CRO Misconceptions Every SEO Should Know — Whiteboard Friday

Conversion Rate Optimization doesn't happen in a vacuum. All the different marketing initiatives that we do impact each other. Knowing a little bit about CRO will help you and will go a really long way.

Hi, my name is Ayat Shukairy. I'm the co-founder of Invesp and Figpii, a conversion rate optimization company and marketing tool. Today I'm gonna talk to you guys about five CRO conversion rate optimization misconceptions that every SEO should know.

Conversion rate optimization doesn't happen in a vacuum. All the different marketing initiatives that we do are all impacting each other. So knowing a little bit about CRO will help you and will go a really long way.

Number one thing is there's a lot of clickbait when it comes to conversion rate optimization. So there are all these sensational case studies that talk about an 85% increase in conversion rates and a 30% increase by just changing the color of a CTA. That's not CRO. And that's why it's super important to make sure that we communicate this and that we understand that conversion rate optimization's a lot more complex; there's a lot more that goes into conversion rate optimization in order to get some really, really amazing results.

CRO, unfortunately, is not about just changing some colors. There's a lot more that goes into it in order for us to really be able to see that change, understanding your visitors, and conducting a lot of research.

The other thing is, that you have to know is BA best practices often don't work when it comes to conversion rate optimization. Because what happens and what impacts one website is not going to necessarily impact your website. I wanna make sure I understand my visitors, and what's going to impact my visitors, and based on that, I'm going to be making the changes.

The other key thing is to remember CRO does not equal AB testing and vice versa. CRO, I like to always explain it, it's like kind of like the umbrella. It contains all of the different research areas, and I'm really looking into it. I'm digging into my customer research. I'm conducting interviews, I'm conducting user testing, I'm digging into analytics for insights. I'm looking at my competitors; what are they doing? Heat maps, session recordings, UX all of that is under the umbrella of CROs. So there's a lot of work that CROs actually have to do.

Thoughtful testing

But in order for me to validate all of this information, that's where AB testing comes in. I can't really be making a change and then looking, oh, well, you know, what type of an impact did it have? Because just looking at my analytics won't tell me much. AB testing is gonna help me validate exactly whether or not that change had an impact on my visitors.

And remember, again, even though we've done the research, and we've found a problem area, it doesn't mean that my solution is necessarily going to resonate with the visitors. That's why I really need to AB test it in order to validate it even further.

Ask questions

The other thing is that a lot of times, people say AB test everything. AB test this, AB test that. But that means that I'm really not conducting any research. I'm just randomly choosing anything. I get to bring in any group of designers, I can bring in any group of people, and they'll have a hundred different suggestions that I should do on a website. Does that mean that I should AB test all of those things? 'Cause AB testing takes time, it takes effort, it takes development. I wanna make sure that whatever I'm testing, it's grounded in some sort of research. I'm looking for a repeatable, sustainable process. And the only way I can get to that process is by doing a lot of these different things. I'm trying to really conduct all this research.

You'll notice that a lot of AB testing tools report that only 15 to 20% of the tests that they launch on their platforms yield positive results. That's crazy. 15 to 20%. This is Optimizely, VWO, Google Optimize before it's, you know, well, obviously, it's currently sunsetting or already sunset, but the idea is that a lot of tests don't actually perform well. And the reason why is they're not grounded in research. They're not being vetted. They're just random experiments that people just think of. Let's just test this and see how it performs.

Now I will say that if you're going to add an element on your website, you do wanna make sure that that actually gets tested. The reason is because, again, you don't wanna add something onto your website that might impact performance, that might impact your visitors without necessarily kind of figuring out whether or not it's going to have a positive result, yield a positive result for you.

Brush up on your stats

The third point that I wanna make is that you wanna brush up on your stats. So, you don't need a degree in statistics. I definitely don't have a degree in statistics I'll tell you that. But you need to understand some of the basics.

Did your test run long enough?

First of all, you wanna make sure that your test runs long enough. I talked a little bit about those sensational case studies. A lot of times, when you dig into the data of those sensational case studies, they haven't run long enough, they haven't reached a significant result. So you wanna make sure you avoid false positives and negatives in order to make sure that you're reaching a specific sample size. Now, sometimes your sample size might just be three days.

Run your test for a minimum of a week

We always recommend that you run an experiment for at least a minimum of a week in order for you to be able to make sure that the test hits an entire business cycle, right? Because again, when I'm like thinking about my customers and when they're coming, I wanna think about weekends, I wanna think about the entire week. So we always say a minimum of a week. We had one client, for example, that we'd always see a surge of conversions on the 15th of the month and the end of the month, and those are payday. So again, you wanna make sure that you ran it long enough, a minimum of a week.

Look at an 85% — 90% chance to win

And when you're thinking about the chance to win, I always say, look at an 85% to 90% chance to win. And the reason why, again, 'cause there's always still a chance that it actually might be a false positive, you wanna make sure you make that chance even lower. So just make sure that you look at all those stats, you consider all of those areas, you conduct a sample size, there's lots of calculators out there. You can just look at your sample size, and figure out what the sample size is before you actually run the experiment in order for you to make sure that you don't run into any issues when it comes to the stats of the experiment.

The fourth area that I want to kind of talk about is that CRO is a mix of usability and persuasion. So the first thing is, of course, like I said, CRO, there's a lot of user testing, a lot of usability. I wanna make sure that I'm understanding all of that. I wanna make sure that from a UX perspective, I've actually noted all of the different areas throughout the website. I've tested them, and I make sure that things are working properly, and the flow is proper on the website, correct? But at the same time, there's also that persuasive piece. That's where the magic happens, right? Because your brand and your unique value propositions, that's what makes your specific

site different. And that's how I'm going to differentiate myself from the rest of the competition.

What are my unique value propositions? How do I make sure I communicate this information to my customers? And what persuasive tactics can I use, leveraging my UVPs on my website? That's what really distinguishes different sites. I mean, a lot of times you go to various ecommerce websites throughout, you know, when you're shopping and whatnot, and you find that a lot of times they all look really the same. If you just take away that logo, they all look the same. So how are you gonna set yourself apart? How is your product really different? If I wanna capture somebody's attention and persuade them that this is the product that you need and you need to buy, then I need to be a little bit different in the way that I communicate that information.

And it doesn't have to be just, of course, e-commerce sites; it is also B2B. People are comparing, so how are they going to compare your website against the rest of the competition? How do you stand a little bit different? And that's all about the different research that you conduct. We do a lot of customer interviews, and a lot of times, those customer interviews help us get those insights on why visitors selected this particular brand or this particular product or this particular service and didn't select a different one. And that's really important information in order for you to be able to kind of distinguish yourself on your site.

The last consideration that you wanna have when it comes to AB testing tools is that they have an impact on performance. Now we hear it a lot, and this comes actually a lot from the SEO industry, that AB testing tools, this is what's causing the site performance, you know, is being impacted, and it's negative because of the AB testing that's running.

So the first thing that you wanna remember is, yes, they do have an impact. Like any type of script that's running on a website, everything is going to have an impact on the site. But what I would always recommend is, first of all, if you're going to be running any type of AB testing, you wanna make sure what other scripts my client or are we running on the site? In order for you to be able to kind of figure out whether or not how is AB testing going to run with all these different other scripts. That's the kind of number one thing there's sometimes a slew of different tools that your client or you may be running on the site. You wanna figure out what those are, are they necessary, and whether or not AB testing can fit?

Depending on the AB testing tool, some tools are faster than others. Like for example, Google Optimize which is actually pretty fast compared to some of the other tools. It just takes long for that tool to actually load up. So you just wanna make sure that whenever you're evaluating, what tool you wanna select. You wanna choose the one that is actually going to load up a little bit faster. And the last consideration is, of course, when you're creating the AB test, depending on the complexity of your AB test, it may take the script a little bit longer to run.

I always tell people that when it comes to AB testing, you're gonna see a little bit of a flicker. It's just impossible. We cannot avoid the flicker. It's a very, very, very quick depending on again, the tool and the complexity of the test that you're actually running. Always remember, that when you're running an experiment, this is a minimum viable product. I'm trying to just justify whether or not I wanna hard hardcode this on my site.

Remember, you're creating a use case. A lot of times, it's so complicated to actually go ahead and hard code on your website, but you need to create some sort of use case to your higher-ups in order to tell them that this makes sense for us to kind of move higher in priority in terms of development because we've seen these types of results, we've seen this type of an increase in conversion rates.

What I'd like to kind of close with is that, again, there are some really key do's and don'ts when it comes to conversion rate optimization. The do's are, to make sure that whatever kind of testing that you do, it's thoughtful testing. You wanna make sure that you're asking a lot of questions when it comes to conversion rate optimization. You wanna understand the basics of the statistics.

The don'ts. Don't do the best practices and just rely on that without necessarily validating whether or not it really will be meaningful for your visitors. Changing a CTA color is not conversion rate optimization. And don't test everything. Make sure that it's thoughtful and that you're actually thinking about what is going to impact my visitors.

I hope this was helpful to you. You can reach me on my various social media accounts and happy testing.