Review of Conversion Optimization Minidegree Program (Pt. 10)

Let’s test you on something real quick.

If you were to see your website pretending you’ve seen it before and know what you can do to see an uplift, would you be able to do it?

Chances are not (as most of us).

Plus, you’d say “I need the data to be able to know that.”

And that’s a valid comment, yet…

Data only tell us what’s happening and where, not why.

That’s where knowing in great detail about your user, having meaningful Personas, with a conversion framework will help you.

That’s what I learned this week in 3 different courses inside CXL Institute as part of the CRO Minidegree Program, so by the end of this article you’re going to be able to perform a reliable analysis of your website in 5 seconds and see where you can improve.

Let’s begin.

First, the people you’re talking to should be the center of everything.

That may not be something new for you, but…

it’s important to not get caught up and think you already know everything you need from your target market.

That’s why you perform user research.

Keep in mind I said user research, not market research.
While the differences are very subtle in some cases and sometimes they can be the same, the goal should be to work altogether with the other fields towards a same goal.

This means, you should always start with the goals you want from the research, as they will define the questions you ask.

Next, you elaborate the questions and use the best method that works depending on what you’re trying to accomplish. Chances are you’re going to use different methods at different stages you prospects/customers are in.

Now we have 2 ways to go about it: you can listen what people say and watch what people do.

You should aim for both.

The reason is simple. For the first case, interviews and surveys will help you get the language they use to describe their own problems and know how they think about the problem.

Whereas to see how they behave, conducting product test or conducting field studies can help you see how they actually use your website and product/service.

Next, you should find the right people for the study, whether you recruit them with the database you have OR you use a service that helps you with this.

Then, after your participants have performed the task, it’s time to synthesize your data.

For this, you should use a synthesis framework (a semi-structured way to look for patterns) and combine some options in here. The idea is that you want to turn that raw and meaningless data into insights.

You don’t want to make decisions based on data, you want to make decisions based on insights.

Lastly, you should create an archetype/Persona with the findings you get.

The idea is to have a way to remind you of the key points, but more importantly… they are to everyone outside researchers so that they build empathy for who they’re actually talking to, and they get to know them as well.

That’s where building a Persona can be a great tool… which was the second course I took this week inside the CXL Minidegree Program.

But I should first answer: “What are User Personas?”

“A User Persona it’s a precise descriptive model of the user, what s(he) wants to accomplish and why” -Alan Cooper

That means Personas are not stereotypes of descriptive models with a lot of irrelevant details that aren’t actionable.

Now, here are the 3 steps framework you can follow to build a great Persona:

1. Collect data
2. Identify groups
3. Build archetypes

In here, surveys were an option recommended to collect the data, simply because you can get everything you need and quickly as it’s very controlled.

Again, the questions in your survey should be determined by your goals, but keep in mind as well that they must be: relevant, actionable and unbiased.

Once you have collected the data and before you identify the groups, you need to simplify the data you collect… that’s where Exploratory Factor Analysis are helpful.

Said in another way, you’re going to organize your data and group them into a few key issues, called “factors”.

When you have an idea of the factors and their number, you can decide how much influence each factor has on each of the questions.

This is called “The Factor Analysis”.

With this, you add ‘scores’ to each factor… so that you have clusters.

Now it’s time where once you have the clusters, you can average the numbers across each factor score and visualize them in different groups.

As you have this visualization, you can start adding everything into an archetype.

You should start with the needs of that particular person, followed by any meaningful information or quotes you extract from the survey. TIP: to get great quotes and other information, you should ask open-ended questions in your survey.

And now, you have built your Persona.

Does this mean you won’t have to do one or think about it ever again?

Not exactly.

You see, markets change… people’s needs change. So this Persona will be helpful for several months (perhaps a year). In that way, you can also pay attention to any information you see along the way and take notes about them until it comes the time to create them again.

But getting to the first scenario in the article, how can you use all of this to confidently check your website and find possible ways to increase conversions?

Well, the answer is in something called “Heuristic evaluation”.

This goes beyond surveys, interviews, usability tests… even interviews. It’s a qualitative method that has the highest validity and the lowest risk across different options.

But as much as I’d want to give you in great detail how to do this, I can only give you the 7 steps this framework has.

1. Relevance
2. Trust
3. Orientation
4. Stimulants
5. Security
6. Convenience
7. Confirmation

Think of them as each step someone visiting your website goes through in their mind. So ask yourself how you can improve and actually “check” all the boxes to be able to not only get customers, but make them feel happy about their decision.

If you really want to know in great detail how this Heuristic frameowork works (it’s very well worth it), then go check the CXL — CRO Minidegree Program.

Anyhow…

That was all for this week. As you can see, I decided to cover a lot because they were all related and hopefully helpful.

Next week, I’m going to be sharing about how to do a proper Google Analytics audit +how to become truly customer centric with voice of customer data.

Till next week.

Ivan