Building a traffic conversion analysis system from 0 to 1

Building a traffic conversion analysis system from 0 to 1
Traffic is so expensive and conversion is so low! So, whose fault is it?

Visitor channels , traffic quality, and user experience , which step has the problem? Regarding conversion rate , marketing, operations and products, who is responsible?

GrowingIO senior product manager Xu Bingjie started from the six core touch points of the "user journey" to help marketing, operations and products build a complete traffic conversion analysis system.

Below, enjoy!

1. What is the user journey?

The user journey refers to the entire process of interaction between a user and a business, from the first contact to placing an order and enjoying the product or service. Among them, there are differences in the user journey on the website and the App. 1. The user journey on the website The user journey on the website includes 4 key points: off-site channels, landing pages , user engaged (activated) and completed conversions.

User journey on the website
Users see various advertising creatives through off-site channels, including but not limited to SEO , SEM , DSP , social media , etc. When interested users click on CTA (Call To Action) to enter the site, the first page they see is called the landing page. Next, the user visits our landing page or website in depth. During this process, she/he may show a willingness to convert - a willingness to purchase our products or services. We call this process user activation (Engaged). After the user is activated, he selects the product, adds it to the shopping cart and completes the payment. We call this a purchase conversion. 2. User journey on the app

User journey on the app
Compared to the website, the user journey on the App side has an additional app store link. I have selected a case to give you a deeper understanding of the user journey and to lay the foundation for our subsequent analysis.
User Journey Example
I searched for "fresh fruits" on Baidu on my mobile phone, and you can see that paid advertisements (SEM) for two fruit brands appeared on the first screen. Taking the first result as an example, there are various creative contents ( titles , pictures, descriptions, etc.) and CTA (web page links, contact numbers, etc.). We click on the link and enter a landing page. The landing page features the event theme of "5.17 for Food Lovers", and there is a CTA button at the bottom of the page that says "Click to receive a 10 yuan coupon". I clicked the button and it started to move to the next page. The link jumps to the next page which says "Open link in 'App Store'?". At this time, I realized that it was to promote its own App. I clicked "Open" to enter the download page of the App Store.

Next, I download and install the app, then browse the products in the app, add them to the shopping cart and complete the payment. This is a complete user journey. Of course, users may also leave halfway. For example, if the third step prompts "Unable to open webpage", it may cause user loss; this can also be regarded as a user journey, but it only ends in three steps.

So what is the logic behind our conversion rate optimization? Our colleagues in marketing, operations, product, etc. must work hard to keep users on this platform and complete the entire user journey as much as possible to create greater value.

2. What are the core touchpoints in the user journey?

Users have many contact points with us on the website, and there are many key roles in these contact points. Now let’s deconstruct the user journey and use some professional terms to restore each step of the user journey.
Six core touchpoints in the user journey
I will take the App mentioned in the first section as an example to analyze the meaning of each point.
Understanding core touch points
1. Off-site channels The off-site channels in the above App case are Baidu SEM, and the off-site channels represent the user groups. Whether it is natural traffic or paid promotion , we all hope that our content can get more exposure. There are two major factors that affect the exposure of off-site channels: user matching and advertising bids. If the channel we find does not match our target users , the exposure will be less; if it is an advertisement, it is closely related to the amount of money we pay. The more we pay, the more exposure we get.

In this stage, we use the "ad/creative display volume" indicator to measure the effect, that is, how many times our creativity can be exposed.

2. Show creativity

The App advertisement we just saw displayed creative content such as the title, company logo, and product advantages. In the creative display step, we need to design and optimize the content copy to improve the conversion rate of user clicks.

Creative display of off-site channels
There are also two major factors that affect the conversion rate of display creativity: user matching and creative attractiveness. The first is the user matching. Are our creativity and content what users need? The second is the attractiveness of the creativity. If our creativity is bland and has no appeal to users, users will not click on it. We use CTR to measure the quality of creativity. CTR is the abbreviation of Click Through Rate , which is the ratio of creative clicks to impressions. 3. URLs to crawl or serve

When we click on the CTA on the creative copy, we will be directed to the URL link of our landing page. If it is SEO ( search engine optimization ), the search engine will automatically crawl relevant page links.

For users, the landing page URL is invisible to users. The key point of this link is that we need to do a good job of tracking and measuring the URL.

URL parameter interpretation
The URL is the unique server path of the page the user visits, which determines the content the user visits, such as "www.xxx.com/landingpage". Parameters are also called "queries". The ones starting with "?" are often used to track the way to reach the page. Different parameters do not affect the page content, such as "?utm_source=baidu_sem&utm_content=new".
UTM parameter table
There is a one-to-one correspondence between landing pages and channels (the smallest granularity), and the concept of landing pages does not exist independently from channels. Self-delivery tracking must track the smallest channel granularity to better measure the effectiveness of channels and landing pages. UTM parameters (as shown above) are commonly used traffic monitoring solutions. For example, traffic monitoring tools such as Google Analytics and data analysis tools such as GrowingIO both provide this traffic monitoring solution. 4. Landing Page When a user clicks on the CTA of an off-site channel, the first page to which the URL jumps is the landing page. Whether the landing page is well designed is very important and will greatly affect the subsequent conversion rate; therefore, the landing page is called the “golden page” or the “expensive moment”.

Landing Page
The factors that influence users’ conversion or bounce on the landing page are, first, the quality of the landing page, and second, the user’s matching degree. What is the quality of a landing page? First of all, how well does your landing page match the previous creative content? Suppose you are an OTA company and have done paid promotion on Baidu; if your promotional idea is "80% off on air tickets ", but the landing page you click on is hotel promotion content. In this case, do you think your users will go to your website to look for promotional content for air tickets? Basically not, especially on mobile devices, where users only pay attention to the landing page for a few seconds. If the page doesn’t match, users will jump out immediately. Secondly, the content and structure quality of the landing page itself. What is user matching? Users of the channel click on the creative copy to enter the landing page. If the content of the landing page meets the user's needs, the user is more likely to be activated or converted; otherwise, the user will think that the previous understanding is wrong and then jump out.

We use the number of incoming users and bounce rate to measure the quality of the landing page.

First, the number of users entering the site, also known as the channel scale; the number of users entering the site is closely related to the channel size and is also the base for subsequent conversions, so it needs attention. Second, the bounce rate, which means that users come to the landing page and leave without doing anything; this is a negative indicator. The higher the bounce rate, the worse the quality of the landing page.

5. Assisted conversion content and CTA

Assisted conversion content and CTA, this is a very attractive part. For many transaction websites, users need to know some product details and user reviews and feedback before purchasing, which can help users eliminate doubts and complete conversions.

Take the data analysis platform GrowingIO as an example. A user of an Internet finance platform wants to know related solutions. After reading the GrowingIO Internet finance solution, he is very satisfied. At this time, the user is activated, and then the registration conversion occurs.

There are two factors that affect the effectiveness of assisted conversion content and CTA: the relevance of the content and CTA.

The relevance of content refers to whether the content you provide can meet the user's further needs, whether your auxiliary content knows the user's pain points and can meet the user's needs. At this time, the relevance of auxiliary content is very important. The other is CTA, which needs to provide users with an entry. We previously served a client whose landing page content was very good, but the conversion rate was very low because there was no CTA on it and users had no chance to register. So when a few CTAs are added, the conversion rate of the entire page is greatly improved.

We use indicators such as dwell time, visit depth, and activated user ratio to quantify the effectiveness of auxiliary conversion content and CTA.

The first are more general indicators such as length of stay and depth of visit. The longer the length of stay and the deeper the depth of visit, the more interested the user is in our content. The second is the proportion of engaged users. We need to identify what proportion of users have the willingness to convert to our products.

6. Product conversion flow

When the user actually enters the product, for example, has added the product to the shopping cart, we believe that the user has a very strong desire to buy, and we should try our best to help the user complete the entire conversion process. The product is the most important thing. If the user has completed the previous journey, but the product has bugs, then the user will never be able to achieve the final conversion goal.

One sentence to describe the product conversion flow: Remove the dross and the final success or failure lies here!

If our conversion flow has many steps, whether the design of each step can allow users to complete the conversion smoothly is the core factor that affects whether users will stay or leave. The core indicator at this time is the conversion rate of each step within the product.

Six core touchpoints in the user journey
As you can see, we used a vertical line in the middle of the picture above to divide the entire user journey into two parts. Steps 1, 2, 3, and 4 on the left are the responsibility of operations, and step 6 on the right is the responsibility of the product manager. The fifth step is to assist with conversion content and CTA, which is the joint responsibility of product and operations, meaning that both parties are on the same boat. This part is inseparable, just like a relay race, product and marketing operations must collaborate well.

3. Interpretation of actual combat cases

A SaaS platform placed display ads in the IT community, with the landing page being the homepage of the website, hoping to obtain effective sales leads (registrations). The table below shows the company’s ad impressions, ad clicks, landing page PV, number of registered users, and registration conversion rate (less than 20%) for three consecutive days.
User journey data of a CRM SaaS platform (initial data)
The boss is not satisfied with the final registration conversion rate. If we want to optimize and improve it, how should we start? 1. Restore the traffic analysis system from clicking channel ads, reaching the landing page, entering the conversion flow to completing the registration conversion. In fact, the above table is a complete user journey. The user journey consists of 6 parts, each with corresponding core monitoring indicators.

User journey data of a CRM SaaS platform (complete restoration) We supplemented and enriched the core monitoring indicator data of each key touchpoint in the user journey to obtain complete indicator data.

  • Off-site channels: advertising impressions;
  • Display creativity: ad clicks, CTR;
  • Landing page: landing page PV, number of users entering the site, bounce rate;
  • Auxiliary conversion content and CTA: number of activated users, ratio of activated users, number of users who took the first step of registration;
  • Product: Conversion rate – Activation – 1, Number of users who registered in the second step, Conversion rate – 1 – 2, Number of users who completed registration, Conversion rate – 2 – Completion.

The boxes in the above figure overlap in indicators to illustrate that each part is closely linked; the above links cannot be separated, they are integrated.

2. Find growth points

Generally speaking, the core indicators of the operation team are the number of activated users and the proportion of activated users, and the core indicators of the product team are the conversion rate of each step of product conversion. So what should we do to improve the overall conversion rate?

User journey data of a CRM SaaS platform (analyzed version) The CTR of off-site channels is mainly the responsibility of marketing or operations. We need to see whether the channel is a good channel; if the channel is a good channel, then whether our display creativity can attract users and whether there is room for optimization of the 13%-14% CTR. “On-site registration conversion rate = ratio of activated users * conversion rate of each step in the product conversion flow”. Why is it divided like this? Because user activation is the responsibility of operations, and in-product conversion rate is the responsibility of product managers, this division is intended to facilitate the division of responsibilities and focus on optimization. In other words, the landing page, auxiliary conversion content, CTA and product design jointly determine the product conversion rate on the site!

The author of this article @GrowingIO compiled and published by (Qinggua Media). Please indicate the author information and source when reprinting!

Product promotion services: APP promotion services, advertising platform, Longyou Games

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