An interview between conversion strategy specialists Hugh Gage and Craig Sullivan

Structured testing to improve website effectiveness has gained a lot of traction among digital marketers in recent years. Its adoption has been helped by success stories of subtle changes such as Google adding $200m in revenue by testing 41 shades of blue on their ad links, or the $300 million button, or even the $500 million button.

These types of 'quick wins' have encouraged more structured programmes moving from simplistic conversion rate optimisation split test to a more compelling realm of driving incremental revenue and profit.

The examples of improvement above are perhaps too tantalising, since they suggest that it's easy to get started and get great results. For many, the real world isn't like that - you have to make the case to colleagues and tests may fail to give these rewards.

As part of writing the Smart Insights…

What a high converting landing page needs

Being a digital marketer is simple. All that’s required is to get people to do exactly what you want them to do. That is: act. That act may be as basic as wanting them to click on a CTA button to “learn more.” The act may be a tad more complex, like getting someone to share their personal information with you. Or, the act might be transactional (i.e. getting a customer to buy your stuff).    Unfortunately, getting a person to do what you want, be it online or in person, is one of the most difficult tasks in the world. Some might say, darn near impossible. Among the many powerful tools a digital marketer can enlist to aid in his/her effort to get someone to take action, the most effective is a dedicated page for a…

Landing pages are a key tool in your CRO arsenal

So, you’ve already invested a considerable amount of time, money and resources on developing a fully-functional and navigable site. What next? You plan to set a budget for PPC ads, social media and email marketing in order to drive traffic to your site. Great! But what happens when a visitor clicks on your PPC ads or links on your social media profile? If they land on the company’s homepage, you’ve already failed! Remember, you don’t just need to drive leads to your site; you also need to convert them. This is where landing pages come to your rescue. They help you convert your web traffic into qualified leads. In case you’re still looking for reasons why you must invest in landing pages, check out these stats: Companies see a 55% increase in leads when increasing their number of landing pages from 10 to 15.…

Examples of applying proven techniques to create higher converting landing pages

Your landing page serves as your first impression to your site visitors. When you give them a great first-time experience, then they will want to explore further, even go as far as making purchases, returning and giving you referrals. Well, the term ‘good landing’ page is relative. Hence, we will get more accurate in our post and talk about a high-converting landing page, which is our definition of a great landing page. In this post, we will talk about the importance of a landing page giving different statistics as proof while including data-driven tricks for landing page designs in 2016. In brief, here is what you should expect to find: Important landing page statistics you should know in 2016 Causes of low landing page conversion rates Proven ways of boosting your landing page conversion rate

Important Landing Page Statistics You Should Know In…

How difficult are the most effective CRO techniques?

This chart from the Ascend2 Conversion Rate Optimization research report shows the views on CRO effectiveness from 177 marketers in medium to large B2B and B2C organisation. A/B testing seems to rule the roost, as the most effective and easiest tactic. Our Customer Journey analysis survey also found A/B testing as the most popular testing method among 1100 marketers, so this corroborates our findings. We also found that multivariate testing was seen as difficult to implement. Personalisation of content was also seen as very effective but was also judged to be tricky to implement. You'll need content personalisation tools to do it right, so you might want to consult our free digital marketing tools guide if you're considering implementing a content personalisation program. Source:Ascend2 Conversion Rate Optimization research…

How are businesses improving their user's experience?

Improving your online customer journeys is critical both to boost conversion rates and to improve customer experience to boost customer loyalty. So when experiences are optimised, it's one of those rare improvements that can boost revenues in both the short and long term. But improving the journey is far from easy, and to do it you'll need lots of data of how your customers actually use the site. When it comes to testing, we have a rule of thumb we have seen in our tests and others. 1/3rd of tests will lead to a significant improvement; 1/3rd will have no effect, and 1/3rd will make conversion significantly worse. It really is hit and miss, but it's important to try plenty of different tests, as it often surprising what yields positive results and what doesn't. If you just assume you know your customers without looking at the data…

Optimise your landing page designs to boost your conversion rate

Landing pages are a vital conversion trigger within the Customer Journey. Typically, they are used within internet marketing campaigns that use Calls To Action, and are a core component of online advertising too. Indeed, Hubspot’s Marketing Benchmarks From 7,000 Businesses report identified that companies experience an increase of 55% in leads when increasing their number of landing pages from 10 to 15. So it’s about volume, then? Well, not entirely. There is no point in having lots of landing pages if they do not convert. Generating and capturing leads is critical to the sales process. Therefore, converting the traffic on your landing pages effectively and efficiently has to be the goal. These aspects are fundamental to business growth. Quite simply, if you are going to invest time, resource and money into driving traffic to your landing pages, then you must ensure that…

Pop-ups aren't always good for your conversion rate

The website pop-up can be the most hated, dumb, and annoying feature of a website. In fact, some go so far as to claim that they're more likely to trust a TV ad, than trust or respond to a banner ad or a pop-up. But it’s no secret that a website pop-up is likely to get you “new” leads and email addresses faster than any other tool on your website. However, pop-ups are really effective for growing email lists, so it makes sense, that if we are to use them, we do so in such a way they don't annoy the majority of our users. So, whenever the question of whether or not to use pop-ups arises, experts say that it’s best to stick to them as long as…

Analysis and actions showing the best ways to increase your conversion rate

An abandoned basket is exactly as it sounds; it’s when a visitor who already added a product/service to the shopping cart then, for whatever reason, abandons their shopping cart and never proceeds to make a purchase. At best this is very frustrating; at worst it can be a business critical problem for your ecommerce site. However, it’s not all bad news; your visitor at least managed to find your website and even went as far as selecting a product to add to their shopping cart. This is a solid foundation to build on, but how can we reduce these instances of online shoppers abandoning their baskets?

Find out where customers are exiting from your checkout flow

Your “checkout” flow describes the entire process of buying a product via your website, from to adding an item to basket, through to completing payment. A good place to…

Having started my career as a web analyst and working with data on a day-to-day basis, I see massive opportunity in what we can learn and how we can improve online performance by using data effectively. However, “how” we use data to make decisions is a wide-ranging scale and it can be all too easy to go from traffic, to visitors, to clicks and transactions in your analytics platform and not pay the appropriate attention to what is actually happening in between. Not micro-conversions in this instance, but the psychological filters consumers employ as they interact with and process your website. Both consciously and (more interestingly perhaps) sub-consciously. Perception, emotion, anxiety and more. The common saying goes that analytics can tell you ‘what’ is happening, but cannot tell you ‘why’. User Research can give you fantastic insights into what motivates or influences decision-making,…