Key learnings from our conversion optimisation event

It’s been a busy month at Launch HQ, delivering our event: The CMO’s guide to Conversion Optimisation in Bristol! Our attendees seemed to get a lot out of it, like Abby Carter : “Great insights, upcoming trends and lots of stuff to get the grey matter ticking”. Thanks Abby!?

In case you missed it, we thought we’d dedicate this issue of Learn With Launch to some of the key insights. You can also access the resources from the day – including slides, video presentations and an event guide here.?

Deconstruct silos to unlock optimisation?

Collaboration is the only way to ensure every stage of the customer journey, from the first click on an ad to a purchase confirmation email, is aligned, consistent and optimised. As our experienced speaker Jan Marks put it: ?

“Consistency or the lack of consistency is the main killer of conversion because inconsistent messages have?the highest bounce rates.??

“People come to your site with particular expectations. They told you in a certain way, by selecting the particular click, what their expectations were. If you ignore it and if your messages along the rest of the journey are inconsistent, you're going to see the highest bounce rates. Keep your campaign's value proposition alive and let it sink in throughout the entire user journey.”?

Place the customer at the heart of all you do?

It sounds obvious, but we all face different demands and priorities. Understanding the motivations of your audience and structuring all you do online around that understanding will create true connection.?

Rob Harrison-Plastow from Source Nine Insights shared how deep insight into the emotional life of the most engaged audience on a marketing campaign he worked on yielded results:?

“(the research shaped)...the targeting that we did, from the ad creative, the copy, even the colours on the landing page, the landing page experience itself, the font, the photos, the social proof, the storytelling. So that when people landed on the page, they saw themselves, they felt heard, they felt seen. And we were offering and promising and delivering on an emotional transformation every single step of the way.?

"It fed into our storytelling, to our checkout post-purchase emails, brand engagements, driving loyalty through greater emotional connection, all from understanding the emotional worlds of customers and going upstream of the data that we already had, to the data that we really needed in terms of results. We ended up with a pretty healthy 7%, and before we'd done this customer work, we were around about four.”?

You can start small with testing?

User interviews can reveal key insights. There are simple tests you can run using free platforms such as Microsoft Clarity which can help you optimise your landing pages. VWO can also help you get started with optimising the user journey.??

Make sure your tracking is up to date?

With the phase out of third party cookies coming, you need to make sure you have the right tracking in place to stay on top of the customer journey and identify pain points.?

“If you're not talking about loss of cookie deprecation and what you're going to do, and connecting all of your social through APIs, please do talk to your web developers, talk to your agencies, because once you lose the data, you won't be able to optimise,” said Marija Cepulyte , of Pinterest. ?

(Our ebook on data can help if you're struggling with this).

Be patient and know your goals?

Many companies abandon testing programmes because they don’t yield results quickly, or don’t uncover quick wins. Testing with clear, limited parameters and having simple goals will ensure your experimentation is worthwhile. Manage expectations with whoever holds budget that this is a long game.?

Our Head of Paid Social, Becky Herbert , said:?

“It's easy to do an A/B test. But it's you know, it's that in-depth piece. Why are they feeling this way about this advert? ?

"So we have all this more in-depth research which is really useful, doing the work that Josh Marinaro and I do rather than just the stats on Meta or on Pinterest. You can create an ad and get great click through rate and loads of sessions, but are they buying? That's the point. You can create this really funky ad and people click on it, but if your goal is sales and they're not converting, then what's the point in the advert in the first place?”?

Access all the learnings on the event resource page.

You can also register your interest in our next event on 10 October here.

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