It is hard to make a living as a freelance writer.
To make good money as a hired gun, I believe to achieve the following:
build a reputation as an excellent writer
find ways to be found by your potential clients
turning clients into returning ones
Just by missing any of the points above, you will find it much, much difficult to maintain a career as a freelance writer.
Luckily for me, with hard work, perseverance, and lots of luck, I was able to teach myself how I became a freelance writer.
In my case, I started earning $1000/month in December 2014.
I started taking freelance writing seriously in July 2014. From that 5-month period, I was able to set up the three pillars of what I feel successful freelance writing is built on.
But before I dwell on the success, I would like to share why I became a freelance writer.
The Journey from Failure
Before starting a freelance writing career, I worked as a virtual assistant for a Canadian client made up of two people. We began a professional relationship in 2012 when I used to work for them part-time to supplement my full-time earnings.
It only took a year later for me to decide that I should work for them at home full-time since the pay was good and the tasks were up my alley. I managed the entire digital marketing campaign of the client, from developing and executing a content strategy to running lead generation campaign to hike up her sales.
One of the pitfalls of freelancing is how you will manage when the client is unable to supply you the salary you are used to getting. Unless you have built up your funds for the rainy day, you will find yourself scrambling for sources of income to keep up with your lifestyle and expenses.
My rainy day came around June of 2014 when my client was no longer able to pay me the amount we discussed before hiring me. It was a straight punch to the gut as I was banking on my work for them to sustain my finances for the family.
While I did not hold any grudge against them, I was left disillusioned by the incident. They were my only client, and I did not have anything going for me outside the work they give me.
So I decided to start back to square one.
Instead of expecting the same fixed amount every month, I had to make do with $5 payouts from then-oDesk and Fiverr writing articles.
My paused Fiverr page that landed me ZERO clients.
During this period, I had to work twice as hard and long to receive around half of what I was used to getting. I was also working alone and did not have colleagues whom I can share my experiences.
I also considered working again in an office full-time out of necessity. However, I was not able to get accepted for the positions I wanted, and other opportunities were hours away from where I lived.
It was a necessary obstacle that I had to go overcome professionally.What made it worse was that my wife and I were expecting our first child in September that year. Without having saved enough money, I had to get help from my parents, which is something I have been trying to avoid.I want to do it on my own
What made it worse was that my wife and I were expecting our first child in September that year. Without having saved enough money, I had to get help from my parents, which is something I have been trying to avoid.I want to do it on my own
While I have been fortunately enough to have a great support system, I think everybody would agree that they want to take matters into their hands. I want to become independent of my parents and start living a life that I could call mine.
Unfortunately, I was not able to do that at that time.
So I decided to ramp up my efforts on getting more clients by pulling every trick out of my bag. I built better landing pages on my site, wrote content with the purpose of attracting customers, and applied to job posting sites, to name a few.
Doing all these came at the expense of getting the usual $5 writing gigs, so it was a calculated risk on my part. If my strategy of getting clients does not pan out, I will not be earning as much as I wanted that month and all my efforts are in vain.
With sheer luck, I finally got a better paying writing gig from the ProBlogger Jobs board and an email from my contact page.
And for some strange reason, it snowballed to more opportunities for different clients.
As the year came to a close, I was pretty sure that working as a freelance writer is what I was meant to do.
And it showed in 2015.
I was able to more than double my salary in December of 2015.
And things are looking up even better this year.
I was able to earn more than $2,000 in a week!
I do not wish to gloat my earnings. But if you think freelance writing — or freelancing in general — does not work, this is proof that it does!
Okay, so how did I do it?
As mentioned, there are three factors that I believe lay the foundation to a fruitful and sustainable freelance writing career:
1. Guest posting
This tactic is the best and fastest way to build your reputation as a good writer.
By writing for different online publications, you can showcase your writing to a different audience than where you usually write.
If they like your writing, they will go to your site and read more. If they are potential clients, they will contact you for a job opportunity.
The important thing to remember here is always to find sites where you can write for to grow your audience and attract leads that you can turn into clients later.
I have covered guest blogging brief in this post to give you an idea on how you can proceed with your guest blogging strategy.
You need to stick your neck out to be found by your audience. Your products and services won’t sell themselves — you need to make an effort to be seen by people to make a sale.
Old school marketing encourages you to go out there, talk to people, and pitch to them about your services.
While that is a tactic that works for some, that was not my approach when promoting my freelance writing services.
I always believe that, if people wanted to know more about you, they would find a way to make that happen.
Instead of you going out of your way telling people why they should buy from you, you want them to go to you.
This is part of what guest blogging does for me. They see my name on the sites I write for, and I get to nest in their heads like a debt that they cannot pay.
To douse their curiosity, I built a site with all the information about my services so people will be compelled to reach out. I created different landing pages for each of my services to ensure that visitors will find the details they need to know about me. I am also currently following a content strategy of writing decent content on my blog to keep my site relevant on search results.
This is the reason why I invested time in building a good-looking site and blog that you are reading now.
And if you are indeed still reading this post, then it only goes to show how important inbound marketing is.
Build relationships
My rule here is simple: do not treat your clients as a dollar sign.
My clients are just like me, people who want what’s best for themselves. They just happened to be people whose needs I can answer.
I provide solutions for my clients, and my goal is to deliver the work that I promised.
More importantly, treating people more than a job is crucial in getting them to order from them to order again.
Going back to my previous Canadian clients, I still keep in contact with them. I have always made it clear that the lines of working again soon are always open. If they have questions on what they should do regarding particular tasks that I once covered for them, then I unhesitatingly give my advice.
Same thing goes for my current clients. I strive to provide them with a more personal experience when ordering content from me. I do my best to answer every email and find a solution to every problem they encounter.
At the same time, I become even well connected to the industry I am working in. As a writer whose feet are dug deep in digital marketing, I have come to know clients from different agencies, as well as influential bloggers from across the globe. Some of them were referred to me by my old customers, so building bridges with clients go a long way!
Wrapping it up
Freelance writing is a struggle, but you need to play your cards right to succeed. In this post, I have revealed my cards in my attempt to help you find your path to success. You can copy my process and build on it to achieve even greater success!
I may not have fully revealed the entire process of how I build an excellent freelance writing career for myself. In the future, I promise to update you with comprehensive tips on how to do guest blogging, inbound marketing, and relationship building.
Until then, I would like to hear from you by answering a couple of these questions:
How is your freelance writing experience thus far? How can I help you?
What are the obstacles that are preventing you from succeeding as a freelance writer?
Are there strategies and techniques you used not mentioned above that made you a freelance writing success?
Seriously, I would love to hear your thoughts about the questions above.
As you compete for eyeballs, you need to make the most out of what is shown on search engines and social media with your headline. Coming up with the most compelling headline will get them to click on your page.
Just a quick note: what you will not learn in this post are Viralnova and Upworthy types of headline that excite readers’ curiosity to get a click and end up under-delivering on the content side. While this is an efficient business model for all intents and purposes, there are two reasons why you shouldn’t approach writing headlines this way.
Your blog is not dependent on ads for income – What you, as a blogger and freelance writer, should be aiming for is a headline that delivers the promise in the content.
You are producing evergreen, sustainable content – Click-bait headlines work best on trending topics. Informative content does not have to resort to tabloid- and gossip-like headlines to receive clicks.
Besides, there are excellent guides that discuss headline strategies using the click-bait approach, such as this post at Buffer.
Types of click-worthy headlines
There are many types of click-worthy headlines that you can utilize for your blog. However, I will distill all the types into five simple yet effective strategies you can apply to your posts.
1. Enumerate them!
There is a good reason why Listverse and, to a lesser extent, Buzzfeed use list posts as a headline strategy.
What makes list posts effective is how they set reader expectations.
For example, in the post “10 Games That Will Make You Nostalgic For The ’90s,” you are only familiar with six video games that make you yearn for the good old days. The post then serves to fill you in on the other four you are unaware of.
(On a side note, I am not sure why Super Mario 3 is not included in the list. Blasphemy!)
Now, suppose we take away the “10” from the title:
“Games That Will Make You Nostalgic For The ’90s”
…would the headline compel you to click on it? For all you know, the post only features the six games you already know. Thus, you will be just wasting your time clicking on the article.
More importantly, I compare these tools and give my opinion on what I feel are the best tools to help you accomplish this goal.
From the examples above, great blog titles must deliver scalable information to readers. By introducing a set number of tips or advice in the headline of your content, readers will have all the details they need to decide whether to click on the post or not.
Make the list as big as possible – The bigger the list, the better! Aim for lists bigger and better than your competitors. If they are publishing lists in the 20+, make yours at least 30+.
7 Authority Hacking Tools To Quickly Grow Your Online Influence
Whereas:
Tip = 7 Authority Hacking Tools Benefit = Quickly Grow Your Online Influence
When my target readers see the headline, the benefit of boosting their influence online should attract them to click on the link and learn more about the tools.
Therefore, when coming up with an effective headline, you need to put yourself in your readers’ shoes.
In fact, think of your readers like they are hostile, grumpy old men.
“Why should I care to read on click on your post?”
“What exactly will I get from reading it??”
“Who the hell are you???”
I am exaggerating at this point, but you need to understand the importance of stating the benefit of reading your post to your audience.
You want to write catchy blog titles that will encourage curmudgeons to give your article a chance by clicking on it.
Additional tips for writing benefits in your headline:
Narrow down your target audience for your post – You need to zero in on the type of readers you want to attract. The GetResponse Blog covers topics from marketing, productivity, and automation. For my post on their blog, I focused on online marketers.
Provide solutions to a specific problem – As a marketer, I know how difficult it is to rise above other equally talented marketers. Therefore, the post was meant to help marketers increase their influence through the tools I featured. Always know the different problems your readers may be going through to make a click-worthy headline that addresses their needs.
3. Use POWER words
“Words are free. It’s how you use them that may cost you.” -KushandWizdom (Click Here To Tweet!)
I won’t indulge in this section of the post because there is an excellent resource that features a comprehensive list of power words that you can use to boost your headlines.
The post contains different words you want to use to invoke a certain response from readers. Knowing these words will help you frame your headline a certain way for maximum effect.
Also, a list of 355+ power words is hard to top. But, again, this goes back to how much more effective your list post is if you have many items to feature in your content.
Additional tips on how to use power words:
Use these emotional words wisely. If you are tackling a complicated topic for your post, you would want to use powerful words that denote “simplicity” (stupid-simple, cheat-sheet, tweaks, and more) to encourage more click-through. The choice of power words on your blog post title depends on the topic, so use your best judgment.
4. Mention exact figures
Usually found in case studies, posts with exact numbers and statistics in their headlines should attract your readers to want to achieve the same results.
Let me start by saying that 17,584 visitors in a day is an incredible number.
It is a figure that most bloggers would dream of having in a month.
Hell, I don’t think I ever had that many visitors.
This is exactly why the figure is effective as part of the headline.
It makes me want to know how he did it.
So I click on the link to find out.
Simple, right?
Now that I have clicked on the article, I should expect that there is a step-by-step guide on how he did it.
True enough, there is.
The post runs through the entire process of how he achieved that number of website visitors, complete with screenshots of data and analytics.
The post shares social proof that attests to the effectiveness of the applied viral marketing techniques.
It is the kind of post that bloggers and site owners will read repeatedly so they can replicate the process on their own. Some will even share the post, link to it on the blog, and mention it in their newsletters.
This would not have been possible without “17,584 visitors” in the headline.
Additional tips on how to use data and statistics in your headline:
Deliver on your promise – When mentioning figures in your headlines, you can either share the process of how you came up with them or link to the post that says the figures. Make sure to touch upon the statistics in your blog post so readers will not be left hanging.
More extensive stats draw a betteremotional response – Just like the example above, your headline should feature a huge number that will leave your readers breathless and encourage them to click on the post.
5. Be controversial
Controversial headlines are, well, controversial in and of themselves.
A perfect example of this is when Neil Patel used the word “douchebag” in his headline and got some flack for it.
It did get him a positive response from others, but you may not afford to lose readers or subscribers because of a controversial headline.
However, when done correctly, controversy can skyrocket your traffic andignite discussion.
Returning to Brian Dean, who is known for developing The Skyscraper Technique, the same technique he used for the viral marketing case study featured above.
It is a beloved technique because it works, plain and simple.
In a nutshell, the piece argues that the technique is ineffective because it’s a be-all-end-all approach to SEO. Not all websites need to produce Skyscraper content just for the sake of creating one.
Even so, there are many things people get wrong throughout the process, i.e., content doesn’t match with keyword intent, bigger doesn’t always mean better, etc.
However, the post ends by saying that the Skyscraper Technique remains an effective tactic when used correctly. So, the post doesn’t come off as controversial when all’s said and done.
If anything, the controversial piece ushers intelligent discussion among marketers on how to use to technique to great effect.
By using a controversial angle for your headline to get clicks, make sure that you have covered all your bases and use this opportunity to open up the ground for discussion.
Additional tips on how to use controversy in your headline:
How much risk are you taking? No matter how careful you may be with your controversial headline, there is a risk that some of your readers would react negatively. Make sure you are prepared for the worst and know how to manage it properly.
Be respectful – From the post to the comment section, always conduct yourself professionally. If you are willing to write a controversial headline and post, make sure you can roll with the punches.
6. Brainstorm with Tools
In today’s digital age, coming up with catchy blog titles doesn’t have to be a hair-pulling experience. AI-powered tools can significantly streamline your brainstorming process, helping you generate creative and click-worthy headlines in seconds. One such powerful tool is Canva’s Magic Write™.
Leveraging Canva’s Magic Write™ for Blog Titles
Magic Write™, powered by OpenAI, is an AI text generator integrated into Canva’s platform. It’s designed to help you quickly draft various types of content, including blog titles. Here’s how you can use it to your advantage:
Quick Idea Generation: Input a brief description of your blog post topic, and Magic Write™ will generate multiple title options. This can kickstart your creative process and provide ideas you might not have considered.
Customizable Output: While Magic Write™ generates titles based on your prompt, you can still refine and personalize the results. This ensures that the final title aligns with your brand voice and style.
Time-Saving: Instead of spending hours brainstorming, you can generate dozens of title ideas in minutes. This leaves you more time to focus on writing your actual content.
Keyword Integration: When using Magic Write™, include your target keywords in your prompt. This will help generate titles that are not only catchy but also SEO-friendly.
Diverse Styles: Magic Write™ can generate titles in various styles – from listicles to how-to guides, questions, and more. This variety can help you experiment with different title formats for your blog.
Overcome Writer’s Block: When you’re stuck, Magic Write™ can inspire you to move forward with your content creation.
How to Use Magic Write™ for Blog Titles
Open Canva and start a new design or document.
Click the Canva Assistant button or “/” to open the shortcut.
Enter a prompt describing your blog post, such as “5 tips for effective time management for entrepreneurs.”
Hit Enter and watch as Magic Write™ generates title suggestions.
Review the generated titles, select the ones you like, and refine them to fit your content perfectly.
While AI tools like Magic Write™ are beneficial, they should be used as a starting point. Continually review and edit the generated titles to ensure they accurately represent your content and align with your brand voice. Combine the power of AI with your creativity and knowledge of your audience for the best results.
More tips to help you write good blog titles
Write multiple blog titles – Don’t be satisfied with writing just one article title for your post, no matter how good it may be. Instead, you need title brainstorming using different headline-generating tools to develop the best blog titles possible. From here, choose one that suits your piece the most.
Include your target keyword – Writing catchy blog titles is a balancing act of getting people to click on them and optimizing them to rank on Google so you can receive even more clicks. Regarding the latter, you must first conduct keyword research and find the best search query to include in the blog title. Then ensure that the keyword included doesn’t detract you from writing a good headline for your post.
Test which among the catchy headlines works the best – If you can’t decide on a title from the blog headlines you’ve brainstormed, it’s best to run an A/B test on them. Use a plugin like Nelio A/B Testing to run tests and measure the results once they conclude. You should then see which title generated the most clicks from users. Use the winning variant for your blog moving forward, or pit it against another title.
Do you now know how to make a good blog title?
Writing blog titles that drive clicks is a skill you need to develop over time. This post has provided ample information on why and how you should write your headlines.
You must apply the strategies shared here to drive more click-throughs to your site from search results and social media.
So you are finally living your dream as a professional writer – how is everything so far?
Most people fail to realize that the writing career path is one of the most stressful professions today, particularly if you are involved in the digital marketing industry.
This is because you will be exposed to projects in niches that you are unfamiliar with.
On top of that, you will be pressured by deadlines, constant requests, and unexpected revisions that could ruin your schedule and affect the quality of your work.
Note from the editor: Wunderlist is shutting down (or has shut down, depending on when you’re reading this). But don’t fret – there are Wunderlist alternatives for you to choose from and help you remain productive in and out of work,
If you want to be a successful and productive blogger, you need to take small steps towards that goal.
Wunderlist is a great app that helps you track all tasks you have in mind. It is really motivational since it sends reminders for upcoming activities.
Include research, writing, and marketing in your daily routine! This task should be in your Wunderlist every single day.
Organize a daily plan that will help you make blogging a part of your life. If for example, you plan to publish a new post in six days, today’s plan can include part of the research process. Tomorrow, you will create the outline, and you will start writing the day after that. You will tackle some marketing every day. That is how blogging will become a daily routine, and you will not perceive it as a burden.
To help you get started with Wunderlist, here is a detailed video explanation from Chris’ Tutorials:
Toggl
This tool will show whether or not you have been smart with the way you use the Internet. Are you wasting huge chunks of your day on Facebook and Twitter? Use Toggl to get a real impression of how committed you are to the blog.
All you need to do is push the Start button, and you will get detailed information on the time you spent on different activities.
You can also access a report of all the hours you logged in using the tool.
The data should serve as a wake-up call to how productive you have been with work. You think you are spending only 10 minutes on Reddit, but 10 minutes in various parts of the day may add up to 2 hours. Locate the websites that distract you the most. Try to reduce the time you spend on them, day by day. So how do you use all that time you save? On blogging, duh!
Trello
There is hardly a better tool you can use for organizing your ideas. Trello enables you to collect information and organize it in a flexible and visual way.
When you discover an inspirational blog post or online article, only add it to your Trello board, and you will see it as a card.
You can drag and drop the cards to make the board more organized, so you will get a better idea for the development of your next projects.
Create a different Trello board for each idea you get. When you are about to start writing a new blog post, and you are not sure what topic to tackle, go through the boards, and you will surely find something interesting.
You can make your Trello board private, but you can also share it with collaborators.
Editor’s note: I consider Trello to be my tool of choice for helping me write faster. I can organize the different writing projects I am managing at the moment so I can prioritize the tasks that need my attention. More importantly, Trello helps me build outlines for each of my posts so I can jut focus on writing the content later on.
It automatically creates topic suggestions using three different terms. A total of five topic ideas will be generated, which is good for a week in a blogger’s editorial calendar.
However, there is a slight chance that a subject idea may have grammatical mistakes. These are usually minor and can be edited fairly easily. For the most part, the topic ideas are far from generic and may contain creative wordings. This is why Hubspot’s Blog Topic Generator is an excellent tool for writers who want to produce highly engaging posts.
ProWritingAid
One of the easiest and most straightforward writing tools for success in improving your written works is ProWritingAid*. It is a free editing platform that can check an entire document for errors and possible improvements.
Using ProWritingAid is simple and can be done in two ways. First, you can go to their website, sign up for an account, and paste your work into the main text field found on their homepage. The tool will automatically detect spelling and grammatical errors that can otherwise be difficult to spot.
Also, remember that even if your work is free from such errors, you could also be overly tedious or using repetitive sentence structures. ProWritingAid also offers suggestions that can help eliminate these issues to polish your work. It is perfect for bloggers, freelance writers, and students who care about the readability, accuracy, and overall quality of their writing.
You can download and install an add-on that integrates with document editing software such as Microsoft Word, Google Docs, and Scrivener. This will automatically add a ProWritingAid section that can be accessed from within the word editing application.
Plagiarism is one of the worst mistakes you can make as a professional writer. It can stain your reputation, terminate your current employment, and waste your time on writing a piece that will most likely be rejected. It will also put you in serious trouble if you are caught plagiarizing for your academic papers.
For most writing projects, you often need valid resources to provide factual information and form topic ideas. This means it is highly likely to write articles that have similarities with existing sources. Although it could be unintentional, plagiarism checkers detects sentences that correctly matches an online source. To avoid this, you can use PlagiarismCheck.org to check your work for possible red flags so you can always submit with confidence.
To get started with PlagiarismCheck.org, just create an account and upload documents to check for plagiarism. After upload, the system will automatically scan your paper thoroughly. This will display the percentage of stolen text for the entire document as well as a list of identified resources that match some of your content.
Keep in mind that plagiarised content has a grave impact on SEO and reader experience. This is why PlagiarismCheck.org is an excellent tool for bloggers and freelance writers who are currently engaged in search engine marketing.
It is important to keep up with your schedule and deliver content on trending topics. You already have Google Calendar as a tool that supports that process. However, sometimes you cannot complete a brilliant post on the right topic at the right time, so you need assistance if you want to meet the expectations of the readers.
When you get stuck, fill in the form at the site and ask for personalized assistance. You will get to work with an author who holds a degree in your niche.
Collaborate with the writer to get exactly what you need.
Death to Stock
Why would you pay for images when you can get the visual content of similar quality for free? Dead to Stock is an excellent service that provides free pictures of good quality.
Subscribe to this service, and you will get regular email messages that inform you about the new additions to the collection. You will mostly find lifestyle photos, so this service is awesome if your niche fits in that category.
Quora
You have to become aware of the problems your target audience faces if you want to develop a successful blog. Instead of writing on random topics, you can get inspired by real questions that will undoubtedly attract a great number of readers.
Quora is getting more popular than ever. It is the best destination for people who want to get their questions answered by experts.
Your Quora feed is full of questions in categories you are interested in. Get inspired by these dilemmas and respond to some of them through insightful blog posts.
Don’t limit yourself only on finding inspiration, however. Here is how you can start developing a successful presence on Quora:
Complete your profile on Quora and add a link to your site in the description. Here’s an example of a description:
Short but sweet, Rand’s bio allows him to put emphasis on the Moz, which links to the homepage.
Start answering questions. You are an expert in your niche, so you have much knowledge to share.
These people have questions you can answer, and that is how you become part of the community. Insightful answers on Quora will lead to long-term traffic to your blog.
Lumen5
Lumen5, an online video maker, turns text into stunning social media videos in minutes. It does this automatically by analyzing the text through AI and putting the best music, video, and images together accordingly.
Today, there are plenty of blog writing tools that will help further your writing career. Just remember that the tools featured above should help cut time in writing your content.
So, make sure to choose the best blogging tools that will help you reach your goals. Don’t get too caught up with the tools – choosing just a tool or two should be good enough for you!
The Conversion Funnel is one of those essential digital marketing concepts. In practice, it allows you to monitor incoming traffic, how much of that is transforming into email subscribers and, ultimately, how your conversions are doing.
And that’s a good thing, It’s a very powerful element. However, it’s main flaw stems from its lack of predictive abilities. Sure, you can look at a current funnel and assume that the Conversion Rates will be the same. But is the data really helping you make informed decisions?
Enter the Cohort Analysis. This splits visitors into groups, based on a common characteristic, and compares their behavior over time.
Cohorts have commonly been used in the medical field, to study the impact of drugs and vaccines, over long periods of time. For example, people born in the same year share what is called a “Birth Cohort”. Within that cohort there can be subgroups formed – Birth Cohort + Location Cohort, Sex Cohort, etc.
A great (illustrated) example of Cohorts can be found on this RJMetrics microsite. It makes it easy to understand what Cohorts are and what their use cases are. Let’s continue and take a closer look at the benefits of this type of analysis.
2. What Are The Benefits Of Cohort Analysis?
Source: Data Hero
We must stress this again: the Booking Funnel is not broken. It’s still a very capable tool and definitely one you should have in your marketing arsenal. If, however, you run more of a SaaS business, Cohort Analysis will provide more actionable data for you to look at and use.
It’s predictive.
Since you’ll be looking at data over weeks and months, trends will emerge. Just like with a marketing funnel, Conversion Rates will never stay the same over time. However, Cohort Analysis provides a more granular view on how your visitors are behaving on your website.
You’ll be able to predict how certain cohorts will act. For example, you might notice that visitors coming from specific search ads are converting at a higher rate than visitors from a blog post. It only makes sense – visitors in search are already looking for a solution to their problem, while blog readers are not in “buy mode” yet.
On the other hand, looking at costs, you might be able to say that a blog post converts fewer people, but it also has lower overall costs. So it would make sense to create more posts (on your own website + guest posts) and track those over time.
It’s customizable.
With Cohort Analysis, you’re not limited to looking at just one thing. It does get a bit more complicated, if you insert multiple sources and demographics data, but as long as you don’t get carried away, you should be ok.
Here is an example that uses a few elements to get a more complete picture regarding User Retention. It’s tracking the Signup Day, the number of users and the retention over specific periods of time (1, 7, 14, 28 days).
It’s actionable.
It really depends on the type of tracking software you’ll be using, but Cohort Analysis does provide a lot of answers. You just have to ask the right questions, in order to make informed decisions based on that data.
Bottlenecks and obstacles will be a thing of the past, if you take action after you understand the data.
Imagine you’ve been tracking customer spending over time. You’re looking at a basic Cohort Analysis chart and you notice that monthly product usage begins to drop in Month 3, for all users. It’s not a technical issue, you’re pretty sure it’s not something to do with the time of the year.
You start to realize that users did not get the full benefit of being appropriately onboarded. That means they’ve probably gotten a basic Welcome Email about how to use the software and that was it. In order to make improvements, you can think about sending triggered emails (when the customer uses the app for 1 week, 1 month, etc.) and asking them for feedback.
In this particular example, it could simply be that they didn’t understand all the benefits of the app, so by month 3 they just gave up using it.
3. How Can You Use Cohort Analysis?
Source: Minubo
3.1 Predict Future Behavior In Terms Of Purchasing Power
If you’re a gamer, you’ll understand this first example. Looking at the charts above you’ll soon learn that there is a direct connection between the preference towards buying credits and game lag. While registered and basic players still are interested in game credits as lag increases, expert/advanced players are much more sensitive.
In other words, the more gamers have to wait, the worse an experience they get in the game. And that translates to a lower desirability towards purchasing credits towards playing more.
You’re essentially segmenting users, looking at 2 data points and predicting future behavior. What you should be doing next is implementing user surveys. Deploying incentivizing campaigns and lowering lag time to increase overall credit purchases.
3.2 Estimate Acquisition Cost VS Lifetime Value
Things will not always be as simple as the table above makes it seem. But you can extract data from a Cohort Analysis and lay it out in a more convenient table format, to use for your own purposes.
The value that this type of analysis brings you is immense. Being able to know not only the acquisition cost for a user coming from a certain marketing channel, but also its lifetime value, makes it so that you can make smarter choices. Choices related to ad spend, content marketing and so on.
Once you have a good amount of actionable data, you can start working towards cost acquisition optimization. You can offer free trials, decrease initial upfront costs, implement a user referral campaign, etc.
3.3. Improve Lead Generation
Source: Megalytic
Cohort Analysis is a lengthy process. Depending on the type of business you have and the services you provide, you will need a few weeks or months to gather data you can look at. But once you have that, you’re free to dig in and think about improvements.
In the case of a SaaS business, lead generation and trial-to-customer conversions are crucial. Without them, there would be no business. Let’s assume your free trial lasts for 14 days. That means that the users who signed up in Month 1 and stayed in Month 2 are paying customers.
That trial-to-customer Conversion Rate is simply a number. Without additional tools and data, you won’t be able to know if users are about to abandon your product. Framed is a service that uses machine learning to provide you with useful data so you can prevent and reduce user churn.
4. Cohort Analysis vs The Traditional Conversion Funnel
Source: WP Engine
Funnels don’t make it easy to track long lifecycle events. They’re not meant to, as they weren’t built for that purpose. Unfortunately, they’re also pretty bad at tracking split tests and measuring retention (as that tends to happen over weeks and months).
The Cohort Analysis doesn’t entirely replace the Conversion Funnel. In fact, they can work together to better visualize how certain events affect users’ behavior over time. By measuring key events that push leads towards conversion, you can get a feel for what works and what doesn’t. And since you’re looking at all of these across time, you can make changes and tweaks and see how it affects your end goal.
Source: WP Engine
Split tests also function well if you’re tracking a variation from a Free Trial to a Freemium model, for example. The chart above (albeit not based on real data), shows how you can have the same actions side by side and compare them across lead conversion tactics. This is the first step, the next being actually implementing changes to figure out if you’re improving things across your Conversion Funnel. You might be surprised to see that a change you’ve made at the top of the funnel drastically increased conversions at the bottom of it.
The trick here, as with most Cohort Analysis you’ll perform, is to keep it really simple. If you make the mistake of adding too much data, you’ll lose yourself in all the different scenarios. The beauty of this type of analysis is that you can pull up certain elements you’re interested in and ignore others. Time is an important indicator and so is the Conversion Rate. Next, you’ll want to define and track key actions that your cohorts are performing. Once you have those, you’re ready to start optimizing and see how your visitors are acting inside of the Conversion Funnel you’ve implemented.
5. Examples Of Cohorts (Medical, Social, Sales, etc.)
Cohort Analysis is not restricted to digital marketing. Since it originated in the medical field, it’s worth nothing what other types of organizations, applications or business use cohorts.
Medical
Does exposure to X (smoking) lead to outcome Y (lung cancer)? This is just one question that can be answered in the medical field, using cohorts. You essentially try to isolate the smoking element as the main cause of lung cancer.
You get 2 groups of people (smokers and non-smokers) and try to have them be as similar as possible. That way, their lifestyle won’t dramatically impact what leads to the outcome.
You then measure those cohorts over a set period of time and analyze the data. Based on that, you can repeat the test and figure out if your initial assumptions were accurate.
Social
Are people who follow a few Twitter users more engaged in the platform at first? Twitter was having a challenging time making users who signed up use the platform for more than a few days.
Then, they realized it was all down to their social environment. If you create an account on a new social platform, there isn’t a lot to do. So now when you sign up for a twitter account, there are popular users recommended you should follow.
Twitter could compare the cohort that didn’t follow anyone with the cohort that had user suggestions. Overall, engagement and retention went up, so the experiment paid off.
Sales
Do engaged users care more about your product? Do these users end up paying more and staying longer with the service?
Perhaps the most important type of Cohort Analysis is done at the sales level. You compare traffic sources and acquisition costs. You look at lifetime customer value and retention. You track the Conversion Rate from trial to paying users.
Having early user feedback is essential. It’s worth testing whether listening to your users, asking questions and making constant improvements to the products results in a higher number of monthly customers.
Things aren’t always as simple as you might want them to be. There are 3 main concepts we need to differentiate between cohort analysis, a/b testing, and multivariate testing.
6.1 Cohort Analysis
You use this type of analysis when your customer base is just too big to average all the data and behavior together. You get to focus on specific parts of the funnel – such as engagement or conversion and separate any elements you might thing have an influence on the outcome.
For example, if you implement a new website feature and your overall engagement with it is low, it’s a good idea to dig deeper and have a more granular view of your visitors. Once you look at them through this lens, you might notice that engagement is not low for every user. Old users understand your website better and are thrilled about the
Old users understand your website better and are thrilled about the improvement. New users, however, aren’t quite sure what to make of it and are skeptical of trying it out since they’ve just landed on the website.
6.2 A/B Testing
When testing big changes, you would use this type of analysis. A/B testing checks how two features are different, while Cohort Analysis sees how groups of users are different.
For example, if you’re using a landing page that only has one call to action, testing two different button colors is a simple way to figure out what issues your users might encounter. There are simply too few options to think about user behavior on a very detailed scale. A/B Testing is enough for this purpose.
Lastly, A/B Testing doesn’t require that much time to see initial data, but it’s limited to a more general view of the website visitors.
6.3 Multivariate Testing
You use this type of analysis and testing method when you’re checking a variety of changes at the same time. Multivariate Testing is usually reserved for making minor adjustments to a page rather than significant changes.
For example, if you’re testing a few changes to a checkout flow on an ecommerce website, Multivariate Testing will help you look at all the different factors at the same time. That’s both a good and a bad one – since you’re analyzing a lot more data simultaneously.
This type of analysis helps you understand user behavior even when one slight improvement or issue is related to another. You can trace users’ steps and make changes along the conversion path.
No matter what type of analysis you use, it’s important to remember that each is better suited for a specific task. In our case, use Cohort Analysis to look at behavior over longer periods of time.
7. Cohort Analysis And The Perfect Customer Persona
We’ve talked about Customer Personas in the past. Their importance in digital marketing cannot be overstated. Now we have another element in the mix: Cohort Analysis. How do the two combine? Let’s find out!
Customer Personas are entities built to represent groups of individuals, that share similar traits, personalities and interests. They’re created using customer surveys, in-person interviews, analytics data, forum and chat data, etc. If we look at DataHero’s article about personas, they’ve included Cohort Analysis to find more info.
Source: DataHero
Since we know that Cohort Analysis does well over more extended periods and is also predictive, it helps you understand your users better now and also in the future. That means that you can focus on past triggers’ actual behavior but also predict how they’ll react in a certain situation on certain pages. This gives you an incredible amount of data to play with.
Combine those cohorts with your usual Customer Personas, and you’re already one step ahead of the competition. While they’re looking at past actions and realtime traffic, you can keep your pulse on what’s going to happen to specific sets of users.
Imagine knowing that a visitor from Facebook will lose interest in your product by month two. Perhaps it’s because the platform offers instant gratification, the targeting might have been off, or a combination of those factors. Now, you’ll use that cohort data to implement email marketing campaigns to capture more leads. You’ll also deploy remarketing across your entire website. So that no matter what your visitors do, you’ll be able to track it, understand it, and take actions that benefit you.
You’ll be able to get a much better handle on customer churn and user retention if you remember to combine Cohort Analysis with Customer Personas. Since most of the tools are at your disposal, it would be a shame not to use this opportunity to provide more personalized marketing solutions for your users.
Defining and using the right cohorts can mean the difference between user churn and increased conversions. Doing it from the outset will help you in the long run. The best way to think about the proper cohorts is that you’re not limited to just one action.
Let’s say you have a mobile game, and you want users to stay more within the app, return more often, and eventually purchase an in-game item. If you’re looking for a specific number for a good conversion rate, I’m sad to report that it is in the 2%-3% range. Let’s put it another way, if you’ve got 1.000 new users each month using your app, only 20 to 30 will buy something from the game. And they might only purchase once.
Given these stats, it is easy to see why conversion and retention optimization are crucial for your website or app’s survival. Moreover, Cohort Analysis is key to finding very specific user data you can act on.
Since you’ll be playing with data, understanding the difference between segments, cohorts, and personas is a useful piece of knowledge. This detailed article on the Moz blog gives you more insight into them.
9. Cohort Analysis And SaaS
Source: ChartMogul
In SaaS land, free trials are golden. Moreover, while services like HiMama, BambooCricket, and Kinsta do NOT offer free trials, they remain an excellent lead generation tactic for businesses. Of course, if providing one does not make sense, you probably shouldn’t.
So, not only are you using cohorts to improve your SaaS business, but you are also integrating Customer Personas for an even more personalized service for your customers.
Remember, a traditional Conversion Funnel can only take you so far. Moreover, if you are waiting 6 to 12 months to recoup those initial free trial costs, you’ll want to use Cohort Analysis to see what impact that initial investment in your users had in the long run.
When your SaaS Sales Funnel tends to get a bit more complex, you need the right tools to measure Conversion Rates at each step. Lucky for you, Pierre Lechelle has put together an impressive list of tools, services, and info all about optimizing your SaaS business.
Long-term success means not only getting someone to download your app but also getting them to come by day after day because you’ve built something that they can’t live without.[/su_quote]
DAU (Daily Active Users) and MAU (Monthly Active Users) are standard metrics anyone should track in their mobile app. You’ll need to dig deeper to grow your user base and retain more of them. Again, this is where Cohort Analysis comes in and saves the day.
Acquisition Cohorts and Behavioral Cohorts are the two largest cohorts to use for Mobile Apps. The first type shows you when and how your users signed up for/downloaded the app. The second type is more complex, tracking users’ actions within the app. These can range from just opening the app up to sharing it with their friends, buying in-game currency, and others. You’ll want to track how long these users stay with your app before they drop off.
What you’re looking for are predictable metrics that can help you understand how your users feel about your app. Most people employ review prompts and they track usage data. Based on this alone, you’ll have to see if users are interested in your app, if they’re using it out of boredom (nothing wrong with that), if they’re using it at particular times of the day, etc. Once you’ve started seeing patterns, you can improve your app and your in-app triggers to make them play more or share it with their friends for increased conversions.
Source: TechCrunch
Take this graph from Evernote as an example. Over three years, their app retention is more significant year over year. That is because of the nature of the app. It is natural to use the app more at first and then return to it occasionally. However, since you are filling your account’s storage gradually, you find yourself using it more and more. So they end up with a “smile graph” and a negative churn. We should all be so lucky!
11. The Most Important Cohorts In Cohort Analysis
Source: Cohort Culture
Your cohorts will vary depending on the type of business you are running. For SaaS, for example, you are tracking things like:
MRR (Monthly Recurring Revenue). New user acquisition costs add up. Retaining more customers with a higher lifetime value is always better than trying to go for smaller clients with shorter lifespans. Once you understand how much you earn per month vs. how much you burn, you can make plans and predictions for your products, services, and business.
VTCR (Visitor-To-Trial Conversion Rate). It is the classic Act element from the RACE framework. The bigger the number of visitors (Reach) and the higher your Conversion Rate at this step, the more users you’ll have signed up for your free trial. Usually, the next phase in the funnel is transforming those trial users into recurring revenue clients.
TTPCR (Trial-To-Paid Conversion Rate). Once the trial is over, you’ll want to see how many of those users are happy enough with your product/service to want to pay you every month. It is key here to start talking and listening to your customers as early as possible so you can get a feel for their pain points and help them accordingly.
MUV (Monthly Unique Visitors). You cannot have 1 million new clients a month without having at least 1 million new website visitors first (unless you somehow convert users outside of your site to some referral system). When you plan for your business, once you go back from the MRR, you’ll end up at MUV. Not only quantity is important here, but also the quality of that traffic – a better lead is worth more than two bad ones.
Since SaaS is a different beast than a regular business, you might want to track your metrics in a dashboard similar to this one:
Source: WPEngine
But going back to cohorts themselves, you’ll want to track things like:
Users by the week or month when they signed up(you can get a feel for particular periods of the year when signups are higher than other periods)
Users by traffic source(this will help you understand which channel is the best for user acquisition in terms of quality and cost)
Time first activated(when they first engaged with your website meaningfully – registered for the newsletter/webinar/demo, began a free trial, etc.)
Usage frequency/intensity(based on this, you’ll think of ways to reward premium users or reduce the free trial limits)
User entry mode(were users referred to the system, or did they sign up on their own?)
These help you gain a better understanding of your users’ motivations. You can see if they signed up on their own, if there are certain times when people sign up, or if individual sources convert better than others. Once you’ve decided to track all these, it’s time to move on to step 2: use the data to make decisions about your website.
No matter what you sell or your business model, you rely on your users to provide you with data you can work with. You can then implement new triggers, optimize signup forms, and provide a better experience based on location, time of day, traffic channel, etc. All this – to optimize your Conversion Rate.
While Google Analytics recently added Cohort Analysis to its first package, it’s pretty limited now. Not only that but since it’s part of a more extensive analytics package, it’s hard to give you a complete and comprehensive experience. Therefore, we’ve assembled three apps we feel would help you more with your Cohort Analysis.
12.1 ChartMogul
Source: ChartMogul
Focusing on your SaaS business, ChartMogul integrates with Stripe, PayPal, Braintree, Chargify, and Recurly. This gives it access to your payment data to build custom recurring revenue reports.
Based on this data, it calculates your Monthly Recurring Revenue, Churn Rate, Customer Lifetime Value, and much more. Moreover, since it is your data, you can be sure the created dashboards will always be unique to your business. You will not have to adapt to other apps’ ways of showing you insights; ChartMogul adapts to you.
Cohort Analysis is much more visible here, emphasizing what’s driving your business forward and what’s holding you back. It doesn’t hurt that the overall graphical interface is better than Google Analytics.
12.2 RJMetrics
Source: RJMetrics
This allows you to connect the currently used apps to run and analyze your business to give you better insights. This helps you answer crucial questions like “Which of my ad channels has the highest ROI?”, “How many subscribers upgrade, downgrade, or churn [in a specified period]?” or “What’s the optimal price point for my products?”.
With RJMetrics, you get to define how your metrics are calculated. This means that no longer are you restricted to the default ways of measurement. If your revenue model is different for your business, that is great. Just define that as you see fit, and you are ready to go with the correct data.
RJMetrics is not meant to be a replacement for Google Analytics. In fact, it connects to Google AdWords, Trello, Stripe, Facebook Ads, Salesforce, and a lot more. They all work together seamlessly in RJMetrics’ dashboards.
12.3 Woopra
Source: Woopra
Initially just a basic analytics package, Woopra has come a long way since its launch. It now focuses on Real Time Customer Activity, whether your website, app, or both.
It builds comprehensive profiles for each one of your users. They are anonymous until they give you an email address or a phone number. After that, each action and interaction with your business becomes data in Woopra.
Based on your users’ behavior, build segments and analyze cohorts. Go further and use that data in your Funnel Reports, showing you where users drop off and their conversion journey.
Since it connects to other apps like Box, Qualaroo, MailChimp, SendGrid, Slack, and HubSpot, your data suddenly becomes actionable and you can send personalized messages and notifications to your users through those channels—time to say goodbye to the exact generic words for all your visitors.
13. Final Tips And Tricks
Define your cohorts early on. Once you have key actions you want your users to take (sign up for the newsletter, buy in-game items, etc.), you can start defining your primary cohorts. Since you’ll be doing this at the beginning, you’ll better understand what’s going on with your business. Be patient and look at the most important actions first. Along the way, you can define secondary cohorts and even combine critical actions to build new ones. But don’t get too complicated at first.
Pay attention to the right metrics for your business. Every business is unique. Even stores that sell the same type of sports equipment (for example) have different customers, locations, and prices. The cohorts that are used for one business may not apply to yours. Figure out what makes you unique and define your cohorts so that you can provide a great user experience.
Don’t be afraid of paid apps for Cohort Analysis. We’ve mentioned a few apps in the previous chapter that can help you with your Cohort Analysis. Even though Google Analytics is free and does provide this type of analysis, it is not its main focus. Therefore, it is harder for it to compete with specialized apps that do just one thing much better. Since most offer a free trial, there’s no risk of trying them out. You might find that you are less frustrated by free Cohort Analysis apps, and you get great insights from these paid ones.
Build upon your Customer Personas. Plan your key user actions according to your Customer Personas. You can place your Call To Action at the middle of the page all you want, but if your users are mostly scanners, they will only glance at your text and never pay attention to all of it. The same goes for apps, games, and websites. If you are not focusing your efforts on understanding your users and their behavior, you are missing out. Use a couple of customer personas and cohort analyses to get an overview of what’s working and what needs to be improved in your business.
Use the Conversion Funnel together with Cohort Analysis. The Conversion Funnel is not obsolete; it is just incomplete. It is definitely not broken, but it needs to adapt to the new digital marketing scenario. One where you are looking at a lot more data than before. A scenario where you can customize and improve your users’ experience, based on the data that they provide to you. Improve your existing Conversion Funnel by adding another layer of Cohort Analysis on top of it. You’ll be surprised and delighted by the results if everything goes according to plan.
You’ve spent a lot of time and money building a website. But do you know if the site architecture and design are giving you the biggest bang for your buck and getting visitors to take actions that lead to conversion?
In the good old days, you had to gather (and pay) groups of people and sit in a room all day to watch them click around your website. Focus groups are time-consuming and expensive. Moreover, the results might not be representative or accurate because of the small sample size and observed user behavior changes.
Nowadays, you can use heatmaps to find out if your visitors are clicking on calls-to-action you want them to click and be able to tweak your copy and layout in real-time to optimize conversion.
This article will explore how heatmaps can help us increase conversion.
What is a web heatmap in the context of design and conversion?
A heat map is a form of visual analytics. It’s a two-dimensional visual representation of data in which colors represent values.
In website design, heatmaps show how visitors interact with the information and graphic elements displayed on a web page and provide insight into how layout and user experience design impact users’ actions and, thereby, conversion.
While analyzing numbers and data can only tell you which pages are underperforming, visual analytics in the form of heatmaps can show you which element(s) on a page needs adjustment so you can maximize its performance.
Heatmaps can be used to identify false CTAs – elements that appear to be clickable but aren’t. They can create a frustrating user experience and impact conversion. Image source from Conversion Sciences.
How are heatmaps generated for a webpage?
Most heatmaps are created using click-tracking software that translates where a user places the cursor and presses the mouse button into a 2-dimension color-coded visual.
While there are two kinds of tracking – eye-tracking and mouse-tracking – the latter is more widely used because you can get a much larger sample size at a fraction of the cost of the former.
There are a few types of heatmaps designed to track different kinds of data and types of interaction:
Mouse-tracking Heatmap shows how users read and navigate a page. Most of the mouse movement heatmaps also indicate how many visitors hover over a particular page area so you can see which part commands the most attention.
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Example of a mouse-movement heat map. Most movement is recorded at the top of the page, indicating that content on the left side above the fold commands the most attention from visitors.
Scroll Map shows the user scroll and where they abandon the page. As a result, it can provide insight into how to adjust the length of your content, and where to place critical calls-to-action, to maximize the effectiveness of your web pages.
Example of a scroll map. The red area indicates that all visitors have seen the content, and as it progresses from orange to blue down the page, more and more visitors leave the page.
Click Map shows where visitors are clicking so you can weed out distracting links and direct attention to the calls to action critical to conversion.
Eye-Tracking Heat Map shows what visitors are looking at on your website. It’s more complex to set up and more expensive to run the tests due to the technology and software involved, and it’d be conducted like a focus group.
Example of an eye-tracking heat map. Image source from Kissmetrics.
Why use Heatmaps?
You can learn a lot about user behaviors by studying heatmaps: what users focus on most, how they react to your calls-to-action, and whether they’re navigating the website the way you intend them to.
Heatmap website conversion provides real-life data based on your ideal customers, the type of products or services you offer, the various design and text elements, and how they interact with each other on your website.
Instead of speculating how a specific user experience design or graphic layout would work for your website, you can test and tweak it in real-time to maximize your results.
Besides the wealth of website heatmap data they provide, most are incredibly cheap to create.
In the past, to obtain the breadth and depth of data provided by most heatmaps, you’d have to gather many people and spend a sizable budget on focus groups.
Even then, you’d have a limited number of data points, and the data could still be inaccurate because focus group participants might modify their behaviors because they are “under observation.”
Nowadays, you can use website heatmaps to gather data from a large sample of users without leaving the comfort of your office chair.
The data is more accurate, representing many users most likely to be your ideal clients or customers interacting with your website in their “natural” environment.
The data gathered can inform the design and development of your website, so you can adjust the graphic layout and user experience to increase conversion.
Heatmaps help improve the user experience, which leads to higher conversion!
When you put a call-to-action on your website, the goal is for the visitors to click on the button (e.g., to subscribe, add to cart, or checkout.)
How do you know your website structure and page design are accomplishing the goal?
Heatmaps can provide the answers to these critical questions regarding the user experience that affect conversion:
Can visitors quickly locate the call-to-action (CTA)?
Is the instruction on the page explicit, so visitors are moving through the user journey that leads to sales and conversion?
Are there elements that look clickable but, in fact, static? If users try to click on those elements, do they get frustrated and leave your site?
Are there elements on a page distracting visitors from your intended CTA so that instead of taking the necessary action they navigate away from the page?
In this case study, Softmedia identifies distracting elements on pages: The left pair of heat map images shows that a “Do not click here” button distracts visitors from clicking the “request a quote” button. The right pair of images shows visitor clicks on the contact page, where a video demo distracted visitors from contacting the company—removing improved conversions for each page. Image source from Crazy Egg.
Studying heatmaps generated for your website can show you areas on a page that receives the most attention and develop the most actions so you can validate if the website structure and page design are optimizing conversion rate.
8 Ways to Use Heat Map To Increase Conversion
The extensive qualitative and quantitative data provided by different heatmaps can give us beneficial information to increase sales and boost conversion rate on a website by showing us if visitors are following the call-to-action we want them to take.
Here are 8 Ways to Increase Conversion by Using Heatmaps and understanding how to optimize your website structure and design:
1. Gauge effectiveness of CTA
A call-to-action is as good as the number of people who click on it. A click map can show you where visitors click on a webpage and help you assess the effectiveness of a CTA.
Combining the A/B split test with a click map can give you quantitative insight to help maximize various user experience elements, such as placement of CTA, copy of the CTA button or text, and CTA button design to optimize conversion rate.
2. Understand how visitors react to content
The user clicking precedes not all conversions on a CTA. For E.g. someone might read some copy about a sale and go on to browse your products on the same page. They did not have to click on anything, but the copy achieved the goal.
To get a sense of how visitors react to content, you can use a mouse-tracking map to observe where cursors stop and deduce what content is interesting to your visitors.
This mouse-tracking map shows the elements that attract visitors’ attention.
3. Optimize placement of CTA
Eye-tracking, Mouse-tracking, and Click maps can help identify areas your visitors tend to direct their gaze or hover their mouse over. These are the areas that command their attention either because of how we read (left to right, top to bottom in most western cultures) or the page layout.
According to this case study, people from English-speaking cultures almost always browse in an F-shaped pattern that heavily favors the left side of the screen.
These areas on a page would be an excellent place to put your conversion-focused text and calls to action to maximize their effectiveness.
Heatmaps shows that people from English-speaking cultures read in F-shape pattern. Image source from Kissmetrics.
In this case study, Dennis Publishing determined from eye-tracking heat map study that visitors pay much attention to the left-hand column of the site. As a result, they shifted their Google ad to the left pane site-wide. As a result, CTR has increased by 44%, and RPM (revenue per 1000 ad impressions) increased by 48%.
Eye-tracking heat map provides information that results in a 44% CTR. Image source from VWO.
4. Streamline page design
Are there any “dead weights” on your web pages contributing nothing to improving the user experience or conversion rate?
To find out, you can use mouse-tracking maps and click maps to identify content and elements that receive little attention.
At best, they’re not helpful to your visitors, and at worst, they distract them from calls-to-action that lead to conversion.
You can remove elements that are not getting attention based on the results from heatmaps. You can also consider replacing them with other content and observing the results closely to optimize your page.
In this case study, with the help of a heat map, Pair realized the navigation bar was distracting visitors from clicking on the conversion button to download the app.
By hiding social share buttons, navigation bar, and the “download for free” text, the company could focus users’ attention on the primary CTA and increase conversion by 25%.
5. Reduce cart abandonment and increase shopping cart conversion
In this case study, “The North Face” found out from a heat map study that visitors got distracted by a banner on the shopping cart page. Instead of continuing to checkout, many potential buyers clicked on the banner and got taken off the checkout path. By adjusting the placement of the checkout button, The North Face increased click-through to the checkout page by 21%.
Visitors interacted more with the checkout button when it was moved above the banner (B), with a 21% increase in clicks—image source from Conversion Sciences.
Use click maps to find where your visitors click on the shopping cart page.
What were they clicking on if they did not navigate the checkout page?
Can any of those elements be repositioned or eliminated so more attention can be given to the checkout button?
Were they able to quickly locate the checkout button, or had the mouse been all over the place to search for it?
Looking at the mouse-tracking heatmaps to see which part of the page commands the most attention can give clues on where to put your checkout call-to-action.
6. Optimize Content Using Heatmaps
Even though most Internet users are savvy enough to scroll and therefore “the fold” is no longer a massive factor in page design, studies of scroll maps show that it still impacts whether your content is being seen.
Use information from scroll maps to understand where your visitors tend to abandon pages. See if your calls-to-action are placed above the point where most users leave the pages and adjust page length for maximum effectiveness.
Here are some stats for you:
Web users spend 80% of their time looking at information above the page fold (meaning, the part of the webpage that’s visible when users first land there). Although users do scroll, they allocate only 20% of their attention below the fold.
Users spend 69% of their time looking at the left half of the webpage and 30% viewing the right half.
You can also use click maps to compare visitors’ responsiveness to CTAs along the length of a page to determine optimal placement.
While giving visitors the chance to consume your content and build trust before you ask for their emails, you also want to make sure the scroll box shows up for most of them before they navigate away from your site.
Understanding where visitors tend to abandon a page can help you determine the placement for your lead capturing Opt-in box on your website and increase your opt-in rate.
A scroll map can identify where visitors tend to leave a page and help inform the placement of calls to action.
7. Replace “dead ends” with CTA
When visitors get to the end of a page, are they clicking through to another page on your website?
If not, you have a “dead end” on your hand. Not only does this create a poor user experience, but you’re also missing out on an opportunity to further connect with or engage users.
A click map can help you identify these dead ends so you can add a relevant call-to-action to increase the effectiveness of your content.
8. Get more out of your images
By combining A/B tests with heat map tracking, you can test the effectiveness of various images on your website and see how they affect visitors’ interaction with your content and calls to action.
The direction of eye gaze has been found to impact conversion rate by directing the users’ attention to text and CTAs.
In this case study, more attention is commanded by the text and call-to-action when the baby’s gaze is directed toward that area on the page.
Text and CTA were not getting much attention when the baby’s gaze was facing front. Image source from Kissmetrics.Text and CTA command more attention when the baby’s gaze is directed toward the area on the page. Image source from Kissmetrics.
You can use various web analytics tools to generate heatmaps, gain insights into how users interact with your website and understand how you can maximize your conversion by maximizing page layout, content length, calls-to-action, etc.
Even Google Analytics got in on the action as it can monitor visitor behavior, determine how long visitors spend on a section of your content, identify navigational gaps, and more.
GA is just one of the many heat map tools on the market. So when choosing one, consider how the rest of the features work together to help increase your website’s conversion rate.
Also, please consider the variety of visitor data a website heatmap tool generates, whether it addresses mobile and desktop usage, and the types of reporting available.
But compared to other analytics tools, TruConversionoffers an all-in-one analytic and feedback application that helps you understand your visitors and how they interact with your website to increase conversion, get your hands on .
The reason why people hire a ghostwriter is to publish something on their blog or social media.
By publishing and taking ownership of the content that they did not write, they can exert their influence within their industry.
There is nothing wrong with this practice as long as the site owners are in agreement with the ghostwriter. That is how these writers operate anyway.
Besides, people who hire a ghostwriter are non-writers or are too busy to do the writing themselves.
Instead of learning how to write or squeeze in time in their busy schedule to write, it is much more convenient to hire a ghostwriter to achieve the purpose of gaining influence.
However…
[clickToTweet tweet=”If you are a writer, should you hire a ghostwriter of your own?” quote=”If you are a writer, should you hire a ghostwriter of your own?”]
The answer to this possibly complicated question is…YES, IT’S OKAY.
For years, I have worked my way up by writing for different clients.
I am far from being a publishing empire, but I have built a decent business with my content writing services.
I busted my ass writing content ranging from different topics for hours. I even had to work during the weekends to finish my projects!
Along the way, I got writer fatigue. I just do not feel writing on some days because of the volume of written content I have churned out the past weeks.
Like a worn out tire, I just needed to take a break that, unfortunately, I cannot afford.
Part of it was my fault — I took on jobs more than I could handle. The load was manageable the first few days, but it became too burdensome as the days went by.
As writers, it is inexcusable if you cannot produce quality articles for your clients. You cannot delay the order you promised to deliver on a certain date.
Your performance is your reputation.
The kind of content that you deliver on time is your calling card as a writer.
As a writer who has amassed lots of orders throughout the years, I found myself missing out on those deadlines. I continue to struggle getting out from my slump, which only delays the time for me to finish the article orders.
Finally, I have decided to contemplate on hiring a ghostwriter to solve my problem.
It took me quite a while to hire a ghostwriter. Mostly because I was afraid of them.
Part of my concern is the possibility of the ghostwriter to get the orders wrong. They might not approach the topic in such a way that I would approach it.
However, the time lost in delaying the orders has proven too much for me. I do not want to further disappoint the clients, so to hire a ghostwriter was a drastic measure that I had to take.
Much of the weight has been lifted from me. I was able to learn how to delegate and manage the content on the fly without typing a word.
Without knowing it, I was able to carry on my other projects and start writing again.
Takeaways
First, you should never take writing jobs that you can finish.
You need to know your limits and learn what you can and can’t do.
My reason for taking the writing jobs that I did was due to financial reasons, but that is no excuse for taking more jobs as humanly possible, which meant compromising my current projects.
The second and most important thing, it is definitely okay for writers to hire ghostwriters.
As mentioned, it is how ghostwriters operate. They are perfectly fine with giving away their content and have someone else own it.
More importantly, it is for your own piece of mind.
Writers are human, too. While we pride ourselves in producing grammatically correct, SEO friendly, and actionable content on a consistent basis, there will be times when we won’t be able to meet those standards, no matter how great we are.
Having a ghostwriter at your disposal eases the stress that comes in with having different clients. You can delegate the tasks so you can get more things done.
Best of all, you can collaborate with the articles that you have to send over to your clients.
Just to clarify, ghostwriting is not necessarily getting them to write for you and just sending the content to the clients. As writers, you cannot afford to cede the writing duties solely to the ghostwriter.
To ensure that you still have an imprint to the content written by the ghostwriter, you need to review and revise the content as you see fit.
Therefore, by establishing a more collaborative environment between you and ghostwriter, you can still take ownership of the articles you will send to clients.
Now, I turn the tables to you:
What are your thoughts about writers hiring ghostwriting to help write for your projects?
