Optimization Guide
Customer Lifecycle Optimization Tactics: Landing Page Optimization, Form Optimization and Progressive Profiling.
Improve every stage of the customer lifecycle!
This is part 5 of the Customer Lifecycle series.
In the previous parts, we covered the steps to create a customer lifecycle strategy and Definitions, KPIs and tactics for each Lifecycle Stage.
In this part, we will cover tactics to optimize the success of the program at various stages using: Landing Page Optimization, Form Optimization and Progressive Profiling.
Once you have your Customer Lifecycle Management program in place you can use additional optimization tactics to further improve the efficacy of each step, which will increase the overall efficiency of your program.
Landing Page Optimization (LPO)
Landing pages are crucial to several of the Customer Lifecycle stages; during awareness, they are the first impression a customer gets from your brand. During Growth and Loyalty stages, they are your vehicle for delivering your offers to the customer and incentivizing them to do the action you require. Landing Page Optimization hence is the process of analyzing and redesigning elements of landing pages that makes them more effective in nudging customers to a certain action and delighting them in the process.
To start with LPO, you need to first clearly define the goal of each landing page, including what actions you will require from the customer, which customer segments will see that landing page and how you will measure its success. You can use different segmentation schemes to create different versions of each landing page, including customer use case, lifecycle stage, source of traffic and product category.
There are a few common elements to most landing pages:
- Headline- This shows the customer what this page represents. This is the first thing customers see on your page and it’s read 5X more than any other copy (Ref: Ogilvy). You must keep this clear, concise and consistent with the customer's expectations. For example, If a customer is coming from another page expecting to see a product, you should not show them a headline about signing up. A good headline should indicate to the customer what they will get by reading this page. In addition, the keywords used in the headline will be indexed for SEO.
- CTA- The Call to action (usually in the form of a button) is what you want the customer to do, it should hence be unambiguous and anticipated by the reader. The customer should know exactly what you are asking them to do, how you want them to complete the task and what they will get next. Additionally, ensure that the CTA is highly visible, by ensuring it is visually clear (above the fold, contrasting colour, large enough,…) and easy to interact with (large enough tap size, enough padding, …). In the case where more than 1 CTA is required, while fewer is better in this case, the primary CTA should be considerably more prominent in both location and visual design.
- Hero image- This is the main image that usually accompanies the headline to tell a story. The aim of this image is to convey the goal of the page quickly even if the visitor has not started reading yet and to resonate with their needs. Hence, this image should be highly relevant, realistic and create an emotional response. It is best to avoid stock photos or highly stylistic design patterns (unless highly relevant to the content of the page).
- Benefits statements- These are generally a few points about what the customer can expect to get from what is provided on this page. These value propositions should be clear and focused on the problems that a specific customer segment is trying to solve and should never exaggerate the value of the offering.
- Reasons to believe- These usually follow the benefit statements with proof that other customers with a similar problem have found the product valuable. These can be in the form of social proof, testimonials and even awards. Ensure that these are aligned to your brand identity and the values of the customer segment that you are targeting.
- Trust and security indicators- This last element of the page works to assure the customer further. Many companies provide customer service contact information and add their licenses and security badges to further signal that they are certified by external parties.
Some overall best practices for Landing Page Optimizations are:
- Ensure that landing pages are consistent with your brand’s look and feel
- Match what visitors see on the page to the expectations they have from the interaction before this page
- Minimize distractions such as popups and links to additional pages. In some cases, you may even elect to remove the main navigation to keep the visitors focused.
- Use page analytics (heat maps, scroll maps, hesitation scores and time on page) to identify potential areas of improvement
- Create different versions of the page for each segment based on their needs
- Keep the design concise and uncluttered
- Ensure that the most important information is presented above the fold
- Optimize the page for Mobile devices
- Map where the customer's attention is on the page and use directional cues to guide them to the CTA
- Optimize for fastest load times to reduce abandonment rate
- Use behaviour psychology tactics such as urgency and scarcity to improve performance
- Test different copy and design elements and continuously optimize
Form optimization
Forms are often used to gather more information from customers and they are vital during the initial signup of the customer. In order to maximize the number of leads that signup, you will have to ensure that the signup forms you use have a high success rate. There are a number of tactics to increase the completion rate of forms you use at any step of your customer lifecycle:
1. Breakup a long form into a few pages- According to the psychological principle of “Commitment and consistency” we want to be consistent in our actions so once we commit to filling a form, even though we don’t know how long it is, we are more likely to finish it. So in order to increase form completion, you can break up the form into a few steps. Once customers fill out the first step, they are more likely to complete a form.
Breaking up a form in this way also has the additional advantage that you can dynamically curate the rest of the form based on the answers in the first steps. For example, if you segment customers based on the job title of the user, you can ask for different additional information in the next few steps based on the job title entered in the first step. This allows you to ask the least number of questions to build a complete profile of the user.
Finally, you can save the information at each step, so even if the customer abandons before the final step, you will have some information to better communicate to them when they come back.
2. Track view to completion per field and optimize order and types of fields. By ensuring that you have tracking on every field, you can measure the abandon rate, average time and re-entry rate of each field and identify the ones that are causing the most friction. Additionally, you can test the order in which the fields are presented to ensure that customers are not overwhelmed and overall completion is improved.
3. Optimize for Mobile. Today most customers are using their mobile as their primary device, so ensure your forms are designed specifically to be legible and easy to fill on mobile. Also, make sure that the right keyboard shows depending on the field type, for instance, you want the keyboard to switch to numerical for phone numbers or numerical IDs. Since many of your customers will have some of their information including payment details saved to their phones, set up your forms to pre-fill wherever possible. Lastly, consider whether you can leverage the phone’s camera to scan documents to fill in some of the fields.
4. Reduce points of confusion by better wording and clear error handling- Clearly call out what information each field requires and ensure that your error messages are helpful. Try to word the error messages in a neutral tone and provide customers with an idea of how to fix the issue.
5. Include automated entry checking- To reduce bad data in your forms, you can implement a number of formatting checks and let customers know if they may have misspelled or filled something wrongly. For instance, you can show your customers an error message if they try to fill a phone number field with letters or they misspell common email domains (eg, Gnail). In addition, you can integrate with external services that can validate external data such as address, credit card information and email address to confirm that the data entered is valid.
6. Improve overall UI:
- Ensure that your CTAs are clearly visible
- Clearly show which fields are mandatory and ensure that error messages are appropriately pointing customers to the correct field
- Provide sample responses as a guide especially if you see high returns to a specific field, meaning the customer retried entering the data. Phone number fields are especially tricky, in this case, you can easily show a sample input as a guide.
- Even better than a sample is if you can develop your fields to enter any syntax required automatically as the customer enters their info.
- Use progress bars to encourage customers to complete the form.
- Place error messages closest to the field they refer to and highlight the field so the customer can easily identify them.
Progressive profiling
One of the best ways to improve a Customer Lifecycle program is by using more customer data to make communication at each stage more relevant. Asking for too much information at once, however, can create high friction for customers who will have to fill long forms and may cause them to abandon the form altogether.
Progressive profiling is one of the main strategies to overcome this challenge. By systematically asking customers for more information over time, you can ensure that the customer is getting enough reward for the hard work of filling out forms at each stage.
There are a few principles when asking customers for information and they all apply to progressive profiling too:
- Only ask for information that is absolutely necessary
- Be clear about how the information is going to be used
- Reassure customers that the information they give you is secured and not shared without their consent
- Ensure the customer knows what value they will get from providing you with this information
- Don’t ask for the same information again
Progressive profiling takes these best practices a step further by additionally ensuring that the customer has a good experience at each stage and they feel rewarded for the information that they provide. To set up a progressive profiling system:
- Identify the steps at which you can ask for information. Asking for information during signup is quite common however, you might want to keep these to only data required for creating an account. By looking at the customer lifecycle stages, you can identify which points you will need additional information to better personalize the customer’s journey and ask for that information ahead of that stage. For instance, you may not need to know the number of people in the customer’s household until you are working on increasing their share of wallet in the Growth stage, so there is no need to ask for that information during onboarding.
- Map the effort of giving information vs the rewards that the customer gets during their journey. Our goal here is to keep the effort and reward in balance at every step. Asking for too much information will make the effort outsize the reward the customer gets. By mapping steps where the customer feels rewarded (this can be the first experience of the product, getting a discount, getting social validation,…) you can identify areas where there is enough reward in the bank to justify additional effort from a customer.
3. Ensure that the data is stored and used appropriately. Customers more than before expect their data to be secured and kept private. On top of that, you want to make sure that they can see how you are using the data by providing them with more relevant messages and recommendations.
4. Consider whether you should reward your customers with a special offer. To increase the completion rate of your forms, consider if it is appropriate to provide a reward directly tied to providing that information.
5. Have a plan for bad data- If customers are unsure of how they benefit from giving you the information you are asking for or are concerned about data security, they may provide you with random responses that can lower the usability of the information not just for themselves but overall. It is good to have some rules around what the inputs of each field should be and have a process of either asking the customer to confirm data accuracy or discarding data that is considered unusable.
6. Plan for periodical data updates if required. If some of the information you are asking customers are expected to change (for instance their needs from the product, preferences of communication, number of licences required,…) you may need to ask them for an update every once in a while or based on an observed change in their usage behaviour.
In summary, by only asking for information when you need it, you can ensure that you don’t annoy and turn away customers by asking for too much information up front and build a trusting relationship with them first while getting all the data you need to serve them better.
In the next part, we will look at Customer Lifecycle Management Advanced Recommendation techniques: Collaborative Filtering, Behavioural Segmentation & Personalized Recommendations
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