DISCLAIMER: This post is written as a live blog from Mozcon. There may be typos and grammar to make my high school English teachers weep. Please excuse those … it’s a fast-paced conference with back-to-back sessions and no time for proofing or even proper writing.
Krista Seiden from Google takes the stage to give us some tips on how to to do CRO using analytics and by extension you can’t do SEO without analytics.
Things that yield low conversion rates:
- user experience
- is your content personalized to your users?
- do you have actionable web analtyics?
- do you have the dev resources you need?
Understanding Customer Behavior (5 tips)
Tip 1
Use the dataLayer to collect custom info. In a case where the URL doesn’t indicate key data (location, category, etc.) They could pass the information in the dataLayer however and send it as a custom dimension in Analytics to understand what their users are looking for and doing.
Use campaign tagging (UTM) o distinguish variations. You want to use unique UTM_Content for each button, even to the same place. Do the same for paid search, email, social, etc. to really understand what your actions are doing.
Tip 2
Setup analtyics to track conversion funnels. This is where you learn the inconsistencies in your messaging along the path and isolate conversion problems. If you setup different goals with micro and macro conversions you can track with goals the dropoffs.
If you’re using site search the site search report can provide invaluable data as to what people are looking for tha they can’t find.
Tip 3
She also recommends CrazyEgg for click tracking and heatmapping. With it you can see what people are and aren’t clicking on. You can find that they’re clicking the wrong areas and other issues.
Tip 4
She recommends drilling down by devices, locations, etc. and see which goals are completed in different visitor types. If you set up goals for different stages of the funnel you can see fi there are dropoffs based on device types that are different and maybe hidden in the global stats.
Tip 5
Qualitative Testing & Surveys are huge according to Krista. They launched a site and it failed by a couple percentage points. They dug into analytics and tried to fix problems but on each test reparation version they placed a survey. That survey told them tht users preferred the new site though conversions remained flat. So – the redesign was worth it even though conversions remained the same.
Next …
Personalize
Tip 1
Personalizing. At Google the found that gMail was the key thing Google Apps was used for so tested headlines focused on that. Engineers loved it but marketing hated it. The new headline clobbered the old. It won by 20%. Understand your user and tailor to them.
Tip 2
REALLY understand your user. At Google they have one template for all locations. That didn’t work in Japan where pages are a lot busier. They tried to force it but finally gave in and tried to tailor the messaging to Japanese business methods. Just switching from contact us to posting a guide increased conversions over 600%.
They then redesigned the whole site and it killed it.
Tip 3
They had an idea that taking the ad headline over to the landing page they may increase conversions. It worked.
Tip 4
Understand customers at the action level. She was taken to an “event sold out” she was registered to she shoudl have been given a personalized message.
Tip 5
Use the custom funnels report. This will create a button to remarket to that audience and also share that info with Google Optimize to send them a personalized experience welcoming them back. This is awesome.
Now what can you start doing today …
- Implement to track relevant data
- Explore your analytics data
- Identify key metrics & secondary objectives
- Build personalized experiences
- Measure, analyze and repeat.