CXL Scholarship — 1st Week Review

I just started learning about Conversion Optimization using the mini degree thay CXL is offering. I had the chance to be accepted in the scholarship program and this is going to be a report of what I learned there. It would be very nice of you to follow me on the list and learn with me along the way. I am trying to be as generous as CXL is and make it easy to read by using a bulleted list.

1- Intro to CRO

• I learned about the basics of CRO. that is not just about A/B testing and instead, it is about a wide range of things. That it is basically about doing things based on data.
• The instructor looks friendly and he talks about real-life experiences, not just fictional stories that are not practical. I like this kind of teaching the most, cause I feel comfortable continuing on.
• One thing that was mentioned about biases really touched me, because I’ve previously read about it. We tend to do a lot of things just based on what we THINK they are correct, but they are not.
• What has worked for others does not necessarily work for us. So we should stop stealing others’ ideas. Bad or good ones.
• You might come up with a lot of ideas, yours and others’. You only can put them to use after you’ve tested them and validate their claimed advantages.
• You have to pay attention to how many people have rated your product. The more they are, the better the result will be. It is called the sample size.
• After considering the quantity of sample size, it is important to look at the quality of it. Are they really among your potential customers? How likely are they to become a customer of your product? You don’t just need data, you need insightful and useful data
• You will have a ton of ideas. Make a list of these ideas and refer back to them. After having this list, try to make a hypothesis out of them. Make it clear what you expect of those ideas and how are you going to measure their effectiveness. This kind of reminds me of SMART goals.
• There is a good framework called ICE for rating ideas. ICE sorts ideas based on their Impact, Confidence, and Effort. We tend to pick ideas that require low effort and yield high impact. Needless to say that we should have enough proof (data) for that idea’s correctness.
• You will need insights to validate your ideas. You can use analytics, user testing, heat maps, available research results, focus groups, and various other methods that were mentioned.
• Conversion Rate Optimization is almost always known to be equal to A/B testing. But A/B testing is only part of it. For example, you can change creatives to see which version does the job the best. Variations should be simultaneously put to test and let the audience decide which one works better.
• When you are doing A/B testing, you shouldn’t be afraid of losing and failure. Failing is quite natural when doing A/B testing.
• Don’t forget that there is no way of playing this game safely. You have to experiment, [push yourself to the edges and make an impact, something like generating more leads, closing more deals, and having an impact on the cotton line.

2- Best Practices

• Seeing an article instead of a video lecture kind of surprised me. I thought this course is fully based on videos.
• Peep Laja says that best practices are bullshit. You should not base your thoughts on them and use them for your business. If it has worked, it has worked only for them. You can just use them as a baseline to understand what works and what doesn’t.
• There is a very long article on Web-Forms. Using forms is important because it gives an online business the opportunity to have a dialogue with their customers.
• Designing a form is a very sensitive task and should be taken care of. Asking for too many questions can lead to user churn and only asking a few questions will result in low-quality leads.
• You shouldn’t intimidate your users. If you need to ask numerous questions, put them in multiple steps or sections on the page.
• Peep points out 10 useful tips to optimize web-forms. The main point that I learned was that on the occurrence of any errors, we can send an event to Google Analytics to track main issues. Using qualitative methods like user testing and video playbacks (tools like Hotjar) can lead to better results.
• Next thing that was discussed: Sorting and Filtering on e-commerce sites. Peep points out things that I have personally experienced When I was working for e-commerce.
• People need to filter products based on general and specific features. This gives them the feeling that they are in control. Sorting is another necessity.
• I learned the application and the idea behind badges here. They are made to simplify the process of decision making for those who can’t make it. Badges should be familiar to the users.
• People buy online after seeing the product images and their prices. So we have to show them these two things more than anything else.
• CTA (Call to Action) leads people to the next logical step. It should be able to convince people to click.
• According to Fitt’s Law, the bigger and closer the CTA is, the more people will click on it. A pretty simple rule of thumb.
• If you want to experiment, changing the color of the CTA should be the last one
• CTA should be distinctive and should have a copy that people can understand.
• Pay attention to the fold. Your above the fold page is the most precious thing you have. It is something that the user sees without the need to scroll down.
• Using scroll maps and heat maps, you can understand if your pages follow the rules of Fold or not. Nothing about should be looked at as a rule. Every website should have its own set of rules for above the fold content.
• We are familiar with forced signups on eCommerce sites. This puts a big stop on the customers’ way and reduces the chance of him becoming a paying customer.
• No physical store asks us for our email address or phone number. We should act normally online either. There are other ways to get users’ info and make them loyal to the brand.
• I have always loved the social login option and am glad that it’s been introduced as a beneficial option here.
• Measuring how many people actually respond to our call request is crucial. We can use call tracking services or we can have events in Google Analytics to count the number of calls. Very helpful tip.
• Peep’s presentation was very good. I learned a lot from it, especially the idea of visual hierarchy. The most important part of the page must be visually dominant. simple, right?
• We make emotional decisions and then try to rationalize them. How good is this sentence? I think I’ve previously seen it in a book or two and it resonates very well with my thoughts.
• As long as your users can easily consume your texts, you can use Serif or Sans Serif fonts together.
• Avoid making a Wall of Text, because it basically won’t get read and makes users leave you. Try breaking long texts into headings, lists, paragraphs, etc.
• A great thing that I learned was Local Maxima which the point that you try to make changes and they don’t work. You have reached the maximum possible optimization level and you need to change the scope.

The Idea of Local Maxima

• If you can change the current design, don’t go for a total redesign. Just try to make things better based on data. If change is necessary, act cautiously and tread step by step.
• The homepage is kinda the most important page of your website. You shouldn’t be copying from others on your homepage. This page is supposed to teach others about your services and ultimately drive them toward the sales funnel.
• The page that talks about pricing is a long read and conveys valuable concepts. I read them one by one and really enjoyed all the pricing strategies. They really are about leveraging psychology in marketing.
• Decoy Pricing and Price Anchoring really touched my and I think I’ve fully absorbed them.
• Next, Page Speed was discussed at CXL Conversion Optimization. Using CDN and Caching, Minimizing CSS and JS requests, and all of those stuffed that I was familiar with because of my SEO knowledge. It was good though.
• Visual Hierarchy again. It seems to be very important and Peep talks about it again here. What has the most value in your opinion should be present at the top of the visual hierarchy.
• The next thing that was really shocking to me, was the fact that FAQs are not required. People won’t’ read them! Whatever you want to answer in the FAQ, answer them in the body copy.

I will continue talking about this section in the following report.