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…

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…

A custom dashboard in Google Analytics you can use for checking your checkout process

If you have an ecommerce web site you know that the performance of the checkout is critical. If anything goes wrong with the checkout it will be costing you money. That’s why first thing every morning, before I even look at the sales figures, I look at my clients' ‘Checkout’ custom dashboards. It gives me an instant health check. I can clearly see if something has gone wrong with any of the stages in the checkout, such as the payment gateway or the address lookup system. Or if something is wrong with a promotional offer codes and people who use it are unable to buy… All I have to do is to take a quick look at this…

Tips on Marketplace Conversion Rate Optimisation from Matt Ogborne

We all know that Amazon and eBay are the powerhouses where almost everyone now shops at some point or other. I've no data to support that, but I imagine, every web user has at least visited these sites once. We also know that they both have very successful marketplaces where many retailers, particularly SME retailers sell their products, often in parallel with their own retail site. Given this, it's always surprised me that relatively little is written (beyond the Dummies guides) on how companies can optimise their sales on these sites. Especially since conversion rate optimisation (CRO) for retailers is such a hot topic. Dan Barker recently introduced me to Matthew Ogborne, a specialist who helps small and medium businesses sell more on Amazon and eBay when I was sourcing someone…

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…

Dispelling the consumer myth of what is involved in creating an account

Overview

In one of my earlier posts I explored the different approaches to handling new customer checkout on e-commerce sites. The approach of forcing new customers to either register or create an account in order to checkout has been around for many years, and in the earlier post I outline why you shouldn’t force new customers to have to register at the start of the checkout process. In this article I provide 2 rare but extremely valuable techniques that retailers can use to increase their new customer conversion rate, with one of the techniques provided by ASOS who were featured in the original article.

Technique 1 – simply ask for a password during checkout

As I described on my original post, the difference between a guest checkout and a registration/account creation checkout can usually be narrowed down to just 1 piece of…