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Conversion Matters

As a small business trying to increase the revenue from the site, individuals are faced with investing a significant portion of their budget on advertising to drive site traffic. Whether you are looking at time or money, it is too expensive to let visitors walk away without trying to engage them to become your customers. That’s where conversion rate comes in. The conversion rate of your website is the percentage of website visitors that take a desirable action while visiting, such as signing up for an e-mail newsletter or making a purchase. The higher your conversion rate is, the more efficient your website is and so is your marketing spend. If you are not paying much attention to your website conversion rate, you are leaving the money on the table.

A case study – A Talking Avatar increased the site conversion by 144% in an AB test

However, raising your site conversion rate is not as easy as it sounds. There are many tools out there, but some of them are too expensive or complicated for a small business. Anita Campbell, CEO of Small Business Trends.com and a renowned small business exports, says that a use of talking characters (avatars) can be a great solution.

Anita Campbell recently conducted an A/B test on her website to see the effectiveness of a talking avatar on the site conversion rate. She had heard about some buzz about avatars for site conversions, but she was not fully convinced and wanted to test it herself.

Small Business Trends.com is a website that provides content and other insightful information of interest to the small business community, and Anita wanted to increase the rate of sign-ups to its e-mail newsletter, as that is where 90% of lead generation for their consulting services originated. As the website and its service were focused around the persona of Anita, she had been using a still photograph of herself on the homepage to add authenticity and personalization to the site.

A 50/50 test was conducted as follows: half of the people visiting Small Business Trends were shown the main page with Anita’s still photograph and a graphic call to action button called “Subscribe to Newsletters” next to it. The other 50% were shown the same version of the page but with a speaking character of Anita instead of a still photograph. Anita used SitePal to make her speaking character. Google Optimizer, a tool that measures landing page conversion rates, was used to track the newsletter sign ups from both pages. With a statistically significant sample size of over 11,000 people, the results were clear: the website version with the talking avatar saw a 144% higher conversion rate than the version without it. In other words, the SitePal talking avatar helped to drive more than double the newsletter sign ups.

“The avatar focused the attention of visitors on the newsletter and was successful in convincing visitors to take the extra steps to subscribe. The SitePal avatar exceeded my expectations,” Ms. Campbell says.

After seeing such great results from the use of a SitePal talking avatar, Anita Campbell provided some best practices for making the most out of speaking characters. They follow.

1. Use Persuasive and Brief Messages to Drive Conversions: By using a persuasive and brief message with your talking avatar, including a call to action, visitors are directed to specific sections of your webpage where they can act and respond to your call to action, whether it be the purchase of a product or signing up for a newsletter.
2. Personalization is important: The test showed that people view talking avatars as more personal than a photograph. This helps to create a rapport with website visitors, keeping your site at the top of their minds. Including the tip of using one’s own voice.
3. Differentiation is Key: You must find a way to stand out in the overcrowded world that is the Internet. With websites being built every single day, it is important to create a lasting impression in your visitor’s mind. Interactive features, especially speaking avatars, are very helpful in giving visitors something unique to remember about your site. They are also a great way to present potential customers with a distinctive call to action.

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