Two men in an Hotel room with a FlipChart and a LapTop August 27, 2009 02:01 by John Sollars
Sounds kinky?, let me tell you it most certainly is not. Following on from yesterdays presentation by Ben Jesson (guy with Brummie accent in America) from Conversion Rate Experts which I found electric – in fact if I had any hair left it would have looked like Jimmi Hendrix (see, clever huh?), we got hold of a flip chart, brewed some coffee and started brainstorming.
The key issue is that we have lost focus on our customers, as we have grown the business I have become so involved in running it on a daily basis that customers become a nuisance – STOP - they are the most important thing that we have but over a period of time we have;
- stopped collecting customer feedback
- stopped listening to customers complaints (apart from sorting the problem out of course)
- stopped looking critically at the website
- stopped trying to improve our visitors website experience
I always tell people that I am 100% committed to constant improvement, and in the offline business we are always looking for ways to improve, but online I’d forgotten to apply the same ethos to our website as to the offline part of our business.
This afternoon, following Bens advice, we have started to use Google’s website optimiser to test some changes that we have made on the front page and on our top product landing page. Every week I get an email from Grokdotcom telling me to Split test and multivariate test and every week I delete it thinking I don’t need it – SHOOT ME if I ever say again that I don’t need to test. Google even provide a free tool to do the job for you – what a Pillock I am!.
Anyway watch out for big changes, we know what our conversion rate is now and again it is something that I have always known, but haven’t apparently been able to influence much. If you run a 12 month analysis in Google Analytics our conversion rate is a flat line and whatever we have done in the past hasn’t made any difference. Boy, what a difference a day makes!. We’ve got what I think is a great new layout, but we will test it and see if it makes a difference scientifically – what a Pillock, these tools have been there for ages FREE OF CHARGE and I haven’t been using them. I feel like I have been metaphorically kicked up the backside by Ben and I thank him from the bottom of my heart.
Here’s my tip for today then, test test and then test again. Listen to your customers feedback and act upon it and finally never lose sight of who is paying your wages – it’s the customer stupid
