CRO: Improve Your Business Results With Conversion Ratio Optimization

All website owners work hard to get more website traffic; but why not focus on getting better results from the traffic you already have? This is the aim of conversion ratio optimization (CRO), which is often overlooked.

In this blog post, I interview Philippe Aimé, the founder of Convertize to find out more about their CRO product.

Read the interesting interview here!

What is your background with your company?

In 1998, I created my first website. I was working in management at the time, travelling between Europe, Asia and South America with a series of international firms.

However, having trained in web-design, I became fascinated with the psychology of web marketing. What interested me was how the internet made it possible to engage with consumers.

In 2008 I created Convertize. It aimed to improve the way businesses communicated, optimising email strategies and websites. Ten years on, Convertize continues to apply psychological insights to digital marketing.

What Problem Does Convertize Solve?

Convertize offers tools and services that help online businesses to increase their conversion rates. We help e-commerce businesses to get more sales and Saas businesses to get more sign-ups.

What Does Convertize do, and why is it Important to Your Customers?

The world of e-Commerce is competitive, so brands and businesses are always trying to stay ahead. Most of them do that by generating as much traffic as possible (with paid advertising or content marketing.)

The problem is, that’s expensive and time-consuming. It also reduces the relevance of the traffic. An alternative approach is to make sure that more of the people who arrive on your website end up converting.

Unfortunately, it is not always easy to predict what sort of layout, design or content, is best. Marketing experts struggle to guess which version of a page will persuade a visitor to make a purchase. That’s why testing tools, like Convertize, are useful.

Marketing experts struggle to guess which version of a page will persuade a visitor to make a purchase.

A/B testing provides marketers with a way of comparing ideas statistically. Suppose you think a new product image will get you more sales, A/B testing allows you to prove it.

There is a range of tools available for every kind of business, and each one has its own strengths and weaknesses…

The Google Route

Google provides a way of conducting A/B tests for free. Optimize connects directly to a website’s analytics and requires no separate subscription. However, there are limitations for this solution, principally with usability and customer support.

Small and medium marketing teams, particularly those without technical expertise, might find it difficult to use and the only help is the online documentation provided by Google.

Enterprise Solutions

There are more expensive software packages that give a comprehensive testing platform. They are extremely powerful, scalable and offer features such as Multi-Variate testing (MVT).

VWO, the optimisation solution provided by Wingify, combines all the data-processing and analysis features of an enterprise solution with a visually engaging interface.

Optimizely, the solution produced by the data scientist Dan Siroker, allows companies to optimise both communications and product innovation in one place.

Where Convertize Fits In

The arrival of Google Optimize, a free A/B testing solution, has removed direct competitors from the market. However, Convertize was built with a different kind of customer in mind.

Its design, features and pricing plans have been aimed at digital marketers without extensive technical skills. Because of this, it offers some things that Google Optimize doesn’t.

Firstly, Convertize uses a visual editor similar to the one provided by enterprise solutions. That means the learning curve is far lower than with Google’s solution.

Additionally, the tool uses an inbuilt statistical package that combines Bayesian and Frequentist probability. This allows marketing teams to produce faster, more reliable results, without specialist statistical knowledge.

Finally, Convertize provides something unique. Drawing from our background in consumer behaviour and psychology, our software allows marketers to add persuasive notifications to their website.

Geolocation can be used to target visitors with personalised information (applying principles like Implicit Egotism, Self-Efficacy and Endowment).

At the same time, real-time data can be used to add trust and urgency to a page (using principles like Social Proof or Scarcity.)

Why A/B Testing Makes Sense

Testing allows businesses to make decisions based on evidence rather than guesswork. With this information, any marketing team can increase conversion rates and build customer loyalty.

Testing allows businesses to make decisions based on evidence rather than guesswork. With this information, any marketing team can increase conversion rates and build customer loyalty.

Perhaps most importantly, A/B testing encourages marketers to pay closer attention to their customers.

Can You Give a Few Examples of How Convertize Can Be Used?

We have hundreds of case studies that illustrate how Convertize can improve a website’s performance. There are three examples that come to mind immediately.

The Swimming Pool Scenario

One of our clients, a swimming pool retailer, noticed that its conversion rate had fallen in recent years. One of our CRO experts recommended changing the products displayed on their homepage and testing the results.

Most businesses experience the 80/20 rule (80% of their revenue is generated by 20% of their products). Our recommendation was for the retailer to display their highest-selling items on their homepage and add targeted recommendations as upsells.

After A/B testing the idea over a number of weeks, this strategy was proven to increase both conversion rate and average order value.

Travelling Further

Another client, a luxury travel agent, was struggling to generate leads for some of its destinations. Having explored the website, we identified a possible cause. At the top of the homepage was a large automatic carousel with images of each destination.

The carousel transitioned so slowly that very few visitors saw the later images (coincidentally, the ones that had not been generating interest.)

Although the client was reluctant to introduce a simpler static gallery on their homepage, they agreed to run an A/B test. The results showed that the gallery format produced more conversions and a wider range of customer choices.

An Extreme Case 

One of our older clients purchased Convertize to implement tests on a site distributing extreme sports equipment. The website was producing too many abandoned baskets and our client wanted to increase conversions from the basket page.

Having experimented with a range of different personalisation and location-based notifications, the results of the A/B tests identified a simple trust message as the most effective.

This reduced basket abandonment and improved our client’s conversion rate without any real outlay.

In Your Mind, What is the Future of Digital Marketing and Marketing Technology?

Marketing changes every few months (sometimes weeks). Predicting how it will change is impossible, but there are three trends that I am excited to follow.

Artificial Intelligence                 

One of the simplest and most helpful ways to improve conversion rates is to offer customers personalised recommendations. Artificial Intelligence provides a way of optimising this process.

As AI becomes accessible to retailers of every kind, I expect consumers to become more reliant on recommendations and less tolerant of irrelevant choices.

Voice Recognition

Siri was the first mainstream voice activated technology (launched in 2011). It has since been followed by Alexa, Google Assistant, Cortana and Echo.

The future of this technology is hard to predict; whilst it cuts down on the effort required from a user, voice activated technology also reduces their feeling of being in control.

Nevertheless, for casual searches, particularly in hands-free situations like driving, voice activated search seems like a growing area.

Augmented reality and virtual Experiences

Augmented reality could allow customers to experience products and services before owning them. This principle is hugely exciting for marketers. Two of the most familiar aspects of consumer psychology are the “Endowment Effect” and “Loss Aversion.”

Augmented reality could allow customers to experience products and services before owning them. This principle is hugely exciting for marketers.

People overvalue things they have experienced owning and feel the pain of losing of something more than the satisfaction of gaining something. Simulating ownership through augmented reality or virtual experiences could provide a way to easily leverage these effects.

Do You Have Any Other Thoughts on Marketing Technology and its use in Marketing onwards?

Investing money in more sophisticated marketing technology is only useful if you also invest time in understanding consumers. Whilst machine learning algorithms become more sophisticated and communications become faster and more complex, the decision-making process will always feature the same psychological processes.

Combining technology, consumer psychology and real value, is the only way to remain competitive.

In this very interesting interview, Philippe explained how the CRO solution from Convertize can be used to improve the business results of your website.

You may also want to read my blog post on CRO with artificial intelligence.