CRO experts discuss conversion optimization challenges

© 1998-2016 Eisenberg Holdings, LLC. BryanEisenberg.com BuyerLegends.com / @TheGrok, @JeffreyGroks,
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Is Conversion Rate Optimization a Dead-End?

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A book by conversion agency PRWD that
features 17 well known CRO professionals.

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Jeff Bezos 
CEO & President
amazon.com
“
This year, Amazon became the
fastest company ever to reach
$100 billion in annual sales. Also
this year, Amazon Web Services
is reaching $10 billion in annual
sales … doing so at a pace
even faster than Amazon
achieved that milestone.
April 5, 2016 Annual Report
B2C
B2B

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“We [CRO practitioners] are the dirt under the
fingernails of the digital industry,”
— CEO André Morys of Web Arts in the foreword of a recent ebook by
Conversion agency PRWD featuring seventeen well known CRO
professionals.
“

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Happiness = Reality - Expectations

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What is a
conversion
rate?

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The conversion rate is the percentage of users who
take a desired action. The archetypical example of
conversion rate is the percentage of website visitors
who buy something on the site.

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The three-letter acronym (TLA) being CRO…
No, we don’t optimise conversion rates, so CRO is a
fundamentally flawed TLA. Despite the cool allusion to a
black carrion bird, it cannot stand. We optimise revenue,
growth, pricing, value propositions, images, navigation and
more.
— Brian Massey, Conversion Sciences
“

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Type to enter text
Copywriting
Testing & Experimentation
Search Marketing
Social Media
Design & Layout
Psychology, Human Behavior & Persuasion
Marketing & Branding
Sales Presentation
Usability & User Experience
Information Architecture
Business & Web Analytics

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Tweak a button?

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Measuring your conversion rate is like taking your
temperature. It cannot tell you what is wrong.

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The Kellogg Foundations’s logic model of inputs to impact separates the
work from the results.
• Inputs - resources that we need to make a change
• Activities - what we’ll do with inputs to make a change
• Outputs - the volume of work accomplished
• Outcomes - the benefit or change derived from our activities
• Impact - the long-term consequences from the change
CR
look!

In a letter to shareholders in 2010, Jeff Bezos
said:
Senior leaders that are new to Amazon are
often surprised by how little time we spend
discussing actual financial results or debating
projected financial outputs. To be clear, we
take these financial outputs seriously, but we
believe that focusing our energy on the
controllable inputs to our business is the most
effective way to maximize financial outputs
over time.
“

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Getting numbers is easy; getting numbers you can
trust is hard
— Ronny Kohavi, Microsoft (previously at Amazon)“

Funnels Measure Outputs
99.6%
75.5%
89.3%
Missed targets
Bounced visits
Failed to
persuade
You create the system your
visitor must navigate. People
don't cause defects, systems
do."  
- W. Edwards Deming  
“

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Conversion Trinity

Example A - Raw Data - CR = 2.25%
Example B
Step Visitors
1 10,000
2 9,500
3 8,100
4 5,700
5 3,400
6 1,700
7 680
8 225

Example A - Conversion At Step

Example A - Chance to Convert Forward

Example B
Step Visitors
1 10,000
2 3,300
3 1,320
4 665
5 400
6 280
7 238
8 225
Example B - Raw Data- CR = 2.25%

Example B - Conversion At Step

Example B - Chance to Convert Forward

a) Conversion isn’t a random event with random probabilities at each stage.
b) No variable is neutral; everything matters, but not everything matters equally
Example A & B - Chance to Convert Forward

Conversion, Intent & Outcomes
Our Goal When... They Want What We Want They Want Other
We Can Help 100%? FIX IT!
We Can’t Help FIX IT! GO AWAY!

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In a word: Silos
— Chris Goward , Wider Funnel
“

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When things get complicated,
we simplify by saying ‘what’s
best for the customer?’ And
then we take as an article of
faith if we do that, it’ll work out
in the long term.”
“

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People not knowing what they’re doing is a big problem - especially
when they think they DO know. Content people - not practitioners -
write more and more articles about CRO to get more trafic, backlinks
etc. - but they’re really clueless about it. This bullshit content makes
people believe CRO is a list of tactics, a swipe file. This creates false
beliefs, unrealistic expectations and a naive world view about the
whole thing.
— Peep Laja , Conversion XL
“

"The miscalibration of the incompetent stems from an error about the self, whereas the miscalibration of the highly
competent stems from an error about others.” The bias was ﬁrst experimentally observed by David Dunning and Justin
Kruger of Cornell University in 1999.

"The miscalibration of the incompetent stems from an error about the self, whereas the miscalibration of the highly
competent stems from an error about others.” The bias was ﬁrst experimentally observed by David Dunning and Justin
Kruger of Cornell University in 1999.
More confidence,
less competence!

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• The average conversion rate for Top 500 merchants is 3.32%.
• The top 25% of online retailers convert at 5.31%
• The top 10% of online retailers convert at 11.45%.
• Amazon.com non-prime customers convert at 13%
—Source: 2015 study by Millward Brown Digital

Survivorship
Bias & Best
Practices
Logical errors of
concentrating on
the people,
companies or
things that
"survived" some
process and
inadvertently
overlooking those
that did not
because of their
lack of visibility.
Best Practices or Survivorship Bias?

Are we
keeping up
with our
competitors?

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There are no right answers to wrong
questions.
- Ursula K. Le Guin“

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Are we
keeping up
with our
competitors?
Are we
keeping up
with our
customers?

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What does it say?
1. They make their UVP
clear
2. They test their CTAs
3. They test their headlines
4. They tend to have short
forms
5. and another 16 tips

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• Amazon prime members convert at 74%
• Investment firm Macquarie says 50% of U.S. households could be
members of Amazon Prime by 2020.

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22x
3.32% vs. 74%
conversion rate.
What exactly is 22x
better?

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A lack of focus on the customer’s non-conscious mind…
Today, there are many poorly optimised websites that
even elementary CRO approaches can help. Once the
basics are exhausted, though, more sophisticated
approaches will be needed to keep improving
conversion rates.
— Roger Dooley, Dooley Direct
“

Conversion rate is a measure of
your ability to persuade visitors to
take action they way you want
them to.
It’s a reflection of your
effectiveness and customer
satisfaction. For you to achieve
your goals, visitors must first
achieve theirs.”
“
Bryan Eisenberg 
ClickZ 2001

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100%
80%
60%
40%
20%
0%
Performance of companies
80%
8%
“Delivery gap”
Companies that
believe they Provide
a superior proposition
Companies whose
Customers agree
Source: Bain Customer-Led Growth diagnostic questionnaire, n=362;
Satmetrix Net Promoter database, n = 375

Jeff Bezos 
CEO & President amazon.com
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“
The most important
single thing is to focus
obsessively on the
customer. Our goal is to
be earth’s most
customer-centric
company.”

© 1998-2016 Eisenberg Holdings, LLC. BryanEisenberg.com BuyerLegends.com / @TheGrok, @JeffreyGroks,© 2013 Eisenberg Holdings, LLC. BryanEisenberg.com / @TheGrok, @JeffreyGroks, #BigData
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1995...the story begins

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~40%
of all
ecommerce
sales go
through
Amazon

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We have our own internal experimentation platform called
“Weblab” that we use to evaluate improvements to our
websites and products. In 2013, we ran 1,976 Weblabs
worldwide, up from 1,092 in 2012, and 546 in 2011.
– Jeff Bezos, 2014 letter to Amazon’s shareholders
“
Amazon was doing over 200 a/b tests at a given time
since 2004, how many more learnings have they had
than you?

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The ego of the optimisers makes 90% of test results a lie…
Why? Most optimisers suffer from a cognitive bias called
“confirmation bias”. They work hard on analysis,
hypothesis, concept and building an experiment. If you
work hard for something, your mind wants to believe
that it is true.
— André Morys, Web Arts
“

Smart people are very
good at rationalizing
things they came to
believe for non-smart
reasons.

Smart people are very
good at rationalizing
things they came to
believe for non-smart
reasons.
Smart people will
usually be able to
brush off criticism
since they are
convinced they are
right and, due to their
thinking abilities, can
probably out-argue
most criticism even if
the criticism is right.

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The purpose of business
is to create and keep a
customer.
“

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Source: Optimove Blog, April 14, 2016

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“A brand is no longer what we tell the consumer it is – it is what
consumers tell each other it is.”
Scott Cook
Founder, Intuit & Board of Directors P&G

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One of the biggest barriers to adopting a data-
informed mindset, and a culture of testing &
optimization, is a lack of trust, belief or empowerment
coming down from the senior levels of businesses
— Oli Gardner, Unbounce
“

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I think that there is a Gartner Hype Cycle for A/B
testing and that many companies end up stuck in
the unproductive part, doing testing that doesn’t
shift the needle or more significantly, isn’t teaching
you anything for the effort
— Craig Sullivan, Optimal Visit
“

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80% of CEOs have lost trust in marketers
Source: Fournaise 2012 Global
Marketing Effectiveness Program

CEOs made the conscious decision not to expect
more from marketing than branding, look/feel good
ads and promotions…
CEOs feel marketers “live too much in the brand,
creative and social media bubble.”
— Fournaise 2012 Global Marketing Effectiveness Program, which has interviewed
more than 1,200 CEOs across North America, Europe, Asia, and Australia.

77% of Marketers still think
effectiveness is about
awareness, 71% think it’s
about engagement, and
86% (of the 71%) mistake
engagement for
conversion.
— Fournaise 2015 Global Marketing
Effectiveness Program, analyzed more than
500 Marketing strategy documents, creative
briefs and effectiveness reports provided by
marketers

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Testing call to action buttons or titles is nice, but these tests
rarely change a thing and keep companies at a low level
of optimisation. In order to change this and utilise CRO to
its real extent, you have to run meaningful tests, build
strategies, probe customers, ask the hard questions and
be bold.
— Talia Wolf, Conversioner
“

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Happiness = Reality - Expectations

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Consumers buy your offering; internal teams buy
your ideas. Which ‘customer’ converts better?
— Angie Schottmuller , Interactive Artisan“

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7 Clues To CRO Happiness
1
2
3
4
5
6
7

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Don’t work for toxic clients1
2
3
4
5
6
7

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Don’t work for toxic clients
Don’t create or get caught up in the hype
1
2
3
4
5
6
7

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Set the right expectations, explain what you can’t control
1
2
3
4
5
6
7

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Identify and prioritize the problems you can solve
1
2
3
4
5
6
7

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Solve the problems and measure change properly
1
2
3
4
5
6
7

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Report on what you learned and what remains unknown
1
2
3
4
5
6
7

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Report on what you learned and what remains unknown
Earn and build the trust of your clients (see #1)
1
2
3
4
5
6
7

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http://www.BryanEisenberg.com
http://www.BuyerLegends.com
Phone: (347) 469-1090
Twitter: @JeffreyGroks & @BuyerLegends
jeffrey@buyerlegends.com

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