Today’s article is for my mother.

And my friends.

And anyone who ever asked me what I do.

What I do at Nextommerce (my conversion optimization agency) is… (shockingly!) conversion rate optimization. And below you can find some details about the process of optimizing said conversion.

The title is, as most nowadays are, a bit exaggerated. It says “The Perfect Execution of Conversion Rate Optimization.” I wouldn’t call it a perfect execution though, rather a decent first step. A primer.

It’s not even an article. It’s an infographic. But it’s simple to follow. Maybe I should send it to my mother too. She’s not on the list. And now I’m starting to wonder why. Is she ashamed of what I do? She shouldn’t be. Ok, inner conversation over. I’m forwarding her this email when it hits my inbox. Now back to conversion optimization.

Below you’ll find a few interesting facts about CRO (again, shockingly, conversion rate optimization.)

For starters, some seemingly bad news:

1 in 7 A/B test campaigns produces a statistically significant improvement.

The rest are either not bringing any improvement or are statistically insignificant, which is a fancy way to say “we don’t really know if it’s any better than what we had.”

But, as I learned today, flying large airplanes is relatively easy. So why are they captains paid well? Because about once a month there’s a landing which “pays” for all the other simple landings and is worth it.

Same with the tests you run. Even if 1, 2, 5 have failed to produce results, the 7th will more than pay for all the previous ones.

For that to happen, you need a process though. You can just randomly choose some elements to test, come up with an idea on a hunch, and expect a huge improvement. Which is unfortunately what happens most of the time:

There’s also an interesting bit of info from VWO (A/B testing tool) about what people test first:

CTAs, headline, layout. These are good candidates for “quick wins.” But you need to have strong hypotheses to start even with those. You can’t just start shooting blindly.

What happens when you do CRO properly?

If successful, the average amount of increase in conversion is 49%. That’s what I call paying for all those other tests!

The rest of the infographic lists the steps to set up an A/B test, mentions the tools you would need, and gives a list of good questions to ask before you start testing.

You can either click below to go to the article, or you can see just the infographic here.

The Perfect Execution of Conversion Rate Optimization

PS. Mom, is it any more clear now? Or am I eternally doomed to being unable to explain what I do to my own parents? I’ll ask a few clarifying questions at the Christmas table to see if I explained it enough 🙂