Lost in Optimization: How We Excel at Websites but Neglect Our Organization

[00:00:00] Hi there. 

[00:00:09] Welcome to my presentation on Lost in Optimization. In this presentation, we will talk about an overlooked paradox in our work as conversion rate optimization specialists. In our work, we conduct thorough user and data research and use those insights to optimize our websites and digital products.

[00:00:33] However, we often neglect to apply the same mindset within our organizations. This hinders us from creating a thriving experimentation environment. When we do apply the same mindset. As you will learn in this presentation, wonderful things will happen. 

[00:00:55] But first, let’s briefly introduce myself. My name is Rubén, and I have been in the data optimization and experimentation business for nearly 15 years.

[00:01:07] Today. I’m the lead consultant at the award-winning agency, Online Dialogue, and owner of Conversion Ideas. With conversion ideas, I want to help people learn and excel in conversion rate optimization for affordable prices. I’m also an international keynote speaker, and live and breathe optimization, both at work and in my personal life.

[00:01:33] I live in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, and in the picture, hiking with my girlfriend, Zoe and dog, Happy as we love to do so in our vacations. 

[00:01:45] And this is me in 2015. I know I do not look one day older, but I am a lot wiser. In 2015, I worked in data and optimization for seven years. It was then that I realized CRO should not be a one person job.

[00:02:04] It should be a company-wide mindset.

[00:02:08] I wanted to get more support and freedom in my work with more people contributing to experimentation. I wanted to test bigger changes, new features, overcome resistance, and get colleagues to understand the importance of experimentation. And this is exactly what you will get from this presentation. By the end of this presentation, you’ll know how to make that happen in your organization. 

[00:02:39] Back in 2015, my journey began with simple steps. Sending update emails about experiment results, presenting AB test outcomes, and hosting lunch and learn sessions. But it did not work. I did not get more support and I did not get more freedom for two simple reasons.

[00:03:00] First, my colleagues did not care. They applied the same way of working for many, many years. So why switch to experimentation? And second, I forgot to use my CRO mindset. I still see this mistake happen today. A CRO mindset is about making decisions based on data and insights with great curiosity. It is the drive to dig deeper and better understand the situation, to know what works and what doesn’t.

[00:03:29] It is about optimizing anything by embracing experimentation. It is about continuously learning and understanding that failure is a part of the process. And this is crucial in organizations because when did you last track? How many colleagues read your update emails? When did you last check if your colleagues actually use your insights in their work?

[00:03:54] And when was the last time you asked a key stakeholder how she perceives experimentation? 

[00:04:01] We are masters of optimizing our websites. We conduct data and user research. We experiment and optimize. But we overlook a crucial area. We often forget to apply the same theories and mindsets in our organizations.

[00:04:18] So if your answer to these three questions is never. That is okay. 99% of people forget to do this. So we must apply our zero O mindset to internal communications and change management within our organization. By using our CRO mindset internally, we can realize impactful organizational change resulting in a thriving experimentation environment. With better collaboration with our team and colleagues, a better understanding of your work and what experimentation is, you get more support for your work and more freedom to do what you love, which is of course, running experiments and optimizing.

[00:05:06] Now, wouldn’t this be great? Imagine what your work would look like if you achieve this. Now let’s see how we can apply the CRO mindset in our organization using frameworks to navigate the key stakeholder landscape and optimize relations with our direct colleagues and team members. 

[00:05:27] And to be truly successful at this, we need to adopt a structured process. Just like when we optimize our websites. As our key stakeholders are crucial to experimentation, we’ll start with this. And we can do so using a framework consisting of six steps called the Force Field Analysis. 

[00:05:51] In the middle of a blank page, write the words, me, your name, or a picture of yourself.

[00:06:00] Next, write the names of stakeholders around you and connect them with a line. Use a solid line if you have a relationship with that stakeholder and a dotted line if there’s no relation. For step three, use a plus, minus, or plus-minus to indicate if the stakeholder is in favor or against experimentation. 

[00:06:26] In this example, I have a relationship with three stakeholders in favor of experimentation. Thomas and Shirley are neutral, and Ronald can form a problem. I have yet to build relationships with Pim and Desiree. Next, indicate the relationships between the stakeholders again, using a solid or dotted line and a plus, minus, or plus-minus to indicate the strength of the relation.

[00:06:55] In this example, Dennis can help me connect with Desiree and Pim. Naomi can help me with Ronald. But I am uncertain about a relationship with Thomas. Finally, Lotte can potentially help you make Shirley more in favor. 

[00:07:14] After you’ve done that, identify the three most essential stakeholders. Importance can be based on a high position in the company.

[00:07:24] Someone with a lot of influence or a key player for experimentation. Give them a number one, two, or three. Based on example, I need to work with Ronald. Perhaps Naomi can help me with that. Dennis is an excellent ally with good connections. He can also help me get closer to Desiree. The final step is to get curious and conduct research.

[00:07:52] Use the key skills of listening and asking questions in every interaction with your key stakeholders. Instead of proposing solutions, ask questions, giving unwanted advice gets in the way of finding real solutions and finding that win-win situation on the. On the contrary, asking for advice is a great way to get other people engaged and get ’em to like you and want to help you.

[00:08:21] Therefore, becoming an ally in the process. Strive to understand the other person’s motivators and concerns, and grab every opportunity to be curious. Learn new things and broaden your horizon. If you want to improve these skills, apply them in every interaction. Not just with your key stakeholders, but also with your direct colleagues, friends, and parents.

[00:08:50] If someone tells you he’s feeling great, get curious and find out why he’s feeling great. If someone states something is important to her, ask questions to find out why this is important. Practice often so you can also better apply it in your conversations with key stakeholders. In your conversations with key stakeholders, you could ask questions about their interests, how they see you, what they expect of you, how they want to be involved, why they are in favor or against experimentation.

[00:09:30] What is holding them back from experimenting more, what useful insights are for them and what their current goals and obstacles are. It is crucial to ask questions and listen. It’ll help you craft win-win situations. For instance, start asking questions. 

[00:09:49] If leadership does not want you to run your proposed experiments, why does she push back? What is her concern? What are her fears and what are her goals? 

[00:10:02] Another situation is where the key stakeholder might say conversion rate optimization is not essential right now. Possible questions are, why do you feel it’s not important, and what do you see as CRO? If then the answer is, we did a few tests that were not successful. You could ask, why do you believe those tests were not successful? Keep asking why and dig deeper. This is called the Letter Technique, and this example comes from the great book ‘Growing Happy Clients’ by Daphne Tideman. 

[00:10:36] Use the acquired information from the force field analysis to navigate the stakeholder landscape and get more key stakeholders in favor of your experimentation efforts by creating win-win solutions.

[00:10:50] Use your insights and experiments to help them achieve their goals. In other words, align your efforts just like you align your website with your user’s needs. We can use the same approach for our direct colleagues and team members. Let’s start with how not to do it, using the frustration cycle. And I’ve seen this happen several times.

[00:11:18] A CRO specialist is enthusiastic about his way of working. And tries to convince others to work the same way. By doing so, he’s a bit demanding and slightly forces his way of work onto his manager and colleagues. And this is often accompanied by convincing others using mere facts. So the specialist explains how we get better results with experimentation, how competitors are experimenting, and how booking and Facebook are experimenting.

[00:11:51] This will cause its colleagues to think the specialists is pushy, demanding, and showing little interest in their way of working. In response, they ignore or even resist experimentation efforts. This again, will make the CRO specialist think its colleagues are stubborn. Don’t see the benefits of experimentation and don’t want to change, which makes him more demanding and more pushy, and before he knows it, he finds himself in a very negative, frustrating cycle that is extremely hard to break.

[00:12:34] This is not how to do it. This blocks the adoption of experimentation. Instead, start by aligning with your colleagues. Help them with your insights from research and experiments. Conduct colleague research like you do user research. Understand their logical and emotional needs. Logical needs are mostly related to the goals of the team and their goals in their work. But everyone also has emotional needs.

[00:13:07] The need to learn to be part of something, to achieve something or experience less stress. Ask questions and get to know your colleagues. You can ask questions in conversations, interviews, surveys, and even focus groups. A few example questions you can ask are, how would you describe the importance of experimentation in our organization?

[00:13:35] Which aspects are you most interested in? How would you prefer to stay up to date? What insights from our experiments would be most valuable to you and your team? What barriers or challenges prevent you or your team from being more involved in experimentation? 

[00:13:58] Besides that, you also want to track data.

[00:14:02] How often do colleagues open your update email? How often do they share test ideas or provide feedback? How often do they attend your presentations? Apply your insights in their work or check your dashboards? Use this information to get more colleagues involved and invested. Learn how you can help them achieve their goals.

[00:14:27] Align your efforts just like you align your website with your users needs. Because now your colleagues will friendly, helpful, and show interest in their work, causing them to become interested and start supporting experimentation. They might even start to contribute to it. Now the specialist will think this is awesome and starts aligning and helping more colleagues and finds himself in a positive, wonderful cycle.

[00:15:02] A great example is how you present your results. How can you make it useful for your colleagues? How can it add value to their work and their goals? Start researching how you can make this useful for your colleagues. And always remember to present winners and loss prevented experiments in the way that works best for them, and to help them understand the value of experimentation. When you align with more and more colleagues you can start personalizing your presentation. 

[00:15:37] What information will you show? For example, a full report, key learnings or business cases in what order, for instance, first AB test setup, then results and learnings or first learnings supported by AB test result. 

[00:15:55] How will you show it? Written spoken dashboards or gamified insights, and where? Email team chats, dedicated meetings, or even lunch and learns. And finally, how often after every completed experiment, weekly, monthly, or quarterly. All aspects you can consider when aligning your presentation with your colleagues needs. At Online Dialogue, we have templates for every situation with our templates.

[00:16:26] We align perfectly with the needs of our clients and with their stakeholders. We have huge templates for complete experiment results. We have templates for management summary reports. We have several dashboards in place and automated messages set up in Airtable, tailored to those who want what information.

[00:16:48] We have everything automated as much as possible to quickly display what is needed for whom and when. There’s much more you can do based on your colleague research. You can categorize these into physical optimizations and social optimizations. Presenting results can be done physically through email, slack and dashboarding. But it can also be in person and in presentations.

[00:17:18] Other physical optimizations include update emails with useful insights for your colleagues. Gamification, accessible data dashboards, creating a Slack channel to share successes and failures, posters and rewards, or symbolic rewards. A few ideas for the social environment are presentations and workshops, testing your colleagues ideas, creating a community of enthusiasts, hosting brainstorming sessions, celebrating success and failure, mentorship programs, watching usability tests together, and hosting F* up Friday sessions. Use these ideas based on the preferences of your colleagues to maintain a positive cycle and go through this cycle often. However, when you go through this cycle often, it might start feeling like a random, unstructured CRO program where you run AB test after AB test without any structure and learning.

[00:18:31] Instead, you want a well-structured, insightful, and successful program to create a healthy, thriving, and fun experimentation environment. To achieve this, we need a structured process, as we do in our CRO practices. And this process is exactly like the CRO process. It starts with research to better understand your colleagues, especially higher management.

[00:19:01] What are the goals, challenges and struggles? How do they perceive you and experimentation? How do they wish to be involved and stay updated. Interviews and surveys can be a great starting point as covered. 

[00:19:16] Next ideate, brainstorm ways to align better with your colleagues and assist them in achieving their goals through experimentation and insights from your research.

[00:19:28] Then prioritize essential stakeholders. Because they hold the budgets and can easily facilitate or completely block experimentation. As in conversion rate optimization, after prioritization comes experimentation. Find out what works and what does not work for your organization. We cannot validate through an AB test, but we can execute our idea and determine if it works.

[00:19:56] And like any AB test, learn from each experiment and refine your strategy. If one key stakeholder does not want to get involved, shift your focus to another. If your emails go unread, optimize, or try something else. Just like in conversion rate optimization, a structured approach is not just about following steps.

[00:20:21] It is about ensuring that every action taken is purposeful and leads to impactful organizational change. It ensures that you follow the same steps and methods each time leading to consistent and the best possible results. It provides clarity for those working on it, and a roadmap for action. It also allows for continuous learning and improvement, and the more often you and your team do it, the better and more efficient you get.

[00:20:53] A pro tip for a structured approach and consistency is to use the last 10 minutes of your CRO stand up to discuss your organizational experiments, ensuring you keep optimizing. 

[00:21:08] Before we wrap up, it’s important to note, with this knowledge, we can dust some persistent myths. Myths, you have likely heard and seen before.

[00:21:21] Often I read and hear, always talk money. Show your business cases and always start at the top. And this might certainly work. Therefore key stakeholders are crucial, and that is why we prioritize key stakeholders. But I’ve also seen many organizations where it is impossible to reach the top. In that case, it works to start with creating enthusiasm, and thus at the bottom, getting at least someone at the top, curious and interested. 

[00:21:58] I also often hear the advice to show your data as proof that experimentation is critical. Again, this can work. But people also have strong emotions or they could also draw wrong conclusions from the data and make decisions based on it. Other examples are 6 steps to experimentation culture, and 4 tactics to sell experimentation to higher management.

[00:22:28] There is certainly truth in all these statements. But they worked for a person in a particular situation in a particular organization. It does not always work like this for everyone. For me, these statements are the same as, always show payment icons on the product detail page, and always show USPs in the cards.

[00:22:53] Improve your page speed to double your conversion rate. Six tips guaranteed to double conversions, and four things everyone should do to get a higher average order value. All these people who set or wrote this are absolutely right. But it worked for them in their particular situation, at a particular time, in a particular organization. It will certainly not work for all.

[00:23:27] Just like our websites, there’s no one size fits all. Every organization is unique. You need a customized approach and constant adaptation to the situation is key. So like any AB test, reflect on each experiment and refine your strategy when needed.

[00:23:47] Stay curious. Align with key stakeholders and colleagues. Keep learning, experiment, and optimize. Conduct a forest field analysis to navigate the stakeholder landscape, create positive cycles, and adopt a structured approach to keep optimizing. This will help you create a thriving experimentation environment, giving you more support and freedom to experiment.

[00:24:19] Going back to my story in 2015, I learned what did not work. It started aligning and experimenting. What did work for this organization at that time was to get to a key stakeholder through my manager. I had not heard of or done a force field analysis, but finding this key stakeholder was crucial. I also placed a data dashboard at the entrance, so colleagues would see data several times a day, and visitors would perceive the company as data-driven, complementing the board of directors on this achievement.

[00:24:58] And finally, I found an experimentation enthusiast in the marketing department who I could help achieve his goals with my experiments. Today, this marketer is still one of my best friends. And as soon as I started working as a consultant at Online Dialogue, the company from 2015 hired me back to guide their CRO team and organization. 

[00:25:27] Over the years, I got a lot smarter applying this mindset in many, many organizations resulting in several nominations and two Experimentation Elite awards this year. But do remember that this worked, for this company, in this situation. It is your job to make it work for your company.

[00:25:51] You’ve got the mindset, the knowledge, and the skills to research, align, experiment and optimize. Now start using it in your organization.

[00:26:04] That is it for me. I post a lot about this stuff on LinkedIn, so feel free to connect there. Also, if you have any questions, feel free to connect. 

[00:26:14] For now, thank you.