A course I gave at the Marketing Institute of Ireland in November 2011

1. What, why & how?
A process for online optimisation

2. optimize |ˈäptəәˌmīz|
verb [ with obj. ]
make the best or most
effective use of (a situation,
opportunity, or resource): to
optimize conversions, the
website should be correctly
adjusted.

3. What makes a good website?

4. Q: What are the elements of a
good website?

5. 1. Analytics

6. Feb 7-13
Mar 7-13
Source: Google Insights for search

7. Decisions

8. Faith/guesswork

9. Committee

10. HiPPO

11. “
We prefer the discipline of knowledge to
the anarchy of ignorance. We pursue
knowledge the way a pig pursues truffles
David Ogilvy

12. Never in the field of
marketing endeavor has
cause and effect been
more measurable or
actionable

13. The real world looks a
lot like this

14. The problem with data?

15. A better definition?
3
Understanding the impact of your
efforts by analysing outcomes
Understanding your customers’
behaviour better
Continuous improvement
through testing

16. Analytics: Maturity model
Where do you fit?
1. Collecting data & some ad hoc reporting
2. Reporting data regularly
3. Deriving some insights & acting
4. Continuous improvement

17. Every metric should be
3
Simple : I get it
Relevant: that matters
Useful & actionable: let’s fix it

19. 2. Customer insights

20. Behind bounce, conversions and abandonments
rates are real people trying to give you money.
Our job is to figure out why.
For that, we need
empathy

21. Mixed methods
• Mapping the user experience
• Expert evaluation & peer analysis
• User testing
• Ethnographic research
• Surveys

23. Feeling the user’s pain

27. The best online survey ever?
KissInsights.com

28. What’s important?

29. The idea came from their photographer who had
previously worked in the footwear department at
one of their stores. He just instinctively knew to tip
over the boots because, in the stores, he watched
the customers pick up the boots to look at the
tread. Had he not worked there, the team never
would've thought to tip the boots over.

30. 3. Design

31. Sketching

32. Workshop rules
sketch review decide
• No spectators, only participants.
• Not a meeting – an activity to produce
designs.
• No abstract conversations, make ideas
tangible by sketching them.

33. Create decisions before we make one
Lots
A few
good ones

34. Getting the design right
and the right design

36. How the user experience designer made it...

37. What the sales agent wanted...

38. How the programmer changed it...

39. What marketing asked for...

40. Don’t forget to run it by legal...

41. ..but there are rules

43. 9 rules of form design
1. Ask for as little information as you can
2. If it helps the user to answer a question, explain to them why
you’re asking it
3. Maintain a straight path to completion
4. Align the text according to the rules
5. Label the fields in terms your users understand
6. Offer intelligent defaults and examples where necessary
7. Distinguish between primary and secondary actions
8. Offer the user recovery methods when things go wrong
9. When a form is complete, explain what happens next

44. 4. Testing

45. • What’s wrong
• Why it’s wrong
• Test alternatives

46. What to test
Ad copy
Site content
Email
Radical design change (ab)
Page elements (mvt)

47. "The headline is
the most important
element. It is the
telegram which
decides the reader
whether to read the
copy"

48. What works
or what works best?
“Two for the price of one”
OR
“Buy one get one free”

49. Buy now Add to cart
Buy now Add to cart
Buy now Add to cart
Buy now Add to cart

50. Where to test first
Top entry pages
with high bounce rates. Pages
with good traffic and clear
purpose & conversions
Buy now

51. This layout?

52. Or this layout?

53. Optimizely.com

54. 31% conversion rate
12.5% conversion rate

55. +22% in sales

56. What to test
Expectation - does the
page people land on match
the promise made?

57. What to test
Clarity of page purpose
visual hierarchy, clarity and
purpose of content

58. What to test
Urgency: are we influencing
this?
Buy now only 3 left
Buy now 10% off today

59. What to test: trust

60. What to test
Distractions

63. But what’s the impact?

65. Last Monday at 5:13 PM we
removed CAPTCHA from Sampa.
The result: 9.2% improvement on
our conversion rate!
Marcelo Calbucci
http://marcelo.sampa.com/

66. Remember this one?

67. 8.5% conversion rate

68. 29.3% conversion rate

69. What are you
optimising for?

73. Optimising for mobile

74. Why mobile?
• In the evenings, more searches are done on
mobile versus a desktop i.e. the mobile is
now used instead of the laptop.
• Smartphone penetration around 32%,
expected to double year-on-year
• Mobile-optimised can increase the chances
of an impulsive purchase

75. Another case study
30%+ of the email offers are read on
smartphones (up from 10% last year).
Average order value (AOV) from mobiles are
around 1.5 times that of desktop, yet site is not
optimized for mobile.

77. Approach
• Focus on the right data & outcomes (KPIs)
• Look for insights
• Take action (design) & test
• Measure & repeat