The Anatomy of a Conversion Path
Share Article The key to segmentation and subsegmentation is that each click pays off with a page that’s relevant to the respondent.
Flexible and targeted, conversion paths allow you to segment, qualify and convert your online respondents from paid search, display, email and other sources of paid and unpaid web traffic.
Let’s kick off the anatomy lesson by defining what we mean by “conversion path.” A conversion path is a conversion-focused, linear landing experience, specifically designed to catch and convert incoming traffic from your online marketing campaigns. Conversion paths live outside of the structure of a company’s main site, and are typically used in place of landing pages, microsites or deep links to improve conversion rates, lead quality and overall marketing intelligence for your respondents and traffic sources.
Conversion paths move respondents from landing through conversion, using simple or complex branching experiences. Conversion paths comprise a series of connected pages:
- Segmentation
- Offer or pitch
- Thank you
The graphic above shows a simple conversion path flow of landing pages, where segmentation is represented by A and B, and subsegmentation represented by A1/A2 and B1/B2.
It All Starts With Segmentation
A conversion path always starts with a segmentation page—the page respondents land on when they click through from an online ad.
A segmentation page should be utterly simple, with just a couple of choices. This is the page that is going to take the somewhat anonymous respondents from paid media and segment them based on who they are or what they’re looking for.
For example, let’s say we are marketing a high-end Caribbean resort on Google. After users click on our text ad and land on our conversion path, our first mission is to target the right content to each respondent. We know they are interested in our resort, but are they interested in vacationing with children? Water sports? A destination wedding? Maybe a honeymoon? In this example, we might present two segmentation choices—romantic rendezvous or family vacation-—so users can learn about the resort based on their specific interests.
Of course, we could offer more than two options to respondents—say, golf, boating or diving—but it’s important that the segmentation page be simple, focused and clear.
Now that we’re pitching our resort to the user’s interest, we could segment one step further if needed. Say we have an initial “Island Wedding” segmentation. We can then subsegment wedding respondents based on whether they want to work with a staff wedding planner or plan the wedding themselves.
The key to segmentation and subsegmentation is that each click pays off with a page that’s relevant to the respondent. The bride who wants to plan her own island wedding should be directed to a different page than the bride who wants the help of the resort wedding planner. Rather than expecting respondents to randomly surf around on a site and find the information themselves, or expecting a single page to appeal to everyone, a conversion path makes it easy to serve up truly relevant content to your audience.
What We Learn From Segmentation
To the marketing manager running the campaign—aside from targeting the right content to the right respondent, which naturally improves conversion rates—the tracking of these segmentation choices reveals who’s responding to which ads, even if they don’t convert. This yields insight into segments and conversions—so instead of trying to globally optimize a marketing campaign for all, we can maximize each audience segment independently.
What Do You Have to Offer?
Make it compelling and make it clear—now’s your chance to get the conversion.
Now that we’re pitching our resort based on the user’s very specific interest, whether it happens to be the family vacation of a lifetime or the bride’s big day, we can tailor the offer accordingly and provide highly relevant and compelling information to help generate a conversion.
Every offer page will be different and every company will have a different idea of what a “conversion” means. For our resort, it could be an online booking or it might be as simple as a completed contact form exchanged for a vacation planner filled with local excursions and offers.
So, at the point of conversion, we ask for the conversion only after we have given them relevant information. And as a result, we get a higher conversion rate than we otherwise would have.
What We Learn From the Offer
By segmenting our users according to their interests, we can apply highly relevant A/B tests for offers or fulfillment that enable us to quickly determine what works best. Again, by not trying to globally optimize our offer, we can really maximize the potential from each audience segment.
Mind Your Manners and Always Say Thank You
Whether respondents have booked a vacation or simply supplied contact details to receive their vacation planner, we should always thank them for the exchange in a manner that deepens our engagement and builds the relationship even further.
The thank-you page of our conversion path is our final opportunity to provide users with content that relates to their conversion. This is where we can introduce all the information that, had it been included elsewhere, would only have served to distract the user from our ultimate goal—the conversion.
Here we can deep link into a photo gallery that lives in our website, link to a customer feedback blog or serve up additional offers to further engage our user. The point is to do it only after we have achieved the conversion.
What We Learn From the Thank You
Saying thank you is not only the polite thing to do, but also a great opportunity to test offers or content. By including various links to resources after the conversion, we can gauge user interest without jeopardizing our campaign goals.
Overwhelming user interest in a resource offered on the thank-you page could provide fuel for an upcoming promotion or identify a vehicle for cross-promotion. Keeping our resources rich and tracking our clicks helps us uncover even more knowledge about our respondents.
Reader Comments (9)
Amen - Amen -Amen!!!
When you don't know where you're going - any path will take you there. Proper market segmentation + well thought out conversion paths = marketing success!!!
GREAT JOB!
Thanks for your comments, so glad you agree!
Anna - I can't see the graphic of the flow. Is it my browser?
Also, do you have any advice on how to determine the best way to segment users? Demographics? Uses?
Robert, I suggest testing different segmentation to see what gets more people through that first page and converted. You can segment by audience, by need, by product. Within each of those tests you can vary language, imagery, click cues. There is a lot to test with segmentation, I recommend just getting started. Look for 60-80% of users to click through your segmentation page -- anything less than that means something is probably off.
Why not let the ad copy (the ad you see on the search engines) handle your segmentation for you? Also, with Google AdWords, you can pick which geographical location sees your ads and other ways to fine-tune a campaign.
One part of the problem is the number of clicks. People don't like to click, click, click to get to what they want. Every extra click you ad may give you more segmentation, yes, but at a cost of losing potential customers because the phone rings or some other distraction happens, or just an annoyance with the number of clicks. I mean, when I search for something online, part of my problem is information overload and too much to read through. I want to just click a few times, make a decision, and purchase it. If you don't believe me, go look for a laptop battery for your particular laptop online, and make a decision on which one you wish to purchase. Then, analyze why you purchased from that particular one. Most often you will find that it was because Google Search hit the right page from the get-go, that you didn't have to yet again dig on the site when you arrived there, and all you had to do was click Buy Now after being convinced of the pitch about the item you saw.
Thanks for your comments.
In many cases, a keyword and a keyword ad can't do the segmentation. Keywords that are higher in your funnel are too generic and general to give you good segmentation.
With a well-build conversion path a user can move more quickly through a conversion funnel than they would be if you land them on a page with navigation and distraction.
When tested against a landing page, a conversion path almost always wins.
I am reading honest seduction now. Excellent book! Path segmentation is my favorite part.
Excellent resource, your team truly is a wealth of knowledge.
All the best
Thanks for the feedback Jeffrey!
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