Arduino’s New User Conversion Funnel— (CF #6)
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This week, I’m going to focus on the Transaction Conversion Funnel (CF#2). In particular, I’m going to screenshot and document the conversion funnel for 5 different Transaction Conversion Funnel products to highlight similarities, differences, and nuances that are key for variations of the Transaction Conversion Funnel.
Today, let’s look at the primary business model for the Transaction Conversion Funnel: Retail.
Amazon is the first example that likely comes to mind, because it’s the largest online retailer in the world. They’re also dominate in several other spaces that span different business model and conversion funnel types.
And while Amazon is world-class in retail, I’d rather highlight a specialty business that offers amazing tools and open source resources to build and teach Internet of Things (IoT) technology. Plus, it may not be on your radar.
Arduino is a pretty cool company. I remember hearing about them 10 or so years ago. They were making hardware (circuit boards, etc) that you could program with software to do various things like turning lights on and off via software so that you could design a shirt with blinking lights (that’s just one potential use case). Their focus was originally on teaching students how to code while using hardware to make it fun. Judging from their website’s progression, they have begun focusing more on IoT professionals and providing tools and technology that empower businesses to create real-world applications of hardware/software technology. Though their roots are still at the heart of their product.
If you are looking for a technical project to dig into some code and make something in the real world, you should check out Arduino. And if you have kids who love to code or you’re looking for them to learn to code, Arduino’s focus on STEAM education products (in addition to their founding story) is a great match for what you’re looking for.
Phase 1: Inbound
When you first land on Arduino’s website, this what you’ll see on a desktop / laptop.
What I like about this landing page is:
- The clean layout.
- The Navigation Bar at the top (with links to ‘Home’, ‘Store’, etc) gives me clear guidance.
- Images of hardware electronics
- Links to inform user what the product is (‘What is Arduino’, ‘Learn Arduino’) and what they can do with it (‘Star Wars-themed…’)
- Call To Action ‘Buy An Arduino’
It’s obvious that this page is intended to provide education to the user above all else, which makes sense.
Unlike Amazon which is a universal retailer that tries to keep basically everything in stock, Arduino is a specialized and technical product. You can’t use an Arduino without some work. In fact, when you purchase an Arduino, the least expensive thing is the purchase. You will likely wind up spending a lot of time learning, coding, and building.
So if you’re landing on Arduino, you are either familiar enough with their product that you can skip straight to the store with little friction (or land directly on a product page from a Google Search), OR you need to learn more to make use of the product.
My guess is that new users interact more with the educational pages on the page before converting for their first time, so Arduino has optimized their primary Landing Page for education to lead the user along the conversion funnel.
A quick note on the Inbound Channels for this Phase. While I could go look at Arduino’s social media engagement and use some tools to analyze their SEO, there’s a lot of ground to cover already, plus I won’t be able to get as deep a view into a company’s Inbound Channels since that data is typically non-public. I could learn about their email marketing campaigns by signing up my email for their campaign and then posting that experience — and when I dig deeper into email marketing, I will. For now, I’ll ignore the Inbound Channel and focus exclusively on the Landing Page itself.
Before we move on, I want to point out a lever that is common for all conversion funnels. Responsive Design is a design concept that enables the same website to show up differently when you’re using a desktop, tablet, or mobile device. In other words, the website will adapt to your screen size. While I haven’t talked about responsive design (and probably won’t for a bit), the grid layout of this page already implies that if you resize your browser or use a tablet / mobile device, then you will see a slightly different experience as below.
Most new products are built with responsive design at their heart and many with mobile or tablet being the primary way users interact. The device and responsive design on that device can have a material impact on conversion, so if you only build your website for one platform and ignore responsive design, then you likely have some meaningful conversion improvements to capture. Customizing the user experience based on the device commonly increases conversion rates and user satisfaction, and those are two of the main reasons responsive design is pretty much standard today for any web product.
Phase 2: Product & Education
As noted in Phase 1, the Landing Page focuses on user education of the product, tools, and what you could create, because the product is technical (hardware and software mainly targeted at engineers, hobbyists, and students) and intended for multiple use cases.
Let’s look at their ‘Store’ from the Nav Bar to better understand why user education is so prominent for Arduino’s Landing Page.
If you are looking at this page and have a clear understanding of the products by their name (without any additional Arduino info), you are likely their easiest user to convert. I would need more information.
When you hover your mouse over the product image, you are given the option ‘Add To Cart’, which is a really smart design choice, and one that I’d love to see more online retailers adopt. With that said, while there are some products where I’d LOVE ‘add to cart’ directly on the Product Search page, Arduino may be one of the few websites where I think that approach could result in a higher number of product returns since these are physical, technical products and the tech specs are more likely to be important.
As a Product Manager, I’d be curious to look at their product return rate, retention rate, and customer satisfaction for new users who added a product directly to their cart without looking at the product page vs new users who did look at the product page (this is a SQL query — albeit potentially complex with multiple queries required — if you’ve been tracking the events data properly). If I noticed a trend, I’d want to consider features that prevent the ‘Add To Cart’ from showing to logged out users who haven’t looked at the product’s page. This product change could be frustrating for new users who already know what they want to buy, so it would be good to run an A/B Experiment for changes to this part of the product, especially what I proposed.
One more note on Arduino’s Product Search / Selection page — the placement of what is displayed is dynamic. Later on I added something to the cart, then wanted to add another product to the cart. When I returned to the Product Search page, the Arduino MKR RGB Shield was the first item in the left-hand corner. I’m not sure what they use to customize this, but the fact that it is dynamic means that they’re already thinking about (if not fully executing) a personalized experience that adapts to how you engage with it — which is where products are headed (more on that another time).
When you click on a Product to learn more about it, you are taken to a Product page like below.
The Product Page itself has the key transaction data at the top of the page (Quantity and Add To Cart) — above the fold (ie no need to scroll down the page — borrowed from newspapers where you don’t need to flip the paper to see it).
Below the fold, you will find the Product’s ‘Overview’, ‘Tech Specs’, and ‘Documentation’. It’s a continuation of the typical product education such as the description / overview and technical specs (think about when you buy a laptop or something from Home Depot) with the additional technical-product staple of Documentation.
It’s likely that Arduino sees a lot of user engagement and activity with educational info about the product before a user progresses to Phase 3 to place an Item In Cart (I know I’d need to do a ton of research just to understand their products). After all, they’ve been around since 2005 (when their primary focus was creating educational tools for students) so they’ve learned and iterated along the way.
You also see the prominent spot of ‘Education’, ‘Resources’, Community’, and ‘Help’ in the Nav Bar. Many other retailers may not put such a prominent position for learning about the product — it’s not like you need on-going learning / training to operate a toaster or put shoes on. For such a technical product, having sufficient documentation to enable newcomers and experienced users to continually learn and grow is incredibly important. You may be buying a product today, but the product is intended for continuous use and changes. You can re-program your software to do different tasks with the same hardware. It’s a part of the fun of the product they offer.
Side note: As I’m writing this, I realize that I didn’t explicitly call out Product Search as a step in the conversion funnel, which it definitely is. I’ll need to think about whether this should be its own Phase or whether it fits within the Product & Education Phase. For now, I’ll include it in with Product & Education.
Phase 3: Item In Cart
When you click ‘Add To Cart’ and place an item in the cart, Arduino (like Amazon) adds the item to your shopping cart and adds a number to the icon in the upper right hand corner to represent the number of products in your cart. I added 1 product with 1 quantity, so we see 1 noted on the cart icon in the image below.
However, unlike Amazon, Arduino also displays a shopping cart drop-down showing what is in the cart now that you’ve added the item. See below. It disappears after a few seconds, so it is informative without being disruptive.
Additionally, when you add more products, you are shown all of the items in your shopping cart, and the number (in yellow) on top of the shopping bag icon updates based on the quantity of items in the cart.
While the Cart itself is important (especially since there doesn’t appear to be any way to remove an item from the cart once it’s been added WITHOUT going to the Cart), we’ll proceed as if we’re going to check out to continue the conversion funnel.
Phase 4: Account
Once you decide to ‘Checkout’ and click the button in the shopping cart drop-down (which you must click the cart icon to access), you are taken to the account page where you can login, create a new account, or login via Google (not seen in the screenshot).
I like the general layout, but I’d be curious to know why there isn’t a guest check-out feature. Perhaps not a lot of people used it. Maybe they weren’t good customers, and creating an account locked the user in more. The fact that guest users typically don’t validate their email address may make fraud more common, so Arduino is not allowing Guest Login to manage fraud risk. After 14 years, Arduino has likely iterated with a guest checkout and decided it wasn’t worthwhile for them. If I was joining the team, I’d definitely want to ask them to understand the history.
The Sign-up Page itself only asks for 4 data fields (Username, Email, Password, and Confirm Password). In addition, there are 5 additional items to consider — 4 are circles that are actually checkboxes (rather than radio buttons) and 1 is a checkbox making sure you aren’t a robot.
The circles rather than checkboxes are a little confusing for me. I’m used to seeing circles used for radio buttons, and when you have 4 options in a radio button pattern, you’re typically only able to select one since you’re choosing which of the 4 you’d like. Not whether you’re giving consent to individual items. The visual that each statement is within the same white box also makes me assume that on first glance. Then I read the words, and I realize that these are checkboxes. I’d want to experiment to see if people are selecting only one value because they aren’t aware of other options. Full Story (or another tool that allows you to see user’s activity) could also be informative.
The form validation is a nice and clean design with clear statements explaining what I need to fix. The fact that I can opt out of the data processing is interesting, but I don’t really understand the language being used, which may also contribute to less people opting in.
For instance, what is ‘processing of my personal data’? Is that what I provide you or is that additional data that you use from a third-party? Also, what’s ‘profiling’ mean since it’s used to further explain how the automated process happens.
Perhaps this language was added for GDPR, a set of laws past in the EU that governs how companies can use user data plus gives EU citizens more control over their personal data. There are big fines in place for violations, and Arduino may need to protect itself.
With that said, if you see that users are opting out at a high rate (and that’s not the behavior you’re looking for), check the language you are using (copy) and the design of the experience. There may an A/B Experiment that is worth running.
Once you create an account, you must then verify that you have access to the email by clicking a link an email they send. This is a common first step to help minimize fraud.
The email itself is fairly straightforward, and Arduino makes sure to add welcoming touches to their email by adding an encouraging image plus a list of ways to make the most of your account (not pictured). Every user touch point (page, email, etc) is an opportunity to either win or lose that user’s business.
Phase 5: Payment
Once you click the link to verify your email, you are taken directly to your cart. This likely requires that you signed-up while going through the checkout versus just signing up without anything in your shopping cart. This is a great step, and the potential dynamic nature of it likely helps improve Arduino’s conversion funnel by avoiding having to click another link to find your shopping cart.
Once you’re in the Checkout process, Arduino uses an accordion stack to guide you through the last 3 steps of the funnel — all on the same page. (Side note: It may make more sense to rename this phase to Checkout so that it can include payment, billing/shipping address, and shipping).
When you first land on the page, you see the option to select who is checking out, whether it’s me personally, for a business, or for a school. Each will likely result in different future offers, plus it allows the team to further segment users by their use types. A little further down, you input your billing address and either add a new shipping address or re-use the billing address. Typical options when shipping a physical product, though Arduino only has 1 line for address which means that apartment and suite numbers must fit on that line as well. If you checkout as a company or school, there are additional fields that display so that you can input the company or school’s info.
Quick note: I intentionally entered the wrong zip code, and Arduino didn’t show an error, so it appears that there isn’t address validation being done once you enter your shipping info and click continue. Perhaps it’s done at a later step.
As you continue through the experience, you will encounter Shipping Method where you’ll select how fast and expensive you’d like your order.
As you see below, the accordion stack is named for its shape and design — in that it mimics an accordion which can expand and compress. Each of the 3 sections of this checkout page expand when you inputting info into that step, and then compress once the info has been input so that you can progress through multiple steps all within the same page. There may be some specific tracking that you need to put in place (plus validation tests to make sure it’s firing correctly) since individual pages don’t represent each step.
Now that you’ve selected your shipping method, notice that the circles are radio buttons on this page rather than checkboxes like on the Sign-Up page — which is appropriate since you should only be able to select 1 shipping method. When click continue, you are sent to input your payment info, staying on the same page but guided to the 3rd and final step of this page as well the completion of the conversion funnel.
For payment options, it’s always a good idea to offer PayPal in addition to allowing the user to input their own card. The reason for this is security. If you only input your credit card in PayPal, then you can make purchases at multiple retailers without having to provide your actual credit/debit card or bank account number. So user conversions can increase by adding PayPal.
On the flip side, if users store their payment method in your platform, it will speed up future transactions since the user won’t have to login to their PayPal account to complete the transaction.
After you input your payment info, click the button to complete your order, and you’ll be taken to the Confirmation Page (assuming the credit card info checks out).
Phase 6: Conversion
While I would love to buy products so I could show you the conversion page screenshot and talk about what it offers, it’s not an economical decision when I’m just writing this down for a (currently) small audience. So please forgive me as I forgo this part of the funnel for these analyses — unless I’m actually in need of that product and then I’ll screenshot my transaction.
Conclusion
As you can see with the above breakdown, the Transaction Conversion Funnel can be implemented in different ways using different tools and designs. Arduino has created a thoughtful and clear conversion funnel that appears to reflect their learnings and iterations over the years. If you’re planning to build a technical product with a transaction conversion funnel, you’d do well to look at what Arduino has already built — you can learn a ton by seeing what others have already tried, though you won’t internalize those learnings until you get hands on yourself.
Tomorrow
I’m going to keep digging into the Transaction Conversion Funnel and look at another company in depth. I have a few in mind that I plan to narrow down, and I’m open to suggestions — so please add something in the comments.
Note 1: I wanted to originally create a Conversion Funnel that was specifically crafted for the company being broken down (for today it was Arduino), but it’s take a bit just to write all this down, so I’ll skip creating conversion funnels for each of these companies.
Note 2: I add notes throughout the article, because I plan on re-writing all of these articles at some point, once I’ve put down enough ideas and realized how many gaps the first 5 articles I wrote had. As you see today, I’ve already identified a few areas I need to clarify better with the Transaction Conversion Funnel.
If you see something that looks off or inconsistent, please let me know so that I can thing through the topic and figure out how it fits within the frameworks I’m attempting to outline.
Thanks for reading this article!
