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- Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
- Kategorie: Wissenschaft und neue Technologien
- Sprache: Englisch
Learn how to convert website visitors into customers Part science and part art, conversion optimization is designed to turn visitors into customers. Carefully developed testing procedures are necessary to help you fine-tune images, headlines, navigation, colors, buttons, and every other element, creating a website that encourages visitors to take the action you seek. This book guides you through creating an optimization strategy that supports your business goals, using appropriate analytics tools, generating quality testing ideas, running online experiments, and making the adjustments that work. * Conversion optimization is part science and part art; this guide provides step-by-step guidance to help you optimize your website for maximum conversion rates * Explains how to analyze data, prioritize experiment opportunities, and choose the right testing methods * Helps you learn what to adjust, how to do it, and how to analyze the results * Features hands-on exercises, case studies, and a full-color insert reinforcing key tactics * Author has used these techniques to assist Fortune 500 clients You Should Test That explains both the "why" and the "how" of conversion optimization, helping you maximize the value of your website.
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Seitenzahl: 445
Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2012
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Table of Contents
Cover
Frontmatter
Acknowledgments
Introduction
Foreword: Be Super Awesome
Introduction
Who Should Read This Book
What’s Inside
Chapter 1: Why You Should Test That
Your Website Is Crucial to Your Business
Your Website Is Underperforming
Web Design for Results (Rather than Aesthetics)
Why “Best Practices” Aren’t Best
Is There a HiPPO in the Room?
The Risks and Costs of Website Redesign
Conversion-Rate Optimization Increases Revenue without Increasing Advertising Spend
Conversion-Rate Optimization and Your Business
CRO Works alongside SEO
Chapter 2: What Is Conversion Optimization?
Conversion Optimization Requires Controlled Testing
What Is Conversion Optimization?
Who Are Your Target Audiences?
Setting Goals
Chapter 3: Prioritize Testing Opportunities
Use Data to Prioritize Tests
The PIE Prioritization Framework
Prioritize Pages with High Potential for Improvement
Prioritize Important Pages
Prioritize Easy Test Pages
Prioritize with a Weighting Table
Chapter 4: Create Hypotheses with the LIFT Model
Methodology Is More Valuable than Tips
The Gorilla in Our Brains
The LIFT Model
Fill the Marble Jar
Create Valid Hypotheses
Chapter 5: Optimize Your Value Proposition
The Value-Proposition Equation
Your Visitor’s Perception Filters
Tangible Features
Intangible Benefits
Costs
What Is Your Value Proposition?
Chapter 6: Optimize for Relevance
Marketing Funnel Relevance
Source Relevance
Target Audience Relevance
Navigation Relevance
Chapter 7: Optimize for Clarity
Information Hierarchy Clarity
Design Clarity
Call-to-Action Clarity
Chapter 8: Optimize for Anxiety
Privacy Anxiety
Usability Anxiety
Effort Anxiety
Fulfillment Anxiety
Chapter 9: Optimize for Distraction
Two Distraction Points
First-Impression Distraction
Chapter 10: Optimize for Urgency
Internal Urgency
External Urgency
Chapter 11: Test Your Hypotheses
Set Test Goals
Choose the Test Area
Choose the Test Type
Isolate for Insights
Chapter 12: Analyze Your Test Results
Reading the Tea Leaves
Monitoring Your Tests
Evaluating Results
Chapter 13: Strategic Marketing Optimization
Aim for Marketing Insights
The Optimization Manifesto
Index
The Color of Conversion
Heatmaps
Clarity and Distraction
Advance Praise for You Should Test That!
If you want to create massive advancements in your business and drive more sales, you have to read You Should Test That!.
—Neil Patel, Co-Founder of KISSmetrics, Crazy Egg, and Quicksprout
In a world where you can test everything, why are companies testing nothing? Maybe that’s being too harsh, but it’s true. In You Should Test That! Chris doesn’t just talk about what you should test, but how to think about your marketing in a very smart and strategic way. Too many brands are wasting too much money on marketing without doing the strategic testing first. You Should Test That! screams, “You should buy this book!”
—Mitch Joel, President of Twist Image & Author, Blogger, Podcaster of Six Pixels of Separation
Chris Goward does a fantastic job of explaining not just effective testing techniques, but also the strategic value testing can deliver to your entire marketing program. This well-illustrated guide to all aspects of testing is a must-read for anyone responsible for marketing decision-making.
—Roger Dooley, author of Brainfluence
With You Should Test That!, Goward has delivered a well-researched and insightful exploration of the latest conversion optimization principles and techniques in a practical and enjoyable book that pushes the boundaries of the art and science of optimized marketing. A definite must-read that ought to be required reading for anyone serious about optimization.
—Brett Tabke, Founder and CEO, Pubcon, the premier optimization and new media conferences
Everyone knows about A/B testing and wants to do it, but not many are doing it regularly. Why? Chris Goward has written an excellent book to answer this precise question where he urges businesses to create internal testing and optimization champions to drive business success. And to corroborate his message, Chris deploys his years of experience in the industry to show successful case studies, discuss his proven LIFT model, and analyze scientific techniques and all-too-essential rules-of-thumb. You Should Test That! is a fantastic book that covers testing and optimization from many different angles. I highly recommend it!
—Paras Chopra, CEO of Visual Website Optimizer
Chris Goward discusses a proven, scientific approach to experimentation with clarity and simplicity—while not losing the conceptual depth this topic deserves. This book at times is a primer in modern online marketing and an advanced study for hypothesis-based testing at others. A wonderfully written text—the very best on this topic I can find!
—Raju Malhotra, Director, Microsoft Corp.
Read this book, and you will profit. Chris Goward gets it. I know. I’ve stalked him for years. His LIFT framework was the missing piece of my CRO puzzle leading to millions of dollars in additional sales for our small family business over the past few years. If you’re a competitor of mine, I’m just kidding. CRO is just a fad. Your shopping cart is just fine. Don’t change a thing.
—Rob Snell, Gun Dog Supply
You Should Test That! is a thorough and irreverent guide for website testing. The wealth of case studies and various testing recipes provides any marketer with plenty of ideas from day one. I particularly liked Chapter 13, which talks about how to make testing a broader discipline throughout the entire organization.Let’s face it, we need to move from an era of “Which button is better?” to also go after questions like “What part of our product’s value prop is most compelling?” or “How should we acquire new customers?” The good news is we can use a lot of the fundamentals and best practices developed over the years in website testing and apply it much more broadly to lean marketing and entrepreneurial management practices in general.
—Tom Leung, CEO of Yabbly and former Sr. Product Manager for Google Website Optimizer
Wow! This is packed full of stuff you can use today. So many business books have a couple of good ideas and are padded out with fluff. This is jammed with good ideas from start to finish, debunking myths in a humorous and practical way and giving you the tools you need to make more money online.
—Charles Nicholls, Founder, SeeWhy
The days of marketing online just for the sake of being present are long gone. Stakeholders at all corporate levels now demand optimized campaigns, making clear the value proposition and return on investment. You Should Test That! reveals deep online testing secrets that fuel some of the most effective companies in the world.Read this book, or read about it somewhere else.
—Marty Weintraub, author of Killer Facebook Ads and CEO, aimClear
Chris Goward knows the secret to business: listen to your gut, and then test what it says. This book is a must read for understanding why scientific testing is the key to continuous improvement in your organization.
—Jackie Huba, author of Creating Customer Evangelists and Citizen Marketers
Chris Goward is the Nate Silver of conversion optimization—smart, entertaining, and a step ahead of everyone else. If you want to be prepared for the future of online marketing, read his book.
—Lance Loveday, Co-author, Web Design for ROI and CEO, Closed Loop
What I really liked about this book was the thorough data-driven approach to helping you make informed decisions of what to do with your website. Packed with 15 real-world case studies, Chris writes a non-technical book that is full of practical tips for building a culture of business decisions through tested insights. In other words, getting data and its sibling testing optimization out of a silo and integrated into the blood stream of your organization.
—Brian Clifton, author of Advanced Web Metrics with Google Analytics
I thoroughly enjoyed the unique perspective Chris is taking in his book when talking about conversion rate optimization. It’s an eye-opener! Also, the great number of case studies in the book makes the message even more convincing. As an entrepreneur, I did find something new in this approach.
—Ann Smarty, Founder, SEOSmarty.com
Chris is a highly regarded conversion expert who has produced a wonderful book that makes a complex process easy to understand. It covers many of the organizational barriers to change and how to get support for changes to the website. It also covers what you need to know about managing and implementing your conversion project. I recommend this book to anybody wanting to improve their conversion success.
—Bruce Clay, coauthor of Search Engine Optimization All-in-One For Dummies and President, Bruce Clay, Inc.
What I like about Chris’s approach is that he can be both tactical and strategic. On the one hand, you can use this book to ensure your website isn’t a slacker. But on the other, you can also use it on a broader level, to guide decisions based less on gut, and more on real insight.
—Ann Handley, co-author of Content Rules and Chief Content Officer, MarketingProfs
Marketing has changed fundamentally with the rapid growth of the online channel, to the point that “close enough” and “gut feel” are mostly working their way out of marketers’ vernacular. Chris Goward’s new book is an important manifesto for today’s digital marketers that want to continue to push lead and conversion performance while also aiming for the holy grail of outstanding user experience. He describes that testing is so much more than simply “conversion optimization,” and makes solid arguments for the value of adopting a data-driven iterative testing model. I would recommend that this book be read not only by marketing executives and strategists, but also by the analysts that are collecting and evaluating business performance data.
—Chris Boggs, Digital Marketing Strategist with over 13 years of experience, currently serving as the Chairman of SEMPO.org
In his book You Should Test That! Chris Goward preaches the importance of clarity, among other things, and he takes his own advice. Goward is unambiguous and unyielding as he guides us to tests that give clear direction toward online success. Yet, he successfully weaves scientific rigor into intuition and creativity. The chapter on creating an optimized value proposition should be required reading in business schools. His Optimization Manifesto sums it up perfectly: “We believe in art and science.”
—Brian Massey, Conversion Scientist and author of Your Customer Creation Equation
Testing and data changed the way we market at Grasshopper, starting with conversion optimization, we built a culture around data and marketing optimization that now has gone into all parts of the organization. Data has optimized everything we do, resulting in increased revenue and profit. Every Founder and Marketer should read this book.
—David Hauser, Cofounder of Grasshopper, Chargify, PopSurvey, and Angel Investor
Before the Web, non-targeted advertising ruled and creative people dominated marketing. But as Chris Goward shows, the Web allows for infinite data analysis, driving success to those who test. Guess what? The quants are now the most important people on your marketing team.
—David Meerman Scott, bestselling author of The New Rules of Marketing and PR
Website optimization has long been one of the easiest ways to improve your conversion rate, but how and what to test is always in contention. What has never been in contention among the best testers, however, is that your tests should be structured and scientific. You Should Test That! provides an easy to understand framework for testing, and lots of excellent ideas for how to optimize toward specific goals. A much needed comprehensive approach to testing that doesn’t exist today.
—Jesse Nichols, Agency Partnerships, Google Analytics
Chris Goward’s book You Should Test That! presents a compelling marketing manifesto to test everything—gut instincts, market research best practices, experts’ advice—for continuous improvement. Testing works, and as the author’s manifesto states, “testing is the crucible for decision-making,”—profitable decision making. This book details a clear, actionable explanation of the science and art of getting more revenue generating actions from the same amount of visitors.Using a top-notch roster of case studies, Chris Goward talks us through just how real companies increased conversions and revenue doing so. His book is a thoroughly persuasive argument for creating a data driven culture at your company and a road map for being an effective evangelist for it. How to gain senior-level buy-in for testing. How to involve other departments. Interactive tools to tie results to revenue.
—Anne F. Kennedy, International Search & Social Marketing Strategist, and author Global Search Engine Marketing: Fine-tuning Your International Search Engine Results
Understanding marketing testing, website optimization, search traffic improvement, usability testing and all the rest are simply part of being a marketer these days. But this book is also about marketing; branding, messaging, persuasion, etc. And once you have those under your belt, you are well on your way to strategic marketing optimization.
—Jim Sterne, Founder, eMetrics Summit and Chairman, Digital Analytics Association
All businesses create content today...but only a handful test their web content. You Should Test That! will help you set up a culture of testing in your organization that will deliver bottom line results. Heck, since you’re spending so much on your content, why don’t you check to see if it actually is working for you. Read this book...then share it with your entire marketing team.
—Joe Pulizzi, Founder, Content Marketing Institute and author of Managing Content Marketing: The Real-World Guide for Creating Passionate Subscribers to Your Brand
Testing is, without a doubt, one of the most effective ways to improve digital customer experiences, yet it remains an untapped resource for most organizations. Chris’ book offers a definitive guide on how to approach testing to develop a systematic program that will elevate your business tomorrow and for years to come. This book is a must have for the modern digital marketer’s bookshelf.
—John Lovett, Senior Partner, Web Analytics Demystified and President, Digital Analytics Association
You Should Test That! provides the most comprehensive framework for testing and optimization that I’ve seen. Chris not only goes far deeper into strategies that deliver results than most but makes the business case as well. A must-read for anyone looking to optimize their digital marketing results.
—Jonathan Mendez, CEO, Yieldbot
It is a misnomer that creative types abhor any left-brain stimulation. In fact, the best right-brain thinkers feed on data that informs, inspires, and empowers them. This book outlines the converged path between art and science and how data, optimization and analytics can produce the ultimate 1–2 punch: sales and experience.
—Joseph Jaffe, author of Flip the Funnel
Analytics is amazing. But all the data and analysis in the world doesn’t mean anything unless you take action. And in the online world that means testing.But many people are scared to test. They don’t understand the process and think it’s too complicated or risky. And they very rarely know where to start. Chris does a great job of presenting an easy to understand framework that will help anyone in the online space get started with testing. Once you start testing you’ll come to understand testing as a way to better understand your user and not just a way to improve conversion rate.
—Justin Cutroni, author of Google Analytics, coauthor of Performance Marketing with Google Analytics, and blogger at cutroni.com/blog
Continuous website conversion data is essential to all aspects of online success—if it ain’t tested, don’t fix it! Chris Goward gets it and delivers the “how-to’s” that will get you results.
—Ken Jurina, President & CEO, Top Draw Inc.
Buy this book right now if you are interested in turning your website into a conversion generating machine. While countless books exist that cover a multitude of strategies for generating traffic to your website, few exist that actually help you close the deal once a visitor arrives. This how-to guide on conversion optimization by Chris Goward unveils proven strategies and scientific methods to help you optimize your website and drive more conversions; it represents one of the best investments you can make to make more money by closing more deals.
—Kristopher B. Jones, Chairman, Internet Marketing Ninjas and best-selling author of Search Engine Optimization: Your Guide to Effective Internet Marketing
I really, really wish I’d written this book—*picture sad face*—it’s the clearest definition of the what, how and why of conversion rate optimization I’ve read. Best of all, it’s a unique approach. After reading about 100 marketing books and only learning one thing from each, it’s exciting to come across a book that makes you smarter after every chapter.
—Oli Gardner, Co-founder & Creative Director, Unbounce.com
Wow, this is some of the best content I have read in the optimization world in a long time! It provides a very solid strategic framework but at the same time breaks it into practical steps people can immediately turn into action in their conversion optimization efforts. I really liked the flow, the examples, how close it was to the day-to-day experiences and challenges we have. This strategy works for Dell to continuously improve our online sales. All business managers, marketers and conversion optimizers should read this and give copies to their teams.
—Nazli Yuzak, Sr. Digital Optimization Consultant, Dell.com
You Should Test That! cuts through the myths of universal best practice and exposes the common mistakes even the experts make when developing a testing program, and offers a comprehensive, data-driven methodology for high impact testing. If you want to move from testing practitioner to strategist, “You Should Read This.”
—Linda Bustos, director of ecommerce research, Elastic Path Software, getelastic.com
Online testing is rapidly evolving from a standalone activity to a core discipline within leading online Enterprises. Today’s Enterprises are requiring an integrated range of optimization techniques, including testing, to deliver the most relevant, engaging and consistent customer experience for every prospect and customer across every channel. This book is perfectly timed with the market and will show the reader how to get the most out of testing and optimization.
—Mark Simpson, Founder and President of Maxymiser
Changes in conversion rates can significantly increase company’s bottom line. This is obviously powerful and Chris does an awesome job distilling information & making conversion concepts easy to grasp & understand. You Should Test That! is a must read for anyone looking to take their conversion optimization efforts to the next level.
—Mona Elesseily, VP Online Marketing Strategy, Page Zero Media
For everyone who has suspected there’s more to successful conversion optimization than the latest “Quick Wins” list, this book is for you. You Should Test That! outlines a clear, powerful approach to improving your website’s bottom line.
—Sandra Niehaus, Co-author, Web Design for ROI and VP of User Experience at Closed Loop
When marketers complain that they don’t know what’s working, they’re really complaining that they don’t know how to figure it out. The fact is that we’re past the dark ages of digital, and that there are robust methods for understanding and improving marketing performance.You Should Test That! does a lot more than just give advice from on high...it explains what to test, and how to test it, in clear language. Just as important, the book is an excellent guide for where to spend precious testing resources (and where not to) because time is marketing’s most precious, nonrenewable resource.Readers of most business books finish with the knowledge of what they should be doing, but quickly run up against the realities of how to get it done. When you’ve finished You Should Test That!, you’ll be armed not just with the belief in an importance of testing and optimization, but with the mental tools to accomplish them.
—Stefan Tornquist, VP Research, Econsultancy US
Powerful conversion advice from an industry luminary.
—Stephan Spencer, Co-Author of The Art of SEO and Author of Google Power Search
Landing page optimization is often the most poorly executed discipline of digital marketing, yet can be one of the biggest payoffs. Read this book to learn how to go beyond the basics, get a graduate degree, and become a strategic marketing optimization ninja.
—Eric Enge, Co-Author of The Art of SEO and CEO of Stone Temple Consulting
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Dear Reader,
Thank you for choosing You Should Test That!: Conversion Optimization for More Leads, Sales and Profit or The Art and Science of Optimized Marketing. This book is part of a family of premium-quality Sybex books, all of which are written by outstanding authors who combine practical experience with a gift for teaching.
Sybex was founded in 1976. More than 30 years later, we’re still committed to producing consistently exceptional books. With each of our titles, we’re working hard to set a new standard for the industry. From the paper we print on to the authors we work with, our goal is to bring you the best books available.
I hope you see all that reflected in these pages. I’d be very interested to hear your comments and get your feedback on how we’re doing. Feel free to let me know what you think about this or any other Sybex book by sending me an email at [email protected]. If you think you’ve found a technical error in this book, please visit http://sybex.custhelp.com. Customer feedback is critical to our efforts at Sybex.
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Neil Edde
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Sybex, an Imprint of Wiley
To Danica, Medo, and Shalom. You. Rock.
Acknowledgments
I’m thankful.
Thankful for the limitless (so far) supply of support my wife, Danica, has given me over the years and especially the past few months as I’ve developed this content, grown WiderFunnel, and overcome obstacles. She never fails to give before I know what I need.
I’m thankful for my joyous, encouraging, and loving daughters, Medo and Shalom, who have given many Skype hugs as I travel the world promoting and refining the concepts in this book.
I’m thankful to the conversion heroes at WiderFunnel for delivering awesome results for our clients with or without me in the office.
I’m thankful for the WiderFunnel clients who have allowed us to learn these marketing-optimization principles using their web traffic and share a few of the test results with the world.
I’m thankful to the many conference organizers and business leaders who have repeatedly invited me back to speak to their audiences about these ideas and fine-tune the message over the years.
I’m thankful to Willem Knibbe, senior acquisitions editor, for sharing my vision and advocating for this book. Thanks also to Pete Gaughan, editorial manager; Jim Compton, developmental editor; Brendan Regan, my technical editor; and the rest of the Sybex team for giving me support and teaching me the process as a teething author.
I’m thankful for my CEO mastermind group, PX6, for your advice and support through the challenges: Tom, Claudia, Paul, Maurice, Jill, Greg, Diane, Geoff, and Mike. You’ve been lifelines and valued mentors to me—each of you.
I’m thankful for an extended network of parents, sisters, brothers, and friends who always show up when we need support and truly provide a safe village to raise our family. You give me the freedom to take on ambitious projects like this.
I’m thankful to have some thoughts that some people seem to want to read.
I’m thankful that you’ve decided to read this book.
About the Author
Chris Goward was one of the first people to look at online content and say, “You Should Test That!” From that revelation he founded WiderFunnel—the full-service marketing-optimization agency that pioneered landing-page and conversion-rate optimization methods for companies such as Google, Electronic Arts, Iron Mountain, and BabyAge.com.
Chris is a top-rated speaker and keynote at conferences and seminars globally, like Search Engine Strategies, PubCon, Search Marketing Expo, European Conversion Summit, eMetrics, and Conversion Conference, where he evangelizes how marketers should test and gain insights about their messages and websites.
Chris began his first digital marketing consultancy in 1994, and he has led online and offline response strategies for ad agencies DDB, TBWA, and Cossette. He developed the LIFT Model and Kaizen Method in response to the traditional agencies’ flawed mentality: “Win industry awards regardless of client results.” Today, his marketing-optimization system is helping some of the world’s most successful websites lift their leads, sales, and revenue by double- and triple-digit percentages.
An entrepreneur at heart, Chris has also launched numerous businesses since his early childhood candy bar arbitrage venture, including the Rockit Roller human-powered scooter, a graphic design and signage company, an online jewelry business with his wife, and a web design consultancy. He is currently a founding member of the Global Conversion Alliance and is an advisor to startups like Unbounce.com. Marketing Magazine named him a “Top 30 Under 30” in 2004.
When Chris is not planning conversion strategies for WiderFunnel’s clients or on the road speaking, he can be found hitting the ski slopes with his wife and daughters, cheering on the Vancouver Canucks, or trying to grow parsley in his office.
Foreword: Be Super Awesome
A few days into my first job on the web, over a decade ago, our senior most executive said to me: “Our product is so good that we should replace all the text, images and links on our home page with one giant red button that says ‘start now.’ People will just love the product and will convert into paying customers. No need to show them previews, explain the problem it solves, have a product recommendation engine. Just one big red button.”
In that one instant I became a fan of experimentation!
I realized that there was no way I could say no to the idea. I was simply not that important (and our salary differential was too big!). My only option was to figure out how to show the executive that we respected his idea, tried it and measure the results.
We jury rigged our CMS to split traffic that landed on the home page to go to two different pages (giant red button and no giant red button). Data collection was painful (log file parsing!). Computation of statistical significance was crude (ok Excel, still works!). The result was surprising. To the HiPPO—because the red button performed miserably. To me as well—I realized this is all it took to let your actual customers pick good ideas.
A lot has happened since that early foray. We have a ton of options when it comes to doing A/B testing. We have tools that make it ever easier to deliver the sexy magic of multivariate testing. An increasing number of people are discovering the exhilarating thrill of controlled experimentation—what a magnificent way to answer questions we thus far thought were unanswerable.
Yet experimentation sadly remains less used than it should be. Tools are not the problem anymore—too many and at all price points. Senior leaders are less of a problem every day—they are starting to see the benefits and career enhancing potential. The problem is that experimentation requires a unique mental model. It requires a systematic approach. It requires a distinct analytical rigor. It requires the love of process excellence.
The problem is you, your employees, me, and our peers in digital marketing.
That’s where Chris rides in to save the day. In 13 chapters, he systematically takes us on a journey from the very first basic steps of testing and experimentation, to making a strong and compelling case for conversion optimization, to the critical sections of prioritization of the many opportunities in front of us and executing our experiments.
My favorite parts of the book are the ones that address the core reasons experimentation is not an all-subsuming part of our digital existence. Chapter 4 introduces us to the LIFT model (this is not going to let you down as you imagine scaling your testing program!), and Chapters 5 through 10 gently hold your hand and provide specific guidance on each element of the model. Any excuse you could come up with to save yourself from being awesome will be gone by this point.
And since just having the knowledge is not sufficient, the 15 real world case studies included will allow you to tell stories to your management team: stories that will inspire them to permit you to unleash your wings and go save the day (and then the next day and then the day after) for your business. Regardless of what your company’s size is. Regardless of where you are on the digital evolutionary cycle.
Buy the book. Be super awesome. Then email Chris and thank him.
Good luck!
Avinash Kaushik
Author: Web Analytics 2.0, Web Analytics: An Hour A Day
www.kaushik.net/avinash
Introduction
Anybody can say charming things and try to please and to flatter, but a true friend always says unpleasant things, and does not mind giving pain. Indeed, if he is a really true friend he prefers it, for he knows that then he is doing good.
—Oscar Wilde
The discipline that I call strategic marketing optimization can change your business and dramatically increase your profits. This book will tell you how.
You have your own opinions about your marketing, perhaps strong ones. Others in your organization may hold differing beliefs. I may have another view entirely.
Which is right? How do you decide whose perspective to take?
Some organizations use a consensus approach where everyone needs to agree before action is taken. Others crown their opinion leaders based on experience, title, or personality. But is the group’s decision always best? Are leaders always right?
No. Opinions are flawed. They are distorted by skewed perspectives, unrelated experience, personal biases, and outdated notions. Yet people believe very strongly in them, despite evidence. As the scientist Peter Medawar said, “The intensity of a conviction that a hypothesis is true has no bearing over whether it is true or not.”
Today, it’s easier than ever to stop debates over whose opinion should win. By scientifically testing marketing approaches, you can gain insights that improve your marketing and business results. Businesses that have embraced split testing in their culture and processes are leading their industries. Others are missing out on this powerful strategy. Some are distracted by the latest unproven marketing trend, social application, or technology. The “shiny new things” can be appealing, but those who fall for distractions are doomed to a downward spiral of false hopes.
I’ll be straight with you. Developing a rigorous optimization process that delivers results isn’t easy. It takes creativity, perseverance, and discipline to get the best results. My goal for this book is to inspire you to be a conversion champion who will evangelize these concepts in your organization and commit to a rigorous approach to continuous improvement. I can promise you that it will be worth the effort.
By reading this, you will learn the processes, frameworks, and tactics that we at WiderFunnel are using to help businesses win. We have refined this optimization system with some of the world’s most successful e-commerce, lead-generation, and affiliate companies like eBay, Google, Shutterfly, SAP, ABB, Citrix, Electronic Arts, and many more. Through dozens of example and case studies of real test results, you will see how you can adopt a similar process in your organization, for whatever products, services, and ideas you need to sell.
In the end, I hope your response to debates and opinions will be to say, “You Should Test That!”
Who Should Read This Book
This book is intended to inspire and equip corporate marketers, web directors, product managers, business owners, web analysts, advertisers, affiliate marketers, agencies, and business strategists:
Everyone who wants to improve your marketing results: You Should Read This!
What’s Inside
Here is what to expect in each chapter:
How to Contact the Author
I welcome feedback from you about this book or any of my work. You can reach me at [email protected] and on Twitter at @chrisgoward. For more information about my work, you should check out the world’s best marketing optimization agency (which I also founded) at WiderFunnel.com.
Sybex strives to keep you supplied with the latest tools and information you need for your work. Please check their website at www.sybex.com/go/youshouldtestthat, where we’ll post additional content and updates that supplement this book, should the need arise.
Chapter 1
Why You Should Test That
Almost everything that distinguishes the modern world from earlier centuries is attributable to science, which achieved its most spectacular triumphs in the seventeenth century.
—Bertrand Russell
What is optimization? The word optimization has become extremely popular in digital marketing in recent years, which has led to some confusion as well as a plethora of acronyms.
There’s conversion-rate optimization (CRO), also known as conversion optimization (CO); landing-page optimization (LPO), which is really a subset of CRO; marketing optimization (MO); business process optimization (BPO); search engine optimization (SEO); website optimization (WSO); social media optimization (SMO); and now, apparently, video search engine optimization (VSEO) and more!
In Internet marketing circles, conversion-rate optimization is too often confused with SEO. I think the repeated use of optimization makes sense, but it can also be distracting. If we were in the business of pancake optimization, we would probably be pursuing the perfect pancake, right? Likewise, conversion-rate optimization is the pursuit of the optimal conversion rate, not a higher search-engine ranking or any other type of optimization or efficiency.
For the purpose of this book, we’ll define conversion-rate optimization (or conversion optimization) as the science and art of getting more revenue-generating actions from the same numberof visitors. If that goal sounds good to you, read on!
This chapter looks at how conversion-rate optimization can benefit your business: the importance of your website to your business and the likelihood that it may be underperforming for you; the importance of designing for effectiveness and not slavishly following “best practices”; and more. You’ll see how conversion-rate optimization can increase revenue without increasing advertising spend, and finally how CRO can work together with SEO.
Your Website Is Crucial to Your Business
Do you remember what the Web looked like in 1994? Most people don’t. Many were just starting to read about the coming “information superhighway.” Some of the most popular websites didn’t even exist. Google.com and Dell.com both launched in 1996. Facebook.com didn’t show up in its original university-only version until 2004, and it was still called The Facebook. MySpace.com hadn’t yet had its explosive growth or its implosive decline. Here you can see examples of how some of the most popular sites originally looked.
Yahoo in 1994 was the search engine leader, providing links to most of the known Internet.
Google in 1998 quickly overtook Yahoo as the world’s most popular search engine.
Facebook at its launch in 2004; it has since had many more redesigns than Yahoo or Google.
Back then, when I began my first web-design business, websites didn’t get a lot of attention. Many of the businesses that hired me considered their sites inconsequential novelties or, at best, “brochures” that most customers would never see or interact with.
Businesses could afford to ignore the Web then. Only the geeky few of us with our plodding dial-up modems were online to see their websites, anyway!
Today, everything has changed. The Web is our daily companion. We connect with friends through social networks and get product and business information wherever we are with our mobile devices. The Web is our most important source of information and social interaction.
The average American spends between 22 and 34 hours per month online, and that number jumps much higher if you count mobile web browsing. Consider the Media Metrix research by comScore.
Average online time
Not only is the Web ubiquitous, but it’s also highly influential. Up to 90 percent of purchasers are influenced by online research before making an offline purchase, according to a study by Experian.
We have a unique situation right now: the importance of the Web is still in a dramatic upswing, but the performance of most website experiences is still severely below potential. In other words, the experience and results of websites aren’t living up to their owners’ expectations and their performance potential. This translates to your online business getting fewer actions than you deserve.
The good news is that this has created a huge and growing opportunity gap. The potential to get more actions and better return on investment (ROI) is very real. Better yet, the book you’re holding can give you a framework to get the extra revenue your customers want to give you!
Opportunity gap
This is one reason I’m excited about the long-term prospects for careers in conversion-rate optimization. The discipline, processes, and skill set needed to consistently improve web experiences will be valuable for a long time to come, and the necessary skills are also highly adaptable to other media.
Your Website Is Underperforming
To tell you that your website is underperforming is a pretty bold claim because I may have never even seen your website, much less analyzed your performance metrics. Nevertheless, I can confidently tell you exactly that: your website is underperforming its potential.
All Websites Can Be Improved
I’ve never seen a website that couldn’t be improved. In fact, the best online companies in the world are committed to continuous improvement on their websites. Some of the best-known examples include Google constantly tweaking and testing its algorithm and website design, Facebook testing, releasing, and modifying new features rapidly, and Amazon, which is well known for evolving its website through testing.
More important, let’s think about you. What is your conversion rate for new visitors right now? 1 percent, 3 percent, 20 percent, 30 percent? Whatever it is, I’m willing to bet that you don’t have a 100 percent conversion rate.
If your company is like most, the vast majority of visitors leave without indicating the most basic level of interest. Are you satisfied that the majority of your expensive traffic is being wasted? Should you be allocating the majority of your scarce marketing budget to driving more people to this underperforming website?
The sad fact is that your website is turning away most of your prospects and customers in disappointment. The good news is that your competitors are probably in just as bad shape. Let’s hope they’re not reading this book like you are. You may have a window of opportunity to gain a strong lead!
The Halo Effect of Underperformance
The halo effect is a psychological bias in which our perception of someone’s strengths or weaknesses influences our perception of their other attributes. For example, if we have a favorite sports celebrity, our admiration of their sports talent will spill over into other areas, so we accept their product recommendations as valuable. That’s why celebrity endorsements have worked so well.
Unfortunately, when your website is underperforming, it has a halo effect on your prospects’ perception of your product performance.
Are You Fast?
For example, if you want to communicate that your product is fast, how quickly should your website load? Let’s look at the website for BlackBerry smartphones. The home page includes complex hover effects with large background images and textures. The download requirements to fulfill the designer’s vision cause a very slow load time. Here’s what I saw for the first few seconds on the page:
Do you see the irony of the headline that appeared once the page loaded? The website experience is negatively affecting the exact value-proposition point that this company wants to promote.
Is It Easy?
If you claim that your product or service is easy, take a look at how easy your website is to understand and use:
How many steps are in your signup process?
How many fields of information are required in your purchase process?
How easy is it to find your shipping information?
Is your product information understandable?
We’ll get into more detail about how to identify these types of issues and more in Chapter 7, “Optimize for Clarity,” Chapter 8, “Optimize for Anxiety,” and Chapter 9, “Optimize for Distraction.” The important point to understand is that the halo effect from your website’s usability is influencing your prospects’ perception of your product.
An Example: Rotating Offers, the Scourge of Home-Page Design
In WiderFunnel’s conversion-rate optimization work, one of the most common elements we come across is the rotating home-page offer banner, or slideshow. It’s a great example of how typical websites evolve common features that are harmful to business results. We have tested rotating offers many times and found them to be a poor way of presenting home-page content.
Our first example is the Ballard.com home-page rotating banner. Notice that each banner has small white boxes in the lower-right corner that indicate how many messages are being rotated. Each banner also has a small Learn More link, but these are white and barely visible on top of some of the images.
The Ballard.com home page has a banner that rotates in the sequence shown here.
The only positive these banners have going for them is that they don’t have large copy blocks, which would have been unreadable. Unfortunately, most of those nice big headlines are so vague that the target audiences, products, and messages are unclear. Ballard has huge potential for improving its home page’s effectiveness.
Next, consider the Forever21.com home page and its rotating banners.
The Forever21.com home page has a banner that rotates as shown here.
The Forever21 banners also show tiny boxes identifying the number of messages as they rotate.
Let’s think about your visitor’s experience in more detail for a moment. She arrives on your home page and needs to orient herself to your layout in order to decide which information to zero in on. A strong, page-dominant banner with a headline and bold image is where she’s likely to start her focus.
Unfortunately, the message in that banner usually isn’t relevant to what she’s looking for. Why? The marketing department is featuring current events, offers, and news that may be important to some department within the organization, but not to the majority of visitors.
In the lucky event that your visitor sees an offer that looks interesting to her, she will want to read a little more about it. But just as she’s gathered the motivation and confidence to click through and learn more, the rotator switches to the next offer.
What happens now? She’s confronted with a second offer and has to decide whether to focus on reading it or getting back to the previous offer. She’s feeling a little frustrated and disoriented at this point.
If she decides the first offer was really what she wanted to see, how does she return to it? She has to figure out how to control the slideshow without the benefits of an owner’s manual. The web designer surely would have made it easy to navigate back and forth between offers, right?
Unfortunately, that’s not the case. Your beleaguered visitor may have to locate a tiny row of dots or squares hidden among the bold, colorful photos in the offer onslaught.
You can, I’m sure, empathize with her likely reaction, which is to bounce off the site in frustration.
Web Design for Results (Rather than Aesthetics)
I sometimes give web designers and art directors a hard time about the websites they create. In reality, though, they’re usually not the only cause of your website’s conversion problems.
At some point early in the design process, the designer often asks the client for examples of websites they like. This may be a sign that things are heading in the wrong direction from the beginning.
The client inevitably selects the websites of the three competitors they think are the most “successful.” Rarely do they branch out of their immediate industry environment. They certainly won’t know where to look to find the Web’s best-converting web experiences.
What is the basis for judging the websites the client selects? Neither the client nor the designer knows how well the chosen examples perform. Often there’s no discussion of whether the example sites have similar business goals. The criterion for success in cases like this often becomes purely aesthetic.
You see, the problem with your website probably started with the criteria for judging a successful design. On one hand, the goal of the design agency is to end the project with a happy client. Of course it is. They want the client to pay the agency’s invoice! Many are also motivated to win “creative” awards, which are based more on cleverness than business results. They want design samples that make their portfolio look great. The revenue attached to those designs for those awards doesn’t matter.
When was the last time you saw a digital agency present the revenue improvement for each of their redesign projects on their website? If they do, they may be one of the rare breed of digital agency that cares about the end result of their designs.
On the other hand, the client usually doesn’t give the design agency the proper goals to start with. They often don’t tell the agency to do whatever is necessary to increase qualified leads for the sales team or lift e-commerce sales or affiliate revenue. They may just say that the current design is “tired” or “stale” or that the new CEO doesn’t like it.
Often, the design is—tragically—driven more by the technical limitations of a chosen content-management system (CMS) than by lead generation and sales goals. Why is this allowed to happen? If you’re paying for a new website, shouldn’t it improve your business results? Clients and agencies both need to reevaluate the outcome of their work. If it doesn’t produce measurably improved business results, it’s just busy work and a waste of marketing budget. You can turn this around by ensuring that your next website update begins with the business and website goals and the criteria for measuring success in terms of specific website actions that produce more revenue.
When goals and success metrics are in place, you have a much better chance of improving those metrics. Unfortunately, even when website owners have clear goals, objectives, and metrics, they may fall into the temptation of seeking out quick-fix advice or “best practices” to follow.
