Welcome to the second episode in our Video Blog Series, where we sit down with a different team member each week and discuss a topic that they are passionate about and expert in.
This week, Woven’s Chief Growth Officer Si Muddell chats to Director of Digital Experience Ceri Balston about Conversion Rate Optimisation. Taking you through the process of measuring, testing and improving metrics to make your business work more efficiently and cost-effectively.
Watch the full video chat below:
Video Transcript
Si Muddell:
Hi, guys, if you’re listening or if you’re reading. This is the second episode in some video-type blogs that we’re launching at Woven. And I’m really excited to be talking to Ceri, who can introduce himself in a moment. Today, we’re going to be talking about conversion rate optimisation.
Si Muddell:
So first and foremost, just by way of introduction, if you don’t know who I am, I’m Si, and I’m the director of growth and customer success at Woven. And that guy…
Ceri Balston:
Yeah. Oh, yeah, this is where I introduce myself. Nice. So I’m director of digital experience at Woven.
Si Muddell:
Great. And conversion rate optimisation, or CRO as its known, and we’ll delve into that in a lot more detail in a moment, is definitely a subject that I think both of us have sort of quite extensive knowledge and experience about. And I think also, just in the various conversations that we have and the projects that we’re working on, it would be fair to say it’s actually something that we get quite excited about. I know for me, and you know me, Ceri, that I’m extraordinarily competitive really with myself. But I think that conversion rate optimisation for me, really plays on my competitive nature to really want to sort of smash targets and perform well.
Ceri Balston:
Yeah. I think there’s a lot of honesty and truth in data as well, which is really nice sometimes in what can be quite opinionated world to work in or live in. And suddenly you get data and it tells a story.
Si Muddell:
Absolutely. So I guess, just by way of sort of starting this, what is CRO? What is conversion rate optimisation by definition?
Ceri Balston:
Yeah. Well, I guess it means a few different things to some people. I think some people see CRO and think AB testing and that’s it. I think it’s a lot more than that. It really boils down to the very act of a process and a strategy and a way of improving the metrics and the KPIs that are important to a brand and to a business and how to drive that forward, whether it’s kind of ultimately conversions and hence the name, conversion rate optimisation. But it can include everything like improving average order value and kind of engagements at the time, or engagement with the brand.
Si Muddell:
So and I guess the medium that you’re talking about there is website, right?
Ceri Balston:
Yeah, yeah.
Si Muddell:
So from your point of view, in terms of your experience, what roles have you had that have used conversion rate optimisation?
Ceri Balston:
So pretty much every role I’ve had at digital has used CRO. It’s been fundamental in kind of improving growth and improving KPIs as a mass. I think my digital experience started about 16, 17 years ago when I ran a digital magazine with my wife. And one of the things we were trying to do is improve our number of subscribers. We had our email database. So we developed a simple meditation download someone could download and created a landing page for it. And something we stumbled across wasn’t called Google Optimize, GWO, I think it was called, Google Website Optimizer at the time.
Si Muddell:
Okay, yeah.
Ceri Balston:
And we tried that. And that worked really effectively. And we said, “Oh, this is brilliant. There are tools out there to gauge, test your hypothesis, rather than just design all the time.”
Ceri Balston:
And I think since there, I’ve worked in insurance and I think one of the challenges with financial services, there’s a lot of concern about bringing in external tools to do this kind of testing and optimisation and kind of nervousness. But again, massively effective once you get going in terms of really improving the fundamental KPIs that are driving business growth at that time. It’s really, really important.
Ceri Balston:
So then, I had a couple of really, really focused roles. One was leading the optimisation efforts for a leading car rental company, Avis Budget, across the EMEA regions and driving that and creating that strategy and driving that strategy forward. And then, a massively kind of CRO optimised role as head of conversion at what was at the time the UK’s fastest growing online travel agent, Love Holidays. And we were driving out to kind of 30, 40 tests live at any given time, just really, absolutely raise the focus on driving micro-conversions and overall conversions and taking that forward. So it’s been very much part of a core part of my career over last 17 or years.
Si Muddell:
Okay, great. And I think that I often hear it being said that yesterday’s oil is today’s data. And it’s obviously so amazingly valuable and anyone who’s watched… sort of slightly going off on a tangent, but anyone who’s watched Social Dilemma recently on Netflix would start to understand a bit of why and how important that is.
Si Muddell:
And I think that for me personally, again having a background and a knowledge of analytics and conversion rate optimisation, I think one of the challenges, or one of the opportunities should I say, particularly from a digital perspective, is that everything can be tracked. There is data underpinning every single interaction.
Si Muddell:
But there sort of lies also in my mind anyway, the challenge with that, because often we talk to clients I think, and they want to know the what of the data. What is happening? But really, I think that can often be very black and white. And we don’t always understand the why. Why is that happening? We might know that traffic is down or we might know that the page isn’t converting or whatever sort of attribute we’re looking at.
Si Muddell:
But what we don’t always know, and what isn’t obvious is why is that happening? And what must we do? And how might we do it to overcome that? So I guess, I’d like to hear your thoughts on I guess, that challenge, and that opportunity and how you typically approach conversion rate optimisation in a way that genuinely drives business impact and success and growth.
Ceri Balston:
No, absolutely. I mean, I think that’s a classic thing that always happens, isn’t it? Numbers will only tell you so much. They’ll only tell you one part of the picture.
Si Muddell:
Yeah.
Ceri Balston:
And I think it’s understanding kind of what wraps around that to give you the insight on why those things are happening. And I think it’s a case of where would I start for an approach like this? I think strategy and kind of processes are really, really important in any kind of successful optimisation program. And it really starts in really understanding your business and understanding what you want to measure and what’s important at the highest level. What are your goals and objectives? What are your targets?
Ceri Balston:
And then, sitting under that is understanding your users, your customers and potential customers, whether that be kind of putting in some personas and identifying particular user needs at that time. And then, understanding okay, well, if that’s the persona, how are we going to track whether that’s been successful or not?
Ceri Balston:
I think and then, sitting alongside that, so that’s still numbers, is what else can you do from understanding the user need? So things like user testing and I think there’s been a huge explosion in kind of remote user testing since the pandemic. It’s one of those few silver linings. And I think traditionally, people were looking at 10, 15 gates to kind of the whole user testing with a remote lab, one-way screens and all those kind of stuff. You don’t need to do that anymore. It’s really quick and easy to do. And anyone can do it. It’s not difficult. There’s books on this. It’s just a case of getting out and doing it.
Ceri Balston:
And I think, that just tells you so much about your users’ needs, your motivations, the barriers they might have kind of engaging with you. And as soon as you’ve got that, it’s working out where are the opportunities? Really identifying those opportunities. And then, implementing that kind of improvement roadmap, whether that’s an iterative roadmap, or whether that’s through to AB testing or something like that.
Si Muddell:
And I guess, from that perspective, so say once you understand the brand, you understand the objectives, the challenges, the audiences, like you said, the personas, what are their objectives? What are their pain points? What are their influences and motivations? How could they potentially be sort of sub-categorised? What’s the buyer journey, all of that stuff? So once you’ve done that initial discovery, what then is the typical… How would you approach it? If a business comes to us and says, “Look, I want to improve sales,” for example. And then, you’ve done that sort of initial planning bit, what’s the practical side of what you’re then needing to do?
Ceri Balston:
Yeah, absolutely. I think there’s a few key things. I think part of it is cultural. And I think a big mind shift adjustment I’ve seen in my career is this concept that every test needs to win, for example. Everything you do needs to show it’s a… And the reality is not everything you do is going to be a success, which is one of the beauties of running a test or if you can AB test it because it may not win. But it’ll teach you something about what to do next. And that’s really, really-
Si Muddell:
And for those who are completely not familiar at all to CRO, conversion rate optimisation, what do you even mean by a test? What does that mean?
Ceri Balston:
So a test in terms of say you have a hypothesis. You start with a hypothesis and say, “Okay, we think by including this particular feature on the site to bring more prominence to this feature,” it could be a flag pointing to a particular area, one that you use and gauge with, will lead to an increase engagement with that particular functionality on the site. So if that’s your hypothesis, and you say you’re going to measure it by number of clicks on this section.
Ceri Balston:
And then you run the test. And then you look at those metrics between the control and when you put this new element in. And you look at the success of that, whether it has been an increase, or it’s been a decrease in engagement.
Ceri Balston:
And I think as soon as everyone’s bought into the fact that okay, it’s all about learning. Everything you do teaches you something and makes you better out of the actions you take next. So that’s one thing. It’s part of the cultural shift.
Ceri Balston:
I think the other part of culture is a sense that everyone can have an idea. It’s a really democratic process. And I think it’s quite a common challenge. Those people who are familiar with the HiPPO problem or challenge when it’s the highest paid person of, not authority. What’s the O in HiPPO? Opinion. Highest paid person’s opinion. So it might the CEO or a director or something, “I think we should do that.” And everyone goes, “Okay, we should do that.”
Ceri Balston:
The beauty of this approach is everyone can have an idea and you can take the CEO’s ideas and you can put this all down into a library of opportunities. And you say, “Okay, these are all the hypothesis. These are all the things we think you should do.” And you can have a big ideation session. You might get 10 ideas. You might get 50 ideas.
Ceri Balston:
And then it’s really working through that and seeing, okay, what is the priority to all that? And there’s a number of ways to do this. Things I’ve looked at in the past is coming out with something called the ICE method, when you give three scores for each opportunity.
Ceri Balston:
And one is kind of the impact you think this test is going to have. So it could be a test you’re going to do on the home page, which is for all traffic and everything. So it’s going to have a high impact. Or it could be actually, we’re just targeting mobile-only traffic on a particular page, a landing page, which only gets 20% mobile of traffic. So your impact’s going to be smaller.
Ceri Balston:
Then it’s the C in ICE is for confidence. And that’s how much confidence do you have that this test is going to work? And that’s generally when you kind of discuss maybe you’ve run tests like this before in a similar part of the site. It might be that you’ve seen it in user testing or there’s been some complaints or some feedback or something, from a customer, or all that insight and you go, “Okay, yes, we really think this is going to work.”
Ceri Balston:
And the effort is really looking at the cost it’s going to take you to implement it. If you redesign a whole page and do something completely from scratch, that’d be fairly expensive to do relatively, to just changing one element on the page, or just changing a banner or something like that.
Ceri Balston:
And you take those three scores. You can add them up. You can kind of get out average between the three of them. And then you’ve got a priority order to look at. And that takes out the opinion. It takes out the egos. It’s just pure, cold kind of scientific approach to doing it.
Si Muddell:
And what fascinates me, or astonished me and annoys me I’ve got to say generally, in I guess, my experience of marketing in general and advertising, is everything you’ve just explained there, is there’s a methodology. There’s an approach. And that approach needs time and resource and budget.
Ceri Balston:
Sure.
Si Muddell:
And actually, I see, and challenge me if you don’t agree, but I see conversion rate optimisation as being a marketing channel onto its own in the sense that people are quite willing to say, “We need more traffic to the site.” So they’ll turn. They’ll pump money into what I call the crack cocaine of marketing in terms of Google Ads. And don’t get me wrong. It’s an amazing source of leads. And you turn that dial, and you will get more traffic.
Si Muddell:
But if the site isn’t converting, or put it a different way, if it isn’t converting as well as it might convert, then you’re literally just throwing money away. And it astonishes me that more people aren’t more concerned and focused again in terms of resourcing a conversion rate optimisation strategy and sort of, implementation of that because ultimately, even if, and I say even if there’s a 10% increase in conversion, that over a year, can be absolutely significant.
Si Muddell:
And not only can it obviously sort of increase sales, increase inquiries, increase the bottom line, it can also increase engagement, generally. And it can decrease the cost of marketing, the cost of per acquisition, the cost per lead. So what’s your thoughts on that?
Ceri Balston:
Yeah, I mean, it’s this whole classic leaky bucket analogy. Conversion rate optimisation is about trying to plug those holes in the bucket. So you’re pouring all this traffic in. And the more you pour in, the faster it’s going to come out those holes. And it’s just wasted opportunity.
Ceri Balston:
And then, you look at that. If you were to think, “Geez, we’re just wasting stuff here.” And sometimes it’s really simple like your site’s loading slowly. It might be something like that. Or it might be there’s something broken on the site. And that’s to plug those holes and you’ll see an improvement in conversion.
Ceri Balston:
And I think one of the things I’ve seen is, because it’s an easy thing to think it’s difficult to do, difficult to implement. But because it’s easy, yeah, you can just buy the crack cocaine and just throw more traffic in it, right? But I guess, my approach would be you don’t have to start big. You don’t have to have a massive roadmap. It’s just a case of trying it.
Ceri Balston:
And I think as soon as you start seeing those wins and think, “Actually, that’s just improved our conversion rate by 2%. Let’s do as you say and kind of extrapolate that over the next 12 months.” You think, “Wow.” You can translate that into the bottom line and you start adding that up.
Si Muddell:
Exactly. And the thing there is that you then double up, right? Because if you have a 10% or greater increase in conversion rate, and you have what we keep calling the crack cocaine of marketing, you are going to be doubling up. And there lies the growth potential.
Ceri Balston:
Yeah. And I think again, what I’ve seen is people who’ve maybe been skeptical of this at first suddenly being completely switched around and thought just they’re completely addicted to kind of optimisation and making things better, because they can see it really quickly. They can see it in the numbers.
Ceri Balston:
I mean, you think occasionally it’s dangerous, because there’s the classic thing. You can look at a test and I’ve had in the past, a chief operating officer of a really big insurance company come charging down the corridor to me and say, “Ceri, we’re up. We’re up. Our conversion rate’s doing really well.” But it’s only the test’s only been live an hour. But that’s because they’re so excited about what we’re doing.
Ceri Balston:
And conversely, a test goes live and it looks down, it’s only been live for an hour. You need to let these things play out. But it’s exciting, because you can see it making a difference in real time and see improvements happening.
Si Muddell:
Yeah. So obviously, again for those of you that don’t know, Woven is a brand engagement agency. And our mission is to make brands work beautifully. And our target audience are design-conscious brands. And we do work and we do qualify, we do filter the people that we work with based upon these kind of key elements. That really does stay true to us as a brand and the type of brands and the type of work that we want to do.
Si Muddell:
So my question is how does conversion rate optimization fit into brand, generally? And is there a tension between sort of beauty and data, like head and heart? And what’s your thoughts on that?
Ceri Balston:
Yeah, it’s interesting, isn’t it? I mean, it’s something I’ve had floating around in my head. The kind of the Woven mantra is making brands work beautifully. And I would add onto that, effortlessly. And it’s all about how can you make experiences, which are just incredibly easy for people to use and actually leave people, leave users, leave customers, potential customers, returning customers just feeling kind of having more warmth and where there’s more kind of brand equity? You know, they value that brand experience more.
Ceri Balston:
And certainly, you bet all the massive, really successful brands in the world like your Ubers, your Apples, Google, whoever it is. They’ll all be optimizing the experience. And it’s totally to try and really make something really slick and memorable and just constantly remove barriers and just kind of use the power of those digital experiences to get across their brand message and the essence of their brand. But also, encourage the users to take the path they want to or they want them to take through the site. And get them to see and engage with the bits of the site they really want them to see and then feel and experience.
Si Muddell:
So brand and conversion rate optimization can completely co-exist together and benefit one another.
Ceri Balston:
Yeah, totally, totally. And I think I mean, within parameters. I’m not suggesting that you suddenly, you say, “Right. We think green buttons are going to work now. And that new shade of green isn’t in the color palette. It all needs to be within the brand guidelines and tone of voice and star guides and everything like that.” But I think CRO is just a way of kind of really implementing a brand and what a brand stands for and kind of bringing that to light.
Si Muddell:
And I think you’re right. I think that we say this a lot. But brand is the sum total of all interactions. And obviously, the greater and more positive that experience is, the better the person’s perception of the brand is and the more consistent that is.
Ceri Balston:
Yeah.
Si Muddell:
And I think that stands true, really. So I guess, my question is in your mind, is CRO relative to user experience?
Ceri Balston:
Yeah, completely. I mean, I think I would say CRO is just one thing in the user experience tool set. And they’re very much go hand in hand. I think CRO is just a strategy and approach for implementing improvements to the user experience over time.
Ceri Balston:
I mean, there’s loads of things that sit in that. It’s like the foundations, those personas we’ve spoken about earlier. It’s inclusive design and accessibility. They all fit together within that. And then CRO’s just a way of implementing that and having the strategy to make those improvements over time.
Si Muddell:
Yeah. And I think again, just having like yourself, sort of spend hours looking into analytics and all sorts of things and think that even though through the sort of conversion rate optimization lens, ultimately, you’re looking to prove or disprove a hypothesis and hopefully, ultimately I suppose, improve a metric. But I guess, in doing that and in having frequent visibility of the numbers, you are also seeing sort of elements that really are aligned and associated and influencing a poor or a good user experience. Because for example, if a site has speed problems and it’s slow, then the likelihood is that will also be detrimental to conversion rate. Now, whilst it’s detrimental to conversion rate, it’s fundamentally detrimental to the user experience, which is why-
Ceri Balston:
Yeah, and their impression of that brand. Absolutely.
Si Muddell:
Exactly. So I guess, for me as well, it’s almost like the two are highly aligned together. And I guess that it’s much more of a focus lens on improving something via conversion rate optimization. But the tools that you use and the way that you use those tools are very similar, really. Would that be fair?
Ceri Balston:
Yeah. No, absolutely. I think so. And I think in the old days, I think people went through kind of cycles of like, “Oh, we need a new website.” Get a new website. Put that live. That will sit there for three or four years. And then, suddenly a few years later, “We need a new website.” And you just go through that massive iterative change.
Ceri Balston:
And the reality is trends change. User needs change over time. And brands just can’t afford to stand still anymore. They need to be constantly evolving, constantly iterating and constantly kind of taking that user feedback and their customer feedback and saying, “Well, how do we adapt to do better?” So they’re very much kind of living, breathing experiences.
Si Muddell:
Yeah. There’s two more questions I wanted to ask you. So for those of you that don’t know, we’re a HubSpot Gold Partner. And within HubSpot, they very much embrace what’s called growth-driven design, or GDD. And again, we’ll put some notes on this for people to read up on in their own time.
Si Muddell:
But ultimately, what growth-driven design is, is it’s an agile methodology. And it’s kind of applied say, if we were going to redevelop a site. Let’s take it from that point. So if we were going to redevelop a site and we had a brief, what we could do is we could have a waterfall approach where we spend ages and ages and lots of money in terms of thinking about what the functionality will be. And then, ultimately, launching it months down the line, it going live. And that’s kind of jobs are good and now it’s done.
Si Muddell:
With growth-driven design, what the methodology there is it’s three stages. Stage one is let’s delve into the analytics and look at and identify opportunities and problems. And sort of discover any kind of insight that we can then feed into point two, which is to work on and launch what they call a launchpad, which is basically a website that is better than what they currently have, but is not at all, the finished product.
Si Muddell:
And then, where really growth-driven design really sort of comes into play is that point three. And they call it continuous improvement. And ultimately, what that’s saying is the kind of the fun begins and the work begins when a site goes live. It’s by no means the finished article, by no means. And to your point earlier in the example of sort of arguments about should it be green? Should it be red? Should it be here? Should it be there? Obviously, there’s a brand discussion around placement and look and feel and tone of voice and messaging and color palette and everything.
Si Muddell:
But also, there’s just beyond the realms of that, or within the realms of that should I say, there’s a well, how do we know what all of our customers… Maybe there’s 10 different personas with different needs at different stages of the buyer journey, and what they need. So continuous improvement in that point three is really using analytics, conversion rate optimization techniques and homing in and focusing in on certain areas of the site that we believe will have the biggest business impact.
Si Muddell:
And ultimately, looking at what the data is saying and then sort of prioritizing that based upon business impact and saying, “Okay, actually, here’s the insight we think we should invest in a sort of a conversion rate optimization test for the home page, or for the buying page.” What would you say on that?
Ceri Balston:
Yeah, exactly. And I think it’s quite a bold thing to embrace that concept of launchpad websites for some companies because the classic thing you say is, “We will list out everything we need, everything that everyone thinks is important.” And it might be they’re kind of replicating what’s on the old site.
Ceri Balston:
But the reality is if you really look at it, really dive into the analytics, or kind of whatever other data you might get, you might find that only 6% functionality is used by 90% of your users. And the cost benefit for doing the other bits are kind of initially not worth it. And then, you can really do that iteration over time.
Ceri Balston:
And I think the beauty of that, because you started with a backlog already, so this is all stuff we thought we should do. We’re now live. We’ve got real data to say, “Oh, yes. It looks like we need to do a bit more of that.” Or, “Are we missing out on that opportunity,” which wasn’t even in your backlog of something you originally planned and wanted to do.
Ceri Balston:
And I think that just really keeps everyone focused and honest about what’s important and what’s going to make a difference and really, maximize the return on the investment. And that’s what it boils down to. It’s like for every dollar, every pound we spend, how much are we going to see back? And that’s the key to kind of unlocking successful CRO, conversion rate optimization.
Si Muddell:
So I lied when I said two questions left. There’s actually two questions left now, because I’ve just made another one.
Ceri Balston:
Okay.
Si Muddell:
So question number one is what are the tools of the trade that you use for doing your role? I suppose, and your role for everyone’s purpose is more than just conversion rate optimization. But within the realms of conversion rate optimization, what tools do you use for that?
Ceri Balston:
Yeah. So I guess, the very first thing, which everyone should have, and I’d be surprised if everyone doesn’t have it, is an analytics data tool. So Google Analytics is free. And I think really getting familiar with that. And the key thing with Google Analytics is how well it’s set up, because there’s so much you can get out of it in terms of the richness of the data and how users are engaging with your site if it’s set up optimally. And we’ve seen kind of accounts which have been absolutely great. Some accounts you’re like, “Oh, we need to fix this.” And as soon as you have fixed things, it really brings it to life.
Ceri Balston:
And I think alongside that, a tool like Google Data Studio to help you visualize data and bring other data sources together is really useful. And then, kind of user testing tools. There’s things like user-zoom or Lookback.io for doing kind of remote screen recording. There’s things called 5 Second Test you can do when you just want to test something quickly, just get that more qualitative data.
Ceri Balston:
And then, in terms of actually implementing an AB test, it’s things like Google Optimize. It’s free. It’s integrated into Google Analytics. Then there’s other kind of more enterprise tools like Optimizely, which I’ve used before, which is fantastic. Other cheaper tools, kind of more affordable tools like VWO, Visual Website Optimizer.
Ceri Balston:
And I think the big bit that shouldn’t be forgotten about that is the tools you need to help you plan and map. And it could be from something like having a Google Sheets, an Excel spreadsheet, which we just saw in your insights library and all your ideas and opportunities. It could be using something to manage your backlog of ideas, like Trello or Jiro or even Microsoft Planner that we use with some of our clients to kind of really manage the backlog and see everything. So that’s kind of the tools that I’d be looking at.
Si Muddell:
And you’d use Hotjar and-
Ceri Balston:
Yeah, yeah, totally. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Si Muddell:
And what are sort of the biggest mistakes that you’d highlight for people to steer clear of when it comes to CRO? And just to add one in there from my point of view, and hopefully, it’s not taking thunder away from what you’re about to say. But I think the biggest thing that I personally see is that people are trying to test too many things within the same test.
Si Muddell:
And so therefore, they’re sort of distorting any real insight that they can get from it, because there might be a landing page. But within that landing page, they’ve changed more than one thing at the same time. And so therefore, the results might go up or they might go down, which is good or bad. But if you can’t isolate the exact reason why it’s gone up or it’s gone down, then it’s kind of pointless, to be quite honest. You’re just got to un-click that go backwards.
Ceri Balston:
Yeah. No, I totally agree. And I think sometimes, you don’t have a choice but to do a whole page iteration. And then, I think you can test to see whether it’s better or worse. But then I think once you’ve done that, you need to test the elements within that and say, “Okay, what are the elements of this test that are driving any improvement or didn’t decrease the metrics?”
Ceri Balston:
I think other mistakes I’ve seen in the past is not having a hypothesis. It’s like, “Oh, we need to do a test. Let’s put something live.” And you get the results in and say, “Well, how do we know this is winning or not?” Because we don’t actually know what we’re testing. We haven’t defined the metrics.
Ceri Balston:
Also, making sure when you are setting up tests, whether it’s a testing brief, or anything, you define all the metrics you want to measure. Because you may have one north star metric. This is the one we want to improve, but it’s worth having lots of others as well, because it’s too late to add them in afterwards if there’s something you need to set up.
Ceri Balston:
Another classic, I know I mentioned it earlier, is just checking a test too soon. I think it can take balls sometimes, a bit of bravery, to test, because sometimes things look like they’re going backwards. And I think it’s a bit of a difficult thing, even if something recovers to have a test that fails and think, “Actually, our conversion rate went down by 2% on that test.” It’s not a great place to be, but it will teach you an awful lot about what not to do and what to do next.
Ceri Balston:
And I think every business learns just as much, probably more so, from the failures as from the successes. And undoubtedly, you’ll take that on the next test you’ll take. You’re more likely to win and see that improve. So really holding fast and having the courage to see those tests, being able to see them through and not get too distraught or concerned if the numbers aren’t always going to way you want them to go.
Si Muddell:
And I totally agree. And you know me. You’ve known me for a while now and that I almost celebrate failure in a sense that a good book for anyone to read if they haven’t read Black Box Thinking. Insanely useful, valuable book around real life examples of brands and sort of people as well, that have failed. But how they’ve used failure as a means to kind of iterative development and improvement.
Si Muddell:
So I think like you say, for conversion rate optimization, it’s hugely important to understand and to test the things that don’t work and to make a note of it. And I think, I can’t remember who said it, but what’s honest about failure is that failure is failing at the same thing more than once. That’s failure. That’s bad failure.
Si Muddell:
And what this should hopefully, teach us is for sure, fail. Just don’t do the same thing again. But also, make sure that if something does succeed, or it doesn’t succeed, whatever the insight is, the ability to make sure that you document and you record that insight in a way that’s sort of really easily digestible for the next person or the next team member to be able to use, because otherwise again, it’s just an insight that’s lost in time.
Ceri Balston:
Yeah, totally. Totally. I think to add to kind of that looking at failure, it’s about failing fast and failing cheaply because it’ll cost you a lot more if you’d implemented this change that everyone thought was a good idea and you haven’t tested it. Or it’s taking a long time to vote and you take a more waterfall approach to get there would be more challenging. But yeah.
Si Muddell:
For sure. So I think we’ve gone for about half an hour or so.
Ceri Balston:
Yeah.
Si Muddell:
Again, I could talk and I know we both could, we could talk about this forever. But essentially, just to kind of wrap up, it’s a service that Woven offers. It’s a really interesting and valuable way and valuable marketing channel that really, we feel should be invested in. It isn’t always invested in the same way that the other marketing channels that are actually driving traffic to a website are invested in. And not just in terms of money, but in terms of time spent reviewing, resourcing and obviously, the financial side of that. But actually, if the right amount of time and the right approach is used, that can really, really drive dividends of value and business and real business impact and growth for businesses.
Si Muddell:
And like you say, I think the key there is in terms of what the approach is, having an approach and being methodical about that. And having a hypothesis and deciding and identifying what the priorities are. And that can be from quantitative sort of data via analytics already and we would tend to deep dive. That can also be from stakeholder interviews generally, to understand the business objectives and goals and challenges. It can be delving into the audience in terms of the personas, what makes them tick? What are their pain points? What are their influences?
Si Muddell:
And you put that all together. You layer that based upon the brand. And you work within the confinement of the brand and the tone of voice and the look and feel and the color palette. And actually, if you do all of that, in that way, and you make it ultimately customer centric, because really, they’re the ones that are actually tend to be using the website, then what we would think and what we would hypothesis and what we’ve seen time and time again is sort of incremental development and increase in conversions, be that to a lead, be it to an action, be it to an engagement, be it to a sale.
Si Muddell:
And again, going into sort of 2021 planning for ourselves and for a lot of our clients right now, these kind of insights, particularly from a digital ecosystem perspective, are genuinely what’s kind of feeding our sort of Kanban board of priorities that they’re focusing on for next year, and where their time and where their money should be spent. So anyway, thanks Ceri. I thought that was really-
Ceri Balston:
Well no. Well, thanks Si, for the time. It was good.
Si Muddell:
And I will stop the record now.
Ceri Balston:
Thank you.
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