Don’t Avoid Questions & Concerns. Address Them!

Quick Takeaway: Addressing customer questions and concerns head-on in your landing page is the easiest way to assuage their fear and help them convert.

Vulnerabilities. Concerns. Fears. These are not topics we often want to discuss publicly — especially when it comes to business. Generally speaking, uncomfortable questions are avoided in hopes they are never asked. The problem with avoiding questions is that doing so can ostracize customers, leave them unsure about their decisions, and ultimately cause them to buy elsewhere.

In 2010, researcher Brené Brown gave a TED talk in Houston about vulnerability. She said, “Vulnerability is the birthplace of innovation, creativity and change.”

In the case of web design, vulnerability is the heart of your customers’ questions and concerns. While you don’t need to bare your soul on your landing page, it is essential to address your customer’s questions and concerns head-on.

Any time you can assuage a fear directly is one less barrier keeping your visitors from converting.

How to Identify Your Customer’s Questions and Concerns

man at interview — There are a variety of ways to conduct an interview, the most common of which are in person, over the phone, and through an online survey.

Interview Customers

Moz has a fabulous Whiteboard Friday that breaks down how to interview customers about their objections in easy to follow steps. We summarized the quick takeaways below and added some additional insights based on our own user testing experience and continuing education. You can also watch the video here.

Know When and Where to Get Feedback

Polling and interviewing is expensive in time and resources. It’s important to start where you have the most to gain — and with those who will reliably give you feedback.

This ‘reliable’ group is generally those at the end of your sales funnel. Start by polling these individuals and then work towards the front of your sales funnel as you seek to gain additional insight.

For example, on your check out page have a poll ask: What’s holding you back from buying right now? Give the user the opportunity to write what trouble they are facing.

Gathering data on those last barriers between losing a lead and making a conversion offers a much higher return on investment than getting feedback on your homepage. This is because you’ll be able to eliminate the identified barriers and likely begin seeing a higher conversion rate relatively fast.

Ideally, you want 200-250 results to get enough data to gain meaningful insights on what needs to change versus varying individual preference.

Know Who to Ask

If you have the opportunity to conduct surveys or live interviews some users are easier to recruit than others. It also helps to have on the ready an incentive the users will find valuable — but will not be a burden on your business.

Users you can contact are generally:

People who have converted. (These people can be recruited from your existing users with banners on your site or an email newsletter.)
People who are not familiar with your product or service. (Facebook groups related to your product or service are a good place to find people in this group.)
People who have tried your product or service, but decided against it. (For example, these people could include: people who put your item in their shopping cart, but abandoned it.)

Getting feedback from people that bounced or didn’t buy is, of course, harder. We recommend always starting with groups one and two first.

getting coffee — It’s essential to avoid creating bias when you’re conducting an interview. An easily avoidable, yet unfortunately common, way bias is created is by meeting with the interviewee on your turf. Rather, you want to meet with them in a neutral environment — like a coffee shop — where they are more at ease and likely to give you honest feedback.

Avoid Bias while Conducting Interviews

Interviews can be conducted in several different ways. The most common are in person, remotely, and over the phone. Regardless of the how, remember your questions can easily give you bad data if you create bais with your wording. Bad moderation creates bad data. Use the following tips to avoid creating bias:

Stay away from questions that ask about how the users feel.
Don’t use leading questions like, “Does this new checkout process make it easier to buy more quickly.”
Have reviewers focus on a small, limited task. This way you can see what problems they’re having in action.
Consider giving the user a prepaid visa card. Then, ask them to find and purchase an item with specifics parameters.

If you are using remote testing, reviewers will describe their experience unmoderated. If you’re able to do an in-person meeting, watch how they complete the requested task and take notes. Just be sure to let them complete the task without any interruption. And last, but not least, try to avoid having interviews at your place of business. This can create unnatural bias. Rather, conduct the interview at a neutral location, such as a coffee house.

Ask About Objections – Without Leading an Answer

Questions will often need to be different from group to group, but ultimately the goal is the same — find out what objections individuals faced.

The easiest place to start is to poll recent customers. Offer an incentive that is valuable to the user, but easy for you to give away.

Pro Tip: Be aware of what you are offering in return for their time and input. X% off your next purchase is not always helpful since it requires the user to take time to complete your poll and spend their money. A free item or a gift card is generally more valuable.

Non-leading questions might include:

Your Email (to claim the thank you gift)
What can you tell us about yourself?
How many sites did you look at for XYZ before buying from us? Which ones?
What made you choose our site?
What was the one thing that nearly stopped you from buying?
How did you choose which product to buy? What matters?
What kind of doubts and hesitations did you have before completing the purchase?
What questions did you have that you couldn't find answers to?
What was the hardest part about finding the right product to buy on our site?

Use a professional survey tool like Typeform or Survey Monkey so you can more easily gather data and make your process re-usable.

Analyze Customer & Competitor Reviews

woman reviewing data — Collecting the data is only part of the process. You then need to analyze it, so you can take action. While reviewing the responses, you want to look for common themes and questions. These are the best place to start optimizing your landing pages.

Another way to discover customer concerns is by reading what customers are actually saying about you — and your competitors. For example, you may see your customers feel the product they received was not what they expected. In this case, your site may benefit from updating your product description.

If you see your competitor’s customers are consistently upset with a specific feature and your product solves this issue, that information is gold! It sets you apart. Be sure to highlight how your product specifically solves this issue within your product description.

How to Answer Your Customer’s Questions and Concerns

man and dog outside — When you address customer questions and concerns, you don’t have to say, “We know you’re worried about XYZ.” Rather, you can simply state and/or show visually how your product or service solves the concern in question. This is a great way to mitigate potential issues before the even arise.

If someone asks you a question in Spanish chances are they’re hoping for an answer in Spanish. We all like communicating in a language we understand. This truth extends beyond English, French, and Chinese. It includes dialect and vernacular.

We all have our own ways of thinking about things and describing things. During the interview process and while reading customer reviews, it’s important to note how people are talking about your product or service. What specific terms and phrases are they using?

Those terms and phrases are a goldmine! By incorporating them into your landing page update, you’ll be able to speak directly to your customer base.

Additionally, you want to look at the objections being raised and consider how you can address them. Are they unfounded? Perhaps you can display this through images and descriptive text — because you want your landing page to be as visually descriptive as possible.

Make positive, true statements about your value — that also counter barriers people have faced. Need inspiration? Look at Netflix. They offer savvy headline and descriptions that state why to choose Netflix, but at the same time address concerns about price, access, and canceling accounts.

As of June 2019, Netflix addresses its free-trial length (very clearly), where you can watch, what devices are supported, and how to avoid large cellular data fees.

Don’t copy them. Their sign-up page was built specifically to address their on-boarding process, but you can see their strategy. It’s very good.

How to Prove Your Product or Service’s Value

happy woman in office — While the endorsement of a close family member or friend is the best your company could ever get, a testimonial with a name and picture attached is a close second. When possible, be sure to add testimonials to your site with an attribution.

Facts and figures are nice. You’ll want to include them. But facts and figures don’t offer that human element of trust that you want to build with your customers. Reviews do.
Always strive to incorporate reviews or testimonials on your landing page. If possible, attribute them to an individual with a name and image. This type of human presence builds trust and brings validity to the facts you’re sharing.
Avoid carousels above the fold — and video backgrounds. You don’t want to distract the user from getting the information they need — or make the page unnecessarily longer to load.
Only use animation if helps tell the story.
Following the latest design trends doesn’t automatically increase your conversion rate. Solving user issues does.
Use your analytics to identify which devices and screen sizes your users are primarily struggling with. Dig deeper by looking at your revenue by device, time on page, and bounce rate. It may be there’s a bug or wonky functionality issue that’s holding a group of users back.
Above all, make the case for why your service or product matters. Make it clear. And make it easy to read — in both language and visuals that make sense to your customers.

Get Help Building a Landing Page that Converts

Wish your website had a better conversion rate? Our experienced marketing team can help. Partnering with us, we’ll help you identify objections your customers are facing and address any vulnerabilities you may be juggling to strengthen your web presence and increase your conversions.

Yes, I Want to Improve My Landing Pages!