Management
How to Get Buy-in for Conversion Rate Optimization
I just arrived home from San Francisco where I attended the eMetrics Marketing Optimization Summit. As always, it’s great to catch up with friends and participate in enlightening conversations. A key theme of my presentation: how to get organizational buy-in to testing and conversion optimization.
Marketers often get so worked up about the prospect of optimization and persuading more customers that we forget something. Before we can pursue optimization, we must convince those in our own company about optimization’s value.
Here, then, are some tips for convincing executives, coworkers, teammates, and anyone else in your company of the importance of investing in marketing optimization, analytics, and conversion improvement efforts.
Get the Math Right
When you present your numbers, don’t assume your listeners are getting the math right:
- 100,000 people visit your Web site
- 3 percent of people convert into a desired outcome
- Your site gets 3,000 total conversions
What happens when you increase conversion rate by 1 percent? How many total conversions does your organization hear?
- 3,030
- 4,000
Translate All Numbers Into Dollars
Another dangerous assumption to make is that your listeners can translate numbers into dollars. Always show impact in terms of dollars. Use average order value (AOV) or average lead value (for lead-generation or registration sites).
Let’s say your AOV is $50 and your company spends $200 for every 1,000 visits. For those 1,000 visits, your conversion rate is 2 percent, which equals 20 actions. For every 1,000 visits, you gross $1,000 in sales (calculate: $50 AOV x 20 actions = $1,000 in gross sales). If you increase your conversion rate modestly to 3 percent, your gross sales increase is 50 percent, or $500 per 1,000 visits (calculate: 3 percent x 1,000 visits = 30 actions; 30 actions x $50 AOV = $1,500 in sales).
It’s also helpful to show the dollar impact over an entire quarter or a fiscal year.
Oftentimes companies have a hard time determining AOV or average lead value with any degree of accuracy; that’s OK. Of course, the cleaner your data, the easier it will be to have organizational buy-in. The key is to show some sort of monetary value. We often encourage our clients to make a conservative estimate that most in the company will agree on.
Leverage Your Reach
Show your team the advantage of taking control of the visitor instead of existing solely at the mercy of visitor traffic.
With an AOV of $50 and a modest conversion rate increase from 2 percent to 3 percent (50 percent), the sales increase is impressive, but that’s only one part of the story. In the table below, you can see the impact of increasing both conversion and traffic:
In the “good” column, you get more from the traffic and spend. Your CPA (define) goes down, and you generate more profit from your advertising. You won’t grow faster, but you make more.
Let’s say you reinvest some of those dollars into acquisition spend to drive more traffic. You can grow exponentially and outspend your competition, you can even afford for the conversion rate to go down a bit. Your conversion and traffic increase rockets your growth dramatically.
This advantage of conversion rate optimization is often missed or overlooked by many companies.
With a conversion rate increase, you now have a choice:
- Use incremental profits to expand reach: 133,000 visits x 4% conversion rate = 5,320 orders
- Lower your marketing acquisition costs. If your acquisition cost was $100 per action, with this efficiency it would now be $66 per action.
Again, even with modest increases in conversion companies can begin to wean themselves off addictive traffic or make their traffic work harder for them instead of working harder for traffic.
Is There a Catch?
While there are many tools to aid marketers in their quest, there’s still no conversion rate black box. Conversion optimization always require resources and effort, trial and error, and sometimes sweat and tears. And it never ends. Optimization is a continual process of gaining customer insight, implementing changes, testing, then starting the whole process over.
The Bottom Line
You can’t always control the amount of visits, but you can control what you present to visitors. Why not optimize it?
Still have doubts? Ask yourself: what would it cost you to double traffic (if this is even possible) versus doubling conversion rate?
*Article cross-posted on ClickZ
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Editor’s Note: At FutureNow, we insist on measurable ROI for our clients. That’s we start by identifying the areas that will make the most difference to your conversion rate and other vital performance metrics. Please contact us to learn how we can help you, or an executive team you know, market better.
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Written by:Bryan Eisenberg
Would You Like a McFrappuccino With That?
As you may know, McDonald’s is trying to beat Starbucks at its own game — or at least steal some market share. According to The Wall Street Journal, the fast food giant is now hiring baristas and, starting this year, they’ll begin putting coffee bars in some 14,000 U.S. locations.
This isn’t the dumbest thing they’ve done lately, but it’s weird.
Starbucks, meanwhile, also hopes to emulate Starbucks — as it once was, anyway — now that Howard Shultz has returned as CEO, renewing his vows with customers. Considering that they’ve been the McDonald’s of coffee since at least 2000, when Shultz last held the position, this oddball battle of the brands is already the height of corporate irony.
Sure, this may seem like a good time for McDonald’s to get into the game (their share price went up 31% last year while Starbucks dropped 41%). And yes, there are a lot of great reasons to compete with Starbucks from the two-dimensional comforts of a spreadsheet. But do they really want trained baristas?
Besides, isn’t the current Starbucks mess thanks to the company’s over-caffeinated growth — the very growth that Shultz pioneered — and not because they abandoned their mythical, shade-grown je-ne-sais-quoi?
The bagel shop near my apartment has some of the best bagels in Brooklyn. They also have a cappuccino machine, if not a barista. You can order a “half-caff french vanilla iced latte” if you want, but I don’t recommend it. The guys behind the counter will sneer at you, as will fellow customers as you hold up the line. But there’s something nice about that. It’s honest. Terrace Bagels doesn’t want to be Starbucks, and neither it seems should McDonald’s.
Starbucks, on the other hand — yeah, they might wanna look into that.
Brand Autopsy’s John Moore, who wrote the book on Starbucks’ marketing, compares Shultz’s return with that of Michael Dell. It’s too early to say what will and won’t work for these two (*gulp*) cafe chains, but Moore has some good advice from the Starbucks playbook in the meantime.
UPDATE: Not sure how I missed this from the WSJ article, but here’s a video of the machine the McDonald’s “baristas” will be operating:
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Written by:Robert Gorell
Spirit Air: You Don’t Have to Turn on the Red Light
Spirit Airlines used to have great customer service. It was refreshing, actually. In the late 90’s, you could fly round-trip from, say, Detroit to New York for about $120 in a hand-me-down jet staffed with friendly people. It was a great, low-cost airline that was always able to surpass its customers (even lower) expectations.
But all that’s changed. Today, they have a brand-spanking-new fleet of mid-sized jets staffed with would-be friendly people who, bound and gagged with corporate red tape, can’t do much to help the customer even when they want to. Sure, the fares are lower than ever, but even with off-peak flights for as low as $1 (yes, really), it’s still not worth it. Why? Because, according to their current CEO, Ben Baldanza, the customer is always a cheapskate — and wrong.
Maybe it’s time to put a dimmer on those red light specials. They say that “a fish stinks from the head,” and if there’s ever been any proof, its this email Mr. Baldanza sent to a customer by accidentally hitting “reply to all” on his BlackBerry:
“Please respond, Pasquale, but we owe him nothing as far as I’m concerned. Let him tell the world how bad we are. He’s never flown us before anyway and will be back when we save him a penny.”
But, wait! There’s more!! Here’s their Director of Communications, Alison Russell, on a separate incident where blogger Alex Rudloff told readers, “Do Not Fly Spirit Airlines“:
“We wouldn’t respond to a blog post. This goes back to the larger question of the veracity of everything you read on Internet blogs. Our customer service is great.”
Oh, really?? More on my horror story with Spirit 2.0 in a moment. But first, let’s see what Google has to say about the company:
Here’s what Rudloff had to say in his blog post:
“So, instead of losing $5 on a customer who has every right to be angry, I’ll write this blog post and tell all my traveling buddies to add Spirit Airlines to their growing list of airlines to avoid,” Rudloff wrote on Aug. 4. “If Google works their magic like they usually do, at least one of the 4,931 daily searches for “Spirit Airlines” will turn up this result and save someone the headache (and hopefully end up costing Spirit Airlines $6 or more).”
Rudloff later told the Orlando Sentinel that:
“I think ultimately that customers have to speak out and they have to engage in word of mouth . . . That’s what the market responds to.”
Cool! What a great segue…
All Spirit, No Soul
Last May, I was flying from New York (LGA) to Detroit (DTW), as I often do for Memorial Day weekend — my favorite time to vacation in Detroit. I was running late. The car service was half an hour late, and traffic wasn’t moving, thanks to jackknifed truck on the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway. After paying top dollar to sit in a car for two hours, it was clear that I’d miss the 30-minutes-before-departure check-in deadline. So, I called Spirit Air’s 1-800 number, only to find there was no “customer service” option. So I waited on hold for, say, 20 minutes until I eventually hung up and called back, pressing a random — and incorrect — selection in hopes of reaching a human who could tell me what to do about the situation. When I finally reached a customer service rep, she told me to go to the airport and speak to the agents at the check-in counter — where I waited for (you guessed it) another 30 minutes.
After all of that, I got to the airport just before the 30-minute mark, but there was a line — a long one — and not enough agents to serve it. When I got to the front of the line, the agent told me that nothing could be done. If I wanted to book another flight, there was one leaving in an hour, but it would cost as much as my entire round trip. I kindly informed this person that I’d be willing to pay a charge — as is typical with other cheapskate airlines — to switch the ticket, but that buying a whole new one, just for a one-way leg of a round-trip flight was absurd. Then, when I asked for a number for customer service because I wanted to complain about the event — after all, I’d been a customer for 10 years — the guy hands me a card with the same freaking number I’d used earlier to get someone who couldn’t help me! When I brought that to the agent’s attention, he said, “I’m sorry, sir, there’s nothing I can do about it” — a common refrain at today’s Spirit Air.
So, Northwest Airlines to rescue (for once), and I was on my way to Detroit with a pounding headache and the world’s dumbest $200 missing from my bank account.
On the way back to New York, I was actually looking forward to flying Spirit. “If this isn’t a good trip after that nonsense,” I thought, “I’m so going to blog this.” Checking in with a smile, I handed the agent my ticket. “I’m sorry, Mr. Gorell, but we don’t have a seat with that name on it for this flight,” he said. I told him that was impossible and that I wasn’t imagining the ticket in my hand. Then it hit me: They’d canceled my entire round-trip ticket because they couldn’t serve me in time!
Turning beet-red, I calmly told the agent of my snag in New York. As I retold the story, one-by-one, all four agents at the desk came up to me, visibly upset by what I had to say. I let them know I was a blogger for a company that specializes in planning and optimizing the customer experience, and that I couldn’t believe the airline had tied their hands from doing anything of value for its “passengers.” Then a crazy thing happened. They actually encouraged me to blog about it! As it turned out, everyone at the counter seemed upset with the company’s new policies, too. I could tell they were biting their tongues, until…
“We used to be #1 in customer service,” said one agent. “Now we can’t help people.”
Her co-workers looked me in the eye and nodded. It was such an honest moment that I actually bought a one-way ticket from them… for the flight I’d already, supposedly, booked. (Oh, and since this was a last-minute one-way flight to NYC, you can be sure I got red flagged for security screening.)
For months, I let it slide. After speaking with the good people at Spirit in Detroit, I worried that blogging about the experience might put their jobs at risk. That is, until I saw Mack Collier’s post, which hipped me to the fact that a lot of other bloggers out there are also convinced that Spirit’s CEO — and not its employees — is what’s putting their jobs at risk by causing this fish to stink:
Sorry, Mr. Baldanza, but you can’t fly faster than word of mouth (or blog).
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Written by:Robert Gorell
How Female Execs Shop for Consultants
Do women behave the same way in the office as they do at home? Is their buying process the same whether they are buying products and services for their home, or products and services for their company?
Deloitte & Touche is trying to find out.
According this Wall Street Journal article, Deloitte & Touche USA LLP has implemented a new program in conjunction with Marti Barletta’s TrendSight Group, to better understand the needs of female clients and train employees on how to treat them like, well, females.
Deloitte began offering four-hour workshops on gender differences to its employees last year. Among its other suggestions:
Don’t be frustrated if female clients reevaluate or modify their initial requests; because they discover as they shop, women may be very receptive to suggestions about other services.
Women clients want to know and trust their consultants personally as well as professionally; sharing personal details can help build trust.
Women often prefer business lunches to dinners, because they tend to have more responsibilities at home. And they may be more receptive to evening social invitations if asked with sufficient time to make arrangements at home.
Body language differs by gender. Men tend to stare as they listen and nod to signify they understand. Women may nod when they don’t yet understand to encourage the speaker to keep talking. And while consultants often seat themselves beside a male client as their “right hand man,” women are more comfortable seated face to face.
There’s certainly some valuable insight here. I do believe Deloitte will see some positive results. And I applaud any company willing to spend the time and money to truly understand their customers and their customers’ needs.
One point I found particularly interesting was the suggestion that you bring “subordinates” into meetings, so your female clients can meet the people they well be working with. I agree whole heartedly. Women do want to meet the actual people who will be doing the work. But what really interested me was the use of the word “subordinates.” (Can you say “male communication style“?) That’s a loaded word. It implies hierarchy, status, and that such people are “less than.” Be very careful with your choice of words.
There are two things I hope Deloitte will be careful of:
1.) You don’t want women to feel patronized.
2.) You don’t want your employees to stereotype female clients.
This last point is very important. As I’ve found in my research, there’s no such thing as “all women want this” or “all women do that.” Automatically treating someone a specific way just because she’s a woman is dangerous.
I do think there’s some valuable insight that has come from this training program. I’ll be very interested to see the results and feedback Deloitte gets from their female clients.
In the meantime, be sure to read Tami Anderson’s perspective, and let us know what you think of Deloitte’s research in the comments.
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Written by:Holly Buchanan
Exclusive: IBM’s “Do it Wrong Quickly” Challenge
All you marketing perfectionists out there, raise your hands! When it comes to project management are you “doing it right,” “doing it wrong,” or “doing it quickly“?
(Okay, perfectionists, you can put your hands down. Nobody’s actually keeping tabs.)
If you answered anything but “doing it quickly,” it’s time to take the “Do it Wrong Quickly” Challenge. The good people at IBM have been kind enough to offer GrokDotCom’s readers an exclusive on this fun interactive quiz they’ve developed. Yes, it’s fun — and it is challenging. Sure, we all want to do our best, but sometimes our best intentions get in the way of getting things done.
So, in the spirit of our buddy Mike Moran’s new book (you guessed it) Do it Wrong Quickly, we’ll leave perfection for another blog post and just ask that you to take the quiz!
Oh, and don’t forget to share your results with the rest of the class…
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Written by:The Grok
How to Grow 2,250% While Launching a New Online Business
Acceller (formerly BuyTelco) has been a reference client of ours for the past 4 years. In that time, we’ve been fortunate to see BuyTelco.com become one of America’s top resources to compare Cable, DSL and High-Speed Internet options. But today, we’re especially proud of Acceller because they’ve been named #54 on the “Inc. 500″ list, with 2,250% growth. (The Inc. 500 ranks top U.S. companies based on growth acceleration for the last few years.)
Acceller CEO Steve McKean is happy to point out that “the Inc. 500 list looks at 4 years of data, and that you can correlate Acceller’s work with Future Now to that growth.” While we do appreciate the compliment, I correlate their success to Steve’s vision as CEO; a relentless focus on execution, the customer experience, and commitment to ongoing improvement.
Their next step: start a new business unit.
While many CEO’s would be content with 2,250% growth, Steve, aware of changes in his industry, knew they had to innovate. Rather than reinvent BuyTelco — which is focused solely on converting ready-to-buy, internet-service-only customers — they created an entirely new experience and brand: Digital Landing.
How did they do it? How does a company capitalize on what it knows about its current business while there are so many unknowns about the new brand’s potential customers and their buying process?
1.Assemble an Investigative Task Force, consisting of people experienced with past/current products, new research, and conversion issues. Make sure you ask the right questions, keeping lessons learned from the former site in play.
2. Develop customer persona assumptions. Why assumptions? Digital Landing didn’t have any customers yet, so we had to make assumptions as to who their customers might be. The good news is that, once a site launches, you can test these assumptions and optimize accordingly.
3. Develop and refine the buy-flow. This is the conversion-related part. Since they were adding additional services — e.g., phone, video, HD — and bundles, we knew it would be complicated. We worked closely with them to make sure it would be as smooth as possible, but much more time was focused on the details — specific wording of calls to action, shopping cart usability, color choice, etc. — pre-launch. There’s still work to be done (read: optimization).
4. Plan content strategy using personas. By planning content through the eyes of our personas, we were able to match both the tone and types of content to their individual needs. While one needs, say, a video on how to install a flat panel TV, another wants to print an article on how to set up a home office.
5. Develop top-quality content. Don’t skimp on production quality. Look at all these resources for digital newbies. Or this custom internet speed test. They didn’t have to do that — which, of course, is exactly why they did have to do it.
6. Develop a launch plan. Work with everyone on the team — engineers, researchers, project manager, the analytics team, designers, copywriters — to coordinate the launch. If something can’t make the launch date, prioritize what needs to be fixed as soon as possible.
7. Do a “soft launch” ahead of time. It makes everyone feel good and allows you to fix what’s broken before creating mixed first impressions. Digital Landing officially “launches” late next month. Here it is today, flaws and all. Why? Because the first version was never meant to be perfect. Besides, a soft launch gives search engines spiders a chance to crawl and index the site.
8. Allow customer’s to interact. Open it up to a small-yet-vocal audience; GrokDotCom readers, for instance. Launch a little Pay-Per-Click traffic and see how it affects the priorities on your optimization list.
9. Measure, Listen, and Optimize. TEST your original assumptions. Figure out who you’re losing, where you’re losing, and adjust.
10. Stay cool. This isn’t childbirth, even if it does feel like it at times.
Join me in congratulating Steve and the rest of his phenomenal team at Acceller on the “soft launch” of Digital Landing. While broadband growth has driven a lot of his business, the marketplace is shifting. People want additional services, and Digital Landing is meant to help us get away from the marketing hype individual providers in order to make intelligent choices and get the best offers on high-speed internet, digital phone, video, and HDTV services.
Originally, the goal was to have the site “soft” launched by Labor Day. They beat that by a few days. As I’m sure you can see, there’s still plenty of tweaking to be done. But one of the biggest mistakes anyone can make when launching a new site is trying to make it perfect from the get go. Getting it perfect in your eyes means very little. Getting it perfect for your customers matters a lot.
One of the best pieces of advice my mentor gave me — and hopefully I can teach you — is “If it’s worth doing, it’s worth doing wrong.” It’s all about execution and allowing yourself to do it wrong quickly.
We’d love to have your fresh eyes check out Digital Landing. Go as far as you like, with or without placing an order, and share your feedback here.
Any suggestions to add to our list? Find any bugs?
We appreciate your help, as does Steve. He didn’t get on the Inc. 500 list by not listening carefully. 
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Written by:Bryan Eisenberg
The Myth of The One Hour Meeting
We’re not big fans of meetings and neither is Jason of 37 Signals his post has received tons of comments on the the one hour meeting:
It’s no mystery that we’re meeting averse, but here’s another reason why we think meetings are toxic: There’s no such thing as the one-hour meeting.
If you’re going to schedule a meeting that lasts one hour and invite 10 people to attend then it’s a ten-hour meeting, not a one-hour meeting. You are trading 10 hours of productivity for one hour of meeting time. And it’s probably more like 15 hours since there are mental switching costs associated with stopping what you’re doing, going somewhere else to do something else, and then resuming what you were doing before.
Is it ever OK to trade 10-15 hours of productivity for one hour of meeting? Sometimes, sure, but it’s a heavy cost. Meetings are expensive when you think about the opportunity cost. On a pure cost basis, meetings can quickly become liabilities, not assets. So when you schedule that one-hour meeting for 10 people think about the 10-15 hours lost. Is it still worth it?
I’m sure a few of our readers also read the Signal vs. Noise blog but I wanted to ask those who don’t what they think. One of our friends likes doing 15 minute-and-under stand-up meetings. Is that better? Is it still worth having them? How do you keep meetings from eating up time, or do you? Do you have any suggestions about maximizing value and minimizing time of meetings?
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Written by:Jeffrey Eisenberg
Process Creams Creativity in Communications
BusinessWeek teams up with Boston Consulting Group to bring us the results of their 2007 Most Innovative Companies survey of senior executives.
Innovation may be one of the hottest buzzwords in business today. But at the world’s largest companies, senior executives understand that innovation is much more than an easy-to-achieve management fad du jour.
The world seems to move at an ever-faster rate, but it also increasingly demands accountability. Is it any surprise that risk aversion is the biggest obstacle companies face?
Managing innovation vis-a-vis risk is a battle organizations have faced for the longest time. Peter Senge in the Fifth Discipline refers to this as “creative tension,” and one of the few ways to overcome it is what he calls “systems thinking.” They need a process to see how all parts of the organization systems interconnect. No amount of innovation training overcomes this challenge. This issue has plagued other disciplines like CRM, corporate learning management, etc.
Success depends on process, people/talent then tools.
Executives need:
- A framework that manages risk with built-in accountability that produces results
- A methodology to shorten development times and coordinate activity within the organization
- A process that brings relevant consumer insights to the table (like Intuit’s Customer Driven Innovation)
Do you have process in place?
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Written by:Bryan Eisenberg
Investors, Speculators, Shareholder Value, and Other Half-Truths
Business Week columnists Clayton M. Christensen & Scott D. Anthony make some pretty provocative comments about maximizing shareholder value in their column “Put Investors In Their Place: Why pander to people who now hold shares, on average, less than 10 months?”
For instance…
Perhaps it is time for companies to adjust the paradigm of management responsibility:
“You are investors and speculators, not shareholders, and you temporarily find yourselves holding the securities of our company. You are responsible for maximizing the returns on your investments. Our responsibility is to maximize the long-term value of this company. We will therefore act in the interest of those whose interests coincide with our long-term prospects, namely employees, customers, the communities in which our employees live, and the minority of investors who plan to hold our securities for several years.”
They continue to argue for restructuring public companies. Whether or not you agree, it’s worth a read.
I’m sympathetic to the argument that management has to act in the long-term interests of not only of shareholders, but of the company’s greater constituency. It’s a higher standard than mere shareholder ROI, and more difficult to manage, but it reduces volatility and forces management to focus on what matters.
Wouldn’t it be nice if companies could focus on what matters, and not simply on this quarter’s results?
Instead of acting like John Wayne, management should be more like Einstein at the OK Corral.
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Written by:Jeffrey Eisenberg
7 BIG Questions for Online Marketers
We hear the questions businesses ask: How do I increase my sales or leads? How do I get more traffic to my site? How do I get better search engine rankings? How do I get fewer customers to abandon their shopping carts? What do I do with all this data I’m getting from my analytics software?
These are important questions.
Ask a Bigger Question
What makes people buy? When you focus on this question, all the subsequent details fall much more easily into place. This is not a word game; it’s a change in perspective. Without a proper strategy, you can win every battle and still lose the war.
Tactics: The Unspoken Assumptions
Whenever businesses tackle optimization, site design or redesign, they start with a set of assumptions. Very often, these assumptions depend on a granular, detail-oriented view of the problem as the business sees it (from the perspective of the business, not the customer). Very often, the problem is couched in the language of “best practices”, a series of tactics. However, to paraphrase Sun Tzu, tactics applied without strategy are the noise before defeat.
Asking a “bigger question” broadens your view of your situation beyond the details; bigger questions often lead you to reevaluate your strategies, which in turn allows you to devise more effective tactics. The critical answers to these bigger questions—the answers that meet your specific needs—can only from you.
7 Online Marketing Challenges & How to Frame Them as Bigger Questions
Here’s a list of the top seven challenges clients put to us, with their variations. We reframe them through bigger questions to target the deeper issues that influence your marketing effectiveness.
1. “We need to reach more people.”
Sometimes you simply need to reach more people. You need to improve your search engine rankings; you need to add more keywords to your search engine marketing; you need to find new or more places to advertise; you need to grow your list; you need to advertise offline; you need viral marketing; you need to increase the number of links to your site; you need to add or modify an affiliate program, and other variations on this theme.
Bigger questions to explore and ask yourself:
- Are enough of the people coming to our website sufficiently satisfied with what we present that they buy, or does our presentation damage our reputation and create an impediment to buying?
- Are enough of the people who buy from us sufficiently delighted to purchase again, are we wasting resources by driving new traffic?
- Do we provide enough of the right information for people to return even when they are not ready to buy right now?
- Are we focused more on marketing to the search engines or marketing to the people who visit our site?
2. “We need to reach better people.”
Sometimes you simply need to reach better people. You need to target more appropriate publications; you need to select better keywords; you need to source better lists; you need to find more qualified buyers; you need to reach your competitor’s customers; you need to reach people when they are ready to buy; you need the right content to attract search engine traffic, and other variations on this theme.
Bigger questions to explore and ask yourself:
- If we reach those people, do we have relevant content for them when they are in the early, middle and late stages of their buying process?
- Is our offering so narrow that there are too few “better” people?
- Does the buyer only identify the need and buy on a very short time horizon, such that we need to find them before they have the need?
- Is the message we’ve been telling the “wrong” people strong enough for them to reach out and tell the “better” people?
3. “We need more resources.”
Sometimes you simply need more resources. You need more money; your need enough time; you need the right consultant; you need better-skilled people; you need the right talent; you need the right vendor; you need to justify your opportunity costs, and other variations on this theme.
Bigger questions to explore and ask yourself:
- Do our priorities and goals match our resource allocations?
- Do we commit our resources based on predicted rates of return?
- Do we hold people accountable for those returns when allocating new resources?
- If we don’t have the resources or time to do it correctly now, when will we have the resources or time; when, exactly, will we commit to do it?
4. “We need better testing and usability.”
Sometimes you simply need better testing and usability. You need to make it easy to buy from you; you need to make it easy for visitors to find what they are looking for; you need to make it easy to checkout; you need to get feedback from visitors; you need to set up tests and watch how visitors vote with their mice; you need to test to isolate which variables are most important to your visitors; you need to test to see which offers work best, and variations on this theme.
Bigger questions to explore and ask yourself:
- What motivates people to buy even when sites aren’t usability-friendly?
- If usability is the only critical factor, why haven’t conversion rates improved in any meaningful way over the last five years, when attention to usability has increased dramatically?
- What if what we’re testing is only what we can think of, but the problem lies in what we haven’t thought of yet; which variables are truly significant and which are not?
- How do we know that pages further up or down the click-stream don’t affect the test we are conducting on one page?
- Do our scientific tests include an hypothesis of the outcome, a theory for why we expect the outcome and a statistically meaningful sample size so we can validate or refute our hypothesis and learn from the results; can we apply that learning more broadly to other situations?
- Would different click-through paths for different audience segments give us a cumulatively higher conversion than the best average conversion?
5. “We need to redesign.”
Sometimes you simply need to redesign. You need to scrap what isn’t working for you; you need more persuasive copy; you need more persuasive or illustrative images; you need to refresh your company image; you need to update your technology; you’ve added so many pieces to the original design that you need to reconceive it, and variations on this theme.
Bigger questions to explore and ask yourself:
- Do we need a redesign or do we need to make what we have work?
- Why will the redesigned site better serve visitors?
- How, exactly, will the redesigned site better serve visitors?
- Why are the best-converting sites so often boring in their design?
- Will our redesign incorporate a scientific testing methodology that will allow us to optimize click-streams based on a prediction of how different audience segments will engage with the site?
6. “We need better metrics.”
Sometimes you simply need better metrics. You need to measure the impact on conversion of the elements on your website; you need a good web analytics program; you need to turn your data into wisdom so you can act upon it; you need to measure whether your predictions were correct; you need to identify what campaigns, keywords, elements and audience segments give you the best return on your investment, and variations on this theme.
Bigger questions to explore and ask yourself:
- How can we better implement the web analytics program we are currently; do we understand how the data we collect impacts our financial statements?
- Are our metrics based on the way we set up our website to sell or on our visitors’ buying cycles and buying modalities?
- Do our metrics help us refine our website to meet visitor expectations?
- Have we identified and planned an intentional path so that metrics can help us separate the signal from the noise or is our analysis an attempt to divine order from randomness?
7. “We need a better Conversion Rate.”
Sometimes you simply need a better conversion rate. You need a better return on investment on your traffic; you need to remove obstacles to conversion; you need to plug the holes in your leaky bucket; you need to reduce shopping cart abandonment; you need visitors to complete more lead generation forms; you need more business, and variations on this theme.
Bigger questions to explore and ask yourself:
- How does our conversion rate affect our advertising and promotional budget?
- If we could attract a drastically reduced audience that converts better, we’ve increased our conversion rate. Are we prepared to reduce our conversion rate if we can generate more sales at an acceptable return on investment?
- If what we are offering is good, what are all the potential reasons why someone wouldn’t convert today, in 30 days, in 60 days, etc.?
- What is the percentage of visitors we would expect to lose to each of our potential reasons?
- After identifying all the potential reasons why someone wouldn’t convert, if we can’t justify why our conversion rate is less than 20%, why would we set our goals so much lower than that?
- Is it possible that the strategy that helps you increase the average conversion rate isn’t the strategy that would produce the most overall sales or best results?
- Would different click-through paths for different audience segments give us a cumulatively higher conversion than the best average conversion?
Meeting your challenges
Time and again we have learned that the answers to these bigger questions, which depend on a critical appraisal and an intimate knowledge of the business, its marketplace, its audience and its objectives, make the difference when it comes to being successful online.
You can tackle these bigger questions yourself. Objectivity and being able to see outside the box that defines your current situation will best serve the quality of your answers.
What happens if you don’t want to rethink your challenges or to identify more effective marketing solutions? Things stay the same, and you never realize your potential.
What happens if you’re unsure how to, or can’t, rethink your challenges?
Well, that’s why we’re here!
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Written by:Jeffrey Eisenberg
