In most companies, improvement (and conversion optimization as a part of it) isn’t constrained by a lack of ideas, but rather by not acting on them, or even not recognizing them.
When a new idea for improvement comes along, the default mode is to find a reason to not do it. Resistance to change is a natural brain’s reaction.
- We’ve tried it before
- Yes, but…
- It’s too risky
- If it was a good idea, someone would already be doing it
I would add a few more:
- I’ve seen it done otherwise
- I know of a single (often anecdotal) case where it didn’t work, therefore it won’t work
- When I do X, I do it differently
- This is completely different than what we have now
Isn’t the whole idea of improvement to do things differently than they are done now?
You would think that companies who specifically want to improve would understand that. Often times, you would be wrong. I have seen many businesses who want improvement but, ideally, if it would be achieved without changing things too much, or at all.
Changing the color of the buttons vs. Reworking the whole funnel
Moving elements on the page and keeping all of them vs. Removing half the elements and adding a few that were not there
Saying the same thing but in different words vs. Changing all the copy on homepage
Safe and tried vs. Testing edgy and risky
So if you want improvement:
- Accept the changes even if you don’t like them or don’t agree with them
- Test them
- See if they work
- If they do, leave them and understand why they worked
- Iterate based on new knowledge on what works
- If the changed didn’t work, stop the test, revert to the previous version and understand why the changes didn’t work
- Iterate based on new knowledge on what doesn’t work
- Repeat
- Profit
PS. I don’t like this quote anymore because it’s used way too much but in this case, it fits ideally: “If you always do what you’ve always done, you’ll always get what you’ve always got.”
