A Simple Conversion Rate Optimization Blueprint (for Newbies)

I live and breathe CRO.

Every single week I talk to newbie, intermediate & high-level SEO’s and 99% of the time, the conversation goes the same way.

These are actual comments from guys making more than 100k a year from SEO.

  • I can build and rank them, I just don’t have the time to focus on the CRO stuff.”
  • “I’ve done virtually no CRO because it seems like a hassle.”
  • ‘The whole process is slow and painful.”

If we analyze those comments above and break them down, we can see some seriously limiting beliefs in action:

  • “I can build and rank them, I just don’t have the time to focus on the CRO stuff.”

Don’t have time?

Setting up PBNs, creating content, making sure you don’t have footprints, IP addresses, hosting, managing it all and then creating the systems to run all that efficiently, makes running an SEO business one of the most complicated businesses to run long-term.

CRO is so simple in comparison.

Let’s examine the other comments:

  • “I’ve done virtually no CRO because it seems like a hassle.”
  • The whole process is slow and painful.

Do you remember the first time you heard about SEO?

Maybe it was a friend who made their first $100 in a month online. The wheels started spinning in your head.

Do you remember the first time you looked at Matt’s blog or first jumped on to Lion Zeal to watch some interviews with industry leaders?

The thing is: Any processes is slow and painful, if you want to be good at a skill.

The thing is, there is a way to speed up the 10,000 hours of learning by managing the optimization of your site with this CRO Checklist

That would be like working 8hrs a day for 3.4 years.

Just on the one topic.

That’s how pro skateboarders get good at their art.

That’s how Matt Diggity got good at SEO.

A true master of his art.

Everything seems hard at the beginning.

You need to practice an skill or subject for a long time until it is easy.

It is when you can see things that others can’t. It’s when you are in the stage of unconscious competence that the magic happens.

It’s how good stock traders make successful trades they can’t explain.

It’s when you get to the stage when you are really good and you can’t explain why or how you did something, that you have mastered it.

The same goes with CRO.

You need to start learning skills on the subject, apply the skills and then learn some more.

The thing is, there is a way to speed up the 10,000 hours of learning.

Trim the Fat

I use the following principle or technique in every area of my life.

It’s called the Pareto Principle or the 80/20 principle.

 

“The Pareto principle (also known as the 80/20 rule, the law of the vital few, or the principle of factor sparsity) states that, for many events, roughly 80% of the effects come from 20% of the causes.”

 

The Pareto principle was made famous by Tim Ferriss in the 4HWW. A lot of the people view this book as the bible in our industry, check it out if you haven’t, it is the one book that completely changed the way I view the world, and is the reason I live the life I have today.

When I first heard about this theory, I was running what I guess I would call a “Digital Marketing Agency”:

I really had no idea. I could make websites, I could graphic design, I could code. So the logic was that I would be able to make the most money and travel if I just did everything.

I won’t get into to much detail about this or it could take up a whole blog post on it’s own.

I worked out that SEO was the 20% that I should focus on, and I decided to kill the rest of the business.

My income tripled the next year.

 

The point is, with anything in your life, apply the 80/20:

  • 20% of your friends create 80% of your stress.
  • 80% of customers only use 20% of software features
  • 80% of your sales come from 20% of your products.
  • 80% of your complaints come from 20% of your customers.
  • 80% of wealth is owned by 20% of people

20% of CRO efforts creates 80% of the CTR% or revenue gains.

I have done all the courses I could find on CRO Academy. I have examined in detail all the case studies on other blogs about winning campaigns they have run for their clients. Here at CROGuy, we have processed over 100 sites in just the last few months.

We are starting to see some pretty clear trends when it comes to optimizing websites:

Most of it, is so far over everyone’s head, we get what is called Paralysis from Analysis, and we go grab a beer, sit down on the couch, put on some Family Guy and do nothing.

Today I am going to go through what I have developed as a consistent, repeatable strategy which it comes to CRO.

The process is very simple, almost too simple, you will want to complicate it.

 


The Simple Conversion Rate Optimization Blueprint (for Newbies)

  1. The current webpage you are wanting to test is your control.
  2. Identify the 20% of the areas where people click that make up 80% of the clicks.
  3. Create a variation of the control.
  4. Run 50% of the traffic at one variation, run 50% at the other.
  5. Run for a week.
  6. See what performs best.
  7. Repeat.

That’s the process, you can click here how this CRO Blueprint increases revenue over a year.

I have put a video together step by step, showing how I work through the process.

If you missed my video on setting up and reading heat maps, you can watch it here, it’s step one of the strategy.


Why most fail.

Most people fail at things in life because they don’t have a dependable process to get a desired outcome.

If I do this then I get that outcome.

If you create a consistently repeatable outcome, you can scale.

Tools we use.

We keep it simple. The tools we use are outlined below.

That’s how we get consistent conversion increases for our clients.

It takes discipline (waiting for VWO to conclude an experiment), management (setting reminders in google calendar to check tests and manage client expectations and creativity.

The thing is, the more tests we run, the more data we get and the better results we get for our clients.

I have kept it super basic in this post so that you can go out there and start your own tests and see for yourself.

Looking forward to hearing about some successful campaigns from all my readers; make sure you share them with us.

Author: Kurt Philip

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Hi, I’m Kurt Philip, the founder & CEO of Convertica. I live and breathe conversion rate optimization. I hope you enjoy our findings.

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