Of recent, I’ve been patronising some foreign web services, and I’ve happened on a few interesting things about how these guys take people’s money. The first is what I considered to be a personal lesson in conversion, which I’d like to share here, as well as get your feedback on.
A few weeks a go, I was looking up what it would take to signup for an account with Bluehost. Because their pricing is sort of hard to understand (until you actually signup, as I have discovered), I initiated the signup process to get a sense of what my bill would look like.
I didn’t get very far before they asked for the money, and I found what I was looking for. Satisfied, I closed the tab and left. Not quite thirty minutes later, however, I was surprised to get an email from Bluehost. Here’s what the email said –
Bankole,
Thank you for your interest in hosting your website with Bluehost. We’ve noticed that you began setting up a hosting account with us and we look forward to helping you have a successful website alongside over one million other customers. Bluehost has the finest customer service in the industry and our knowledgeable staff would love to help you get started.
Our team is anxious to find the best solution for your needs. We provide free web building tools in our Simple Scripts 1 click installer, templates available through our partners, and are happy to walk you through uploading a site you’ve already created. Call, e-mail, or open a chat with us anytime.
To help overcome any challenges, we’ve arranged a discount on our service. Just follow this link:
http://www.bluehost.com/track/aesignup to finish setting up your account and get started on your website today!
Thank you,
Bluehost Sales Team
What is significant about this message?
For me, it’s how closely these guys monitor their conversion funnels and take timely action to plug any leaks. I don’t know if it was an automated thing or not, but truth be told, it didn’t even need to be personalised to have the desired effect. Even if I wasn’t particularly interested in buying hosting from, I would definitely consider them now. And I did get a one dollar/mo discount. The plan had originally read $6.95/mo. While I was already leaning in their general direction, this touch was the final pebble that tipped me into eventually giving them my custom.
I also think that asking for their money only two pages in is also significant. Collecting the money upfront is a powerful interest filter lets only the serious people in, so that they don’t have to waste their time and resources on casual passersby. But its designed in such a way that the casual passerby gets a gentle nudge that may well serve to make him get serious later on, just like I did.
Do we also do the same here? Optimise our conversion funnels?
From conversations I’ve had with Konga for instance, I know that they do that sort of thing too. They noticed a lot of people would add stuff to their shopping carts but wouldn’t checkout. It”s easy to assume that these people just aren’t ready to buy, but because they took the unusual step of calling people to find out why, they discovered that a good number of these people actually wanted to buy but couldn’t because they weren’t sufficiently aware of all the payment options that were available. Konga would then advise them of the alternatives, including bank deposits and cash on delivery. By doing a little extra to optimise that portion of the funnel, Konga manages to close sales that ordinarily would have fallen out.
Some of our startups would make lots more money, or signup lots more users, or achieve whatever conversion goals they’ve set if they simply spent a bit more time looking for the leaks in their conversion funnels and started plugging them as best as they can. Some of it will require email follow-ups. Phone calls. Surveys. A-B testing. Sign-up flow optimisation. User interface/experience tweaks. More. Do whatever you need to do.
What do you think?
PS: I did some googling and found an excellent resource on Kissmetrics: 54 Quotes from Startup Leaders on How to Improve Conversions.
[image via Flickr/Roland Tanglao]
