Friction: 3 simple optimization tactics to get more customers from headline to call-to-action

You might have a highly optimized headline …

And you might have a highly optimized call-to-action …

But if customers never get from the headline to the call-to-action, what’s the point of that optimized headline and call-to-action to begin with?

Dr. Flint McGlaughlin, Managing Director, MECLABS, discusses the major impediment that stops your customers from ever seeing your CTA — friction — in this video recording of a recent Web clinic planning meeting.

 

 

For the purposes of the MarketingExperiments testing methodology, friction is defined as a psychological resistance to a given element in the sales or sign-up process.

There are three basic elements you can optimize to reduce friction and get more customers from your headline to your CTA. We’ll take a quick look at these basic elements, and then dive into seven more commonly overlooked causes of friction in our next free Web clinic – Silent Conversion Killers: How overcoming hidden friction boosted conversion 166%.

 

There are three types of low-hanging fruit to look for when optimizing to reduce friction:

1.       The number of form fields

Less form fields usually equals more form completions. Here is an example test run by Marketo:

 

 

And a deeper look at the results…

 

 

 

2.       The number of steps in a process

The more hoops you make your potential customers jump through, the less customers that will stick around until the end of that process. Here’s an example …

Before: The first page of a three-step process

 

 

After: The first page of the optimized, two-step process

 

 

Results

 

 

3.       The length of the page itself

All other things being equal (and we’ll get into the deeper complexities of this on the Web clinic), a shorter page tends to be easier to get through for customers, and therefore, less customers tend to bounce on shorter pages.

 

Here’s an example test with a Research Partner:

Before (please note, the creative sample has been anonymized to protect the Research Partner’s competitive advantage)

 

 

After

 

Results

The new page outperformed the control by 188.46% with a statistical confidence level of 95%.

 

Related Resources:

Next Web clinic – Silent Conversion Killers: How overcoming hidden friction boosted conversion 166% — Wednesday, Mar 14, 2012, 4:00-5:00 p.m. EDT

Minor Changes, Major Lifts: How headline and call-to-action optimization increased conversion 45% (Web clinic replay)

Landing Page Optimization: Identifying friction to increase conversion and win a Nobel Prize

Landing Page Test: Why less equaled (54%) more when reducing friction and highlighting value proposition