optimizing wordpress for conversions (wpsf april 2, 2014)

Making Your Online Business More Profitable

Optimizing Wordpress For Conversions

SF Wordpress Meetup -‐ April 2, 2014


Is Conversion Important?

2

No other metric [conversion rate] so holistically captures as many critical aspects of a web site – user design, usability, performance, convenience, ad effectiveness, net promoter score, customer satisfaction – all in a single measurement. Yet despite the remarkable power of this metric, it is alarming how few companies today truly understand conversion and how to optimize it. As such, it is time to pound the table again – conversion is by far the most powerful Internet metric of all.

-‐ Bill Gurley, Benchmark Capital http://abovethecrowd.com/2013/10/02/conversion-‐the-‐most-‐important-‐internet-‐metric-‐of-‐all-‐revisited/

http://abovethecrowd.com/2013/10/02/conversion-the-most-important-internet-metric-of-all-revisited/


Background

✓ Founder & Chief Optimizer at FunnelEnvy – Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO) agency – www.funnelenvy.com – @funnelenvy

✓ UX Design, Testing, Analytics & Lifecycle Marketing

✓ Twitter: @asivash ✓ Email: [email protected]

3

http://www.funnelenvy.com

mailto:[email protected]


Acquisition vs Optimization

4

Acquisition Optimization

Tactics


The Dream

✓ The Obama Campaign raised an additional $60 million using A/B Testing

✓ AMD increased social sharing by 3600% by moving ShareThis icons

✓ iCouponBlog increased conversions by 400% by removing an image

✓ GetResponse increased trial signups by 158% by adding a button ✓ OpenMile increased lead generation rate by 232% with landing

page masthead change

5


The Reality

✓ Most of your tests will not result in statistically significant conclusions within a meaningful (actionable) period of time

✓ Where there are improvements, each individual gain is most likely to be modest

✓ Requires sufficient test visits (traffic) to get results* ✓ Adds additional complexity & overhead within the organization ✓ If done effectively CRO is still one of the highest ROI activities

for online businesses

6


Recipe For CRO Success

✓ Relevance ✓ Measurement ✓ Experimentation

7

Hypothesize Test Measure

Iterate


Relevance

✓ Closing the gap between your online presence and your customers needs

✓ Understand customer intent & points of friction to develop testable hypotheses – Qualitative and Quantitative evidence

8

✓ Pains, fears & motivation ✓ Empathize and design User Experience

accordingly


Segmentation & Personalization

✓ Use available signals to segment your traffic – Channel, referrer, activity, location, demographic, outcome,

etc. – Challenges differ across business models – Apply existing segmentation from other sources

✓ Personalization – Make each of your customers / prospects feel special – A more relevant, personalized experience will convert better

across channels9


Integrating Customer Segments

10

http://wordpressconversionfunnel.com/

Customer Data

http://wordpressconversionfunnel.com/


Controlling the User Experience

11


AdWords Intent

12


Wordpress PPC Segmentation

✓ Custom Post Type (segment) ✓ Categories correspond to ad

groups ✓ Modify template & theme per

segment ✓ Slug changed with

str_replace() ✓ Stores custom fields in PHP

session or Local Storage13


Measurement & Analytics

✓ Discover qualitatively, prove quantitatively

✓ Exploratory vs Reporting ✓ Are goals & KPIs established? ✓ Analytics should inspire action – Beware vanity metrics

(visits, pageviews) – Focus on rates & ratios

14


Exploring Optimization Opportunities

✓ Bounce Rates – Indicator of visitor’s first impressions – Factor in entrances

✓ Exit Rate – Process flow issues – Page context matters (acceptable exit rate)

✓ Traffic Sources ✓ Conversion Goals & Funnels

15


Google Tag Manager

✓ Decouple analytics from code – Marketers and developers co-‐exist peacefully

✓ Custom and built-‐in tag types ✓ Firing Rules ✓ Macros & Data Layer ✓ Container Management – Publish, Rollback, Debug and Preview

16


Tags, Rules, Macros

17


GTM Preview & Debug

18


GTM Limitations

✓ Limited documentation ✓ Difficult to control tag firing order ✓ No approval workflow ✓ No Wordpress Context – Use Data Layer to pass WP data to Google Tag Manager

19


DuracellTomi's Google Tag Manager for WordPress

20

!https://wordpress.org/plugins/duracelltomi-‐google-‐tag-‐manager/

https://wordpress.org/plugins/duracelltomi-google-tag-manager/


Segment.io

✓ Common and consistent API for 80+ analytics providers ✓ Allows providers to be enabled / disabled without touching

code

21


WooCommerce Segment.io

22

http://extensionworks.com/product/woocommerce-‐segment-‐io/


Experimentation✓ A/B, Split or Multivariate Testing ✓ Achieve an actionable conclusion within a

reasonable amount of time based on a sample ✓ Test Design

– Hypotheses (change & anticipated result) – Conversion Goal

✓ Coarse grained vs fine grained testing ✓ Test Duration

– Estimate duration & sample size before you test

– www.experimentcalculator.com – www.evanmiller.org/ab-‐testing/sample-‐

size.html

23

✓ Factors that influence test duration – # of visits to the test – Conversion Rate – Anticipated change in

conversion rate – Confidence Level (~95%) – Statistical Power (80%)

http://www.experimentcalculator.com/

http://www.evanmiller.org/ab-testing/sample-size.html


What To Test -‐ Find the Friction

✓ Copy (especially headlines) ✓ Calls to Action (CTA) ✓ Design & Layout Elements – Remove distractions

✓ Trust Indicators – Social Proof – Badges

✓ Forms / Checkout ✓ Multi-‐Step Funnels

24


Testing Options for Wordpress

✓ Plugin Integrated (landing pages, opt-‐ins) ✓ Open source frameworks – https://github.com/maccman/abba

✓ Wordpress specific platforms – Nelio -‐ http://wp-‐abtesting.com/ – Marketing Optimizer for Wordpress

✓ Google Content Experiments ✓ Full suite platforms – Optimizely, Visual Website Optimizer, Convert Experiments

25

https://github.com/maccman/abba

http://wp-abtesting.com/


Plugin Integrated

✓ Pros ✓ Simple to setup and run ✓ Wordpress context aware

✓ Cons ✓ Limited scope ✓ Limited features ✓ Statistical data integrity ✓ Data volume

26

Wordpress Landing Pages

OptinMonster


Google Content Experiments

27

http://wordpress.org/plugins/google-‐content-‐experiments/

✓ Pros ✓ Free ✓ Uses Google Analytics Interface

✓ Cons ✓ Limited to split testing ✓ Limited targeting & goals capabilities ✓ Not Wordpress context aware

✓ Blog post: http://www.funnelenvy.com/blog/2013/12/27/free-‐ab-‐testing-‐google-‐content-‐experiments-‐wordpress/

http://wordpress.org/plugins/google-content-experiments/

http://www.funnelenvy.com/blog/2013/12/27/free-ab-testing-google-content-experiments-wordpress/


Full Suite Testing Platforms

28


Sharing Wordpress Context with Test Suites

✓ Use Javascript API to share Wordpress context ✓ Target experiments accordingly

29


Testing Do’s & Don’ts

✓ DO – Create complete hypotheses – Have a minimum sample

size – Plan for an actionable test

duration – Be able to implement tests

quickly (< 1 hr) – Segment test results

30

✓ DONT – Forget to test baseline – End tests too soon – Give up after the first

test fails – Introduce confounders – Micro-‐test too early – Choose the wrong tool


Review

✓ CRO is more than just A/B Testing – Relevance, Measurement &

Experimentation ✓ Make evidence-‐driven decisions ✓ Align your onsite presence with your

customers ✓ Increase the ROI on marketing

acquisition activity ✓ Reduce cognitive biases ✓ Eliminate the HIPPO problem

31


Thanks!

✓ More Resources – FunnelEnvy Blog -‐ www.funnelenvy.com/blog – Quicksprout CRO Forum – Product Blogs -‐ Optimizely, Visual Website Optimizer,

Unbounce, CrazyEgg, KISSMetrics ✓ Arun Sivashankaran – @asivash, @funnelenvy – [email protected]

32

http://www.funnelenvy.com/blog

mailto:[email protected]

optimizing wordpress for conversions (wpsf april 2, 2014)

Marketing

benchmarkcapital http

funnelenvy uxdesign

withlanding pagemastheadchange

test measure

asivash email