can be time-consuming and fiddly so research can help you weed out the form from unnecessary fields and information, boosting the conversion of the contact form completion.
App Downloads
When it comes to apps, app downloads are the king of the conversion rates. With app downloads being one of the most crucial metrics showing the overall health of your product, trying to optimize it seems only natural.
An accurate and compelling product description as well as a clear call to action can work wonders when it comes to this particular conversion rate. Again, conversion research can shed light on the preferences of the users and give you a better understanding of the motivations surrounding their purchase behavior.
Not only you need to optimize the app’s usability by conducting mobile app testing, but also it’s listing on App Store. Here’s a video with tips for quick App Store optimization ⬇️
Content Shares
Last but not least, content shares are another quintessential metric as they can help organizations reach new audiences without allocating additional budget!
This conversion revolves around the creation of shareable content. Researching to better understand how users interact and which platforms they are using to do so, is important so that you can provide them with the right tools to make it easy for them to share content about your product or your service.
Conversion Research and UX
Conversion research and user experience are interconnected since optimizing the UX of a digital platform can have a direct impact on conversion rates and the increase of paying customers.
With the integration of conversion research insights into the UX optimization process, organizations have a unique opportunity to create more pleasurable and relatable products that convert better.
If you are not convinced here is how this can be achieved:
1. Identifying Sticky Points
Conversion research can help UX and product professionals better understand how users interact with a product and identify pain points in the user journey.
Once these areas of improvement have been identified, UX research can work its magic and find ways to smooth those instances creating a frictionless and seamless process that can enhance the overall UX. This will increase the likelihood of users converting or coming back for more.
2. Optimizing Information Architecture
Conversion research can offer valuable insights into how users naturally consume content and navigate a digital platform. By incorporating these insights into the UX research process, UX professionals can ensure that users can find the information they need promptly without unnecessary fuzz, which can lead to better conversion rates and boost sales.
There are 2 best research tools you can use to optimize a product’s Information Architecture – Card Sorting tool and Tree Testing tool. They work seamlessly together and help you get insights into how users expect the information to be categorized, and where they get lost in the website’s (or app’s) structure.
Try those tools in action in these demos ⬇️
3. Enhancing Trust and Credibility
Conversion research can help you identify elements that make users perceive an online platform or product as more credible as well as areas where trust might be compromised.
Based on those insights, UX professionals can work on optimizing all these elements and boost conversion rates by crafting a more secure, transparent, and seamless checkout process.
Conversion Research Pillars
Here we have collated some of the fundamental conversion research pillars that you need to know about. By incorporating those pillars into your product design process you can craft a robust conversion research strategy that will allow you for data-driven optimizations and boost your conversion rates.
Usability Testing
👉 What is it? Usability testing revolves around observing users while they interact with the systems and taking notes to evaluate how usable the system is as well as identify areas for improvement.
✅ How can it help conversions? Usability testing allows for real-time observation of the users who navigate a website offering invaluable insights into how users would intuitively interact with the system. These findings are gold as they can be turned into targeted improvements to ensure that users are guided toward the desired actions.
🔥 How to conduct it? You can conduct usability testing online with the help of an online usability testing tool like UXtweak. With UXtweak you can conduct all kinds of testing in one place – test your websites, applications, prototypes, app’s demo versions and even your competitors’ websites!
Heuristics Analysis
👉 What is it? A heuristic evaluation is the evaluation of a system against some industry-approved usability principles called heuristics.
✅ How can it help conversions? By conducting a heuristic evaluation you can ensure that your system is not only functional but also highly usable and adheres to the industry’s best practices when it comes to design and navigation.
This methodology provides a structured approach to identifying areas of improvement. It also ensures that the digital product aligns with the expectations of the users leading to overall better adoption and higher conversion rates.
🔥 How to conduct it? Check out our full guide about usability heuristics where we also explain the step-by-step process of conducting a heuristic evaluation.
Technical Analysis
👉 What is it? A technical analysis revolves around investigating the technical aspects of a website or app, such as the loading speed, the responsiveness of the design, and the device compatibility.
✅ How can it help conversions? Technical issues can hinder the performance of your digital product and can negatively impact your credibility. Slow loading times can lead to higher bounce rates which can truly hurt your conversion rates. Being on top of these by conducting rigorous technical analysis can ensure optimal technical performance and hence higher conversion rates.
🔥 How to conduct it? Use tools such as Google’s PageSpeed Insights or GTmetrix to assess the loading speed and performance of your product. Next, evaluate the responsiveness of design across various devices using tools like BrowserStack. Finally, perform compatibility tests on different browsers and OS to ensure a seamless user experience.
Qualitative Research
👉 What is it? Qualitative research revolves around gathering user insights and user feedback through different methodologies such as in-depth interviews, focus groups, and diary studies.
✅ How can it help conversions? Having a deep understanding of the motivations, aspirations, and preferences of your users can help you craft a product that meets and exceeds their expectations. This can ultimately drive better conversions on all fronts.
🔥 How to conduct it? Use qualitative research methods like interviews, qualitative surveys, focus groups and diary studies.
Copy Testing
👉 What is it? Copy testing revolves around assessing how effective the content on a page or screen is. This can include the copy on the labels as well as a microcopy on the call-to-action.
✅ How can it help conversions? Well-crafted, cohesive copy that is written in a language that the intended users of the product can understand is the alpha and the omega for higher conversion rates. By refining the language used through copy testing, product professionals can enhance user engagement and increase conversions.
🔥 How to conduct it? You can assess how well users understand your website’s or app’s message with the help of a Five Second Test. It helps to assess the effectiveness of your messaging and copy, as well as your designs in general.
Mouse Tracking
👉 What is it? Mouse tracking involves the recording and analysis of the clicks and scrolls to better comprehend how exactly users interact with a system.
✅ How can it help conversions? Mouse tracking can offer invaluable data on user engagement when it comes to specific elements on the website.
Heat maps and click maps can give us a clear idea of where users are clicking on a page and identify areas of interest but also areas that distract them from the desired action. These insights can be used to inform the design to create better-converting pages that drive sales.
🔥 How to conduct it? With the help of Session Recording tool you can generate heatmaps, click and scroll maps of your website. You can also see exactly how your users’ mouse moved when navigating the product.
What’s next?
To sum up, conversion research is the secret sauce to optimizing the overall user experience and driving conversions. Understanding the preferences and behaviors of your users is the alpha and the omega of a successful product or service that converts well.
By incorporating fundamental pillars of research like user testing, heuristic evaluation, and copy testing into your design process you have a unique opportunity to make data-informed decisions that can lead to better-converting elements and screens.
If you are looking to kickstart your conversion research, UXtweak is the platform to go with! Register for your free account and give it a try!
With UXtweak you can run usability tests, generate heatmaps and session replays, conduct surveys and five second tests, and so much more ⬇️
