This book describes the Conversion Framework™, a process we developed in 2007 and have evolved since. The framework is built around eight principles: the first six principles cover how visitors interact with different websites and whether they are persuaded to stay or decide to leave. These principles are:
Understanding your website visitors through persona creation
Creating confidence and trust
Understanding the impact of the buying stages
Dealing with FUDs (fears, uncertainties, and doubts)
Using incentives
Engaging users
As you apply these principles to your website or campaign, you will begin to see what changes need to be made.
The seventh principle of the Conversion Framework asks you to test any change you make against your original design. By applying the science of online testing, you will measure the impact of any change you make on your bottom line. The eighth and final element of the Conversion Framework asks you to make a long-term commitment to conversion optimization—a willingness to iterate. Conversion optimization is not something you do only once. It is a long-term effort when done correctly. It should pay for itself for a very long time.
We have deployed this framework on hundreds of websites in different vertical markets to help increase conversion rates. The framework removes the guesswork from the conversion optimization process. It will provide anyone interested in optimization with a specific methodology to produce consistent results. The framework puts buyers at the heart of your optimization effort. It forces you to think of buyers’ needs, wants, motivations, and fears. By focusing on buyers, you will ultimately persuade more of them to become your customers. We continue to test the Conversion Framework and refine it every day.
This book is divided into two sections. The first two chapters introduce online marketing concepts you’ll need to understand as you read the rest of the book. Chapter 1 covers some of the basic concepts in conversion optimization, and Chapter 2 explains some of the analytics concepts and mathematical formulas behind conversion optimization. These two chapters will provide you with enough information to understand the general concepts and numbers behind conversion optimization. A novice reader should start here.
If you are familiar with online marketing and have been doing it for a while, you can skip to the second section of the book, which starts with Chapter 3. This section is focused on the eight principles of the Conversion Framework.
You may be a marketing and ecommerce professional who is interested in discovering new ways to maximize the ROI for the campaigns under your purview. You might be a sales professional looking for a way to optimize your sales funnels and increase output. You could be a web designer who is looking for ways to translate your beautiful designs into money for your clients. You may be a web developer or a software engineer creating great websites or ecommerce portals, but you have never focused on creating applications with revenues or users in mind—this is where one of the authors of this book started. Or you might be a small-business owner who is looking for quick tactics to implement on your website.