Based on a survey of 342 marketing, sales and business professionals done this past April they revealed the top conversion optimization methods based on how effective and how difficult they were to implement.
Here, we break down each method and shed some light on these findings.
Conversion Optimization Methods – Most Effective And Difficult
As you can see this is a pretty interesting list of conversion optimization methods. Let’s take a closer look at this list by topic and see why they may have come to these results.
1. A/B Testing
A/B testing is a very popular conversion optimization method. As you can see by the chart only 18% of the survey respondents said that it was a difficult task. Thanks to tools like Optimizely and others it is relatively simple to integrate into any marketing plan. The fact though is that a good majority of companies, even those with big marketing departments don’t have the bandwidth to deploy the tactics necessary to make it the most effective that it can be.
Over 52% of the respondents stated that A/B testing was an effective conversion optimization method. That isn’t surprising considering this is the majority of the type of testing we deploy for our clients.
2. Segmentation and Targeting
It is not surprising that this one ranks as the second most difficult conversion optimization methods. At least from a segmentation standpoint. Targeting is getting easier and easier thanks to many of the advancements in ad serving platforms that is if companies stay on top of the campaigns and constantly be cutting losing variations and audiences to narrow the focus on the highest return opportunities.
As far as segmenting, companies are sitting on a mountain of data. Segmenting visitors, customers and leads can be a difficult task to set up and maintain. However, if done effectively can be a wildly effective solution to serve product and service solutions to your customers based on their behavior.
3. Copy optimization
There is a reason they call copywriting the million-dollar skill and that it’s ranked quite high on the difficulty scale of conversion optimization methods. We typically couple copy optimization in with our A/B testing deployment to maximize the results from the test variations.
Copy is everything. How and what you say to your web visitors, your customers and your leads can make a break a marketing campaign. The effectiveness if your copy is delivered in the proper fashion can be off the charts.
4. Responsive design
With recent changes to Google earlier this year and an increase in online visitors using mobile, we are glad to see this one make the list of the top conversion optimization methods. You need to pay attention to the browsing habits of your potential customers and make sure their browsing experience is optimized for their chosen method. By treating mobile visitors differently you will most certainly see an increase in conversions.
Especially if you are paying for mobile traffic to your sites. Thanks to mobile responsive themes on many of the most popular platforms it is quite simple to create a responsive mobile design that will also be effective in boosting your results.
5. Event-triggered email
This ranks pretty low on both charts. We don’t necessarily agree with the effectiveness ranking, however. We find it to be much more effective if done correctly. Using simple solutions such as login reminders, abandon cart emails, and other event-driven solutions can dramatically boost results as well as bring visitors back to engage in your site or product. Implementation is quite easy for the most part as email solutions typically have tagging or segmentation options available.
6. Usability Testing
We do agree that this is one of the more difficult conversion optimization methods. However thanks to solutions like usertesting.com it can be easy. You can get unbiased third party feedback and find major holes in your process with as little as 20 user tests. You can also leverage heatmap/clickmap solutions to get a better handle on what your visitors are paying attention to, what they are ignoring and where they are getting held up.
We don’t necessarily agree on the effectiveness ranking though as creating a better user experience and removing friction points in your online process can be quite effective to boost the results.
7. Customer Survey/Feedback
We look at surveys and feedback as one of the top conversion optimization methods. Companies don’t necessarily want to know the negative of their product or service but the fact is that it is valuable information.
Surveys are actually one of the steps we deploy for our clients. It allows companies to find trends in feedback and gives the customers an outlet, a place to be heard before they take to social media and make their comments public. It can be quite difficult to deploy in some cases even giving that there are loads of services that help make it easier. Getting the right information back is crucial. We recommend that you incentivize when you can to get more feedback faster.
8. Multivariate Testing
It is no surprise whatsoever that this was ranked as the most difficult of the conversion optimization methods. Multivariate testing we have found can be time-consuming, clunky and often giving mixed results that can lead companies down the wrong path of improvement. Multivariate testing requires quite a bit more traffic to realize any statistically significant results and, as previously mentioned, can actually give you the wrong results.
As far as effectiveness we also agree that it isn’t the most effective method. Time-consuming and difficult on all fronts.
There you have it… A deeper look at the top conversion optimization methods survey ranked by difficulty and effectiveness.
Do you agree or disagree? Be sure to leave a comment.
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If you want help with your conversion optimization methods, implement faster so you can realize quicker results we urge you to reach out for a no-obligation conversion acceleration session.