Most people who visit your product sales pages will not buy. That is a simple, if uncomfortable, truth. Unless your conversion rate is over 50%, the majority are going to walk away rather than buy your product.
Of course you can, and should, spend time optimising your product sales pages so that they convert better. Any increase in conversions is money in the bank. But how do you know what to improve on the page when optimising it?
If you just choose something at random or based on your gut feel, you’re taking a stab in the dark. A better approach is to understand why people aren’t converting. Once you understand why, you’ll know what to improve on.
I’ve recently used RightMessage to achieve this for one of my books on BeFused, with an exit modal when people leave the sales page. The modal is triggered when someone leaves the sales page, just before they hit the back or close button.
Ask relevant questions
In the exit modal, I’m asking them a question on why they didn’t buy, with a multiple choice answer. Here are the questions I’m asking:
Question 1
Hello! Do you mind if I ask you a few questions?
- Sure!
- Not right now
I’m asking this first as a polite way to get consent to ask them the survey questions, rather than jumping right to the meat of the actual questions. If they say “Sure!”, they get the next question.
Question 2
I’m trying to improve my Drupal book, can you tell me why you didn’t buy today?
- It’s too expensive
- It’s not what I need
- I’m not sure it will help me
- I don’t have time to read it
- I’m too busy today!
- I’ve already bought it
At the moment, the question that follows is not dependent on their answer to the above question. So the above question is purely to gather data on why people aren’t buying. The next question is designed to offer them a free alternative that still helps them achieve at least part of their goal.
Question 3
Which of these best describes you?
- I’m transitioning from Drupal 7 to Drupal 8
- I’m a developer new to Drupal
- I’m a site builder who wants to be a developer
And then I’ll offer a different email course, depending on their answer to the above question. For example, if they are transitioning from Drupal 7 to Drupal 8, I’ll offer them a course on how to get started with that.
Analysing the results
As time goes on, you’ll collect more and more data. Be careful not to make decisions on the results too early, because if you don’t have enough data, there isn’t enough statistical significance. In other words, you can’t trust the data as valid until you have enough of it.
To see the results, go to the segment on the dashboard in RightMessage.
At the moment, pricing is the biggest reason why people aren’t buying my book. With this data in hand, I’ll have to decide if this is something I want to act on. Simply decreasing the price might be the obvious answer. But that could actually have the opposite of the desired goal and decrease overall revenue (more people buying a lower priced product could net less revenue than less people buying a more expensive product).
An alternative to simply dropping the price is to increase the value that the product delivers. In my case, the product is an ebook. I could add in a video as additional educational value, as an example.
Another alternative would be to improve the price bracketing (I’ll write more about price bracketing in the future). At the moment, the product has a top tier which is a bundle with another book. But if a customer doesn’t want that other book, it isn’t a viable option to bracket against. I could create a different top tier, such as the book and some one-to-one help. The higher price of this tier will make the book seems less expensive, which could reduce the high price objection.
The second reason why people aren’t buying is “I’m not sure it will help me”.
There is always going to be an element of this, as you can’t guarantee that everyone who visits a product page is ideally suited to the product. But it could indicate that the copy on the product page needs improving to better explain the benefits of the product and the problems it solves.
As you can see, I’ve started to work through the reasons people are not buying the product and analysing the implications. This is as much an art as it is a science. The data gives you a feeling for what could be wrong and what you can do to improve. You’re still going to need to use an element of intuition and any other data you have (such as research data) to make decisions on what to change. And when you do make a change, if you have enough traffic, you can always do it as an A/B test to see if the change generates a positive result overall.
Future improvements
At the moment, I’m asking readers how I can help them with a free email course in question 3. Instead of doing that, I could offer them a follow up sequenced based on the objection they have. If they answer I’m not sure it will help me in question 2, the follow up sequence would be a few emails that further explain the benefits of the book and the problems it solves.
Wrapping up
RightMessage isn’t the only tool that allows you to create surveys like this. You can do something very similar with Hotjar, amongst others. Hotjar also provides other tools like Heatmapping, which allows analyse where people scroll and click on a page.
The great thing about using RightMessage for this is that it can act as both the survey tool to understand your audience, and a tool to build your audience with targeted offers, all in one. Because the people who complete the survey haven’t bought the product, offering them a free alternative (such as an email course) is a create way to add them to your audience.
If you’d like help setting this up for your business, get in touch. Otherwise, check out the newsletter if you’d like more content like this.