Steps To Get The Most Out Of Your Optimization Team

The following are simple steps you can take before you start an engagement with an optimization company so that when we come together to increase ROI, we can hit the ground running.  If all these steps are prepared and taken before your kickoff call, you will get the benefits of our analyst’s expertise and professional insights based on what they find in your data faster, and you will be able to begin testing right away! The essay writing service emphasizes that If you cannot set these things up on your own, the company you plan to engage with should help you.

Make Sure You Know What the Goals of Your Site Are

We cannot say it enough.  whether you are an eCommerce site or a lead generation site, B2B or B2C, give a numerical value to everything. Know what the value of your goals is.  It can be tough, but it has to be done.  We can assure you that more complicated things have been given numerical value before. No Optimization company out there can give you proper insights if they cannot calculate the value of the changes you make and the improvements you experience on your site.  This information will help you to prioritize your site changes and use your resources effectively.

Set Up Goal Funnels and eCommerce Tracking in Your Analytics Account

 Before calling a service provider looking for help, start by setting yourself up to succeed by setting up goals & funnels.

Get Site Search Set Up on Your Website if You Have It

You do not need to add a site search if you do not already have it.  Let your conversion experts look at your data and decide if it could be a valuable contribution to your site. 

Make Sure You Have a Team of Resources that Can Help You Implement Testing and Changes to Your Site

You cannot do it all on your own.  Even the smallest site should have one designer and one developer contracted before starting a CRO engagement.  From our experience, clients with at least these resources at their behest have the most success in increasing their conversion rate.

Get Google Website Optimizer or Some Other Testing Platform Set up and Get a Basic Understanding of How A/B and Multivariate Testing Work

 This can be a little complicated and you will probably need assistance from your CRO experts and developers once you start testing.  At the same time, you will be much more comfortable starting the engagement if you have some background information.

Have a Goal in Mind

Don’t be petrified of setting goals, they’re notorious for helping people achieve success.  Maybe you don’t know what an inexpensive goal is that this early within the process, but don’t worry, your goals can change.  Write down 3-5 major belongings you would love to determine to happen on your website that directly affect your bottom line.  An example list may be:

a. Increase average sales per day from 60 to 100 within the next year

b. Develop a social media campaign to increase my sale of blue widgets by 20% from Facebook, Twitter, and our company Blog by the 4th quarter

c. Decrease spending on our PPC campaigns by 10% while keeping ROI from campaigns consistent or improving it in the next 3 months.

d. Increase page views from the homepage to increase AdSense revenue by 15% by December 2021.

What’s the Best Place to Start Optimization?

If you’re reading this post, congratulations! You’re already leaps and bounds ahead of many of your competitors because you recognize that simply creating a website is not enough. Whether you’re optimizing for the first time since your site launched 6 years ago or 6 months ago, it can be a very overwhelming process. There is simply so much that you can do, and deciding where to begin is often a stressful decision. Many of you may be throwing things on the site and seeing what sticks, and while I must commend you for at least trying, chances are, you’re wasting time and money with this tactic.

So, where to start? Planning. While it may not be as “glamorous” as testing or creating a new design for your site, setting up your optimization plan will help you budget accordingly and achieve your goals. Optimization is much like fixing up your home – you can do a full gut or just paint a few rooms, but having a plan before you tear out that wall is critical to the success of the project.

First, decide how much time and what resources you are prepared to put into optimization. It’s very important to be realistic about your resources and constraints. If you’re a one-man shop, chances are expecting to dedicate 20 hours a week to optimization will translate into failure or disappointment. Believe it or not, we’ve worked with many smaller clients in the past that met the “one-man shop” criteria despite having several employees. If you only have one person working on your marketing, you’re still in that category as far as optimization is concerned.  You may be a little bit better off if that one person is 100 percent dedicated to your marketing, but they will still have lots on their plate in addition to optimization tasks.  Remember that resources include both money AND time and that if you’ve never done more detailed work with Analytics, copywriting design, and your website, many of your tasks will take longer than you expect.

Now, pause. Ask yourself: are the resources you’ve allocated realistically for the returns you seek? If you have allocated 10 hours each week and 1 copywriter, and expect to see a 20% increase in conversion, that may not be realistic. That is not to say that it’s impossible to achieve your goals; it’s important to understand that with optimization, what you put into your efforts is directly related to what you get out of them. When considering whether or not you’ve set aside enough resources to reach your goals, be sure to look at your business and your competitors. Is there space within your industry to gain a 20% increase in conversion rate, or is your market already flooded? Shoe sites are a great example of a flooded market. There are so many online these days that unless you can compete with a large retailer on price, shipping, and availability, you may be able to achieve only a 3-10% increase in conversion rate with optimization efforts, because of the already saturated market.  Read more about how to set an optimization budget.

Next, determine what metrics you’ll use to gauge your success. While many of our OnTarget subscription clients focus mainly on conversation rate, it’s not uncommon for a particular business to gain a higher return on a particular type of item or service, so that increasing sales of that particular product or service is another marker of success.

Now that you’ve set your goals and allocated your resources, it’s time to look for opportunities; it’s time to go to the data. Sticking with our earlier example, you’ve already decided that you don’t have the time or money to invest in a developer or designer right now. So although the data may be showing a large drop-off in your 5-step checkout, fixing this right now without a developer may not be in the cards. (Side note: It’s great to recognize larger projects when looking through your data, and while I’d urge you to make these a priority, I’m realistic about the financial burden of larger projects like moving to a 1-page checkout present. Gaining small wins using current resources can help bankroll larger projects that need to be tackled. Still, it’s important to remember opportunity cost: is it worth driving more, well-qualified traffic to your shopping cart only to have them drop out?)

The Two Top Places to Begin Looking for Optimization Opportunities Are

• Areas of high abandonment. Areas of high abandonment are like red flags telling you that something isn’t working for your visitors. But that doesn’t always mean they are the best place to start your optimization.  One notable exception is if you find an area or page with 100% bounce, but your traffic to the area is under 50 Unique Visitors per month. This IS NOT a good place to optimize. You want to find high traffic pages with a high abandonment rate.

• The checkout process. The checkout process is a great place to start as well because it typically has a lot of “low hanging fruit”… if you’re a regular Grok reader, you already know that “low hanging fruit” indicates areas of the site where making small changes can yield large returns. Visitors entering the checkout process have already determined that you have a solution that fits their needs, but often they encounter some type of barrier that prevents them from checking out. For some personas, the difference between converting and not may be as simple as reassurances on the checkout page, or shipping estimates within the cart, so it’s a great place to begin your efforts.

Notice that we’re able to calculate the value of each of these goals, they are actionable and are given a specific time frame. Goals like these help your company and your CRO team stay on the same path.  When everyone is working toward the same thing, it gets done faster and with fewer headaches!

About the author: Timothy M. Wilson works as a content provider for essaywritingservice.nyc. He is interested in self-development and spiritual awakening. So he likes keeping up with modern tendencies of personal development. It helps him plan ahead and have time to do everything.