How to Create a Conversion Optimization Strategy that Gets Results

Editor's Notes

• #3: Ecommerce-focus
• #4: Conversion rate dissatisfaction is growing year over year. Companies are realizing that their conversion rate needs to improve.
• #5: But it’s getting harder to achieve conversion rate improvement. Companies who say their conversion rate has improved decreased 5% in one year. It’s getting harder for many companies to make progress because they’re doing it wrong.
• #7: We know that Conversion Optimization works. At WiderFunnel, our average conversion rate lift is 23% for ecommerce and 49% for lead gen. I’m going to show you how to get there with the 5 step conversion optimization strategy.
• #8: But before we get into the examples and framework, I want to correct misconceptions about Conversion Optimization.
• #9: Conversion Optimization is not just about getting advice. There are a lot of consultants willing to hand out advice about how your website and landing pages should be handled. Even if the consultant has run a few tests, without the trend-spotting that can *only* come from thousands of test results, their advice can be shallow. Ask yourself how much of their advice has been tested. If not, where is it coming from? Your best advice will come from conversion strategists who do the most testing (like we do at WiderFunnel, for example) “ Best Practices ” advice alone also ignores the context of your unique business situation.
• #10: Some consultants will tell you that you should always use green buttons maybe because they’ve seen a single test where a green button won.
• #11: Others will tell you that red beats green.
• #12: I can point to other blog posts that say you should always use orange buttons.
• #13: As you can see from just some of the buttons on WiderFunnel’s winning tests, the best buttons change dramatically based on the situation.
• #14: The false promise of multivariate testing is that putting any ideas into a complex tool will give brilliant results. Tool vendors have to sell you on the latest whiz-bang features so you’ll pay high monthly subscriptions. But, the dirty little secret of CRO is that A/B/n testing will usually give the best results. By the way, we’re seeing this play out again with the promise of mass personalization and big data. Without a strategy, the tools won’t deliver.
• #15: MVT was the technology that would increase everyone’s conversion rates. But this is what most companies ended up with. Tests that run forever and never achieve statistical significance. In six months of testing, would you rather run one MVT test with no significance or 6 strategically-planned A/B tests with significant conversion rate lift?
• #18: Usability testing can only tell you whether a person has the skill to do what you tell them to do. It doesn’t test how to persuade them to *want* to do it. The Hawthorne Effect is well a researched phenomena that shows artificial situations are not predictors of real-world behaviour. The Observer Effect is also at play. Observers can’t help but influence the results.
• #19: So, what is conversion optimization really, then? It’s the intersection of three things…
• #22: … Let ’ s think about how this relates to your website
• #25: This test didn’t just focus on usability or only on marketing. Both are needed to get this result.
• #26: Plus, they’re developing marketing insights from their conversion strategy.
• #28: Today I ’ m going to show you some examples and principles that have gotten these results for clients in all industries. The reason I ’ m showing this is that the frameworks I ’ ll show you are working in all types of businesses. And we ’ re seeing a lot of benefit from the cross industry view. Principles from our B2B and lead gen testing are being proven to work in our e-commerce clients and vice versa.
• #32: At WiderFunnel, we run workshops to help our clients’ understand how their business goals, website goals, unique value proposition and target audience personas work together.
• #34: The PIE Framework helps you prioritize your conversion optimization opportunities.
• #35: Since we’re in Florida, I thought this mnemonic would be helpful. When you need to remember which page to test first, just think of a beautiful Florida key lime pie.
• #36: Here’s how the PIE Framework works.
• #52: Companies with a structured approach to conversion optimization are twice as likely to have seen a large increase in sales as those without a structured approach.
• #54: Are you still stuck in Testing 1.0?