Uncover High-Impact Testing Ideas: Site Review Strategies

[00:00:00] Divyansh Shukla: Hello everyone. Welcome to ConvEx ’23, VWO’s annual virtual summit for growth and experimentation professionals. My name is Divyansh, and I’m a Marketing Manager at VWO. 

[00:00:19] Thousands of brands across the globe use VWO as their experimentation platform to run A/B tests on their website, apps, and products. This session is all about building relevant testing ideas. I’m happy to introduce you to Will Garbutt and Amy Renyard from the team at Reprise Digital. 

[00:00:37] Hello, Will and Amy. Welcome to ConvEx 2023. The stage is yours.

[00:00:42] Will Garbutt: Hi everyone and welcome to our talk on website review strategies. 

[00:00:45] Hopefully we’ll be able to give you some useful insights and ideas into how to identify some issues with your sites and come up with some effective testing ideas. 

[00:00:54] We’re both from Reprise Digital, who are a full service digital marketing agency, and both myself and my colleague Amy work in the UX team, so we’ve got plenty of experience in working a number of different client projects across a number of different agents, a number of different industries.

[00:01:10] What we’re going to cover today is hopefully give you a understanding of what factors influence website conversion, discover how these strategies can be applied to your website, and give you the ability to identify some of the different areas of optimization and then finally learn how to use these different insights to create a prioritized CRO testing roadmap.

[00:01:30] Amy Renyard: Awesome. So to get started with, we’re going to look at what factors influence conversion. So, there are a number of different factors that affect conversion, hundreds in fact, but we group these into six core categories. 

[00:01:47] So the first one is value. So value refers to how well a website reflects its brand, its offering, and as the word says, its value to its user group.

[00:02:00] Trust is focused on how well the website signals that it is a reputable, trustworthy, secure, safe site that users can shop from in confidence. 

[00:02:09] Relevance refers to how essentially relevant or how the content is to users. So things like product features, all that kind of stuff.

[00:02:23] Clarity refers to how easy it is for users to see things on the site, how clear the layout is and everything related to that element. 

[00:02:33] Urgency refers to how many elements on the site are driving users to take action now. 

[00:02:41] And then conversion, again, all of these factors influence conversion. But when we talk about conversion in this sense, it’s the links, CTAs, anything that is actually enabling a user to convert or progress down the conversion funnel. 

[00:02:58] So we’re going to take you through a few website examples here, just so you can see how we would apply some of these individual factors to a website. 

[00:03:08] So the first one, clear and consistent branding. So you can see this website here.

[00:03:13] It’s very clear that this is all for one brand. It’s got a very strong brand presence and it’s consistent without the page. 

[00:03:22] The second one is value proposition. So when we talk about value proposition, we talk about anything that is showcasing to a user why this product or service is of value and is of use to them.

[00:03:35] The third one is company mission and values. So this is a great way of showing that, again, you’re a company that’s really reputable. You’ve got really core, strong values. You’ve got a really good company culture and you’ve designed something that really, really meets the needs of your target users. 

[00:03:53] And we have a load of other factors that also support value here. 

[00:03:56] So things like main and supporting headlines, that again are a really good way to in short snippets, showcase to your users how you offer value to them, user focused benefits, and also product guarantees as well. 

[00:04:11] So trust, as I mentioned before, trust is about anything showcasing to a user that this website is really secure and safe for them to use.

[00:04:21] First one, social proof. So that can be in the form of customer reviews. So that can be trust pilot scores, any kind of Google ratings or any kind of organic customer reviews. That’s really good to just show that it’s a reputable and trustworthy brand or product. 

[00:04:38] Awards and accreditations. Again, just building that reassurance that if you buy from this site, you are going to get something quality as a result and trust markers. 

[00:04:49] So when we refer to trust markers, these are things like FCA ratings or any kind of industry or legal body that would need to back a particular type of product in a particular type of industry. So users know that it’s safe and secure to buy from that website. 

[00:05:09] We can also have social proof in the form of data in terms of stats, corporate social responsibility information.

[00:05:18] It’s quite good for increasing user trust, as well as contact information and also content accuracy. So relevance, as I mentioned before, this is to do with how relevant the content is to users who are viewing the site. So for example, this website here is all focused on selling plant based meals to users.

[00:05:39] So one of the key things they want to show is their product features, that they’re nutritionally balanced, that they’re fully plant based, just to communicate that this is relevant to that type of user. 

[00:05:50] Product visuals as well are really important, for users to see the product and know that that is something that they want to buy and something that is relevant to their specific needs. And again, highlighted key points and benefits. 

[00:06:03] Again, it’s just showcasing users why this product is really valuable to them, why it’s really relevant to them and why it’s going to fill this need that they have in their daily lives. And we have a number of other features here, such as product comparisons, so comparing two products or a competitor product together.

[00:06:23] Video content is a great way to showcase in a really fluid and interactive way why any product or service is relevant. Personalization, so servicing. Personalized content to users. Again, that’s a great way to ensure that relevance is coming across to them, and also FAQs and when it comes to clarity, again, this is related to how the elements are laid out on the page to attract user attention.

[00:06:52] So, the first one is a clutter free above the fold experience. So, as users land on the page, they don’t want to be distracted by lots of visual clutter, as that will increase their perceptual load, and it may actually lead them to leaving the page as soon as they land. The website needs to be readable.

[00:07:09] There needs to be clear color contrast. Font sizes need to be an appropriate weight, size, just to make sure again, that it’s readable for people with perhaps visual impairments and CTAs. 

[00:07:22] CTAs need to be really, really clear on the page as they are a key conversion driving aspect of any website. So making sure that they’re really stand out against other elements on the website is super important. 

[00:07:33] And then we’ve got a logical content hierarchy. So as a user scrolls up and down a page. They want everything to be arranged in a logical order that makes sense to them as they read through. An F shaped reading patterns, so reading from side to side rather than any kind of crazy diagonal or up and down pattern when it comes to actual blocks of content, is important and as I referenced before, color contrast and making things stand out really clear and are really readable and then any links to additional pages or content should also be clearly highlighted. 

[00:08:06] So with regards to urgency, again, this is how well the site drives users to take action now. So not just action in general, taking action now.

[00:08:16] So one of the best ways that brands can do this is by offering promotional offers, sales, anything like that. Another one is the value of that offer. So that should be something that again is really relevant and valuable to the target user group and again, CTAs also fall under this category here but they should specifically be action orientated, so encouraging users to shop now, read now, whatever it may be.

[00:08:45] They should be really driving action with the way that they are worded. We also have a few other features here, including a promotional offer. So something that could be very specific, as in order now for free delivery, for example. 

[00:08:59] It should be again, relevant to those users and there should be in the general context and copy of the site, just an implied sense of urgency. And conversion, like I mentioned before, this is specifically related to the pathways for users to actually get to the point where they can convert. 

[00:09:19] So the first one, an absolute hero key one, is CTAs. So CTA buttons on a site are an excellent way to drive users down the conversion funnel. So they should be really easily identifiable and when you click them, it should take them to the page that users want to go. 

[00:09:35] And promotional banners. So promotional banners are a really kind of discreet but also attention grabbing. I know that is a bit of an oxymoron but it’s a great way to just showcase something of value to users on the site and also include a really clear and clickable way to get them to convert. And any kind of optimized signup forms or contact forms that are on the page, they’re a great way to while users that encourage them to enter their details and enter into the conversion funnel now, so they should be optimized to facilitate that. 

[00:10:09] And yup, we’ve got a number of key factors here. So we’ve got pop ups and prompts. We’ve got a clear cart. Clear contact details should be clear to encourage users to get in touch.

[00:10:22] Live chat is an excellent way to get users to convert, as it’s really quick, convenient, easy, and you get direct and instant feedback and sticky elements that follow users down the page as they scroll down, such as a Learn More CTA or something like that are a great way to encourage conversion as users explore the content on the page.

[00:10:45] So from that section, we’ve got three key takeaways here. So the first one is that there are multiple conversion influences. So I know I ran through a few just there, but like I said, there are hundreds, if not thousands of individual elements on a page that could influence conversion. But these can be grouped into those six key areas and that framework is a really good way to make sure that when you’re reviewing a website, you encompass all the different areas that are relevant to facilitating an excellent user experience. 

[00:11:18] The second one is to always review a website in context. So whenever you’re reviewing a website, the criteria that you select or the factors that you select to assess how you can improve conversion should always be relevant to that specific website and brand and also that specific industry that it operates in.

[00:11:39] So for example, something like a banking or a financial services website, something like trust would be really, really important. 

[00:11:47] So that’s something to consider that. And again, a third point is that to remember that different users value different things. So every website that you come across will have a different target audience and it’s really important to remember that there’s no one size fits all answer to how well optimized each factor should be or how important that it is and it’s really important to keep in mind what your users value most. 

[00:12:13] This may require some upfront research to identify what the key things are that users care about or want to see on a site but it’s really important that you keep that in mind when reviewing websites in the future.

[00:12:25] Will Garbutt: Thanks for that Amy. So we’ve just covered a lot of the different factors that influence conversion on your website. So now we’re going to dig a bit deeper into some of the different strategies we can adopt in order to really discover those issues and how much of a potential issue some of those findings might be.

[00:12:43] So there’s a number of different tasks you can carry out or types of research you can do in order to really dive into what’s going on with your website and which areas might be underperforming. These range from things like analytics, or you can just see what people are doing on your website, where people are clicking, how many people are looking at certain pages, through to UX audits.

[00:13:03] So using some of those criteria we’ve just discussed to get an understanding of how well your website is meeting those needs at the moment for customers. You can also do some more primary based research. So actually sitting down with people, watching them do tasks on the website and getting an understanding of what works, what doesn’t work, what they can do, what they can’t do. 

[00:13:22] And also things like surveys. So again, on a wider scale, asking people what they want from the website from a proposition or a value point of view, asking them what they value most about your service or what they value most around competitor services. Just to make sure your site is giving them what they want. And then another key part you can do is just compare things to competitors. 

[00:13:43] So how well do you stack up to what they’re doing? Chances are your users are looking at other websites as well at the same time. So making sure you offer at least a good experience as they are, and doing what you can just to rise above it in order to make them more likely to buy from you than they are from anyone else.

[00:14:01] So we’re going to dig into each of these in a bit more detail to hopefully give you a few ideas of how you can go through your site, do a few of these kind of tasks and get an understanding as to what’s working, what’s not working with your sites. 

[00:14:13] So the first one itself is analytics. I think everyone should have access to some form of analytics on their website.

[00:14:18] As I just previously mentioned, it’s all about identifying what pages are working what pages aren’t working where people are potentially dropping off when they’re moving through your website It might be there’s a specific landing page. 

[00:14:31] So it’s got a really high bounce rate that you might want to look into and try and get a real feel as to why are people leaving the site from that page? What kind of information are we not showing there? So it gives you a really good I suppose, starting point of identifying where those issues are and what pages you might want to look at in detail with some of the other tactics in order to really find out what’s going wrong. What can we fix? What are people not getting from the page they’re obviously expecting?

[00:14:56] Another good type of analytics you can look into is a thing called heat maps. So this gives you a more visual view of where people are scrolling on a website, where people are clicking. So some of the examples on the right hand side of the screen here is what’s called a scroll map. So this gives you an idea of what percentage of people are scrolling down your website to see specific bits of content.

[00:15:17] So if you’ve got some really important, good, useful content, or a really important call to action, lower down your page, you can get a view of what percentage of people that go to the site are actually scrolling down there. 

[00:15:30] It might be it’s not as many as you want. So in that case, you start thinking, right, do we need to move that call to action higher up the page? Or do we need to have more content higher up the page to encourage people to explore that page a bit more so they discover that call to action themselves? 

[00:15:44] So all these kind of analytics data you can use in order to get an idea of what’s working on your website potentially what isn’t working, what pages are those problem pages you might want to look at.

[00:15:55] Again, it might be high traffic pages that have got low conversion rates, that kind of thing. So it helps frame your view of what you want to look at in a bit more detail. 

[00:16:06] The next type of tactic we look at is a UX audit. So in essence, this is taking a lot of the criteria we discussed at the first part of this presentation and trying to work out how well your website is meeting each of those needs. 

[00:16:20] There’s a bit of a caveat that every single website type, every single industry, every single type of target audience, values things in a slightly different way. 

[00:16:28] So, as Amy mentioned, banking website, trust is a huge factor because people are obviously giving money to them or investing their money with those kind of services.

[00:16:37] Whereas for other kinds of websites, trust might be slightly less important or there’ll be different factors around trust that make people more likely to want to use that service. 

[00:16:48] So in essence, what you build up during this phase is coming up with almost a checklist of what the perfect website of your industry should have, using a lot of those factors that we discussed in those six different areas. 

[00:17:00] Coming up with, yeah, this is what my website should have on it and this is how well we’re currently meeting that need. So you can end up almost auditing your own site or comparing it against competitors or benchmarking yourself around how well your site is meeting those different criteria needs. And it helps if you come up with some kind of visuals that you can show like we’ve got on the slides. 

[00:17:21] That just give you an idea of why we probably need more value based components in our pages because they’re not meeting that very well, or when people land on the pages they’re not seeing enough to understand the relevance of what they’re looking at.

[00:17:34] I suppose, level is set so you know where you stand when you do these kind of audits and you know where really you want to be, trying to improve or focus your efforts of improving. 

[00:17:43] The next really, really valuable way of identifying issues in your website is user testing. So this is sitting down with users and observing them going through your website. 

[00:17:54] So usually give them a specific task to do say go on this website and buy a specific product and you watch them go through page to page you get them to speak out loud to get an understanding of what they’re doing, why they’re doing it, when they click things, what are they expecting to find, what are they expecting to see, what are they expecting to be able to click or read about or or what kind of information they want. 

[00:18:16] And just doing this simple observation exercise just give some really really good insights into why people are doing things. A lot of the the other types of work we’ve just talked about specifically the analytics. It gives you an idea of what’s happening. So, you know a specific page isn’t working or you know, people aren’t clicking on a certain button. 

[00:18:35] The user testing tries to help answer that, why is that happening? So you can you can get an understanding of what people are doing, why they’re doing things, why they’re not doing things, and try and understand what we can do in order to make it more likely for them to continue that purchase journey and really be able to go from page to page with as much confidence as possible and hopefully leading to a sale or a conversion at the end of things.

[00:18:59] One of the I suppose more newer ways of analyzing websites now is using eye tracking and visual design reviews. So this from a purely design perspective gives an idea of what elements are standing out to people. So is your key message in standing out clearly when people first land on a page. 

[00:19:18] Do calls to action stand out or they’re getting lost between other kinds of imagery or just that the styling isn’t right or the colors of the buttons don’t quite stand out. 

[00:19:27] And currently at Reprise we use a number of different AI power tools. In order to really predict where people’s focus would go. So being able to upload screenshots or look at a specific page and getting reports out that say, this is where people’s eyes go within that first three to five seconds of landing on the page.

[00:19:48] So you can really understand, are my most important messaging standing out to people, or is that messaging that’s really key in the conversion journey? Is he getting lost behind the clutter of the page? So doing these kind of research or this kind of analysis gives you that data led view of whether a design is working or not and are the right things standing out.

[00:20:14] Next, we move on to a more typical way of doing things, so just market research. Sending out surveys to your target users and saying, what kind of things do you expect us to offer on our websites? What kind of value propositions you expect us to have? Why do you shop with us over competitors?

[00:20:31] Why would you choose competitors over us? And trying to get that real primary data that helps you validate which of those specific criteria on your website is most important than anyone else, you could have a one size fits all list of an eCommerce website.

[00:20:49] It should have these 50 things to be good. But this adds the extra level of personalization that says right for an eCommerce website targeting our target market these are the real 50 things that our audience really need and helps you just audit and get an understanding of your website much better when you add that extra user focus lens onto it. 

[00:21:11] And then what you can do after doing each and every one of these different tactics is just benchmark against competitors. So get an understanding of how well you stack up against the other people you’re up against in the market. 

[00:21:23] Chances are if you’re an eCommerce website, there’s other eCommerce websites out there that sell exactly the same thing so this gives you an idea of right how well do we benchmark against them?

[00:21:34] What are the key features or areas of the website that they’ve got that we don’t? How can we optimize our website in order to be better than them. What can we learn from them? What do we want to be doing differently? And just gives you a good idea of the lay of the land of where you are and which of the areas you probably want to focus on most in order to improve conversions the best.

[00:21:55] And once you’ve found out all those issues or all those areas of interest in your website, you can start creating hypotheses for each of these findings and try and work out why we’ve identified some of these issues. 

[00:22:06] How do we fix those? Or how do we approach improvements of the website in a real focused manner that allows us to optimize our website in the most efficient way possible. 

[00:22:18] So creating these hypotheses as I said lets you focus your efforts around what you’re trying to achieve. It lets you nail down exactly what you’re trying to measure. So by fixing this thing on this website, we’ve got to improve this specific KPI or this specific metric and it allows you to better plan and prioritize things so you’re not wasting time or money by just throwing everything against the wall and seeing what sticks.

[00:22:41] So a good thing we found is really structuring each of these hypotheses. So, based on some data we found using this specific research method, we’ve observed this specific problem and we’re going to solve this by doing this solution for this type of user and this should lead to a very specific outcome and we’ll measure that by using this metric or this KPI. 

[00:23:02] So as I said, it keeps you focused. It keeps everyone on the same page. It’s so everyone knows this is exactly what we’re trying to fix and it’s based on this kind of finding that we had from this piece of research and we’ve got a specific number in mind.

[00:23:15] It might be a bounce rate. It might be conversion rate. It might be click through rate of a button but you’ve got a specific metric that each of these improvements are trying to improve. 

[00:23:26] So some key takeaways from this section that I’ve just run you through is, just make sure you do your research, understand what matters most to your users and you can do that using a number of different methods. And the output of that’s normally like a checklist of all the things that matter most to your customers. 

[00:23:42] Make sure you’re asking the right people when you do that. People are people to an extent but if you’re looking at a very specific type of target audience, their needs might be totally different from the general population.

[00:23:53] So make sure you’re asking the right people the right questions and then once you’ve discovered a lot of issues using these tactics we’ve discussed, create hypotheses for your findings to try. Focus your effort and really understand what are we trying to improve by thinking about some of these issues and thinking about some of these improvements.

[00:24:09] Amy Renyard: Perfect. 

[00:24:09] So what we’re going to look at now is we’re going to look at an in depth review of a real UK website. So, this website is B&Q. So B&Q are a UK based supplier of all kinds of DIY and garden related products. 

[00:24:26] So they are not one of our clients currently. However for the purposes of this, we have come up with a hypothetical brief just so you can see how we would approach this on a day to day basis.

[00:24:39] So imagine that B&Q have approached us with the goal of driving people along the conversion funnel from their homepage. So they’ve shown us some analytics data, which we’ve had a look at and it indicates that the homepage has a really high bounce rate compared to any other area of the conversion funnel.

[00:24:56] So this is where they want to focus our efforts and identify the key factors that we could potentially tweak and test to boost conversion. So just to give a little bit more background here. So the website, b&Q is an eCommerce website and it sells a wide variety of DIY, home and garden products, again, to customers based in the UK.

[00:25:17] The industry they’re in is home improvements and garden living retail. So their competitors would be companies like Ikea, which is more of a global brand, Wix, which is a UK brand. Also Screwfix, UK brand as well. 

[00:25:31] Audience. So this obviously covers a wide range of consumers from homemakers to people who are just getting into DIY and don’t really know where to start.

[00:25:41] People have been doing DIY for years. All the way through to full time professional tradesmen. So when it comes to defining the accused target audience and getting a really specific idea of their personas, we’ve done some survey research, identify some specific things that these people particularly care about or that are particularly important to them.

[00:26:09] So the first one is customer reviews. So, when shopping online, these customers really want to know what other people thought about the product that they may be buying or they may be interested in buying. They want to know about its quality, if they thought it was good value for money and they just really want to see what other people thought before potentially making a decision to purchase.

[00:26:29] Another important one is delivery information. Some people who have an on the go DIY project on something like a bathroom might need supplies delivered ASAP. So it’s really important for them to see clear delivery information in terms of if there’s an opportunity to click and collect, if home delivery is available, how fast delivery there is, if all products are available to delivery.

[00:26:53] That kind of information is really important to them. Likewise is ease of navigation. So this is a very big site that contains lots of different products in lots of different categories. So it’s likely that when a user lands on this page, they’ll have a really specific use case. For example, they may be repainting their bedroom and need a new tin of paint.

[00:27:14] So they’ll want to find that as quickly as possible when accessing the site. So creating a really streamlined navigation and search is really important to them. 

[00:27:24] And likewise, price. Value for money for these people is really important, particularly for someone who’s perhaps doing a whole home renovation and have lots of things to buy.

[00:27:33] Price, deals and special offers are something that are really drawing to them and really pique their interest. So the first issue that from conducting a professional review, we would identify is the main CTA on the page. So as we discussed earlier, CTAs are a great way to drive conversion and the main CTA on this page at the moment is rather small. 

[00:27:59] So when we ran this through our AI eye tracking software that Will mentioned earlier, we found that only 0.7% of user attention was drawn to the main CTA above the fold, which indicates that this needs to be drawing a lot more attention to drive as many conversions as possible from this particular feature.

[00:28:20] So what we would recommend is past studies that we’ve done for clients has indicated that increasing the size of a CTA button has a positive effect on conversion. So this would be our testing recommendation moving forward. 

[00:28:37] Again, you can see an example of a specific hypothesis we would create to test this specific idea. So based on the data found using our AI eye tracking, we observed that the main CTA drew little attention. We’d want to solve this by increasing the size of the CTA for users who land on the home page. 

[00:28:57] This should lead to progression down the conversion funnel. So click through to the next page and we would measure this impact with clicks on that specific CTA.

[00:29:08] Will Garbutt: The next one we look into in this theoretical scenario was the user benefits bar. So at the moment, it’s obviously promoting these things which B&Q feel are really important to their customers. So we’ve got, free one hour click and collect. Great. Free delivery on thousands of products, 90 days returns, and promoting the joining the B&Q club to save money.

[00:29:30] We have hypothesized that potentially if we were to do some kind of surveys different kind of feedback might come back. So in this case we know people who shop for DIY products want things like price matching, review scores, free returns. 

[00:29:46] They all write really highly when it comes to asking customers what they want and from doing some kind of competitor review and understanding what competitors are offering from a value proposition point of view.

[00:29:56] These are the kind of user benefits that they are promoting. So looking just at this promotional bar at the moment from B&Q’s point of view, there’s a few different types of messaging we might want to promote in order to really hammer home why people should shop at B&Q over somewhere else’s. 

[00:30:14] So being able to update the wording or tweak some of the information on this to promote what people are looking for.

[00:30:20] I think one of the specific examples is around free returns. A lot of competitors offer free returns and make a big song and dance about it. In this case, 90 day return policy sounds amazing but customers have no idea how much that costs. 

[00:30:34] Is it free? Is it free for certain things or not. So they have to almost click through to a separate page which puts a stop to their conversion journey and makes them have to go slightly off to the side in order to find out a bit more information rather than giving them the information they need up front in order to ease that journey and make it as easy as possible.

[00:30:55] So in this case, we’ve got based on data found using user surveys, we observe users care more about different benefits than what we’ve been displayed. 

[00:31:03] We’d want to solve this by better showcasing the relevant benefits based off the data from the survey in the benefits bar. This should lead to users becoming more likely to make a purchase, and we’ll measure that impact by the reduction of the bounce rate on that homepage because people don’t have to go off to a different page or leave the site because they think B&Q don’t offer them what they want.

[00:31:22] Amy Renyard: So for this third part, we’re going to look at visual clutter. So as we mentioned earlier clear and easy navigation is really important for B&Q customers. And whilst the main navigation is perhaps clear at the top of the page. As soon as a user lands on the site, the whole screen, it’s very visually overwhelming.

[00:31:44] So this greatly increases the perceptual load which in other words is the cognitive demand placed on users when they land on the site and what tends to happen when this is the case is again users will just exit. 

[00:31:55] If they land on a site and they’re too overwhelmed, they’ll just leave straight away and continue their search for another site where as soon as they land, they are more easily directed to where they want to be.

[00:32:07] So we ran this through our AI tracking tool again. So, as Will mentioned before, as well as just tracking where user attention focuses, it gives us a lot of really useful metrics to track user attention and cognition levels. And we found that the above the fold experience of this page achieved a cognitive demand score of 70, which is way beyond the recommended industry benchmark of anywhere between 35 to 60 for an eCommerce landing page.

[00:32:37] So this is something we would definitely recommend is addressed to boost conversion. So we do this by redesigning the above the fold experience to reduce the amount of elements on the page and the visual clutter while still maintaining engagement and user retention. So we would employ a designer at this point.

[00:32:57] We’d give them a brief based on our evidence and what we found and ask them to redesign this above the fold experience here. So it’s still in line with the B&Q branding but presents a much more visually clear and engaging user experience. 

[00:33:13] So our third hypothesis based on the data found using the visual design review, we observed a high perceptual load.

[00:33:21] We want to solve this by reducing visual clutter for users who land on the homepage. This should lead to increased user retention and we will measure this impact with the reduction in the bounce rate. 

[00:33:36] Will Garbutt: Perfect. I think the next logical question is, which test do you do first? Can I do all the tests at once? What’s the most important thing to do next? So there’s a stage around planning and prioritizing each of these tests. I think in an ideal world, you’ve done a lot of different research, a lot of different analysis on the pages. 

[00:33:55] You do back to each one of these hypotheses with a lot of real data and you’d have a list of say, I don’t know, 10 to 20 different types of tests or different types of recommendations in your mind and you’re not really sure which one to do first. 

[00:34:08] So we start using this prioritization matrix. So there’s a number of different ways of prioritizing but mainly they’re focused around things like impact and effort.

[00:34:17] So how much impact do you think this testing idea will have if it’s successful and mainly how easy is it to implement? I think there’s no point recommending a test that’s going to take hundreds of thousands of pounds and months and months to develop unless it’s going to have really, really big gains.

[00:34:35] So being able to marry the two between effort and impact and get an understanding of where’s the sweet spot between how you want to do things, I think is really key. 

[00:34:45] So what you end up thinking about is how much of an effort is something like changing the homepage CTA, in this case, a bit of restyling, potentially some more promotional focused wording. Really low effort because it’s a very small piece of design work. But potentially it could have a really high impact because a lot of people land on that site and we’re pretty confident that changing it will have a positive impact based on some of the research we’ve done previously.

[00:35:12] So being able to go through your list of potential tests and rank them and prioritize them and plan them based on all this information. I think it’s a nice, quick and easy way for you to work out what could be a quick win that you could do really quickly and easily and what needs a bit more thinking and working out if it’s something you really want to go ahead with.

[00:35:33] And they’re basically once you’ve got that big list of perspective tests. That’s when you begin the conversion rate optimization program. A lot of what we’ve just spoken about is around these first few steps, doing all the research to identify what problems we’ve got and ideating what the solutions could be and planning and prioritizing a lot of those potential new tests you can do.

[00:35:59] Then obviously you want to start setting up the tests themselves, running them, monitoring and reviewing if they’ve actually worked. 

[00:36:04] So hopefully, this has given you a good overview of how you can do that research, how you can quickly identify a few of the issues on your website and be able to really come up with some of those quick fire testing ideas that could then form part of the wider CRO roadmaps and CRO strategies.

[00:36:22] So there’s some final takeaways from the whole presentation. It’s all about understanding the factors that are most influential to your audience. 

[00:36:31] So we hopefully listed quite a lot of different potential issues that someone might come up with or some potential factors that users found interesting but it really does depend who your audience is, what your audience finds most important and most useful and then being able to audit your site against those factors to work out what’s going to have the biggest impact.

[00:36:52] Identifying those issues, I think we mentioned quite a few different potential methods of doing that. Some are quick and easy. Some need some time and money to invest in them but being able to really identify what issues again matter most to your audience is really important and then being able to prioritize what those solutions are.

[00:37:13] I think no one’s got unlimited budget and no one’s got unlimited time. So being able to really rank the importance of each of those issues using things like how easy it is to implement what kind of impact we’re going to have, how many people would see that test and just being able to quickly and easily organize that in the prioritization matrix to get an understanding of why we can get started straight away by fixing this or testing this but this one might be a bit more of a long term investment.

[00:37:38] So making sure you can focus your efforts and don’t waste what could be limited resources and limited budget on tests that are going to have low impact off the end of it. And that is the end of our presentation.

[00:37:51] So yeah, thank you very much for listening everyone and hopefully you all found that useful.

[00:37:56] Divyansh Shukla: Will and Amy, thank you for a really insightful presentation today. I’m sure that this session will help us build better and relevant testing ideas. 

[00:38:03] ConvEx 2023 is filled with more such impactful content. Stay tuned to listen to amazing sessions lined up ahead. See you there.