The biggest obstacle in conversion optimization? Company culture!

“The biggest challenge is to change company culture to make sure experimenting and testing become a second nature.”
André Morys

In many cases, optimization processes fail because of company culture. It’s an inconvenient truth, but many optimizers will recognize it.

Karl had a talk about this with German CRO specials André Morys, CEO of KonversionsKRAFT and – like Karl – a popular keynote speaker at international conferences. André runs the biggest CRO company in Europe.

For a change, Karl and André did not talk about their common love for cigars, truffles and French wine.

In this interview, they look at the very cause of optimization issues in many companies. And they give you tips to make sure your conversion optimization succeeds.

The most daring challenge, according to André Morys?

Change the company’s culture to make way for decent CRO.

Watch the interview, listen to the podcast or read the blog post

Watch André and Karl’s conversation about CRO and the obstacles and challenges companies are facing to do it right. Or read on about the most common pitfalls of CRO and how to avoid them.

Pitfall 1: You’re not tweaking the right things

Many CRO specialists are tweaking bullshit.
A bold statement by André Morys.

The color of the buttons, the shape of that button, the design of the navigation bar, icons, … Too often, the focus is on the wrong things.

Wrong?

Well, yes, because honestly:

Your user couldn’t care less about those rounded corners on your button.

This kind of tweaks has no impact on the success of your website. These changes rarely lead to more sales, more requests for an offer and more happy customers.

Your user couldn’t care less about rounded corners on your button. To have an impact on visitor’s behavior, there’s more to it than changing the outer layer of your webpages.

To make sure your visitors act and become customers, you have to change their behavior.

Playing with your website design or following the latest design hype can’t do that. On the contrary: some trends in web design are even harmful to your website.

To have an impact on visitor’s behavior, you have to do a lot more than changing the outer layer of your webpages.

So, what is that?

• Give your visitors what they want to know
• Write your copy starting from their viewpoint
• Take away any friction (why are they not buying from you?)
• Use psychological persuasion techniques

This is the essence of a successful cro strategy: based on user research, change the things that have an impact on your visitors’ behavior.

Pitfall nr 2: you are doing A LOT of AB-testing, but not the right ones

When AB-testing, it’s not quantity that counts, but quality. Especially when the number of AB-tests you can run on your website is limited.

“When you’re testing random things, you won’t learn anything. You can do thousands of AB-tests, but if it is not the right tests, you won’t gain anything.”

AB-tests are not meant to test your website.

AB-tests should measure how much behavioral change your adjustment will make.

The impact of this kind of test is about 5 times bigger than tests about your website’s design. And yes, they mostly need more preparation (because you’ll need user research), but this can be justified because their impact is much more significant.

This is what André Morys calls “behavioral contrast”.

If the adjustments you’re AB-testing have no impact on behavior or psychology of your visitor, they rarely give significant results.

And that’s exactly what we often need in Belgium and the Netherlands. Because most websites do not have enough visitors to measure the impact of small changes with statistical certainty.

Pitfall nr. 3: You’re only pretending to be customer-centric, but you’re not. Really.

When you’ve heard Karl talk, you probably know these figures:

• 80% of companies say they are customer-centric
• Only 8% of their clients think the same

There’s a big gap between what companies see as customer-centricity, and what their clients think is customer-centric.

André Morys sees this all the time. “A lot of companies indeed claim customer-centricity is very important to them. But in the workshops I have with them, I do not see that. They talk about themselves all the time: ‘I think, I find, according to me, we have to …’

It’s typical for companies that pretend to be customer-centric but are quite the opposite.

They rarely talk about:

• How the client feels
• What he expects
• What his inner thoughts are when visiting the site

And these companies never truly researched this either.

But it’s precisely this you’ll need for your conversion optimization strategy: not in a meeting room, brainstorming, but with your visitors and customers. That’s why user research and user tests are a must.

According to André, it’s most useful to ask an external party to do this. Or as he states: “You can’t read the label from inside the bottle.”

“Looking through the eyes of your customer and experiencing your brand, is almost impossible. That’s why you need an external consultant. He can be a mirror and show you how customers and prospects really feel and behave.”

Pitfall nr. 4: You’re afraid to experiment

We see this every day: as soon as a company gets some fame or grows, the fear for experiment increases.

Procedures are set in place, and there are guidelines for everything.

Taking risks and thinking outside the box is punished rather than rewarded.

Well, you will not get any results with that attitude…

Don’t even think about growth marketing or conversion optimization.

Because CRO is all about experimenting. Based on research and data. And of course, without crossing ethical borders and values of your company.

But yes, you’ll have to fall flat on your face. And you’ll have to go beyond the strict guidelines you got. And you’ll need full support from your management…

CRO is all about experimenting. You’ll have to fall flat on your face.

You can’t win if you’re afraid to lose.

Sometimes, your idea will work, sometimes it won’t. What we often see is that the big winner only follows upon 1 or more losers.

Only by experimenting, you can discover what works and what doesn’t.

So, test your ideas and see if they work. If so, implement them.

Or make them better. In that respect, we share our philosophy with André’s:

“Better done than perfect”
First, try out if your basic idea will work, then start fine-tuning.

Do not spend weeks or even days on figuring out the perfect AB-test, where every pixel is in place. Just start with a quick test and then fine-tune, measure again, and adjust.

André believes in small, incremental changes. Optimizing each page step by step.

Do not work for months on a complete redesign of your homepage or your product page. Only to find out that it was no good after all.

Make sure to start new experiments every 2 to 4 weeks.

In the long run, you’ll get much better results than in big waterfall projects.

Pitfall nr. 5: You’re not convincing your boss the right way

“When cleaning the stairs, you work from the top to the bottom. Not the other way around.”
André Morys

This means that your management has to support you on the basic idea of conversion optimization.

The art of the experiment.

Without the support of your management, your CRO strategy will fail.

We know, getting your bosses approval is easier said than done. But actually, that’s strange, because every company was once built starting from some sort of experiment.

It’s your responsibility as a CRO specialist to clearly show the impact of experimenting and optimizing your website and online marketing.

But how?

It’s simple: demonstrate the effects of your experiments.

Without the support of your management, your CRO strategy will fail.

Make a business case for your AB-testing. By showing real numbers. Do not just talk about an increase in conversion percentage and decrease of bounce rates. Your boss will show no interest.

Instead, show them that an increase of 10% in conversions in one year, will result in 100.000 euros more in sales and about 20.000 euros more in profits.

I bet your boss will grant you the budget you need for a conversion optimization strategy.

Not convinced this kind of results is possible?

Read how we managed to boost Yoast’s revenue with 118% in a year’s time