Which should you use: the free Google Website Optimizer or a $50,000 alternative?

We’ve just launched a website that you’ll find really useful. It’s a comparison site for split testing software (like Google Website Optimizer). It allows you to…

• see the differences between 15 different multivariate testing software solutions (including Google Website Optimizer).
• read reviews from existing users (happy ones and unhappy ones), so you can see the truth behind the sales pitches.
• get a better understanding of what you’re missing out on.

So if you’d like to know which multivariate testing software is best for you, then hurry to … rabba dabba dabba dabba tish* …

Which Multivariate?

* That was supposed to be a drum roll.

Oh, and please don’t forget to come back here and leave your comments.

P.S. If you know anyone else who’d find this valuable, please could you spread the word?

At the start of 2009, Voices.com, one of the leading marketplaces for voice-over talent, began working with Conversion Rate Experts. The result? Their conversion rate increased by over 400%—from less than 5% to 22%.

How we got those improvements

The most important part of any project is the exploratory work that occurs at the beginning; in FORTUNE’s article about us, they described this stage as the “detective work.” (One of our consultants describes it, rather unglamorously, as “dumpster-diving for details.”) Our in-depth analysis of Voices.com included the following:

• We studied Voices.com’s analytics account to understand which components of the sales funnel contained the biggest opportunities for improvement.
• We analyzed 510 visitor surveys to understand the mindset of those who arrived at the Voices.com site but didn’t ultimately subscribe.
• We studied all of Voices.com’s sales literature, and interviewed the company’s CEO in an effort to identify all of the company’s “persuasion assets.” This is a term we use to describe those assets of a company that would be likely to impress the prospect. Persuasion assets can come in many forms, and we’ve discovered valuable overlooked persuasion assets in the businesses of every client we’ve ever worked with.
• We analyzed Voices.com’s competitors’ websites to understand the strategies they were using, and what the opportunities were for positioning Voices.com against them.

Once we understood the prospects’ main objections, and what could be done to overcome them, we created new test pages.

Here are a few things that gave us quick wins

The 400% increase was obtained from a total of eleven experiments, which we carried out at five different stages of the conversion funnel. Some of the changes we made were very specific to Voices.com’s business, but others tend to work for most businesses. Here are the ones that are likely to be applicable to your business, regardless of what type of business you have:

1. Finding and communicating proof

Adding proof to the homepage had a significant effect: Voices.com had some impressive “claims to fame” that could really influence prospective customers, but which weren’t clearly communicated on the website. For example, it transpired that Voices.com’s customers included many household names:

2. Segmenting (by visitor type or by visitor intention)

The site had two distinct types of visitor: (i) voice-over artists, and (ii) companies looking for voice-over artists. There was a great benefit from immediately and clearly segmenting these types of visitor into separate conversion funnels.

3. Demonstration videos

Often, the biggest obstacle facing a prospect is that they don’t understand what they are about to sign up for. Voices.com overcame this obstacle by adding clearly communicated demonstration videos.

4. Hidden opportunities in the sales funnel

Once you’ve increased the conversion rate of one section of your sales funnel, it’s important that you take a “50,000 ft view” of the business, to look for new opportunities that have arisen as a result of the improvement. Many clients expect us to work only on their landing pages, and are surprised that we analyze the whole customer journey—from the initial ads to the retention of long-term customers—in order to identify opportunities. For one client, we identified an opportunity for offline marketing, and devised a hugely successful direct mail campaign; for another, we identified an opportunity for viral growth, and implemented a tell-a-friend program that became one of their top sources of business. Once we had increased the conversion rate of Voices.com’s sales funnel, we identified that there was a big opportunity for email marketing. We then designed a hugely successful email marketing campaign for increasing their lifetime customer value.

Handy lessons

• Find out why customers aren’t converting; don’t just guess. If you don’t know what their objections are, your chances of overcoming them are very slim.
• Don’t “hide your light under a bushel.” If your company is the best at something—and if you have proof—make certain the proof is prominently placed on your website.
• Consider segmenting your visitors. How do you know whether to segment visitors? If your most common “visitor intentions” can’t be addressed with the same message, you should segment them. Similarly, if you have more than one type of visitor, and they can’t all be served by the same message, you’ll probably have to segment them. Beware that segmentation can create a lot of extra work, so only do it if you absolutely have to.
• People don’t buy what they don’t understand. Clearly explain your service, so the prospect is more likely to feel in control and take action.
• Sometimes video is the best medium for explaining things—and for providing proof. Web video needn’t cost a lot, as we’ll reveal soon (subscribe to our newsletter to receive details). Screen capture videos can easily be carried out using Camtasia (for PC) or Screenflow (which is our preferred option for Mac).

Some of the tools we used

• For running split tests and multivariate tests, we used Google Website Optimizer.
• To better understand how users interacted with the website, we used Crazy Egg.
• We identified user experience issues by commissioning usability tests from UserTesting.com.
• The videos were hosted with YouTube. (Here’s a great guide for advanced YouTube techniques.)
• We analyzed survey feedback to understand visitor intent and to identify common questions and objections. We use many survey tools, including Survey Monkey and Survey Gizmo (We’d highly recommend Survey Gizmo.)

Have you tested audio yet?

We were customers of Voices.com three years before they became a client of ours. In 2006, we managed to get a double-digit increase in conversion for one of our clients by adding an auto-playing audio message, which was recorded by a voice-over artist we discovered from Voices.com. Good voice-over artists are like good graphic designers—they make your company seem extremely professional. They can be particularly useful for tutorial videos, for auto-playing audio messages, or even for automated telephone systems (IVRs).

If you haven’t already used Voices.com, it’s one of the most pleasant tasks you’ll ever carry out as web marketer. You just paste your text into Voices.com’s window, then, within hours, you’ll receive loads of audition recordings from voice-over artists. You then play the role of Simon Cowell, deciding which of the voice-overs is the best. (To get in character, you might even decide to pull your trousers up to your rib cage.)

You can host the audio easily using Xiosoft Audio.

Learn more

David Ciccarelli, CEO of Voices.com, described the process as being a “fascinating and profitable experience.” Watch this video to learn more…

We’d like to thank David for sharing this case study. If you think you’d benefit from adding nicely-spoken audio to your website, visit Voices.com.

Will these techniques work on your website?

A 400% increase is extreme; not all experiments yield the same spectacular results. However, we’re using these techniques every day, and we’d expect at least some of them to be valuable to your business.

Want more case studies like this?

If you want to see more of our clients’ results, our buzz page contains a big list of them. We’ll be publishing detailed case studies of some of them soon. If you want to be notified when they’re ready, join our mailing list.

If you’d like to hear how we can help your company to increase its conversion rate, get in touch with us.

How do you persuade your prospects of the quality of your product? Use this strategy: Show the work that went into creating the product.

This can take two forms:

1. Show the work that went into inventing the product

2. Show the work that goes into creating each individual product.

For example, if you were selling Rolex watches, you could tell the story of how the watch was designed, or you could describe the painstaking process by which each individual watch is manufactured. Or you could do both.

How this technique was used to sell beer 100 years ago

The advertising legend Claude Hopkins used this strategy to revolutionize the sales of Schlitz beer in the early 1900s. He did so simply by being the first to describe how beer was made. He toured Schlitz’s operations and noted down all the aspects of their process that he found interesting. In particular, he highlighted those that supported Schlitz’s main claim, that their beer was pure. The campaign was a huge success. Within a few months, Schlitz went from fifth place to being joint-first in the market.

Even if you’ve heard the story before, you probably haven’t seen any of Hopkins’ ads. Here’s one of them:

Apparently, the techniques he describes in the ad were common to many beers; Hopkins was simply the first to mention them, thereby implying that the techniques were unique to Schlitz.

How Apple is using this technique to sell laptops

Hopkins’ ads now look comically out of date, but the technique is still as fresh as a daisy. Here’s a fantastic modern-day equivalent—the following video shows the work that went into creating the body of Apple’s new MacBook Pro laptop:

(You only need to watch the first three minutes of the video.)

If you’re too busy to watch it—and we recommend you do—here’s what happens: Apple’s Senior Vice President of Design passionately describes, and shows, how the body of each MacBook Pro laptop is carved from a single block of metal. According to Apple, this increases the reliability and robustness of the laptop, and allows it to be lighter and smaller. It’s a brilliantly persuasive piece of marketing.

Unlike in the Schlitz example, Apple’s manufacturing techniques do appear to be unique to Apple, which makes the video even more effective.

At Conversion Rate Experts, we have had great success with this technique, having incorporated it into winning webpages for clients in weight loss, B2B products and health supplements, and achieving conversion improvements of 67%, 101% and 114%, respectively.

Why does it work?

This strategy works for several reasons:

1. It adds credibility to your claims. When you describe the work that went into creating a product, you are providing supporting evidence for the product’s features. Many breweries were claiming that their beer was pure, but Schlitz was the first to give justification as to why its beer was pure.

2. It is concrete. People struggle to think in terms of abstract concepts. “Pure” is a vague abstract concept, whereas “beer being dripped over frigid pipes in a plate-glass room” is concrete.

3. It tells a story. People respond well to stories. Stories can be considered to be the “native programming language” of the human brain.

4. It gives you something new to say. In some mature markets, it’s hard to think of anything new that can be said about a product.

5. It gives you something to say when the product’s benefits or features are not easily discernible. If you’re selling bottled water or luxury watches, it’s hard for the prospect to discern the benefits—and the benefits themselves aren’t even particularly interesting. The background story can be the most compelling aspect of the product. This leads us to…

6. It can give “romance” to the product. People love to associate objects with romantic pasts. For example, which guitar player would not like to play Jimi Hendrix’s guitar? Don’t underestimate the power of romance in your copy, particularly if you’re selling something that doesn’t have many logical benefits.

So, how can you use this strategy?

• List the main benefits of your product.
• Presumably, you go to extreme lengths to create these benefits. Would your prospects be impressed if they could see the work that went into creating the product or service?
• Remember, you are likely to underestimate your own achievements. Even if a technique is commonplace, it may still be impressive to your prospects.
• Bring your process to life. Tell the story. Feature the people who worked on it—and show the passion behind it.
• Be highly specific: Lexus is smart to say its Certified Pre-Owned cars go through a “rigorous 161-point checklist,” rather than just saying “a rigorous screening process”.

When will this strategy not work?

Clearly, this strategy will only work to support a particular claim. If Apple’s prospects didn’t care about quality and elegance, the video would have no effect on their behavior. If a particular prospect was a PC user, and their main objection was that they didn’t want to learn a new operating system, the video would not affect conversion.

Do you have other great examples of this strategy?

If you know of any inspirational examples of how this strategy has been used, please add them to the comments fields below.

P.S. If you didn’t read this article out loud, you missed out on saying the word “Schlitz’s”.

Here’s a strange prediction from Google’s Chief Economist: “I keep saying that the sexy job in the next 10 years will be statisticians. And I’m not kidding.”

That quote came from a recent New York Times article, which is about the rapidly increasing demand for statisticians.

He’s talking about you, conversion fans. You may not think of yourself as being a statistician—you may not have it written on your business card—but if you’re basing your marketing on data, not on whims, you are already one of the new wave.

We may be in the minority now, but someday all marketing will be carried out this way.

Another article, published by Wired magazine earlier this year, describes how Google’s business models have evolved. Here’s a great quote from the Wired article:

“Hal Varian [Google's Chief Economist] believes that a new era is dawning for what you might call the datarati—and it’s all about harnessing supply and demand. “What’s ubiquitous and cheap?” Varian asks. “Data.” And what is scarce? The analytic ability to utilize that data. As a result, he believes that the kind of technical person who once would have wound up working for a hedge fund on Wall Street will now work at a firm whose business hinges on making smart, daring choices—decisions based on surprising results gleaned from algorithmic spelunking and executed with the confidence that comes from really doing the math.”

Hal is a fantastically insightful guy—and, of course, he has the benefit of sitting at the cutting edge of innovation. So his advice is worth taking.

Here are a few things that any web business can do now to benefit from this approach:

• Start making decisions based on data, not on opinion.
• Get analytics set up well, so you really know which pages, products, acquisition sources, etc, your money is coming from. Knowledge really is power (and profit).
• Start carrying out split tests (A/B tests or multivariate tests) on different aspects of your business.
• Create a culture in which people are rewarded for carrying out tests, and not punished for making mistakes.

This might sound like a lot of work. In fact, it’s really liberating. Imagine being able to end long debates with “let’s test it and see who’s right”. Imagine being able to make business decisions based on insight that your competitors don’t have. And imagine never taking a step wrong, because every decision you make is tested, so you almost-immediately know whether it was the right thing to do or not.

So, that’s today’s word of the day: datarati.

If you missed it when it came out, the Wired magazine article is particularly worth reading: it’s here.

We need to recruit more Conversion Rate Experts. Do you want to join our team?

Here’s what you’ll get…

• Full- or part-time work, so it’s fine if you already have clients of your own.
• Work anywhere you choose. We are looking for the best people in the world, so we won’t be restricted by geographic location.
• Learn to be one of the world’s best conversion rate experts. We’ll reveal every secret we’ve ever discovered about growing web businesses.
• Really good money—with even greater incentives when you “deliver the goods”.
• Prestigious clients: Sony, Vodafone, 888, SEO Book, SEOmoz and many exciting less-well-known businesses.
• Great colleagues. Our goal is to build and grow the world’s Number 1 team of conversion rate experts. We also work with many of the world’s most respected marketers…so you’ll be in exciting and stimulating company.

Do you have what we’re looking for?

Here’s the type of person—or squirrel—we’re looking for:

Expertise in…

Note: We’ve never met anyone who has all of these skills. As long as you have most of them—and you’re willing to learn fast—that’s fine.

Interested? Here’s what to do…

1. Read our About Us page, to see if you share our values and beliefs.

2. Send an email to join@conversion-rate-experts.com, giving us evidence that you have most of the skills we’re looking for.

Note: If you work for one of our clients, or for a company actively considering using our services, we can’t consider you, unfortunately.

In the movie Monsters vs Aliens, the President has two big red buttons…

The one on the left launches every nuclear weapon in the country; the one on the right makes a latte.

The President asks, “Who designed this ridiculous system?”

His colleagues reply, “You did.”

Throughout the movie, he keeps almost pressing the wrong button, by accident. Whenever he leans towards it, everyone screams hysterically.

Now, if you have ever carried out a usability test, you’ll know this feeling well. You’ll regularly find yourself screaming, “No!”, (though you have to do so internally), when the participant is about to make a “conversion-killing” mistake. Some website elements are effectively “Nuke Buttons”. In other words, they are “traps” that reduce the likelihood of conversion.

Does your own website contain any “Nuke Buttons”?

Here’s how to find out if you’re making the same mistake as the President did: look at one of your mission-critical webpages—such as your homepage or one of your landing pages—then look at each link and button, one at a time, and answer the following two questions:

Question 1: “If a visitor clicks on this button, what will they see next?” (Open the link in a separate tab, just to check.)

Question 2: “Will clicking on this increase—or decrease—the likelihood of the visitor taking the action we want them to take?”

You may be surprised by what you discover.

Types of Nuke Button

Here are some of the most common types of Nuke Button:

Nuke Button Type 1: The “Empty Cart” button. The internet is riddled with shopping carts that have “Empty Cart” buttons in them. Can you imagine a supermarket in which half of the checkouts are “trap” ones, at which a member of staff would grab your shopping cart and put all the items back on the shelves? An “Empty Cart” feature would never exist in the offline world.

But, online, they are commonplace. Here’s an example of one:

Notice how this “Empty Cart” button is identical in appearance to the Place Order” button. It’s even located on the right-hand side, where you might imagine the “Place Order” button to be. One false click and the order is nuked.

Nuke Button Type 2: The “Reset Form” button. Strangely, it’s hard to even imagine a scenario in which a “Clear Form” button would ever be needed. It’s not like you’d ever fill out your name and address, and then think, “No, wait, that’s not me!” Perhaps “Reset Form” buttons are designed to safeguard people who are in witness protection programs.

Here’s an example of a “Reset Form” button, waiting to catch its next victim.

Nuke Button Type 3: the “Too-Easy-To-Click-Accidentally” button. Hotmail’s “Sign Out” button is tiny, and sits beneath a much larger Nuke Button that jeopardizes the user experience. In the image below, you might expect that the arrow is hovering over the “Sign Out” button.

In fact, when clicked, it opens up a dropdown box for the much larger “Karl” button that’s immediately above the “Sign Out” button.

As a result, it’s surprisingly difficult to work out how to sign out of Hotmail, or to change user.

This usability error isn’t trivial. Many Hotmail users access their email from public computers. Failing to sign out could result in identity theft.

Nuke Button Type 4: The “Your Session Has Expired” feature. Some shopping carts spontaneously destroy the visitor’s data after a certain time period. Why?

Clearly, in some situations, it makes sense to expire a session after a certain period of inactivity, for security reasons. But in those cases, it’s essential that the session be automatically saved for next time, otherwise the visitor’s hard work is destroyed.

The “Your Session Has Expired” Nuke isn’t a button at all, but it has the same self-destruct power of any Nuke Button. It’s really a “time bomb” version of the “Reset Form” or “Empty Cart” Nuke Buttons.

In a way, it’s more destructive, because it doesn’t even require a click; it can be triggered off by a bathroom break.

Nuke Button 5: The “Irrelevant Link”. This one is perhaps the most common of all. It sounds obvious, but a link shouldn’t be on a page unless you want at least some of the visitors to click it. Many links cause the visitor to veer off to an obscure part of the website—or to another website—never to return.

An obvious example of an “irrelevant link” is found in websites that have banner ads on their shopping cart pages. If a customer is about to place an order, do you really want them to see a distracting banner ad like this one?:

“The Nuke Button Hall Of Shame”

We thought it would be fun to have a little game: we want you to scour the Internet for examples of buttons—or links—that kill conversions. Copy the URLs, then add them to the comments below (or screenshot them and email them to us). Then, we’ll incorporate them into this blog post.

By creating this “Nuke Button Hall Of Shame”, we’ll be assembling a library of pitfalls for marketers to avoid. It’ll be entertaining too.

And, who knows, maybe we’ll get sued by DreamWorks for adopting the phrase.

Here are the ones we’ve received so far

1. WashingtonPost.com’s search box: The first person to respond to our call for Nuke Buttons was a visitor called Marisa, who described her frustration with the search box on WashingtonPost.com’s website:

The area above the search box is a “Too-Easy-To-Click-Accidentally” button. As Marisa says, “If you move your mouse up a little too far, the hover drop-down menu of Politics, Opinions or Business appears.

“If you then click, as you normally do when arriving at a search box, you hit the menu accidentally, and end up on a page you never wanted to visit. I can’t tell you how annoying that is, when you have a word/idea that you are actively searching for.”

Marisa also correctly spotted that the Comments feature on our blog has a flaw: it went haywire because she did not enter an email address, and she consequently lost her carefully written comment. Aargh! Already, we’re in our own Hall of Shame! It’s like a scene from Being John Malkovich! Sorry Marisa—we’ll get it fixed.

Send us more examples of Nuke Buttons!

So, Nuke Button Spotters…here’s your mission: we want you to send us examples of buttons—or links—that kill conversions. Copy the URLs, then add them to the comments below (or screenshot them and email them to us). Then, we’ll incorporate them into this blog post.

Together, we can disarm the web.

Right, let’s have a latte.

P.S. We update this post every time someone submits a new Nuke Button to us—so bookmark this page on Delicious!

Here’s a handy tool for capturing ideas from your customers: UserVoice.com. It’s effectively an “ideas box”, into which your website’s visitors can suggest ideas for improving your website and business. They can also vote on which ideas they like most.

It has a lot of similarities with Kampyle, but with a social aspect. If you give it a try, please leave a comment below and let us know how you benefit from it.

And, if you haven’t done so already, don’t forget to read our free report, “Tools That Reveal Why People Abandon Your Website”. These tools tell you exactly why many of your visitors aren’t ordering, so you don’t have to guess at how to persuade them. They provide a brilliantly reliable way of increasing your website’s profits.

Would it help to meet us, face to face? We’ve been asked to speak at several events over the next few months: two in the US, one in the UK, one in Australia, and two in the Netherlands. Come along and say “hello”!

If time permits, we can give you a free website critique.

We highly recommend all of these events. Each has its own strengths.

1. Search Engine Strategies (SES) New York, USA

When: March 23–27, 2009 (that’s next week). We’re speaking on Thursday March 26 at 10:30 a.m..

Why you should attend: It’s one of the world’s biggest and best search marketing conferences.

Our talk: Our Chairman, Karl Blanks, will be speaking in the session entitled “Extreme Makeover: Live Ad Copy and Continuity Clinic”, during which he will examine ads and landing pages offered up by volunteers from the audience, and suggest changes to improve click-through and conversion.

Plus, get a free website critique, one-on-one: Throughout Wednesday 25, Karl will be offering free website critiques at Google’s Website Optimizer stand. He’ll be there between 10 a.m. and 1 p.m., and between 2 p.m. and 4 p.m.. To avoid disappointment, visit early to sign up for a time slot.

How to register: Visit SearchEngineStrategies.com to get the full conference agenda, speakers list, and event information.

2. The System Seminar, Chicago, USA

When: March 27–29, 2009 (that’s next Friday)

Why you should attend: It’s one of the best web marketing conferences for small businesses and entrepreneurs.

If we were given the challenge of training someone, from scratch, to make money from the web, we’d start by sending him or her to The System Seminar.

Last year, we recommended the London System Seminar to our subscribers—and those who attended loved it. The Chicago event will be much bigger, and has some excellent speakers, including

• Perry Marshall, who’s an AdWords expert and a brilliant all-round direct marketer.
• Google Website Optimizer manager Trevor Claiborne.
• ROI Revolution’s Timothy Seward (ROI are fantastic at getting valuable results from Google Analytics).

Some of the attendees are beginners, and many are owners and employees of small- to medium-sized businesses, who are looking to learn every aspect of web marketing. That makes it a fantastic hands-on training in marketing and entrepreneurship. There’s some really sophisticated stuff going on too; some of these guys have sales funnels that are much more sophisticated than the average corporate website.

There’s also a real enthusiasm about the event; the conversations in the hotel bar tend to go on till after midnight.

The System’s organizer, Ken McCarthy, is an excellent teacher of online marketing and persuasive copywriting. Back in 1994, he organized the first-ever conference to discuss the commercial potential of the internet. Ken has introduced us to some really valuable resources over the last few years.

We’ll be giving two talks:

Talk 1.) Our Chairman (and company rocket scientist), Karl Blanks, will be giving a talk entitled “Internet marketing is NOT rocket science—YOU can do this.”

Talk 2.) Our CEO, Ben Jesson, will be speaking on “How to use the Internet to get to know your customers intimately”.

And, of course, during the breaks, we’ll be doing whatever we can to help as many businesses as possible.

How to get in for half-price: Visit TheSystemSeminar.com to get the full conference agenda, speakers list, and event information. That’s an affiliate link but we don’t want to profit from it, so, if you order via the link, we’ll forward the affiliate payment to you, which is 50% of the price you pay.

3. SMX Sydney, Australia

When: April 2–3, 2009

Why you should attend: SMX conferences tend to attract the same type of visitor as the SES conferences do (see above). The SMX conferences are organized by Search Engine Land, which is one of the world’s best authorities on search marketing. (Get their fantastic email newsletter, SearchCap, here.)

Our talk: Our CRO® Consultant Stephen Pavlovich will be revealing “23 Proven Techniques For Increasing Your Conversion Rate”.

How to register: Visit SearchMarketingExpo.com.au to get the full conference agenda, speakers list, and event information.

4. a4uexpo Amsterdam, Netherlands

When: April 28–29th, 2009

Why you should attend: Affiliate marketers live or die based on the quality of their conversions, so they care passionately about “marketing that works”. a4uexpo has grown incredibly quickly, and this is the first a4uexpo event outside of the UK.

We’ll also be offering free eyetracking reviews from the Conversion Rate Experts exhibition stand (learn more about this on the a4uexpo blog).

We’ll be leading two sessions:

Session 1.) Conversion Clinic: ‘Recession Proofing’ your Landing Pages. This is your chance to have your web pages analyzed and critiqued by the Conversion Rate Experts team. During this session, three of our staff—Karl Blanks, Ben Jesson, and Stephen Pavlovich—will critique your web pages, giving direct suggestions as to what should be done to improve their conversion rate, and giving you loads of valuable techniques that you can immediately put to use on your own website.

Session 2.) Landing Page Success Story: How we Increased SEOmoz’s Sales by 170%. Over the past four months, Conversion Rate Experts have increased the sales of the web community SEOmoz by 170%. In fact, in January, a single split test grew the sales by 52%. During this session, we’ll show you the page before and after the test, and explain all the techniques that were used, and how you can apply them to your own business today.

How to register: Visit a4uexpo.com/europe/ to get the full conference agenda, speakers list, and event information.

5. eMetrics Marketing Optimization Summit, London, UK

When: May 18–19, 2009

Why you should attend: Two years ago, John Marshall (the brilliant guy behind the pioneering web analytics software ClickTracks), recommended that we should attend eMetrics, because, “the attendees understand the importance of measuring a website’s performance.” You’re one of those people—otherwise you wouldn’t be reading this.

Our talk: We’ll be running a “conversion clinic.” This is your chance to have your web pages analyzed and critiqued by our Chairman, Karl Blanks, who will be giving a Conversion Clinic about “making your landing pages ‘recession proof.’”

During this session, Karl will critique your web pages, giving direct suggestions as to what should be done to improve their conversion rate, and giving you loads of valuable techniques that you can immediately put to use on your own website.

How to register: Visit emetrics.org/london/ to get the full conference agenda, speakers list, and event information.

6. Design For Conversion, Amsterdam, Netherlands

When: June 12, 2009

Why you should attend: There aren’t many conferences that are focused specifically on conversion. Design for Conversion has an unusual format—it sounds great:

• First, our Chairman, Karl Blanks, will be giving a Keynote talk.
• Then, the attendees will split into groups of ten, and all groups will be given the same project to carry out.
• During the day, two other keynote talks will be given.
• Throughout the day, the three speakers will interact with the teams, giving them practical guidance.
• At the end of the day, a panel of judges will decide which group is the winner.

Our talks: Karl’s Keynote talk will be entitled, “A robust system for increasing any website’s conversion rate.”

How to register: This event does not have a website yet. If you’d like more details, contact us via our Contact Us page, and we’ll forward your details to the organizer.

Will you be at any of these events?

If you’ll be attending any of these events, let us know in the comments below, so we can keep an eye out for you!

We look forward to meeting you in person, and saying hello!

A few weeks ago, we gave you 5 reasons why you should get obsessed with conversion rate optimization in 2009.

Some companies will follow this advice, and thrive, and some will ignore it, and spiral downwards. Fortunately, you have an unfair advantage: the mere fact that you’re on this page means you’re in the top few percent of web marketers who understand the importance of conversion.

But if you’re still having difficulty persuading the rest of your company that you should be investing in conversion rate optimization, maybe you’d like to tell them about this:

Vodafone, one of the world’s largest mobile communications companies, has recently started working with Conversion Rate Experts to optimize its visitors’ online experience.

Why?

Kevin Woodberry, the Online Manager of Vodafone Specialist Communications, gave the following reason:

The big attraction of conversion rate optimization is that it benefits both ourselves and our customers. Working with Conversion Rate Experts has been an absolute eye-opener. Getting started is surprisingly simple. Google Website Optimizer tells you which of your pages your visitors prefer. Your website’s visitors get a better service that’s aimed at their exact needs, which is great for profits.

Follow Kevin. It needn’t cost anything, and there’s no better time to start putting the pressure on your competitors.

You can start today, at no cost, by implementing some of the techniques in our free reports, signing up to our newsletter, and getting your hands on Google Website Optimizer (a free tool for carrying out split tests on your website, which you really should be doing by now).

Eyetracking? If you recall, eyetracking was Number 9 in our list of techniques for improving your conversion rate.

Here’s how it works:

1. Fancy hardware is used to track a user’s eye movements as they look at a website. (So the user needs to be physically in front of a computer monitor that is set up with eyetracking hardware, which usually means they have to visit a usability lab.)

2. The data is then analyzed, revealing where the user clicked and looked. They are then asked questions about their experience.

3. Finally, the website owner gets an actionable report containing heat maps of where the users looked, where they clicked, and how much they scrolled. This gives valuable insights into how they can improve their website.

We’re currently carrying out some exciting eyetracking research with the team at Eyetools (who work with companies like The New York Times, American Express, Sprint and Yahoo!), and are looking for volunteers to take part in our study.

If you’ll be near downtown San Francisco (the financial district near Bart and parking) any time between Wednesday Feb 4 through Friday Feb 20, 2009, please sign up to participate in the tests or get a tour of the facility. You can sign up here. (Please note: you won’t be paid, which participants typically are, BUT you will get an “insider’s behind-the-scenes view.”)

What’s in it for you?

• you’ll get a tour of the Eyetools lab
• you’ll learn about the processes, technology and results that eyetracking achieves
• you’ll get a sneak preview of our research findings, before we tell the world

But here’s the main benefit: it’ll turn you into a better marketer. The first time we personally participated in eyetracking tests was in 2006, and we were amazed at how unaware we had previously been of how we interacted with websites.

For example, it turns out that we weren’t just blind to banner ads—we had developed a blindness to Flash animations. This was much to the disappointment of one website owner, who had just spent most of his budget on creating a beautiful Flash animation in the center of the screen…which we completely ignored.

If you are able to volunteer to take part in this research, then please sign up here to book your appointment.

If you can’t get to downtown San Francisco between Wednesday Feb 4 and Friday Feb 20, 2009, don’t worry. We’ll let you know the results of our exciting research when it’s ready.