5 CRO myths you should know about – and tips to do it right
Many companies invest a lot of time and money in CRO and growth marketing. But often they don’t get the results they were hoping for. Karl talks with André Morys, CEO of German CRO market leader KonversionsKRAFT. They talk about common pitfalls of conversion optimization, and how to avoid them.
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, conversion optimization fails because of company culture. It’s an inconvenient truth, but many optimizers will recognize it.
Karl had a talk about this with German CRO specialist André Morys, CEO of KonversionsKRAFT and – like Karl – a popular keynote speaker at international conferences.
In this interview, they look at the cause of optimization troubles in many companies. And they give you tips to make sure your conversion optimization succeeds.
The hardest challenge, according to André Morys?
Changing the company culture to create room for 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”, André says.
The color of this button, 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 your user couldn’t care less about those rounded corners on your button.
These kind of tweaks has no impact on the success of your business. These changes rarely lead to more sales, more requests for offer or more happy customers.
Your user couldn’t care less about rounded corners on your buttons. To have a real impact on the visitor’s behavior, you need to do more than just change the outer layer of your web pages.
To make sure your visitors 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 can even be 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
• Write your copy starting from your users’ point of view
• Take away friction (why aren’t people 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 should measure how much behavioral change your variation 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 is justified because their impact is much more significant.
This is what André Morys calls “behavioral contrast”.
If the variations 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 to do. 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. 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 they expect
• What their inner thoughts are when visiting the site
And these companies never truly researched this either.
But it’s precisely this information you’ll need for your conversion optimization strategy. That’s why user research is a must for conversion optimization.
According to André, it’s most useful for companies to ask an external partner 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 to do yourself. That’s why you need an external consultant. They 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 of experimentation increases.
Procedures are set in place, and there are guidelines for literally 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 the values of your company.
But yes, you’re gonna fall flat on your face sometimes. And you may have to go beyond the strict style guidelines you’ve got. And you’ll need full support from your management…
CRO is all about experimenting. Failing is part and parcel of that.
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 big winners only follow after 1 or more losers.
Only by experimenting can you truly 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 the same philosophy as André:
“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.
Without the support of management, your CRO strategy will fail.
We know, getting your bosses’ approval is easier said than done.
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 management, your CRO strategy will fail.
Make a business case for AB-testing. By showing real numbers. Do not just talk about an increase in conversion percentages. Your boss will show no interest.
Instead, show them that an increase of 10% in conversions in one year, could 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 result is possible?
Discover how we boosted Yoast’s revenue with 118% in a year’s time
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