6 CRO myths to dispel today 🌶

Hey all,

We are taking a break from our regularly scheduled Affiliate programing to discuss a practice that's near and dear to my heart.

Conversion Rate Optimization 🧪

(Actually critical to affiliate & paid marketing and too many miss it)

I wanted to thank you for spending five minutes with me and I hope this is valuable! If you have recommendations for future topics please fire away!

Tye

Button colors 🎨

While this has become parody, micro testing can cost you big time if you are not balancing it with large tests that impact more users more significantly.

Instead, ensure your experiments are a mix of base hits, swings for the fence, and everything in between.

Requires a ton of technical work and coding 💻

Yes some web development skills are important, but you can tap into tools like Optimizely, VWO, and Intellimize with a lot of success.

It conflicts with existing product development work ❌

No. Great CRO, A/B testing, and Experimentation teams collaborate, educate, support, and compliment in-house product and growth teams.

Data is only about quantitative data 🤼‍♂️

Far from it. Qualitative data is a biiiiiig differentiator. Taken a step further the quality and quantity is critical. Sorry I know that is a lot of Qs! Talk to customers, do it often and do it well.

For example, don't ask leading questions. Also, be sure to segment e.g. talk to power, casual, and prospective users, even detractors (sometimes) helps.

It’s just landing page testing 🤦‍♂️

Definitely not. It can positively impact your entire user funnel, often addressing landing pages but not just paid marketing pages.

A/B test winners and losers are always clear 🍾

The gray is real. As "Nuke" LaLoosh said in Bull Durham: “Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose, sometimes it rains.”

As Gary our CRO lead likes to say: "You win some, you learn some." A test is only as good as what you get out of it - so always set it up to you can learn more about your customers even if it does not promote more sales.

While many growth teams take very large swings leading to win rates of 25%, our combination of experience, data, and balance of high and low risk tests, we get a win rate over 60%. Real talk.

That said, some tests fail / are not conclusive, and some tests are unclear and require discussion, and gut business decisions in collaborating with in house DTC e-commerce brands.

Conclusion ✌️

1. Think Big - you might be surprised and diversify tests within your ICE frame work

2. No / Low Code can work - No/Low code tools are good and keep getting better

3. PMs are our friends - Product Teams are often the center of modern growth orgs and they can be great allies and collaborators to AB testing pros.

4. Talk to customers - Often and effectively. Many over index on the quant side. You need both.

5. Full Funnel - It is not just paid traffic / landing pages. It can go much further than that.

6. It can be gray - Winners and next steps are not always crystal clear. So at times you will need to use your best judgement to do what is best for the business amidst ambiguity.

If you want to chat about it more - email me back, I want to help you!

Tye