#53 – Conversion Funnel Optimization Tactics For Any Website

In this episode of the CRO Live Hour podcast, hosts Khalid and Simbar dive into the world of funnel optimization, shedding light on its pivotal role for online businesses. They break down the process of identifying key bottlenecks and friction points in a conversion funnel, emphasizing the critical nature of addressing these issues for improved user experience and increased conversions.

The hosts also explore the unique challenges and strategies involved in mobile conversion optimization, recognizing the growing prevalence of mobile devices. To guide businesses on the right path, Khalid and Simbar share insights into common mistakes made during funnel optimization and offer practical advice on avoiding them. Tune in to discover how businesses can seamlessly optimize their funnels to create a cohesive experience across various platforms, ensuring a smoother journey for users and ultimately boosting success in the online landscape.

QUESTION — Have a question about e-commerce Conversion Optimization, A/B Testing, User Research, Marketing, or Anything Else? Post in the comments section of this video!

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Transcript

[00:00:00] Khalid: So Simba, how's life? How is everything? I mean, It's a new, completely new look for Simba. You gotta tell the story. What convinced you to shave off your hair? 

[00:00:11] Simba: I've always wanted to shave my hair off, like to remain like with no hair. It's like there was a way to make sure that like I don't grow hair.

[00:00:19] I would go for it because for me I think it's good but my wife hates it. She doesn't like this. But I think it's good. Like it shows that I'm mature and I don't have to think of like maybe combing my hair every time that I go out. So I just live it the way it is. actually like it. It's something that I didn't plan. During the weekend, I was actually like thinking of going to get a haircut, and then it started raining big time. Then I just decided, Oh, what if I just shave my whole head off? So that's what I did. But how does it look? 

[00:00:50] Khalid: I gotta do a jobs to be done interview right now, understand this first off, Aren't you worried that the hair is not going to grow back again because that's my biggest worry about shaving my head and I'm [00:01:00] like, oh gosh, the hair is not coming out again.

[00:01:02] That just freaks me out, man. 

[00:01:04] Simba: actually don't mind. But one of the things that I usually do, I usually shave my hair during summer. Then during the winter, I let it like grow. But this time around I just did the opposite. 

[00:01:15] Khalid: Okay. And your wife, that's a look, for me, actually, Ayat, my mom, my kids, maybe my daughter, or the females in the family, object vehemently against a complete shave of the head.

[00:01:28] 

[00:01:29] Simba: Yes. My wife also doesn't think that this looks good, but I just like, oh, let me just give it a try. Why not? But. Personally, I like it. If it was up to me, I would just leave it like this all the time, but there are other forces involved, oh, you have to... 

[00:01:43] Well, 

[00:01:44] Khalid: you know, It's a new look.

[00:01:45] I like it. Maybe it's a guy thing. I don't know. Okay, so away from the hair because that took a little while. How has your week been? What's the latest and greatest? 

[00:01:53] Simba: My week has been good. We've been removing a ton of blog posts on the investment page, like I [00:02:00] don't know. Like we have a ton of blog posts on the invest page like deadweight because they were not like bringing in any traffic and some of them like they were written about, is it 10, 12, Oh, 12 years ago. we had to remove like some of those and start like updating some of them. So we have seen a drop in traffic because of that. But the guy that we are working with, Adam, like who assists us when it comes to SEO. He's saying like it will take us like a couple of weeks for us to see like maybe some improvement.

[00:02:29] But I'm just trusting the process right now in going with the flow. 

[00:02:33] Khalid: I think that's the best thing that you can do. Just trust the process as long as there is a process. Correct? Otherwise, yeah, interesting. So yeah, it'll be interesting to see that leads us. 

[00:02:41] Simba: How about yours? How 

[00:02:42] Khalid: is it? How is my week?

[00:02:44] Let me start by saying. I installed this app. This is going somewhere. I installed this app called rewind dot something, and the app has this thing where it rewinds your life. So it's constantly recording every meeting that you have, everything that you're saying, the emails, and [00:03:00] then can give you a summary of your day.

[00:03:02] So when you ask me, Hey, how's like your week? I'm like, Oh, this is a great idea. It overwhelmed my laptop okay, it's not as new as your laptop, but I think I have a fairly decent laptop. Anyways, my laptop was overwhelmed and after three days of trying to use it, I removed it. I'm like, okay, I'm tired of this.

[00:03:18] So maybe the app is great, performance killed me. Outside of this. My week has been good. Nothing too crazy, which, we've had about a couple of months that things were just so hectic at Invesp and FICPAI. Things are going really well for FICPAI.

[00:03:33] think we're at a stage right now, and you've seen this, where me and Ayat are trying to step back from some of the things that we keep on doing. So I think IATS managing to do that with the client delivery team where like we've hired enough staff and they're experienced. So it's been just really fascinating watching that and we've had the conversation, you and I James earlier this week where I'm like, Hey guys, you own marketing, you own sales, you come up with the budgets, we'll agree on it, we'll agree on the [00:04:00] plan and then we'll have regular conversations.

[00:04:02] So really trying to step back is an interesting transition, part of it is. You're removing your hand from some of the things you have to trust the people, that they're all even when I was doing things, I made a whole bunch of mistakes. So mistakes will always happen. So just trying to navigate through that.

[00:04:18] So it's been fascinating. 

[00:04:20] Simba: Yeah That's good. I can see like all the changes. And one of the things that I can also say is the marketing that we used to do or when I joined invest. It's different from the marketing that we do now think like the first two, three years, I was just like focused much more on articles, content marketing, we still do a lot of content marketing because that's a good foundation for what we do marketing wise, but there's a lot of other pieces that have come together and there's a lot of other things that we're still trying out and we'll see how that goes in the next few weeks.

[00:04:51] Yeah. 

[00:04:51] Khalid: I love that. I love that. Awesome. Okay, so what are we talking about today? CR by the way, I was gonna tell you. CRO live hour. Maybe we should become just CRO [00:05:00] hour, I don't know because we're not always live on LinkedIn. Maybe we'll just keep live,

[00:05:04] but what are we talking about today?

[00:05:06] Simba: Okay, so today we're talking about conversion final optimization tactics. We have about five questions around conversion final optimization. So are you ready? Should I ask the first question? 

[00:05:18] Khalid: Go for it. Let's see. 

[00:05:20] Simba: Okay, so the first question is, can you provide a brief overview of what final optimization entails and why it is crucial for online businesses?

[00:05:31] Or maybe you should start by defining what's final 

[00:05:34] Khalid: optimization. Yeah, so if you think about an interaction between a prospect, let's step away from the web for a second. a Prospect. Trusted in your service, goes through different stages, and some of those stages are pre even like getting to know you about your specific business.

[00:05:53] Correct. There is. Oh, I need to recognize that there is a need or there is a pain. I'm looking for a solution to it. Oh, [00:06:00] you are, you might be a good solution. So I'm going to contact you. I'm going to explore certain things. I'm going to ask some questions, so there are stages that Gandhi slideshow there A potential customer goes through or a potential conversion person, whatever that might be correct, because an e commerce website, that's a customer for a SaaS, like in a company that is a subscriber for a lead gen, that's a lead, But there are certain stages, they're funneled. And we always like to think of it as a funnel because it starts really wide and then it goes, smaller and smaller. Not everybody who's interested in a particular product or service will always end up looking at converting and doing business with you.

[00:06:37] So whenever we think about the conversion funnel, we think about those different stages that a person goes through. Within the web, I like to think of the conversion, and different people have different definitions, but within the web, I like to think of the conversion funnel as a different steps that somebody has to go through.

[00:06:54] So we'll give the simple example e commerce, because everybody's on an e commerce website. You have the landing [00:07:00] page, correct, where I say, hey, yeah, yes, okay, I have a need, yes, this is the right site for me. Yes, I'm going to continue navigating. Eventually you might go through category pages. Then you go through a product page, cart, checkout.

[00:07:12] That's a conversion funnel on an e commerce website. For a SaaS, I'm landing on a landing page. Okay. I'm going to read about maybe your product features. Okay. I am interested in scheduling a demo, or maybe I'm just going to look at the pricing and I'm going to subscribe. I'm going to go through the process of subscribing.

[00:07:27] So those are the different steps of the conversion funnel, the challenge. With a conversion funnel and I think there's two challenges with conversion funnel. Us as marketers, we like to think of it as a linear one step, second step, three steps, so on and so forth. And that's exactly what I just gave you.

[00:07:44] Even when I'm explaining it. Oh category page, product page, car, checkout. It's just makes it easier to explain. But the reality is that neither you nor I nor our listeners. Shop online that way, or interact with the website that way. [00:08:00] Yeah start maybe on a category page, we go to a product page, and instead of clicking on that add to cart, we go to another product, and then we get the phone call, and we forget about that product, and then maybe we remember it later, and it's oh, so we go ahead and start at the homepage, and it's oh yeah, I found, I saw a product, and then eventually we find the product, but again, instead of clicking on the add to cart, we go back to a category, we go to a second category. wouldn't call us erratic, but really we're always intrigued. Correct? Especially if the site is well designed Oh yeah. I want to look at this. I want to look at that. So the concept of funnel is just to simplify the life of marketers, by the way. And then. Perhaps the biggest challenge in funnels, when you're dealing within the context of a web, is that in order for you to have somebody start at the very top of the funnel, yeah, I might have a need until the point that they actually convert on a website, that person subconsciously has to say, Yes, about a hundred times.

[00:08:52] Oh yes, this is the right product. Oh yes, this is the right website. Oh yes, I can trust them. Oh yes, they have the right category. Oh yes, they have the right product. [00:09:00] Oh yes, the product is not too expensive. Oh yes, this product meets my requirements. Oh yes, I'm going to click As you can imagine, hundreds of yeses.

[00:09:07] And the challenge for every experimentation program, every conversion optimizer is that the minute somebody says no, a single no is enough to break that conversion funnel where you say, nah, too expensive. I'm not sure if I should buy this today or not. I was looking at a product and it's funny because I've been thinking about buying this product probably for a year now.

[00:09:28] Talk about a lengthy conversion funnel. And it's not an expensive product. Probably a hundred bucks. That's it. Yeah, it's 120. But look at the kind of the conversion funnel. So basically, if you have, this is horrible, but if you have a car, and you can plug in this to your car, so it allows you to watch Netflix and YouTube as you're driving.

[00:09:47] Absolutely horrible, I understand. And maybe that's one of the reasons I didn't buy it until now. But my brother in law has it. And I'm like, Oh, this is really cool. So he sent me a link because I saw their ad and then they disappeared. And then I'm like, I don't know where those guys went. They [00:10:00] just completely disappeared.

[00:10:01] Then like he sends me the link, I look at it and I, at that point they were not running a sale, forget about it. And now because Black Friday is coming up. They're running a sale. Somehow, their ad appears to me again. I'm like, oh yeah, think I'm going to buy it. Then I think to myself, I'm like, oh, maybe I should buy two of them.

[00:10:17] I can gift somebody this. don't even know why I thought that. Because you even get a better discount. And then I add. And now I'm thinking, I'm like, oh man it started at 70 bucks. Now I'm paying like, or 80 bucks. Now I'm paying like 130 bucks. Do I want to do it? Conversion funnel is breaking continuously, correct?

[00:10:31] So may God help us all marketers to figure this out. 

[00:10:34] Simba: like how you explain it. Especially like when you're mentioning the steps off the conversion funnel for your size and also for an e commerce website. It makes it like so much easier to visualize it and understand it.

[00:10:46] I've written an article before about optimizing a conversion funnel and I still remember it but one of the main questions that I used to ask people when I interviewed like a couple of other CRO [00:11:00] and when I wrote that article and one of the main questions that I would ask them was where do you start?

[00:11:05] Optimizing on a conversion funnel, which area is right to maybe it's that you said, like at the top to study at the bottom. Do you start like at the middle? What's your take on 

[00:11:15] Khalid: that? Yeah. So my take on that's maybe a little bit different. So I like to take each steps of the conversion funnel.

[00:11:23] And we actually apply statistical formulas for each one of the steps of the funnel that are based on the number of visitors that are coming to that step, the conversion rate from that step to the actual final step, by the way. So if I'm optimizing product pages versus a card versus checkout versus category page versus the whole site, correct?

[00:11:41] Because sometimes you can optimize the general messaging. So I'm looking at the what I call macro conversion. Correct from product page to order confirmation from cart page to order confirmation. look at those metrics. We have specific guidance within every experimentation program that says for this client, we want to run experiments for two weeks for this type of clients.

[00:11:59] We [00:12:00] want to run experiments for three weeks or four weeks. Based on that, we can actually calculate the dollar impact of each one of those steps of the funnel. So it's fascinating because sometimes you might think to yourself, Oh, the carton, the checkout, that's what makes the most sense. If we increase conversion rates there that's bottom line.

[00:12:17] And I used to say that, by the way maybe due to lack of experience years ago, but now we calculate and we say, you know what? A successful experiment on the product pages is worth about 88, 000 annualized because again, looking at the first month is 88, 000 annualized might be 130, 000. So we always look at the annualized value a successful experiment on the cart page is 60, 000 annualized that might be looking at 85, 000.

[00:12:43] And again, there's lots of formulas that go in there based on that. I find the step that will have the most impact dollar value on the funnel, and I start there. so This, by the way, goes back to how we prioritize, correct? Where do you start? So we start, this is [00:13:00] very first thing that we do is calculating the dollar value for the different areas.

[00:13:04] Within the funnel and let's say you see based on your calculations you say, okay, so we're gonna start with the I'm gonna give a random example We're gonna start with the product pages and then we're gonna go to the home page and then it's the category page and then it's The cartons to the checkouts.

[00:13:16] Okay, that's based on dollar value Within that group. Okay the product page I can probably optimize 10 different things. Correct. And within the category page, I can optimize seven things. And within the homepage, I can optimize 12 different things. In the past, we used to throw all these optimization possibilities within a single plan and say, Oh, what are the top priorities?

[00:13:39] Okay, so the product page might be position 1, 2, 3, homepage position 4, category page position 5. And we used to think that's great. okay, so we know. And then practically. The more we thought about it, it's like, Oh great that I had the first top priorities are the product page. But guess what, when I run an experiment on the product page, I cannot run a second experiment on the product page.

[00:13:59] I'm [00:14:00] just in a holding pattern. So really, what I need to do is jump to the second. Page look, which is the category page in this case and pick the top experiment there and then go to the home page, correct? So now we say, okay, here's our top priority page product pages. For example, here's the list of experiments there Now the second, priority page is maybe the category page and here's the list of experiments What comes to those?

[00:14:21] And then it's the homepage and use those experiments. And then we pick the top one from each one of those. And that helps us create kind of a road map for optimization. Very technical. I don't know if I explained it really well, but I hope I did. 

[00:14:33] Simba: Yeah, I was following. Just as an example which are the most.

[00:14:38] important, micro conversions, let's just say, maybe on a category page. 

[00:14:43] Khalid: A micro conversion, usually, the top level micro conversion that matters, in an experimentation program, is pushing somebody down the conversion funnel. On a category page is how do I get you to the product page, on the product page, how do I get you to click on the add to cart now?

[00:14:59] That [00:15:00] is the main micro conversion. There might be other micro conversions that we have on a category page. Maybe your interaction with the images, correct? Maybe your interaction with the filters. Those are all micro conversions that help support the top primary micro conversion of getting you to the product page.

[00:15:17] I have a category page with 200 products. And guess what? Unless you use the filters, you're not going to be able to pick the right product for you. So that's microconversion of using the filters, or sorting is really important in order for me to get you to the product page. I know that, so that's really important.

[00:15:32] Sometimes a microconversion may be like, clicking on the quick shop button. Correct. You see that's with apparel sites. There's lots of considerations that you want to think about. Think on a product page. Most important micro conversions, click on the Add to Cart. Okay, great. Let's say somebody is not ready to click on the Add to Cart.

[00:15:48] What are some of the micro conversions? Maybe reading the reviews, maybe filtering the reviews, maybe searching within the reviews, maybe looking at some product details. maYbe it's the interaction that's, with the images on the [00:16:00] PDP on the product page. So again, there is a clear micro conversion of somebody clicking on the add to cart, but it doesn't happen all the time.

[00:16:08] We would love for it to happen all the time, but it doesn't. So you want to consider all these additional. possibilities of micro conversions, knowing that they can support the primary micro conversion of clicking on that to cut. 

[00:16:19] Simba: Yeah, that's good. That makes a lot of sense. But what if you do like a test on a product page and like the main or the primary micro conversion is to click on it to cut.

[00:16:30] But when you look at the results, most people are not clicking on the add to cart. But now you have increased the number of people who are clicking add them micro conversions. 

[00:16:39] Khalid:  by the way, this is a great question. there's two scenarios.

[00:16:43] So there's one that, just mentioned, I'll mention another one, but let's discuss this one. My goal is to get you to click on the add to cart as a step. and I see because of a design, people are clicking on those, all of those, but I am not getting the primary microconversion of people clicking on the [00:17:00] add to cart.

[00:17:00] That's a problem, correct? Because sometimes we're distracting visitors by giving them too many options, too many choices, too many this, and we're really distracting them from the main and primary macroconversion goal that we have on the page. You want to pay very close attention to that. It's hey, what's happening over here?

[00:17:16] Great that we're getting all this other interaction, but that's. Might be defeating the purpose. So that's one consideration that you want to really evaluate. The second issue that you want to think about. Okay, so although people are interacting with all these other micro conversions, we're not getting as many clicks on the add to cart.

[00:17:35] What's happening in the rest of the funnel? Because again, there's context, nothing is happening, in a vacuum. Maybe people who are interacting, for example, because we've seen this, people who are interacting with images, looking at product details, looking through the reviews. Some of those are maybe not clicking as many on the add to cart, but those who actually complete those micro conversions are actually converting at a higher rate, correct?

[00:17:55] the context that's really important for us. Hey people will read the reviews and [00:18:00] actually scroll through the reviews and look at the two star reviews. have a higher chance of converting. Yes. by emphasizing the reviews, we're getting A lot less, maybe less clicks on the add to cart.

[00:18:12] But we're also, in the big scheme of things, we're getting more conversions. Nothing happens correct in a vacuum and you always want to consider that. Even more interesting, I don't know if it's more interesting, but like also something else that you want to think about whenever you think of a conversion funnel.

[00:18:24] I am getting more people to click, for example, on the Add to Cart. Great. And I see that now the problem that I have is this particular design that is helping more people to click on the Add to Cart. When I see the rest of the funnel, the downstream, people are not actually starting to check out.

[00:18:42] But those who start the checkout actually finish at a higher rate. That's interesting. So in step one, I've increased conversions. Step two, I broke conversions. It's lower. Step three, four, five, it's higher conversions, correct? So I want to examine the second step. That's it's like, hey, what's happening there?

[00:18:58] Why is it that I am getting more people [00:19:00] to click on the add to cart? Why is it that people who pass this step, second step, maybe it's the cart, are actually finishing with higher conversion rate? But what's happening in the second step? That's an area that I want to focus on. And that's I think, by the way, the beauty of funnel optimization is you never really have this Clear cut.

[00:19:16] 1234. I'd love for it to be like that way. But there's always and I was like, Oh, what's happening to the data over here? need to analyze this further. 

[00:19:23] Simba: So yes, speaking of analyzing all those pages, how then do you like maybe identify conversion killers within the funnel? 

[00:19:33] Khalid: so there are several things that we look at to figure out conversion killers. I think one of the more important ones, which doesn't give you the full context, is looking at the data and the flow from one step to the next. And of course, needless to say, you want to segment that based on device, correct?

[00:19:50] Mobile versus desktop, just to start with. But that's not enough. You also want to segment that based on traffic source. You want to combine, Hey, mobile paid. mobile organic, [00:20:00] mobile social, mobile paid social mobile affiliates, mobile email versus desktop, all of these other ones. And you're analyzing each one of those channels within the context of the device.

[00:20:10] That tells you which step in the process you have issues. What I love to do, by the way, is to take a channel, take a device, And take a step and then compare it between mobile and desktop and compare the click through from that step to the next step. Give you an example. I was looking at a search results page for a large electronics company.

[00:20:32] Their data, initially, I said, okay, there's a problem with the data. Verify the data multiple ways on the search results page. The first four results, the click through from the search results page to the actual PDP is less than one and a half percent. Very unusual. Lots of times if you have a good search engine within the site you get click through rates of 20, 30 percent. one and a half percent, that's so low. And their first thing, they're like maybe people are not interested. I told them, [00:21:00] okay well, this is on desktop. Here's something really interesting, and I was not even looking at the traffic source in this case. Let's take a look at also the same search performed on mobile.

[00:21:09] Same search, using the same search engine, correct, same technology. And now the only distinction is mobile versus desktop. On mobile, the click on the first results is 5%. Versus one and a half percent on desktop. I'm like, what's happening here? Why is it and I think that's really where experimentation starts asking good questions.

[00:21:26] Why is it that we're getting, Almost 3x time, three more clicks on mobile versus desktop. Desktop is lower, considerably lower, correct? 80 percent lower compared to desktop. You cannot say oh, yeah, you know Just different visitors. Yeah, maybe it is different visitors, but maybe it has a lot to do with your design.

[00:21:46] So data can tell you a lot, your own data, by the way, instead of looking lots of times people ask about, Oh what's the standard, what should I be looking at? I'm like let's just start even with your own data, Let's compare your mobile to desktop and one of them will set the standard.

[00:21:58] Second, I [00:22:00] really think usability testing is very powerful when it comes to funnel optimization. very well designed usability case studies can be very powerful because you give people a specific scenario and you watch them and you're trying to figure out What is making them go from one step to the next?

[00:22:16] This could be moderated or unmoderated, where you're asking them questions. That's the second one. Third approach is really conducting heuristic evaluation, expert review, looking at the different steps, and what makes sense and what doesn't make sense. Last step, inspired by different funnels across the web.

[00:22:35] Doesn't necessarily have to be your competitors, but you can learn. I was on Apple's website yesterday. I was looking at buying products, go through the process. So I find the product. I look at the different product options, click on the add to cart. I start the checkout. Great.

[00:22:50] Halfway through the checkout, I'm like, eh, this is too expensive. Let me just leave the cart, see, maybe I can find a cheaper product. Maybe I just went for an expensive one. And one of the things that they did [00:23:00] is they gave me a pop up. It's Hey, are you sure you want to exit the checkout process?

[00:23:03] You're, and they were, gave me some incentives to continue. I'm like, oh, this is really an interesting model. This is something I wanted. I shared with the team. I'm like, Hey this might be interesting to test out on different clients website. I don't know whether it works or not, but it's a good way to say, you know what?

[00:23:16] For those who are exiting, maybe the hypothesis is no, we can actually encourage them to stay within, within the process. So again, you can look and get inspired by other sites on the web and what they do and see if that fits within your within the context of your site and your visitors.

[00:23:29] Simba: Yeah, that's a good point. What are some common mistakes that businesses make when optimizing their conversion funnels and how can they avoid them? 

[00:23:38] Khalid: Oh, man mistakes. 

[00:23:40] Simba: Yeah, go ahead. I think like everything that you just said, the opposite of that. Those are the mistakes explaining.

[00:23:47] Yeah,

[00:23:47] Khalid: let me look reverse everything. do think a couple things just to add on top of that. One. Lots of times people make assumptions and they don't look at the data. I know, like we're reversing, we [00:24:00] even fell like I did that mistake with fake pie. At some point we're like, Oh this funnel is absolutely amazing.

[00:24:05] We have so much experience. And then we look at the data and we're like, Oh, we're actually we wanted, for example, to get a lot more information for people who are going through our subscription page. We thought that was a great idea, correct? Let's get more information, we can use it later. As it turns out, we were turning people away, so we caused friction within the funnel, and we were not doing anything with that data.

[00:24:27] It was like, oh, this data that we've been asking for, I'm like, so we've had this data for two years, have we done anything with it? just Scrape it, let's just remove it. So that's one thing. Look at your data and really make sure that you understand the impact of everything that you're adding to the funnel and its impact rate.

[00:24:44] Number two, sometimes the fundamental assumption is like we need to ease a person through the purchase funnel, correct? So as optimizers, we're running experiments. It's Oh, let's push people through. Yes, that's good. But. We have to [00:25:00] do further analysis. What is the lifetime value of this visitor who I made their life so much easier to subscribe to my software?

[00:25:08] How long or they bought from my website? How long they're going to become a customer? How often do they order? There are lots of questions that you want to ask, correct? As opposed to, oh, I just got a conversion. Because sometimes, a conversion is more headache than its value. At some point, we had a company and they were like a decent subscriber to FicPi.

[00:25:25] I think, they're paying almost like 1, 500. Now, this is the start of FicPi when you get 1, 500 subscriber. this is absolutely amazing. But then the amount of work and support and the customer success team having to really pay. such close attention to them was just overwhelming.

[00:25:40] And I'm like, okay, this is just definitely not worth it. So there's a lot of analysis that needs to happen beyond the simple analysis, single metric, or did I get a conversion or not?

[00:25:49] Yep. 

[00:25:50] Simba: That's a good point also. I think you touched on the last question. I'm just going to ask it and see what you think, but I think like you've already touched on it. [00:26:00] How can businesses optimize funnels to provide a seamless and coercive experience across different platforms 

[00:26:06] Khalid: across the sorry, 

[00:26:07] Simba: across different platforms? 

[00:26:10] Khalid: Yeah. think what's important to understand that different visitors who come to your site using different channels have different levels of quality.

[00:26:19] Yesterday, I got an email from an old client. He's like, Hey, help. And I'm like, okay, what's going on? He's like, our marketing team decided to run some experiments and they brought a whole bunch of cheap traffic to the sites. Okay. I knew exactly where this is going. Cheap traffic means a lot of traffic means that their conversion rate, which was a 4 percent all of a sudden without doing anything, just because they drove a whole bunch of cheap traffic.

[00:26:41] Now their conversion rate looks like it's 2%. the C level are saying, what the heck have you done here? Why did our conversion rate drop? No. It didn't really drop. I guess it did, but it did not really drop. somebody in the marketing team made a mistake and they brought us all these, visitors who are really not interested converting.

[00:26:58] So [00:27:00] evaluating the quality of the visitors and are coming from different channels matter a lot. And also you have to understand the mindset. of those visitors that are coming using different channels. Another example, we work with a company, they get about 250, 000 visitors to 400, 000 visitors a month.

[00:27:17] Okay, decent size, number of visitors. And we notice in a period of six months that their conversion rate is constantly dropping. We're like, oh what's going on here? Same number of visitors. And then we look at the channels. And what they've done is they used to rely on paid ads to drive visitors to their websites.

[00:27:36] And in the last six months, they've slowly been focusing a lot more on SEO and pulling away from paid ads, budgets and spending on SEO because SEO, hey, we're going to gain the traffic, we're going to drive lots of visitors, and we don't have to continue paying for, ads. Guess what?

[00:27:53] Visitors who are coming to your website. from a PPC ad, from a paid ad, are a lot different than a visitor [00:28:00] who searched in Google and clicked on an organic result. The visitor who's coming through a paid ad most likely raised their hand and said, Hey, I have a problem. Can you solve it? Organically, most of those visitors are coming to your website through SEO are top of funnel visitors, correct?

[00:28:16] I'm just interested in researching this topic. I'm really not ready to buy. And converting a top funnel visitor versus a bottom of the funnel visitor a completely different feats, tactics that you have to do are completely different. And naturally, by the way, by switching from PPC your conversion rate is going to drop.

[00:28:31] Now, I think there's two mistakes that happened there. One is that our client did not inform us that, hey, by the way, over the next six to 12 months, we are going to be investing less and less in paid. And for us. Because we were comparing month over month, we always look month over month traffic, there's like a change in the mix, it's like a 5%, 6%, month over month, sometimes 4%.

[00:28:54] When you look at it over a year, you see a much larger change, correct? But because we're looking at 30 days over 30 [00:29:00] days, we didn't notice it. We're like, Oh, what's happening? Conversion rates are dropping. Yeah expand the parameters of the period that you're going to Optimize just to see the difference.

[00:29:07] And when we did that, we're like, Whoa, what happened here? Organic traffic is up by 90 percent and paid is down by like, you know, 70%. That explains it. So you need to understand. why that mattered, guess what the copy and design that I use on landing pages.

[00:29:25] For organic traffic is a lot different than the copy that I use and the messaging and the type of experiments that I would run for paid. They're completely different animals. So you want to look at your channels. You want to look at where people are coming and you want to optimize for the mindset for the visitors who are coming from that.

[00:29:40] from that channel. And by the way, just add on top of that, the device, correct? Sometimes I might do the research on my mobile device, but I'm not going to buy unless I buy on desktop. Sometimes, especially if a larger investment, sometimes I'll buy, especially if I've done business with you, I will buy on mobile.

[00:29:57] So there's lots of factors. That [00:30:00] would require any marketing team or an optimization team or an experimentation team to sit back and think about those different channels within the context of a device, within the context of our business and how we can optimize for that. 

[00:30:14] Simba: I love how you get like into the nitty gritties. It shows that like our CRO team really doesn't leave no stone unturned. Like you actually delve deep into the data to understand and to see if there are any kind of like conversion Problems in there, but yeah, that's good.

[00:30:31] Khalid: Awesome. Yeah. By the way, it's fascinating because part of the fact that's giving autonomy to our CR team and now it's part of hiring just absolutely amazing people and more and more kind of building the team and their capabilities is.

[00:30:43] There are some areas that I've always owned over the years. foR example, our prioritization. We're just talking about prioritization at the beginning of this CRO live hour. But now I've handed it over to the team and yesterday they gave me their first proposal of a different way of doing prioritization.

[00:30:57] Which was fascinating, because it [00:31:00] had about 30, 40 percent of what I had previously suggested. They've changed some things. But that's, by the way, the beauty of working with smart people, because as they did this and they were going in a certain direction, I'm like, Oh man, guys, you gave me a completely different idea, different perspective.

[00:31:13] So let's sit and talk because I had the method. They suggest a different method. And now by looking at both, I'm like, Oh, let's think about this third way prioritizing, which is. It's going to be fascinating. 

[00:31:23] Simba: Yeah. That also goes on to show like how CRO is often like evolving process, I'm sure like maybe the conversion optimization process that we're using now is way different from the one that we began with in 2006.

[00:31:35] So they're always trying to make some changes and 

[00:31:38] Khalid: improve it. Yeah. Oh man. I mean You look at what we were doing in 2006 and you look at what we're doing right now. It is so different. By the way, one of our recent senior CROs, I mean, she's been working with another agency and she has a really good process and now she's been with us now for near a month.

[00:31:54] sO I was talking to her and I'm like, what do you think? She's yeah, the process is so different. I'm like, really? Because our process perhaps is [00:32:00] very close to some of the top companies and her she was working with the top CRO agency, but it's just fascinating to see that's by the way, one of the things that we're doing with our CRO is to say, Hey, since we do CRO.

[00:32:11] For all these different companies that come and knock on our door. We're doing CRO for our own CRO process. So everybody has to spend time analyzing our process, what works, what doesn't work, so just fascinating going through that, process, I guess. 

[00:32:24] Simba: that's clever.

[00:32:25] I think that's all that we had for today. 

[00:32:27] Khalid: Unless you want to share something else? No, No. You always ask me that question. Nothing more to add. There will be no soccer this weekend, but you know what? Family is going to be arriving. For Thanksgiving, I think next week probably we're not going to have CRO live hour because that's Thanksgiving and I think people will be busy eating turkey, but we'll come back in two weeks.

[00:32:45] So yeah, so until next time, happy testing everyone. Thank you.