How Conversion Rate Experts helped Top Cashback optimise sign-up

We recently shared this case study of one of our clients, Top Cashback, who are ranked number five in a list of the UK's fastest growing companies. Dave Chaffey suggested we share it with Smart Insights' readers since he liked the level of detail on the process we used which we hope other businesses can learn from.

The Top Cashback team has kindly allowed us to describe what we did—with a focus on the techniques that are likely to be applicable to your own business. We can’t promise that the following techniques will get you an invitation to Richard Branson’s house, but we’d be amazed if some of them weren’t hugely profitable for you.

The problem

Dubious... That’s how a lot of people used to feel when they first visited the Top Cashback website. Meanwhile, Top Cashback’s owners wondered why more people…

Managing Conversion Rate Optimisation, Stage 3: Plan

In this article we continue to follow the 6-step Conversion Architecture model I outlined in Part 1. Analyse and Part 2. Talk. This 6-step process has been developed over the last 10 years of our work to become the foundation of all our clients’ projects so I hope it’s useful both to agencies and clients reviewing their approach to conversion rate optimisation (CRO). In this article I look at key issues to think through as part of planning after the analysis and research have been complete.

Demographics vs. Psychographics

Demographics looks at variables like age, gender, education, ethnicity and income level. Marketers are familiar with this, but for CRO planning you also need to think about Psychographics; which looks at the thought processes of site users. You need to think about your audience from a User Experience perspective. How do they interact with a…

An interview covering the process, tools and skills needed to increase conversion, leads and sales

[caption id="" align="alignleft" width="246" caption="Karl and Ben at the Googleplex"][/caption] Many web consultants have relevant-but-similar backgrounds. They're experts at design, or pay-per-click advertising, or another specialty. But when I recently met Ben Jesson and Karl Blanks from Conversion Rate Experts their background didn't fit the norm. Their company was founded when a real-life rocket scientist teamed up with a internet marketing specialist to look at websites through unconventional eyes. This unusual perspective has turned out to be highly profitable for their clientele, which includes firms like Google, Vodafone, and Sony. In this interview we explore how Conversion Rate Experts approaches optimisation since I think companies, agencies and consultants can learn a lot to their approach to returning the commercial returns from websites of all types. I've asked them about the process…

Question: I wondered whether you might be able to point me in the direction of some info on web behaviour? We've recently been looking at "drop off" rates for some of our online content and seeing if we can compare it with external sites to help gauge whether the behaviours we are seeing could be considered as "typical". The metrics we've been looking at include time spent on a page (0-10, 10-20 seconds etc) and would like to compare to external websites such as BBC, YouTube, etc. Do you know how it is possible to obtain this data, or any external websites who may have it? We measure it, but have no external reference as to whether it is good, bad or indifferent. Nicola Smart Insights Expert Answer: Yours is a familiar problem for all analytics users. We hear "What does good like"? "How do we compare"? questions often. So, you need some context, otherwise the…

A process for content mapping and workflow

I've posted a few weeks ago on marketing automation and also this week on lead nurturing, the concept is reliant on having great content at each and every stage, so I thought a post might offer some further insight. It's also easier than you think, a relatively simple and practical process that can be tested and improved upon over time.

What exactly is content mapping?

Content mapping is (amongst other things) a process for lead nurturing by which a team prepares and organises relevant and valuable content. Once done, this content can be distributed to prospects depending on the type of lead (persona) and their point in the buying cycle (scenario).

Create and map content that generates buyers

Persona definition - you'll already understand your personas from my last posts - once again Im stressing how effective persona definition is key, otherwise how do you…

Shocking! New report shows surprisingly few companies using CRO techniques

Increasing conversion rate is a common goal for all site owners whether they’re running transactional sites or not. That’s why we review the tools available for CRO and have regular posts on techniques to improve conversion from Paul Rouke and others. You would think that working to increase conversion is obvious; everyone would be working on it in the same way they will work on search, email or social media marketing. It seems this isn’t the case according to a new Econsultancy-Redeye Conversion Optimization report that shows where the smartest marketers are investing. There’s also a companion report from Redeye on developing a structured approach to CRO which I recommend if you’re working on boosting conversion. In this post I’ll summarise the main implications as I see them - thanks to Redeye and Econsultancy for sharing this part of their…

A practical tool to determining which days and times work best

Value/Importance: [rating=4] Recommended link: Optimisation Beacon

Our commentary

I loved this simple, yet powerful way of seeing which times are the peak for conversion. This post from Robert Kingston shows you how to extract data from Google Analytics and then display it on a spreadsheet using this format: You can download the spreadsheet template and Robert also provides a pre-built custom report to obtain the data you need: (more…)…

Best practice advice in conversion optimisation and AB Testing

Value: [rating=5]

Our commentary: I was talking recently to Ben Jesson, CEO of Conversion Rate Experts to set up an interview we'll have soon on creating the business case and using the right process for conversion rate optimisation (CRO).

I mentioned it would be great if they could share some of their well-known presentations from conversion rate and search marketing conferences, so it's great to see their first from the recent Think Visibility conference, presented by Karl Blanks. Enjoy!

Gruesome conversion-killing mistakes

View more presentations from Conversion Rate Experts.

Marketing implications: Here's our pick - it's worth viewing fullscreen in Slideshare to pick up some…

Site owners are naturally looking for where they can make the biggest improvements with the least effort in terms of resource and cost. I think this has led to the popularity of landing page optimisation through AB and multivariate testing.

The table shows that the use of KPIs is quite well understood today, with most marketers knowing their conversion rates from their bounce rates and AOV. Likewise, improving calls-to-action and development of landing pages has a relatively good level of focus.

But, the chart shows that most think there are many other areas they need to give more attention to. For me journey analysis is a key activity.

I think there are two issues here, first where visitors are routed to when they first come to the site and secondly, the journeys forward from the initial pages.

How effective is your traffic routeing?

While…

Website design optimisation and testing books Since I wrote my first book on web marketing 10 years ago, success in online marketing has required an ever more detailed approach as the discpline matures. Specialist books on search engine optimization have been established for many years, but in 2008 we saw several new books on landing page optimisation to improve web design and messaging of which these are the two "must-haves" IMO. I recommend Bryan Eisenberg's book if you work for a small-medium business and are planning on using Google Analytics for testing your sites. I recommend Tim Ash's book if you work for a larger business and want to audit your existing testing approach or are starting to plan a website testing programme. Before we get to the two main reviews, I also recommend: [amazon-product text="Brian Clifton's book on Google Analytics" type="text"]/0470253126[/amazon-product] particularly if you are personally involved with configuration,  or want to know how to use…