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| How to Convince your Boss that CRO is a Win Posted: 20 Sep 2010 04:20 PM PDT Posted by Jamie Today I’ll talk about one of my favorite topics, Conversion Rate Optimization (or CRO). I won’t be speaking about tools, case studies, or tips on what layouts or buttons colors work best; Dr. Pete, Paras Chopra and Oli Gardner have written some excellent blog posts on these topics recently. Instead, over the next several weeks, I’ll be posting a few lessons I’ve learned from doing CRO successfully (and unsuccessfully) for a variety of organizations. These are things I wish I had known when I got started. Today’s post will focus on how to convince your organization to do CRO. Make the Case for CRO using Simple MathCRO may be popular on online marketing blogs, but I’m always surprised to learn that most organizations aren’t doing it. At the recent SEOmoz PRO Training Seminar in Seattle, conversion rate guru Tim Ash asked the audience how many of their companies were doing CRO. Of the 300 or so in the audience, only a few dozen individuals raised their hands. Of all the things I’ve worked on in online marketing, nothing has delivered a higher ROI than conversion rate optimization. And yet, it remains less popular than it should. One explanation I’ve heard is that it’s difficult to get started. But with free tools like Google Website Optimizer, and affordable, yet capable services like Unbounce and Visual Website Optimizer, this excuse is quickly losing ground. The best explanation I can venture is that CRO doesn’t happen because it’s difficult to prioritize against the stack of urgent projects that marketing teams tackle each day. Your first job should be explaining the potential return-on-investment of a CRO project. If your marketing team, boss or client knew the estimated ROI of CRO using metrics from their own business, they’ll be more likely to prioritize it ahead of other projects. So what’s the best way to make the case for CRO? Use simple math. Take the numbers of conversions/goal completions from key process of your website, and show what would happen if they performed better. Imagine saying this to your boss or client:
The above example was generated using a simple Excel spreadsheet I created. Download the worksheet and just fill in the white cells with blue text (further instructions are later in this blog post). The spreadsheet will calculate a simple ROI and provide an easy, yet surefire argument. The boxed quote above reflects the outcome of a retail web site example that has 632 sales a month with an average transaction size of $40. See the details in the screenshot of the spreadsheet below:
What to enter into the spreadsheet: Experience Name Monthly Visits Monthly Conversions Average Cash Per Conversion If you don’t have easy access to monetary values like average purchase size or customer lifetime value, just use the raw number of conversions to make your case. Using the data entered above, that would be the following (note that the Excel worksheet provides both):
Keep it simple.This is a simple ROI calculation. Some may argue it's too simple, but it makes a compelling argument that's easy to grasp. The key lesson here is while 10% may not seem monumental, when you see the expected ROI, it often is. And for a low effort with a big reward, it’s a slam-dunk. Use simple math to make your case and you'll have a better chance of getting your organization on board with conversion rate optimization. What's worked for you?What’s helped you convince your organization or client to start doing conversion rate optimization? Please let me know in the comments! --- |
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