lowriderzzz

I want to figure out what is the relation between average time spend and conversion rate on a sales page.

So can you please share you experience.

For me av. time spent on one of my top sales pages is: 00:04:23

Next one is 00:02:36. How ever for this one the message on it is twice shorter.

peekay

I think you would get more useful information by segmenting your website traffic.

Here are some useful segments:
All converters - look at the engagement report
All Non-converters - again look at the engagement report.
All visitors who spend more than the average session duration
All visitors who spend less than the average session duration

Those 4 segments will tell you A LOT about your best prospects and you can use
that information to increase your conversions.

Find out free how CRO can double or triple your conversions, sales & profits in the next 60 to 90 days...

lowriderzzz

what do you call "engagement report" ?

I use google analytics.

peekay

One of the standard reports in Google Analytics.

Left hand side

Audience > Behavior > Engagement then look at "Session Duration" & "Page Depth".

Find out free how CRO can double or triple your conversions, sales & profits in the next 60 to 90 days...

SEO Power

The average time spent on one of my sales pages is 3:00 minutes. Content length can affect time on site a lot as evidenced from your own results, but the content has to be interesting even if it is a sales page or else you will get dismal results from your long saled pages relative to the short ones.

That said, I don't care too much about time spent on my sales page. What concerns me the most is the number of visitors that click on my 'buy now' link and purchase the product being promoted.

ONE HOUR INDEXING - STOP WASTING MONEY ON LINKS GOOGLE NEVER FINDS

dburk

Hi lowriderzzz,

Average time spent is a metric than can provide some insight about the importance of a page, and sometimes point towards problems and issues with a page. However, it generally isn't useful correlating average time on site with conversion rates. More often than not there isn't a meaningful direct relationship between the two metrics. Other metrics are generally far more important.

Key takeaway is that "time spent on a page" is a metric that can provide hints to problems, and generally not a key metric used to optimize conversion rates. There are some exceptions, like ad revenue models.

Also, I should point out that over-reliance on site-wide "averages", for most metrics, can lead to poor optimization decisions. Averages lie, and you must use some type of segmentation to "optimize" conversion rates beyond just slight tweaks. Generally speaking, the more granular your segmentation the more opportunities you will uncover for optimization.

* Get Results - Outsource Your PPC Management |
* Don Burk Advertising & Marketing - www.donburk.com

peekay

Although I agree with most of what you said, I respecfully disagree with the following:

"However, it generally isn't useful correlating average time on site with conversion rates. More often than not there isn't a meaningful direct relationship between the two metrics."

There is I am afraid.

Visitors need time:

• for the page to load
• to read page copy
• make up their minds
• take action
• etc.

So there is a direct relationship between time on site/page and conversion.

Segment any site visitors by those who :

• Spent less 10 seconds
• Spent more than 10 seconds but less than 30 seconds
• Spent more than 30 seconds but less than 60 seconds
• Spent more than 60 seconds

Compare conversions rates for each segment and lets know what you find.

Find out free how CRO can double or triple your conversions, sales & profits in the next 60 to 90 days...

dburk

Hi peekay,

I'm not sure that we disagree at all. As I asserted previously, the time spent on page is useful for spotting problems. So yes, you can use time spent on page to gain insights about traffic sources, and technical issues with the page. However, each individual visitor , may need different amounts of time to do want they want to do, and there are many other variables that effect time spent on page.

It is important to remember that correlation does not imply causation. And it is this what I am cautioning against.

* Get Results - Outsource Your PPC Management |
* Don Burk Advertising & Marketing - www.donburk.com

lowriderzzz

Let me see if I got this right ?

Here is image of one of my sales pages with data for 1 year period of time. (march 2014 - march 2015)

http://snag.gy/lKWvR.jpg

So what is says is most people that were on the page spent the least time, then the second is those that spent the most time. So... roughly half of the people bounced on this page according to the page views bar.
I still had sales from it but its wayyy less than 1% conversion, even less than 0.5% conversion.

How naturally two questions pop up for me.
1. what the best numbers I can strive for... for time spent in 0-10 secs, 10-30 sec. etc.
2. what would be best approach to increase conversion.

IDK if 50% of the people that get on the page bounce is still acceptable, but the conversion % says it all.

I assume part of the reason for this is that a lot of organic, untargeted, cold traffic is going directly to this sales page since its ranked in google for a keyword "attraction" in my local language, but the page is selling dating advice for men.
IDK if that is for sure because organic, direc and referral show approximately same av. pg duration time.

http://snag.gy/K4XJf.jpg

Here is the Engagement report - Session Duration and Page depth for the whole site. What do you think about it?

http://snag.gy/2zEbK.jpg

http://snag.gy/jSeeX.jpg

savidge4

I think its great that you are taking the time to look at this. Time in my world is a very important factor. I would sit down and place a video recorder from behind your shoulder pointing at your computer monitor. Set your recorder to place a time stamp on the recording. Set yourself up with a hi-lited mouse pointer and go through the page and follow with your mouse as you read. I go so far as to not only do this myself but will get 5 to 20 people to do the same.

You now have some real time data of WHERE in your page people are falling off. Those numbers will come to life for you. You will figure out if the 8 minute visitors are reading through all of your material or got caught in a facebook discussion or a phone call or something.

As someone has mentioned above, take the time and break down this traffic in 30 second increments. tally the percentage of loss for each time slot. this will give you a more targeted idea of where to start looking and working.

I am going to be brutally honest here. you have been dealing with this for a YEAR. Its not your traffic... its not the time spent... its probably not even your product. Its you page.

I found interesting looking at your numbers... your return visitor rate. 10% for an offer that is not converting is awful high. That I think in this case would be an indicator that your "bait" is effective. that your targeting is effective. that your traffic source is effective. Hence the statement above.

Use the time slot strategy, start making changes. watch to see if your time on page increases as you make those changes.. and work your way down the page.

lowriderzzz

Can I just do this with an on screen video recorder? You mean 5-20 people that I personally know. Because idk how i can get 20 strangers to do this.

savidge4

Onscreen as long as there is a video stamp you are fine. Yeah totally people you know. the more the better I am sure 5 is fine 10 would be better. gives you a good solid average so you better understand what you are working with.

dburk

Hi lowriderzzz,

You can use crowdsourcing services like:

UserTesting.com
TryMyUI.com
CrowdSourcedTesting.com

* Get Results - Outsource Your PPC Management |
* Don Burk Advertising & Marketing - www.donburk.com

savidge4

What else is there online? LOL I seriously would never consider doing that... its so funny. I have people in and out of the office all day so for me its easy to get a broad spectrum of people to do stuff like this.

If I am in a rush I will head to my local coffee shop and will ask people to look at this that and the other to get "Real" reactions and opinions as well as time stamping. Was at the coffee shop just today asking opinions between 6 images.

Just would not even for a second think to go online for that kind of thing.

lowriderzzz

But most people that I know are not quite exactly interested on that topic. i.e they are not targeted. Ikd if so how much accurate will that be.

savidge4

Has nothing to do with topic... its about reading the material. interest at this point means nothing. you are simply trying to understand where your potential drop points are.

lowriderzzz

As drop points you mean that there might be some grammar errors or technical issues in the text (formating etc) that are making readability difficult?

Because if they are not interested in the topic they might just skip ahead or not pay as much attention to text and just move on with same pace.

savidge4

The larger the pool that you get to read the dang page the semi more accurate the data you are going to get. but the truth is this is not so much about accuracy as it is to give you a better than good idea of when people that you are TRYING to sell to are falling off your page.

I personally do not run read time tests to catch grammar errors... just me maybe.

As much as a conversion is the collection of many little conversions... loosing them often times is the loss of some of those mini conversions along the way. The time test gives you an idea where to start looking.

Seriously you don't have to have people read your page... is it really that hard to get some folks to do it for you?

lowriderzzz

Well no... I just want to make sure I get your idea correct. Those days I'll ask few friends of mine to do it and I'll replay back the results.

lowriderzzz

OK I've recored one video of me actually going through the sales letter.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hOP1...ature=youtu.be

But I don't know how much of an indicator is this, since I know the text and I go through it relatively quickly, and also at the bullet points I got kind of tired reading it so I skipped fast forward through it.

I'm not sure if I got the idea right about it.

princy91

Average time spent on sales page is near 3 to 4 minutes, also it depends on the content and layout of the page.Build a content that engages people to spend more time on the page.

Website development and maintenance | SEO | E-commerce solutions | Mobile development | Joomla website development

savidge4

One is a start but like I said 20 is better... but we can work with the one. you now need to go back and like I have said before start grouping your user data into 30 second intervals. I would probably start in the 1 minute 30 mark and write down how many were lost between 1:30 and 2:00, 2:00 and 2:30 2:30 and 3:00 etc etc

you will probably see a pattern of progressive loss with a time segment being max loss and before it and after it is less. from that Max point you need to start looking at the text in your case and figure out whats loosing them... where is there friction. how are you dispelling the anxiety of the purchase.

Chances are better than good most of these people are not even getting to the price. I couldn't read the text you have ( don't speak / read the language ) in the video, but overall... the page looked boring.

You simply have to try and determine why they stop reading and make adjustments with each adjustment you then need to let some traffic over it to see if the read time gets longer or shorter. and again make some more adjustments until you get your readers across your sales page to you CTA. Like finally doing the video...

its a process it will be change after change after change I am sure. but welcome to CRO. That is what we do, and this is how we do it. we test the snot out of stuff, and gain as much insight as possible to what our end users are seeing and doing.

lowriderzzz

I get your point. Making changes then adjusting and seeing the result, then again and again etc.

You said that they most likely don't even reach the BUY button, if that is the case I should simply put a hover buy button that goes along with the sales copy. That should help out huh ?

In fact I can tell what % of visitors have actually clicked on the button. Here is the data for 1 month span: 436 visitors (352 unique) have been to the sales copy page and only 66 (16 unique) were on the next check out page so therefore doing the math that = ~15.14% definitely reached BUY button (because they clicked) . Although there are probably more people that have reached it but didn't clicked.
To me this % looks very low. What number should I strive for.

A question though: what major areas I should stress on changing - for instance: text font, layout, page design, power words etc... what else.

I was thinking of doing a VSL...

The page is copy of a successful US dating product, however it is translated in my language. (different market). Perhaps mentality of the markets varies... that's why probably it is successful in US but not as much over here.

I'll do the time crunching and I'll post results again here, and will try to do more videos with on screen recording.


One more question: what is best way of making changes and testing. - A/B split testing I guess - if yes is analytics enough for correct A/B split test?

cheers.

lowriderzzz

Lets bring back this topic from the dead...

In order to avoid posting new thread I'd ask here instead.
I got idea today and I want your opinion to validate or bust it.

Have anyone tried to use sales copy where the visitor is being engaged to read the copy.

Here is what I mean in more specific.

Lets say we have pretty long sales copy: 10+ MS word pages or so.

Put that on webpage - that means lots of scrolling down.

Do you think it will be a good idea if you show only part of the copy initially lets say only contant that apears in the above the fold section (above the fold = what actually is seen on the screen without scrolling) of the page and if the visitor is interested, at the bottom to be read more button which opens the rest.
Sort of the way posts are being posted in FB. If the post is too big there is a button "Read whole post" and when you click it just unfolds the rest without opening new page.

Get the idea?

This way the visitor can't go to the end if he didn't read or at least viewed the previous piece of content.

And by measuring who reaches what point and what clicks can determine where people in general fall of the website (in other words where they click the X button).

I was just thinking about it today.

Probably someone had already tried it - what is your take one this?

Cheers