{"id":2785,"date":"2016-06-21T16:11:43","date_gmt":"2016-06-21T10:41:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.karooya.com\/blog\/?p=2785"},"modified":"2017-04-29T09:23:21","modified_gmt":"2017-04-29T03:53:21","slug":"20-qs-top-cro-experts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.karooya.com\/blog\/20-qs-top-cro-experts\/","title":{"rendered":"[Transcript] 20 Questions with Today\u2019s Top CRO Experts"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"lead\">An interesting talk where experts attended to some of the questions around\u00a0Conversion Rate Optimization. Moderated by <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/searchbrat\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Kieran Flanagan<\/a>\u00a0(VP Marketing, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.hubspot.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">HubSpot<\/a>)\u00a0the panelists of this Q&amp;A session were\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/pamelump\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Pamela Vaughan<\/a>\u00a0(Principal Marketing Manager of Optimization, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.hubspot.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">HubSpot<\/a>),\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/larrykim\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Larry Kim<\/a>\u00a0(Founder &amp; CTO , <a href=\"http:\/\/www.wordstream.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Wordstream<\/a>),\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/oligardner\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Oli Gardner<\/a>\u00a0(Co-founder, <a href=\"http:\/\/unbounce.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Unbounce<\/a>),\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/peeplaja\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Peep Laja<\/a>\u00a0(Founder, <a href=\"http:\/\/conversionxl.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">ConversionXL<\/a>) and\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/randfish\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Rand Fishkin<\/a>\u00a0(Founder,\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/moz.com\/\">Moz<\/a>).<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<p>Here are some of the key takeaways from this discussion:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>A structured CRO process is to primarily identify where the problem lies and finding a relevant solution for it<\/li>\n<li>Identifying the source of your converting traffic is important \u00a0and thus is an important metric for CRO<\/li>\n<li>Make your landing page content persuasive to drive conversions<\/li>\n<li>Remarketing is a massive CRO hack<\/li>\n<li>Having pop-ups that are relevant and occur at the right place and right time can help drive results<\/li>\n<li>Conversion and placement of CTA is co-related along with using a relevant term for your CTA<\/li>\n<li>When creating experiments, think beyond conversion to retention and life time value of customer<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>For more, watch video of this discussion <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=KR0coupWYBI&amp;feature=youtu.be\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">here<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Here&#8217;s the transcript of the session:<\/p>\n<p><strong>Kieran<\/strong>: Hey everyone. So, I think we\u2019re live. Welcome today to our Google Live Hangout all around Conversion Rate Optimization. So we have something very special today for everyone. We have a truly global list of world experts on Conversion Rate Optimization based all around the world literally. A couple of housekeeping notes, so we\u2019re going to record this Hangout, so you\u2019ll have it available to you. There\u2019s a hashtag you guys can follow, it\u2019s #CROhangouts; so you can follow along, ask questions, interact with people. And the agenda we\u2019re going to go through today, which I think is very cool, is built by everyone who\u2019s actually on this hangout, so people uploaded their questions and we\u2019re going to answer the top 20 questions over the next 60 minutes.<\/p>\n<p>So I\u2019m going to be really strict with the [inaudible 0:00:56] experts. I\u2019m sure they would want to talk for an eternity on each of these questions, but I\u2019m going to try to cut them up so we get through all the questions that you guys wanted us to cover and thought was important. So what I\u2019m going to do is go around from my left to right from the list of experts. I\u2019m going to give you a quick introduction, and then I\u2019m going to ask them to tell you where they are today so you can get a feel of how truly global this hangout is.<\/p>\n<p>So the first person is Pamela Vaughan, is from HubSpot. She works in our CRO team. Pam has worked on an incredible amount of conversion tactics and built the conversion playbook for our blog and now she is doing the same for our website. Some of the things she\u2019s done for her blog have actually increased our leads by 240%. Most of the times when I go and present at conferences I just steal all of Pam\u2019s experiments because they make me look good. So, Pam, do you want to give a quick introduction on where you\u2019re based today?<\/p>\n<p><strong>Pam<\/strong>: Yeah, I\u2019m at neighbouring Massachusetts in the new [inaudible 0:01:57]<\/p>\n<p><strong>Kieran<\/strong>: Next we have Larry Kim. Larry\u2019s the CTO of Wordstream, also one of the people I see publishing lots and lots of content \u2013 an incredible amount of content, a list that\u2019s always full of lots of learnings. So he is the best known person for paid acquisition, an expert in CRO, a phenomenal marketer. And also someone who has got up really early in the morning to be good enough to join us today. So, Larry, do you want to give a quick introduction so that people know where you\u2019re from?<\/p>\n<p><strong>Larry<\/strong>: Sure, I live in Cambridge right near the HubSpot office, but I\u2019m actually dialling in from Sydney, Australia this morning and that\u2019s why it\u2019s so dark here.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Kieran<\/strong>: Awesome.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Larry<\/strong>: 3 AM.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Kieran<\/strong>: 3 AM, so that is commitment to this Hangout. Thank you for doing that, Larry. Oli Gardner, co-founder of Unbounce. I\u2019m sure everyone\u2019s familiar with Oli, probably seen more landing pages in his time than anyone else. Renowned speaker, speaking all over the globe, been kind enough to speak in Dublin where I\u2019m actually based, and has a blog on Unbounce full of amazing things around Conversion tactics. Oli does this really cool video show, where he tears &#8230;the pages as well. Oli, do you want to give a quick introduction, let people know where you\u2019re from?<\/p>\n<p><strong>Oli<\/strong>: Yes, I\u2019m in here from Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Kieran<\/strong>: Awesome.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Oli<\/strong>: And it\u2019s not that early, it\u2019s 9 AM, that\u2019s early for me.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Kieran<\/strong>: Yeah, not too late, not like Kim or Larry. Peep Laja [chuckles]. I think I just got the second name wrong. Peep runs Conversion, co-founder of ConversionXL, entrepreneur, over ten years of industry experience. The best thing I can say is that Peep is\u2026 anytime anyone wants to ask me a question on conversion or CRO, I just say, \u201cGo, read his blog.\u201d I\u2019ve stolen multiple things from his blog. It is definitely one of the best resources on the planet for everything Conversion. Peep, do you want to give us a quick introduction, let us know where you\u2019re based today?<\/p>\n<p><strong>Peep<\/strong>: Yeah, I\u2019m in Austin, Texas, and also United States of America.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Kieran<\/strong>: Yep, another United States of America. And then, last but no means least, is Rand Fishkin. I don\u2019t think he needs too much of an introduction \u2013 founder, former CEO of Moz, author of tons and tons of books, co-author of lots of books, co-founder Inbound.org, industry speaker across the globe\u2026 Rand, where are you based today, because you usually travel quite a lot?<\/p>\n<p><strong>Rand<\/strong>: I\u2019m actually in Seattle, Washington, my hometown, which is kind of shocking. It is in the United States, but my hope is &#8211; and may be Oli could work on this \u2013 if Trump happens to win the election, may be Canada can invade.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Pam<\/strong>: [Laughter]<\/p>\n<p><strong>Oli<\/strong>: Yeah, we can absorb you, we\u2019ll just do that.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Rand<\/strong>: That\u2019ll be really appreciated.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Kieran<\/strong>: Cool. So there are our speakers. Yeah, you have to give a lot of money to go and see these people speak, so we\u2019re getting that tool for free. They\u2019ve all been kind enough to dedicate some time, so we really appreciate that. Want to say thanks for their time. Let\u2019s get right into the questions. So, the very first question, I think it\u2019s a really great question to start off with\u2026 So, this is for you, Peep, we\u2019re going to go to you in this:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>How do I create a CRO process? How do I get started with that?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><strong>Peep<\/strong>: Mm-hm. Well, first thing to understand is, what do we need a process for. And the goal of what we\u2019re doing here is to either make or test effective changes in our website. So, a good structured process, CRO process, should help you answer that question, the question of what should we test next, what should we change next in our website. So<strong> a structured process will tell you what the problems are<\/strong>, where they are on your website, why are these problems even problems, and it will help you identify the problems, turn them into test hypotheses, which means solutions to these problems with an A\/B test should be a solution to a problem.<\/p>\n<p>So, a <strong>CRO process should focus primarily on identifying what the problems are<\/strong>. So you want to look at the analytics to figure out where the traffic is dropping out, you want to analyze a qualitative feed to understand what\u2019s keeping people from signing up, why they are leaving your website, why aren\u2019t they buying more stuff. You want to use all the tools available to you to figure out what the problems are. So your structured process should be around identifying problems, turning them into test hypotheses, and then running tests and I think within this three minute time limit, can\u2019t give you a better overview.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Oli<\/strong>: People should check out your <strong>ResearchXL framework.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>Peep<\/strong>: Yes, they should. Thank you, Oli.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Kieran<\/strong>: So to get back to us again, what was that\u2026?<\/p>\n<p><strong>Peep<\/strong>: ResearchXL.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Kieran<\/strong>: Can you give us a little bit of a insight to what that is? Is that a way to\u2026?<\/p>\n<p><strong>Peep<\/strong>: It\u2019s a f<strong>ramework that I\u2019ve developed that teaches you how to do it<\/strong>. So, if you go to ConversionXL.com, in the top menu, there are free guides, free CRO courses, a full course on how to build the process.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Kieran<\/strong>: Awesome. Anyone else want to jump in there? We have some&#8230;we have a little bit of time on how you would create that process, prioritize. I think Rand, you have some input there?<\/p>\n<p><strong>Rand<\/strong>: One thing that\u2019s worked for us pretty well is to <strong>identify the area that we\u2019re trying to improve<\/strong> and <strong>then talk to two groups of customers in particular<\/strong>. One are people who are right customers, but did not end up signing up; so, meaning they matched all the criteria of people we think should have loved the product and wanted to sign up for it or buy it or sign up for the e-mail or whatever, do the conversion event. And then also talk to people who did sign up for it, and ask them the same sets of questions \u2013 things like, \u201cWhy were you interested, what initially brought you there?\u201d Or \u201cWhat made you decide to investigate it? What made you decide to convert or not convert?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>And then you can look at those objections and turn that into the process of things that you test on the landing page, right? Answering those objections, overcoming them, that seems to be a really powerful process that, you know, that I still learn from experts like Oli and Pam and Peep over the years and has worked well for us.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Kieran<\/strong>: Really quickly, how do you ask those questions? Is it through, like, an e-mail survey or a website survey, or\u2026?<\/p>\n<p><strong>Rand<\/strong>: We\u2019ve done e-mail surveys, we\u2019ve done in-person, so at lot of conferences and events, like, talk to folks about this, or we\u2019ll bring them into the Moz box and ask them in person. And phone calls work well too.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Kieran<\/strong>: Cool.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Peep<\/strong>: But e-mail is the way that is the scalable approach. You can, you know, survey hundreds and hundreds of people fast. So interviews, not very scalable, but you know of course, you get the richer information if you do, you know, in-person interviews.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Rand<\/strong>: Do you find..? Peep, would you, or other folks, do you find that when you\u2026? I find that when we get, like, five or ten answers, those tend to be very, very similar \u2013 the same objections come up if we ask ten people, or a hundred people or a thousand people&#8230;get more and more.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Peep<\/strong>: Mm. So, you can identify the top issues with a smaller sample size, but if you interview only ten people, what you don\u2019t get is, you don\u2019t understand the severity or let\u2019s say the frequency of the issue. So if people worried about, let\u2019s say, price, security and I mean, whatever a third reason, so like, what is the scale of difference? So if you survey, find 100 people, you understand that, \u201cOh my God, pricing is a five times bigger issue than fear about something,\u201d you know.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Rand<\/strong>: Right, got it, got it.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Kieran<\/strong>: So, I guess the next question is a really great follow-on, and this will go to you Pam, and this is:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>What are some of the top CRO metrics a person should really care about when they\u2019re trying to create that first process?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>What are, like, the metrics they should grab there towards?<\/p>\n<p><strong>Pam<\/strong>: So, I actually think <strong>it depends on, you know, on the goal, on the problem you\u2019re trying to solve<\/strong>. What you\u2019re trying, the problem you\u2019re trying to solve will have different metrics depending on what it is. So, I mean, the goal to metrics that people, you know, like when they talk about Conversion Rate Optimization is, you know, conversions, conversion rate which you know also depends on traffic. But, you know, if your goal\u2019s, for example, is to improve the number of marketing qualified leads that you\u2019re generating from your blog, you can\u2019t just look at raw conversions, right? You have to look at, you know, the qualified conversions that come from the blog.<\/p>\n<p>So things will change depending on, you know, what trials and experiments you\u2019re running. You know, if you\u2019re running an e-mail experiment, you\u2019re going to be looking at, you know, click-through rate of your e-mails sent and you know, referral traffic from your emails and things like that. So really, I think the main thing is to focus on the goal you\u2019re trying to solve and the hypotheses that you\u2019ve formed for that experiment, and then, what makes them to actually measure to a value; whether your hypothesis is [to purchase].<\/p>\n<p>And another thing I wanted to point out was the big role that traffic plays into all this. I think <strong>traffic is a huge metric, and it\u2019s particularly traffic sources<\/strong>, Conversion Rate Optimization, you know, it\u2019s really important to pay attention to the traffic, that if you try to optimize a specific page, to understand how people are getting to that page. <strong>People behave differently depending on the source of traffic, and you\u2019ll notice changes in conversion rates based on that.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>So, you know, things that we notice is that, you know, [paid] traffic typically converts at a lower rate than something like organic traffic because visitors to organic traffic are much more qualified typically; or they were searching for something that you ranked for, and they ended up on your page. They might be a little bit more qualified than people that you might acquire through [paid] traffic. So I think it\u2019s really important to understand the sources of traffic that you\u2019re dealing with in any given project, and understand how best to, you know, cater to those sources of traffic.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Peep<\/strong>: Pretty cool.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Kieran<\/strong>: So we\u2019ll get further into that process, so if someone\u2019s created the process, they understand the metrics, and the first thing they want to do is, like, redesign one of their landing pages, redesign one of their site pages to try to improve conversion.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>How do you think they should go about approaching the design of that page to improve conversion?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Oli, I\u2019m going to hand it over to you, a man who\u2019s seen more of \u2018landing pages\u2019, \u2018site pages\u2019 test than anyone else.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Oli<\/strong>: Well, the first thing you shouldn\u2019t do is like, jump the gun and jump straight into designing your page; like, you have to have a process for this too. The first thing should be copy; I remember copying forms design, not the other way around, which speaks to the common question, you know, \u201cWho has heard the ugly landing pages convert better than beautiful ones,\u201d right? This is&#8230; people say it all the time, but it\u2019s not true. The reason why ugly pages do convert is because that person didn\u2019t have design skills, and didn\u2019t worry about it, and they <strong>focused all of their time on copywriting, which is why it\u2019s persuasive, which is why it\u2019s impactful.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Could be better with some extra design wrapped around it; most likely because it would just be in better page. Conversely you know, if you\u2019re a high priced brand \u2013 Prada or whatever, you have to look exceptional, because that\u2019s part of your visual identity, so they can\u2019t get away with it but a lot of businesses can.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>So focusing on copywriting is the start of the process. Once you have that and then your information hierarchy, you tell your story in the right order, then you can wrap a design around it.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>So, getting into design now, you have to realize that traditionally no one has been taught how to design for Conversion; nobody, right? Graphic and web designers have been taught typography, grid systems, colour theory, and some aspects of it, but really, it\u2019s been designing for UX or designing for winning awards, or whatever it is, but not for Conversion, which is why recently I wrote an Ebook called \u201cAttention-Driven Design\u201d which teaches you how to use design to focus attention on what you want people to be doing and give you a business advantage through design.<\/p>\n<p>An interesting story, like when you asked what it was like speaking in Dublin. When I got there, I was checking into the hotel. I got, given my key card for room 324. I went to the elevator; there was a lady there ahead of me. We were chatting; I let her into the elevator first; she puts her key card in the third floor; I\u2019m also in the third floor, so I don\u2019t have to do anything. Now, when she exits, I exit behind her. I\u2019m following her down the corridor, which was really creepy and awkward [chuckles] and it\u2019s not until I get two doors down that I see that the numbers are going in the wrong direction. I\u2019m not going to my hotel room\u2026 here\u2019s the actual\u2026 this is the sign that made me go the wrong way.<\/p>\n<p>And it\u2019s not till she enters the room that I go, \u201cOh!\u201d and I turn and run away. Because that was the second door and I \u2018m looking like a pervert. And so I ran an experiment to see how many people did this and 33% went the wrong ways. So I changed it using design principles \u2013 contrast, grouping, the numbers next to the arrows, a bit of separation and after three experiments doing five-second tests, I managed to get a 100% of people going the right way. <strong>So if you can identify a design problem and you understand the principles, you can solve the problem through design.<\/strong> It\u2019s a fascinating way to be able to, you know, look at things. And actually, if you want the Ebook, here\u2019s the link to that: BITLY.COM\/ADD-EBOOK.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Rand:So<\/strong> now we can add to your title \u201cOli Gadner, Hotel Sign Designer.\u201d [Laughter]<\/p>\n<p><strong>Oli<\/strong>: Exactly.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Rand: <\/strong>Your prestige is rising as we speak.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Oli<\/strong>: Yes it is. I\u2019m tired of solving the world\u2019s problems. I love seeing these real world problems, that is showing, you know, through something like a five second test, \u201cThis is a problem, and I\u2019m fixing it.\u201d But going back to the copy part, <strong>clarity is the most important part of conversion, as you&#8230;.copy only can convert,<\/strong> so also here this is an equation which identifies how good the clarity is on your page. It\u2019s broken down into seven sub-equations that then let you know where you have a problem, but as immediacy, can\u2019t get ever right away is readability. There are seven of them and it\u2019s a\u2026on Twitter, I\u2019ll share that with you; it\u2019s a great way of figuring out if you have a clarity problem.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Rand<\/strong>: Is there a URL for that?<\/p>\n<p><strong>Oli<\/strong>: Not for buying, it\u2019s brand new, so I\u2019ve only like talked about it once.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Rand<\/strong>: So we\u2019ve got to go, get the recording, take a screen shot, and then post it\u2026?<\/p>\n<p><strong>Oli<\/strong>: [Laughter] Or tweet out to me and I\u2019ll share something.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Rand<\/strong>: I\u2019m on it.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Kieran<\/strong>: One thing you said there, Oli, about, I would be interested in what everyone thinks, it\u2019s going to be&#8230;..is that it seems that you start every may be, every test, it seems like you always start with copy and then layer in design. <strong>You think that is always the case, that you would always look at copy first and then design?<\/strong> And I guess as a follow-up on that is what people think is the best path \u2013 like copy versus copy test , and then, design versus designing. You need change one of those things at a time? Or\u2026?<\/p>\n<p><strong>Oli<\/strong>: Well, ideally you <strong>start with copy, right? That\u2019s the best process, because then you understand what treatment you need to present that copy.<\/strong> Otherwise if you start with a template, you\u2019re like, you\u2019re just filling in holes, right? This square peg around holes sometimes. \u201cOh, it has three bullets, I have to write three bullets.\u201d That\u2019s not appropriate; maybe you need 12, maybe you just need one. And when it comes to testing, well, that should be informed by your research. It shouldn\u2019t be, \u201cWell, let\u2019s think about a copy test today,\u201d or, \u201cLet\u2019s think about design test.\u201d You need to\u2026 If you identify there was a design problem, use design to fix it. If you identify there is readability or a clarity problem, use copy to address that.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Kieran<\/strong>: Okay. Okay, now we\u2019ll move on to the next question we\u2019ve got here. One of the questions people really want to get answered was,<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>\u201cWhat are the top three CRO myths that are like, right now?\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>So what are people really getting wrong around CRO that they believe is kind of [facts] so we\u2019re going to go all the way to Australia, so Larry, pick up this one.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Larry<\/strong>: Sure, thanks. How much time do we have here? I\u2019m just kidding [chuckles]. I think if it was just the top three, kind of, big mess on CRO or big mistake, places where people get tripped up, I think one of them would definitely have to be this idea that smaller changes , you know, they generally lead to smaller changes, and they often actually don\u2019t persist forever. A lot of the times, you know, the reason why something works so great is because it\u2019s new, and then later it doesn\u2019t work so well because it\u2019s no longer new.<\/p>\n<p>Another thing that people often get wrong, or get mixed up over is this idea of diminishing returns and the theoretical maximum conversion rate, you know, definitely it\u2019s possible to go from, like, 1 to 3% conversion rates, you know, a little bit harder to go from 3% to 5%, you know, much harder to go to, you know, 5% to 8%. Instead of saying&#8230;. you can\u2019t go to a 100% and drop beyond usually and so, you know, just when thinking about your strategies, the pics illogical, may be overestimate, you know, how high we can get this thing, you know, because the kind of low hanging fruit is fixed&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>And then another kind of area where I think people can get tripped up is, you know, I suppose <strong>an increase in quantity doesn\u2019t necessarily mean an increase in quality.<\/strong> So just be mindful that you\u2019re not just making changes to your marketing stuff to get more unqualified people. You always have to be checking against the marketing qualified leads, if you can reach them because now there is cost associated with following up on leads; you don\u2019t want to just inundate people with the scrap leads. Anything you have, anyone?<\/p>\n<p><strong>Peep<\/strong>: I would like to add a few here. I think the biggest myth in CRO is that people think the CRO is a list of tactics, a list of\u2026 \u2018There\u2019s one great CRO hack around the corner that will change everything.\u2019<\/p>\n<p>I mean, if you think of CRO as just a list of tactics or, \u201cI\u2019ll just find that blog post with one hundred tactics, and then, you know, my conversions will grow,\u201d whatever; that\u2019s BS. You know you always make your start with a process to identify what your actual problems are, because <strong>if you copy your competitors, you\u2019re copying their solutions to their problems,<\/strong> or actually they probably copied somebody else.<\/p>\n<p>And copying competitors, copying market leaders \u2013 also BS \u2013 don\u2019t do that. And the myth that, \u201cOh, CRO is about figuring out what works; so we\u2019ll just brainstorm great ideas and then let\u2019s test them\u201d &#8211; that is the stupidest way to go about it. I mean, an A\/B test or any change you make in your website is about addressing a known identified problem. <strong>So focus on identifying what those problems are, don\u2019t rely on the next great CRO hack.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>Kieran<\/strong>: Cool. Anyone else want to jump under the net? Shall I move on? Nope? Okay, I\u2019ve got them covered. So, this, I think is, like, one of the most important parts of a good CRO process and there\u2019s lot of different frameworks, but I want to kind of go over to you, Rand, see what\u2019s your thoughts on this is:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>How do you score and prioritize experiments within Moz or how have you seen this done really well?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><strong>Rand<\/strong>: Yeah. So, when we run experiments, we are generally seeking the same thing, right? So we are a SaaS product with a software subscription, so we\u2019re almost always trying to increase the number of people signing up for a \u2018Free Trial\u2019 or signing up for a \u2018Free Mass Account\u2019, a community account. And so, for us, scoring those is very, very simple, right? We can essentially say that, given that, presented with a number of visitors that landed on the page or that came into the funnel at all, broken down by source, as Pam noted, that we can then, you know, look at the percent of folks who signed up.<\/p>\n<p>And the only thing that\u2019s critical for us in that metrics, in that scoring in addition to just the raw numbers is the performance of those folks once they get into the product. So, in a SaaS product, right, it\u2019s not like eCommerce where you\u2019re selling something one time or hoping to sell, you know, maybe have some recurring purchases in the future, you\u2019re looking for that recurring revenue. So for us one customer who stays with us for two or three years is worth far more than ten customers who stay with us for a month or two months each.<\/p>\n<p>Like, churn rate is kind of a killer, you don\u2019t want to get people into your funnel who\u2019re not right through your product, and so <strong>we look at the performance of the conversion rate, but we also use a methodology to look at the first three or four months of performance of the customers who signed up<\/strong> just to qualify whether they have a churn curve that\u2019s, you know, similar to, better than or worse than our existing customer sets. And I think this is important for anyone who is considering a sign-up process.<\/p>\n<p>For example, one of my pet peeves, one of the things I hate most in the web world right now is the pop-ups that ask for your email address and are like, \u201cDo you want to learn more about SEO?\u201d, and then there\u2019s a big button that says \u201cYes\u201d and a small button that says \u201cNo, I\u2019m done and I want to stay done forever,\u201d right?<\/p>\n<p><strong>Oli<\/strong>: Click up, back up.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Rand<\/strong>: Yeah, I hate that, it just drives me bananas, right? And I think that one of the things that I would say is a very important to test is not just, \u201cDid you get more e-mail sign ups,\u201d because I\u2019m sure you do get more e-mail sign ups from that \u2018Opt In\u2019 button, but <strong>how many of those people are long-term subscribers, how many of them are engaged subscribers? What percent of them get unsubscribed? What percent potentially hit \u2018Report Spam\u2019, and affect your e-mail deliverability and e-mail repetition sender score?<\/strong> I think those things are critical to consider, so<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>when you\u2019re qualifying a test, remember to think beyond the point of conversion to recidivism and retention and lifetime value.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><strong>Oli<\/strong>: What is that word you just used?<\/p>\n<p><strong>Rand<\/strong>: Retention, recidivism and lifetime value.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Oli<\/strong>: What does that mean?<\/p>\n<p><strong>Rand<\/strong>: Recidivism meaning you come back and do the thing again, right? So, like in eCommerce, someone buys one pair of shoes from Zappos, do they ever buy again from Zappos?<\/p>\n<p><strong>Oli<\/strong>: Right, so I learnt a word today and Kieran\u00a0almost learnt a word which was Peep\u2019s last name.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Kieran<\/strong>: I almost learnt a word.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Oli<\/strong>: [Laughter]<\/p>\n<p><strong>Rand<\/strong>: I also learnt Peep\u2019s last name [Laughter].<\/p>\n<p><strong>Kieran<\/strong>: Which is only four letters, so I think I could\u2026<\/p>\n<p><strong>Oli<\/strong>: [Laughter]<\/p>\n<p><strong>Peep<\/strong>: Laja, Laja.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Pam<\/strong>: I\u2019d love to chime in on the priorities&#8230; Yeah, so on <strong>our team we used the PIE framework<\/strong>. And so<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>PIE stands for Potential, Importance, Ease.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>So essentially you know you\u2019ll have, you know, people come to us all the time with ideas for optimization projects; we come up with ideas ourselves-based on you know digging through analytics and determining what our problem are based on what our, you know, our company goals are, and then we take these projects and then we give them this PIE score.<\/p>\n<p>So <strong>Potential is essentially, you know, how much potential improvement could, you know, the results of this project or this experiment be.<\/strong> The I<strong>mportance, like, how important is this to our business, how important will the improvement that we make be to our business.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>And then <strong>Ease is like, how complicated is it to actually execute this project.<\/strong> Are there, kind of, stake holder or political barriers we might come in contact with? Are there technical implementation and roadblocks that we might have to overcome? And then each of these categories get the score from 1 to 10, you know, 10 meaning like it has the most potential, it\u2019s really important and it\u2019s really easy to execute.<\/p>\n<p>And then we added these scores out to get an overall high score. Then we use that to score, you know, for all the projects that we\u2019re evaluating and we prioritize these final scores.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Rand<\/strong>: Pam, do you have a resource or a link where we could see that, you know, listed out?<\/p>\n<p><strong>Pam<\/strong>: Trying to think of\u2026 Kieran, do you remember where this PIE framework is actually from?<\/p>\n<p><strong>Kieran<\/strong>: Yeah. So the PIE framework actually comes from a really great conversion company based in States. I know them really well, and I have&#8230;totally\u2026<\/p>\n<p><strong>Peep<\/strong>: It\u2019s in Canada, it\u2019s WiderFunnel.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Pam<\/strong>: Yeah, WiderFunnel.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Oli<\/strong>: Thank you. What\u2026?<\/p>\n<p><strong>Kieran<\/strong>: It\u2019s taken from WiderFunnel. They have a great resource section, great stuff in their blog about it as well.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Peep<\/strong>: There are lots and lots of prioritization frameworks. There is the [Ice] model, [inaudible 0:28:16]&#8230; Some are like from the 80\u2019s and then there are binary models like\u2026 if you want to create a cultural optimization within your company, and if you want to score let\u2019s say A\/B testing ideas, you want to add criterias in like \u201cDoes this idea come from user feedback? \u2018Yes\u2019 or \u2018No\u2019?\u201d \u201cDoes this idea come from&#8230;.?\u201d I don\u2019t know, like, \u201cDoes it have support from analytics?\u201d \u201cDid you look at this thing?\u201d \u201cIs it above the fold, the change?\u201d \u201cDid you add or remove anything?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>So, all these binary criterias, so next time when people come to the table with an A\/B testing idea that they just brainstormed in their bathroom, it\u2019s, \u201cOh, no user feedback, no analytics data, no blah, blah, blah, blah, blah?\u201d Its like, \u201cOkay, next time actually I\u2019ll go out and get some data.\u201d <strong>So with the prioritization framework, you can influence the way people think.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>Kieran<\/strong>: Yeah, I think the thing with the PIE framework is, you can\u2019t get a PIE score unless you\u2019ve done all of those things, you wouldn\u2019t know&#8230;in fact you wouldn\u2019t know&#8230;<\/p>\n<p><strong>Peep<\/strong>: And also, I mean, estimating potential is, like, \u201cI think this is a 7,\u201d you know, and so on.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Kieran<\/strong>: So let\u2019s get to, help me go into&#8230;if we haven\u2019t already, Rand mentioned something that is a hot topic within marketing, and people have passionate feelings about those pop-ups. So Oli, let\u2019s get started with you and then people can come at you, is,<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>\u201cWhat are your thoughts on pop-ups?\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><strong>Oli<\/strong>: [Laughter] They suck! They suck, and they\u2019re great. In truth, all they are is an evolution of the mechanics of how we request an action of people online. Does that make them good? No, or not always. Like <strong>if they offer something you really want, then they\u2019re amazing, if it is at the right place in the right time.<\/strong> We have some amazing success with specifically like typically, they\u2019ll convert within 1% to 4%. But we had Digital Agency Day.<\/p>\n<p>It was an event, kind of like where you show up and we have recordings for it. So it is an event not everybody can attend, so on the exit there is like, \u201cHey, put in your e-mail, I\u2019m going to give you all the recordings.\u201d That converted at 32%, which is unheard of, because it was super-relevant and helpful. But the truth is they are part of our future, that future being <strong>conversion automation<\/strong>\u2026 Well, what does that mean? It means t<strong>aking all of the conversion opportunities that exist on every page in your website and landing pages, and having them evolve to create experiences that are delivered in a responsible manner, responsible being the important word.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>So, it\u2019s capitalizing on those conversion opportunities but perhaps more important, it\u2019s discovering the parts of your pages that you\u2019re marketing that need to be protected. \u2018Where do you need to put this walled garden\u2019, like if you can find the data on these things then it\u2019ll be like, \u201cWell, this page can be really successful in requesting that, but this one, don\u2019t ever put anything there,\u201d because that breaks part of the conversion chain and you have to be really careful about certain pages. Any interruption ruins that experience; so people even don\u2019t come back.<\/p>\n<p>So it\u2019s not just about capitalizing everywhere. It\u2019s about figuring out where you have to put some kind of barriers to stop that happening. You know, you<strong> develop a conversion opportunity map<\/strong> and then, kind of, start from there because<strong> every website and landing page has conversion opportunities and every conversion opportunity needs a \u2018Call-to-Action\u2019<\/strong>. Sometimes that\u2019s where, you have to do nothing or not. And it\u2019s a responsible use of technology, psychology, copy writing, interaction designing &#8211; that was interesting.<\/p>\n<p>I was on my phone the other day, playing a game, \u2018Genies and Gems\u2019 \u2013 super adult \u2013 and I got in, and here\u2019s my progress, right? I\u2019m on, like, I\u2019m on level 50. And then a pop-up comes up, and it says \u201cConnect to Facebook and save your progress.\u201d That\u2019s a blatant lie, because it doesn\u2019t matter if I do it or not, your progress is always saved. I mean, I didn\u2019t do 50 levels in one day, this is over the course of a week. So this is lying to me, to try and get me to share this on social \u2013 that\u2019s an irresponsible use of, you know, interaction copywriting psychology, you know.<strong> Above all, with these things, you have to be delightful, and there\u2019s always a way to make something delightful if you demonstrate empathy for your visitors.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>Rand<\/strong>: Yeah, I\u2026 There was a game\u2026 I can\u2019t remember what the game was, but it was like a Tower Defence game, and you got a little power up if you did the share, right? So it gave you like, a free something if you did the share. So there\u2019s no lie, and it was \u2018Opt-in\u2019 only, and you had your choice, right? I didn\u2019t connect it to my primary Twitter account, and I created a new one, and then tweeted it out &#8230; [Laughter].<\/p>\n<p><strong>Oli<\/strong>: [Laughter] Yes, I did __.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Rand<\/strong>: But you know, it was less of an adult pattern, and I think, you know, you\u2019ve got to be careful about abusing trust.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Peep<\/strong>:<strong> Most people don\u2019t take action on their first visit, right?<\/strong> Like, to subscribe or whatever, so if you\u2019re working hard to spend money, or may be at the, you have been working with SEO or whatever, to drive traffic to your website. And they come, they look at the stuff and they leave. And there\u2019s like, \u201cOh my God, I\u2019m out of all that PPC budget.\u201d But i<strong>f you have the ad pop-ups, you can capture some of the traffic, remarket to them, get them to come back<\/strong>. Because the difference between static \u2018Opt-In\u2019s\u2019, so \u201cPut your email here,\u201d always visible, versus pop-up \u2013 it\u2019s an amazing difference, like seven, eight, nine, ten times difference.<\/p>\n<p>So it\u2019s hard to\u2026 it\u2019s easy to bash pop-ups, it\u2019s always, it\u2019s in, like such a, you know, guy lying down on the floor, let\u2019s kick the ass-hole, you know! It\u2019s like\u2026 Sorry [Laugher]. I mean, it\u2019s so easy to bash it, but it is a fact [inaudible 0:33:56]. And if you\u2019re not, you know, as you said, as I always said, if you\u2019re not unethical about it, you know\u2026<\/p>\n<p><strong>Rand<\/strong>: Yeah, I think my point is broader. It\u2019s just that <strong>if you\u2019re going to engage in pop-ups or especially more aggressive ones, right, with a negative messaging, just make sure that you\u2019re testing how those e-mails, right, the sign-ups that you get are performing versus the ones that you got in a less aggressive manner.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>Pam<\/strong>: Oh yeah, I used to, I really hated all those, you know, those pop-ups, that have, \u201cNo, I don\u2019t want to be a better person,\u201d you know, but I think there\u2019s a way to do pop-ups that is not annoying and is, you know, taking your user\u2019s experience into consideration, you know, putting\u2026 For example, we had an exit pop-up on our blogs for a subscription pop-up. And, you know it\u2019s an exit pop-up, so people getting in there were about to close out of their browser.<\/p>\n<p>But we also had it on a timer, so that we\u2019re only showing it to people who were there on the blog for a certain amount of time, because<strong> we wanted only, you know, encourage the people who are enjoying reading our content to subscribe<\/strong> because we know&#8230;. We also had it such that if someone does exit out of it, we won\u2019t show that again to them for a certain period of time. If they come back, they are not going to see that again or exit out of it. It\u2019s smart, so that, like, if they\u2019re already a subscriber, you want to show them the \u2018New Subscriber\u2019, you know, that\u2019s just consent.<\/p>\n<p>So I think there is ways to be just mindful of your user\u2019s experience when you\u2019re designing in pop-ups and not overdo it and, you know, like you said, it\u2019s &#8230;mindful about it.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Oli<\/strong>: And also the future of this is where machine learning is going to come in, and that\u2019s going to do two things. One, it gets really smart, first of all, let\u2019s think\u2026 So, you\u2019re on a page; it will test automatically, exit in 10, scroll in 10, timed, quit all these things for you and say, &#8220;On this page, this performance best.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>When even smarter, hopefully, it will tie back into like a Cohort analysis and go, \u201cBut these people didn\u2019t stick around to around this point,\u201d or, \u201cThese became high lifetime value,\u201d and when you can connect those things, like \u201cThis interaction model actually helped get better quality customers,\u201d that\u2019s when it\u2019s going to get really smart, very intelligent, and it will start to undo some of the damage, some of the harm that\u2019s being done because it\u2019ll be more intelligent. That\u2019s the\u2026<\/p>\n<p><strong>Rand<\/strong>: Is there any pop-up like that?<\/p>\n<p><strong>Oli<\/strong>: Not really, and it is coming. I mean, Banners Exchange I think, Peep was telling me, have some pretty\u2026<\/p>\n<p><strong>Peep<\/strong>: Yeah, Banners Exchange have gotten really, really smart. Their \u2018under-the-hood\u2019 stuff is impressive there. Its top-of-the-line; you know, it doesn\u2019t do the kind of looking-at-the-Cohort\u2019s, you know, in-the-back-end type of stuff, yes, but might be coming. I don\u2019t know.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Kieran<\/strong>: Guys, I\u2019ve got to call these off in my &#8230; I thought it great to venture into some of the questions. So I appreciate all of your information on that. We\u2019re going to go all the way back over to Australia, to Larry. I think one of the things people were really interested in was, when it comes to\u2026 So, Pam mentioned earlier on about source of the traffic being very important and in particular, paid sometimes coverts best than a lot of the other sources like organic direct.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>What are some of the key CRO &#8230;people learns specifically when it\u2019s coming to, like, PPC or social advertising?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><strong>Larry<\/strong>: Sure. Well, first of all, I don\u2019t know, like, about that statistic because, like, my paid channels are like, by far highest converting channels, like, for my own business. So maybe we should have a talk with whoever\u2019s running your &#8230;.marketing&#8230;channels, but we\u2019ll just look back. Basically there\u2019s a ton of lessons for CRO that you can get from PPC. So I\u2019ll just give you couple of crazy examples. <strong>So generally one of the most important key metrics that a CRO should be thinking in terms of PPC is click-through rate, alright?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>So click-through rate is ridiculously important because what we find, when I analyze billions of dollars of ad spend, what I find is that if you can raise the click-through rate of your ads, that will, like, <strong>if you double your click-through rate, that\u2019ll double your conversion rate.<\/strong> And not only that, it\u2019ll actually, you\u2019ll get more clicks because you\u2019ve doubled the number of people going through, so like a four times increase. So, what the heck is happening here?<\/p>\n<p>Generally, if you can get people off really, really excited about, kind of, whatever it is you are offering, that excitement generally will carry through to, like, a purchase or, like a lead stuff level like downstream. So, you know, click-through rate I think is also really important because in some ways it\u2019s even more important than conversion rates because conversion rates are biased.<\/p>\n<p>The conversion rates is only telling you, like, your offer; you know, it\u2019s telling you how interesting that offer is to the people who\u2019ve kind of self-selected into wanting to learn more about that offer, like they have actually clicked through there. You could be in a situation where, you know, if you have a very low click-through rate, but a very high conversion rate, that could tell you that, \u201cWell, we\u2019ve got a really niche market basically. We\u2019ve got kind of a really appealing offer that appeals to like a very small amount of the total population of people who potentially buy such \u2026\u201d See what I\u2019m saying?<\/p>\n<p>So, like, I think, <strong>PPC in terms of click-through rates can give you a ton of perspective in terms of, like, you know, not just sampling how good your offer is amongst people who are interested in your offer but also people who are, you know, like, how appealing it is globally speaking,<\/strong> alright? And if it\u2019s really not doing well from a click-through rate perspective, that should be, you know, maybe a clue to maybe consider diversifying your offers or changing it up a little bit.<\/p>\n<p>Another crazy thing about PPC is that, with advertising in general, is that <strong>brand awareness plays a massive role in biasing people and thus impacting conversion rates in a huge way<\/strong>. Like, I\u2019m talking, like, three, four, five times, like it\u2019s&#8230;. I mean, you can prove this to yourself, guys. Go to your analytics, look at, like, your conversion data, and look to see, like, what\u2019s the difference between, like, people who covert that are repeat visitors versus new visitors, right? People who are familiar with your brand versus people who are not previously familiar with your brand, and you\u2019ll find that the conversion rates are ridiculously higher, you know, typically two, three, four, five times higher for the repeat visitors.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>And so it is basically what advertising allows you to do is to go after those people and familiarize themselves with your brand so that when they do search for things that are related to the products that you\u2019re selling, they\u2019ll be biased, they\u2019ll want to go with what they know, and this plays a huge role in conversion rate optimization. And of course, it would be crazy to not mention remarketing; I think remarketing is a massive CRO hack.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>It\u2019s still a paid thing, but you know, it\u2019s changing that one opportunity to kind of get the sale, and to like have potentially dozens of opportunities to get people to remember what it is you do, and also convert at a later time. You know, people are just busy, they may have just juggle some of it&#8230;.because [inaudible 0:41:27] I think you were hoping for them to do, and I think remarketing is such a game changer for them that you can kind of just have a second, or third, or fourth chance at a conversion.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Kieran<\/strong>: Awesome. Thanks a lot for that, Larry. I\u2019m going to just quickly jump on to another question because I\u2019d be entire\u2026<\/p>\n<p><strong>Rand<\/strong>: I know we\u2019re short on time, but I just want to mention one quick thing on that. What Larry mentioned, and what Pam had mentioned about paid vs organic traffics sources. So Larry, I agree with you that our paid traffic sources at Moz also convert better as a whole than our organic ones, but when it\u2019s one-in-one, when it\u2019s exactly the same, so for example, our paid Twitter campaigns , two landing pages that try and convert people through a product, don\u2019t work as well as our organic tweets to those same ones.<\/p>\n<p>Our Facebook ads to a product landing page don\u2019t work as well as a Facebook organic post to the same thing. And the same is true, again, organic versus paid, SEO versus PPC; so someone searches for, you know, keyword research SEO tool, we have an ad for it, we also have an organic; the organic tends to convert I think only slightly but a little bit better than the paid traffic does. So paid is [cross-talk 0:42:43] for sure, but one-to-one, organic.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Larry<\/strong>: I just think you need to be more picky there. Like, who says you have to remarket to everyone who\u2019s visiting your site? You know why not apply some demographic filters, and only remarket to, like, the people who have purchased business software in the last 60 days or something like this. So you see, I\u2019m saying, like, I\u2019m sure you don\u2019t want to be in a situation where you know, you\u2019re paying money for stuff that\u2019s not doing better than your organic stuff, it should be many times better and then, you know, it\u2019s like a targeting issue I think.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Rand<\/strong>: Okay, yeah, I should look at that.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Kieran<\/strong>: We\u2019re going over to Peep. I think this is a pretty good question. It\u2019s:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>How can you\u2026? Is there such a thing as, like, over-testing and over-optimizing? Can you just go a little bit too far?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><strong>Peep<\/strong>: Meaning that your conversion rate is, like, 100% and everybody buys, don\u2019t worry [Laughter]. No, like, there is no thing as over optimization or over-testing. What you can do, what is a problematic issue is if you don\u2019t know how to run tests, so if you stop tests too early or if you have lots of tests running at the same time that are interacting with each other, meaning biasing the results, that can happen. So it\u2019s not about over-testing. I mean, every single day without a test running is a day wasted, <strong>so you need to be testing all the time provided that you have that traffic, because a lot of small businesses, shouldn\u2019t be testing at all.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>I mean, broadly speaking, if you have, you know, if you have less than 500 transactions a month, you shouldn\u2019t be testing at all. If you have less than 1000, may be you can do one test a month, so to speak. So over-testing, if you test early, is possible but if you do it right, if you know what you\u2019re doing, if you know how to run tests, there is no such thing as over-testing or over-optimizing. I mean as Larry was saying, I mean, the peak of how far we can get, I mean, the mountain is very tall, you know; we should be continuing to climb.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Larry<\/strong>: Yeah, but here\u2019s the thing. So you want to turn your donkeys into unicorns; you don\u2019t want to turn your unicorns into donkeys. You know, it\u2019s kind of like, when you get something that\u2019s pretty good, you know\u2026 Not every test is going to go your way, and so like, the worst you start off with, it\u2019s kind of like, the higher the likelihood for success, and the converse is that the higher you start off, the higher the probability for failure. And so, you know, I can draw a little curve where there\u2019s kind of, like, this optimal point where, you know, it\u2019s like&#8230;, \u201cIt\u2019s pretty good but let\u2019s not turn the unicorns into donkeys.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><strong>Peep<\/strong>: Well, I mean if you\u2019re talking about the opportunity cost, that instead of optimization we could be doing something else, then yes, if it\u2019s a lack of human resource or whatever, it can happen. But then again, we have a [cross-talk 0:45:35]&#8230; I mean, if we have a 1% win, if booking.com gets a 1% win, \u201cOh, that\u2019s so small, 1%,\u201d but, \u201cOh, actually, it\u2019s another 100 million dollars,\u201d you know.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Kieran<\/strong>: Okay, cool. So we are kind of going switch, you know, get towards blogs. So a lot of people who are on this are trying to figure out how to get some sort of conversion playbook for their blog, and get something tangible back from their blog. One of the questions they really wanted to know was, for you Pam, because you\u2019ve already run every experiment that\u2019s possible on a blog is, they have a question on<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>\u201cHow many CTAs should be on a blog post or landing page?\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>I guess what they\u2019re trying to get to is, like, what is the right way to try to convert someone through a blog post.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Pam<\/strong>: So, I don\u2019t know if there\u2019s, like, a specific number. I actually, in all the testing that I\u2019ve done, one of the things that really stick out to me is that <strong>there\u2019s a definite correlation between, you know, conversion rate and the placement of the CTA<\/strong>. So I\u2019ll just give you examples. So we have, on our Marketing blog, we have really long blog posts. Some of them are 3000 words long. And so, we found essentially that, you know, all we had was that end of post \u2018Call to Action\u2019, like the [inaudible 0:46:59] of the post. Well, we ran some heatmaps and scrollmaps on our blog, we realized people weren\u2019t even making it to the bottom\u00a0of the post; they weren\u2019t even, like, hitting the CTAs where we were banking on them to do work.<\/p>\n<p>And when we started introducing CTAs higher up in the post, actually I call them \u2018Anchor Text CTA\u2019s\u2019 \u2013 basically within the first few paragraphs, you know, \u201cDownload this e-book or this template to learn how to write a press release,\u201d or \u201cthis press release template\u201d. We basically doubled our conversion rate from our blog by doing that. What\u2019s interesting is a lot of the work that I\u2019ve done in the blog has been historically in\u00a0optimizing our old post that\u2019s continued to get a lot of traffic, mainly from search, but don\u2019t convert very well, and I just started doing it and I just naturally started to add these, you know, \u2018Anchor Text CTA\u2019s\u2019 near the top of the post, and what my method was just basing it off on the search terms that people were using to get to the post.<\/p>\n<p>So in that present example, we have this blog post, \u201cHow to write a press release?\u201d It ranks really highly for similarly high volume keywords around \u2018How to write a press release\u2019 and \u2018Press release template\u2019. And when I went in and conversion optimized that, I was using those keywords, I added an \u2018Anchor Text CTA\u2019 near the top, and it essentially doubled the conversion rating. For me, I\u2019ve tried this across a ton of our historical blog posts, basically<strong> matching the keyword that they\u2019re using to find the blog post in search<\/strong>, you know, <strong>using that same term in the CTA for those very relevant to that blog posts, that\u2019s when our conversion rate, kind of, hit through the roof.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>And I think you must use a combination of the relevancy of the keywords that you\u2019re targeting in the posts, but also the placement, because you know, originally I thought that it was, I just had to do with the keywords and then I ran a study that basically looked at the breakdown of where these were coming from on the post level, like, which CTAs were actually generating all the leads, and they were, like, all accurate, like, the end of post \u2018Call-to-Action\u2019 only generated 6% of the total leads on those posts, they were all being generated from those \u2018Call-to-Action\u2019 near the top.<\/p>\n<p>So I mean, I think that the takeaway here is that <strong>there\u2019s a ton of different CTAs that you can use on your blog<\/strong>. You know, we try to balance it out, so if it\u2019s a really long post like we\u2019ll have that CTA at the beginning, we\u2019ll have the end of post CTA, you know? Not overdoing it, but I think it\u2019s related to how long the post is as well, because you want to give them opportunities as they\u2019re reading through to convert if they\u2019re ready for it.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Oli<\/strong>: Yeah, we\u2019ve had, we did exactly the same thing recently, not with&#8230; We always have little text links to relevant stuff, but we had banners in the bottom saying \u201cPathetic performance.\u201d We moved them up, redesigned it slightly and made them super-relevant to that paragraph. We actually had it so when you scrolled down to it, it will kind of light up \u2013 it\u2019s like a panel as you move over, it goes, \u201cHey, how about me?\u201d and it converts so well. So, you know, when you think about how many CTAs, it\u2019s different for a blog post and a landing page. Landing page \u2013 one, that\u2019s obvious, although if you need, you can have safety net CTAs, so may that\u2019s on exit intent, but ideally after the conversion on the Confirmation page you can get the other thing may be you\u2019re dying to get.<\/p>\n<p>But on content, what we found, because if you look at your top 20 organic content pages, I bet half of them have outdated content, and half of them don\u2019t have an actual CTA, they\u2019re not actually asking for anything. We did this, if you typed \u201cWhat is the landing page?\u201d we owned that, right? Remember one in Google, we had it for seven years, and it\u2019s a seven-year-old piece of content with lots of internal links to other places\u2026 And Rand can speak about this much better than I can about, like, say, for a legacy page like this, so what we did first, so we took out\u2026 Well, we analyzed Google Analytics. We know our best conversion path. People have to hit the landing page templates page, that if they hit that, they will be much more likely to convert.<\/p>\n<p>So on this page, we stripped out every internal link in the content, we took out the Side. Nav., and we just added a CTA to say, \u201cHey, check out our templates&#8221; \u2013 171% increase and people going where we wanted them to go, right? But then, so my question, I guess, for Rand is, like, what do you think about\u2026? This page has existed for a long time, and has a lot of connections into the site. If you remove those content links, I don\u2019t know what the impact of that might be. I mean, the result was amazing for us, but you know, I don\u2019t know\u2026?<\/p>\n<p><strong>Rand<\/strong>: Yeah, typically, I mean on a site your size, with a number of links and domains that are pointing to you and the quantity of content, that one change, even to a powerful page on the site is not going to have a massive impact. It could affect that single page or may be a couple of other pages that was linking to, but I would worry far less about that and far more about the conversion rate in general. So I think that 171%, you know, if you moved from ranking three or four for a few of those internal pages, then you were pointing to five or six, I don\u2019t think I\u2019d sweat that in your shoes, right? And you [cross-talk 0:52:27] to see much more movement than that given how powerful the Unbounce site is.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Oli<\/strong>: Yeah, and it was interesting because, you know, we took away the links, it went up maybe 20%; we took away the side bar and we added the CTA and it went to a 150%, then we took away the Side. Nav., it went to a 171%. So each one of those little things made a little difference and it was great. O<strong>n a landing page, this is very different, you know, you should have a single CTA<\/strong>; like I said before, focus on your copywriting. I think the three most important skills for a modern marketer are writing, coding and public speaking. If you can do those three things really well, you know\u2026 marketers need to get more technical now.<\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s just like any bottleneck in business; if you have to rely on someone else, then you\u2019re going to be slowed down. I think this is why growth hacking became popular because it gave people an identity. As technical marketers, I prefer that term; didn\u2019t have an identity, they were looked down upon by the debt community because, \u201cOh you are a marketer, what do you know about debt?\u201d A lot of people are technical and they can\u2026 I was a coder first, so I can build things without anyone\u2019s help sloppily, and I wouldn\u2019t want someone to look at my code, but I\u2019m kind of free to do those things.<\/p>\n<p>And also, <strong>what are you asking for on your pages is important<\/strong>. There\u2019s a thing called, I call it <strong>\u2018Conversion Hierarchy\u2019, which is the conversion journey from first touch to an activated high lifetime value customer.<\/strong> And there are jumps in this, and if you ask for too big of a jump, people won\u2019t convert. You have to do smaller jumps. But there are exceptions, there are accelerants you can use \u2013 video is a great accelerant, because if someone watches your video, you can push them up your way quicker and that\u2019s how you kind of some of those things, especially I would say a workshop that shows your product or something, that would be accelerant. If you think about your conversion hierarchy you can start planning how you can move people along it.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Kieran<\/strong>: Cool, awesome. I\u2019m going to try to get two more questions in before we have to wrap up. So we\u2019re going to go across to Rand. It\u2019s semi conversion but a lot of focus on SEO. This question is:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Should we be more skeptical about On-page SEO factors?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><strong>Rand<\/strong>: Should we be more\u2026?<\/p>\n<p><strong>Kieran<\/strong>: Skeptical.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Rand<\/strong>: Skeptical? No, no, we should not be more sceptical about On-page SEO; we should just move over to the right forms of On-page SEO. I think one of the wonderful confluences of SEO and CRO is the fact that today, a high engagement rate, a low bounce rate, and a high browse rate are strongly, strongly correlated and in my opinion, actually have a causal relationship with high rankings in Google.<\/p>\n<p>I think Google is looking at engagement, and they are looking at how traffic performs on a website and they are looking at bounce rate, and what they call \u2018pogo-sticking\u2019, where you bounce back to the SERP and you click on someone else\u2019s result, and for that reason, we need to do an extraordinarily good job of converting our visitors into people who stay, people who engage with the site and people who find their answer on our page. If we don\u2019t do that, we are going to lose in rankings as well, and so target On-page SEO, a huge part of On-page SEO is satisfying the searcher \u2013 that is basically a conversion rate optimization activity, just a different form of it.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Larry<\/strong>: Demand.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Kieran<\/strong>: Go ahead, Larry.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Larry<\/strong>: Oh, I was just expressing my support of what Rand just said.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Rand<\/strong>: Spot-on.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Kieran<\/strong>: Okay, cool. So let\u2019s go quickly to Peep, I think we have time for two more questions, I see, so let\u2019s go quickly to Peep. I think people ask this all the time when trying to get started with CRO is,<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>how long should they run a test for?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><strong>Peep<\/strong>: How long should they run a test for? <strong>There are three factors that you should take into consideration before deciding when to stop a test<\/strong>. But first of all, you need to <strong>calculate the sample size ahead of time before you launch a test.<\/strong> So sample size is how many people need to be part of the experiment before we can trust the results. And you can just Google sample size calculator; Optimizely has one, VWO has one, there are many independent ones. And so you put in your existing baseline conversion rate for that specific page that you\u2019re running the test on.<\/p>\n<p>So if it\u2019s, say, your Checkout page, your conversion rate for that page might be, you know, like 90%, so you put in that, the minimum uplift you want to be able to detect \u2013 you know, maybe it\u2019s 5%, 10%, whatever \u2013 and it will tell you how many people you need per variation. So that\u2019s one. You should not stop the test before you have at least that many people in a variation.<\/p>\n<p>Two is <strong>you need time representation \u2013 test duration.<\/strong> So, you know, if you\u2019re Amazon or Booking.com, you can get a 100,000 people per variation in like, five minutes. So is that, is your test done now? No, because now you\u2019re taking a convenient sample, not a representative sample of people.<\/p>\n<p>So you need at minimum seven days\u2019 worth of traffic because every, you know, people on Monday behave different from people that come to your site on a Friday, and may be that one week is an [outlier] too, so it\u2019s better to test for at least two weeks and may be even four weeks, so, two to four weeks\u2019 duration. And once those two criteria have been met, <strong>only then you look at your statistical significance<\/strong> or, you know, if you use patient statistics, the probability of B being better than A.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Rand<\/strong>: Peep, would you ever cut off a test early because the results just looked too damned good?<\/p>\n<p><strong>Peep<\/strong>: Too damned good? No, never. But if there\u2019s a&#8230;result look terrible, then yes, I don\u2019t hesitate to kill it early. But if it\u2019s too good to be true, oh my God, then it\u2019s like\u2026 I mean, I\u2019ve seen it too many times when a huge winner after one week is no difference after four weeks, so\u2026<\/p>\n<p><strong>Rand<\/strong>: Realist, hmm?<\/p>\n<p><strong>Peep<\/strong>: Yeah.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Oli<\/strong>: I mean, every single A\/B test pretty much will do this at the beginning. It\u2019ll spike, there\u2019ll be a big difference because the sample size is so small, there\u2019s a high variance, and they all flat line, and then they may see some change but until you\u2019ve gone through that experience and trusted it several times, and you see that kind of behaviour, you don\u2019t even believe it\u2019s true.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Peep<\/strong>: Be skeptical of \u201ctoo good to be true\u201d results, you know; I guess they probably are.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Larry<\/strong>: That\u2019s all the time, or 90% of the time it does, like, the winner becomes the loser or whatever, you know.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Rand<\/strong>: Well, I have a landing page right now that\u2019s converting about one out of every 12000 visits.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Oli<\/strong>: [Laughter]<\/p>\n<p><strong>Rand<\/strong>: I\u2019m serious, I\u2019m totally serious. And I\u2019m currently hoping I\u2019ve a new landing page that\u2019s been in the queue to be built at Moz for the last four weeks \u2013 I think it\u2019ll be another two of four weeks before it gets launched, but then I\u2019m wondering, you know, \u201cIf it starts winning within a day or two, can I just be like, \u2018Okay, see, there we go, that was what was missing.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n<p><strong>Oli<\/strong>: 2 out of 12,000 [Laughter].<\/p>\n<p>Larry: It would be hard to go down from there, Rand.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Rand<\/strong>: Really, it is the shittiest landing page I\u2019ve ever built.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Oli<\/strong>: It\u2019s really donkey, donkey by definition, yeah.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Rand<\/strong>: No, no donkey, it\u2019s a much lower form of life; it\u2019s like a tardigrade. [Laughter]<\/p>\n<p><strong>Oli<\/strong>: [Laughter] Donkey shit.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Kieran<\/strong>: Okay, we\u2019re going to end with this final question. So I\u2019ll put that to you, Rand, but please, anyone pitch in. It\u2019s an interesting question, I\u2019m not sure this person has a clear zone on &#8230;.they do &#8230;CRO. After all this is:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>What line do you draw between CRO and great hack marketing, and is there a line?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><strong>Rand<\/strong>: Yeah, I certainly believe that there is&#8230;.I think that the <strong>CRO can be viewed in two ways. It can be viewed as a long-term exercise in building high-value, high quality customers who love your brand and want to amplify and share it and are proud to be customers, or it can be used to get a lot of money quickly from people who are then very upset with you in the future.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>And there are numerous ways that this can be done but I would urge folks who are interested in this topic to check out a great article recently on dark patterns. Let me see if I can\u2026\u2019Dark patterns in UI\u2019, and\u2026 Yeah, so this is\u2026Let\u2019s see, there\u2019s a good one from The Verge, couple of years ago called \u2018Dark Patterns: Inside the interfaces designed to trick you.\u2019<\/p>\n<p>There\u2019s another one more recently, oh, from the New York Times called, \u2018When websites won\u2019t take NO for an answer.\u2019 And they talk about these exploitative techniques as well. I think that, you know, you have to decide for yourself what you\u2019re trying to build. If you are an information products affiliate marketer, and all you\u2019re trying to do is maximize your one-day revenue, you\u2019re probably going to go down that dark pattern path and not care about it.<\/p>\n<p>But<strong> if you\u2019re a brand trying to build long-term customer happiness and success, you should be very cautious about the degree to which you increase conversion rate on a particular page or particular effort,<\/strong> but cost yourself brand trust and happiness. You can see this in the sales world as well, right? I know plenty of SaaS companies whose sales people are effective but so aggressive that despite their relatively high conversion rates, they\u2019ve turned eight of the ten people they talk to into permanent detractors for their company.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Oli<\/strong>: Yeah, travel companies, you know, sometimes are terrible at that. There\u2019s a lots of dagger in hand stuff going on there. People are orbited in and fall to insurance and things like that, which is terrible. Like, most people don\u2019t need travel insurance&#8230;.but yeah.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Kieran<\/strong>: Okay, cool. So I\u2019ve hit the 60 minute mark we missed, I will take full responsibility to this, I think we missed three questions. I\u2019m not a good time-keeper even in my own personal life, so\u2026[Laughter]<\/p>\n<p><strong>Rand<\/strong>: We forgive you because, you know, your Irish accent, Kieran. You could say and do anything. We missed the full mark.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Oli<\/strong>: [Laughter]<\/p>\n<p><strong>Kieran<\/strong>: If you could &#8230;.the Irish.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Oli<\/strong>: This one started with L and then because you hit Liar pretty quickly.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Larry<\/strong>: Totally &#8230;.potato. [Laughter]<\/p>\n<p><strong>Kieran<\/strong>: You could read [inaudible 1:03:10] thread, that I tried to draw here, but &#8230;.now that you\u2019re got&#8230;backwards, so its&#8230;<\/p>\n<p><strong>Rand<\/strong>: That reads okay.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Oli<\/strong>: That\u2019s fun.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Kieran<\/strong>: bitly\/CROthread, over at Inbound.org, so you can go, get involved in the discussion. We have some great speakers who were kind enough to go there, and answer some questions. As a reminder, we have got an email record out to everyone, so you\u2019ll have all of this information. I want to just quickly say thank you very much, to Pam, Larry, Oli, Peep and Rand for joining us across the globe. This has been a great 60 minutes that had a ton of interesting information. I have learned a lot. I hope you guys learned a lot. Thank you very much for joining us. Thank you everyone for joining in. And yeah, we\u2019re going to stop broadcasting now and that means &#8230;will go offline. [Laughter]<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><strong>Related Articles:<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/www.karooya.com\/blog\/bing-ads-science-remarketing\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">[Transcript] Bing Ads Advertiser Science Series \u2013 The Science of Remarketing<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/www.karooya.com\/blog\/google-ads-analytics-innovations-keynote\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">[Transcript] Google Ads &amp; Analytics Innovations Keynote<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/www.karooya.com\/blog\/upgraded-urls-workshop-part-bingads\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">[Transcript] Bing Ads \u2013 Upgraded URLs Workshop<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>An interesting talk where experts attended to some of the questions around\u00a0Conversion Rate Optimization. Moderated by Kieran Flanagan\u00a0(VP Marketing, HubSpot)\u00a0the panelists of this Q&amp;A session were\u00a0Pamela Vaughan\u00a0(Principal Marketing Manager of Optimization, HubSpot),\u00a0Larry Kim\u00a0(Founder &amp; CTO , Wordstream),\u00a0Oli Gardner\u00a0(Co-founder, Unbounce),\u00a0Peep Laja\u00a0(Founder, ConversionXL) and\u00a0Rand Fishkin\u00a0(Founder,\u00a0Moz).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ub_ctt_via":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2785","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-googl-search-tips"],"featured_image_src":null,"author_info":{"display_name":"Kirti","author_link":"https:\/\/www.karooya.com\/blog\/author\/kirti\/"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.karooya.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2785","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.karooya.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.karooya.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.karooya.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.karooya.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2785"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/www.karooya.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2785\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4587,"href":"https:\/\/www.karooya.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2785\/revisions\/4587"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.karooya.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2785"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.karooya.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2785"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.karooya.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2785"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}