Group items tagged

How to use Googlel Web Optimizer to modify URLs in an AB split test. Good for eCommerce sites.

Some good tools that don't require IT

Wonder what your conversion rate should be? @PhillyMktgLabs takes a stab at some categories. NOTE: These conversion rates are unacceptible!

I'm always wary of any list that claims to be "complete." This list comes pretty close, and includes one of my favorite selections from The Conversion Scientist Blog.

The list is novel in that you can select the categories of interest to you and the post will modify itself to serve you best.

I'll be intersted to find out if this novel feature increases conversion rates on the page.

What do you think?

Whenever someone writes an article about Conversion Consultants (like us), we are always nervous that we might cross some of these lines.

We know that we have made these mistakes in the past.

The issue is exacerbated when the author is someone like Amy Africa, who has the experience and likes to tell things like they are. Her middle name could be "Frank".

I'm happy to report that we have evolved beyond these "lies" and firmly embrace the matching truths.

If you are looking for someone to guide your optimization efforts, have a conversion with a Conversion Scientist.

I often say we're living in a golden age of marketing, in which we can find data to answer almost any question we have. And these tools aren't expensive. Every marketer can benefit from these tools with a little curiosity and patience. 

 @conversion_team It's easy to cut prices.It's hard to build up the value of what you offer in words and images. If you can occupy the high-price category in your niche, life gets much easier.

So, I was pleased to find this article which makes a bold statement: "Avoid Best Practice Conversion Rate Optimization"

What?

While your competitors are testing button color, you can be comparing yourself to the competition, being open about your profits, and doing the math for your visitors.

Best practices only get you so far. Here are some alternatives for online success.

While good UX (User eXperience) does not always translate into higher conversion rates or revenue per visit (RPV), these trends point to excellent hypotheses for what MIGHT increase the performance of your site.

Single Page Sites: Simplicity is often a great way to increase conversion rates Infinite scrolling: Consider this for category pages. I haven't tested this yet. Persistent top nav: I am very curious to see if this increases CR and RPV. Let me know if you've tested it. Web 2.0 Aesthetics: I hope this includes the rotating banners at the top of so many sites. Typography Returns: Your message is the most important part of your conversion optimization plan. Typography can help... or hurt

Bryan Eisenberg is a great teacher and is one of the fathers of conversion science. In this post, he asks his audience to make recommendations on pricing tables, those pages that ostensibly help us to choose the right product for us.

Here are my suggestions.

The main purpose of a page like this is "Help me choose." Choice, as it turns out, is a conversion killer, so these pages can be very helpful. This page needs to tell me which is "The best value." A badge would be helpful, probably on the most expensive item.

The little "signal bars" are unique and may be helpful, but don't really tell me at a glance what I want to know.

The copy is unhelpful. Instead of "Essential productivity..." how about "Great system for a tight budget." Instead of "Yield better results..." how about "Good value ready for your network." Instead of "2nd Generation Processor..." how about "This system has the power to do heavy number crunching, video editing and graphics."

There are too many prices here -- four to be exact. I say, pick two: Savings and total price. Crossing out "Starting price" is a proven way to communicate value.

Finally, put the coupon code near the "Customize & Buy" buttons to give those transactional shoppers an extra push.

What do you find frustrating about this page?

Regular expressions rear their ugly head in more and more places. Google Analytics is just one.

For me the regular expression showed up in the excellent Yoast SEO plugin for Wordpress. I needed to redirect a URL that had parameters, like this:

http://conversionsciences.com/conversion-upside-report/?t=10000&v=344&x=250

To do this, I could not use a regular redirect, as everything after the ? would be stripped away. I needed to use a Regular Expression Redirect. However, this sort of thing -- using query parameters -- wasn't covered in any of the Yoast documentation.

This article gave me the hint I needed, and the technique that ended up working. To summarize, I used the following regular expression to match my URL with the parameters:

^\/conversion-upside-report($|\/.*$)

The parentheses save the matching contents into a variable, which I can access using $1 in the new URL, like this:

resources/conversion-rate-optimization-calculator/upside-report/$1

It worked great. Give it a try: http://conversionsciences.com/conversion-upside-report/?t=10000&v=344&x=250

Thanks to Himanshu.

This is a good overview of design trends from 2016. Not all of these trends are good ideas from a conversion optimization standpoint.

Scroll Animations, Large Thematic Images, Animated Micrinteractions, and Brutalism are probably hurting conversion rates.

The author makes a very important point: "this sort of experiment requires thorough research and in many cases the final result comes via several iterations tested and analyzed in terms of usability and visual perception."

We have begun using machine learning to optimize client websites. We call it "machine earning". I think that this is going to be common within a year or two. So I was pleased to find this excellent summary that explains machine learning so well.

@thegrok (Bryan Eisenberg) highlights the rise of artificial intelligence and robotics in everyday retail with the appropriate amounts of warning and optimism. Will retailers and their employees find themselves in the same boat as our manufacturing sectors? Surprised and confounded by change inevitable?

The folks at Rejoiner were kind enough to include me in their list of conversion rate experts to follow on Twitter.

The folks at ConversionVoodoo give us two simple questions we should ask before creating a landing page. The "elephant in the room" here is that one landing page probably isn't going to work, as different people respond to different ads, and thus need a different landing page. What you know about them will make all the difference in your conversion rates.

We focus on conversion marketing because it lets us spend our limited resources on the things that will move our business forward. However, when you first start your conversion optimization process, you are going to have to do MORE work until you get the data on what programs to kill. So, I thought I would pass along some very effective tips that have worked for me to find more time in my already crowded day. Enjoy. 

It's great to optimize  high-traffic websites, but the traffic brings it own set of analysis problems. In particular, the number of things you can test goes up, the amount of data goes up and finding insights becomes more and more difficult. Excel is a great tool, but I'm looking for some tools to help cut the analysis time. Here is a nice list of free tools that I will be exploring over the coming weeks.

This is a nice summary of my @PubCon Masters Group Training. You can watch the free 14 minute video of my PubCon "Social Moonshine" presentation at http://conversci.com/vuh8 

YouTube is a challenging environment for Conversion Scientists, despite @purnavirji 's optimism. Video is an amazing way to communicate, so we must pay attention to the second biggest search engine on the planet. Purna's advice includes strategic as well as tactical advice, and I found it very helpful.

 @TheGrok  says "Test your product headline to be benefit oriented as opposed to just product name." I hadn't considered that. Good lists always tell you something you hadn't thought of and Bryan has such a list for Online Stores and Publication sites who feature their offerings on Product Pages. Product pages are the money pages on your site, and are one of the first places to look for optimization opportunities.