Managing Conversion Rate Optimisation (CRO) Projects

Step Two - Talk

In this article we continue to explain the 6-step Conversion Architecture model we discussed in Part 1, which dealt with Step One – “Analyse”.  This 6-step process has been developed over the last 10 years of our work to become the foundation of all our clients’ projects.

Step Two - Talk

If step one focused on data analysis from analytics, the ‘talk’ phase is all about the human analysis. In other words, you’ve perused all the hard stats, now you need to gain a more qualitative insight.

You are not the audience for your website. Looks obvious when it’s written down, but I see websites every day that have clearly been created with little consideration for the customer.

You need to understand your audience so you can construct a targeted strategy. I mean, truly understand them. You can look at all the analytics reports you want, but without a knowledge of what makes visitors happy to continue their journey deeper into your site you will never be able to rectify the problems.

Analytics will show you pages in a customer journey have a problem, but only by understanding the individuals behind the data will you know how to solve your site issues. Once you know that there is no such thing as an ‘average’ user you can create designs, content, assets and calls to action that meet their needs. Once you meet their individual needs, you will meet yours – getting the conversion.

So, who do you talk to? And, what do you talk about?

Firstly, you need to consider the key stakeholders. By getting these people into a room to talk about their products/ services, their audiences and their own issues, we’re giving them a way to buy in. No longer is this a consultant-driven process - it's a company-driven process, where we serve more as a facilitator than dictator.

However, the main source of your information (internally) is going to be the people on the front line. The people who actually deal with the sales enquiries, answer prospects questions and understand the decision making process. These are the people within the company who know what questions the user needs answering, and who know what the user wants.

Of course, the other major source would be your customers/ prospects themselves. Surveys and user testing are the most commonly used methods, though you should be wary of surveys as they often don’t catch peoples ‘gut’ instinct as they too hard about the answers, unfortunately gut instinct is often the main driving force behind their website usage (though that’s a whole other blog post, so you’ll just need to take my word for it at the moment).

User testing can be done on a very simple level by getting some independent people in your office and observing them, or it can be much more advanced to include things like Eye Tracking. The latter will come at a fairly hefty cost though, upwards of £15k is quite normal. A great place for cost-effective user testing is WhatUsersDo, where you can conduct online video testing from their database of qualified testers.

This kind of research allows you to see how users actually view your sites. What grabs their attention? What goes unnoticed? What journey do they take through the site? What questions do they have? Are they engaged with your content?

Persona Development

Finally, we use these audiences and our subsequent analysis to create personas. Personas are fictional representations of the key segments of your target audience. They have a name, a life and needs/ aspirations like the rest of us. We use these personas not just for the website design phase but to input into the overall marketing strategy. When we did this one of our clients last year, Ricoh, they shared the report with all the European Marketing Directors to influence their multi-channel strategy across EMEA.

Because we can’t run every decision past a field of actual end users, we rely on personas to do the work for us. We refer to them by name in meetings and planning sessions. It would all be very weird, if it wasn't such a successful tactic!

You may already do something like this without being so deliberate, or you may define audiences and outcomes elsewhere in your process. That’s cool. As long as you’re doing it (and using the findings) by all means work to a structure that fits you.

Is all this really worth it?

This is a step that could be skipped, but you shouldn't! In doing all of this, you can answer the two most important questions of your planning:

1. Who are your audience?
2. What do they want from your website?

Then (and only then) can you start planning your content.

Let me give you an example. About dancing cows.

What’s important is that it clarifies our goals from day one. For example, if we’re building a site to sell a new organic baby food, we can’t just say, “We’re building a lovely, fluffy site with dancing cows in fields which stereotypical ‘yummy mummies’ will come to engage with, love and buy from. So let’s start writing copy!” I’m not a mum (I’m male), but have 3 very young kids and quite often get the groceries. And even if I was female, I’m certainly not EVERY mum. I know that other dads like me (and nurseries, child-minders and grandparents) will come to the site too. Not to mention anything about potential trade visitors who want to stock my baby food. So if I base everything around this single ‘yummy mummy’ stereotype, I’m going to alienate a big percentage of the site’s users.

We’ve done this many times for clients of all shapes and sizes and really getting to know site visitors is THE  most crucial part of improving their conversion rates. Of course, there are lots of articles on the web with tips and tricks to give your conversions a little boost and most of them are very good. But without having completed this research, you won’t know which of them will work for your audience.