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Tuesday, April 7, 2015

30 Quick Conversion Tips Every Marketer Needs to Know

Written by Neil Patel, CrazyEgg.com

Hi laela,
You have thousands of visitors coming to your site, but no conversions. So what do you do?

Should you change your marketing campaigns?… Maybe redo your targeting? Or even worse, pause your SEO and content marketing efforts?

Probably not. Before you modify your marketing campaigns, you should spend some time optimizing your site for conversions.
Before you go off and start running A/B tests, take a look at the 30 quick tips to help you with your conversion rates:
30 quick conversion tips

1. Never start an A/B test without running an A/A test – don’t assume your A/B testing software is accurate. Run an A/A test to ensure the accuracy of the software solution you are using.

2. Don’t take words for granted – one word can drastically decrease or increase your conversions. Words like “free” or “trial” can increase or decrease your conversion rate.

3. Data, not opinions, should influence tests – never run tests based on what you want. Run tests based off what your visitors say they like or dislike. Opinions typically lead to failing tests, which means you will lose money.

4. Patience is a virtue – even if your testing software shows statistical significance, don’t stop a test unless you have at least 100 conversions on the winning variation. When tests are under 100 conversions, the results can drastically change.

5. Color has meaning – don’t take color for granted as different colors mean different things. Just look how one simple color affected click-through rates by 21%.

6. Some people don’t read – text works great for some sites, while video may work better for others. You’ll have to figure out which one your audience prefers. Before you go off and create a video, however, you’ll have to create a script first.

7. Some people love reading – short copy doesn’t always convert better. Lengthy sales pages can potentially boost your conversion rate.
8. Don’t take your reputation for granted – some people are worried about entering their credit card online, especially with unfamiliar or brand new sites. Consider testing trust elements such as the TRUSTe badge or the BBB seal.

9. Macro conversions are better than micro conversions – it doesn’t matter if you increase click-through from one step to another. All that matters is if more people buy from you. Focus on the big picture when testing instead of trying to maximize how many people move onto the next step.

10. Social proof isn’t always the best proof – you would think that social proof helps boost conversion rates, but it doesn’t always work that way.

11. Don’t assume what works for one company will work for you – just because someone like 37 Signals reveals how one change boosted their conversion rate by 200% doesn’t mean that change will work for you.

12. Conversion optimization doesn’t stop with the front end – from upsells and downsells to even cancellations, you can use conversion optimization to increase your average sell price and decrease churn. You just have to get creative.

13. The best increases come from drastic changes – after awhile, small tweaks won’t do much for your conversion rate. Drastic changes will move your bottom line. Don’t be afraid to get a bit creative and try something radically different.

14. Higher conversion rates don’t mean more money – sometimes having a decrease in conversion rate can make you more money. If you double the price of your product, but your conversion rate goes down by 20%… you still make more money by roughly 60%. Optimize for revenue and not conversions.

15. Mondays aren’t Tuesdays – your Monday visitors may not be the same as your Tuesday or even Saturday visitors. Run your tests for at least 7 days as visitor behavior can change over time.
16. It’s all about results – you want to see the results, but your visitors want to see proof of your results too. Test adding case studies and testimonials as they can help validate your company to visitors.

17. Don’t worry about bounce rates – when I used to do consulting on A/B testing, companies would focus on decreasing bounce rates, but sometimes they increased. It doesn’t matter what happens to your bounce rates as long as your conversion rates go up. Ignore vanity metrics like bounce rates. They may not actually affect your revenue.

18. The best experience is a custom experience – when running A/B tests, make sure you run separate tests for your mobile and desktop visitors. The experience on a mobile device shouldn’t be the same as on a laptop.
19. Less isn’t always better – creating the best user experience doesn’t always boost conversion rates. Adding more steps and making visitors jump through hoops can potentially boost your conversion rate. We boosted our conversion rate by 10% on Crazy Egg by adding an extra step.
20. Don’t make people think – don’t assume your users know what they are doing or what they want. Test giving people buttons to click instead of open-ended form fields. The Obama Administration boosted conversion rates by 5% through this one simple tactic.
21. Customize your user experience – the best call-to-action buttons aren’t generic ones like “free trial” or “buy now”; they are the ones related to your product or service.

22. Images are powerful – a picture is worth a 1,000 conversions. Not only was Highrise able to boost conversion rate by including images of people, but they found that certain images convert better. Using a picture of someone who is too good-looking or a male versus a female may affect conversion rates.

23. Navigation bars affect conversion rates – it’s not always wise to give people navigational menu options. Removing them can potentially increase your sales.
24. Multivariate tests are bad luck – I’ve run dozens of multivariate tests. Every time you add up the increases of each variation, the total increase never adds up to being the same as what the multivariate test shows. For this reason, I prefer running A/B tests over multivariate tests.
25. Clarity trumps persuasion – answering basic questions like “where am I?” or “what does this site do?” typically works better than persuasive content that sells. In an ideal world, you should be using both, but make sure you don’t trick people into converting as that causes cancellations and refunds.
26. Focus, focus, focus – each page should have one goal in mind. Pages with one strong message typically convert better than pages that try to accomplish multiple things. For this reason, it’s worth creating landing pages.
27. Testing shouldn’t stop with your site – you should use A/B testing principles with everything you do on the web. From testing your ad design and copy to testing which profile image on Twitter gets you more followers, everything can be tested.
28. There is money in ugliness – just because a website is ugly, it doesn’t mean it doesn’t convert well. You can learn a lot from ugly websites… especially the ones that make billions of dollars.
29. A/B testing doesn’t hurt SEO – a lot of people are afraid of running A/B tests because they are worried what it will do to their rankings. As long as you follow Google’s guidelines, you will be fine.
30. Minimize friction – don’t make users do things they don’t need to do. For example, don’t collect unnecessary form fields or ask people to verify their credit card address when processing companies don’t require it. Test a version of your site with as few friction-creating elements as possible.
Conclusion
No matter where your traffic is coming from, there is a way to make it convert. Instead of just focusing on building traffic, spend a portion of your time on converting it.
If you are continually running A/B tests, good for you! That’s the only way to maximize how many window shoppers you convert into customers.

Written by Neil Patel, CrazyEgg.com

omg?.....

(The title references Shanley Kane's post by the same name. This post represents my views on what men can do.)
It's no secret that programming is an incredibly male dominated field.

Figures vary, but somewhere from 20% to 29% of currently working programmers are female.
Less than 12% of Computer Science bachelor's degrees were awarded to women at US PhD-granting institutions in 2010.

So, on average, only about 1 out of every 5 working programmers you'll encounter will be female. You could say technology has a man problem.
In an earlier post I noted that many software developers I've known have traits of Aspergers. Aspergers is a spectrum disorder; the more severe the symptoms, the closer it is to autism. And did you know that autism skews heavily towards males at a 4:1 ratio?
Interesting. I might even go so far as to say some of those traits are what makes one good at programming.
That's the way it currently is. But is that the way it should be? I remember noticing that the workforce of the maternity ward at the hospital where our children were born was incredibly female dominated. Is there something inherently wrong with professions that naturally skew heavily male or female?

Consider this list of the most male and female dominated occupations in the Netherlands from 2004. It notes that:

In higher and academic level positions, men and women are more often represented equally. This pattern of employment has hardly changed over the last years.

Is programming a higher and academic level occupation? I'm not so sure, given that I've compared programmers to auto mechanics and plumbers in the past. And you'll notice squarely where those occupations are on the above graphs. There's nothing wrong with being an auto mechanic or a plumber (or a programmer, for that matter), but is there anything about those particular professions that demands, in the name of social justice, that there must be 50% male plumbers and 50% female plumbers?
For a counterpoint, here's a blog post from Sara J. Chipps. When I've e-mailed her in the past with my stupid questions on topics like this, she tries her best to educate me with empathy and compassion. That's why I love her.
This is an excerpt from a blog post she wrote in 2012 which answered my question:

Many people I meet ask me a variant of the question “I understand we want more women in technology, but why?” It’s a great question, and not at all something we should be offended by. Often men are afraid to ask questions like this for fear there will be backlash, and I think that fear can lead to stifling an important conversation.
Frankly, the Internet is thriving without women building it, why should that change? Three reasons:
1) Diversity leads to better products and results
As illustrated in this Cornell study along with many others, diversity improves performance, morale, and end product. More women engineers means building a better internet, and improving software that can service society as a whole. Building a better Internet is why I started doing software development in the first place. I think we can all agree this is of utmost importance.
2) The Internet is the largest recording of human history ever built
Right now the architecture for that platform is being built disproportionally by white and asian males. You’ve heard the phrase “he who writes history makes history”? We don’t yet know how this will affect future generations.
How can architecture be decidedly male? I like to refer to the anecdotal story of the Apple Store glass stairs. While visually appealing, there was one unforeseen consequence to their design: the large groups of strange men that spend hours each day standing under them looking up. As a woman, the first time I saw them I thought “thank god I’m not wearing a skirt today.” Such considerations were not taken in designing these stairs. I think it’s probable, if not easily predictable, that in a few years we will see such holes in the design of the web.
3) Women in 10 years need to be able to provide for themselves, and their families
Now, this reason is purely selfish on the part of women, but we all have mothers, and sisters, so I hope we can relate.
This year there are 6 million information technology jobs in the US, up from 628,600 in 1987 and 1.34 million in 1997. Right now jobs in technology have half the unemployment rate of the rest of the workforce. There is no sign this will change anytime soon. If growth continues at the current rate, it will not be long until women will not be able to sustain themselves if not involved in a technical field.
We have to start educating young girls about this now, or they may ultimately become the poorest demographic among us.

These are good reasons. I'm particularly fond of #1. Diversity in social perspectives is hugely valuable when building social software intended for, y'know, human beings of all genders, like Discourse and Stack Exchange. Also, I get really, really tired of all the aggressive mansplaining in software development. Yes, even my own. Sometimes it would be good to get some ladysplaining all mixed up in there for variety.
I suppose any effort to encourage more women to become software engineers should ideally start in childhood.

Dolls? Pshaw. In our household, every child, male or female, is issued a regulation iPad at birth. You know, the best, most complex toy there is: a computer. And, shocker, I'm kind of weird about it – I religiously refer to it as a computer, never as an iPad. Never. Not once. Not gonna happen in my house. Branding is for marketing weasels. So the twin girls will run around, frantically calling out for their so-called "'puter". It puts a grin on my face every time. And when anything isn't here, Maisie has gotten in the habit of saying "dada chargin'". Where's the milk, Maisie? "dada chargin'".
But not everyone has the luxury of spawning their own processes and starting from boot. (You really should, though. It will kick your ass.)

What can you do?

If you're reading this, there's about an 80% chance that you're a man. So after you give me the secret man club handshake, let's talk about what we men can do, right now, today, to make programming a more welcoming profession for women.

Abide by the Hacker School Rules
Let's start with the freaking brilliant Hacker School rules. This cuts directly to the unfortunate but oh-so-common Aspergers tendencies in programmers I mentioned earlier:
- No feigning surprise. "I can't believe you don't know what the stack is!"
- No well-actuallys. "Well, actually, you can do that without a regular expression."
- No back seat driving. Don't intermittently lob advice across the room.
- No subtle sexism via public debate.
Does any of this sound familiar? Because it should. Oh God does this sound familar. Just read the whole set of Hacker School guidelines and recognize your natural tendencies, and try to rein them in. That's all I'm proposing.
Well, actually, I'll be proposing a few more things.
Really listen. What? I SAID LISTEN.
Remember this scene in Fight Club?

This is why I loved the support groups so much, if people thought you were dying, they gave you their full attention. If this might be the last time they saw you, they really saw you. Everything else about their checkbook balance and radio songs and messy hair went out the window. You had their full attention. People listened instead of just waiting for their turn to speak. And when they spoke, they weren't just telling you a story. When the two of you talked, you were building something, and afterward you were both different than before.
Guilty as charged.
My wife is a scientist, and she complains about this happening a lot at her work. I don't even think this one is about sexism, it's about basic respect. What does respect mean? Well, a bunch of things, but let's start with openly listening to people and giving them our full attention when they talk to us – rather than just waiting for our turn to speak.
Let's shut up and listen quietly with the same thoughtfulness that we wish others would listen to us. We'll get our turn. We always do, don't we?
If you see bad behavior from other men, speak up.
It's not other people's job to make sure that everyone enjoys a safe, respectful, civil environment at work and online.
It's my job. It's your job. It is our job.
There is no mythical men's club where it is OK to be a jerk to women. If you see any behavior that gives you pause, behavior that makes you wonder "is that OK?", behavior that you'd be uncomfortable with directed toward your sister, your wife, your daughter – speak up. Honestly, as one man to another. And if that doesn't work for whatever reason, escalate.
Don't attempt romantic relationships at work.
Do you run a company? Institute a no-dating rule as policy. Yeah, I know, you can't truly enforce it, but it should still be the official company policy. And whether the place where you work has this policy or not, you should have it on a personal level.
I'm sorry I have to be that guy who dumps on true love, but let's be honest: the odds of any random office romance working out are pretty slim. And when it doesn't, how will you handle showing up to work every day and seeing this person? Will there be Capulet vs Montague drama? The women usually get the rough end of this deal, too, because men aren't good at handling the inevitable rejection.
Just don't do it. Have all the romantic relationships you want outside work, but do not bring it to work.
No drinking at work events.
I think it is very, very unwise for companies to have a culture associated with drinking and the lowered inhibitions that come with drinking. I've heard some terrifyingly awful stories that I don't even want to link to here. Men, plus women, plus alcohol is a great recipe for college. That's about all I remember from college, in fact. But as a safe work environment for women? Not so much.
If you want to drink, be my guest. Drink. You're a grown up. I'm not the boss of you. But don't drink in a situation or event that is officially connected with work in any way. That should absolutely be your personal and company policy – no exceptions.

There you have it. Five relatively simple things you, I, and all other working male programmers can do to help encourage a better environment for men and women in software plumbing. I mean engineering.
So let's get to it.
(I haven't listed anything here about mentoring. That's because I am an awful mentor. But please do feel free to mention good resources, like Girl Develop It, that encourage mentoring of female software engineers by people that are actually good at it, in the comments.)

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