Go way beyond any CRO (conversion rate optimisation) and go big with the business if you really want to change conversion.

This blog post was spurred on by Lessons Learned from 21 Case Studies in Conversion Rate Optimization

I loved that blog post – and there are great examples but it neglects the 3 biggest factors. These factors go beyond the average role of someone responsible for CRO, but without these looked after first there is no magic bullet by performing any conversion optimization.

It’s not simple at all – conversion rate is just like meeting a girl (and I’ll prove it with italics)

You need 3 things

1. Branding
2. A Good Offer
3. Demand

1) Branding

I’ve worked on websites with no brand awareness, and some with high brand awareness. It’s obvious to say that a brand you know will convert better.

If you don’t have a known (or liked) brand: make it very easy for users and ensure there are no hurdles in testing you out with minimal risk. Then they can gain trust and know (and love) your brand before you ask them to hand over cash.

If a girl knows who you are, it will make it easier for you to to hit it off. Compare meeting a girl in a bar, to a girl who is a friend of a friend.

We all know Basecamp – so what would make you choose ACE Project?

2) Offer

Call to action? Who cares. The more important factor is what you’re offering. “See plans & pricing” might be a good performing button – but what if your plans and pricing aren’t aligned with consumers? No matter what the words on the call to action say, conversion rate will be (s)hit.

If you’re dressed well but actually a bad person, it’s not going to help your case with a girl. Sure you might get her chatting to you but it’s not going to go any further.

This is actually an example from when I was looking at SERP ranking software. The offer for AuthorityLabs is so good, why would I go with a company I couldn’t try for free even though it may be better software?

AuthorityLabs Offer

Exact Factor Offer

3) Demand

A lot of visitors are just doing research and are not only weighing up you and your competitor, but also your product/services substitutes.

For example, I work in the gifting industry, and we sell experience gift vouchers (skydive, massage, that kind of stuff). When optimising for general gift buyers (i.e. someone searching for “gifts for men”), we not only need to be a better option than experience competitors, but also a better option that substitute gifts (books, department stores vouchers etc).

Think about the bigger picture, talk to your existing customers and find out what the factors were in creating the demand for them to purchase. If you know what piece of communication made your customers decide they want to buy from you – use this nugget to attract others.

If she’s looking for a guy, why would she choose you? If she’s not looking then how can you make her interested to start looking?

A lot easier said than done

CRO has it’s place, but it’s not the magic bullet. My point is to think about influencing the bigger picture first before fussing over what headline to use or colour of your buttons. It’s a lot harder than reaching statistical significance at a 95% confidence but means a lot more.

Google Instant Preview

I’ll assume you know what I’m talking about with this new feature from Google – and if you haven’t then read more about it on SearchEngineLand.

Funnily enough, 2 years ago I wrote about a new visual search engine where I mentioned all of these points – and if you’re curious you can read that here.

5 Ways Google Instant Preview will Impact SEO & Your Website

1. Lower Bounce Rate – visitors will be pre-qualified and know what to expect. This is bad for publishers who make money on a CPM basis who just want as many impressions as possible.
2. Higher or Lower Click Through Rate – depending on your design, your organic CTR will change.  And if you’re site looks poor, it might turn users off, but if it matches their expectations you’re going to get more visits.
3. Demise of Spam Sites – How often do you click through to a search result and get some average content that is unreadable because of the number of AdSense blocks on it? If you knew that’s what the site was, you wouldn’t click through. Based on this theory, their CTR will go down which may impact…
4. Lower ranking for poorly designed sites – I’m speculating a lot here, Bing have admitted to using CTR in their ranking algorithm so I can only assume the big G does as well. If you get a lower CTR, then by this theory your ranking will go down. It gives Google great insight into the quality of a website, preview -> click ratio shows a stronger picture about how users perceive your site.
5. Prominence of on-page keyword usage will become more common – To match searcher expectations and make your page seem more relevant, you’re going to need to make your keywords visible on the design. Either with a large title or even within a graphic.

1. All Brand Traffic
2. Non-brand Organic Search (qualified)

Key segments will vary from website to website, but for me these are extremely useful.

All Brand Traffic

Looking at Direct traffic on it’s own is useless, just like Google (organic) doesn’t show a true picture.

This segment includes:

• Direct Traffic
• Branded Search Terms (paid/non-paid)

You simply select direct traffic OR keyword contains [your brand name]. It’s always best to test your keyword usage a few times. My company is called “RedBalloon” so I look at any keywords including “red” or “balloon days” (old branding). But I always make sure it doesn’t include “delivered” which has red at the end of it.

This will give you a true picture of how many people are actually seeking you out.

Non-Brand Organic Traffic (qualified)

As it says – ignores any brand terms and also any bouncing visits. After all, who cares about a bounced visit? You obviously are getting traffic from a person who doesn’t think your site matches their query. This is what I mean by qualified.

In this example we do the opposite to all brand, then make sure it’s organic and then the bounces is 0. To make the branded terms removed check it doesn’t contain what you contain in the brand terms, and then add “Or” statements to overcome terms where that would should be.

I’m surprised Google Analytics doesn’t make it more obvious – Organic traffic shows totally different stories as one, brand terms are the new direct.

As days go by, I’m losing trust in Google’s bidding methods and feeling like I need to use a third party bid management tool. But let’s take a look at the options we have using AdWords:

1. CPC Manual Bidding
2. CPC Manual Bidding with enhanced CPC
3. CPC Automatic bidding
4. Max CPA
5. Target CPA

I’m not even going to bother talking about Manual Bidding (it’s obvious), Automatic Bidding (never, ever use this) or Max CPA (why would you use Max CPA when you get use target CPA?).

Enhanced CPC

You set the bids and Google tries to assume if the actual users search query is more likely to convert (which makes smart bidding).

Advantages

• Individual bids for a lot of different search queries  – your keyword listed in AdWords will match a multitude of user search terms. So instead of setting up a huge campaign with a lot of exact match terms with individual bids, it does that work for you
• It finds patterns it what converts – let’s say your keywords are “gifts”, “birthday gifts” and “gifts for dad”. Enhanced CPC might find that when the user adds “buy” to their query they’re more likely to purchase, and when they add “ideas” then they’re less likely. You might be bidding $2 for “gifts”, but when someone searches “buy gifts” Google puts your bid to $3, or when someone searches “gift ideas” your bid goes to $1

Disadvantages

• You give Google permission to increase your CPC at their will, based on their assumptions (they say it won’t raise for cost-per-conversion, but of course it would for your high performing keywords)
• Google makes assumptions very quickly – they can get it wrong to start with

Target CPA

You set the end amount you want to spend on a conversion at an ad-group level.

Advantages

• You don’t have to worry about bidding and Google “tries” to meet your conversion expectations
• Let’s you focus on things like creating new ad groups & testing new ad copy – where you (as a person) can add real value
• Computers are smarter than humans when it comes to calculation

Disadvantages

• It starts out bad – everytime I’ve started using Target CPA on a campaign my CPC gets massive. It comes back down but overall not all that trustworthy
• You’re relying on Google to maximise your revenue, when they also want to maximise their revenue
• You could actually be better a better cost-per-conversion but the system will push your bids up to your target (meaning all of your ad-groups need

In Conclusion?

I’m testing out Enhanced CPC now on 1 of my campaigns, and will see how it goes. Target CPA needs time to really test out but none of them really match ROAS bidding like you can do with a bid management tool.

The biggest takeaway for me: Don’t hide your “classic hits”

Do you have some blog posts you’re really proud of? How easy can someone find these from your homepage? Perhaps try adding a sidebar widget to promote your best work, or even a feature above your blog posts on your homepage (easy if you have WordPress). Luckily for me, everything I blog is rubbish so it’s not an issue.

Remember when someone comes to your blog homepage – they most likely want to know about you. It’s not always the most relevant for the first thing they see to be  your latest blog post. What if your last post was a YouTube video of talking animals? What does that say about you?

What should you do now?

I’m not the expert on it – so you should probably just read his article. But my favourite quote (and I admit to being one of this people)

Many weblog authors seem to think it’s cool to write link anchors like: “some people think” or “there’s more here and here.”

I’ve just read a blog post about the value of a Facebook user (the rest of this rant won’t make sense unless you read that).

I have a habit that always makes me want to argue anything that’s come from someone biased, so here’s why I think this “detailed” report was a waste of time:

• It takes 18 pages to make the point that a Facebook fan spends more & and engages with you more. Here I was thinking that if someone was my fan then they hated my company.
• It puts a value on the average Facebook fan and then throughout the report it constantly states the obvious by explaining that every company has a different value for a Facebook fan. To me this basically says “the value is $136, but not really”. It’s merely a number to catch headline and for the social media racquet to pull out and impress in pitches and presentations.
• The recommendations are written as general as a horoscope “Loyalty, Spend, Recommendation, Fan Acquisition Cost, Affinity, and Media Value are the key factors that impact fan value. Brands need to develop strategies that address these areas”. In other words, develop the perfect business and the value of your Facebook fan will be higher.

Of course a Facebook fan is valuable, they’re your fan and they’re wearing it on their virtual sleeve.

But don’t believe the hype. My problem is that reports and articles like this have caused a common mentality of “wow, I need to get a Facebook fan page!!” as if it’s the magic answer, but it can easily turn into a meatball sundae. A lot of companies would be better off using their time thinking about how to make something remarkable enough that people genuinely become fans of.

The real value of a Facebook fan – it’s the perfect medium for your true “fans” to spread the word for you. Your happy customers have been doing this for centuries, Facebook just makes it easier for them to do so and much more effective for you.

The video ties in with their latest ad campaign and strongly communicates the positioning to an extremely captive audience, we weren’t escaping anywhere.

Extremely captivating, you can’t take your eyes off it. Although supposedly no 2 planes are the same, every single safety video is. This video however, is memorable and stands out from the boring stuff we’re used to while impatiently waiting to take off and reach our destination.

5.3 million views on YouTube so far, obviously others feel the same way as me.