The mid point of the user journey is the Point of Action phase. This is where your audience is ready to act, but to do so we need to focus the users attention to the action we want them to take to increase the conversion rate as even when a user is ready to act, if it is confusing or difficult they will abandon and leave your website.
When looking at your website content, it is important that we are funneling users and especially once a user is ready to act we need to make it easy to get them to do so. For example, a visitor to your website may have visited your About Us page on your website to learn more about you and through your messaging you may have instilled enough trust that the user is ready to act. We want to make sure within that content you have given users a clear understanding of where they can go to convert. The best way to do this is with a call to action button that is noticeable and stands out as the item that draws your eye. It is common on a page to have multiple calls to action so the call to action that you want most should be styled differently than others. A text link is great when you want to drive someone to another interior page to gain more information (a user still in the previous consideration phase) but on that same page you will want to use a button or other image to represent the main action like driving a user to a Contact Us page.
Once you have gotten the user to the Contact Us page, your job isn’t done. We want to ensure we get that final macro conversion by filling out a form, clicking a phone number or perhaps clicking for directions depending on what is most important for your business. In these situations, you want to limit the noise and distractions on the page. This does not mean you want to avoid any text, it just means you want to give just enough information to convey the promise of the return the user will get from taking that action. Keep this type of messaging short, but clear. If you are using a form, make sure the input fields are easy to use so large and enough spacing to click through even on a phone, but also make sure to only ask for information you truly need at this initial engagement with the user. It is best to get enough information for you to be able to get the conversion and contact the individual versus asking for so much up front that the mere visual on form length prevents a user from contacting you.
Data is key to decision making so it is important to track the micro and macro conversions mentioned above. This can be done multiple ways, however many of you are probably using Google Analytics to track and monitor traffic coming into your website. If so, we would recommend setting up Google Tag Manager and within Tag Manager to setup phone and form tracking. This can be helpful to determine how effective your content is, but it can also be a helpful way to compare conversion data for different time periods over the lifespan of your website. These conversions also help further optimize your marketing when you being to use marketing methods that optimize based on conversion data information such as search engine marketing.
Once a user has converted, the marketing isn’t over. We need to continue to send the right messaging to keep a user engaged through the next step of their user journey whether it relates to a follow up call from your business or following through on delivering a product. Learn more in our next blog post on the fulfillment phase.
