Conversion Rate Optimisation Guide

2. Getting Started With Conversion Rate Optimisation
What Is Conversion Rate Optimisation?........................................................................... 5
Step 1: Review Your Existing Pages ................................................................................ 5
What Are You Trying To Achieve? ............................................................................... 5
Step 2: Decide On The Type Of Test............................................................................... 6
A/B Testing ............................................................................................................... 6
Multivariate Testing ................................................................................................... 6
Step 3: Set Quantitative Goals........................................................................................ 7
How Long To Test For ................................................................................................ 7
How To Check Your Results Will Be Accurate ............................................................... 7
Step 4: Choose a Data Source ........................................................................................ 8
Test It Yourself.......................................................................................................... 8
Heat Maps................................................................................................................. 8
Get Others to Test for You.......................................................................................... 9
Surveys..................................................................................................................... 9
Google Analytics Tracking ..........................................................................................10
Google AdWords Tracking .........................................................................................10
Step 5: Advert Testing ..................................................................................................11
Step 6: Landing Page Testing........................................................................................12
Word and Content Tests ............................................................................................12
Guide Your User .......................................................................................................13
Headline ..................................................................................................................13
Initial Content ..........................................................................................................14
Images / Videos / Diagrams ......................................................................................14
Main Content ............................................................................................................15
The Offer Itself .........................................................................................................15
Social Proof / Testimonials.........................................................................................16
Make It Easy To Convert ...........................................................................................16
Step 7a: Shopping Cart Testing .....................................................................................17
Step 7b: Form / Contact Page Testing ...........................................................................18
Step 8: Collect And Analyse Test Results ........................................................................19
Step 9: Review and Refine ............................................................................................23

3. A Little Bit About Koozai:
Koozai are a multi-award winning digital marketing agency.
We’re one of the UK’s fastest growing technology companies having been ranked 23rd in the
Deloitte Technology Fast50.
We help businesses connect with their customers online – providing a range of industry-
leading services from Organic Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) and Pay Per Click (PPC)
Management to Link Building, Social Media and Brand Management.
We thrive on building long-lasting client relationships and delivering true value for money.
We’re passionate about what we do - and that shows in our work.
No lengthy contracts, just world class Digital Marketing. Koozai will help you build your
brand online and achieve ROI that can be clearly measured against your bottom line.
How To Get In Touch:
If you would like to get in touch with us, please visit our website (www.koozai.com) or use
one of the methods below:

4. About The Author:
Laura Phillips has experience of SEO, PPC and Social Media both in-house and within an
agency environment. Having worked across a variety of industries from travel to law, and
retail to education she is always looking for new and innovative ways to improve the search
and social visibility of her clients across all platforms.
Additional content provided by Samantha Noble and Dean Marsden.
About This Whitepaper
If you are looking to get more conversions without necessarily gaining more traffic then
Conversion Rate Optimisation is the best place to begin. This guide will give you the basics
of building a highly effective landing page, showing you how to find areas for improvement,
and how to maximise their potential for conversion.

5. What Is Conversion Rate Optimisation?
A large number of websites spend a lot of time and energy focusing on their traffic. There is
a widely held belief that if you can get traffic to your site then conversions should naturally
follow. Sadly for most, this is not the case. You may be getting vast amounts of traffic to
your site, but what can you do if conversion numbers do not meet expectations?
Conversion rate is one of the most important statistics for any online business. It’s about
getting the most from your customers, maximising their understanding and desire to
convert, and countering any and every bump in the road that may stop them doing so.
Step 1: Review Your Existing Pages
The easiest way to find potential improvements for your landing pages (or indeed any part
of your site) is through analysing what you already have and testing it. Whether you are
building a brand new site or looking to improve on an established one, testing and re-testing
is crucial.
What Are You Trying To Achieve?
Start by thinking about your objectives:
 Why am I testing this page?
 Who is my target audience and why?
 What is a good key performance indicator (KPI) for this page?
 What is this landing page trying to get users to do?
 What course of action is it trying to promote?
Identify your goals for testing and give consideration to the expected outcome. It is easy to
get caught up with passive goals which are easier to achieve but don’t actually create
actions, for example, total traffic. High levels of traffic are good; but only if they are
converting. You also need to measure actions from those you are trying to influence.
Try to aim for one goal per page. If an action is worthy of being a goal, it needs its own
landing page to give maximum opportunity to convert and the least chance of distraction
from the goal. For example Spotify focuses on having you try their premium service:

6. Step 2: Decide On The Type Of Test
A/B Testing
A/B testing (aka split testing) is simply where you test two versions of one page element.
For example, you may wish to design a home page with a light blue background and a dark
blue background alongside each other to see which performs the best. Once the test has
been run and the most successful page established, this may become the new default,
which can then be tested against another, for example a grey background. A/B testing
involves constantly testing two variations of one page element to find which is most
beneficial to the site, giving very specific results.
Multivariate Testing
Multivariate testing allows you to compare a number of factors across a page or pages to
find the best possible combination. You may wish to test various headlines, colours, button
locations, images, price points or any other aggregations of elements to find which performs
best for your predetermined goals. Start by listing the elements you wish to test, for
example, headline includes/excludes the word ‘Free’, button size large/small, and image
top/bottom.
The versions and tests you can run are essentially infinite, providing broader results than
A/B testing. That’s why if you’re looking to run a test it’s often far better to use Multivariate
testing and to create a new page that meets your core goals rather than just a simple
change such as colour switches.

7. Step 3: Set Quantitative Goals
We now need to consider some of the fundamental aspects of our test to make sure goals
are realistic and easy to track:
How Long To Test For
Consider the timeframe you will need to run the test. If you fail to define clear parameters,
your results will be hard to quantify. Think about how many conversions you get on a
daily/weekly/monthly basis and how many you need to achieve conclusive results.
Marketo have created a Landing Page Calculator to estimate the time period and/or number
of variations you could run based on the number of conversions the site achieves on a daily
basis.
How To Check Your Results Will Be Accurate
Statistical significance allows you to accurately distinguish between naturally occurring
patterns and those that happen by chance. This is hugely important, you need to know your
results are accurate before implementing any changes or page performance may be
damaged instead of improved.
Set a level of confidence that you are happy with (if you are unsure, 95% is a popular bar
for confidence). Then choose one of a number of plug-ins available for Microsoft Excel (such
as the Data Analysis plugin) which will tell you the sample size you will need to gain
accurate results.

8. Step 4: Choose a Data Source
In many cases, sites will roll out landing page tests on a live site and watch the results come
in. In other cases, such as a site that has not been launched yet, user testing may be
carried out by small samples of invited guests. They can then test a landing page within a
website by using it and recording their thoughts.
Test It Yourself
Firstly, be the customer and test the page yourself. You may think you know your site inside
out, but site owners often discover stumbling blocks they didn’t know of or had forgotten
existed by testing the site for themselves. Navigate the page testing your predefined goals
one by one. For example, if you were testing the BBC homepage you may wish to test how
easy it is to navigate to the news or TV listings. Are they easy to spot? Does anything block
your path such as pop ups?
Video yourself doing this and keep a running commentary of what you are doing and how
you are feeling. There are many products and services available for this such as ScreenFlow
or Camtasia. You may hate the idea but you will have a record of your own user experience
that you can refer back to.
Heat Maps
Secondly, have the page tested by anyone who can spare the time and see what issues they
might have. If the same issue keeps coming up, start improving by focusing on that element
of the page.
You may also wish to employ a User Experience (UX) service such as Clicktale for heat-
mapping, eye-tracking. This will show you the behaviours users use when they browse your
website and build up an aggregate pattern so you can spot any issues.

9. Get Others to Test for You
You could also use a full video service such as User Testing or What Users Do which allow
you to create a test and define what tasks testers should complete. Once completed you will
receive videos of participants with audio so you can see and hear what problems they might
have found. It’s important to get third parties fitting the description of your target audience
to test your site. If your target audience is broad, you may wish to carry out tests using a
number of different audiences.
Surveys
For ongoing feedback, you may wish to add a service such as Survey Monkey, Ethnio or
Qualaroo (previously KISS Metrics) to the site. These surveys can be added to any page,
though most commonly they are added to the Thank You page. This creates a small pop up
where you can ask for the user’s opinion. Because you are requesting this information from
the Thank You page, you ensure that these users are fully qualified, having already
converted. You may wish to ask if there was anything that confused them, or that they
found hard to find on the landing page.

10. Google Analytics Tracking
Within Google Analytics you can create goals that allow you to see when a user has
completed a key action. You can also analyse this data to see what they did before
completing the action, such as the pages they viewed. This is a great way of seeing which
parts of the conversion path need improving.
This guide from Google explains how to create goals:
http://support.google.com/analytics/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=1032415
Google AdWords Tracking
If you are running paid search adverts on AdWords you should also enable conversion
tracking: http://support.google.com/adwords/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=1722054. This
will identify which keywords and adverts led to conversions and is the ideal way to see if
your pages are meeting user expectations.
You should also run your new page through all of these tools one you’ve created it to see
what people think.

11. Step 5: Advert Testing
Always keep your Ads in mind, making sure the landing page is closely tied to the Ad copy.
This not only gives users the confidence that they have made the right decision by clicking,
but also helps to minimise wasted clicks. If you aren’t using paid adverts then it’s also
important to consider your Meta matches up to the pages people will land on.
For example M&M Direct have adverts for running shoes that say they are cheap:
The landing page then supports this by showing only running shoes, and how much the
price saving is on each one:

12. Step 6: Landing Page Testing
On any given page there are likely to be thousands of different variations of items that can
be tested to generate results. Below we’ve listed some of the most important changes to
investigate and while you don’t need to change them all this should a great place to start if
you need inspiration:
Word and Content Tests
 Test the offer
 Long paragraphs vs short paragraphs
 Bullet points vs paragraphs
 Punctuation
 Test copy ordering on the page
 Columns – 1, 2 or 3 layout
 Test different words
 Informal / formal / attitude
 Font size
 Links – Blue and underlined
 CTA Wording
Other Things To Test
 Headline
 Image
 Call to Action: Wording / Shape / Style / Position on page / Icon / Colour / Legibility
 Layout
 Testimonials
 Content Size
 Actual Copy
 Embedded Widgets
 Coupons
 Colours
 Fonts
 Sizes
 Sales Incentives
 Number of fields on a form
 Newsletter Subscriptions
 Reviews
 More Product Details
 Shipping Info
 Shipping Pricing
Let’s take a look at some of those key items in more detail:

13. Guide Your User
Guide your user’s eyes to where you want them to look with a logical, attractive design and
cues such as colour contrast and arrows to take them to your call to action. The Crazy Egg
Home page does this really well:
Headline
Start with a headline that feels personalised; text visitors can identify with and that provides
an answer to their search query. The headline has the job of drawing the user in and
making them want to read more, so make it engaging, rouse their curiosity, and give them a
reason to continue. This will often be the place to include your unique selling point. For
example ‘Plant bulbs delivered to your door – 10% off until 5pm today’. On the MailChimp
website their headline makes it really clear what they do:

14. Initial Content
Follow the headline with short, to the point text or bullet points to keep reading easy and
the user engaged. This text should include more details of the features and benefits you
offer, explaining how your product or service will benefit the user, and should be written in
the same style as the headline.
Remember the Milk uses a “to do” list to explain their features, which is a clever way of
showing how their product works:
Images / Videos / Diagrams
Use images to break up content and help reinforce the feel of the site. For example,
technical, emotional, niche. This is the place to add your best promotional imagery or video
or your product or service in use. Video has been reported to directly increase conversions
by over 75% in some instances. Attractive diagrams can also be useful here, demonstrating
how your offering solves a problem.
The Dropbox Homepage focuses on one big video to show their benefits.

15. Main Content
The first paragraph should contain a brief review of major points. You also need to reveal
the deal clincher early on so the user does not have time to lose interest. Think about what
you would say if you were selling the product face to face. Your landing page copy should
reflect this. Consider recording yourself making a pitch then compare it to your page and
see what elements might be missing.
Some sites will be better off with short, easy to read pages, where others will require more
information, usually where larger purchasing decisions are involved. For an example of how
long pages can work to your advantage have a look at any Amazon product page. That said,
if you don’t have anything to say, don’t say it. Endless waffle and fluff in your text will put
users off. Keep editing your content, every word must have a purpose, otherwise take it out.
On our Whitepaper pages we try to quickly establish what the content is about:
The Offer Itself
Place your offer here with a clear call to action. Include a brief overview of the benefits,
present your offer, and justify your pricing. You may also wish to include a limited time offer
or other incentive to act quickly. This helps to create a sense of urgency which may
motivate more users to convert. Groupon do this well:

16. Social Proof / Testimonials
Social proof can be very important in the conversion process. Testimonials from real people
provide evidence that you are a trustworthy and quality business. The reassurance of seeing
your offering be qualified by others helps users convert.
Any positive press can also be used on your landing page to further cement your value in
the mind of the user, as can any guarantees or other ‘peace of mind’ propositions you may
have associated with your product or service.
If any recognisable companies or personalities use your product or service, combine this
selling point with more imagery such as their logo or photograph to provide further
assurance. Firefox do a great job of showing off the number of downloads they have had
and using that to encourage downloads:
Make It Easy To Convert
Overly lengthy or complicated forms are known to put users off. Focus on making
conversion as simple as possible with a quick and easy to use action, no distractions such as
pop ups or adverts, and a Thank You page asking for their opinion to help you further
improve your landing page. We try to make the forms for our Whitepapers as simple as
possible and focus them on only the information we need:

17. Step 7a: Shopping Cart Testing
Another vital part of a website to be tested often is your shopping cart, especially by
analysing where people fall out of the process. Some of the key aspects to test are:
 Make it easy for people to pay using their preferred method (PayPal, Credit Card etc)
 Check the compatibility of payment gateways (e.g. Lloyds) on different browsers
 Test how the shopping cart renders on a mobile and tablet
 Include logos that add trust
 Gather email addresses at the start of the process, if users don’t complete an order then
follow-up
 Consider testimonials and reviews
 Use key phrases such as ‘Fast Delivery’ and ‘Price Guarantee’ to encourage a sale
 Review competitor shopping carts to see what they do well
 Use progress indicators, pictures and links to product descriptions
 Eliminate unnecessary steps
 Monitor user journeys through the process with the tracking software discussed earlier
 Make error messages clear so the user understands any problems they have to fix
 List a phone number in case of any problems
 Make postage costs visible on the product page so there are no surprises
 Test user registration before and after the sale
One site that does many of these items very well is ASOS:

18. Step 7b: Form / Contact Page Testing
If you don’t have a shopping cart then you’ll need either a form or contact page to gather
customer details. Like a shopping cart there are also factors to be considered:
 Keep reading to a minimum
 Only have “required” fields where absolutely necessary
 Have adequate shipping information and pricing information
 Ensure that the email privacy link is next to, or close by to the email request field
 Add alternative contact methods (Phone, Email, Address, Live Chat)
 Keep contact form as short as possible; the basic name, email and message fields should
be enough
 Use a large, obvious submit button below your contact form
 Assure users that their contact details will not be passed on to a third party
 Include your phone number as HTML text so it can be used on Skype or easily copied
 Include your postal address as HTML text so it be easily copied
 Add Schema markup data to allow your address and phone numbers to appear as rich
snippets in the search engines and elsewhere; more information at www.schema.org.
 Display a confirmation message when the page has been sent
 Test having the name, position and, if possible, a picture of the person they might be
speaking to when they contact you
 Provide FAQ’s to answer common questions that may cause issues
SEOmoz do many of these things very well:

19. Step 8: Collect And Analyse Test Results
One of the better ways to test pages is to use Google Content Experiments which can be
accessed via Google Analytics:
Getting Started
It is very easy to get started with a new Content Experiment and you can be up and running
in five simple steps:
 Decide on which page you want to test
 Design the different variations (each one needs a separate URL)
 Choose which goal you want to improve
 Create the test
 Analyse the results
Content Experiments can be found within the Content section
of Google Analytics, just one click away from your main
reports.
When visiting the area for the first time you will be displayed
a screen explaining a little bit about the tool and how to use
it. There are some helpful guides; so if you are unsure of
what to do, I would recommend checking these out first by
clicking on ‘learn more’ in the bottom right-hand corner of
the screen.
The first thing you need to do to create a test is to tell the
system what page of your site you want to start with.
In this example I have added the Koozai Home page:

20. Next up, you will be asked to provide details of the first variation you want to run against
your original. The variation does need to be on a different URL and I would suggest that you
put all your test pages into one folder on your site called ‘tests’. This way you can block the
entire folder within your robots.txt as you don’t want the search engines to be able to crawl
the pages due to duplicate content issues.
If you want to test more than one page variation, you can do this from this stage too. There
is a button that you can click to add another variation. If this is the first time you have
played about with testing, always start small and create one variation or things may get a
little confusing.
Next you need to set up your first test and choose which goal you want to add. After
selecting the goal you want to work with, you need to tell Google what percentage of your
visitors you want to put through the test. The higher the percentage, the faster you will be
able to see the results; however, if you are making a change you may not want to put all
your traffic through the test in case the change causes a negative drop in conversions rather
than a positive. Basically, if you choose 100% of traffic and have your original page and one
test page then 50% will see the original and 50% will see the test.

21. Code Implementation
In order to get the test started, you will need to add a small piece of code onto each of your
test pages. Content Experiments makes it easy to either add the code yourself or send it
onto your Web Developer.
NOTE – all pages taking part in the test need to have Google Analytics installed.
The code needs to be added immediately after the opening <head> tag on the
original page.
Once you have added the code to the original page you will be taken to a new screen which
checks to see that you have installed the code correctly. If you haven’t you will be displayed
with a message like the one below. If everything is OK and ready to go, you will see green
ticks next to each page indicating that you can proceed.

22. Checking The Test
You are now ready to start the test, so spend a couple of minutes reviewing what you are
about to launch before hitting the go button. Depending on how much traffic your site
receives and in particular the page that you are testing, this will determine how long you
should run the test for. In order to see fair results there should be a good amount of visits
and conversions put through the test.
Once the test is running, you can look at the results as they come in by going back to the
Content Experiments section in Google Analytics. When you select the section, you will be
displayed with a list of all your experiments.
You can go into each test to see the results received to date and it is wise to keep checking
back on your test to be confident that you are not losing out on goal conversions. When you
select an experiment from the list, a detailed report will open for that experiment. In the
report you can see exactly how the pages in your experiment are performing and whether
one of the pages is outperforming the other. You can also see the status of your experiment
from this report and if you decide to stop the test early, you can do this from here too.

23. Step 9: Review and Refine
At this stage you should have created new pages to test with clear goals in mind. You’ll have
launched the pages and tested them against each other to determine which worked best, or
you’ll use real user feedback to determine what they love and hate.
Now you have a winning page the next step is to reassess what worked well and to try and
tweak those aspects or introduce new elements to gain further improvement. CRO is a
process that never truly ends and that’s what makes it so fascinating.
Thank you for reading this whitepaper and happy testing!