Use conversion funnels to ID on-page opportunities  

Everyone knows what a conversion is, right? Just checking.

A conversion funnel is simply a series of steps that you want a user to complete.

One of the most common ways people use funnels is to visualize a signup process or multi-step form that users have to fill out, and see where people are dropping off in a process.

I love that use of conversion funnels and use it every day. But there is also another way to use a funnel that I’d like to talk about a little today. Let’s look at a very simple example of a generic test funnel to start. Just to get an idea.

Now this is from Concurra’s goal tracking, but honestly, this advice will work with any analytics platform.

Define the steps of your funnel as your desired user path.

I want users to go from my homepage to my product page, then I want them to visit the pricing page, before finally going to the order form. That’s a process and depending on how you set up the tracking, the user won’t have to do these things in a linear way for it to track. They can visit some other pages in-between as long as their general direction is correct.

The wonder of using funnels this way is it can help you identify areas to conduct experiments.

If you see a large percentage of visitors going the wrong way from the product page, you may want to spend some time looking at the product page to see if you can “funnel” your traffic in the other direction.

A little link sculpting can go a long way. So can a little reduction in distraction. Here is an actual example from an experiment we are running today on Concurra.com.

We want visitors to go from our homepage, to our features/benefits section, then to our pricing page, and finally onto the signup process. But we noticed a lot of people pause on the pricing page.

Based on that and our heatmaps and session replays we’ve watched, we think that by removing the extra text at the top, more people might see the packages sooner, and move onto the signup process.

Will it work? Not sure. Ask me in a few weeks. But it’s an idea, and we’re testing it, and that’s exactly what we (and you) should be doing. Here’s what the page looks like for 20% of the visitors who visit it.

Now we wait. I’ll post an update on this experiment in a few weeks. For now, think about what you can test on your own site.