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CRO & Testing

Video for Mediums

It’s no big secret that video often improves conversion rates.

And with Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram all making recent upgrades to their video capabilities, it may almost seem like a no-brainer to blast your next marketing video everywhere you can.

Not so fast.

Every platform is different and therefore no single video is right for every platform. That’s not to say your business shouldn’t be using every platform, but let’s be smart about it.

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User State Models

William A. Foster once said, “Quality is never an accident; it is always the result of high intention, sincere effort, intelligent direction, and skillful execution; it represents the wise choice of many alternatives.”

Yet, we continue to see businesses pushing leads through doors, pushing customers through funnels… just hoping that they’ll create a high quality, engaged audience by accident.

Unfortunately, it doesn’t work that way. A high quality, engaged audience is anything but accidental. It requires that optimizers put in the effort to create user state models, dig into cohort analysis and correlative metrics, run experiments for different user states, etc.

It’s not the easy choice, but if you’re looking for long-term revenue growth, it’s the only choice.

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Context

When trying to boost conversions, whether it’s on a signup screen or a landing page, it’s a default for many optimizers to generate hypotheses based on best practices and what’s generally “known” to be a problem.

A landing page that doesn’t display well on mobile is a perfect example. Someone might shout “it’s not responsive” and then resize the page properly for mobile use.

But that won’t solve the real issue… because the truth about most low converting landing pages on mobile isn’t just that they don’t resize properly, but that they have been written, designed, built… with no mobile context in mind.

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Intelligent Agents: An A.I. View of Optimization

As a digital analyst or marketer, you know the importance of analytical decision making.

Go to any industry conference, blog, meet up, or even just read the popular press, and you will hear and see topics like machine learning, artificial intelligence, and predictive analytics everywhere.

Because many of us don’t come from a technical/statistical background, this can be both a little confusing and intimidating.

But don’t sweat it, in this post, I will try to clear up a some of this confusion by introducing a simple, yet powerful framework – the intelligent agent – which will help link these new ideas with familiar tools and concepts like A/B Testing and Optimization.

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Science of Marketing

Fact: offering customers more choices kills conversion rates.

A scientific study proved it.

Fact: you can prime customers to behave in certain ways with certain phrases, images or ideas.

Researchers have shown it’s true.

Fact: if you give potential customers a small gift, you’ll create a debt that customers will eagerly repay.

Robert Cialdini wrote about that years ago in his popular book, Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion.

These ideas (and dozens of others) are so widely accepted that almost no one questions them.

But maybe we should.

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Key Insights from Every Speaker of Elite Camp 2016

Elite Camp is a 3-day traffic and (mainly) conversion event. It’s among the very best CRO events in the world, and of course in Europe. This year was already its 7th year – and the format has proven to be so successful that the event has been replicated in many other countries.

Elite Camp 2016 had an enviable line-up of heavy hitters and rock stars. Here are top insights from every speaker of this year’s event.

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Personalization

In his famous novel, 1984, George Orwell wrote, “Big Brother is Watching You.”

When you’re browsing around online, someone is watching you, too. Actually, a lot of someones. Sites collect plenty of data about each and every visitor that passes through. “The more data, the better,” they say.

But you’re already well aware of that because all smart optimizers are watching their visitors (and customers) as closely as possible.

All of that data is now being used for website personalization in an effort to increase conversions. But, by their own admission and according to consumer opinion, it seems that companies are getting personalization all wrong.

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This I Believe - 25 Thoughts for Life

Throughout his life, architect Bill Claudill wrote down notes on this and that, and organized those thoughts under the title This I Believe. When Tom Peters turned 60, he decided to scribble down 60 thoughts, one for each year – that seemed to capture his professional and personal journey.

I turn 36 in a couple of days (June 24). Much younger than the above named folks, but I decided to do the same. I wrote down 25 TIBs – things I believe to be true.

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Innovative Testing

Most people stick to one end of the testing spectrum, which is where iterative testing falls. Why? Likely because it’s the most talked about, the most publicized.

However, there is another end of the spectrum to explore, which is where innovative testing falls. Understanding one without the other is a disservice to yourself, your colleagues and your boss / clients.

A solid testing program includes the full spectrum.

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