Episode Transcription

Alexander Kotler: When you think of trends, what comes to mind? Earbuds, small batch bourbon, Cardi B, reality show reunions, boomeranging. I bet you don't think of conversion rate optimization though. Well, it's a trend, and Scott Rubenstein is on this episode of RubyApps Insights to tell us what it is, why it's important, and what it can do for you. So check out this flow. We're tracking trends and we're talking CRO.

Alexander Kotler: It's an exciting day today. We're joined by Scott Rubenstein, the director of client services, and we are here to talk about trends. Polka dots, pastels, Hawaiian food, hyperlocal food, boy bands, robotic production, invisible tech, self-memeing, these are all trends, but there's one that we're going to talk about today which may surprise you, and that is around conversion rate optimization. Scott, welcome to the RubyApps Insights podcast, exciting to speak with you again.

Scott Rubenstein: Happy to be here.

Alexander Kotler: What do we mean when we refer to conversion rate optimization?

Scott Rubenstein: Well, when you talk about conversion rate optimization, you want to think about well, what, what is a conversion? You want to think about it in a couple different ways. So you can think about it from the macro sense and then the micro sense. So from the macro sense, it's really converting a website visitor into a client, right, getting them off the website and into your office. And, from a micro sense, you think about the particulars, so, logistically, how do we do that? So it comes to tasks on a website and using a website as a tool on that path of the customer journey from someone who's just a casual website visitor, or even someone who may, you may know that may be on your website, and turning them into a client.

Alexander Kotler: So when you think about conversion in that micro sense, essentially, it's about getting them to do something that you want. You put something out there and it is a request and it is calling for some kind of action and they will hopefully, if you've executed it correctly, they will perform it.

Scott Rubenstein: Yeah, and there are a number of examples, and they ... some of them are similar across industries, some of them are, are industry-specific. So if you're in commerce, you want somebody to buy a product. But I think one of the main driers of turning a website visitor into a client is obtaining their information, right, so typical contact info done so by a contact form or some sort of sign-up or subscribe form, and so that would be a mechanism for which you would create a conversion, and people coming to a website page or even a contact form page, and signing up or not. What is the percentage of people that come to that page and sign up and then is that percentage, okay, is that acceptable, or do you want to make that or do, would you like to increase that percentage and how do we do that?

Alexander Kotler: What are the factors that impact whether someone completes this form, it entices them, 'cause, clearly, the object is to get as many people as possible, so what are the variable involved?

Scott Rubenstein: I think it really depends on the value, as an organization, that you place on each conversion. And so there are things ... so let's, let's use a commerce site, I think, 'cause that's, that's a more straightforward approach. You know, there's someone clicking to learn more about a product, which would probably have a lower value than someone clicking to buy a product. And so when you think about ways to entice people, enticing them to learn more about a product is done so in, in one way, while buying a product is done so in other ways.

Scott Rubenstein: So, learning more, you want to lure them in buy expansive media, whether that be imagery or a video and/or some enticing language. Whereas buy a product, there are ways that, if you're not already intending accept, acceptable conversion rates, you can say things like "Free shipping," or "Save 10%," or have a pop-up that is "If you buy now and add this promo code, you will get 10% off," and constantly trying to lure, lure and attract the website visitor to becoming a client or a customer.

Alexander Kotler: If we were to structure what a particular journey would look like, just to dig in a little bit deeper to what you just said, if we are on a commerce site and I want to learn more, the, perhaps, if I'm going to buy a pair of sneakers, maybe I will have a video which shows some athletic person wearing these sneakers and that will entice me to get to the next stage, and then it's about closing the deal. And that may include some sort of discount for a purchase or any form of incentive for me to think about digging into my wallet-

Scott Rubenstein: Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Alexander Kotler: ... and buying that pair of sneakers.

Scott Rubenstein: Yeah, that's a, that's a good point, you know. Ease of use and how, how troubling it is to go from point A to point B on a website will skew that conversion rate. So if I know I want these sneakers and I click buy, but then there's a six or seven page checkout process, I may decide that I might want to go to Amazon and find some other version of these sneakers or just do something that's a little bit easier. And so making it, making it easy for the customer, or the website visitor, to become a customer is also an aspect of it. You know, adding the value is an important part, I think the most important part, but then on the way to converting them like to submitting that call to action is also an aspect.

Scott Rubenstein: So for example, professional services sites, they ... professional service firms will want to obtain your information and get some information about you as a user in terms of what your preferences are so that they can provide you with meaningful information, meaningful content. And so one of the ways to do that is to entice you by wanting to learn more about a specific topic and then perhaps having a document or a whitepaper, a PDF of that document, but having it be gated behind a form that you must fulfill the name, email, and other information before you can download the information. And so that's a, that's a very transactional, a transactional event, wherein you must pay for (laughs) the form with your information, but it's also rewarding because you're giving the user what they want and they're giving you what you want and it's a symbiotic relationship in that way.

Alexander Kotler: There's some terminology that has come out, either directly or indirectly, and I want to bring some of that to the surface. So one is around calls to action, and I think you highlighted a call to action, that the video could potentially be connected to a call to action because you want to learn more about the sneakers, or there's an opportunity for you to learn about this whitepaper that you want to download and so, "Give us this information." Then there is the lead generation form, which is what you would theoretically fill out to provide whatever that entity is with that information. And then the last one, which I'll take a pause on and allow you to explain it a little more, is the idea of gated content, which is this whitepaper.

Scott Rubenstein: Right. And so gated content is something that has been around for a little while, but I think is becoming more of a trend in professional services industries in particular, wherein there's a sense that there's a lot of time and energy to produce this content and some content is more valuable than others, whereas you may want to readily produce and readily make available certain articles or, or publications when you're producing a high value piece of content, like an annual report or like some sort of quarterly review of a topic.

Scott Rubenstein: You may already have a user base that you know is interested in, in this, but if ... and, and you may be sending emails and you may be producing things on social media driving traffic towards this, you want to be able to harness that information.And doing, and having that gated content is sort of like a roadblock for the user, to say like, "You can have this valuable information which we know you want, which we know is valuable, and the only thing that we're asking for in return is your information so that, we can, we can contact you in the future."

Scott Rubenstein: And so when we talk about, and we talked about this a little bit earlier, about ease of use and, and being able to easily submit this information and hitting, you know, submit, we think about when users get to that form and how it makes them feel when they're surfing on your website or they're browsing between pages and they're clicking download, or even if they're coming from an email or social media and they're clicking download, and they're sort of ... it, it can be a little jarring in terms of the, the user experience to get that form.

Scott Rubenstein: And so another tip that you can possibly im-, impart for that, gated content form is some more information about the, the document or about the, the ... whatever your download is to, again, continue in getting them interested and also not having them fill out nine fields. If all you want is their name and their email, get that. You already know what they're interested in based on what they're downloading. There's a lot of things that you can deduct or deduce from that task, from that website event, that you can then use in, in later, transactions, if you will, with that customer.

Alexander Kotler: It seems like a silly question, but I want to point it out. What's the value in collecting this information? How can it actually be used? You mentioned a follow-up email in the future, but how would a marketer think about putting all of this to work and for what reasons?

Scott Rubenstein: So that's a really good question and just from a, from a top level, it's really about, you know, the customer journey, the business development flow, and, at the end of the day, making turning a cold lead into a warm lead. And so I'll give you an example. You have a website. It's got a form that has a few preferences on it or, or maybe they're, they go to a, a, a page about some sp-, specific expertise that your professional services firm is known for and there's a sign-up for alerts link, and they sign up for the alerts. It then gets captured in your CRM, where you have their name, their email, and other information as well as their preferences for let's say, energy.

Scott Rubenstein: So this client is interested in energy and emerging trends around energy, and there will be an event soon where one of the people at the firm is speaking about energy, new energy and so you will send them an invite to this person who will then get an email, see that it's about something they're interested in, go to the event, and that could then be locked in your CRM and put in a list for you know, people at your firm to already know a lot about this person and say, "Hey, oh, I know that you were on our website and you're interested in energy and I wanted to, you know, talk to you a little bit more about that." And so it turns a cold lead to, "Hi, this is my name, and what brings you here?" to, you know, it jumps to the third or fourth step in the conversation and I think makes that person a little more comfortable and more eng-, more willing to engage in a conversation that you want them to have.

Alexander Kotler: In the era of data privacy and GDPR, it also sounds like these types of techniques allow you to get people to opt in and willingly give you information and communicate to you, overtly, how they wish to be communicated to.

Scott Rubenstein: That's right. Yeah. I mean, with GDPR, it really formalizes, through regulation, what the best practices have been for a long time, which is you should really be contacting people that have preferences to want to be contacted in this way about this thing. And so what the regulations, in my mind, are really enforcing are things that should be happening anyway, you know, and you can think about it from in any way that you engage with any business online and if they're sending you information or they're contacting you and you're not, you don't want that information, you're not going to open up that email. You're not going to do what they want you to do. And so what GDPR will do is enforce the opt-ins, enforce things like preferences so that you're not sending things to people who don't want them, and so it, it, it sort of puts a law around that.

Alexander Kotler: I want to demonstrate some intent to exit our conversation, but before I do that, I thought I'd introduce the idea of exit intent pop-ups as part of this conversation and hear some of your thoughts on those.

Scott Rubenstein: Right. An exit intent pop-up, put simply for those who are not familiar with the term, is where you're on a website and you would like to go off the website and go to another page or click to another bookmark on your toolbar in your web browser and, as your mouse is scrolling up to the address bar to change that URL, you'll get a pop-up on the website. And it's typically very alluring and, and very attractive because, you know, it's a pop-up, it's an overlay, and you're ... the eye really focuses on this form to do one of many things. So they, this is where websites will entice you to either sign up for their newsletter or, if you act now and use this promo code, you can get 20% off, and things like that.

Scott Rubenstein: It, it does remind me a lot about, of, of an ad that you'll see on another site. So if you see an ad, or if you see a commercial on TV, and you don't want the product and it's not for you, it's a nuisance, but if you see the ad and you see, and you see the commercial, and it's something that you really want, it's the best thing that's happened to you all day. And so that's what we're really going for. We're looking for something that is what you want and providing users with what you want.

Scott Rubenstein: Typically what the exit intent pop-up is very effective at doing, especially when you're on the path to becoming a customer, on that checkout process, but you're on page six and you really don't want to fill out a shipping address 'cause you just gave them your billing address, and you go to, go, and you move to go to Amazon, but then they say, "Hey, wait a second, here's 20% off. Please fill out that last bit of information and buy this product," or "Please fill out that last of information and download this whitepaper." Iit can just be another little tap on the shoulder to say, "Hey do this and, you know, we'll give you a little something extra for it."

Alexander Kotler: It also sounds like a last-ditch effort. So in a last-ditch effort to close out our conversation, a last question, going back to something you said earlier around acceptable conversion rates. I understood it in the context, but let's speak quickly about what are acceptable conversion rates.

Scott Rubenstein: Another very good question. So I think in order to best answer that question, you really have to go through the steps. So I, I sort of have like this step-by-step plan in terms of how, what is, how to create conversions, what the right conversion is for your organization, and then what the right conversion rate is. So you have to stop, start at the top, so what are your firm's organizational goals and business objectives, and then try to tie that into the website.

Scott Rubenstein: So if your firm's goals are to generate more leads, let's tie that into a lead generation form on the website and determine the KPI for that, right? And so, if you have a lead generation form which is to sign up for a newsletter and you're looking at the baseline of your current metrics, you know, to assess the, the key performance indicator and you're saying, "Well, 3% of all users that are coming to the site are signing up." That's your baseline, so you have to achieve a baseline and, you know, we always want to improve on that baseline, so we're going to define a target. So if we say it's at 3% now, we want it to be at 10%, and so we're going to say, "Well, we're going, we're going to look at this and we're going to maybe add some more social media power behind this. We're going to send out a few emails, and maybe we're going to change that sign-up button from gray to, gray to blue, and we're going to see if that changes anything."

Scott Rubenstein: You're also going to want to identify the valuable segments, and saying, "Well, social is more valuable than email because we're getting more traffic, and more people are coming to the site, so let's put some more effort into that." And then you're going to get reporting on that. So you're going to be able to use analytics, and perhaps some of the other metrics that are available through your email software and/or your social media network to be able to report on these things on a weekly/monthly basis, and then take a look if your efforts made any difference and did you go from 3% to 10%, did you go down because people didn't like that blue button or, for whatever reason, they didn't like some of the changes you made. Make other changes. You know, wash, rinse, and repeat, and ensure that you're constantly adapting and making those strategic updates, to the content or to the website based on those goals, but where I would start is your own baseline for your own website and try to improve from there.

Alexander Kotler: So don't be discouraged, everyone. Improve on your baselines as we try to each and every episode. We wash, we rinse, we repeat, and I hope we've optimized your time this afternoon. Scott Rubenstein, thank you so much for speaking with RubyApps Insights.

Scott Rubenstein: A pleasure. Thank you for having me.

Voiceover: RubyApps Insights is recorded at Studio 55 and is hosted by Alexander Kotler. For more insights and detail on RubyApps and enterprise software developed by RubensteinTech, visit RubyApps.com. Until next time, have an awesome every day.