Design Tips to Convert More Customers | Design Review

It's one thing to get somebody to your website; it's another to actually get them to sign up or convert. So today we're going to look specifically at how well your sites convert clicks to customers. Welcome to another episode of Design Review. Today we are lucky to be joined by my colleague Pete Kumin. Thank you for joining, Pete. Pete previously was the co-founder of Optimizely. So Pete, why don't you tell us a little bit about Optimizely?

Optimizely builds experimentation software, among other things, and helps thousands of companies run A/B tests. For example, you can use Optimizely to run an A/B test where you compare several different versions of your homepage and then measure objectively which one of these gets more people to convert into customers. I saw firsthand how small changes can sometimes have a big impact on how your users behave. Awesome, super relevant!

So Pete, one of the things that I think we're going to be looking at for a lot of these websites today is their conversion funnel or conversion flow. Maybe you can explain to everybody what do we mean when we say conversion funnel or conversion flow?

Yeah, sure. So a conversion funnel is just a set of steps that a user has to take, starting with, in most cases, landing on your website, right? Then maybe clicking "learn more" and entering their email address, and maybe entering a credit card until they finally convert. That conversion isn't always a purchase; it could just be entering an email, but it's essentially whatever this company wants their users to do once they land on the website. So from hitting the website to the goal that you have, the primary action you want people to take.

All right, well, let's see how well these websites do that. Yeah. All right, first up we have Rivet. So let's take a look here. Rivet: multiplayer made simple. Open source solution to deploy, scale, and operate your multiplayer game. I'm being told to click the computer but also to click the sign-up button, so I'm a little confused about what I'm supposed to do. But let's spend a bit more time trying to figure out what this is.

Well, let's see here. There's a lot of different calls to action here, and the call to action is the button or the main action that you are encouraging people to take on your website. So you're right, we've got "click to start," we've got a sign-up, we've got tutorials and templates, we've got "open Rivet" up here in the top corner, we've got a search bar, although that's secondary... we can star the Rebo star the re... Yeah, so there's a lot of things competing for my attention here, and I think one of the things that I've found is the more things that you have competing for somebody's attention, the less likely it is that they're going to take any of those actions. It's almost like a paradox of choice. Basically, I just think this isn't clear, and the first thing I would probably experiment with is just reducing down to a single call to action and seeing what impact that had. Do they want me to sign up? Do they want me to play with what looks like maybe a demo? I'm not sure.

Yeah. Oh, and they're asking you to open a second tab to play with... I'm very curious about this. Um, okay, so we got "click to start." It's interesting. One says "sign up," one says "open," so "open" makes me think that I can just open it and start using it right now. "Sign up" makes me think I need to sign up before I can then actually start using it. I'm curious. Let's follow their click to start here and see what happens.

Okay, so maybe this is a video... tanks. Press enter to join. Oh, there you go! Okay, ah, so the ASD W... So what I assume is happening here is this is showing their product that's actually making this a multiplayer mode, although I don't see another player here, so I assume that's what they're trying to show. But it's not clear to me, and I can't actually figure out how to play the game. So maybe some instructions would be... um, I'm curious what happens if you do "open Rivet."

So this opens a new tab. Learned guest 1876, looks like you're logged in as a GU. Okay, so now it's asking me to register. I'm just not sure what we're looking at. Is this Rivet? Yeah, I'm not sure. It says it gives you access to joining groups, editing your profile, adding friends, and much more. Okay, register... it's asking for my email. Now what happens if we go back and we do sign up? Will this take me to the same page?

Oh, so this is a beta sign-up. This is different, and I assume this is a Typeform. Yeah, powered by Typeform. Okay, so it looks like there's some beta they're collecting email addresses on. There's something that I can register to, but I'm not sure exactly. Joining groups, editing your profile, and adding friends... so is this to like be a participant in a game? It's not clear to me.

Serving millions of players at scale... okay, so it's being used by somebody, so I assume this is targeted at developers... and they've got docs up here. Yeah, but I'm still not clear. Do you want me to play tanks? Do you want me to open Rivet, which asks me to sign up to join a community, I guess? Or do you want me to sign up, which takes me to a beta? Seems like these should all just be one thing, right?

I know! What advice do you have for them to improve this here? Well, when I look at pages like this, I kind of ask two questions. One, does this convince me that I want to sign up? And then two, does the sign-up process talk me out of it? Right now, I'm still having a hard time kind of figuring out what this is and who it's for. As far as the sign-up process goes, I'm still not clear even after we've played around with this what this company wants me to do here. So I think that making it clearer, basically what this thing is and who it's for, and then giving me a clear call to action as a next step if I'm interested, I think could have an impact here.

Yep, awesome! Thank you, Rivet, for letting us check out your site. Thank you! And next up, we have Decoherence. Let's take a look.

Okay, create what can't be filmed. H... right, pretty abstract. It looks like some kind of AI art. Maybe that looks like it. Maybe AI-generated videos since they can't be filmed, but I'm definitely guessing here. Yep, okay, here we go: AI video generator, bring any idea to life. So this is clearer to me than what is currently above the fold at the top, so maybe they want to move this up.

Okay, and so we got a video here. The call to action here is to start a free trial, no credit card required. All right, that's a plus. That helps. Um, let's take a quick look through here. All right, let's check out the video... [Music] sure. All right, so it looks like it's animating individual images, right, to create a video scene with panning camera. Um, so I get a sense of it. It looks like a real thing. Now, let's see use cases. So, oh yeah, music videos. There we go. Um, footage, stock footage, educational content. Okay, so it's giving me some ideas. Now, I've got another "try now."

Okay, text is all you need. All right, I like the big style here. It's very visual, which I think is important for a product like this, because people ultimately want to see how it works. And so here we are, and they're showing some of how you create these animations, so that's cool. I like that they start basically with the outputs, which seem actually really interesting and good and maybe convince me that I want to go through the trouble of understanding how the whole flow works.

Yep, it looks like another thing that they do really well before we even click the button is they repeat the call to action throughout the page. So if you're at the top, you're like, "Oh yeah, this sounds cool. Start free trial." I click it right there. If I start scrolling down, I learn a little bit more, I'm like, "Okay, this is interesting," oh, and now there's a "try now" right there that I can click once I’m convinced. If I'm not convinced, I keep scrolling, I get further down to the bottom, and it's "start free trial" again. So they keep repeating the same call to action over and over, which is likely going to increase the conversion rate.

So let's see what happens when we click on it. Welcome, log into Decoherence. Okay, so it's just a Google login, and we're in. Okay, all right, that's pretty easy. Yeah, I think so. Sometimes we've seen that by offering lots of different sign-in options, it actually can reduce the friction to getting people to sign up. If I don't have to create another new username, new password I have to remember, store somewhere, I can just connect with an existing login, whether it's Facebook or Google or whatever else makes sense for your product, that can increase conversion rates a lot.

And I like how everywhere on the homepage just kind of guided us into this exact same point. Yeah, seems like we've gotten here. Should we try to create a new project? That's sure, sort of the first thing it looks like that we'd have to do here. Yeah, choose CH your ASP. Sure, one-to-one. So one thing that's jumping out at me here is that once we landed on the kind of projects page and now that we're in the product itself, there's nothing really guiding us around.

I might not be the best person to look at a UI like this because I'm not a film editor and I don't have experience with tools like this, but I'm definitely on my own and I have to figure out a lot. One thing that I've seen work well is adding kind of gentle guides as I go through my first product experience, showing me around, maybe guiding me through the process of creating my first film or my first project.

Yep, it looks like they're maybe trying to do that a little bit here where this... oh, you're right, that's not my video. Yeah, says "welcome to..." right? I had the same reaction when I saw this, which is "Is this the starter video here?" Um, that it’s getting me to, and it's—no, it seems to be this is the person who's going to show me around, but that is not obvious.

And they've got a red box here, which I assume is drawing my attention, but it almost makes it seem like there's an error. Oh, that's interesting! And there is actually an error down here—scene does not have a description—but like we just got here. So, um, seems like that's a default state, and I notice I've got some kind of coins up here, which looks like some kind of credits or mon. Okay, this is, I guess, the free trial.

Yeah, and there's the pricing. Yeah, so what I like about this is it's reducing the friction to actually get you in and experience the product. Um, I think whenever we see that, usually one of the best ways to improve the conversion rate is to actually reduce the number of steps that it takes to get in the door. Every product has an "aha moment" where when the users see it, they go, "Oh wow, this is amazing! This is the thing that I've been looking for! I have to use this."

The problem is a lot of people implement too many steps, too many clicks, too many things that get in the way and create more friction to getting there. So what I usually recommend is if you actually go through and map out your conversion funnel, every single step that a user needs to take from when they first land on your website until they get to that "aha moment" where they experience the value, and figure out which ones you can actually cut, which ones you're seeing drop off, if you're measuring the conversion rate from one step to the next, and you can usually figure out some really impressive low-hanging fruit that you can do to improve the conversion rate all throughout your funnel.

And that's a great point! And you can also use those kind of analytics to figure out how far somebody needs to get before they're likely to sign up. Yep, right! And that's a great clue for when that "aha moment" actually happens for a lot of your users. Yeah, I've seen this working with founders in the past too where we get on a whiteboard and we map out the conversion funnel and all the steps, and the "aha moment" is at like step seven, and they realize they don't actually need steps two, four, five, and they cut them out, and all of a sudden the "aha moment" becomes like step two.

Yes! And things improve a lot from there. One other thing that I want to show really quickly here that I thought was really good, if we go back to, um, this is they're saying "no credit card required," and I think a lot of times it can be scary for users to say like, "Start a free trial," and you go in the back of your head like, "Uh, how long are you going to try to upsell me or charge my credit card, or I don't know if I can trust this?"

And so if there's some objection that people have, then you can address that right out of the gate, right there on the page, and just say, "Oh no credit card required," so that makes it almost a no-brainer, really low risk to click that button. Yep! And I think just to add on to that, while I'm still in this place where I'm trying to figure out what this is and do I actually want to go through the trouble of learning more and going into the product, one question I can imagine people asking is, "Who else is using this thing?"

And I didn't see—I don't think I kind of saw any of those. They had some use cases, but it wasn't—they made it up—or if somebody else had used their product for it. And so if there are great creatives that are using this product already, this is a great place to tell me about that, right? And doesn't—you know, you don't have to do that—if there aren't, there aren't, right? Every startup starts somewhere. But, uh, that's definitely an opportunity.

Super cool! Thank you, Decoherence. This was great! All right, next up we have Solve Intelligence. Let's see. Write patents with AI. Get high-quality patents in less time. Request a full demo. Sounds like a... sounds like a commitment!

Yeah, I might have actually missed that. It's very small relative to everything else. Yeah, it's got the same color background, like I was looking at this and then I was down at the moving demo. Um, I guess there's not much else on the page here, so...

No, the contact us button is a lot more visible and that's way off to the side, so that says something. Yeah! But again, we have two different things: contact us or request a full demo. It looks like just looking at the URL hovering, they go to the same place, which is the contact form.

Yep, so, okay. Um, so back here, I get what this is from this one sentence description and then the subheadline here. This shows me the product is real, but I can't quite tell what's happening here. I just put in a headline and it just writes out an entire patent for me, I guess? So pretty smart, but if I had missed the first ten seconds of that because I was reading the headline, I think I'd be very confused if I just kind of jumped into the video at this point, I think.

Yeah, I agree. And to be honest, my reaction to this is a bit of skepticism. Is all you need a headline to write a full patent? Yeah, oh I see. So it looks like they're dropping in some kind of PDF. I don't know—this makes me ask more questions than it answers.

Yeah, okay. Another thing I'm not quite sure is, is who is this for? Is this for lawyers who want to spend less time writing patents? Is it for people who don't want to have to hire a lawyer and they want to write their own thing? Maybe it doesn't matter? I don't know.

Yeah, yeah, it's not clear. Um, I think one of the things, you know, if you're going to show a screenshot or you're going to show a video of an actual product, a lot of times it's hard for users to orient themselves around a scaled-down version of a screenshot showing all these, like, features and small text and everything. It's hard to figure out what's going on.

And so usually what you want to do—and it looks like they're doing it a little bit here—is zoom in on the specific thing that you're trying to show and sometimes you can even, um, almost blur out the rest of it to make it really clear where the user should focus in. That can help people understand much faster.

Yep, text overlays as well and slowing down in these key points where it's very important that I understand maybe, I don't know, what is being dragged into there and what it's doing. There's definitely an opportunity to help bring us along better here.

Yep, and then you made a great point earlier, which is social proof. More evidence, trust here is actually really important because this is about writing patents with AI and that's expensive to file. And if I write a patent with them and I spend all this money to do it and it gets rejected or something because the AI wasn't good enough or didn't write it in the right way, I'm going to be upset.

And so something that convinces me that I can trust this, either because other people use it or because, you know, 100 patents have been approved that were written by this, you know, maybe it's too soon or the product's too early to tell, but something like that would give me more confidence using this, I think. I think that's a great point! If the AI gets it wrong, the downside is potentially enormous for something like this.

Yeah, and then if we go back to the request to demo, I think this is up here. They're starting to address your question around who is this for. Okay, for everybody! Yeah, so whether you're a patent attorney, an inventor, or just interested in what we're building.

Um, but putting that on the homepage I think would be helpful too. Many people won't make it to this step. There's going to be a lot of drop-off there, but is it usable? You know, all they have is contact us and request a full demo.

Um, and so it just takes me to this contact page where I have to fill out all this information. Um, and so if there was some other way for them to maybe show me, um, like get me right into a demo live, um, maybe there's work they have to do to open that up, I'm not sure.

But that would make it easier if I could just jump right in, start playing with it, and figure out if I could trust it or not. Yep, I agree. Yeah, this is one where it seems like there's a lot of work they can do at the top of the funnel to increase the chances that someone's going to be willing to go through and fill out this form and convert.

Yep, awesome! Thank you, Solve Intelligence. Okay, next up we have InEvent. Let's check it out. So let's see... go beyond in-person events, go be live live events with the ultimate all-in-one event management software for all events.

Okay, all right, this one I like. The call to action because they have "enter your work email" and "book a meeting" right there—very clear. We've definitely tested this in the past at my former company and if you have a button that says like "book a meeting," and then clicking that pops up a form to collect an email address, if you actually just embed the form directly in the page, it can actually significantly increase conversion rates. Believe it. So I think this was smart.

Yep, and they've got the—some social proof right there. They've created 1.1 million events, presumably with this software. I get the sense that this team knows what they're doing. Yeah, but "run live meetings in in-real-life experiences"? I'm not parsing that. "Run live meetings in real life experiences, TV-like broadcasts or virtual events with the award-winning in-event platforms."

Yeah, that's a bit of a mouthful. Yeah, I think I'm still a little confused on what this product does. Yes! And I guess, okay, so like live broadcasting, virtual workplace, online classes, fundraising... I'm still kind of confused on if this is software to manage in-person events or if this is like an online community or Zoom-like thing to be able to broadcast events online.

Yeah, and the wording is very ambiguous about that. "Go beyond live events," does that mean you just make your live events great, or you're not doing live events at all and managing a virtual event?

Yeah, I am housing H trusted by over 900 companies? Okay, okay, here we go. "Build event websites and landing pages," and they have an email... build—oh go back, I'm not ready to move yet. "Custom email builder and automation".

Okay, provides you with professional studio—okay, so it seems like it's kind of all those things. Oh, this is out of 10, so that's long. Just a small tweak here is that you deliberately moved back and then they continued skipping you forward.

Yeah, yeah, maybe a simple thing is if my mouse is hovering here, don't auto-move. It's funny how people do that—like you'll use your mouse to kind of follow along with where you are, and so it can be a good indicator for where people are actually paying attention.

Yeah, I think what I'm getting from this is that I have to read through 10 different paragraphs and 10 different screens to figure out what this product does, which this is a lot.

Yeah, this is too much. Um, and I think one of the things that we found in the past is that when you bury things behind tabs or a slider or something like that, nine times out of ten, it's not going to be seen. Like, how many people are going to make it to 10 out of 10 here and sit here like we did for 30 seconds or a minute? Most people will not do that!

Yep! Um, so if you have important stuff as nine out of 10 or 10 out of 10, most people are just never going to see it. Yes! So I would recommend the things that are most important, distill down to the most important features, and then put them all just directly down the page. I think people will scroll.

Agreed! Okay, now we're at least getting into some specifics here where, you know, something like this, I think would have been helpful up at the top. Yes! Okay, and then here's who it's for. Did we just get past some actual case studies? Is that what that—okay, these are—these are quotes from... okay, that's helpful.

Yeah, so clearly one of the things they have going for them is they've got a lot of people that are using this, and they're doing a good job of showing that off. Like, this feels like a real thing that a lot of people are using.

Um, let's take a look at some of the call to actions. So this one, good... reinforced up here with a button: "Book a meeting." Good, same text, same color, makes it pretty clear. Scroll down, it sticks, that's great. So no matter where you are, you can always click on that button to find the call to action.

I really like how clear this team has made it that they have a lot of people using this software. It's probably the single most important thing on this homepage, and, uh, like you mentioned, there's a clear call to action and they've gotten rid of what looks like almost all the friction in taking it.

So that seems really positive. Um, there's definitely some fit and finish things here with just links that might be a little broken or maybe confusing. Once we scroll down, things got a little more confusing and I would love to just see this same kind of clarity of purpose that we see right here reflected through this entire landing page.

I think being more specific about what they do right up front, it seems like they do a lot and they've probably been around for a while, you know, building out a a really full-featured product, and they want to show that off.

Um, which is, you know, virtual events, webinars, all these different things. Um, but I think being even more specific will make it more obvious if this is something that I could use. Yes, yeah! For example, instead of "Go beyond live events," just "Event management software for live events, webinars," like even that would have made it much clearer to us.

Yep, awesome! Nice work, InEvent. All right, that does it for this episode. Pete, thank you for joining us! It was awesome.

Yeah, it was great to have you. You really appreciate it, and thank you to all the founders for submitting your websites. And, uh, definitely let us know down in the comments if there are any tips or reviews that you found especially helpful; it will definitely help shape future episodes.

Thanks for watching, and we will see you on the next design review.