Conversion Optimization & Marketing Blog

5 Things We Learned from Analyzing 28,304 Experiments

How do CRO professionals run experiments in 2019? We analyzed 28,304 experiments, picked randomly from our Convert.com customers.

This post shares some of our top observations and a few takeaways about:

When CROs choose to stop tests;
Which types of experiments are most popular;
How often personalization is part of the experimentation process;
How many goals CROs set for an experiment;
How costly “learning” from failed experiments can get.

Let’s begin.

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Marketing Project Management: A Reliable, Reusable Framework

Lurking beneath every goal are dangerous assumptions. The longer those assumptions remain unexamined, the greater the risk.
– Jake Knapp, Sprint: How To Solve Big Problems and Test New Ideas in Just 5 days

Imagine this scenario. You’re a marketer, and you’ve just launched a marketing campaign that you spent weeks or months building. You checked all your boxes:

You assigned roles and responsibilities.
You kept stakeholders informed along the way.
You activated all the right channels to reach your target segment.

But something is wrong. Hardly any prospects are opening your emails. Almost none are engaging with your ads. The only feedback you are getting is that certain elements on your landing page are broken and, worse, don’t load properly across devices and browsers.

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5 Principles of Persuasive Web Design

Cialdini breaks down influence into six persuasion principles. What’s the best way to persuade somebody when talking to them? You have to be confident, talk fast, and swear a little, among other things.

But what about persuading somebody without words—possible?

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7 Retargeting Case Studies That’ll Boost Your Current Campaigns

You already know retargeting works. But what if you’re doing it all wrong?

What if grouping all audiences into the same retargeting campaign is actually doing more harm than good?

The truth is that a lot of people never give the attention or resources that’s needed to improve their retargeting campaigns. It’s an afterthought.

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How to Use Google Data Studio for Client Reporting

“Getting great results” and “creating great reports” are very different skill sets. If you’re like most marketers, you’d rather sharpen your subject-matter expertise than spend time in PowerPoint.

The result is that reporting becomes an afterthought rather than an opportunity—a “necessary evil” with imperfect solutions:

Manual reporting is too time-consuming, but it’s been the only way to report on the right platforms with the right analysis.
Automated dashboard reports save time but bring limited functionality and don’t help clients understand the story behind the scorecards.

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SaaS Content Marketing: 5 Proven Strategies to Earn Links

Links to blog posts or long-form resources increase their search visibility and build awareness. They also help sites rank for bottom-of-funnel terms—a rising tide lifts all boats.

Some content marketers have it “easy,” working in highly visual industries (e.g. food, fashion) with wide appeal. That simplifies content creation and link building compared to, say, trying to promote niche B2B software.

Given the potential benefits and challenges in SaaS, who’s doing it well? To find out, I ran a study to benchmark content marketing performance for 500 SaaS companies.

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Internal Site Search Optimization: Best Practices for Your Site

According to Econsultancy, up to 30% of ecommerce visitors use internal site search. Due to the increased level of purchase intent from searchers, they’re known to convert up to 5–6x higher than the average non–site search visitor.

Site searchers account for up to 14% of all revenue, and case studies have shown increased conversion rates of 43% from site search optimization.

Yet how many sites pay attention to site search? Too often, it gets ignored. This post walks you through opportunities to improve your internal site search.

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