Welcome to part two of our interview with conversion optimization expert Chris Goward. In the first part, Chris helps software vendors understand testing priorities and how to test for the biggest impact to your conversion rate.
The second part of this interview features conversion optimization advice for mobile users, pricing strategies and how to get your executive team to invest in testing resources.
Building Keystones: Mobile is great for selling and consuming digital content like e-books, games and movies. How can merchants who are not yet in this space create a mobile strategy?
Chris Goward: If a merchant only has single-digit mobile visitors, maybe they have a little more time to ignore them. But, not for long. They’ll wake up one day and realize their customers are on large-screen Samsung phones shopping on all their competitors’ sites and they’re being left in the dust.
Remember, mobile isn’t a segment of people – it’s all people. It’s the same people that come to your full-size site. Everyone has a phone now. They might currently be completing their purchase on your full size, but may want to quickly check on a product while on the road. If they can easily find what they need, they’ll be more likely to complete the purchase either on their phone or back on their computer later.
We at Wider Funnel are having lots of fun testing on mobile sites and apps and finding the best experiences across all devices. One of the considerations is which CTAs should be more prominent on each device. That’s often overlooked.
BK: Has raising prices ever increased conversions?
CG: For sure! There are many examples of “psychological price points,” where higher prices can trigger unexpected value perceptions.
Price testing can be very revealing for ecommerce. The traditional economic model that says “lower prices always increase demand” doesn’t hold up in some cases.
Retailers are familiar with the effect the “95” cent ending price has. It can communicate a discount and create more demand than other five-cent price movements. Recent research also shows price size, boldness, color, sound and cultural considerations can boost sales.
Can you really raise your prices and increase your sales? In some cases, yes!
Try testing price treatment as well as the price amount too. Do color, size, cross-out comparison and even numbers make a difference?
In my new marketing optimization book, “You Should Test That!,” I explain nine psychological price tactics that influence price perception. For example, research has shown that peoples’ perception of the relative size of a number is influenced by the number’s sounds. Vowel sounds produced nearer to the front of your mouth can seem smaller than sounds from the back of your throat. And fricative sounds like f, s, and z seem smaller than stop sounds like t and b.
All these findings are in addition to the irrational power of “Free.” Here’s the new economic model I propose compared to traditional economics:
The traditional economic model where demand increases smoothly as price decreases is broken!
BK: How resource intensive is testing?
CG: As with most things that are worth doing, testing properly takes effort. We’ve been refining the process that gets the best results since 2007, and the only way to do it right is to have a cross-functional team of experts with focused attention on only conversion.
So, yeah, it takes work.
But so many companies are doing it because the payoff is so great. When retailers first realize what they’re seeing when we present a 10%, 20% or 40% conversion rate lift, they’re immediately hooked. It’s addictive.
And, beyond just the conversion rate lift, they learn a better way to make all their company decisions. They start to want to test everything, especially when they realize how many of the gut-feeling decisions have been wrong in the past.
BK: Reid Hoffman of LinkedIn once said, “If you’re not embarrassed by the first version of your product, you’ve launched too late.” I think this idea is interesting. On one hand, it emphasizes the importance of companies getting their product out there. But indirectly teaches that at some point, you’re going to have to make improvements. And that’s where testing comes in: To identify issues that can be improved and figure out the best way to implement that improvement. How can testing enthusiasts persuade their resistant colleagues on the importance of testing?
CG: Every business has an opportunity to use controlled testing to make decisions. Those decisions may be related to product, marketing, strategy, service or any other key component of the business. Testing is not just a web strategy but a decision-making strategy.
Some of the most important learning can be value proposition insights. There are three components you can use to A/B test your value proposition.
In the book, I give eight ways to move the culture toward a test-and-improve culture. One of the most important is to get senior-level buy-in early.
No matter how strong your test results are, without senior management backing you’ll face an uphill battle. Many people look for cues from HiPPOs when deciding what to support, and senior managers allocate funding. For many reasons, your job will be much easier with their support.
BK: Have you encountered strong resistance to optimizing by testing where everyone just agrees with the HiPPO (Highest Paid Person’s Opinion) and makes decisions based on gut reaction? How important is it to establish a culture of testing and what tools are out there to get going?
CG: For organizations where gut-feeling rules, all hope may be lost.
Seriously.
We’ve had clients in the past where an internal conversion champion has brought us in to improve the conversion rate. They’re doing their best to instill a data-driven decision process. Yet, after we complete a test and produce a beautifully-designed new page that also lifts their sales, the HiPPO decides to implement a different page design that he “likes better.”
Companies like that are following the path of the dodo.
As a conversion optimization champion, your goal is to influence that culture and turn the ship around before the company plows straight into an iceberg of bad decisions.
Keystone
What are you waiting for? Get started on your conversion optimization efforts now, and do it the right way. It will be worth the hard work. Creating a test-and-improve culture will foster continuous advancements.
For more expert advice and insight from Chris Goward, visit widerfunnel.com/blog.
Hi,
I keep a website in which I advise visitors how to start their own site, make it more profitable, etc. The site’s in Polish and in translation it’s domain name is “e-business step by step”.
On front page I keep info on free guides and advice since
I’ve chosen content marketing as way of attracting visitors to my site. I then try to convert them to subscriber of my Newsletter.
The thing is my offer is in site’s menu only. I don’t mention it on front page. I’m wondering how to insert info on my services (advising, coaching) on front page so that the main idea that the domain name won’t be lost.
I think it would be strange for a new visitor to come accross a site calles “e-business step by step” and see instead of guides advice of 3 of my offers (even small).
What do you think, how could I make it work so that I could keep my visitors looking for advice and inform them on my services at the same time?
Thanks,
Krzysztof (Chris) Planeta
Poland
My own conversion optimization advice:
The most important part of conversion optimization is the part after the conversion optimization test 😉
Think carefully if the results are trustworthy, and what do the results mean. If you have increased the CTR by 50% doesn’t mean that you have increased your sales. IMHO you can only trust your results, if you have more than 50 (better 100) SALES for the winning variation in less than 1 month.
That means: If you have landing page with eCPM is 1$, and the product price is $30, and you have a A/B test with 3 variants, and the variants generates 50,30 and 20 sales in 1 month, then you need:
(50+30+20) sales * $30 = $3000
eCPM = $1 = $3000/Impressions*1000
-> Impressions = $3000*1000/$1 = 3 million
That means: You need at least 3 million impressions a month for a page to run a reliable conversion optimization test on that page. Strange! So think about it 😉
Or read “You Should Test That!”