In Austin, March is just another way of saying “SXSW season” – however, this year, there’s another conference that you might want to consider attending.
The first annual ConversionXL Live is taking place from March 11-13 in the hill country just outside of Austin. We like to think of this conference as a form of what SXSW used to be like – a small, intimate gathering of people looking to share ideas, make connections, and innovate.
Make no mistake – if you want to learn everything there is to know about conversion optimization in 2015, this is the conference you’ll want to attend.
This will be no ordinary conference – you’ll have easy access to one-on-one discussions with the speakers, presenters, and your peers in conversion rate optimization. Even better, it’s all-inclusive. With your ticket, you get:
Three days of brilliant seminars from the likes of Peep Laja, Yuan Wright, Craig Sullivan, and…yours truly.
You’ve read the blog posts and you’ve heard from the vendors. A/B testing is a lot more difficult than you can imagine, and you can unintentionally wreak havoc on your online business if you aren’t careful.
Fortunately, you can learn how to avoid these awful A/B testing mistakes from 10 CRO experts. Here’s a quick look at some of their greatest pitfalls:
Joel Harvey, Conversion Sciences Worst A/B Testing Mistake
“Because of a QA breakdown we didn’t notice that the last 4-digits of one of the variation phone numbers displayed to visitors was 3576 when it should have been 3567. In the short time that the offending variation was live, we lost at least 100 phone calls.”
Peep Laja, ConversionXL Worst A/B Testing Mistake
“Ending tests too early is the #1 mistake I see. You can’t “spot a trend”, that’s total bullshit.”
Craig Sullivan, Optimise or Die Worst A/B Testing Mistake
“When it comes to split testing, the most dangerous mistakes are the ones you don’t realise you’re making.”
“I had been allocated a designer and developer to get the job done, with the expectation of delivering at least a 20% increase in leads. Alas, the test went terribly and I was left with few insights.”
Andre Morys, WebArts.de Worst A/B Testing Mistake
“I recommend everybody to do a cohort analysis after you test things in ecommerce with high contrast – there could be some differences…”
Ton Wesseling, Online Dialogue Worst A/B Testing Mistake
“People tend to say: I’ve tested that idea – and it had no effect. YOU CAN NOT SAY THAT! You can only say – we were not able to tell if the variation was better. BUT in reality it can still be better!”
John Ekman, Conversionista Worst A/B Testing Mistake
“AB-testing is not a game for nervous business people, (maybe that’s why so few people do it?!). You will come up with bad hypotheses that reduce conversions!! And you will mess up the testing software and tracking.”
Paul Rouke, PRWD Worst A/B Testing Mistake
“One of the biggest lessons I have learnt is making sure we fully engage, and build relationships with the people responsible for the technical delivery of a website, right from the start of any project.”
Matt Gershoff, Conductrics Worst A/B Testing Mistake
“One of the traps of testing is that if you aren’t careful, you can get hung up on just seeing what you DID in the past, but not finding out anything useful about what you can DO in the future.”
Michael Aagaard, ContentVerve.com Worst A/B Testing Mistakes
“After years of trial and error, it finally dawned on me that that the most successful tests were the ones based on data, insight and solid hypotheses – not impulse, personal preference or pure guesswork.”
A new survey of 1,000 business owners and executives of small businesses has revealed their attitudes as we go into 2015.
Dallas-based Wasp Barcode is a small business and took it upon themselves to survey their colleagues, finding out how small businesses felt about the coming year.
As a small business, we took an interest in the findings of this report. Here is what we divined from the numbers.
They are Optimistic
Overall, 57% of businesses are expecting revenue growth in 2015. Only 9% expect their revenue to be lower in 2015.
This is a rosy outlook, considering that the Small Business Administration’s Office of Advocacy says that some 20% of businesses with employees will close shop within 5 years of starting. Optimism is a part of the job description for entrepreneurs, who create far more jobs than big companies in America.
They are Hiring, Or Trying
Of the biggest challenges facing small businesses, 42% cited hiring new employees. This was second only to growing revenue, and the two are intertwined for most businesses.
For companies above 51 employees, hiring was the most acute problem for 2015.
Government regulation and employee healthcare took the fourth and fifth slots on the list of challenges. Clearly, the changes in the national healthcare policies is on the mind of small businesses.
They are Local
It was somewhat surprising to find that 82% of small businesses had no plans to expand globally. In our experience, it is common to work with businesses who are utilizing highly-trained workers from outside of the US.
This statistic draws a bright circle around the fact that small business is local business.
They are Working to Keep You Happy
Of the small businesses surveyed, 56% said that they were focused on improving customer experience and retention. Small business has clearly gotten the message that it’s cheaper to keep a customer than to gain a new one.
This doesn’t mean that they’re not working to get new customers. The next most cited strategy was investing in new customer acquisition.
In 2015, we can expect to courted by small business.
Read the Full Report
You can read the entire small business report from Wasp Barcode and draw your own conclusions.
Disclosure: Wasp Barcode is a client of Conversion Sciences.
Why does the “online” marketer have to do something different from the “other” marketers at the beginning of a new year?
There are many reasons.
The online marketer is blind without accurate data.
The online marketer has wrested control from the grubby hands of IT.
The online marketer knows that
the seeds of holiday regret are planted in February procrastination.
Subscribe to Podcast
Don’t worry. We’ve prepared a list of seven things you should do now at the beginning of the new year.
Resolve to optimize the website before the next holidays
“If only” are the saddest two words in the English language.
If only we had a little higher conversion rate from all of that juicy holiday traffic.
If only Black Friday had put us a little more “in the black.”
If only our shopping cart had worked with Internet Explorer.
We know that the holidays are happier when we get more revenue under the Christmas Tree. This year let’s start getting more from the traffic we’re going to get next November and December.
Testing and optimizing does take time. Now is the time to start testing if you want your holidays to be merrier.
Change the passwords on your testing tools
The modern marketer has taken control of much of the website from the grubby hands of IT and the web developers. Today, tag managers give marketers an unparalleled ability to add measurements to a site without IT’s help. Split testing tools allow them to transform a website for a particular group of visitors at will.
With great power comes great responsibility.
Many marketing departments should adopt the best security practices of their IT brethren. If a malicious individual got the password to Optimizely or Visual Website Optimizer, they could wreak havoc on the site at will.
Go ahead, change your passwords. And make them good passwords. We use the program PassPack to store and share hard-to-crack passwords with our team.
Check that all your pages still have analytics and testing software
A website is a complex piece of software. New pages are added by different stakeholders. Changes are often undocumented. Not everyone is concerned that your analytics and testing tools need to be added to each page and then checked.
Before diving into a new year, run through the pages on your site and make sure they all have the right tools installed.
There are automated systems for checking your site, but taking some time to explore by hand is very helpful. Get ready to start a punch list.
I recommend installing two browser extensions for Chrome: Tag Assistant by Google and Ghostery. Tag Assistant tells you if your Google Analytics or Google Tag Manager installation is broken on any page, and offers helpful tips. Ghosterytells you every tag that is installed on the page, so you can check for things like Click Tracking tools, session-recording tools and more.
Consider moving to a tag manager, like Google Tag Manager. This centralizes analytics setup.
Make sure your site still works with all devices and browsers
Your analytics will tell you which browsers and devices your visitors are using on your site.
Your analytics will tell you which browsers and devices to check.
Make sure your site works on the top devices and browsers.
Year over year evaluation
The end of a year means another year of data. Woohoo!
This means we have an entire year to compare our progress against. When we compare year-over-year data, we eliminate differences that occurred due to market changes. For an online consumer retailer, comparing October performance to November performance wouldn’t be fair, since the holiday shopping season starts in November. Instead it’s better to compare October of this year to October of last year.
Here are some of the things we like to look at in our year-over-year data.
Depth of Troughs
It’s the off-season that kills us. It’s the winter months for bikini boutiques and the summer months for mitten makers. However, if we are making progress on our site, we should see less of a drop revenue during the off-peak weeks.
And with shallow troughs we often see higher spikes during prime selling or lead-gen seasons.
Increasing Revenue Per Visit or Conversion Rate
Even it you got more traffic to your website in 2014, you may not see the increase in revenue. By measuring the Revenue per Visit (RPV) and Conversion Rate (for lead generation) you can see how your efforts in 2014 added to the bottom line independent of traffic volume.
Average Order Value
When people buy from you, are they buying more or less? This is what average order value tells us. Even if your traffic was flat and your conversion rate didn’t move, you may be getting more from each customer.
Bounce Rate
If you saw an increase in traffic to the site, did you see an increase in bounce rate? The Bounce Rate measures visitors who came and didn’t stay long. They saw only one page or left before 15 seconds had passed.
Bounce rate is an indicator of traffic quality. If lots of visitors are bouncing, then you may not be bringing the right visitor to the site.
Review your idea list
Where do you keep your punch list of things to try on the site? Go find it and give it a look. You’ll find some great ideas you forgot about.
Where do you keep your ideas for a better website?
21 Quick and Easy CRO Copywriting Hacks
Keep these proven copywriting hacks in mind to make your copy convert.
It’s unfortunate that I have to fly to Las Vegas to catch fellow Austinite Noah Kagan. However, I was glad to have caught his keynote at Affiliate Summit West 2015.
Mainly because he gave everyone in the audience $10. Real money.
Is he so desperate for attention that he has to buy an audience with cash? Maybe. But his little stunt was really to make a point. His question is, “Are your relationships in black and white, or full color?”
I captured the highlights of his presentation in this instagraph infographic drawn in real time. Share it with someone.
Affiliate marketers get conversion optimization.
I was gratified at how sophisticated the folks at Affiliate Summit were. Affiliate marketers understand that conversion optimization is a big lever that increases CPA payouts, makes advertisers happy and sets OPMs apart from the competition.
And it’s all we do at Conversion Sciences.
Learn the best practices for using exit-intent popups to engage visitors who are leaving your site and increase conversion rates.
Imagine that your website could detect when a visitor was just about to leave. What could your business do with that information? Would you beg them to stay? Would you sweeten the deal? Would you ask them why they are leaving?
Right now, exit-intent technologies can detect when your visitors are about to hit the back button, close their browser, or navigate away. Then popup dialog is presented to them, a last-ditch message to get their business. They are a powerful tool for any in-house team or CRO Agency to use to recover abandoning visitors either through an incentive or survey.
Are you using exit-intent popups? If not, you are leaving money on the table—quite a lot of money, actually. Exit-intent popups are known for several years now but it’s still a hot topic and heavily used component of conversion rate optimization services.
In case you haven’t heard of them before, let’s summarize quickly what are they.
They are the popups that appear the very moment you move your mouse to leave a page. They are “overlay popups,” and cannot be blocked by popup blockers.
Here is an example:
This exit-intent popup teases a free eBook.
Why Should You Use Exit-Intent Popups?
Exit-intent popups give you a “second chance” at communicating something important to your visitors before they leave your site. According to data, 10 to 15 percent of lost visitors can be “saved” by using exit-intent popups. In other words, between 10 to 15 percent of visitors leaving your site will respond to a well-crafted message.
Exit-intent popups are the most customer-friendly approach to communicate a special message to your visitors. They are superior to normal popups because they don’t interrupt your visitors while browsing or scanning your site; they only appear when your visitors start to leave your site altogether or switch to another window.
So how can you maximize the ROI of your exit-intent popups?
One of their most effective uses is to grab email addresses by offering an incentive to subscribe. Naturally, the conversion success of email collecting popups depends upon the effectiveness of the copy and the offer.
Exit-intent popups can be used to grow your email list.
According to data from OptiMonk, a simple popup like this converts between three and five percent on an average content or ecommerce site. To achieve this level of performance requires no preparation, and you can install the popup on any page.
You can increase a popup’s effectiveness significantly by offering an eBook or other “hook” as an incentive. In such cases, a popup can easily convert up to 15 percent:
Informational offers can turn 15 percent of abandoners into leads.
You can also boost your results by gamifying your message. A lucky wheel popup can not only increase your conversion rate and coupon usage rate, but it also enhances your user experience: everyone loves to win, and it will give shoppers a reason to remember your store.
A lucky wheel can create a new, fun and interactive subscription experience on your site.
2. Recover Abandoned Cart Instantly
E-commerce sites should use exit-intent popups for instant cart-recovery. Since cart abandonment is about 70 percent, exit-intent popups can potentially save a lot of lost revenue. The best method of conversion during checkout is to offer visitors an incentive to finish the order on the spot, such as a price discount or free shipping.
Exit-intent popups can sweeten an offer and save a sale.
This type of popup usually converts around 15 percent, especially if you turn off the email capture, though you should follow up with these users later by email, since only about 5 to 15 percent will use their coupons immediately.
3. Redirect Traffic to Other Content
The most common usage of exit-intent popups is to redirect traffic to other content on your site. In effect, it responds to your visitors attempts to leave by saying, “You find this content boring or irrelevant? No problem. Check this out, instead.”
You can even use it on landing pages, to give yourself a second chance to hook visitors who are not converting on your landing page.
In this example, the site owner promotes a webinar on his site:
Redirect visitors who are about to leave to something that may be more relevant.
E-commerce sites can use this method by showing alternative offers to visitors not interested in buying the current products. Content sites can use it to promote other content the reader may prefer.
Content redirection popups can convert up to 25 percent.
4. Keep It Simple
The most important rule of every exit-intent popup is to keep it simple. Don’t try to stuff too much content into one popup. Less is more. People leaving your site are often already overwhelmed by its contents; they may be unable (or unwilling) to understand complex messages. So, make sure your headline tells your visitors immediately what benefit they will receive.
The look of your popup is also important. Try to use a simple and clear design that matches to your website. Since you only have a few seconds to get visitors attention, you should always use readable fonts.
One large tagline, one sub-headline, and some visual reinforcement of the offer should be enough, 99 percent of the time.
Don’t forget that the look of your popup is just one thing, but if your offer is not good enough, you won’t succeed. Always add a relevant offer and try to focus on pain points. Adding a sense of urgency always makes popup more effective since it helps to overcome procrastination. Here’s an article if you want to learn more about creating a good exit-intent popup.
5. Speed Matters
When we say that an exit-intent popup appears at the very moment the visitor moves the mouse out of the window, this means that the popup appears a few milliseconds later—and the amount of time, no matter how miniscule, does matter. You have less than 200 milliseconds to show the visitors your message before they actually click on the X button. In fact, you should decrease this lag to less than 50 milliseconds.
How can your popup respond so quickly? First, it is important to preload the popup content. Loading in real-time takes longer than 200 milliseconds. Preloading takes technical know-how, but the best exit-intent popup software has already solved this issue.
You should refrain from using special effects on these types of popups. Such displays look cool, but they increase the amount of time required to display the popup, as well as the time needed for visitors to comprehend the message.
6. Always Test Copy
The same rules apply to exit-intent popups as to any other webpage or landing page—always test the copy. For example, in this test, changing only the tagline of the offer resulted in a 47 percent increase in conversions.
Test your copy to get even more lift from exit-intent popups.
7. Start Today
My last piece of advice is to start NOW. You are losing customers every minute.
21 Quick and Easy CRO Copywriting Hacks
Keep these proven copywriting hacks in mind to make your copy convert.
We talk a lot about conversion rate optimization here – we are conversion scientists, after all.
Recently, our friends over at Shopify asked five questions of seven conversion rate optimization experts, including our own Brian Massey. These are questions that people normally might be afraid to ask.
How Do You Define Conversion Rate Optimization?
Where Do You Look For Testing Ideas?
How Do You Know What To Test?
How Long Should You Run A Test For?
When Do You Stop Testing And Go Full Redesign?
The responses were both enlightening and entertaining.
“Like fine wine, CRO takes some time to mature,” says @Judah
“Like fine wine, CRO takes some time to mature,” says @Judah Phillips of Smart Current. It’s simple advice like this that can make a night and day difference when it comes to your website’s conversion rate.
Peep Laja informs us, “You can’t test faster just because you/your boss/VCs want to move faster.”
“Watching people in the act of loosening their grip on their pocketbook is the most reliable data you can collect,”
“Watching people in the act of loosening their grip on their pocketbook is the most reliable data you can collect,” says Brian Massey.
If you’ve found yourself pondering some conversion questions, check out the article here – you’ll probably find the answers you’re looking for.
The online marketing landscape is more competitive than ever – doubly so if you’re a university or college that’s trying to attract the right kind of students.
Although many people think of conversions as something related to business – a sale, a a lead, a subscription, etc. – conversions are just as important to educational institutions. To build a student body, you need applicants.
To get applicants, you need to optimize your online marketing so that it converts your web traffic into prospective students.
Our latest report was compiled from data from over 9,000 educational institutions and student service providers. It offers insights into how colleges and universities use conversion optimization and analytics-based marketing to competitively bring in their next batch of students, and to do so at lower and lower costs.
Only 19% of colleges and universities have an optimization tool installed.
Only 19% of colleges and universities have an optimization tool installed. This means that most schools have a high acquisition cost. They pay a lot for each new student acquired online.
This high cost of acquisition means that schools must spend and spend on advertising because it takes so many clicks to get one more new student. Conversion optimization reverses this, requiring fewer clicks for each new student.
This report is free to download. Click the image below to get the report, and let us know what you think.
[collegepromo]
Enjoy this fast-paced and very helpful webinar done in partnership with Formstack called “Conversions 101: Optimize Landing Pages for Higher Ed Marketing.”
Click to watch the webinar for free.
The recorded version is free, and there is a ton of great advice for optimizing your institution’s landing pages.
Get out your number 2 pencils and practice your small circles. We fill in some bubbles for you to help you redesign your home page.
What if I told you that, when a visitor reaches your homepage, to them it’s just like taking a multiple-choice test? They have a question and you offer choices.
Does your homepage design punish visitors if they make the wrong choice? This is the purpose of those standardized multiple choice tests we’ve been taking since high school: if you guess, you are likely to get it wrong.
We don’t want to punish our visitors for guessing. We can attempt to eliminate the guessing, though.
In 8 Ways Your Home Page Is Like A Multiple Choice Test we explore the rules for designing multiple choice questions provided by the Scholastic website, and then see how these apply to our home page question: “Why did you visit our website today?”
21 Quick and Easy CRO Copywriting Hacks
Keep these proven copywriting hacks in mind to make your copy convert.
Come Learn Conversion Optimization From the Experts
Conversion OptimizationIn Austin, March is just another way of saying “SXSW season” – however, this year, there’s another conference that you might want to consider attending.
The first annual ConversionXL Live is taking place from March 11-13 in the hill country just outside of Austin. We like to think of this conference as a form of what SXSW used to be like – a small, intimate gathering of people looking to share ideas, make connections, and innovate.
Make no mistake – if you want to learn everything there is to know about conversion optimization in 2015, this is the conference you’ll want to attend.
This will be no ordinary conference – you’ll have easy access to one-on-one discussions with the speakers, presenters, and your peers in conversion rate optimization. Even better, it’s all-inclusive. With your ticket, you get:
All you have to worry about is getting to Austin.
Register for the conference here – we’ll see you in March!
10 CRO Experts Reveal Their Worst A/B Testing Mistakes
CRO Tests | Multivariate | AB TestingFortunately, you can learn how to avoid these awful A/B testing mistakes from 10 CRO experts. Here’s a quick look at some of their greatest pitfalls:
Joel Harvey, Conversion Sciences Worst A/B Testing Mistake
“Because of a QA breakdown we didn’t notice that the last 4-digits of one of the variation phone numbers displayed to visitors was 3576 when it should have been 3567. In the short time that the offending variation was live, we lost at least 100 phone calls.”
Peep Laja, ConversionXL Worst A/B Testing Mistake
“Ending tests too early is the #1 mistake I see. You can’t “spot a trend”, that’s total bullshit.”
Craig Sullivan, Optimise or Die Worst A/B Testing Mistake
“When it comes to split testing, the most dangerous mistakes are the ones you don’t realise you’re making.”
Alhan Keser, Widerfunnel.com Worst A/B Testing Mistakes
“I had been allocated a designer and developer to get the job done, with the expectation of delivering at least a 20% increase in leads. Alas, the test went terribly and I was left with few insights.”
Andre Morys, WebArts.de Worst A/B Testing Mistake
“I recommend everybody to do a cohort analysis after you test things in ecommerce with high contrast – there could be some differences…”
Ton Wesseling, Online Dialogue Worst A/B Testing Mistake
“People tend to say: I’ve tested that idea – and it had no effect. YOU CAN NOT SAY THAT! You can only say – we were not able to tell if the variation was better. BUT in reality it can still be better!”
John Ekman, Conversionista Worst A/B Testing Mistake
“AB-testing is not a game for nervous business people, (maybe that’s why so few people do it?!). You will come up with bad hypotheses that reduce conversions!! And you will mess up the testing software and tracking.”
Paul Rouke, PRWD Worst A/B Testing Mistake
“One of the biggest lessons I have learnt is making sure we fully engage, and build relationships with the people responsible for the technical delivery of a website, right from the start of any project.”
Matt Gershoff, Conductrics Worst A/B Testing Mistake
“One of the traps of testing is that if you aren’t careful, you can get hung up on just seeing what you DID in the past, but not finding out anything useful about what you can DO in the future.”
Michael Aagaard, ContentVerve.com Worst A/B Testing Mistakes
“After years of trial and error, it finally dawned on me that that the most successful tests were the ones based on data, insight and solid hypotheses – not impulse, personal preference or pure guesswork.”
Don’t start your next search marketing campaign without the guidance of our free report. Click here to download How 20 Search Experts Beat Rising Costs.
21 Quick and Easy CRO Copywriting Hacks
Keep these proven copywriting hacks in mind to make your copy convert.
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4 Revelations About Small Business in 2015
Conversion Marketing StrategyDallas-based Wasp Barcode is a small business and took it upon themselves to survey their colleagues, finding out how small businesses felt about the coming year.
As a small business, we took an interest in the findings of this report. Here is what we divined from the numbers.
They are Optimistic
Overall, 57% of businesses are expecting revenue growth in 2015. Only 9% expect their revenue to be lower in 2015.
This is a rosy outlook, considering that the Small Business Administration’s Office of Advocacy says that some 20% of businesses with employees will close shop within 5 years of starting. Optimism is a part of the job description for entrepreneurs, who create far more jobs than big companies in America.
They are Hiring, Or Trying
Of the biggest challenges facing small businesses, 42% cited hiring new employees. This was second only to growing revenue, and the two are intertwined for most businesses.
For companies above 51 employees, hiring was the most acute problem for 2015.
Government regulation and employee healthcare took the fourth and fifth slots on the list of challenges. Clearly, the changes in the national healthcare policies is on the mind of small businesses.
They are Local
It was somewhat surprising to find that 82% of small businesses had no plans to expand globally. In our experience, it is common to work with businesses who are utilizing highly-trained workers from outside of the US.
This statistic draws a bright circle around the fact that small business is local business.
They are Working to Keep You Happy
Of the small businesses surveyed, 56% said that they were focused on improving customer experience and retention. Small business has clearly gotten the message that it’s cheaper to keep a customer than to gain a new one.
This doesn’t mean that they’re not working to get new customers. The next most cited strategy was investing in new customer acquisition.
In 2015, we can expect to courted by small business.
Read the Full Report
You can read the entire small business report from Wasp Barcode and draw your own conclusions.
Disclosure: Wasp Barcode is a client of Conversion Sciences.
7 Ways Online Marketing Pros Kick Off the New Year
Conversion OptimizationThere are many reasons.
The online marketer is blind without accurate data.
The online marketer has wrested control from the grubby hands of IT.
The online marketer knows that
Subscribe to Podcast
Don’t worry. We’ve prepared a list of seven things you should do now at the beginning of the new year.
Resolve to optimize the website before the next holidays
“If only” are the saddest two words in the English language.
If only we had a little higher conversion rate from all of that juicy holiday traffic.
If only Black Friday had put us a little more “in the black.”
If only our shopping cart had worked with Internet Explorer.
We know that the holidays are happier when we get more revenue under the Christmas Tree. This year let’s start getting more from the traffic we’re going to get next November and December.
Testing and optimizing does take time. Now is the time to start testing if you want your holidays to be merrier.
Change the passwords on your testing tools
The modern marketer has taken control of much of the website from the grubby hands of IT and the web developers. Today, tag managers give marketers an unparalleled ability to add measurements to a site without IT’s help. Split testing tools allow them to transform a website for a particular group of visitors at will.
With great power comes great responsibility.
Many marketing departments should adopt the best security practices of their IT brethren. If a malicious individual got the password to Optimizely or Visual Website Optimizer, they could wreak havoc on the site at will.
Go ahead, change your passwords. And make them good passwords. We use the program PassPack to store and share hard-to-crack passwords with our team.
Check that all your pages still have analytics and testing software
A website is a complex piece of software. New pages are added by different stakeholders. Changes are often undocumented. Not everyone is concerned that your analytics and testing tools need to be added to each page and then checked.
Before diving into a new year, run through the pages on your site and make sure they all have the right tools installed.
There are automated systems for checking your site, but taking some time to explore by hand is very helpful. Get ready to start a punch list.
I recommend installing two browser extensions for Chrome: Tag Assistant by Google and Ghostery. Tag Assistant tells you if your Google Analytics or Google Tag Manager installation is broken on any page, and offers helpful tips. Ghosterytells you every tag that is installed on the page, so you can check for things like Click Tracking tools, session-recording tools and more.
Consider moving to a tag manager, like Google Tag Manager. This centralizes analytics setup.
Make sure your site still works with all devices and browsers
Your analytics will tell you which browsers and devices your visitors are using on your site.
Your analytics will tell you which browsers and devices to check.
Make sure your site works on the top devices and browsers.
Year over year evaluation
The end of a year means another year of data. Woohoo!
This means we have an entire year to compare our progress against. When we compare year-over-year data, we eliminate differences that occurred due to market changes. For an online consumer retailer, comparing October performance to November performance wouldn’t be fair, since the holiday shopping season starts in November. Instead it’s better to compare October of this year to October of last year.
Here are some of the things we like to look at in our year-over-year data.
Depth of Troughs
It’s the off-season that kills us. It’s the winter months for bikini boutiques and the summer months for mitten makers. However, if we are making progress on our site, we should see less of a drop revenue during the off-peak weeks.
And with shallow troughs we often see higher spikes during prime selling or lead-gen seasons.
Increasing Revenue Per Visit or Conversion Rate
Even it you got more traffic to your website in 2014, you may not see the increase in revenue. By measuring the Revenue per Visit (RPV) and Conversion Rate (for lead generation) you can see how your efforts in 2014 added to the bottom line independent of traffic volume.
Average Order Value
When people buy from you, are they buying more or less? This is what average order value tells us. Even if your traffic was flat and your conversion rate didn’t move, you may be getting more from each customer.
Bounce Rate
If you saw an increase in traffic to the site, did you see an increase in bounce rate? The Bounce Rate measures visitors who came and didn’t stay long. They saw only one page or left before 15 seconds had passed.
Bounce rate is an indicator of traffic quality. If lots of visitors are bouncing, then you may not be bringing the right visitor to the site.
Review your idea list
Where do you keep your punch list of things to try on the site? Go find it and give it a look. You’ll find some great ideas you forgot about.
Where do you keep your ideas for a better website?
21 Quick and Easy CRO Copywriting Hacks
Keep these proven copywriting hacks in mind to make your copy convert.
"*" indicates required fields
Affiliate Marketing is about Relationships says Noah Kagan [INFOGRAPHIC]
Conversion Marketing StrategyIt’s unfortunate that I have to fly to Las Vegas to catch fellow Austinite Noah Kagan. However, I was glad to have caught his keynote at Affiliate Summit West 2015.
Mainly because he gave everyone in the audience $10. Real money.
Is he so desperate for attention that he has to buy an audience with cash? Maybe. But his little stunt was really to make a point. His question is, “Are your relationships in black and white, or full color?”
I captured the highlights of his presentation in this instagraph infographic drawn in real time. Share it with someone.
Affiliate marketers get conversion optimization.
I was gratified at how sophisticated the folks at Affiliate Summit were. Affiliate marketers understand that conversion optimization is a big lever that increases CPA payouts, makes advertisers happy and sets OPMs apart from the competition.
And it’s all we do at Conversion Sciences.
7 Best Practices for Using Exit-Intent Popovers, Popups
Conversion OptimizationImagine that your website could detect when a visitor was just about to leave. What could your business do with that information? Would you beg them to stay? Would you sweeten the deal? Would you ask them why they are leaving?
Right now, exit-intent technologies can detect when your visitors are about to hit the back button, close their browser, or navigate away. Then popup dialog is presented to them, a last-ditch message to get their business. They are a powerful tool for any in-house team or CRO Agency to use to recover abandoning visitors either through an incentive or survey.
Are you using exit-intent popups? If not, you are leaving money on the table—quite a lot of money, actually. Exit-intent popups are known for several years now but it’s still a hot topic and heavily used component of conversion rate optimization services.
In case you haven’t heard of them before, let’s summarize quickly what are they.
They are the popups that appear the very moment you move your mouse to leave a page. They are “overlay popups,” and cannot be blocked by popup blockers.
Here is an example:
This exit-intent popup teases a free eBook.
Why Should You Use Exit-Intent Popups?
Exit-intent popups give you a “second chance” at communicating something important to your visitors before they leave your site. According to data, 10 to 15 percent of lost visitors can be “saved” by using exit-intent popups. In other words, between 10 to 15 percent of visitors leaving your site will respond to a well-crafted message.
Exit-intent popups are the most customer-friendly approach to communicate a special message to your visitors. They are superior to normal popups because they don’t interrupt your visitors while browsing or scanning your site; they only appear when your visitors start to leave your site altogether or switch to another window.
So how can you maximize the ROI of your exit-intent popups?
1. Email List Generation
One of their most effective uses is to grab email addresses by offering an incentive to subscribe. Naturally, the conversion success of email collecting popups depends upon the effectiveness of the copy and the offer.
Exit-intent popups can be used to grow your email list.
According to data from OptiMonk, a simple popup like this converts between three and five percent on an average content or ecommerce site. To achieve this level of performance requires no preparation, and you can install the popup on any page.
You can increase a popup’s effectiveness significantly by offering an eBook or other “hook” as an incentive. In such cases, a popup can easily convert up to 15 percent:
Informational offers can turn 15 percent of abandoners into leads.
You can also boost your results by gamifying your message. A lucky wheel popup can not only increase your conversion rate and coupon usage rate, but it also enhances your user experience: everyone loves to win, and it will give shoppers a reason to remember your store.
A lucky wheel can create a new, fun and interactive subscription experience on your site.
2. Recover Abandoned Cart Instantly
E-commerce sites should use exit-intent popups for instant cart-recovery. Since cart abandonment is about 70 percent, exit-intent popups can potentially save a lot of lost revenue. The best method of conversion during checkout is to offer visitors an incentive to finish the order on the spot, such as a price discount or free shipping.
Exit-intent popups can sweeten an offer and save a sale.
This type of popup usually converts around 15 percent, especially if you turn off the email capture, though you should follow up with these users later by email, since only about 5 to 15 percent will use their coupons immediately.
3.
Redirect Traffic to Other ContentThe most common usage of exit-intent popups is to redirect traffic to other content on your site. In effect, it responds to your visitors attempts to leave by saying, “You find this content boring or irrelevant? No problem. Check this out, instead.”
You can even use it on landing pages, to give yourself a second chance to hook visitors who are not converting on your landing page.
In this example, the site owner promotes a webinar on his site:
Redirect visitors who are about to leave to something that may be more relevant.
E-commerce sites can use this method by showing alternative offers to visitors not interested in buying the current products. Content sites can use it to promote other content the reader may prefer.
Content redirection popups can convert up to 25 percent.
4. Keep It Simple
The most important rule of every exit-intent popup is to keep it simple. Don’t try to stuff too much content into one popup. Less is more. People leaving your site are often already overwhelmed by its contents; they may be unable (or unwilling) to understand complex messages. So, make sure your headline tells your visitors immediately what benefit they will receive.
The look of your popup is also important. Try to use a simple and clear design that matches to your website. Since you only have a few seconds to get visitors attention, you should always use readable fonts.
One large tagline, one sub-headline, and some visual reinforcement of the offer should be enough, 99 percent of the time.
Don’t forget that the look of your popup is just one thing, but if your offer is not good enough, you won’t succeed. Always add a relevant offer and try to focus on pain points. Adding a sense of urgency always makes popup more effective since it helps to overcome procrastination. Here’s an article if you want to learn more about creating a good exit-intent popup.
5. Speed Matters
When we say that an exit-intent popup appears at the very moment the visitor moves the mouse out of the window, this means that the popup appears a few milliseconds later—and the amount of time, no matter how miniscule, does matter. You have less than 200 milliseconds to show the visitors your message before they actually click on the X button. In fact, you should decrease this lag to less than 50 milliseconds.
How can your popup respond so quickly? First, it is important to preload the popup content. Loading in real-time takes longer than 200 milliseconds. Preloading takes technical know-how, but the best exit-intent popup software has already solved this issue.
You should refrain from using special effects on these types of popups. Such displays look cool, but they increase the amount of time required to display the popup, as well as the time needed for visitors to comprehend the message.
6. Always Test Copy
The same rules apply to exit-intent popups as to any other webpage or landing page—always test the copy. For example, in this test, changing only the tagline of the offer resulted in a 47 percent increase in conversions.
Test your copy to get even more lift from exit-intent popups.
7. Start Today
My last piece of advice is to start NOW. You are losing customers every minute.
21 Quick and Easy CRO Copywriting Hacks
Keep these proven copywriting hacks in mind to make your copy convert.
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7 Conversion Rate Optimization Experts, 5 Questions You Are Probably Asking
Conversion OptimizationWe talk a lot about conversion rate optimization here – we are conversion scientists, after all.
Recently, our friends over at Shopify asked five questions of seven conversion rate optimization experts, including our own Brian Massey. These are questions that people normally might be afraid to ask.
How Do You Define Conversion Rate Optimization?
Where Do You Look For Testing Ideas?
How Do You Know What To Test?
How Long Should You Run A Test For?
When Do You Stop Testing And Go Full Redesign?
The responses were both enlightening and entertaining.
“Like fine wine, CRO takes some time to mature,” says @Judah Phillips of Smart Current. It’s simple advice like this that can make a night and day difference when it comes to your website’s conversion rate.Peep Laja informs us, “You can’t test faster just because you/your boss/VCs want to move faster.”
“Watching people in the act of loosening their grip on their pocketbook is the most reliable data you can collect,” says Brian Massey.
If you’ve found yourself pondering some conversion questions, check out the article here – you’ll probably find the answers you’re looking for.
How is Your College or University Stacking Up Online? [REPORT]
Conversion OptimizationThe online marketing landscape is more competitive than ever – doubly so if you’re a university or college that’s trying to attract the right kind of students.
Only 19% of colleges and universities have an optimization tool installed. This means that most schools have a high acquisition cost. They pay a lot for each new student acquired online.Although many people think of conversions as something related to business – a sale, a a lead, a subscription, etc. – conversions are just as important to educational institutions. To build a student body, you need applicants.
To get applicants, you need to optimize your online marketing so that it converts your web traffic into prospective students.
Our latest report was compiled from data from over 9,000 educational institutions and student service providers. It offers insights into how colleges and universities use conversion optimization and analytics-based marketing to competitively bring in their next batch of students, and to do so at lower and lower costs.
This high cost of acquisition means that schools must spend and spend on advertising because it takes so many clicks to get one more new student. Conversion optimization reverses this, requiring fewer clicks for each new student.
This report is free to download. Click the image below to get the report, and let us know what you think.
[collegepromo]
Learn How to Optimize Your Higher Ed Landing Pages
Conversion OptimizationEnjoy this fast-paced and very helpful webinar done in partnership with Formstack called “Conversions 101: Optimize Landing Pages for Higher Ed Marketing.”
Click to watch the webinar for free.
The recorded version is free, and there is a ton of great advice for optimizing your institution’s landing pages.
Homepage Design: It’s Like a Multiple-choice Test
Conversion-Centered DesignGet out your number 2 pencils and practice your small circles. We fill in some bubbles for you to help you redesign your home page.
What if I told you that, when a visitor reaches your homepage, to them it’s just like taking a multiple-choice test? They have a question and you offer choices.
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Does your homepage design punish visitors if they make the wrong choice? This is the purpose of those standardized multiple choice tests we’ve been taking since high school: if you guess, you are likely to get it wrong.
We don’t want to punish our visitors for guessing. We can attempt to eliminate the guessing, though.
In 8 Ways Your Home Page Is Like A Multiple Choice Test we explore the rules for designing multiple choice questions provided by the Scholastic website, and then see how these apply to our home page question: “Why did you visit our website today?”
21 Quick and Easy CRO Copywriting Hacks
Keep these proven copywriting hacks in mind to make your copy convert.
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