Always be testing

There are 2 posts tagged Always be testing (this is page 1 of 1).

#96/111: Conversion Optimization

What is it about?

Increase your profit by 40% just be changing your slogan. Sounds suspicious but it is possible. You’ll just need tons of good ideas, some time and testing. Saleh & Shukairy talk about conversion optimization and how you can increase your profit over time.

What can I learn?

Personas: I talked about personas some time ago but this book used them really in detail, which was refreshing. The idea is that you define imaginative customers and think about them if you do any decisions in marketing/sales. This will help you especially if you got different types of customers. However, it is important that you do your market research first. Lots of people fall into the trap that they just make up personas without knowing their prospects/customers.

FUDs: Fear, uncertainty and doubt. This is why people won’t buy from you even when you got a product they would buy. You can use your personas here, again. Think about their fears, uncertainties and doubts when browsing your website, e.g. “is my data secure?”, “what happens if I want to return the product?” or “does this work on my computer?”. You probably can’t convince people that they should buy your product if they don’t like it. But you can help people buy your product if they are afflicted by FUDs.

Iterative testing: I talked about testing some weeks ago in detail, so I won’t say that much about its basics. After initial testing, you shouldn’t just assume that now everything is perfect. The idea behind iterative testing is that you design your product and presentation and slowly change it element by element. This will improve your presentation and product step by step. Amazon does a great job doing this. They won’t relaunch every few years with a completely new design. Rather they change just some elements a time.

Conclusion

I don’t like this book as much as Always Be Testing, mainly because most content is in both books. Conversion Optimization doesn’t really bring new concepts in the game which aren’t already known. The book is OK. If you haven’t read anything about testing or conversion optimization, I would recommend Always Be Testing.

#92/111: Always Be Testing

What is it about?

It should be clear that this book is about testing. But why test? Because it helps you to optimize your website/shop which helps you to increase your profit. Eisenberg & von Tivadar show you how to test and what to test.

What can I learn?

Competitive, Spontaneous, Methodical, Humanistic: Everybody makes decisions different. The authors differentiates between these four types. The competitive type comes to a decision quite quickly and does want to know why you can solve his problem. The spontaneous type is more emotional and wants surprises, also this type makes her decision more quickly than the other two types. The methodical type needs lots of information and time to come to a decision. He wants to know each detail and each specification of your product/service. The last type is humanistic that focuses on humans, e.g. this type wants to know which other people are using your product.

In which state is your customer?: Not every customer is equal in its state. Some people are ready to buy and just search for the lowest price. Others want to browse and collect some information. Again others just stumbled on your website. Depending on your product and service you can focuses on different types. Lots of sites just focuses on the first type which is ready to buy. Shops like Amazon considers nearly every type. You can collect information, read testimonials and shop for lower prices.

Basics first: Before you start to test if light blue or dark blue is better for your logout button, you should test some basic elements first. Often they got a greater impact on your overall conversion. Things like slogans, important buttons, order of your links, etc.

Conclusion

Always Be Testing is a nice book. It covers a intro into statistics and hypothesis testing. Furthermore, it shows you how to use Google’s Website Optimizer. It got tons of ideas what to test. I haven’t see any severe flaw. Nice book!