Conversion funnels are a bit like a game of snakes and ladders. You can get so far along the journey and then, if you land in the wrong place, you can drop all the way out and have to start again, or more likely give up altogether. With that in mind let’s consider the 5 ways to maximize conversion on your digital platform and, because we all love an acronym, let’s use one that sounds like a snake. So here it is, my 5S (or Sssss) model for improving your conversion rate optimisation (CRO).

Simplicity

Simple is best. This has always been the way in marketing. If you can’t express what you’re trying to say or get someone to do in just a few words then you are failing. You need to use straight forward language. Drop the technical speak, internal language and acronyms. Always imagine you are in a social setting with a friend and asking them that question / would you phrase it that way? For example would you sit in a bar with a friend and say “Within which town do you currently abide?”? I suspect not.

Key the steps of the journey simple. Don’t over complicate buttons or try to be clever with fields. Use standard UX techniques and functionality rather than trying to invent your own. This makes it much more familiar for users and drastically increased completion rates. Don’t ask questions you don’t need to and don’t have more pages than you need.

Speed

Make it fast. Everyone is time poor now (How did that happen?). We don’t want to waste the little time we have on forms. Make them download fast, look for time savers everywhere.

Can you automatically move the user through the fields to save them manually doing it? Can you pre-fill known or likely fields such as country or name?

This is a major drop off factor so do not take it lightly.

Signposting

One that is often the weakest so if you remember one thing from this blog remember this. Signposting on most forms is bad. Have a look at your funnels and journeys now and consider these questions:

1. Is it obvious what I should do as the next action

2. If not how do I find out?

3. If I’ve made a mistake can I easily find it?

4. If I can find it, is it obvious what the problem is?

5. If I need to go back and fix something is it easy to find how to do that?

6. Is the button that drives you forward or to completion the most prominent thing?

7. Does a user know where they are in the journey and have a fair reflection of how far is left to go?

Every one of those factors causes drop off of not addressed so take a look at them.

Semantics

As we mentioned above, you need to ensure that everything makes sense to the user, not to you. Testing your journeys can help with this of course but also you need to think about the meaning of what you’re saying.

The trick here is to forget about yourself, your goals, your company, your industry. You’re effectively becoming a Hollywood / Broadway actor for a moment. Become that user and imagine everything that could be wrong. What might you not understand when expressed like that.

Semantics is really about subtle shades of meaning. What’s the difference between location and geography? Which will users understand in the context of what you’re asking? Should it be Name, First Name, Full Name? Which is clearest?

This attention to detail is critical to improving completion rates.

Support

If your user struggles despite all the good work you’ve done – and yes it will still happen – is it clear how they can get support and is that support working? Live chat, forums, phone numbers. Are they there and contextually relevant? Do staff answer quickly on live chat? Do your experts have the expertise and can they screen share to help?