Tim Ash

Can't take credit for the phrase - it has been used a lot in many contexts.

 I certainly use it a lot in the context of website design and conversion, and as far as I know, I am the main bigmouth saying it.

If you Google your baby is ugly "tim ash" you get 7,610 results... :-)

True - but there is a different purpose too. The German site seems like it is more for branding, while the Japanese one is more for direct e-commerce.

Q1 - You can't get me to buy baby diapers if I don't have a kid. So your offer has to have compelling value to a specific audience. "How many psychiatry patients does it take to change a light bulb? Only one - but it really has to want to change... :-)"  However, you can make sure that I see the "right thing", understand it's value, trust you as the source for it, and can easily interact to get it. That is CRO.

Q2 - Too many to mention - I wrote a couple of books on this...

Dennis Yu at BlizMetrics is the master of this. Yes you absolutely can measure the impact of social media ROI directly - at least for FB. Here is the outline of how to do it. Take your email list and import it to FB. Some percentage of those will be mapped to specific people with existing profiles. Split that group into two at random parts. Advertise to one of the groups only. Track ROI or various conversion outcomes weighted by value (over the appropriate timeframe), for both groups. Compare results. 

This approach measures true ROI - including virality and indirect influence.

Cultural differences can definitely be very powerful. I think that if you focus on universal neuromarketing principles (how our brains work), you can still apply them across cultures. For example, visual distractions and eliminating those. Also creating biases by presenting your offer in the right context. 

It depends on your business and the relative value of the different conversion goals. Some of our clients equally weight the phone-calls and form-fills. Others know that a call is worth 10x as much (since it is a more immediate and interested prospect calling). So you should offer both response mechanisms on the page, but visually prioritize and bias them to reflect their relative value and the direction you want to nudge people in.

Hi Victor,

Most of the things you mentioned are very tactical. I would try whole-page redesigns that have a radically different approach to conversion. It is not about the individual pieces of the page, but rather the whole experience. 

Hi Joel, thanks for your kind words.

Not a simple question - see my book chapter on the math of testing for more complete reply.

But basically you should always test in increments of one week (to average across time-of-day or day-of-week effects - unless you are specifically looking for those...)

I recommend at least 10 conversions (not unique visitors) per day for even basic split testing. And even them you have to be prepared to run several weeks if the difference between your test versions is small. If you have low data rate, try radically diverse page designs that perform differently.

Hi Joseph,

Any page where a significant audience lands on the way to conversion goals deeper in your site is a landing page. Sometimes the goal is to get them to do something on the page itself, and sometimes it is just to funnel them deeper and closer to the actual response page. So getting them to understand priorities and click on something is a legitimate anc important conversion event for many sites. 

People misunderstand the power of visuals. Basically they distract the visitor and make it hard for them to prioritize. There is a hierarchy - motion, visuals, text - stuff at the higher levels will prevent the visitor on focusing on more subtle stuff at the lower levels. So cut back on the motion and the window-dressing - boring works.

Not sure what to tell you. Compete transparency (after signing non-disclosure agreements) is pretty much a prerequisite for us to work with anyone. The more the client shares, the more helpful we can be. We have a detailed (40 question) questionnaire that we use as a starting point for a recorded kick-off discussion with them. It covers the history of the business, their economics and business model, competitors, marketing, website and technology, as well as any political dimensions inside of the company.

Hey Jason,

We mostly work to improve existing sites, so I am no expert on new product launches.

But certainly email collection in advance of your launch (in order to build your list) is a solid strategy. You just need to figure out the best bribe to offer in exchange for the email, and then optimize that page.

There are two situations:

1) Terms are required by law or regulation - then of course you must have them for compliance and disclosure.

2) Using them as a way to build consumer trust - often having a privacy link near the call-too-action will help people overcome hesitation and convert.

Use ZERO sliders. Motion creates a visual distraction that our primitive brain must respond to. So it resets our attention every time the slider moves. Putting a bunch of commercials into the top of the page by using sliders is also a bad idea from the standpoint of prioritizing - no one will sit still to watch them all go by... 

So do your job and prioritize the small number of choices that you want the visitor to consider by dedicating the right amount of static screen real-estate and visual emphasis to each.

The right balance is ZERO sliders. Motion distracts and resets our attention - we literally can't ignore something moving in our visual field. Our primitive brain must understand the survival implications. So don't use sliders. It is just a lazy designer's approach to packing more stuff above the fold. It is your job to edit and visually prioritize static content on the page (and allocate attention among the different choices available). Have a small number (2-4) clear choices and weigh them properly with the right visual emphasis - but never make someone sit still for a series of slider commercials. 

Test the big stuff first (business model changes or complete page redesigns). Then fine-tune graphics, calls-to-action, and headlines.

See my reply above - did not thread it properly...

Yes - it is critical to have a well-defined diagnostic processes. We developed ours through lots of painful trial and error... :-)

At a tactical level we conduct interactive recorded Express Reviews of client sites and methodically cover production value, organization, calls-to-action, and use of trust on the page/website. 

At a company level we have a detailed process called a Conversion 360 which looks at organizational maturity and gaps in areas like people & structure, tools & systems, culture & politics, and tracking & measurement. All of these impact conversion and the ability of the organization to learn. 

As the head of a professional services agency, my goals are to do interesting and impactful work for our clients, and to profitably grow our business. We have created over $1billion in value for our clients to date and that is very rewarding - so the work speaks for itself. The hard part is profitably growing an agency and building a world-class reputation.

I think that this is a common misunderstanding. Testing is great, but you need to keep it in perspective. CRO is basically improving your business. So everything should be in the mix: your business model, your product offering, the quality of your customer service, your back-end systems and methods for communicating with clients. In other words, it can't be just about some kind of tactical single-page testing. 

Often testing devolves into a crutch to settle bar bets and trivial things are tested (green button vs. orange button kinds of stuff). Sometimes the right thing to do is to change the whole business and user-facing experience. So you might need to blow your website up and start over with a conversion focused redesign blueprint (like we create with our Strategic Conversion Jumpstart process). Then you can do more testing with that as the starting point to refine results further.

On a side note, many smaller businesses do not have the traffic to test (the limiting factor being the number of conversions and not the number of unique visitors to the page). So they have to rely on other means to get the voice-of-the-customer into the equation.

Hey Kevin,

We have actually worked with many law firms and also the FindLaw division of Thompson Reuters. There is nothing that you should carbon copy since each firm has different goals. But a s general observation, you have to make sure that you present trust elements clearly, and also that you view the site expereince from the visitors perspective. If you think of it as a monolithic practice that is just trying to get me to fill out the lead form, you will fail. If you think "someone who has just been injured" is visiting our site, how can we be of service to them, then this user-centered approach will be much more compelling.

If you want to see how we can help specific clients, feel free to email me and I will connect you with someone on our end - tim@sitetuners.com