The first step in heuristic analysis. Use relevance to increase conversions

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The first step in a heuristic analysis is making sure the relevancy of your ads and landing pages is there. Just so we’re all on the same page, relevancy in this case means showing the right stuff to the right people. So, your ads are relevant, important for the user that sees it. You don’t want to advertise pet supplies to someone who doesn’t even have a pet, because it’s almost certain they won’t buy. And relevancy on the landing page is referring to the match between the ad and the page, but also the match between the page and what the user is looking for.

In what follows, we will talk about how to make sure you show your products or website to the right people so you can increase conversions. This will be the first of a 5 series articles where we’ll dive a little deeper in the 5 elements of a heuristic analysis: Relevance, Clarity, Motivation, Safety and Accessibility.

We’ll first elaborate more on ads relevancy and then landing page relevance. Landing page meaning the page people land on when visiting your website or clicking on your ads.

 

Ads relevance

Everything starts with traffic acquisition, meaning how you bring people to your website. Whether it’s through CPC or organic, you should try to attract more of the right users. SO, you need to know who your audience is and bring visitors to your site that are qualified. Qualified traffic is basically people that have a need or an interest in your product and have the means to buy what you sell.

What happens in case of ads is your cost per acquisition starts to go down. The general conversion rate amongst industries is about 2%, so out of 100 people, only two bought. Chances are you are using FB ads or Google ads and you inevitably pay for your traffic. If you do so, you know it’s not a great feeling when you see hundreds of clicks and not enough sales. One of the reasons this happens is because your ads do not attract the right kind of people.

You see, there’s a lot of visitors that click on your ads just because, with absolutely no reason to buy, just to look around out of curiosity. The problem is these kinds of clicks raise your costs and the way you tackle this is as follows:

One way is through using pre-qualifiers in your ads. For example, if you have expensive products you want only users that have the financial situation to make such a purchase. So, in this case you might include the price of the product in your ad copy, something like “From $75”. You will still have people that can’t buy, but they’ll be fewer.

And the obvious way is through improving relevancy. For this you will need to know who are your customers. Age, gender, location can help in case your product is age specific or gender specific, but it’s still very vague. When you’re making a buyer persona, the most important thing you must consider is: what they care about. Nobody wants to hear you talk about your product and how great it is, just like every other product. Instead, you should speak to their needs, talk about what they want to hear and what they care about. 

Try to resonate with them and genuinely help them solve a problem or help them decide if buying from you is the right choice for them. With increased relevancy, your trust will go up as well and if users want to buy what you sell, they’ll be less likely to hesitate.

Besides this, you should take into consideration what images you use to make sure they show exactly what you want to sell and that they’re intriguing and makes you want to click. Take into account the context in which users see your ads, this is really important. Think about a generic scenario of a user that sees your ad. What might they be doing in that moment? Where they might be? If someone clicks on your ad, but it’s in a hurry, they’ll forget about your product, even if they might have really had an intention to buy. In this case you can use retargeting/remarketing to show those who visited your site an ad to remind them about your product.

Now let’s move on to the landing page relevancy.

 

Landing page relevance

The first thing here is to make sure you match the landing page to the ad or the ad to the landing page, whichever you think it’s best. If you show me an ad telling me there’s a promotion for a product I might be interested in, when I click on the link it better get me to that product with that exact offer. And I mean, exact offer, no more, no less because inconsistency will make people have second thoughts about making a purchase. So, try to avoid misleading messaging or images and be honest, tell people exactly what they’re going to get.

The page that a user lands on should help them figure out whether the product solves their problem or makes their life easier. The headline/call to action should be clear, summarizing what you’re selling. Based on it, viewers will decide whether it’s worth staying on that page, so it must grab their attention and spark their interest.

From that point forward, every element of the landing page should help people answer questions they might have. For example, a product page of an ecommerce selling clothes should have easily accessible size guides, shipping info and especially return policy. This way you will solve objections and help users make a decision. If you’re selling one product and you have a dedicated landing page, you should include important elements such as benefits, FAQs and any other thing that contributes to convincing the viewer you’re the right option for them. So, to do this you need to know what your audience considers when buying, for example price or shipping or how fancy it looks, things like that.

What else you should pay attention to, that’s related to both ads and landing pages, is the user journey. You got to love all these fancy terms. Jokes aside, this can be a total deal breaker if you mess it up. The best example explaining what’s this all about is: think about you and your audience like you’re dating. You meet, you get to know each other, you figure out whether you match with one another or not and you go forward from there. Asking someone to buy your product the first time they saw you is like asking the person to marry you from the first date. Imagine what they must think in that moment, they’re not ready to make the commitment.

Although it’s not exactly the same, it paints an accurate picture about the buying process. You have to let users to get to know you, to figure out whether they should trust you, or if they really want to buy and so on. So, don’t be pushy and aggressive with your marketing campaigns, but at the same time keep your audience engaged using email campaigns and retargeting/remarketing campaigns.

 

Remember, conversion rate optimization is not an exact process that everyone can follow. You have to test, adapt and improve as you go. What works for someone probably won’t work for you. Be cautious when you take ideas from industry leaders, test first and then see if it’s worth making the change. Relevance is the first step in optimizing your website and if you were wondering where to start, now you know.