Amadesa

You are successful. You have the software that enables you and your team. You have a “culture of optimization” that allows you to make calculated, strategic decisions about your website. You have the dedication and drive to succeed in testing, optimization and continual improvement.

Where do you start?

When do you start?

How do you start?

When and How are easy answers. When = ASAP. How = By learning about website optimization, with the help of Amadesa’s Optimization Account Management Team, or by just getting something new and interesting on your site via a simple AB test...!

Where is a tricky question and the answer is… It depends. Here are a few steps to go through when you are deciding where to start your optimization project.

Step 1: identify, Qualify and Quantify Business Goals

You have business goals. You know that if you increase the conversion rate by “x” you make “$xxx,xxx.xx” more revenue every month. The question to answer is – “What business goals will make the most (or save the most) money now?” Is it:

• Decreasing homepage bounce rate
• Increasing email opt-ins
• Increasing shopping cart conversion rate
• Improving ad click through rate
• Improving pages viewed per visit
• Improving revenue per visit
• Decreasing shopping cart abandonment
• Increasing average order value
• Reduce ad spend by converting more PPC traffic

Once your core business objectives are identified, you can begin to quantify the improvement of each business goal. For instance if you are a top 500 Internet Retailer, and you can improve homepage click through rate by 300%, the current and future value of that improvement is “$x” and justified by up to an “$x” investment in time, resources and materials. Similarly, if you can improve shopping cart conversion rate by 5%, the value of that improvement is “$x” over 30 days, 90 days, 365 days. Once the dollar value of each goal is identified, allocating time and resources becomes an easier process.

Step 2 – Find a website optimization and personalization partner

Step 3 – Identify your key customer segments or customer 'personas'

This step is important if you want to resonate uniquely to each key segment of your audience. While behavioral targeting will personalize the user experience down to each user, segmentation allows us to define groups of like 'personas' that are relevant to your business.

For instance – Visitors arriving via Google natural search account for 50% of visits and 60% of revenue. This is a key customer segment and targeting this segment with specific optimizations and tests should improve overall revenue. Other examples include email programs, PPC advertisements, affiliates, direct load or customers that visited 2 times previously. Your key customer segments are specific to your business and can be identified in your web analytics, BI or CRM applications.

Step 4 – Launch your optimizations based upon your business goals as defined in step 1; start with the goal that has the highest value

For most e-commerce websites, average order value, shopping cart abandonment and homepage engagement rate are primary metrics. What tests should you start with?

Testing your add to cart buttons with several variations of style color and text may assist in improving AOV, revenue per visit and overall 'add to carts'. For some perspective, take a look at the following that provides an overview of the diversity of the add to cart button - 107 Add to Cart Buttons of the Top Online Retailers. I hope all of these buttons are being tested, targeted and refined...!

Testing shopping cart page elements like checkout buttons, remove from cart buttons and promotions (free shipping, contests, etc.) can assist in improving shopping cart conversion rate and understanding more about your auidience. Additionally, test reinforcing your return policy, privacy policy and the security of personal information such as credit cards, email address and telephone numbers. Something as simple as adding "we value your privacy" on your cart page, may assist in converting users to the checkout process.

Homepage engagement rate can be improved with behavioral targeting; presenting the right content to the right visitor at the right time. Start by creating diverse treatments of your top selling items, highest margin products or promotions. The behavioral targeting engine will utilize all creative concepts and begin developing models of your traffic over time. Once enough data is accumulated, the engine will start to personalize content delivery for each user.

This is just scratching the surface and the amount of granularity in testing and optimization is almost infinite. Ultimately, by concentrating on your top business goals first, you can begin to make real impacts on your revenue objectives.

Questions, comments, thoughts? Want to discuss a testing and optimization strategy for your website? Drop me an email.