#57 – How Clarity Drives Conversion Rates

Is there like a way clarity can also touch on elements such as, like, things to do with the user interface? Aside from the copy, the messaging, the information, is there like a way, like, it also can help?

Yeah. Think about this. To me, you communicate your message to your visitor through two different ways. I think words copy is very powerful, but then design is there to support that. Copy and clarity, I think is super, super critical. That's two supers when it comes to website copy. It is super critical when it comes to website design.

My name is Khalil Slade and I love to talk about conversion rate optimization.

I'm Simba and I love asking questions about conversion optimization.

This is CRO Live hour, a show all about a B testing, experimentation and conversion rate optimization.

Each episode Khaled amazes me, answering some of the difficult CRO questions, dropping insights like, it's no big deal, while pretty.

Much every episode will take on new set of conversion rate optimization questions that are not easy. We will talk strategies, we will talk process, and we will talk tactics. Simba will be bringing all the questions.

Oh, man.

I bring tough questions like, do a B testing results fade over time? How do you go from low to high testing velocity? How do you measure the success of a conversion funnel? And how do you align your CRO program with a growth strategy? Yeah, Khalid, these are very, very tough questions.

Yes, they are, but we always answer them here. And if you love conversion optimization like we do, and certainly like Simba does, subscribe to CRO Live hour podcast today. Wherever you listen to your podcasts.

CRO Live hour again another week. And super excited to be here because we missed last week, but we are back. Simba, how are you doing?

Yes, I'm doing good. I'm trying to avoid giving like, that typical answer of saying, like, so far, so good. So everything is good.

Excellent, excellent. So what's been keeping you busy? Before we jump into CRO, let's talk marketing.

Yeah, that's a good question because there are a lot of things. There are a lot of moving pieces all the time here at invesp. So I have a couple of things which are always keeping me busy. I've been taking an ABM course, so that's one of the major things that I've been doing because I find it interesting because there's a lot of things that I really didn't understand, but now I have a better understanding and they know, like how to get some of it done and some of it, like, I think it's one of those things that you can learn through Practice through doing like you get to understand there.

Yeah, yeah.

Over time. That's one of the things we have like some few campaigns which have been running and one of the things like that made me happy. We had a certain number of leads of marketing qualified leads that we were targeting for January and I was just checking the numbers and we surpassed that. So I was. That's a good thing. Like I was happy about it.

So yeah, it's an excellent thing, my friend. You're happy, I'm happy. So yeah, let's talk about ABM account based marketing. And then you've been doing marketing for a while. So I'm just going to ask you the kind of very straightforward question. Is it just some other type of marketing but they're just renaming it like, I don't know, like I always think inbound marketing really was content marketing, but we just came up with a different name for it or no, it's actually a different type of marketing. Your thoughts on that?

That's really like a good question. I think it borrows like certain principles from the traditional marketing that we know, but there are some certain differences that you can see. Oh, I didn't know about this along the way as you do the course. So I think there's definitely some similarities and there's some differences. So I wouldn't say it's marketing as we used to know it like back then or stuff, but I feel like there are some similarities and differences, but it's not the same thing. Okay.

And my second natural question about abm, every time I hear it, because I hear this question from our sales guys, it's like, oh, really, ABM is sales more than marketing? I always argue no, it's a kind of combination between sales and marketing. Your thoughts on that?

I think there are different functions within an abm. Some of them they are sales related and some of them they are marketing related. The good thing about the ABM course is it puts everyone within the same page. Everyone gets aligned, whether you're from marketing or you're from sales. Because there are certain things that you as a marketer, you need the input of sales in order to build the foundation of a good ABM program. So I think like it's a combination of both marketing and sales. Yeah, I would say, like, it's a combination of what?

Okay, I like that. I like that. And I look forward to seeing the results of that. Talk to us before we jump in again. For those who are listening, you are running campaigns on LinkedIn. You've been impressed, have you? Because you're also running campaigns on Google, paid Google Ads. Is it too early to judge? No. You've liked it. You're not so impressed. What are your thoughts?

I think with Google Ads we had a certain hypothesis which was like sometime last year, and we kept it running for long. Right now we're still like doing Google Ads. So which means, like the hypothesis that we had back then worked and Google Ads still works. But all the time I think there's always room for improvement. But when it comes to LinkedIn, I think we've been running like the LinkedIn campaign for about three to four weeks now. I would say like three. We're going like on week four. So it's still like a bit early to say that it's working. I can say like it's working if I'm looking at the vanity metrics.

Right.

I can say it. Right. But if I look at like the major goals that you are trying to target or that you are trying to hit, we're not there yet because we haven't implemented like the whole strategy and stuff. So I would say, like, maybe in the next three, four weeks we'll know if it's worth it or not.

Okay, we're going to come back to you in four weeks from now. We're going to ask the same question and we shall see what you think about that. Okay? And then the final question. The most important segment of the most important segment, but the Simba had it segments. Man United is playing in a little bit.

We're playing against a team that we lost to some couple months ago. Like, I think it was the opening match of the season. We lost at home. Now we're playing our way. Yeah, we lost against Wolves.

Did you know you beat them?

But we lost.

Ah, man, come on. I think you beat them. However, there was like, you know, the penalty where your goalkeeper just hits the guy from Wolves. I mean, they played much better, but they end up losing. That's what I remember. Or maybe you lost. Okay, But I remember because that was a big deal back then. And of course our listeners are thinking to themselves, what does this have to do with conversion optimization, my friends? Everything has to do with conversion optimizations. This kind of different goals that you are trying to achieve. The, you know, website goals and then physical goals. And did you lose or did you win, by the way, the first game.

You done that, I think we won. But with Wolves, like, they are so unpredictable. They can be good this week, bad next week. So we'll see what happens.

Okay, I'm On a high until now. Hopefully my team keeps me on that high because I am enjoying the season.

Good game yesterday? Yeah.

Impressive. Yeah. Probably the ref was a little generous towards us, I have to admit.

Yeah, yeah. Two pinos. Jesus.

Those.

Yeah.

So I. No, one. One man. I would say two.

Okay, cool.

Yes, I would like to give what. But okay. And it's funny because my little one watches soccer with me and he's like, oh, this is the Premier League. They're so soft nowadays. And I'm looking at him and he's 8 years old. I'm like, oh, dude, what have I done? Today I talked about going to a party looking for snacks. That just happened to me and I hope the person who invited me is not listening. It was an amazing party, but I was looking for the snacks and took me a while to find them because it was not clear, I guess, do you expect the location? But I just was not sure where do I go to in that house? And I'm like, oh, clarity. And guess what? We are talking clarity, website clarity today. So tell me.

Yes, today we are talking about clarity, like within the context of conversion optimization, why is it important? Why you should think about it, the elements that have to do with clarity and all those good stuff. So we have about four questions. So the first question is what exactly does clarity mean in the context of conversion optimization and why is it important?

So clarity. This is funny. This should be a very clear answer, but it's not necessarily very clear answer. We're going to go about it in a roundabout way. If I think about ways to identify problems on a website, we usually when we're evaluating a page, we're looking at the page and evaluating it through different lenses. And one of the most important lenses as far as is the conversion framework. So there's different elements of the conversion framework. We look at trust elements, we look at fuds, fears, uncertainties and doubts. We look at incentives. We look at engagement, sales, complexity, Persona, different types of elements. And under each one of those elements there is a sub element. So you say under trust and trust factors, is there clarity, clear signals that you are sending to people where they're not confused about the website? Under incentives, I'll have an incentive. I'm using some sort of scarcity or urgency offer. But is it clear or is it causing people more confusion? So clarity plays a role and it's a. Although it's what we call a sub element, it's all about making the message that you are trying to convey, whether it's a trust message Whether it's an incentive message, whether it's an engaging message, making sure that message is communicated clearly so your visitor understands that message as well as you do. And they're not left wondering, what do they mean by this? Best example that I can give, and I see many companies fall into is on the enterprise software websites. So we always like to use what we call a combination of a functional headline plus an emotional headline, a combination of those two. Here's what we do to help you achieve this emotional dream, whatever that might be. Correct. Increase your conversion rate so you can make a ton of money. Okay, I'm going to an extreme, but hopefully that communicates the message. Great. Sometimes a headline. And again, most SaaS, enterprise companies fall into the trap of using an emotional headline. That you look at it, you're like, I have no clue what you guys do. Oh, make a ton of money. Oh, I can make a ton of money by working in a job, or I can make a ton of money by, like, hiring somebody, an amazing sales team. And I could. And I'm like, you've used such a vague headline that visitors are left. And it's like, okay, I understand every word on your website, but I have no clue what you do. You see it sometimes in sales emails. Correct. And some salespeople, by the way, do this intentionally where they leave their emails very vague when they're doing cold outreach or even when they're doing outreach because their goal is to intrigue you enough for you to say, you can jump on a call and see what you guys do. Some people like that. I personally don't like that. I'm okay if you're sending me an email or if I'm landing on your website. I want that clarity. Because when I come into a website, I'm hunting for a specific goal. Now, this could be the conversion goal on your website. That's what I'm hunting for. Or it could be, maybe I'm looking for specific information, but I need that clarity. I don't like to be confused, because if I'm confused, even for a few seconds, it depends on how motivated I am to stay on the website. But there is a good chance I might say, you know what, thank you, but thanks, but no thanks, good luck, and I move on to the next website. So is clarity important when it comes to conversion rate optimization? Improving the user experience. Improving conversion rates, Very important. How important is clarity? It relates to how motivated the visitor is. The more motivated the visitor is, they're willing to put up with more vague, less clear websites. The less motivated a visitor is, the less they are inclined to stay on a website that is vague and not clear. But in both cases, regardless of my level of motivation, if you are not clear, you're increasing the chance of that visitor saying, yes, don't want to stay here. Goodbye and good luck.

Yeah, that's a good one. You spoke about messaging and also the way, like the website conveys like an information, but I was just like, wondering, is there like a way clarity can also touch on elements such as, like, things to do with the user interface. Aside from the copy, the messaging, the information, is there like a way like, it also can help?

Yeah. Think about this. To me, you communicate your message to your visitor through two different ways. I think words, copy is very powerful, but then design is there to support that copy. And clarity, I think is super, super critical. That's two supers when it comes to website copy. It is super critical when it comes to website design. Because if the website design sending a message and the copy is saying something else, that's an area where you don't want to fall into. Let's give an example. So I sell, for example, services to companies. Let's say I'm a B2B website and I sell services to companies. Let's say small size businesses or, sorry, the enterprise size businesses, they land on my website. The copy says that I sell to the big companies, the Fortune 500. My website design sends a message to people that, okay, it's not professionally designed, it's clunky, just confuses people who are like, okay, yeah, I hear the words that you're saying, but I see the design that you've put in front of me. And there is a clear contradiction correct between the two. Your site design. And in this case, it doesn't matter to me what you say. Your design sends the wrong message to visitors. I remember just very recently I was trying to use some software and it's to connect a whole bunch of data. Data software. So we use Google Analytics, we use Google Sheets, we use a couple of other data warehouses. And I'm like, God, man, Every week we have to pull reports from almost 7, 8 different resources to combine them together and pull data from here, combine with data from here and just generate the reports. Surely there is a way to find a piece of software that will do that connection in a seamless way. I Google that, find different options. I click on one of the options and they're like, oh, you can have a free demo. So I'm like, oh, let me just see how it works. I like to take the demo for rocking myself without having a salesperson walk me through it. I log in and I am convinced that they have not. At least I hope. But I am almost convinced that they have not updated the site design since 2002 or 2003. Very powerful software, by the way, and it connects to all the different data warehouses that I'm looking forward to connect to. The interface looked like somebody designed it from 20 years ago and has not been touched since then. Although you connect to all these different tools, the message that you send me is, oh, this is old clunky software. Is that what they wanted to do? I bet you they did not want to do that. And they probably prioritized updating the UI at a later stage. Oh, we're going to add more connections. That's a lot more important. But guess what? I was really turned off by that software. Now eventually, I'm probably going to still evaluate that software against its competitors. To see I'm like, okay, maybe I can overlook the clunky design that they're sending me and the message that design is sending me. Because again, there was confusion and it's not clear to me. They're really looking really able to connect to all these complicated software platforms, or aren't they? So I'm going to evaluate the functionality, but they're already starting from a lower level compared to their competitors. Correct. Where I'm like, okay, I don't know whether this works or not. Long story short, design matters because it does send a signal to people. Now, all the examples that I gave until now are SaaS and software examples, but the same thing applies if you are an E commerce website. You're an E commerce website. And this we've dealt with in your E commerce website that sells beautiful skincare. Okay, very clear, very important. But the pictures that you're using on your website just really don't convey that beautiful skin feeling. Correct. Now, there's contradiction. I'm like, okay, yeah, I know the product and I see the words that you're seeing, but your messages are sending me a different signal. And there's a contradiction in the clarity of what your product actually do. Let's give another example. You are an E commerce subscription site and people have to subscribe, but they need to understand what they are getting for the subscription. Correct. Okay, so you're asking me for $30, skincare for men, what am I getting? How frequently am I getting it? Oh, you get it four to six weeks. I'm like, there's a big Difference. Correct. Between four or six weeks because you're charging me on monthly basis and I'm like, I don't really understand what's the difference? How do I set that up? Lack of clarity in this case causes confusion, causes fears, uncertainties and doubts. And this could be communicated to you, to me, to everybody, through design and through words. So it applies both to E commerce, it applies to SaaS, it definitely applies to lead gender as well.

I was saying, like you touched on my next question because I was going to ask you, is there like a specific industry where clarity is much more important than you answered it?

So we could let me just also add, since that was going to be your next question. So one of the things that we do is we pull the 2000 some experiments that we've launched every year and each experiment is classified based on the main elements, secondary, what we call secondary element and third element. So there's three different levels of classification. So we always want to see which elements are tested most, which elements are more successful than other elements. And it's fascinating, by the way, so I'm going to throw something at you. Sometimes adding clarity helps improve conversion rates. Sometimes it does not, which is very fascinating. Give you an example. Same website we tested clarity, E commerce website where we said, you know what, there is lack of clarity when it comes to shipping dates. We need to be very clear with our visitors to show them shipping dates. So that's an element. So we're testing clarity of time, correct. So it was under trust, clarity, shipping times or time. And then we said we can also test time again, but not under clarity. But we're going to test it under urgency. We're going to use it, say by order. Now you'll get the order. The order is going to get shipped out order in the next two hours. The order is going to be shipped out today. So we're testing the same elements, clarity correct for time versus urgency for time. What we found out is most of the time when we had clarity around shipping times and dates, times only and dates, we end up losing, reducing conversion rates, which is fascinating. Now I test time under urgency and under incentives and urgency and it improves conversion rate. So it depends. You can come at the same concept, correct the whole and shipping dates. I can come at it and address it through adding urgency or I can address it through adding clarity. And I get two completely different results. And this goes back to how do you actually structure and how do you measure the impact of this particular element? And it's fascinating because you look at that and when you look at the spectrum of all the different experiments that you run is looking. So we've ran maybe close to 100, 110 experiments around clarity. When did it succeed, when did it fell? And is this happening across all E commerce websites? Is this happening all across all lead gen type websites? Is this happening across all SaaS websites? Sometimes, yeah, it happens across all the sites. Sometimes for E commerce. I go back to the example I just gave with shipping. Adding clarity around shipping times and dates most likely will hurt your conversion rates, but also just add another dimension. It depends on when you have that clarity. Having that clarity for the time on the product pages helps you. Having it on the cart page hurts you. Having it during the checkout, but it's not very prominent helps your conversion rates. So look at that now. Like you go from, well, I'm just adding clarity into okay, what, when are you adding it? How is the messaging, what is the.

Design, how emphasized it is?

And I think that's by the way, the beauty of experimentation, conversion optimization. Because you start with one concept, you drill down, you start looking at the page, look at the site and it's like, oh, wow, different results for different sites for different areas of websites.

That's a good example. And I think sometimes it depends on the way that you look at it. You say clarity sometimes might reduce conversion rates, but when it comes to agency, it increases conversion rates. But I might say that maybe you added like an agency and said this product like will run out maybe in the next two hours, three hours. That's kind of like clarity. Like you're giving me clarity in terms of like availability of the product. Will it be available tomorrow? Will it? I'm not sure, but I don't know.

No, no. But actually bring up a very interesting point. How do you classify a problem on the website? Let's take the example that you just gave. Hey, tell me like, you know, let's say this product is going to run out tomorrow or you're going to ship this product today. You can classify that as how long they're like. Because you don't have that. And think about the problem that we're trying to address, not the solution. Because lots of times people try to classify the solution. But to me, the solution is like a medicine. Correct. The website is aching, has some pain points. Correct. Think about as a human and it's like, oh, you have a little bit of a disease over here. It could be something that's cancer, it could be something like the flu. But I need to diagnose the problem that you have in order for me to give you a prescription for the medicine. So let's leave the medicine aside and let's classify the problem that we have now. Problem classification is really one of the more complex problems that you deal with in any area. But it's even more difficult when you are trying to classify how people feel about an issue and how they perceive it. Correct. When you classify a disease, you're taking the temperature, you're taking the blood pressure, you're doing some lab work, but you're dealing with a very objective measurements. Most of the time I'm doing 1, 2, 3, 4. Based on that, I say, okay, I think you have this disease and then I'm going to prescribe this medicine for you. When you're looking at the website, it's not very objective. Correct. Three CROs can look at the website, look at the same area and they can classify differently. Oh, you have a problem with urgency? Missing urgency. Oh, no, you have a problem with clarity over here. Oh, you have a problem with funds, the same issue. Oh, you're not very clear about the shipping dates. Oh, you don't have any incentives to push people to act right now or you'll increase the fears, uncertainty and doubts in the minds of the people when they're going to be getting the item. Different ways to look at the problem. But that's the reason we always like to go to the second level of like trying to say, okay, is it incentives, is it trust, is it fuss? Those are all three valid areas. And with each of them, probably clarity is second elements. Because the third element, the third level that we go to is the element level, it's about the shipping time. So, like the actual element that you see on the page, classification of the first and the second levels. Correct. Because those are general classifications are really difficult. And just to make it fun, I spent the last probably three, four months reading on how doctors, how medical, doctors and organizations classify diseases. Because I'm like, oh, they deal with the same thing. And it's just really worth researching because there's like six or seven different ways that they classify based on the organ, based on the symptoms, based on like kind of the group of organs. I'm like, okay, there's so many different ways. But nonetheless, I think the classification of an actual disease or illness is a lot easier than the classification of a problem on a website or a conversion problem or usability problem on a website.

Yeah, that's interesting. That's interesting. We both agree that clarity is important. But then is there Like a certain way that you can measure it. Are there like any certain metrics that you can say, okay, cool. This is our lack. We measure clarity since it's one of the most important sub elements of the conversion framework.

There's two different things that you want to measure around clarity. One, let's measure the problem that we have and sometimes by the way, on site polling. Correct. When you're asking visitors what stopped you from making a purchase today and you give people a free text form and you collect the data and then you do text analysis that helps you understand why are people leaving my webpage where I expect them to click on an add to cart or where I expect them to subscribe or where I expect them to fill out a lead form? Is it because of lack of clarity, we did not give them enough information or that we left them confused? That's one way to measure it now. So the measurements of the problem and it's like how 40% of our visitors are complaining about that. Our offer is not clear. How do I fix the other portion, which is of course how do I fix the solution that I'm proposing to fix the issues around clarity? And the best way to measure that is a B testing. Now I'm going to introduce a design that's very focused on solving the problem that I've identified. And then I'm going to take lots of measurements as I introduce my different designs that are trying to address that problem. And I'm going to measure the micro conversions and the, the macro conversions. Let's say I find a clarity problem on a product page for an E commerce website. Okay. Okay. So maybe our offer is not very clear and leaving people confused. We can fix that through 1, 2, 3 different designs. And now let's see by introducing those designs, how many people are actually clicking on the add to cart that's a micro conversion. How many people of those who are viewing design 1, 2 and 3, how many people are actually placing an order? That's a macro conversion. So that's AB testing, helps you measure the effectiveness of the solution that you introduced. It's very powerful. I would say as we look at different elements within that you can address on a website. One of the areas that we focus on is how successful are a B tests in addressing the specific problem. There's some elements in a conversion framework, for example sales complexity, that your success rates when you run an a B test is less than 25%. One out of four experiments will succeed. The other three are not going to be successful. There are some Elements that are just do really well for you and then that goes back to how you structure a project. Correct. If you're just starting out, you want to tackle those easier elements. Clarity is one of those easier elements that you can tackle. And you have a success rate anywhere between 50 to 60%, which is nice. I launched an experiment, at least five of them will be successful, will help me improve conversion rates. So thinking of conversion optimization, what the experiments you launch in a strategic way is very powerful in that way.

Just like to close, are there like maybe certain elements that you would look for when you're trying maybe to improve conversion rates or maybe when you try to improve clarity on your website? I'm asking this because maybe for someone who's listening for the first time and they want to try to improve clarity on their website, let's just say maybe it's an E commerce or a SaaS website, which are certain elements that they can go and look at and say, okay, cool, one, two, three. I've sorted.

I think there's some elements around clarity. So for example, and think about the user journey around your website. Think about it from the user's perspective. That's what's really important. When they land on your website, is it clear to them where they're at? Correct. Are you orienting them correctly? That's the very first thing. Is it clear to them why they, they should trust you as a brand? That is very important. Correct. On a landing page, as they navigate, is it clear to them what is the next action as they get to the product pages? Clear to them the offer that you have, why they should select the unique selling values for that offer? All of these things you should consider is okay, yes, I am in the right place. Okay, I am going to give you a chance. Yes, I can find the right product for me. Yes, this is the right product. Yes, this is the right price. Yes, I have all the information I need to go ahead and place an order. Oh, yes, I'm going to go through the checkout process. So you want to think and ask. And it's not only about clarity, by the way. With each one of those steps, we're asking about clarity, we're asking about incentives, we're asking about possible fuds, fears, uncertainties and doubts that people have. We're asking about social signals that we're sending, trust signals that we are sending. We're talking about things, engagement. All of these elements should be analyzed in a methodical way on a page. So for us then, you've been part of the conversation we started many years ago with about 150 elements that we evaluate on a page where we say, okay, evaluate those 150 elements. Now, I think as we go through this exercise of rehashing all what we call the panorama, that 360 degree view of a website and a user's journey, I think it's going to go up to 400 different things that we evaluate on a page, on a single page. Now think about the user journey in an E commerce website. You're talking about six or seven pages. Correct Homepage or landing page, PLP, category page, pdp, cart checkout. And then you have supporting pages, search results pages and whatnot. Imagine evaluating all of those from 400 different angles. Very powerful. Now I don't say that everybody needs to do that because you have to have the traffic and you have to have a large data set to be able to do that. But if you do have that, it is extremely powerful to come up with really great ideas to improve conversion rates and improve user experience.

Yeah, those are the questions that I had for you today about clarity.

I was just like thinking as you're.

Explaining that maybe next week we should talk about Value Proposition, because I feel like we have spoken about them before, but I feel like there's a lot that you can also like, share with listeners.

Love that. Okay, so next week, next episode, value Proposition. And until next time, everyone happy. Testing. Thank you, Simba.

Sure. Bye.