Beware of Conversion Cannibalism

Does your web design suf­fer from con­ver­sion cannibalism?

Organisations add CTAs fre­quently, hop­ing to increase con­ver­sions. They hope that 1+1=3, but in real­ity, it’s closer to 1+1=0.

Adding more CTAs (call-to-actions) to a single browser view will allow these but­tons and forms to can­ni­bal­ise each oth­er­’s con­ver­sion rates.

I will demon­strate why less is more in web design.

Here we go:

Conversion Cannibalism

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Conversion Cannibalism

Imagine a web page with 1,000 vis­it­ors per day. The page has only one but­ton for the users to click. On aver­age, the site’s con­ver­sion rate is 2%, equal to 20 clicks on your button.

So, what if you add anoth­er but­ton? The page’s con­ver­sion rate does­n’t increase in most use cases — it falls. Instead of get­ting 20 clicks on one but­ton, you might get 10 clicks on two.

Two call-to-actions in the same browser view will typ­ic­ally can­ni­bal­ise each other.

The Paradox of Choice

An easy way to think of web­site CTAs (call-to-actions) is to think of but­tons and forms. 

Buttons and forms are sub­ject to the para­dox of choice. 

In 1995, Professor Shena Iyengar from Columbia University launched a mar­ket stall with dif­fer­ent jam fla­vours. When she offered twenty-four options, more people came to the booth. When she only offered six choices, more people con­ver­ted into pay­ing customers.

Our decision-mak­ing pro­cess is com­plex, but research­ers have offered many pos­sible explan­a­tions, such as decision fatigue, ana­lys­is para­lys­is, and buy­er­’s remorse. ¹Piasecki, M., & Hanna, S. (2011). A Redefinition of the Paradox of Choice. , 347 – 366. https://​doi​.org/​1​0​.​1​0​0​7​/​978 – 94-007‑0510-4_19

Horizontal vs Vertical CTAs

On the web today, we see a trend where there is white space to both the left and right of but­tons and forms. We also see a trend where more of the same CTAs are stacked from top to bottom.

• The few who reach your content’s call to action (con­tent diver = click­ing ver­tic­ally) are more valu­able than those who only scan its first head­line (con­tent surfer = click­ing horizontally).

There is a form of “align­ment can­ni­bal­ism” tak­ing place when it comes to but­tons and forms. These align­ment issues should be con­sidered when design­ing a web page:

• Buttons and forms with dif­fer­ent CTAs com­pete on a web page. One single CTA often con­verts more than sev­er­al CTAs.
• Button and form ele­ments com­pete when stacked hori­zont­ally on a web page. Presenting only one but­ton or form per hori­zont­al block would be best.
• Buttons and forms with dif­fer­ent CTAs com­pete with each oth­er if stacked ver­tic­ally. But not as much as if you stacked them horizontally.
• If but­tons and forms are stacked ver­tic­ally and con­tain the same CTA, the total con­ver­sion rate for that web page is likely to go up!

Learn more: Beware of Conversion Cannibalism

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The Classic Front Page Debate

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The Classic Home Page Debate

“We must put all these items on our home page because they’re all import­ant to us.”

I often get involved in heated debates on what to include on the home page. If I weigh into the debate that they should remove cer­tain ele­ments, the chances are that someone will get offen­ded. Like, “How dare you remove my work from our home page?”

Since this situ­ation is tricky, here’s a men­tal mod­el to help you clean up your home page approach:

The key to an effi­cient home page design is to stop think­ing about what’s “import­ant” and “not important”.

Take a look at Google’s de facto home page:

Now, Google has many essen­tial products: 

• Google Gmail
• Google Drive
• Google Maps
• Google Chrome
• Google Earth
• Google Trends
• Google Ads
• Google Adsense
• Google Analytics
• Google Scholar

… to name a few. However, the only ser­vice on the home page apart from Google Search is Gmail (top right corner), which isn’t prom­in­ent on the home page.

All these Google products are reas­on­ably sig­ni­fic­ant, right? However, they still don’t replace Google’s de facto home page — the Google Search page.

If Google can keep its home page clean, why can­’t you? Is everything in your busi­ness more import­ant to your vis­it­ors than, let’s say, Google Drive?

Small Ask vs Big Ask

What single CTA (call-to-action) should you focus your home page on? Instead of basing your design decision on “bot­tom line import­ance,” focus­ing on a small rather than a big ask often makes sense.

Small ask = a value pro­pos­i­tion that requires little effort and resources for a pro­spect to accept. It works best when the ask offers a swift, hassle-free solu­tion for an urgent pain point.

Big ask = a value pro­pos­i­tion that requires high engage­ment and a sub­stan­tial trans­ac­tion by the pro­spect. It works best when mutu­al under­stand­ing and trust are thor­oughly established.

By pri­or­it­ising a small ask on the home page design, you increase the like­li­hood of build­ing a “yes lad­der” by ask­ing pos­ing slightly big­ger asks in sequence over time.

Learn more: The Classic Home Page Debate

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Priority: The Small Ask

The choice of what to put on the front page isn’t related to what’s neces­sary or not neces­sary. Instead, it should be regarded only as a point of entry into your brand’s universe.

Instead of cram­ming everything into one front page, your busi­ness could util­ise mul­tiple high-con­vert­ing land­ing pages, a strategy I call ice­berg pub­lish­ing, where many hid­den dir­ect land­ing pages are beneath the site’s surface.

By mak­ing a small ask (your email address in exchange for some­thing valu­able to you) instead of a big ask (invest in hir­ing me as an advisor), I can cap­ture and nur­ture trust­ing rela­tion­ships over time, slowly mov­ing pro­spects from 9% to 1%. 

Looking back at the Google example, one could say they use mul­tiple front pages. If we look at Google Drive’s “front page,” we can see the same strategy: just one mes­sage and one call-to-action above the fold. It works because it’s crys­tal clear:

More and more con­ver­sion experts argue that most pages with­in a web­site’s struc­ture should be land­ing pages. Landing pages are access­ible for search engines to drive rel­ev­ant traffic since they’re stripped of unne­ces­sary content.

Types of Landing Pages

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Types of Landing Pages

Landing page (LP) = a single-pur­pose web page stripped of stand­ard menus and side­bars with a single CTA (call-to-action) chosen to match the visitor’s demon­strated intent.

Here are a few examples of land­ing page types:

• Lead cap­ture pages. These are designed to gath­er con­tact inform­a­tion from vis­it­ors, usu­ally in exchange for some­thing valu­able like an ebook, a webin­ar, or a free tri­al. They typ­ic­ally include a form and a brief descrip­tion of what the vis­it­or will get in return for their information.
• Click-through pages. These pages are used primar­ily in e‑commerce and SaaS (Software as a Service) indus­tries. They provide detailed inform­a­tion about a product or offer and lead vis­it­ors to a shop­ping cart or checkout.
• Sales pages. Focused on dir­ectly selling a product or ser­vice. They often include detailed descrip­tions, bene­fits, testi­mo­ni­als, and a strong call to action (CTA) to make a purchase.
• Squeeze pages. A type of lead cap­ture page, squeeze pages are designed to extract inform­a­tion from vis­it­ors, usu­ally through a form. They often have min­im­al con­tent except for a pitch and a form.
• Registration pages. These pages provide inform­a­tion about the event and include a regis­tra­tion form. They are designed to sign up vis­it­ors for an event or a webinar.
• Thank you pages. After a vis­it­or takes action (like sign­ing up or mak­ing a pur­chase), these pages thank them and can also guide them towards the next steps, like down­load­ing a resource or check­ing related products.
• Launch pages. These pages are used for new products or ser­vices and aim to build excite­ment and anti­cip­a­tion. They might include a count­down timer, teas­er inform­a­tion, and an option to sign up for updates.
• Unsubscribe pages. Used when someone unsub­scribes from a ser­vice or email list. They often include options to recon­sider the decision or provide feedback.
• Coming soon pages. Like launch pages, they are used before a web­site or product launch to build anti­cip­a­tion and gath­er early interest or email sign-ups.
• 404 error pages. While not a typ­ic­al land­ing page, a well-designed 404 page can turn an error into an oppor­tun­ity, guid­ing lost vis­it­ors back to the main site or to spe­cif­ic actions.

The above examples are to name a few examples of land­ing pages. Only your ima­gin­a­tion will determ­ine what types of effi­cient land­ing pages you can develop!

Each land­ing page type serves a spe­cif­ic pur­pose in the cus­tom­er jour­ney, focus­ing on a single object­ive: increas­ing conversions.

Read also: Types of Landing Pages

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PR Resource: The Engagement Pyramid

The Engagement Pyramid

The 1% rule of online engage­ment was mainly an urb­an legend on the inter­net. However, a peer-reviewed paper from 2014 con­firmed the 1% rule of thumb. ²Trevor van Mierlo. (2014). The 1% Rule in Four Digital Health Social Networks: An Observational Study. Journal of Medical Internet Research, 16(2), e33 – e33. … Continue read­ing

Active pub­lics dis­trib­ute them­selves in a way proven sci­en­tific­ally by soci­olo­gists — long before the inter­net and social media emerged. 

The engage­ment pyr­am­id divides pub­lics into three dis­tinct groups:

When study­ing inter­net for­ums spe­cific­ally, it’s not uncom­mon to find that 90% of users have nev­er pos­ted (lurk­ers), 9% are adding only to exist­ing top­ics and threads (con­trib­ut­ors), and 1% are act­ively start­ing new sub­jects and threads (cre­at­ors).

The engage­ment pyr­am­id is some­times called the 1% rule or the 90−9−1 principle.

“The 90−9−1 prin­ciple and Zipf’s Law both effect­ively clas­si­fy mem­bers in online sup­port groups, with the Zipf dis­tri­bu­tion account­ing for 98.6% of the vari­ance.”
Source: Internet Interventions ³Carron-Arthur, B., Cunningham, J., & Griffiths, K. (2014). Describing the dis­tri­bu­tion of engage­ment in an Internet sup­port group by post fre­quency: A com­par­is­on of the 90−9−1 Principle and … Continue read­ing

Learn more: The Engagement Pyramid (The 90−9−1 Principle)

PR Resource: Deep Content

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Deep Content

Above is an example of an online con­tent struc­ture that’s five levels deep. In the example above, five lay­ers of ever­green con­tent are stacked:

• Level 1: Articles
• Level 2: Content Upgrade
• Level 3: Resource/​Lead Magnet
• Level 4: Ebook
• Level 5: Online Course

Deep con­tent is centred around provid­ing increas­ingly high­er qual­ity to engaged users. ideally, the user­’s engage­ment should determ­ine when the inform­a­tion need has been ful­filled, not the lim­it­a­tions of the web­site’s avail­able content.

• The few who reach your content’s call to action (con­tent diver = click­ing ver­tic­ally) are more valu­able than those who only scan its first head­line (con­tent surfer = click­ing horizontally).

As for the import­ance of struc­ture and depth, the logic is the same as that of ice­berg pub­lish­ing and con­tent themes.

Learn more: The Deep Content PR Strategy: Win By Going Deeper

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