1. Getting blinded by your own knowledge and preferences
If your conversion optimization efforts are largely based on what you like and how you behave, then you are more likely to fail. Not everyone is like you; there are at least three other temperaments to consider.

According to renowned psychologist David Keirsey, everyone falls into one of sixteen temperaments. The temperament of the buyer influences what will convince them to buy a specific product, and what will make them buy it specifically from your company or website.

Which temperament are you trying to sell to? To learn about how to sell to people who may be different from you, read the work about temperaments done by Keirsey and the interpretations made by firms like Future Now, Inc.

My own consultancy firm, inUse Insights, has also done similar work, grouping visitors into four types that are illustrated by different birds: owl, penguin, swallow and peacock. The lesson here is that you should learn as much as possible about your audience, and don’t fall into the trap that they are just like you. Besides that, you know a lot more about your company, product or service than your visitors, and you may therefore make the mistake of assuming that your visitors know more than they do. Don’t get blinded by best practices, either; they are not always silver bullets. Your audience and context may differ.

2. Optimizing for the wrong visitors
The assumption that all visitors to your website are there to convert is wrong. When analyzing why visitors are dropping out without converting, you need to know what they came there to do in the first place.

Some visitors end up on your website by chance, some because you cater to their interests or needs, and others because of a mistake. You will rarely convert those who came to visit your site by accident. If you combine a survey (attitudinal data) with your Web analytics tool (behavioral data), you’ll be able to ask for the intention of your visits upon entry and analyze their success rate.

It’s not unusual to find out that the group you have a reasonable chance at converting constitutes 10 percent or less of your visitors. With that new knowledge, you can focus your conversion analysis on the segment that came to your website to convert but never did. Work hard to make that group convert, and forget about the rest — for now.

3. Focusing on only one metric or goal
Testing and conversion optimization is often based around the idea of increasing the rate for a specific metric, a specific goal. Nothing wrong with that, but you may forget to check how your efforts are impacting other goals and metrics.

Maybe you are increasing one goal at the expense of others? Maybe your conversion rate has gone up, but your average order value, margin or return on ad spend has decreased? Always make sure to look at the big picture. If you’re just looking at — and optimizing for — one metric, there’s a risk that you’re fooling yourself.

4. Making testing a goal in itself
I’ve come across organizations that have set goals on how many A/B or multivariate tests they should run in a set period of time. That’s a bad idea.

Think about what incentives do to people, particularly if there is a reward involved. If the goal entitling an employee to a bonus is the number of tests executed, be prepared for lowperforming tests and maybe even ones that decrease rather than increase your conversion rate.

A good goal is not addressed as the number of tests run. Instead, focus on the monetary goal you want to reach, or actions that you want your visitors to take, and run as many tests as you can based on hypotheses and traffic volume. Your goal should be to increase something (purchases, downloads, etc.) or decrease something (visits to the contact page from visitors who have read the FAQ, etc.), not to run a certain number of tests. If you focus on the number of tests, chances are that you will be too eager to test that you forget about building a solid hypothesis, and run tests that don’t have enough traffic to complete within a reasonable amount of time.

5. Coming to the conclusion that nothing works
Have you run tests and not seen any improvement? Rather than conceding that there is no way to make a difference and simply giving up, it is more likely that you overlooked something. There may be something further you could do to collect more relevant data.

Has your Web analytics tool been implemented properly? Have you integrated attitudinal and behavioral data in your analysis? Have you done usability testing? Have you used a tool such as ClickTale that shows behaviors that are not necessarily linked to what you can actually do on the website? One way to quickly get new ideas is to ask your non-tech Web-savvy friends to perform a task on your website without your guidance.

Conversion optimization is for everyone
Keep in mind that conversion optimization is not just for e-commerce. It’s for everyone. It does not matter whether you’re selling a product, a service, information or an idea. We all have specific actions in mind that we want website visitors to take. Conversion optimization is about making a larger share of visitors do those actions. It could be about making a donation, becoming a member, changing an opinion about something, or many other actions.

As long as it’s measurable, it’s a candidate for conversion optimization.

eMetrics Marketing Optimization Summit and Web Analytics Wednesday (WAW) will be held in Stockholm, Sweden, at the end of September.

At eMetrics you’ll be able to listen to speakers like Vicky Brock, Brian Clifton, Steve Jackson, Erick Barney, Kristoffer Ewald, and Oliver Schiffers. There will be nearly 20 speakers during the two days the conference lasts. Yes, I will speak too. Have a look at the rest of the agenda.

On the evening of the first day of eMetrics there will also be a Web Analytics Wednesday.

Both events are part of Digital Days Stockholm.

Use the discount code WEBANALYSTS010 when registering for eMetrics Stockholm to get a 15% discount.

You can also become a blog partner if you’d like a link to your blog from the eMetrics website. If you’re lucky you might also get some free tickets.

Some of the topics discussed in this podcast:

• Where should someone new to testing begin?
• Does method matter?
• Is suboptimization a risk?
• Can we trust the statistics behind tools?
• What test result has been the most surprising?

Download the podcast

The panel in this podcast about testing:

Bryan Eisenberg is the co-author of several best-selling books: Call to Action, Waiting For Your Cat to Bark?, and Always Be Testing. He is also the co-founder and chairman emeritus of the Web Analytics Association. Bryan serves as an advisory board member of several venture capital backed startup companies (such as Bazaarvoice, iPerceptions, UserTesting.com, and ClickEquations) and is on the board of trustees of the Direct Marketing Education Foundation.

Lance Loveday is the founder and CEO of Closed Loop Marketing. His company has become highly sought after, serving a wide array of clients—from startups to big brands such as Hewlett-Packard, Brocade, and Lockheed Martin. Lance is co-author of the book Web Design for ROI.

Anne Holland is the publisher of WhichTestWon? and president of Anne Holland Ventures Inc, an online business media company. She is the founder and former president of MarketingSherpa, and has for more than 20 years been conducting tests and research into what works best in marketing.

Chris Goward is the CEO of WiderFunnel Marketing Optimization and an expert in website conversion rate optimization. Chris has been optimizing online and offline marketing for companies such as eBay, Epson, SAP, Getty Images, BabyAge.com, Rudder.com, Outrigger Hotels, and Google.

If you would like to give my podcasts a listen, try:

Podcast with Bonnie Thomas, Marketing Director of Memetrics
Download podcast (MP3)

Interview with Matt Roche, CEO of Offermatica
Download podcast (MP3)

Wine or Gasoline? A Podcast with Mario Fantoni of TaguchiNow
Download podcast (MP3)

Podcast with Mark Wachen, CEO of Optimost
Download podcast (MP3)

I am currently planning a new round table podcast about testing featuring thought leaders.

Two podcasts about web analytics as well:

Web Analytics in Europe
Download podcast (MP3)

Interview with John Marshall, CEO of ClickTracks
Download podcast (MP3)

Read Mark Red’s press release

Some of the services offered by Google Website Optimizer Authorized Consultants:

• Experiment design
• Experiment set up and implementation
• Report analysis

There are currently 21 WOACs in Europe, covering 11 countries. Two of them are working in the Nordic Region.

Sweden: 1
Italy: 1
Greece: 1
France: 1
Germany: 1
Finland: 1
Turkey: 1
Spain: 3
Belgium: 3
The Netherlands: 4
UK: 9

The other 35 countries in Europe do not currently have a single WOAC. In other words: 76% of Europe does not have a WOAC.

There are currently 50 WOACs in the entire world.

Coverage per region:

North America: 25
Europe: 21
Asia: 1
Middle East: 1
Oceania: 4
Latin America: 1

Some WOACs cover several countries and regions.

Find a WOAC in your region

Will you get more correct answers than a monkey (randomized), a HiPPO (Highest Paid Person’s Opinion—in this case a CTO), a usability expert, an art director, a web analyst, and my mom (a retired elementary school teacher)? Find out!

It’s a fun game and the point is to prove that a guess is just that—a guess. Trust me, a monkey would probably beat me too sometimes! After all, this is why we test. Tests will give you a result based on lots of people and not based on a single person’s opinion.

So, what are you waiting for? Play the guessing game!

Note that you won’t see this test in your RSS reader or e-mail message. You need to open this post in a web browser to see it.

What makes Widemile and Webtrends a good match?

Robert Bergquist, CEO Widemile: Both Widemile and Webtrends have been committed to building best-of-breed technology featuring open integration and very high ease-of-use characteristics. We at Widemile recognized that web testing and targeting were rapidly becoming natural extensions of web analytics and decided to partner with the best company in the analytics category. Alex, Webtrends’ CEO, and I quickly realized we shared the same vision for the future of web optimization and, as the saying goes, the rest is history.

What kind of integration can we expect?

Robert Bergquist, CEO Widemile: Prior to the acquisition, Widemile Optimize test results were already available within the Webtrends analytics interface. Going forward, expect the most integrated web optimization and targeting solution available from any company. Unfortunately, I’m not at liberty to disclose future product details.

What’s the first thing Widemile’s customers will notice?

Robert Bergquist, CEO Widemile: Widemile customers have already been embraced by Webtrends and continue to experience the same expert service. They will also benefit from the much larger global professional services group, accelerated product development and, as indicated above, full integration with the other Webtrends products.

The Webtrends acquisition of Widemile certainly fills a gap, but why did you make the move now?

Alex Yoder, CEO, Webtrends: Probably for four primary reasons. First, we needed to get our organization focused in the right direction around our core competencies and customer satisfaction. The release of Analytics 9 and the highest customer satisfaction and customer value ratings in the recent Forrester Wave report are evidence that we have made successful headway in these areas.

Second, we wanted to first execute on the “openness” of our platform before adding complementary solutions. The biggest challenge in the market right now is having solutions that don’t integrate. Customers are tired of hearing presentations that discuss integration, but where it doesn’t truly exist. Our approach is to be sure that we are prepared to deliver in integration through a truly open platform. This approach will allow us to accelerate adoption and value for the customer from all of our products.

Third, the market for optimization technology was still pretty fragmented and not very well developed. The market has now clearly begun to cross the chasm, which represents a perfect time to enter the market—let others invest and uncover the challenges, let us step in and take advantage of the knowledge.

Finally, the timing is right from an investment standpoint. One of our competitors spent $120M to get the same set of solutions that we just brought into the Webtrends family. Another competitor spent almost $70M to get just the A/B and Multivariate Testing portion of the product, without any comprehensive targeting capabilities. We’ve done extensive due-diligence and found the Widemile technology to be far superior to that of our competitors, who spent…a lot.

Why do you think your offering will be stronger compared to your competitors’ offering?

Alex Yoder, CEO, Webtrends: As I just mentioned, we did a great deal of diligence. We actually had partnerships with most of the offerings in the market and you may recall that I personally was involved with Test and Target in its infancy at Omniture. Widemile has spent the last five years perfecting this technology and has invested heavily in development of the technology and support systems, but simply did not invest in marketing and sales—they had an indirect sales approach that was not successful.

One thing that many in the marketplace (even purported testing experts) are likely not aware of is that the years of development have culminated in a recently released platform that most of the market has not seen. We leverage a “design of experiments” approach that allows for the use of the best possible combination of Full Factorial, Fractional Factorial and Taguchi, which allows for the greatest number of levels and options, but maximizes the time to value. In other words, some testing methods are very complex and take 30-60 days to see results, unless traffic volume is very high, or the options are very low. Our approach allows for the maximization of balancing time to value with complexity of testing. Speed to value is also enhanced because of the simplicity of our tagging approach—one tag for the page, instead of a tag for each element tested, like our competitor’s solutions.

Another key point is that Widemile had built behind the same core value of openness. It is very easy to exchange data. Finally, our market intelligence told us that other solutions were too difficult to use without technical resources or outside consultants/contractors. We spent a lot of time focused on building a user interface designed specifically for non-technical marketers. We tested it ourselves. Literally, a member of our marketing department used the solution with no training, or outside support.

If we knew for sure which design, image, headline or value proposition would perform best, we wouldn’t need to test them. But each test scenario is unique. A tactic that wins on one website may under-perform on yours or, worse, could even hurt results!

Some e-commerce and lead generation consultants tell me that testing is a waste of time. They think they already know which variation will win before we run a test. But I have yet to meet someone that can guess the winners of our test results with even 50% accuracy. The obvious conclusion is: if you’re not testing intelligent variations, you’re leaving money on the table.

Test Your Gut Instinct

If you think your gut is trustworthy, I encourage you to visit Anne Holland’s new site at  WhichTestWon.com. Each week she posts a new conversion optimization test result that you can vote on. It’s a fun idea and always an interesting learning opportunity.

The most surprising test results are usually the ones where the winner does not match the commonly-accepted ‘best-practices’. We’ve often seen ‘best-practices’ design or copy elements lose against less common variations. In fact, in a few cases we’ve seen page designs that the client would bet money to beat the original page significantly decrease conversions!

Surprising Result #1: Should You Minimize the Clicks to Act?

One example of a common surprising test result is with landing page forms. A lot of people will tell you to include the call-to-action form directly on the landing page. Many believe that minimizing the number of clicks required will always improve conversions.

We’ve tested many variations of lead generation funnels and have found that there’s no blanket rule on this. In some cases, forms on the landing page lift the conversion rate and, in other cases, a two or three step funnel works better.

The best option can be influenced by the length of the form, product decision-cycle, page wireframe layout, among other factors.

Surprising Result #2: Do Security Icons Work?

In another recent example, one of our e-commerce clients tested adding a third-party security logo to their site-wide shopping cart area and saw their conversion rate decrease by almost 2%. That’s certainly not a finding you’ll see advertised often.

So, don’t just follow what experts tell you. Test it!

Some of our most interesting test results are published as Conversion Optimization case studies and discussed in the Conversion Optimization blog.