#I need a comprehensive psychological study done stat

[seoafin]

just checked out the ao3 2024 ship stats and the grip harry potter has on fanfiction is actually insane what do you MEAN within the top 50 the ONLY F/F pairing are 2 harry potter side characters who are mentioned precisely Once throughout the entire series

[cindylouwho-2]

RECENT NEWS, RESOURCES & STUDIES, June 2019

Welcome to my latest summary of recent news, resources & studies including search, analytics, content marketing, social media & ecommerce! This covers articles I came across from May 31 to June 21, although some may be older than that.

(Unfortunately, a few of this edition’s entries were lost somehow, & I could only remember one of the missing, so if you know of an article/post that should be included, please let me know, & the piece will be added here as well as to the next post.)

My busy few months are now mostly over, so I will have more time to get working on this Tumblr, new blog posts & the new forum I want to start; expect more frequent updates starting in July. 

TOP NEWS & ARTICLES 

Shopify is going to run fulfillment centres for its US customers within the next 2 years. “Right now Shopify will offer early access for merchants who ship between 10 and 10,000 items per day, and by the end of the year the company aims to offer two-day shipping to 99 per cent of the United States.” They announced other plans at the same time, including better shop tools. 

If you have your own website, conversion rate optimization is something you should be looking at. Why? Because “[a] simple tweak on a landing page can double or even 10x that page’s conversion rate” which can be much easier to do than doubling your traffic. [Note that this is not a short article; it’s a full guide.]

Matching searcher intent is a crucial part of great rankings. This long article tells you pretty much everything you need to know on making that happen with your content, with real examples for their site. 

Mary Meeker released her annual internet trends report; shorter summary here. “If you're looking to connect with the next generation, you should be maintaining at least some awareness of gaming culture, which is where attention is increasingly shifting.” “Some 51 percent of the world — 3.8 billion people — were internet users last year, up from 49 percent (3.6 billion) in 2017...E-commerce is now 15 percent of retail sales. Its growth has slowed — up 12.4 percent in Q1 compared with a year earlier — but still towers over growth in regular retail, which was just 2 percent in Q1...Customer acquisition costs — the marketing spending necessary to attract each new customer — is going up.

ETSY NEWS

Etsy retired several of its Support/Help email addresses, including support@etsy.com, all without any official announcement. 

You can now link photos to variations - but only with one variation, not both. 

Etsy’s annual report for 2018 is out; I didn’t see much new here, but if you catch something, please leave a comment or send me an email so I can add it to this summary. [They actually mentioned “abilities” in their list of things they accept diverse ranges of, but as usual, they only give any details about gender, race/ethnicity and sexual orientation. Disability is invisible for them.]

A new bunch of US states will have state taxes charged for online sales as of July 1. 

Ryan Scott will be Etsy’s new Chief Marketing Officer as of June 24. 

SEO: GOOGLE & OTHER SEARCH ENGINES

Google broke with tradition & decided to warn SEOs about the core search algorithm update that started rolling out on Monday June 3 and ended on the 8th. There are multiple reports of some UK news companies taking a hard hit while others picked up visibility. It’s still too early for much comprehensive analysis, but here is a summary and another more recent one. 

At the same time, Google also rolled out an update that increases site diversity in search results, often limiting each website to 2 entries in Google’s top pages. Think of it as Google's approach to “clumping”. They insist it is separate from the core algorithm update. Early analysis finds that it didn't change much for most searches. 

Websites sometimes rely too much on Google traffic, which is dangerous whenever they change something (i.e., daily). Here are 5 ways to make your site/pages more resistant to algorithm updates. 

Most decent SEO tools cost some money to get the full value, but here is a list of 55 free tools including keyword research, stats, linking, and technical tools. (Some have paid versions as well, but just ignore what you don’t need.)

SEO sometimes requires stating the obvious; check out this tweet with a graphic from an SEO conference. 

Rand Fishkin did a major review of clicks from Google search, & found that nearly 50% of US google searches result in a click (often questions such as weather, or spelling). Only 45% led to clicks on non-paid links, & non-Google companies. But “for every click on a paid result in Google, there are 11.6 clicks to organic results. SEO is far from dead.” Search Engine Land did a TL;DR (too long; didn’t read) summary here. 

Fishkin also has some good insights on making a profit through SEO. [video and full transcript] I think the point about having a strong profit margin is really important - it is going to get more expensive to sell online as time goes on. Etsy is not the only provider trying to squeeze more pennies out of its customers. (Fishkin’s whole push lately is that you must be a known brand to survive; I am reserving judgement on that for the moment.)

Most blogs haven’t done their SEO correctly, but you can fix that. [video & full transcript]

Hate it when your site/business gets mentioned online, but they don’t link to you? There are ways to get other companies to link to you. 

The latest Google mobile search redesign has folks pitching fits about how ads now look like organic search results. For your own website & other sites where it is possible, make sure you have a favicon that stands out from paid ads. [If you Google “CindyLouWho2″ on mobile, my blue fossil coral avi shows for my website & this Tumblr blog.]

Voice search isn’t taking off like people thought it would, although around 30% of Americans use virtual assistants regularly. 

Is audio SEO going to be a thing? Dr. Pete looks at Google’s decision to post podcasts in search results. 

CONTENT MARKETING & SOCIAL MEDIA (includes blogging & emails)

Facebook announced its move into cryptocurrency with Libra, which will launch in 2020. 

Contrary to some reports, it seems that fewer people are using Facebook regularly. While time spent on FB drops, Instagram in particular is seeing more interaction. 

Getting the right image sizes and dimensions is really important for each platform; here is an infographic on all image sizes for Facebook. 

“[T]he right time for you to post on Facebook will be different than the right time for someone else to post on Facebook.” A summary of multiple studies on the topic, with tips on using your Facebook Analytics to narrow this down for your business. 

After banning mass messaging earlier this year, WhatsApp is prohibiting sending newsletters through the app as of December. 

A decent guide on using Twitter for your business. “...tweets with images get 150% more retweets”.

Thinking of running a Twitter chat? Here’s a complete guide, including Hootsuite templates. 

You can get new content ideas from Reddit. “Reddit.com saw 542 million visitors in March 2019 alone.”

Pinterest is expanding its shopping program, now called Pinterest Partners, to provide more shopping opportunities on the site. 

A study of the 500 top-followed Pinterest accounts shows that home decor is most popular among influencer topics. [infographic with text.]

Short video platform TikTok is still showing rapid growth. “Digital wellbeing is more important than it has ever been. Since tech companies started optimising for user engagement, the user is unable to escape the app. You will always feel dissatisfied when you close the app, because the notifications keep on coming and the content never seems to end. To us it seems, TikTok has taken this idea to another level and built the user experience to deliberately create addiction.“

ONLINE ADVERTISING (SEARCH ENGINES, SOCIAL MEDIA, & OTHERS)

Using Google Ads for your website? Make sure you avoid these 7 common mistakes. 

Google now allows you to target people who are “regularly in your target locations” - but it doesn’t really define how they calculate that.

Instagram Shopping is most popular with younger people (at least in the UK).

Good tips on improving your Amazon ad effectiveness, especially cost-effectiveness.   

Some tips on Microsoft Audience ads, and how to get the most out of them. It includes some good general tips, like looking at your profit margin. 

Facebook produced an infographic on how to best create FB ads, especially, for mobile. 

STATS, DATA, OTHER TRACKING

Google has purchased analytics company Looker; Etsy uses the platform already. 

The Google Search Console is now giving users 90 days of data for some reports. 

Here’s a new WordPress plugin that tracks clicks on pdfs on your site through Google Analytics. 

ECOMMERCE NEWS, IDEAS, TRENDS

Paypal has developed “a customizable e-commerce platform”. 

Amazon has extended 1-day Prime delivery. Their ability to do that largely depends on how they are taking control of the shipping methods used, moving away from using other big companies. 

Amazon closed Spark, its social media competitor, and it redirects to a page of customer-curated collections. 

Some Goodwill stores are now selling thrift items on online platform OfferUp.

Opinion article: is feature-driven retail preventing people from buying?

BUSINESS & CONSUMER STUDIES, STATS & REPORTS; SOCIOLOGY & PSYCHOLOGY, CUSTOMER SERVICE

Human brains like stories, which is why you should use them in your marketing. “Stories do another thing: They trigger the release of this neurochemical called oxytocin, which is known in some circles as the love drug. About 10 years ago, all we really knew about oxytocin is that it’s released when, say, a mother is with her baby. But what we’ve discovered since then, through the work of neuroscientists like Dr. Paul Zak, is that stories trigger the release of oxytocin in much the same way.” 

Sell luxury goods? The market is changing as younger people make up a larger chunk of the core. Millennials will make up 50% of the market by 2025. The article has some interesting stats on the luxury resale market: “Overall 45% of true-luxury consumers participated in the second-hand luxury market, and more than one-fourth (26%) have bought pre-owned goods”  which is a trend some luxury vintage sellers might want to watch.

Generation Z prefers personalized content & isn’t as worried about privacy as older generations. 

US adults now spend more time on mobile devices than they do watching tv. Much of that time is spent on mobile apps instead of browsers, & audio (podcasts & music streaming, mostly) accounts for a large chunk of time spent. 

US retail sales grew by half a percent in May, less than predicted. 

MISCELLANEOUS 

As the US looks at starting an antitrust case against Google, articles are reminding the government what other countries found, and what they should be looking at now. Businesses big & small have filed complaints. 

The Google Cloud outage on June 2 that took down YouTube, Snapchat and Shopify among other sites points to the need for everyone to have a backup system. [Remember, Etsy is also moving all functions to Google’s cloud.]

Sick of writing product descriptions? Imagine if it was your full-time job, and you didn’t have any hand in making or curating the products.

[lulu-fermosa]

The Role of OT in Primary Health Care and Using Media as a Tool for Health Promotion and Prevention!

Primary health care is and has been a vital theme in the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA, 2010). However, the question that remains is whether there is a difference between primary health care and primary care and whether primary care includes Occupational Therapy. What we need to ask ourselves is what are the possible roles that Occupational Therapists can play in primary health care and in achieving the health care goals that the health system has. We will be looking at the Occupational Therapy role in primary health care.

Primary health care can be defined as, “the provision of integrated, accessible health care services by clinicians who are accountable for addressing a large majority of personal health care needs, developing a sustained partnership with patients and practicing in the context of family and community” (Metzler, Hartmann & Lowenthal, 2012).  The standards of care that we find in the health sector require health professionals to form a comprehensive collaboration between the different departments to promote adequate care, have sustained and correlating decisions regarding the care of a patient as well as to form sustained relationships with the patients and their families for the continuity of care. The role of Occupational Therapists in this sense is for them to be able to identify the needs in the health care system, develop a strategy to meet these needs through building rapport with the patients and ensuring that there is continuity of care for a sustained partnership.

Metzler et al (2012) references on the four pillars of primary health care by Barbara Starfield who is sometimes referred to as the “pathfinder of primary care” as first contact care, continuity over time, comprehensiveness and coordination with other parts of the health system. The thinking that we find in this is very broad in such a sense that it goes beyond what our health care system is currently providing because of the time that Occupational Therapists have and the number of patients they must see. This is where occupational therapy can be of great contribution in enhancing the approach to primary health care and helping to achieve the aim of ensuring care in our health sector, providing adequate prevention strategies, promoting true care and ensuring that resources are used wisely for the benefit of the patients to achieve great health.

For over two decades, occupational therapists have been encouraged to enhance their roles within primary care and focus on health promotion and prevention activities (Donnelly, Brenchley, Crawford & Letts, 2013). This has been a long journey for the field of Occupational Therapy as enhancing their roles within the primary health care requires the practitioners to exercise their knowledge and experience and at times, this leads them to spreading themselves very thinly as there are many people who require healthcare provision but there are not enough human resources. Contact care as stated to be part of the first part of the four pillars of primary care is what occupational therapists see on their first contact with a patient. This is the stage where rapport is made with the patients to have a holistic understanding of who the patient is and their history which is essential when formulating their goals of intervention.

Occupational therapists are holistic practitioners. They are skilled and have the knowledge to evaluate all the factors of a client’s life which leads to a comprehensive understanding of the client’s occupations and their health. The role of an Occupational therapist goes beyond the treatment of an illness as seen by how it is evident in incorporating activities of a patient’s roles into their health promotion and disease prevention. The role that occupational therapists have in the context of the community and the family allows them to conduct a thorough analysis within the client’s contexts of the different environments they live in. This includes their home environment and social environments.

Primary health care provides preventative and curative services to the community and rehabilitation which is part of the role of an occupational therapist. Through the services provided, the goal is to improve health leading to a decreased occurrence of chronic diseases and injuries which in most cases require hospitalisation which means more space is used up (WHO 1978). Occupational therapists have the role of providing intervention and rehabilitation services to patients using assistive devices which are used to help the patients to engage in their areas of occupations easily with minimum difficulty. The use of assistive devices is an occupational therapy specific form of intervention that is used in rehabilitation.

Occupational therapists have the role of addressing the psychological aspects of the health problems that patients face by providing supportive advice and meaningful interventions. The Occupational Therapists can also aid patients with the knowledge and skills that they can use at home to take care of themselves to prevent reinjury and relapses. It is for this reason that many general practitioners have felt the need for occupational therapists to be actively involved in the intervention of their patients especially those presenting with chronic symptoms (Hughes, 2009)

Metzler et al (2012) states that the role of an occupational therapist is to engage a patient in goal setting to ensure that they are aware of how their intervention will carry over. This allows the clients to be actively involved and it increases participation in activities to promote the well-being of the clients. The role that occupational therapists have in this case allows for the prevention of reinjury. The close involvement that occupational therapists have with their patients meets the definition of primary health care and the purposes it has.

The challenge that Occupational therapist have in the primary health care is the lack of support from other practitioners. This is evident in many health sectors where there is little cohesion amongst the multidisciplinary team. This is also caused by the low rate of referrals from other practitioners who are unaware of the role of OT in health care and the lack of knowledge that preventative care falls under the occupation therapist’s scope of practice (Metzler et al, 2012). Therefore, it is important for occupational therapists to advocate for their profession wherever they go to provide that platform for referrals to get to them in time.

Social media refers to interactive digital platforms that allow users to share ideas and information with a network of contacts. Health professionals can use media to interact with people around their community. This can allow for them to increase their base, increase engagement and provide tailored experiences for specific individuals and their communities ("Digital Health in Canada | Canada Health Infoway", 2019)

There are many different types of media platforms that we can use as health professions for health promotion and prevention. Firstly, most of the communities that I have worked in have their local newspaper or radio station. The radio station can be used to allow for health professions to come in on a weekly basis to promote themselves and what their role in the health care is. This can be done on a rotation basis between the different practitioners. The newspapers can be used to have a section where every week, certain individuals write or share their health journey and how they were able to receive health care. This will allow for the people listening and reading to be able to hear what kind of help is available for them, and how they can reach it. Many people do not know what to do with their health due to the lack of knowledge, therefore this will provide more information.  

Social media provides us with many options of sharing information, interventions, ideas concerning health promotion and prevention. One of the easiest ways to use social media is to post content that is relevant and valuable. You can also post things on your social media platforms and have a special hashtag that you use for the health promotion and prevention so that people can reach it easier.  You need to build a strong support base so having a page where you promote health could work. You can have people LIKE and SHARE your page so that it can get to more people. Lastly, TV can also be used as a tool for health promotion by using shows and soapies to put out an awareness through drama.

In conclusion, occupational therapists play a vital role in the primary health care. It is our duty as health practitioners to advocate for our professions and what we do. This is the only way that we can get our name out for the public so that they can come for intervention early to ensure efficient health care.

x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x 

References

Digital Health in Canada | Canada Health Infoway. (2019). Retrieved from https://www.infoway-inforoute.ca/en/

Donnelly, C., Brenchley, C., Crawford, C., & Letts, L. (2013). The integration of occupational therapy into primary care: a multiple case study design. BMC Family Practice, 14(1). doi: 10.1186/1471-2296-14-60

Hughes, J. (2009). Chronic Fatigue Syndrome and Occupational Disruption in Primary Care: Is There a Role for Occupational Therapy?, 72(1), 2-10.

Metzler, C., Hartmann, K., & Lowenthal, L. (2012). Defining Primary Care: Envisioning the Roles of Occupational Therapy. American Journal Of Occupational Therapy, 66(3), 266-270. doi: 10.5014/ajot.2010.663001

Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, Pub. L. 111–148, § 3502, 124 Stat. 119, 124 (2010).

World Health Organization. (1978). Declaration of the Alma–Ata. Retrieved from www.who.int/hpr/NPH/docs/declaration_almaata.pdf

[anseladams03]

How to Blast Away the Top 15 Conversion Roadblocks on Your Website

Conversion rate optimization has never been bigger than it is today.

Just look at how much interest in conversion rate optimization has increased over the past decade:

And there are more and more conversion rate optimization (CRO) agencies popping up every day.

A quick search on Google for “conversion rate optimization agency” gave me nearly one million results:

This tells me one thing: many companies have lousy conversion rates.

According to Econsultancy, “only about 22 percent of businesses are satisfied with their conversion rates.”

So, what’s going wrong?

The issue with CRO is that there is a plethora of potential problem areas.

It’s not always easy to pinpoint precisely where the issue lies.

But based on my experience and research, there are 15 primary conversion roadblocks that disrupt the process and turn would-be customers away.

If your conversions aren’t where they should be, it’s very possible that at least one of these issues is the culprit.

In this post, I describe these problem areas and offer advice on how to fix them.

I’ll start with the more technical aspects and work my way down to onsite content and, ultimately, the checkout process itself.

1. Slow load time

Before you can ever spark initial interest, you must get visitors to actually browse through your site.

If they abandon your site before it loads, you’re guaranteed to have a zero percent conversion rate.

Not good.

Quite honestly, slow load time is an issue that still plagues many companies today, and that’s because people have little patience.

Here’s what I mean.

Research has found that “nearly half of web users expect a site to load in 2 seconds or less, and they tend to abandon a site that isn’t loaded within 3 seconds.”

In the case of website conversions, a lack of speed kills.

If you think this is a problem for you, I recommend checking out these two resources:

10 Ways to Speed Up Your Website — and Improve Conversion by 7 Percent

How to Make Your Site Insanely Fast

2. Wrong color scheme

When it comes to choosing the color for a site’s design, I feel like many people just use something they think looks cool.

Often, they don’t consider the underlying psychology behind a particular color scheme.

But color may play a bigger role in conversions than you may think.

In fact, “studies suggest that people make a subconscious judgment about a product within 90 seconds of initial viewing. Up to 90 percent of that assessment is based on color alone.”

Here are some examples of the meanings of certain colors in the Western world:

The point I’m trying to make here is that you shouldn’t haphazardly choose a color scheme.

Instead, you should carefully choose colors based on the type of emotion you want visitors to feel.

It can have a tremendous impact on conversions and put leads in the buying mindset.

For more on this topic, check out these two resources:

The Complete Guide to Understanding Consumer Psychology

The Psychology of Color: How to Use Colors to Increase Conversion Rate

3. Confusing navigation

Two words should define your site’s navigation: simple and intuitive.

If your navigation is in any way confusing or complicated, your conversion rate is likely to take a hit.

Allow me to provide you with a couple of examples of this.

Here’s a site where navigation is in a non-standard location:

This can throw people off because they’re expecting to find it at the top or on either side of the page.

Another mistake that can be a conversion roadblock is having too many navigation items:

This can have a paralyzing effect on visitors: they will likely become so overwhelmed that they won’t know where to get started.

Either one of these issues is going to lead to a high bounce rate and low conversions.

The fix is to keep it simple and intuitive, which you can learn more about in this post from Kissmetrics.

4. Cluttered design

Have you ever come across something like this?

Or this?

These sites are messy, cluttered and can lead to a cognitive overload, which isn’t going to do your conversion rate any favors.

I enjoy sites with a minimalist feel, like this:

In fact, that’s what I aim for on Quick Sprout, Crazy Egg, and NeilPatel.com.

I recommend doing the same for your website.

Although you don’t necessarily want it to seem sterile, a simple, fresh design should put your visitors at ease and lower your bounce rate.

5. Crappy imagery

The word “crappy” may seem vague, but I think you know what I mean.

I refer to bad stock photos that come across as inauthentic.

Kind of like these:

“Overly corporate” stock photos are the worst.

Of course, visuals are important.

As Loyalty Square reports,

a research conducted by the Seoul International Color Expo 2004 suggested that 

92.6% people take into concern the visual factor while making purchases

84.7% of the total respondents think that color is [more] important than many other factors while choosing products for buying.

But you want to be very selective with the images you use.

I prefer spending a little money upfront for some quality stock images.

Sites like Shutterstock and Fotolia tend to be good.

If you’re going to use a royalty-free image site, I suggest be diligent about your quality standards.

For instance, Pixabay is one of the best for free images.

You may also want to experiment with making your own images, which you can learn about here.

Regardless of the path you take, just stay away from crappy imagery because it’s going to hurt your conversions and reputation.

6. Excessive options

Several studies have been conducted on the topic of options and the impact of those options on consumers.

The overarching consensus is this: having too many choices reduces the likelihood of a purchase.

Don’t get me wrong, it’s good to showcase a few different products.

But you don’t want to drown your visitors in a seemingly infinite number of options because it’s inevitably going to overwhelm them.

You’ll notice that I make it a point to minimize the number of options on all my sites, and it’s worked out beautifully.

7. Missing or hard to find contact info

I was honestly a little surprised when I came across the following stats regarding contact info from KoMarketing:

“Once on a company’s homepage, 64 percent of visitors want to see the company’s contact information.”

“44 percent of website visitors will leave a company’s website if there’s no contact information or phone number.”

“51 percent of people think ‘thorough contact information’ is the most important element missing from many company websites.”

I knew that having some means of contact was important but not necessarily that critical.

But these stats show that your conversion rate will basically be cut in half if there’s no contact info or phone number.

So it’s super important to include this information in a conspicuous area.

8. Spelling/grammatical errors

I know we’re all human, and humans make mistakes.

But spelling/grammatical errors can be costly. Really costly.

One study in particular found that “59 percent of people would not use a company that had obvious grammatical or spelling mistakes on its website or marketing material.”

In other words, nearly six out of 10 would-be customers will abandon your site if they come across these types of errors.

This is why it’s so important to be hyper-diligent, and you may even want to use a free tool like Grammarly when writing copy, blog posts, or other content.

9. Stale content

Here’s one that might not be so obvious: having outdated content on your blog.

I instantly become skeptical of a company if its blog hasn’t been updated in at least six months.

I wonder if they even care.

If you run a blog, be sure to update it fairly frequently.

This doesn’t need to be every week, but it should be once a month at an absolute minimum.

10. Crazy salesy copy

Did you know that “approximately 96 percent of visitors that come to your website are not ready to buy?”

If you go right for the jugular and beat them over the head with “salesy copy,” many will run.

In other words, using too much hype or BS and sounding like a sleazy used car salesman is going to hurt your conversions.

Instead, most leads need to be warmed up before they’re ready to buy.

I suggest checking out this post from Kissmetrics for advice on writing persuasive copy without any “icky gimmicks” that could turn off your audience.

11. No social proof

Anyone can make claims on their website.

Today’s customers want to know you can walk the walk and not just talk the talk.

Social proof in the form of testimonials, positive press, and social shares can go a long way.

One of my favorites is media icons (otherwise known as logo porn), which showcases companies you’ve partnered with, written for, or done business with.

That can instantly quell any doubt that may have arisen in a visitor’s mind.

12. No trust elements

Trust elements include things such as:

A badge from the Better Business Bureau

Indication of secure payment processing

Return and refund policies

Detailed product information

Unbiased reviews

If you’re missing these types of trust elements, it’s going to be difficult to get your leads over “the buying hump.”

I suggest reading this post from ConversionXL for a comprehensive list of ways to boost your website’s credibility.

13. Annoying sign-ups

You know what people really hate?

Those long-winded sign-up forms with fields that just seem to go on and on.

I’ve abandoned numerous sites when I got hit with these.

If you’re a first-time shopper, you don’t want to waste your time entering loads of info just to make a purchase.

Or as one disgruntled online shopper phrased it,

“I’m not here to enter into a relationship. I just want to buy something.”

The bottom line is to reduce the number of fields a person has to go through to make a purchase.

Or better yet, ditch it all together, and let someone check out as a guest.

Going this route can result in a surge in conversions. If you’ve never read The $300 Million Dollar Button, I greatly recommend it.

It touches on this topic and highlights a real-life case study.

14. An arduous checkout process

This roadblock piggybacks on the previous one.

Besides having too many forms to fill out, a complicated, exhausting checkout process can really hurt conversions.

Just look at the number of customers that drop off during checkout:

If you’re making people jump through too many hoops or have confusing ordering/shipping policies, it’s going to disrupt things.

A streamlined checkout process will be simple and linear and have a progress indicator so customers can see the steps they’ve completed and still need to complete.

This post from Kissmetrics highlights some common problem areas of the checkout process and explains how to correct them.

15. No A/B testing

Last but not least, there’s the issue of A/B testing.

It’s amazing that many websites still fail to use this simple yet incredibly powerful technique.

Running continuous tests on elements like CTA buttons, colors, and copy can have a major impact:

I really like this article from ConversionXL for learning both the basics and more advanced techniques of this A/B testing.

Conclusion

There is a lot happens between the time when a person lands on your site and when they actually complete a purchase.

And that’s why a lot can go wrong.

Understanding some of the most common roadblocks and diagnosing them can make the process go far smoother.

I’ve found the 15 issues in this post to be some of the most pervasive.

But making the necessary fixes can be your ticket to boosting conversions and getting the most out of your traffic.

What’s been your main conversion obstacle? How did you overcome it?

from Quick Sprout http://ift.tt/2mIxUxC from Blogger http://ift.tt/2nYCTtQ March 27, 2017 at 08:41PM