A while ago, I stumbled upon a tweet that stated you miss a huge opportunity when you don’t ask your site visitors why they did not buy now. You could learn why they hesitate, what might be wrong on your site or offer.
They used a single Exit-Intent Popup; you know those little buggers when you leave the page, and showed a quick questionnaire with five options and asked the visitor why they are not taking action.
And I was like, “wow, that great, have to test that.”
So, I quickly whipped up a small embed script that can be integrated into my sites and backed by a FeedLetter form. Now I could easily configure the options and other texts in one place without any hassle.
Once the tech was done, I set up the experiment on two sites; FeedLetter and ZENmix.
Setup
The technical stuff is straightforward. I set up a FeedLetter Onetime Poll form, copied a tiny embed snippet, and added it to the pages where I wanted feedback.
The Exit Intent popup uses the standard 2-step FeedLetter method to reduce friction and get responses.
When visitors leave the FeedLetter front page, they’ll see this pop up on a desktop. Mobiles don’t work (yet).
When the visitor votes, they’re encouraged in a second screen to leave a comment and, if they want a reply, their email address—the followup text changes based on the chosen option of step 1.
The experiments started in mid-May (around 11th), and once I noticed I got results, I kept them running.
Findings
The hard numbers are a bit blurry as I did not track exact times and visitors, etc. My main intention was to get actual comments from the visitors.
Till today, July 7th, 2021, I got 40 votes on ZENmix and 37 on FeedLetter. Each got 8 comments.
Not much but enough insights to see patterns and improve things.
The insights were priceless.
Site Design Matters
The first popup on FeedLetter had the option “Looks too cheap,” and that was actually the most voted one. Definitely a sign of improving the page.
As a result, I did revamp parts of the front page and completely revamped the app to have a pleasant design and still being minimal and clean.
Once that was finished, I made a new popup version and split the “Looks too cheap” option into two, “Price is too cheap” “Design sucks.”
Result: Nobody voted on them again. I count that as a success.
Note on design: You don’t need something fancy, but it must fit what you offer. If you sell high-priced goods, the site design must look like that. If you sell cheap stuff, it must look for selling cheap stuff.
You won’t go to Walmarts and expect an Armani shop and vice versa.
Show The Value & Offer Better
Another finding on both sites was that the visitor did not see the value of the offer or did not understand or find what they will get.
This led me to redo the frontage of FeedLetter and show more how the tools helps newsletter creators and even people without newsletter on their sites and ebooks and what it has to offer.
It is still not perfect, but nothing is perfect in life. After the redo, the “I don’t see the value” votes dropped to 1. So, it seems it did help, and that enough.
People Don’t Read Or Look
As a side effect of those, I realized that people have no patience and don’t even read what you write, overlook information, and then complain it’s not there.
Like on ZENmix, I got many votes on “I don’t know what I’ll get,” but none of them told me what’s missing in the follow-up question.
Or on FeedLetter, where one comment was “don’t know what it costs” while not seeing the pricing link in the top navigation.
But it’s real even when I don’t understand it, so I started to repeat important info and place links in areas where people are trained to expect them.
Price Are Too High And What Not To Do
That is a common complaint on both sites, and had I not learned something about pricing, I’d defiantly fall into the “lower my prices trap.” But lowering prices is not the right choice for many situations.
There will always be people complaining about prices, and they will almost never buy if you lower the price anyways. It’s rather that you might attract the wrong audience at all.
For example, on ZENmix, I sell a bundle of meditation music tracks that customers can use commercially, like for guided meditations or their YouTube channel. People buying those use them in a commercial context to make money.
The bundled content changed over time, but the lowest was 12 tracks for $19. Yet, some people still complained and stated 1 GBP or $5 as an acceptable price. However, they didn’t say if for a single track or the whole bundle.
It made me realize that I should not listen to those as long as sales still keep coming in. It’s better just to do price tests and lower prices again if sales drop.
Moreover, it showed me that the sites attract not the ideal audience, and I have to change something. For example, a FeedLetter user replied with “price is too expensive” and as he left contact details, I could check how long he was on board.
He already skipped the early supporter price at $29 a year, the $39 after that, and I even offer parity support. Nope, didn’t take the chance, but now prices are too high, and it’s just a hobby for him.
Don’t get me wrong that is fine. It simply helped me realize that my price increase before was the right choice, and some of the users are the wrong audience.
I kept the pricing and gained 3 new customers with it and 2 extra one where we make a service trade.
Conclusion
Adding the exit intent question was a big win for me. Even with the few replies, I got enough insights to improve the sites and services, and now they are starting to pay off.
The only downside is that you need a certain amount of traffic as the response rate is pretty low. But that’s always like that- the mob stays quiet.
I added it on Spreadsheet2Site too, but that site gets too little traffic, and I haven’t gotten a single vote yet. So, keep that in mind when you implement it for yourself.
But you definitely should add this to your site and get more insights into your users. So get started with FeedLetter and ping me to help you set up the still hidden exit intent feature.