I am the Web Experience Manager for Cisco in EMEAR, and I’ve been working on increasing our capabilities as a business when it comes to conversion optimization for the past three and a half years.
Here’s our story of bringing experimentation into a $51 billion company with 71,000 employees spread across 96 locations worldwide.
What worked in SEO, content, and growth just a few months ago may not be effective today. Making things even more challenging, there’s so much noise. Is that top-ranked content on Google actually the best thing out there? Or is it the same “me too” content?
We identified top marketers based on some good-but-imperfect criteria (e.g., mentions on marketing sites, social media presence, recent presentations, etc.).
Then, we used that expert seed list to gather opinions on which people, sites, and books all marketers should listen to, read, or watch.
Navigation gives a user control, which is generally a good thing—but what about on a landing page, where the motto is “one page, one goal?” Should you use navigation on landing pages?
While there’s not a one-size-fits-all answer (there never is in optimization), we do have some good data by which we can make a decision.
After receiving a $500k budget increase, someone in the C-suite must decide where to allocate these funds: remarketing budget, R&D, events, website redesign, etc.
What should they do? Do they need more information to decide? Even with new information, will that clarify the percentage allocation of funds?
As consumer needs and technology become increasingly complex, so too do the decisions. Modeling is critical for complex decision-making. Relying on intuition alone can set you up for failure.
Nearly 75% of SaaS companies offer a free trial. Trials give potential customers a taste of life with your product at minimal risk. They also give you the opportunity to earn their business.
But while free trials are commonplace, how long should yours be? Should you require a credit card? How can you get more users to purchase?
Urchin, later acquired by Google, invented an amazing way of measuring campaign performance by using last non-direct click attribution and first-party cookies. The solution was perfect—for earlier times:
In most cases, the assumption that users converted on the same browser and the same device as their first site visit was fair.
Over the last several years, email has been pronounced dead half a dozen times, if not more. The truth is, even today, that email is very much alive and, for most optimizers, it’s far from being on its proverbial deathbed.
How can there be such a divided opinion? Segmentation and personalization are the answer.
Optimizers who take advantage of it are seeing real ROI. Optimizers who don’t? Well, they’re likely declaring that “the email blast is dead.”
In the big picture, “conversion optimization” boils down to getting more of the right people clicking on the things you want them to click.
Consumer shopping behaviors have changed dramatically since the onset of the coronavirus pandemic, with ecommerce retailers seeing unprecedented growth in traffic and sales.
While retail stores are slowly beginning to reopen, many consumers have made online shopping their new default. Some 71% of U.S. adults plan to do more than half of their holiday shopping digitally this year.
Traditionally associated with development and product management, agile is a lightweight and, well, agile framework for software development and bringing features and products to market.
But what is “Agile Marketing?” And how can you apply the principles to your own marketing efforts?