conversions - Ignite Search

How To Use Crazy Egg To Enhance Your Conversion Rate Optimisation Activities Part 2 – Extracting & Analysing Data

By: Cheech Foo
Posted on 04/07/201919/10/2021

By Kelvin Sim

Introduction

Conversion Rate Optimisation (CRO) tools allow you to undertake qualitative research and retrieve insightful information regarding online visitors in forms of visual data reports.

In our last blog post – How To Use Crazy Egg To Enhance Your Conversion Rate Optimisation Activities Part 1, we ran through how to setup a CRO tool called Crazy Egg. In this blog post we will discuss how you can use Crazy Egg’s visual data reports to enhance your CRO activities.

Crazy Egg’s Visual Data Report

Crazy Egg will provide you the following eye-tracking visuals:

Heat maps
Scroll maps
Overlay
Confetti

These visual data reports can help you understand your users’ interests, interactions and behaviour that will assist your CRO activities and increase your website’s conversion rates.

To locate these visual data reports:

Login to your Crazy Egg account
Click ‘Snapshots’ on the left menu tab
Click your Snapshot campaign
Click any of the 4 visual data reports

From there you will be able to gain insight on your users’ behaviour. In the next section we will run through each of the visual data reports.

Heat maps

A heat map uses a ‘warm-to-cool’ colour spectrum to display your web page’s analytics. It provides you a visual overview of where your visitors click on your web page. The areas where your users click most the brighter the will be – creating what is known as ‘hotspots.’

Heat maps reveal which web page elements are attractive to users and receive the most attention and which elements are being ignored. Therefore, providing you an insight into what your visitors are searching for.

For example, in the screenshot above, the heat map indicates the first image on the left received more clicks than the rest of the other elements of the web page. You can deduce that your visitors are interested in the first image on the left and may indicate they found this image relevant to their search.

On the flip side, you can also determine elements of your web page that users are not interested in and tailor your CRO activities to relocate, remove or edit web page elements.

Scroll maps

A scroll map is another type of visual data report by Crazy Egg that shows you how far users scroll down a web page. These visual data reports uses a colour coded gradient to display where your users spend most of their visiting time.

Unlike heat maps which only shows areas of your web page that receives the most interactions, scroll maps reveals areas where users spend most of their time.

The whiter the area appears the more attention and time your users have spent in this specific section. And vice versa, the bluer the area appears the less attention and time your users have spent, thus typically indicates disinterest and your users have scrolled pass these areas.

For example, in the screenshot above, the scroll map displayed a white area in the middle of the web page. This means users are spending more time in this specific section and may indicate that users found the content in this section more relevant to their search. Vice versa, the blue area towards the end of the web page may indicate content that is less irrelevant to users’ searches.

This is important in determining the placement of your web content and allows you to consider what areas contain the type of content that will engage with your users.

Confetti

The confetti visual data reports are very similar to heat maps, in that it shows you specifically where your users click. However, confetti provide a more in-depth overview in comparison to heat maps in that it reveals individual colour-coded clicks based on a variety of metrics. By default these colours represent the referral sources or where your users came from.

For example, in the screenshot below, red represent represents users’ clicks that came directly to your web page by entering your URL while orange represent users that was redirected from Google.com. From this, you will be able to see how effective your other digital marketing efforts contribute to how users interact on your webpage. If there are less orange clicks then red, it could indicate that these users arrived to your landing page based on your Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) elements or Google Ads campaign and was not able to find what they were looking for.

This can help you learn more about where your visitors come from, and how user behaviour varies by referral source. Furthermore, referral sources are just the beginning! Using the drop-down list in the upper left corner, you can select from a variety of options to colour-code your clicks.

You can choose to view clicks by:

New vs. Returning
Referrer
Search Terms
Search Engine
Country
Device Type
Operating System
Browser
Day of Week
Time of Day
Time to Click
Window Width

This colour-code filter will provide you with a much thorough and precise analysis on your users clicks. The insights you receive from these colour-coded filters will assist your CRO activities by depending on the type of conversion goals you have configured for your website.

Overlay

The Overlay report provides a quantifiable breakdown of clicks on your web page. While heat maps and scroll maps show data on different sections of your web page, the overlay report provides insight on the specific web page elements.

In this report, each clickable element has a (+) marker that’s colour-coded by the number of clicks it received

This colour scheme is similar to the one used in other reports. Where by a blue (+) marker indicates that an element received few clicks, while a red marker indicates that it received a lot.

For example, in the screenshot above, the numbers indicate that 109 or 14.3% of all clicks was directed at the search bar. If a large portion of your users are clicking your search bar, it may indicate that they did not find what they were looking for and continued their search through this web page element. This may or may not be a negative insight but if the search bar appears to attract a large amount of attention, we may recommend that you make the search bar more prominent.

By clicking ‘more’ you are able to gain a more comprehensive understanding based on a variety of metrics. These metrics are exactly the same as those available in the confetti visual data reports.

You can organise your data into the following views:

New vs. Returning
Referrer
Search Terms
Search Engine
Country
Device Type
Operating System
Browser
Day of Week
Time of Day
Time to Click
Window Width

It also lets you see which elements on the page were clicked on even though they weren’t actually linked to anything. While the confetti visual data report reveals in-depth information on where user clicks, Crazy Egg’s overlay report will have you take into account web page elements that will drive the most engagement.

Crazy Egg & CRO

CRO is the systematic process of making improvements to your website with the objective of increasing your conversion goals. As we have previously mentioned in a recent blog post – How To Conduct Effective Conversion Rate Optimisation To Grow Your Business, converting in this context refers to the action you want your visitors to take while they are on your website

This could be purchasing a product via your Ecommerce website, a subscription to an online service tool or a form submission.

Therefore, CRO involves understanding what your visitors on your website are looking for, their journey as they navigate through your website and the actions they take during their visit. More importantly, CRO also involves understanding what deterrents exists on your website to prevent them from completing your website goals.

This is where Crazy Egg’s visual data reports play an imperative role. Whether you choose to utilise a heat map to understand which areas users engage most or a scroll map to determine which section of your web page user spent most of their time, these visual data reports will provide you with a rich and insightful understanding of your users’ behaviour.

As you continue to analyse your user behaviour with these visual data reports, you will be able to identify behaviour patterns and modify web page elements that will encourage users to perform a desired action and boost your conversion rates.

Conclusion

CRO tools such as Crazy Egg can provide you with a comprehensive visual overview of how users navigate, interact and engage with certain areas and elements of your web page. This will allow you to assess your users’ journey and coordinate your CRO activities to encourage users to perform desired actions depending on the conversion goal you have configured for your website. This will boost your overall conversion rates and will allow your business to grow.

Everything You Need To Know About Setting Up Your First Conversion Goal In Google Analytics

By: Cheech Foo
Posted on 13/06/201919/10/2021

By Kelvin Sim

Introduction

Conversion rate is an online marketing key performance indicator. As we have mentioned in our previous blog post – 3 Easy Google Analytics Reports To Help You Improve Your Conversions Google Analytics (GA) is a free website analytics service offered by Google that provides you with data that will help your improve your websites content, elevate user experiences and increase your conversions.

In order to increase conversion rates, it’s important to have a full understanding of who your visitors are, where they’re coming from, and what they do once they arrive on your site. This can be done by examining the reports produced by GA.

However, with the right set-up, GA can also be your most powerful conversion rate optimisation (CRO) tool. In this blog post, we will provide you a step-by-step guide to setting up 4 goal types in GA, but firstly, what is a goal in GA?

Goals in GA

Goals in GA allow you to track specific user interactions on your site. This has been discussed in another one of our blog post – Your Guide To Everything You Need To Know About Conversion Rates these goals should reflect your business goals and may include a product being purchased creating a sale for your Ecommerce store.

However, it may also include an aggregate goal, where you assign average values for specific criteria on your website that can provide valuable insight. This may include the average time a user is only your website or the number of pages a user visits – more on that later.

Therefore, it is imperative to configure your goals in GA as this will provide you with critical information that will contribute to your conversion rate and ultimately contribute to the success of your business.

Types of Goals in GA

Goals in GA will typically fall into one of these categories.

Destination: Specific URL loads. For example, this could be a ‘Thank you for purchasing our product’ webpage
Duration: Sessions that last a specific amount of time or longer. For example, this could be 5 minutes or longer on a blog post.
Pages/Screen per session: A user views a specific number of pages during their visit. For example, this could be tracking 5 subsequent pages prior performing a desired action on your website.
Event: An action defined by an ‘Event’ is triggered. This could be a click or a sharing specific content on your website.

In the next section, we will show you how to set up each of these goal types in GA. But firstly, to set up a specific goal in GA you must firstly navigate your way through the GA dashboard and here is how you do it.

Step 1. Click on the ‘Admin’ on your GA dashboard.

Step 2. Click on the ‘Goals’ section under the ‘View’ column.

Step 3. Click ‘+New Goal’.

Step 4. Select ‘Template’ and name your goal.

Destination Goals

These goals track when a user arrives on a specific page during their visit on your website.

For example, this goal can track the number of people that lands on a thank you page, add to cart page or even a purchase completion page.

How to set up a Destination Goal in GA

Step 1. Click ‘Destination’

Step 2. Identify your URL.

When it comes to the URL match types ‘Equal to’, ‘Begins with’, and ‘Regular expressions’, make sure to choose the one that best fits your needs.

If this is one specific URL that you want to track, choose ‘Equals to’.

Optional Steps

Value: Toggle on the value option if you want to assign a specific monetary value to the conversion. This is most helpful if you are tracking Ecommerce transactions

Funnel: Toggle on the funnel option if you expect your visitors to follow a certain path after landing on the URL you have specified in Step 2.

Verify Goal: Click ‘Verify this Goal’ if you want to know how often your goal would have converted based on the past 7 days of GA data.

Step 3. Click ‘Save’.

Duration Goals

These goals are much simpler compare to the previous goal – Destination. With it you can track how long your website visitors stay on your website before leaving.

How to set up a Duration Goal in GA

Step 1. Click ‘Duration’ and ‘Continue’

Step 2. Specify the duration parameters

At this stage, you will be able to define the length of time you want to track.

For example, you may want to measure how many visitors stay on your website for more than 5 minutes.

Optional Steps

Value: Toggle on the value option if you want to assign a specific monetary value to the conversion. This is most helpful if you are tracking Ecommerce transactions

Verify Goal: Click ‘Verify this Goal’ if you want to know how often your goal would have converted based on the past 7 days of GA data.

Step 3. Click ‘Save’

Pages/Screen per session Goals

These goals allow you to track the number of pages each website visitor views before leaving your website.

Step 1. Click ‘Pages/Session per session’ and click ‘Continue’

Step 2. Specify the number of pages per visitor you would like to track.

For example you may want to set a total of 5 pages to track.

Optional Steps

Value: Toggle on the value option if you want to assign a specific monetary value to the conversion. This is most helpful if you are tracking Ecommerce transactions

Verify Goal: Click ‘Verify this Goal’ if you want to know how often your goal would have converted based on the past 7 days of GA data.

Step 3. Click ‘Save’

Event Goals

These goals are useful for tracking specific interactions on your website.

These interactions are not track by GA by default so before setting up an Event goal, you must first track an event.

Event tracking leverages a custom code snippet that you would need to add to the element you would like to track on your website such as buttons, videos, images, podcasts and more.

After finalising the events your would like to track, you should proceed with creating an Event goal with the steps listed below.

How to set up an Event Goal in GA

Step 1. Click ‘Event’ and ‘Continue’

Step 2. Specify the details of your goal.

Category: The name your supply as a way to group objects you want to analyse. For example forms.

Action: Typically these goals will require an action parameter. For example it could me a submission.

Optional Steps

Label: You can provide additional information for events that you want to analyse, such as movie titles in videos, or the names of downloaded files.

Value: You can assign a numerical value to a page object, specific playback marker is reach on a video player, the number of downloads, even monetary value

Event Value: Toggle on the value option if you want to assign a specific monetary value to the conversion. This is most helpful if you are tracking Ecommerce transactions

Step 3. Click ‘Save’

Once you’ve completed the steps above, your goal conversions and value will automatically be reported in the right-hand column of your ‘Acquisition’ screens.

If you have set up multiple goals, you can also choose the individual goals you would like GA generate reports for.

Conclusion

CRO is important because it helps you understand how your online visitors navigate through your website and the interactions they take place during their visit. GA is capable of providing you with the data to comprehend your visitor’s behaviour and characteristics. Furthermore, GA enables you to set up and configure conversion goals that would enhance your CRO activities. Leveraging goals and conversions in GA will lay the foundations to a successful CRO strategy and will contribute to the growth of your business.

The 4 Best Strategies to Enhance Pay-Per-Click Lead Quality

By: Cheech Foo
Posted on 06/05/201919/10/2021

Lead quality can be determined by the percentage of leads that flow through the sales funnel and turn into sales opportunities. While it is important to find the right balance between lead quality, cost and volume, it’s common for businesses to focus heavily on lead quality. Pay-per-click (PPC) advertising is a great way to increase those leads for your business, but it can prove to be quite challenging. You might also find that PPC advertising is increasing revenue, but it’s still possible that the majority of leads aren’t reaching your desired outcome within the marketing funnel. In order to generate a higher return on investment (ROI) with your PPC campaign, it’s crucial to figure out how you can enhance the quality of your PPC leads. In this blog we cover the 4 best strategies to improve PPC Lead Quality.

Focus On Specific Keywords

Keyword research is the starting point of any search campaign as it determines who you will be targeting, what landing pages need to be created and the type of ad copy content. So when you’re looking to develop lead quality, the first step you should take is planning and then modifying your keywords with a more specific approach.

When it comes to keyword matching, having exact and phrase match gives you the most control, unlike broad terms match; which may be an issue if the majority of your leads stem from broad terms. To help reduce poor matches, its recommended to limit the amount of broad match types and be more attentive to negative keyword inclusions and search query reviews. Both these recommendations may limit lead volume and will require continuous optimisation, but will ultimately help you improve lead quality.

Like match types, keyword length plays a big role in lead quality. The objective of lead quality is targeting users who understand what they want and using long-tail keywords proves to be the best way to do this. If you have noticed that many of your keywords are only one or two words long, you make them more specific by adding another relevant word such as a location. On top if this, the shorter the keyword is, the less intent you can designate to its related queries.

Create High Quality Ad Copy & Landing Pages for Targeted Customers

Arguably the biggest component of any PPC campaign is developing highly relevant content for your landing pages and ad copy. These serve as the first touch point a customer has with your brand, so it’s fundamental to make a good first impression and user experience. When it comes to generating lead quality, you’re going to want to create your ad copy and landing pages around your targeted customer needs whilst keeping in line with other factors that make an overall good landing page. It’s important to note that the landing pages you create don’t have to be visible on your website or indexed, they can be solely designed for ads to focus on conversion. On top of this, factors like landing page experience, expected CTR and ad relevance will determine your Quality Score, which affects your Ad Rank. So make sure you follow the Ad Rank = Quality Score x Maximum CPC Bid formula when going through this process.

Keeping A Consistent Message

It’s a common theme for many ads to not advertise the same message throughout the marketing funnel, which can result in a higher bounce rates and a lower lead quality. When you begin you ads campaign, ensure that your message remains the same, especially within the ad copy and landing pages. For example, if your ad copy promotes a free trial and contains specific keywords, make sure your landing page focuses on this promotion.

Call to Action (CTA)

Having a clear and direct CTA can massively affect your conversions. Some easy ways of improving your CTA in your ad copy and on your landing page include:

Using engaging words and phrases
Having the CTA located high up on the page above the fold
Employing a contrasting colour on the CTA button
Remove any clear distractions or navigation that is not supporting the funnel

Integrating Trust Signals

Ensuring there is an emotional connection between your brand and your target audience is a must for any successful leads to conversions. There are many types of signals, the two primary ones include:

Social proofing: Many users rely on social signals as a form of validation for online brands. Include elements such as testimonials, ratings or reviews to ensure the customer feels a genuine connection to your brand.
Contact Information: Allow your contact information to be easily visible to users to reinforce legitimacy. A great example of this is making your phone number a clickable link that directs you straight to a call to increase the chances of conversions.

Utilize Remarketing

Remarketing has proven to be a very effective, data-backed strategy when it comes to increasing lead quality. While it’s becoming more popular, it’s still a fairly underutilized advertising tactic. Remarketing opens up a whole new avenue for extensive reach not only on the Google Display Network and Search Network, but across other platforms such as Facebook and Twitter.

Once a user visits your website and clicks on a product, a cookie is established in their browser information which can be used to “retarget” them with advertisements based on the products they interacted with, even if they don’t follow through with completing the sale. This is known as an on-site interaction and there are many ways in which you can choose to retarget these individuals, some of which include:

Users who have expressed interest and are present on your email list
Based on how the user located your website (via search, social media or other inbound methods)
Based on the specific product they interacted with

On the other hand, it’s also possible to target off-site interactions. This involves targeting users who haven’t previously interacted with your site but have similarities with prior customers. Choosing to target this set of individuals is usually achieved through search remarketing. So remarketing essentially allows you to increase conversions and retain those potential customers who have previously expressed interest in your products or brand.

Optimise Forms for Targeted Customers

When optimising for quality, you want to ensure that the appropriate customers who are more likely to complete a sale are entering details into your provided form/s as opposed to trying to get a higher number of potential customers to fill in their details.

It’s always good to start with a form that’s longer in length and experiment with what information is more important to you and the user. There is no perfect length with forms and the provided information will vary for each business. The ultimate goal of your form is to help separate low value leads from high value leads and this involves finding the optimal position between the right length and right information. Make sure the form is also located as high on the page as possible so users don’t have to waste time scrolling to find the form.

Conclusion

Enhancing the lead quality for your PPC campaign is tailored to the specific nature and objective of your PPC campaign. However there are numerous strategies you can implement to better support your campaign. This includes having to revise your primary keywords with each campaign and creating ads that correspond to the different stages of the user’s online journey.