After about two years, today is my very last day doing content and growth at CXL.
In celebration of this amazing experience, I want to share the five most important lessons I’ve learned during my time here.
Testing in an enterprise is truly a team sport.
If a testing program was a football team, its lead would be the QB. They can set the tone and direction, but without the support of a good offensive line, they’ll be scrambling to get any real results.
To get a good “offensive line” in your company, you’ll need to get buy-in from the right people.
What happens when ecommerce sites run out of stock? Cue crowds of angry (would-be) customers and the burning of a big pile of money.
Ok, it might not be that bad, but it’s certainly never good. Fortunately, there are steps you can take to mitigate the negative impact.
The initial phase of establishing an optimization practice at any organization is an exciting time. Big wins often accompany putting companies and careers on an upward trajectory.
But it can also be a real challenge knowing where to start and how to lay a solid foundation with the potential to transform the business. How you structure your team might be the most important part of this.
While SEO and PPC are saturated markets that are getting harder and harder (while PPC costs keep rising), the conversion optimization market is just growing and growing. It’s a market where most competitors are good friends and openly sharing everything – there’s plenty of business to go around for all of us.
If you’re a digital marketer and are looking to specialize in CRO, watch this video where the optimization legend Craig Sullivan shares his thoughts on the topic:
If you enjoyed this video and want to learn to start and grow your CRO business, check out CRO Agency Masterclass live course with Craig Sullivan.
Run an agency? Offer conversion optimization services? Then you know it can be hard.
I’ve been running an optimization agency for 6 years now. Here are my top lessons I’ve learned along the way.
Do you need to be a big company and need large volumes of traffic to be data driven?
When creating landing pages, marketers tend to focus all their efforts on optimizing page elements — making sure the headline engages the visitor, testimonials speak to your unique value proposition, the offer is in the right media type, the lead capture form is correctly formatted, and the CTA button jumps off the page.
That’s all marketers need to generate high quality leads, right?
Then why is it that professional landing pages — getting decent traffic numbers — don’t produce conversions a lot of the time?
It’s because marketers forget about the visitor in the conversion equation.
A common mistake ecommerce store owners make is accepting the sale as the end-goal. It is easy for brands to think in such a transactional way; looking beyond each purchase can prove challenging.
A 2014 survey by Econsultancy revealed, “Just 42% of companies are able to measure customer lifetime value.” Though the remaining 58% understand the importance of customer loyalty and retention, they may find it difficult to execute and analyze customer happiness and conversion campaigns.
For a business to thrive, it must provide customers with long-term value that translates into repeat purchases and, thus, increases the customer’s lifetime value to the company.
“It’s tough to make predictions, especially about the future.” – Yogi Berra
Digital marketing moves at a fast pace. One year something works, and the next year it is obsolete.
Similarly, conversion optimization moves quickly. Sure, there are some core skills that seem foundational and everlasting, but year to year there are also some new skills that crop up.
What are the skills someone should invest in learning if they want to be a top 1% optimization expert in 5 years? What should they learn today?
What are the industry and technology trends that are fueling the need for these skills?