This is the third and final article in a series based on a talk that Nick Woolnough – Head of Marketing Operations at StrategiQ – gave at the Pharma Multichannel Marketing Meetup in December 2018. Following on from the importance of realistic expectations and an opportunistic approach to web content, this article goes on to look at learning from the increased number of visitors that your website is hopefully now receiving.
Transitioning from “visitors captured’ to “visitors converted”
In my last article, I discussed some tactics for acquiring new web traffic in your niche and how pharma companies in particular can deep dive into their areas of specialism to produce unique content that meets demand. Unfortunately, more traffic doesn’t always mean more conversions – if only digital marketing was that simple! When you are generating an upsurge in traffic through content marketing, it is likely that you are attracting a lot of ‘top of the funnel’ traffic that typically is even less likely to convert to business in the short term. As such, this traffic is ripe for analysis as the audience will typically be more varied in terms of intent and interests.
What do you do when it’s not working?
If traffic is increasing but conversions aren’t following suit – questions are usually asked of the marketing team behind the content strategy and the way in which budget and resource has been invested.
How brand and marketing teams react in this scenario is critical. Is it seen as an opportunity to learn from new data or a cause for panic?”
The temptation can be to use this as an opportunity to reinforce preconceptions and opinions about the website.
“I told you we should have put a link to our solutions in the secondary navigation.”
“That enquiry button has never been big enough, we need to make it orange too.”
These are the sorts of things you could typically hear in a session to analyse a drop in conversion rate. It’s all subjective, but if your new website visitors aren’t providing you with feedback then that’s all you’ve got to go on, right? Yes, but only if you didn’t have the foresight to put in place measurements at the start of the campaign.
Pulling on your data sources
As a bare minimum, most websites will be running some sort of web analytics software; most likely Google Analytics. With some forward planning there are great ways of enhancing the data collected within that platform and even better, overlaying it against something more visual.
Behavioural analytics tracking tools such as Hotjar and VWO allow you to actually observe the way in which visitors are using your website. All of a sudden that majority of users who weren’t leaving a tangible imprint of form completions or enquiries on your website become far more real, allowing you to derive action and a pipeline of website improvements based on real user data.
Heatmaps
Some of the quickest of quick wins when it comes to optimising your website for user experience can come from observing heatmaps. Set up on the pages that you wish to analyse, these can allow you to quickly identify if visitors simply aren’t finding the on-page elements that you view as most important or compelling – be that a video, content form or key sales message. By knowing – per device type – how much of a landing page the majority of your web visitors are actually viewing, you can make some pretty bold, data-backed decisions as to how you prioritise your content.
User Recordings
Here’s where it gets really interesting. With the exception of looking over someone’s shoulder on the tube or in a cafe, you won’t get much closer to charting a visitor’s journey on your website than through watching back user recordings. These screen captures follow the mouse around the website, giving you complete visibility as to what elements of the page drew attention and also those that didn’t. The danger for marketers here is the time it takes to analyse multiple screen recordings. While heatmaps are aggregated, these are not, so you need to be careful to use filters to tackle one landing page or predetermined user journey at a time. Key things to look out for include the mouse hovering over an on-page element for longer than usual, attempted clicks that don’t seem to result in an action or users scanning past content or elements you assumed they would find useful or engaging. By collating these findings, you can derive some genuine insight.
Feedback Forms
If the above fails and the silent majority still aren’t telling you what you need to hear in order to improve your website performance, then ask them! Pop-up feedback forms are becoming more commonplace and enabling these gives you a chance to overlay some qualitative data against the more quantitative data that heatmaps and recordings can provide.
So even if your website users aren’t making a whole lot of noise, it doesn’t mean we can’t listen to them. The opportunities don’t end with websites either, so if you’d like to find out more about how advanced analytics can help you get more out of your digital sales aids, why not fire a quick question across to the team at twentyeightb.