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.
You can divide SEO tactics into two general categories: the black hat and the white hat.
I believe we can do a similar classification with conversion optimization. If we had two categories worth distinction they would be:
Perhaps using the same concept of Black Hat and White Hat for conversion optimization is a step too far.
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.
You’d think conversion optimization and SEO should play together nicely, right?
In theory, conversion optimization aims to improve the user experience, which, conveniently, is what Google wants to do as well with their top search results. Therefore, the more you test and improve your site, the higher it should appear in the rankings. You get more traffic, more conversions, more money – in an endless hockey stick shaped cycle.
Of course, it’s not so simple.
As more and more people start to look to testing and conversion optimization as a consistent and meaningful tool for their marketing and other initiatives it is important that people start to realize that optimization as a discipline is not just a false add-on to existing work. Testing when done correctly can and should be by far the number one driver of revenue for your entire site and organization, and yet according to 3 of the major tools on the market the average testing program only sees 14% of their tests succeed.