Some little-known tools and techniques we’ve used to grow our own business

When we began Conversion Rate Experts, we used a Prerequisite Tree like this to plan the stages of our growth. The technique was invaluable, and we have used it ever since. This blog post is a mix of great resources we’ve recently shared with each other (using Diigo) plus some tools and techniques that have been invaluable in helping us to grow our own business. We’ve been meaning to share them with you for a while. We hope you like them. A one-minute introduction to Scrum development (video) by Axosoft. We use Scrum, and find it very useful. You’ll probably find it useful too. If you can’t spare 10 minutes, just watch the final…

Culture and conversion Part 1 : 5 tips for designing for the culture of site visitors from different countries

Ever wondered why your baskets are bulging in Belgium but spring a leak in Spain? Why your checkouts are chock-a-block in Chile, but empty in Egypt?

Whether you are B2C or B2B business, cultural preferences play a big part in how people respond to your web design. This blog looks at how culture affects your online performance and what you can do to effectively manage an online presence globally.

'Just as nine-tenths of the iceberg is out of sight and below the water line, so is nine-tenths of culture out of conscious awareness. The out of awareness part of culture has been termed deep-culture.' – Edward T Hall, Beyond Culture

Managing Global web design assets

Managing global web design assets is not an easy task. No matter…

What is holding digital marketers back?

Did you know that Facebook got a massive 40% increase in ad sales worldwide with just a small change in wording. Instead of a call to action button 'advertise' they simply changed it to 'create an ad'. This was discovered by accident.

In France Facebook’s Translators had translated 'advertise' as 'créer un ad' or 'create an ad'. Sadly too much online testing is accidental rather than the result of rigorous testing.

Improving marketing with off-line and on-line testing

Offline and online testing is the best way to improve marketing results. And what marketer does not want to improve results?

Well, I would suggest that many online organisations are not taking testing seriously enough. For example, a recent survey of Digital Marketers by Adobe found that 49% of respondents said testing was not a priority and most companies spend less than 5% of their marketing budgets on testing…

Harness the value of marketing insights from controlled testing

Are you truly leveraging the potential of your traffic?  I’m going to show you why most companies aren’t and how you can today, with two phases. Editor's note: Chris Goward, the author of this post gave a well received webcast on website conversion on 28th June 2013. If you didn't make it, we hope you find his advice useful. His deck on conversion for mobile sites on Slideshare is also worth checking out. …

Chris Goward on building in testing to any type of business

It's simple, if you're not testing to improve results from your site, the leading companies in your sector likely are, which means you're likely to be falling behind. But how do you approach testing in a structured way? Earlier this year, I read Chris Goward's new book You Should Test That and was impressed by the way it blends advice on structured testing techniques with recommendations on how to better communicate the benefits of your products and services. So acting on requests from Smart Insights members to review and feature the latest thinking in book reviews and webcasts from invited experts, we have asked Chris to deliver a webcast on this topic. We hope you can join us this Friday! …

9 approaches to increase conversion through increasing visitor engagement

Marketers spend a lot of time and resource in driving their target audience to their website. However this is when the real challenges of keeping the customer engaged, and on your site, long enough to help support a conversion journey to start.

Engagement strategies to support conversion

Here are 9 methods I have found effective which mainly involve engaging more closely with the visitor through feedback or tailoring the design to their device. 1. Behavioural surveys Software such as Qualaroo can be easily integrated on to your website and allows you to ask visitors simple questions in order to help you understand their behaviour better and improve the website experience. 2. Mobile responsive With smartphone usage increasing rapidly across the globe, businesses need to make sure their website is optimised for multiple devices such as smartphones and tablets. If not potential customers will leave promptly. One…

How to use people-focused analytics to change how you measure search marketing effectiveness

Most marketers will know the volume of visitors generated by search, but are you using visitor quality to measure the effectiveness of search traffic (organic or paid)? If you are, conversion rate is a key measure effectiveness. In this post I'll explain how to increase it without spending a penny more. It's not intended to be an unrealistic boast instead it's a technique that makes allocating marketing spend and identifying successful campaigns easier and more effective.

Why your Conversion Rate is lying to you

Most people would measure Conversion Rate for a paid search campaign (or organic search) like this: However, this formula has one major flaw, it assumes that all visitors from this campaign have the potential to convert. The reality is that only a fraction of search traffic is convertible,…

Two webcasts on increasing conversion rates from the Smart Insights Digital Marketing Priorities 2013 summit

At our recent free summit many viewers asked to share the slide and recordings, so to collect them together we have a short series of posts to point you in the right direction. If you take a look at the end of this post you will see there is one for each topics covering each of the processes of Reach, Act and Convert and Engage in the Smart Insights PRACE digital strategy framework.

The two webcasts focusing on converting site visitors were:

1. Persuasive design priorities for 2013 with Paul Rouke of PRWD

This webcast was presented by user experience consultant Paul Rouke who reviewied of major and subtle persuasion tips & techniques which positively affect user behaviour. It also included live examples of where brands are combining different techniques to enhance the influence on user behaviour.

Related…

Creating website conversion strategies to improve ROI

Over the last four years we have completed research with thousands of digital marketers in collaboration with Econsultancy reviewing what they are doing to improve their website conversion. There are literally hundreds of different ways to improve conversion and we know digital marketers battle to know where to start. However, based on this year’s in-depth analysis, we believe we have now managed to break a very complex issue down to the five most important ways to improve website conversion. These are: Responsibility: Make one person responsible for website conversion, give them authority and accountability, plus ideally a financial incentive. Structure: Implement a structured approach. Conversion rate optimization needs to be a systematic process, not a one off project. Testing: A/B or MVT is the best way to keep improving your website performance. Usability Testing: The best way to understand why your customers are doing the things they are…

A case study of how an international company manages conversion-rate-optimisation

I think all digital marketers know we should be testing and improving our sites, but the reality is that often we’re focused on day-to-day activities like getting new content live and setting-up campaigns. This means that not enough or more commonly, no time at all, is devoted to structured improvement programmes. One company which certainly does put the time into testing is Belron. They're a multi-channel business with sites operating in thirty-three countries with 19 languages with online revenue of over £400 million. You may know them as Autoglass or Safeglass in the Major markets such as the UK and US. Here Craig Sullivan, Group Ebusiness Manager explains why they invest in structured experiments on their site and some of the benefits they’ve seen. I always enjoy listening to Craig speaking at events because he’s generous in sharing his learnings and tools that they use. This is…