How to spring the trap: Test pop-ups after a few decisions have been made by the visitor, and start small by implementing on page exit or on cart abandonment pop-up plays. Getting that email is key, but not at the expense of losing a visitor.
2. The personalization trap: There's no shortage of ink spilled on personalization in today's omnichannel, mobile-enabled world. And of course, there are a few key ones almost everyone agrees on. Nobody's going to argue that you don't need responsive web design, a mobile version or both for different devices, or that you don't need to serve locally relevant content when you serve multiple territories.
However, that's the baseline. You can take personalization a lot further than this. For example, you can serve different content for people with different roles — assuming you have the data from a form fill — or, with data, move around page and navigation elements based on past behavior. Here's the rub: while most companies salivate over this functionality, it rarely leads to good outcomes.
Personalization can work for simple tasks that don't change over time, but almost everything else isn't mature enough to use right now.
How to spring the trap: Only add personalization features when you have a significant volume of data, and when users don't need to do any extra work — e.g., Amazon.com's book recommendations.
3. The promo code trap: It's not just complex stuff like personalization that can get in the way of a conversion; sometimes, it's the little things like promo codes that get in the way. Usually, promo codes work out great — that is, unless you put them in front of a visitor who, just 10 seconds ago, was ready to buy from you.
What happens when you do that is that the visitor fees like he or she is missing out on a deal, and someone you previously had a conversion lock on will flee, looking for that promo code, likely never to return.
- Companies:
- Amazon.com
Tim Ash is the author of the bestselling book Landing Page Optimization, and CEO of SiteTuners. A computer scientist and cognitive scientist by education (his PhD studies were in Neural Networks and Artificial Intelligence), Tim has developed an expertise in user-centered design, persuasion and understanding online behavior, and landing page testing. In the mid-1990s he became one of the early pioneers in the discipline of website conversion rate optimization. Over the past 15 years, Tim has helped a number of major US and international brands to develop successful web-based initiatives. Companies like Google, Expedia, Kodak, eHarmony, Facebook, American Express, Canon, Nestle, Symantec, Intuit, AutoDesk and many others have benefitted from Tim's deep understanding and innovative perspective.
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