How to do conversion research for your startup.

In my last article detailing what I learn in my currently ongoing mini-degree program with the CXL Institute. I discussed how to optimize the conversion process for a startup and I also mentioned that the major step in optimizing a conversion process is research.

Research that helps you figure out what the problem you are trying to optimize is, how it affects your users, and possible solutions that you can test to solve the problems you discover, thus optimizing conversion.

Today, I’ll be delving further into conversion research and sharing the research framework you can use when trying to optimize conversion.

How to do conversion research for a startup that has no users:

Simple answer, you can’t. What you need to do if your startup is at that stage is figure out customer development. You should forget about Conversion Rate Optimization at this stage because there is basically no data to analyze and no customers to survey. There is nothing to optimize.

What you need to be focused on is what to build and for whom. A good number of businesses fail because they build something that no one wants. Customer development is what helps you minimize risk and improve the chances of your startup making it.

Once you have your customer profile for your startup, what you need to do is go and talk to the people or businesses that fit your customer profile. If you learn that the assumptions that your business is being built on are wrong, then you pivot.

So for a startup with no users, what you want to be doing is constantly talking to your users from the onset of building your product.

Like Steve Blank, author of the startup owner’s manual says: “There are no facts inside your building, so get outside.”

The Research XL model.

The Research XL model is a six-step framework created by Peep Laja, Founder at CXL institute. It teaches you how to use;

• Heuristic analysis to assess user experience.
• Digital analysis to identify problem areas.
• Technical analysis to identify functional problems.
• Qualitative research to draw insights.

Why we need a research model for conversion optimization:

So let’s say you visit your doctor complaining of a headache and his immediate response is saying “Alright, let’s schedule you for a brain surgery.” I am willing to bet your follow-up question would be along the lines of “How on earth do you know I need brain surgery?” like how did he arrive at that conclusion.

You can draw a parallel from that to the process of conversion optimization. It’s not enough to know that there is a problem, you need to figure out why it is a problem, how many users the problem affects, and to what degree it affects them.

It’s not enough to just have data, you need to pinpoint certain data points and leverage on the insights you get to optimize your conversion.

A research model is what helps you leverage the data you have effectively and we’ll be exploring the RESEARCH XL model.

The Six Steps of the Research XL model:

STEP 1: HEURISTIC ANALYSIS;

Heuristic analysis is an experience-based assessment of your website, basically trying to understand how users experience your website. The four focus points of heuristic analysis are the following:

• CLARITY: Is everything clear to your users, do they understand what actions they are supposed to perform at a certain stage.
• FRICTION: What’s causing doubt & hesitation for your users.
• ANXIETY: What’s making your users cringe.
• DISTRACTION: Figure out what’s distracting your users. Are there too many CTA’s on a page? etc

STEP 2: TECHNICAL ANALYSIS;

After doing a comprehensive heuristic analysis, you’ll want to ensure everything is running smoothly from a technical standpoint.

Even the most persuasive website can’t make money if it doesn’t work on a specific device or browser. If a buyer is trying to use a website and it’s not working on their phone, then they definitely won’t convert so you need to do an analysis to see if a specific browser or device is converting less than others. That’s an indicator of a quality assurance problem.

Another thing that needs to be looked into from a technical standpoint is SPEED ANALYSIS. Speed matters, if your website is taking >10 seconds to load a page, that’s too slow.

STEP 3: DIGITAL ANALYTICS;

Digital analytics tools like Google Analytics are very invaluable when you are trying to figure out where money is leaking from your website. Digital analytics helps you understand where the problem is exactly. With digital analytics, what you are aiming to understand is;

• Where the friction point is: At what point are users dropping off exactly, what type of users are dropping off etc.
• Correlation: What type of behavior correlates with more purchases or fewer purchases.

In order to figure out all of this, you need to ensure that everything a user can do on your website is being measured.

STEP 4: QUALITATIVE RESEARCH;

Qualitative research consists of Surveys & User Testing. With surveys, there are two types of surveys you want to do;

• Survey people on your website: You can do this through onsite polls, you can set up polls on key pages where you have identified an uptake in drop-off via digital analytics to garner real-time feedback from your users.
• Survey people who actually bought something.

STEP 5: USER TESTING;

Recruit people who actually represent your target audience and give them a set of specific and broad tasks to do. What you want to do here is track how they go about performing their tasks.

STEP 6: MOUSE TRACKING ANALYTICS;

In a nutshell, mouse tracking analytics is recording what people do with their mouse and trackpad on your website and quantifying that information via heatmaps or click maps. Mouse tracking can provide extremely valuable insights into viewing and information processing patterns.

What to do after research;

After you are done with applying your research model, you collect your observations and findings and when you evaluate them, you are sure to find a list of problems. Some of them are severe, some of them minor.

So what you want to do is rank these issues in order of priority. I’d recommend a five-star ranking scale.

Five stars: A critical usability or conversion issue that will be encountered by many users to the website and has a high impact. Implementing fixes or testing is likely to drive significant change in conversion or revenue.

Four stars: Critical issue that will be encountered by many visitors to the site.

Three stars: Major usability or conversion issue that may not be viewed by all users and has a lesser impact.

Two stars: Lesser usability issue that may not be viewed by all users.

One star: Rating for minor usability or conversion issue and although it’s low for potential revenue or conversion still worth fixing.