Showing posts with label automate. Show all posts
Showing posts with label automate. Show all posts
Thursday, 5 March 2015
Tuesday, 3 March 2015
Five Questions That Smart Conversion Optimization Consultants Should Ask
Conversion optimization consultants need to be two things: smart and curious. In order to optimize website for more conversions, a consultant doesn’t just make changes. Instead, the consultant asks questions.
If you are a conversion optimization consultant or want to do some CRO work on your own website, ask these questions.
1. Who’s the audience?
CRO is a small part of the huge industry of marketing. There is a lot of overlap in field of digital marketing.
If there’s one thing that holds this unwieldy field of marketing together it’s this: audience understanding.
In order to be successful at marketing, the marketer must know their audience. Marketers accomplish nothing meaningful without first identifying their audience.
The conversion optimization expert can “fix” a website’s conversion problems only if he or she understands the audience.
The illustration from Moz below shows how the field of digital marketing understands itself in all its overlapping glory:
2. What’s the value of the product or service?
According to CRO big dog Oli Gardner, a “winning landing page” has five elements:
- A Unique Selling Proposition (USP)
- The hero shot.
- The benefits you’re offering.
- Social proof.
- A single conversion goal — your call-to-action.
That first point is critical — the USP. Here’s how Oli describes it:
The starting point of a marketing campaign revolves around your ability to define a point of differentiation. What is it about your product or service that sets it apart from the competition? You need to communicate this in a succinct way on your landing page. Try to break down your offering to its most basic level, to describe the specific benefit your customers will get by choosing your product/service.
When a conversion optimization turns her expert eye on a landing page, she wants to know one thing — what’s the big deal? Why is this important? Why should I care? What does this offer? Why is this special? Why are you selling this?
However you answer that barrage of questions, it should focus on one thing: value.
No matter how good a CRO consultant is, he can’t just make someone buy something with just a few conversion tricks — bigger buttons, snazzier graphics, etc. He has to understand the value of the product or service.
3. If this were my site, what would I do first?
Those two questions are simply the pregame warmup. We have to wrap our minds around the event as a whole before we can make any changes to specifics.
Conversion optimization is an incredible field precisely because it requires comparitively little time, little cost, and little effort. It utilizes existing resources to create substantial improvement. Sometimes, a small tweak can produce a torrential uptick in conversions.
That’s what the smart consultant wants to discover. She will identify the most obvious problem or easiest opportunity for improvement.
Here are six additional questions that will help you identify your page’s low-hanging fruit:
- Is the value proposition obvious?
- Is the headline clear and compelling?
- Are the graphics professional and motivating?
- Are there benefits focused on the user?
- Are there genuine testimonials?
- Is the CTA obvious?
A shortcoming in any one of these areas can signal a problem that is stopping up the flow of conversions. Pick the easiest one to change, decide on an improvement, A/B test the two elements, and watch your conversion rates improve.
4. What is one thing I can do to reduce friction?
Friction is public enemy number one of conversions.
Peep Laja of ConversionXL defines friction as “a psychological resistance to a given element.” Jeremy Smith calls it, more broadly, “anything that gets in the way of conversions.”
In case you haven’t realized it yet, conversion optimization is a mind game. The best CROs in the business know how to identify psychological barriers and totally demolish them.
There are several kinds of friction, and each one requires a different angle of attack.
- Design friction – Aspects of the overall design of the page that limit conversions. This could include layout, color, images, font kerning, etc.
- Copy friction – Features of the text that reduce conversions. It could be grammatically awkward, boring, too long, etc.
- Time friction – This involves page load time, as well as the time it might take to scroll through the page, fill out a form, etc.
- Cognitive friction – Cognitive friction is a catch-all category for those elements within the mind of a user that can prevent conversions. For example, if a user doesn’t trust website, doesn’t like the “feel” or anything else, this might be categorized as “cognitive friction.”
If you can look at your website from a user’s perspective, you will be better able to identify the points of friction and eliminate them.
If you don’t see any friction, look again. Every single website and landing page has friction. That’s just the way it is. Find it, and kill it.
5. How can I make the call to action stronger?
This last point is money.
The CTA of a website or landing page is where all your conversion optimization efforts come to a climax. This is where the user converts (or not). Nearly every CTA on the planet can be made stronger. You just need to figure out how to do it.
Here are a few points that will help you figure out how to make your CTA really work.
- Make it look like a button.
- Make it bigger or more obvious.
- Use a color that has more contrast.
- Use copy that is more compelling or exciting.
- Place more white space around it.
- Add trust signals near it
- Add more than one CTA to your page.
Most of massive increases in CRO come from CTA changes.
Conclusion
Conversion optimization has a very straightforward goal: make more money by improving conversions.
There are plenty of ways to do this. But it all begins with asking the right questions:
- Who is the audience?
- What’s the value of the product or service?
- If this were my site, what would I do first?
- What is one thing I can do to reduce friction?
- How can I make the call to action stronger?
Ask these questions, conduct your A/B tests, and watch your conversions rise.
What questions help you identify areas of conversion optimization?
Monday, 2 March 2015
Thursday, 26 February 2015
6 Basic Needs That Make Us Tick...By Mr Tony Robbins
I've seen it a million times--people can equate their net worth with their self worth. Their identity is married so deeply to their bank statements and quarterly portfolio reports that they’ve forgotten that money is simply a vehicle for trying to meet our needs, almost all of which are not financial. We're all familiar with the cliche that money cannot buy happiness, but I'm convinced that almost everybody has to learn that lesson the hard way because let's face it; the idea of having enough money to throw at your problems until they're solved is a seductive impulse.
It certainly was something I constantly thought about as a kid. Growing up, money was always out of reach. It was always a source of stress because there was never enough of it. I remember knocking on the neighbor’s door to ask for food for my brother and sister and me.
Then, on a Thanksgiving Day when I was 11 years old, something happened that changed my life forever. As usual, there was no food in the house, and my parents were fighting. I heard someone knocking at the front door. I opened it a crack and saw a man standing on the steps with grocery bags filled with enough food for a big Thanksgiving dinner. I could hardly believe it.
Fast forward several years to when I was 17. I saved my money from working nights as a janitor and went out on Thanksgiving and fed two families. It was one of the most moving experiences of my life. I’d learned the joy of giving and to this day I consider contribution to be one of the six most important things every person needs.
Whatever emotion you’re after, whatever vehicle you pursue—building a business, getting married, raising a family, traveling the world—whatever you think your nirvana is, there are six basic, universal needs that make us tick and drive all human behavior. Combined, they are the force behind the crazy things (other) people do and the great things we do. ;) We all have the same six needs, but how we value those needs and in what order, determines the direction of our life.
Need 1: Certainty/Comfort
The first human need is the need for Certainty. It’s our need to feel in control and to know what’s coming next so we can feel secure. It’s the need for basic comfort, the need to avoid pain and stress, and also to create pleasure. Our need for certainty is a survival mechanism. It affects how much risk we’re willing to take in life—in our jobs, in our investments, and in our relationships. The higher the need for certainty, the less risk you’ll be willing to take or emotionally bear. By the way, this is where your real “risk tolerance” comes from.
Need 2: Uncertainty/Variety
Let me ask you a question: Do you like surprises? If you answered “yes,” you’re kidding yourself! You like the surprises you want. The ones you don’t want, you call problems! But you still need them to put some muscle in your life. You can’t grow muscle—or character—unless you have something to push back against.
Need 3: Significance
We all need to feel important, special, unique, or needed. So how do some of us get significance? You can get it by earning billions of dollars, or collecting academic degrees—distinguishing yourself with a master’s or a PhD. You can build a giant Twitter following. Or you can go on The Bachelor or become the next Real Housewife of Orange County. Some do it by putting tattoos and piercings all over themselves and in places we don’twant to know about. You can get significance by having more or bigger problems than anybody else. “You think your husband’s a dirt bag, take mine for a day!” Of course, you can also get it by being more spiritual (or pretending to be).
Spending a lot of money can make you feel significant, and so can spending very little. We all know people who constantly brag about their bargains, or who feel special because they heat their homes with cow manure and sunlight. Some very wealthy people gain significance by hiding their wealth. Like the late Sam Walton, the founder of Wal-Mart and for a time the richest man in America, who drove around Bentonville, Arkansas, in his old pickup, demonstrating he didn’t need a Bentley—but of course, he did have his own private fleet of jets standing by.
Significance is also a money maker—that’s where my dear friend Steve Wynn has made his fortune. The man who made Las Vegas what it is today knows people will pay for anything they believe is “the best,” anything that makes them feel special, unique or important, anything that makes them stand out from the crowd. He provides the most exclusive, luxurious experiences imaginable in his casinos and hotels—they are truly magnificent and unmatched in the world.
Need 4: Love & Connection
The fourth basic need is Love and Connection. Love is the oxygen of life; it’s what we all want and need most. When we love completely we feel alive, but when we lose love, the pain is so great that most people settle on connection, the crumbs of love. You can get that sense of connection or love through intimacy, or friendship, or prayer, or walking in nature. If nothing else works, you can get a dog.
These first four needs are what I call the needs of the personality. We all find ways to meet these—whether by working harder, coming up with a big problem, or creating stories to rationalize them. The last two are the needs of the spirit. These are more rare—not everyone meets these. When these needs are met, we truly feel fulfilled.
Need 5: Growth
If you’re not growing, you’re dying. If a relationship is not growing, if a business is not growing, if you’re not growing, it doesn’t matter how much money you have in the bank, how many friends you have, how many people love you—you’re not going to experience real fulfillment. And the reason we grow, I believe, is so we have something of value to give.
Need 6: Contribution
Corny as it may sound, the secret to living is giving. Life’s not about me; it’sabout we. Think about it, what’s the first thing you do when you get good or exciting news? You call somebody you love and share it. Sharing enhances everything you experience.
Life is really about creating meaning. And meaning does not come from what you get, it comes from what you give. Ultimately it’s not what you get that will make you happy long term, but rather who you become and what you contribute will.
Now think about how money can fulfill the six human needs. Can money give us certainty? You bet. Variety? Check. Obviously it can make us feel important or significant. But what about connection and love? In the immortal words of the Beatles, money can’t buy you love. But it can buy you that dog! And it can, unfortunately, give you a false sense of connection because it attracts relationships, although not always the most fulfilling kind. How about growth? Money can fuel growth in business and in learning. And the more money you have, the more you can contribute financially.
But here’s what I truly believe: if you value Significance above all else, money will always leave you empty unless it comes from a contribution you’ve made. And if you’re looking for significance from money, it’s a high price to pay. You’re looking for big numbers but it’s unlikely you’ll find big fulfillment.
The ultimate significance in life comes not from something external, but from something internal. It comes from a sense of esteem for ourselves, which is not something we can ever get from someone else. People can tell you you’re beautiful, smart, intelligent, the best, or they can tell you that you are the most horrible human being on earth—but what matters is what you think about yourself. Whether or not you believe that deep inside you are continuing to grow and push yourself, to do and give more than was comfortable or you even thought possible. The wealthiest person on earth is one who appreciates.
Wednesday, 25 February 2015
Top 5 Habits of the World's Wealthiest People (Infographic)
What do Oprah Winfrey and Warren Buffett have in common, in addition to their fairly sizable net worths? More than you might think.
An infographic developed by social-media marketing company NowSourcing details some of the qualities and traits shared by the rich (we're talking those who earn more than $160,000 a year and have $3.2 million in assets). If you want to take a page out of Bill Gates' playbook, wake up early, exercise, read more (definitely cut back on your reality TV intake) and write a daily to-do list.
For more tips and statistics, including a gender breakdown and where the world's nearly 31.7 million millionaires call home, check out the infographic below.
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Tuesday, 24 February 2015
Steve Jobs' 13 Most Inspiring Quotes
With a life as storied as he had, it's no wonder that Steve Jobs is remembered not only for running an incredibly successful company, but for being tremendously outspoken.
He seemingly had an opinion on everything, and his thoughts often echoed his obsessive commitment to quality at Apple, whether on his approach to mistakes ("Sometimes when you innovate, you make mistakes. It is best to admit them quickly, and get on with improving your other innovations"), or his attention to detail ("Design is not what it looks and feels like. Design is how it works").
But he had plenty to say on deeper matters as well. Here's a roundup of some of his more thought-provoking words, collected from various interviews and speeches.
"Creativity is just connecting things. When you ask creative people how they did something, they feel a little guilty because they didn't really do it, they just saw something. It seemed obvious to them after a while."
Image credit: Red Touch Media via Flickr
''Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart."
Image credit: Charles Nouÿrit via Flickr
"Be a yardstick of quality. Some people aren't used to an environment where excellence is expected."
Image credit: Jimmy via Flickr
"You can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something – your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever."
Image credit: Anthony Sigalas via Flickr
"Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven’t found it yet, keep looking. Don’t settle. As with all matters of the heart, you’ll know when you find it."
Image credit: Sean O'Sullivan via Flickr
"Being the richest man in the cemetery doesn’t matter to me … Going to bed at night saying we’ve done something wonderful … that’s what matters to me."
Image credit: thierry ehrmann via Flickr
"I’m as proud of many of the things we haven’t done as the things we have done. Innovation is saying no to a thousand things."
Image credit: J M via Flickr
"I think if you do something and it turns out pretty good, then you should go do something else wonderful, not dwell on it for too long. Just figure out what’s next."
Image credit: Wired Photostream via Flickr
"Getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me. The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life."
Image credit: Ben Stanfield via Flickr
"Quality is more important than quantity. One home run is much better than two doubles."
Image credit: Photo Giddy via Flickr
"When I was 17, I read a quote that went something like: 'If you live each day as if it was your last, someday you'll most certainly be right.' It made an impression on me, and since then, for the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: 'If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?'"
Image credit: Anthony Sigalas via Flickr
"I'm convinced that about half of what separates successful entrepreneurs from the non-successful ones is pure perseverance."
Image credit: Zadi Diaz via Flickr
"I want to put a ding in the universe."
Image credit: tsevis via Flickr
A Picture Tells A Thousand Words...Think Different. Happy Birthday Steve Jobs :)
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Monday, 23 February 2015
Sunday, 22 February 2015
Thursday, 19 February 2015
The 9 Things People Decide Within Seconds of Meeting You
Psychologists call it "thin slicing."
Within moments of meeting people, you decide all sorts of things about them, from status to intelligence to promiscuity.
Here are nine of those instant decisions people make:
1. If you're trustworthy
People decide on your trustworthiness in a tenth of a second.
Princeton researchers found this out by giving one group of university students 100 milliseconds to rate the attractiveness, competence, likeability, aggressiveness, and trustworthiness of actors' faces.
Members of another group were able to take as long as they wanted. While other traits differed depending on time spent looking, trustworthiness was basically the same.
2. If you're high-status
A Dutch study found that people wearing name-brand clothes — Lacoste and Tommy Hilfiger, to be precise — were seen as higher status than folks wearing non-designer clothes.
"Perceptions did not differ on any of the other dimensions that might affect the outcome of social interactions," the authors wrote. "There were no differences in perceived attractiveness, kindness, and trustworthiness."
Just status.
3. If you're straight or gay
People can read a man's sexual orientation in a twentieth of a second — the minimum amount of time it takes to consciously recognize a face.
"The rapid and accurate perception of male sexual orientation may be just another symptom of a fast and efficient cognitive mechanism for perceiving the characteristics of others," wrote study authors Nicholas O. Rule and Nalini Ambady.
4. If you're smart
A 2007 study led by Loyola Marymount University professor Nora A. Murphy found that looking your conversation partner in the eye was huge for your perceived smartness.
"Looking while speaking was a key behavior," she wrote. "It significantly correlated with IQ, was successfully manipulated by impression-managing targets, and contributed to higher perceived intelligence ratings."
Wearing thick glasses and speaking expressively helps, too.
5. If you're promiscuous
A British study found that women with visible tattoos were perceived as less attractive, heavier drinkers, and more promiscuous than females without any ink — which owes to stereotypes about women with tattoos.
"In Britain, at least, tattooing among women is often associated with 'ladette' culture, the female equivalent of 'lad' culture, which typically involves a proclivity for alcoholic beverages, sports, fast cars, and a plethora of men's magazines," the authors wrote.
6. If you're dominant
Bald isn't just beautiful; it's powerful.
A University of Pennsylvania study found that "men with shaved heads were rated as more dominant than similar men with full heads of hair," and that "men whose hair was digitally removed were perceived as more dominant, taller, and stronger than their authentic selves."
So if it's starting to go, shave it off.
7. If you're successful
If you want to look successful, get it tailored.
In a British-Turkish study, participants looked at photos of men in tailored versus off-the-peg suits for just five seconds, with the guys in tailored suits rated as more successful.
"On the evidence of this study it appears men may be advised to purchase clothing that is well-tailored, as it can positively enhance the image they communicate to others," the authors wrote.
8. If you're on your way to a promotion
It's not just status — it's earnings potential, too.
In a 2011 Canadian study, university students were shown photos of male models dressed in either business or casual attire. They were then asked questions about how that guy would perform in a variety of jobs.
The results were stark: Not only were the crisply dressed dudes expected to make more money, they were expected to get promoted more rapidly.
9. If you're adventurous
People don't just read into who you are from your appearance, but also from the way you move.
In a Durham University study, students were shown video clips of 26 other students walking — some with looser gaits, some tighter.
Just a few steps were needed to give a sense of personality. Students equated looser gaits with extroversion and adventurousness, while the more clipped walkers were seen as neurotic.
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