Category Archives: marketing optimization

Building a Successful Optimization Program: Slides Available

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click image to access slidesOn December 6 of last year, I presented a session at the BestPractices conference in Seattle, WA. BestPractices is a conference and webinar series presented by Analytics Pros and focused on, you guessed it, “best practices” around digital analytics and optimization.

The session was titled “Building a Successful Optimization Program” and the slides have been posted for public consumption.

I will be presenting a follow up webinar, “Testing & Optimization: A Deeper Look” on Wednesday, January 16th at 10am PST. Seats are still available, so feel free to put your name on the list here »

A 3-Level Web Analytics Framework for Optimization

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We all know that Optimization and testing efforts should be “data driven.” Quantitative and qualitative data should lead you to the problems that testing attempts to solve for your prospects.

But how, exactly, should quantitative web analytics data be used to power your Optimization efforts? How does analysis differ when you’re looking for insights and testing opportunities? Great questions, if I do say so myself 😉

Camera LensI’m going to answer both in this post as I lay out a basic framework for how to “do” web analytics in the context of Optimization. I compare web data analysis to looking with different “lenses” at the same set of data depending on the context. For example, if I’m doing analysis on “site performance,” I would take a different view of the data than if I were doing “campaign analysis” or “content performance analysis.”

It’s the same for Optimization. You look at the same data as always, but you look through a different, contextual “lens” to suit your needs. Continue reading →

3 Signs Your Personas Are Broken

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danger iconLast month, the venerable Bryan Eisenberg wrote on his blog about Content Marketing Personas. The article was a good reminder for us that there are a lot personas out there in the marketing world, and many of them are sub-par if not dangerous.

I especially liked his suggestion that readers explore his “conversion trinity” on paid ads and landing pages using existing personas to see if they were up to the task of helping optimize a landing page experience. He has promised us more columns about “getting personas right” in the future, so I recommend you keep an eye out for those.

Coincident with me reading Bryan’s post, I was doing an on-site consulting engagement with a new client. They were looking to redesign a microsite with the goal of boosting lead conversion rate. I was relatively unfamiliar with their marketing efforts, so I asked if they had marketing personas. They answered, “Yes,” and I was delivered an 8Mb PDF with a professional layout, high-quality stock images, and content that was backed by legitimate research.

I deleted it minutes later.

Why did I delete these personas, choosing to “start from scratch” instead of leverage a document that had obviously taken many hours to produce?!? I won’t answer that specifically about this client’s personas, but it’s my segue into my 3 warning signs that your personas may be toxic. If the personas you’re using to do Optimization (or any Marketing) show any of these traits, you may be shooting yourself in the foot. Continue reading →

Conversion Optimization Specialists are Marketing Mediators

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image depicting mediationFor years, I’ve been searching for better and better ways to explain what it is that I do as a Conversion Optimization specialist, and to encapsulate the value I bring to marketing organizations.

I’ve heard that you should be able to explain your job to your grandparents. Anyone who works in new media, web, or technology knows how challenging this can be!

For those in the web industry, I could easily argue that Conversion Optimization is a sub-skill of User Experience (UX) design. I’m constantly experimenting with, and trying to improve, the experiences that users have on websites so that they’ll be more likely to buy, become a lead, etc.

But, that last paragraph is useless when you’re explaining Optimization to your grandparents, or even to marketing executives that have lived most of their lives in the years “B.I.” (Before Internet).

So, in this post, I’m proposing a new metaphor that I’ll be testing in the near future with grandparents, clients, and maybe even strangers at dinner parties!

Drum roll, please… Continue reading →

The Six Types of Conversion Optimization Documents

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documents iconWith all of the quality blogs devoted to Conversion Optimization tips and best practices, I’ve not come across any posts related to the different kinds of documents required to be successful in a conversion optimization and testing effort.

Being a bit of a “document geek,” I will give you my thoughts on important documents and how to use them to set yourself up for success. Continue reading →

“Grit” is the New “Agility” in Online Marketing

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I recently learned of a lovely new acronym that aptly describes the world of online marketing. It’s VUCA, which stems from military jargon and stands for Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity, and Ambiguity. I just love a pessimistic acronym. 😉

I credit a recent report published by the Corporate Executive Board with this sweet new acronym as well as the data points I’m including in this post. The title of the study is Driving Marketing Performance in a Volatile Environment: The Surprising Qualities of the Best Marketing Teams. I assumed the report was going say that marketing agility was the solution to all of Marketing’s problems. After all, agile marketing has a good amount of buzz these days – it even has its own manifesto. But, I was totally wrong! It turns out that a another characteristic is key to surviving volatility: grit. Continue reading →

Does Marketing Optimization Hurt Innovation?

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image representing innovationAn Optimizer’s Dilemma

I’ve been thinking for a few months about a post I read on the dangers of continuous improvement. Its author, Ron Ashkenas, makes several good points about how continuous improvement methodologies (Six Sigma, Kaizen, Lean, etc.) can stifle creative problem-solving and add other risks to a business.

This worried me at first, since I was trained to apply continuous improvement methodologies to improving the performance of websites and marketing campaigns. Was optimizing via testing in a continuous fashion introducing risk to my companies or clients? Continue reading →

A Useful Web Analysis I Always Come Back To

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As we all know, there is now more web data, and more web analytics reports, than there are hours in the day. One could literally do nothing but stare at web analytics reports all day every day. Unfortunately, that approach would be well beyond the point of diminishing returns.

The fact is that web analysts aren’t paid to stare at web analytics reports all day. They’re paid to provide data-driven insights to drive the business. In the absence of insights, they are paid to ask thought-provoking questions that have the potential to become marketing insights.

Given the scarcity of time to come up with insights and the overabundance of reports, I believe it’s important to have your own “short list” of super-powerful reports or analyses that can quickly give you insights or things to talk about with your marketing colleagues.

I’m going to share one of mine with you. It consistently either a) gives me insights about the prospects of a given website or b) gets my mind buzzing with questions that can be further investigated. Continue reading →

In-House Expertise: The Final Frontier of Optimization?

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house iconI recently moved from the world of consulting to the world of “in-house” marketing optimization. While my reasons for switching career direction after 5 years on the ‘service provider’ side are numerous, I wanted to take this opportunity to discuss A) why I chose to go “in-house” and B) why I believe that in-house optimization expertise should be the ultimate, long-term goal for online marketing organizations. Continue reading →

Conversion-Friendly Website Redesigns Need these 7 Factors

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numeral sevenThose who’ve worked with me know that I’m not a fan of website redesign projects. I much prefer testing and incremental change.

Why? Because I’ve been involved in website redesign projects that were catastrophes, and many of my clients have admitted that they engaged my expertise in conversion rate optimization because they redesigned and their new site converted worse than their old one!

But, once in a while, a redesign is the right course of action. Maybe it’s part of a re-branding effort, maybe it’s simply a “political” requirement, or maybe the current site will require so much work to optimize that it’s not cost-efficient.

If you find yourself heading down the path of a redesign project, there are factors that your team can focus on to ensure that the redesigned site does more than just look nice in browsers on devices. It needs to perform as part of your marketing system and help your company achieve business goals! Building these 7 factors into your project will set you up for success. Continue reading →