eMetrics – Steve Jackson talking about Conversion Optimisation

• Latest posts
• Optimisation
• Web Analytics
• May 17, 2010

Steven Jackson (@blackbeak) optimisation delivers massive benefits to companies but, this is something that needs to be handled and monitored carefully.  This is not something that can simply to be done on ten minutes to half an hour a week.

Optimisation Tools available from companies like Maxymiser and WebTrends (testing tool called Optimise)  are worth their high price tag (when compared to Google Web Optimiser) because you can run hundreds of tests and aggregate their results to understand your customers more.

So why are you assuming that this process which saves and generates money is easy!  It certainly isn’t.  Invest in your analytics staff and get them working on your site.  They aren’t there to just churn out KPI reports.  Let me add context, value and recommendations.

Training

What about giving them some training?  The Web Analytics Association (WAA) provides training courses and certification (some tests are happening today at eMetrics) where you can learn from the experts.  In the UK eConsultancy offer courses as well – from online copywriting through to customer experience and social media strategies.

Anyway I digress.

WhichTestWon.com – lists the tests that people are running on their sites at the moment.  Anne Holland runs this site and gives you an insight of which tests work for people.  However you need to understand your customers!

Are you speaking to the dog in the language of the dog that the dog understands?

Are you understanding and catering for audiences of different needs, backgrounds and requirements.  Clear signals, testimonials, star ratings, which build the customer’s confidence and you are reassuring them that they are buying, interacting, researching (choose your verb) with a reputable company.  Steve, whilst prompting debate about the Facebook privacy issue, showed the Levis’ microsite which integrated with your Facebook account which showed you which of your friends like which products.  This is HELPING people make decisions!  This is great for conversion optimisation and could be compared against the adverts in the 1950s supermarkets where you are given demonstrations of the washing powder.

This video shows how an ‘average’ family is dealing with the troubles of their children playing in mud and potentially destroying their white jeans.  This is a family like your own family so give the air of ‘one-to-one’ marketing.  Social media gives us the opportunity to give REAL one-to-one marketing.

If you look at the recommendations and star ratings these are provided from like-minded people to you.  This is a great way for

Do you make it EASY for your customer?

Do you guide them through the sale process?

Do you tell them what you NEED in order to make the sale? (type of credit card…)

The Long Tail - segment out sources of traffic which come from long tail keywords and then buy them!  They are going to be cheap and by using this you can find your clients extra revenue.  Steve Jackson gave an example of one of his clients that following this process and found an additional €250,000.  Remember to look at things like time on site, bounce rate and the basic metrics when looking at this particular segment of your visits.  If they are higher then fix, if they are lower the exploit!.

Take Away:

Don’t be frightened to use Excel.  Models can be built to slice-n-dice thousands of rows with some very simple filtering exercises.  Build a dashboard so that your management can see pretty pictures – they don’t realistically have the time to look at granular data.

Make sure that you know the data inside out.  Don’t stand up infront of the Executive team and get confused with your own data.  It happens more often that you think.

I love using Excel and will post some blog posts in the coming months about functions and dashboards that I’ve created which you can just plug-in your data and get instant (well almost) insight!.

Thanks Steve for a great presentation!  Miles

conversion eMetrics Optimisation Steve Jackson Web Analytics