Part 3: Implementing Your Conversion Rate Optimization Process

January 16th, 2012 | Published in Google Conversions

This is the third part of a three part guest post by one of our GACP partners, Conversion Rate Experts.

Previously in this series, we discovered how your conversion rate optimization process can be improved by adding some critical planning and research. In this article we will see how Conversion Rate Experts (one of our Website Optimizer Authorized Consultants) recommend taking those learnings and applying them. Take a look at part 1 and part 2 to see the previous steps.

Step 7: Design your experimental web pages (your "challengers")

This is the point at which you’ll create the content that you’ll be testing. Create wireframes of the new pages (or page elements).

Create your wireframe first

Pay particular attention to critical copy elements such as the headline, introductory paragraphs and calls to action. Carry out several usability tests on the wireframe and discuss them with anyone who has an empathic understanding of your customers.

Step 8: Carry out experiments on your website

For each split test, follow a procedure that ensures that all team members understand what the test is, why you’re running it, how it fits into the site, how it aligns with the business goals, and how you’ll measure success. These experiment plans create a valuable archive of your business’s evolution. Once a test is started, the software takes over. All split-testing software automatically calculates when one version of the page has generated statistically significantly more conversions than the others, at which point you can end the test and promote the winning version to be your new “control”. If you are new to split-testing tools, check out this quick start guide to Google Website Optimizer and conversion rate optimization.

Step 9: Transfer your winning campaigns into other media

Diversifying your customer acquisition channels gives your business more stability. Your increased conversion rate will mean you can profitably invest more in advertising channels such as SEO, PPC, social media, affiliate marketing and offline media. Also, explore how the insights from your winning experiments can be implemented in other parts of your marketing funnel.

A winning appeal in a landing page test can provide a winning headline for your AdWords campaigns (or vice versa)
A winning landing page can be adapted for space advertising in offline media
If a particular offer performs well in your own marketing materials, your affiliates may benefit from using it too

Insights from winning experiments can be implemented in other media such as print advertising.

Summary

As you can see, while a lot of work, your results will reflect the effort that you put in. Keep in mind that the process is not a one-off event, rather it is an iterative methodology. Subsequent experimental plans will be based on the outcome of the previous experiments and each improvement builds upon the success of the previous ones.

With iterative testing your profits can only go up—because you only keep the winners.

Each time your conversion rate is increased, it becomes increasingly difficult for competitors to compete. Also, as your conversion rate grows, more opportunities present themselves. Hopefully this series will give you some ideas that you can take and implement into your own Conversion Rate Optimization processes. If you want to see the whole process in more detail, check out the full Conversion Rate Experts Process.

Posted By Shane Cassells, Google Conversion Team

Google Data