Lilach Bullock presented a Simplilearn webinar on conversion rate optimization, billed as five advanced CRO tips, published on YouTube on 13 November 2019. The Simplilearn moderator, Dan, introduced her as a CRO expert, and she described herself as a digital content and digital marketing specialist with over 14 years of experience working with enterprises, SMEs, startups and non-profits, a Forbes top 20 women social media power influencer and Oracle’s Social Influencer of Europe. The 42 minute presentation covers what CRO is and why it is the cheapest way to grow, the Obama 2012 campaign’s 500 tests, a five-stage process, Cialdini’s six principles of persuasion, heat maps, A/B testing and what to test, why Amazon’s add to cart button had to change, and personalisation. The video is embedded below, followed by the key takeaways, a summary and a cleaned transcript. She gave a shorter, updated version of the same method at the Israel Networking Hub in January 2026: that talk and transcript are here.
Watch on YouTube: Conversion Rate Optimization Tips With Lilach Bullock | Simplilearn Webinar. The webinar was hosted and recorded by Simplilearn.
Key takeaways
- CRO is increasing the percentage of visitors who take a desired action, from micro conversions to purchases. It gives more from the traffic you already have, cuts ad spend, and is continuous. A one second delay on mobile can cut conversions by 20 percent. Under 2 percent is a warning; aim for at least 4.
- Obama’s 2012 campaign ran over 500 tests on its donation site and landing pages, raising donation conversions 49 percent and sign-ups 161 percent; a simpler donation form alone added 5 percent of 690 million dollars raised online.
- The process: discovery (audience data and behaviour, the pages that leak), premises (hypotheses), prioritisation (one thing at a time), testing (A/B, multivariate) and analysis, then round again.
- Cialdini’s six principles, scarcity, consistency, reciprocation, social proof, authority and liking, are the standard for encouraging a sale, and every one has a website expression, from “only a few left” to a real About page.
- Analytics and heat maps show what people look at, click and ignore. Use them to check CTA visibility and scroll depth, spot distractions, understand which content matters, fix design flaws, find dead ends and fix checkout: The North Face moved its checkout button away from a distracting banner and lifted click-through 21 percent.
- Test one thing at a time; A/B beats multivariate because the answer is clearer. Measure per 10,000 visitors on a busy site or over two to four weeks on a quiet one. Test layout, colours, headlines, copy, visuals and the CTA. Nature Air tested 17 landing pages and one change, contextual CTAs, took conversion from 2 to 19 percent. Amazon’s 1990s add to cart button reassured nervous shoppers; today it is one click, because trust and expectations changed.
- Personalisation lifts sales by around 14 percent and 68 percent of companies call it a priority. Start with detailed personas, then personalise pop-ups (first names, cart-based upsells like GoPro, urgency), localise like Zara and the Food Network, and use tools that adapt content to browsing history the way Amazon does.
What CRO is and why it pays
Lilach defined conversion rate optimization as raising the percentage of visitors who take a desired action, whether a micro conversion such as viewing content, filling in a form, or buying, and explained that it can be as small as a button colour or a second of page speed or as big as a redesign. It is continuous because behaviour changes. The case for it: higher conversion means higher revenue without more ads, more leads on your list, and lower PPC spend, because you are getting more from the traffic you already drive. She set the benchmarks, under 2 percent is a warning, 4 percent the target, asked viewers to write down their current rate and a year-end goal, and told the Obama 2012 story: 500-plus tests, 49 percent more donation conversions, 161 percent more sign-ups, 690 million dollars raised online, and a rebuilt donation form worth 5 percent on its own. The tools she reviews for doing this work are in the conversion tools worth putting on a website.
The process and the six principles
The CRO process has five stages: discovery, learning who your audience is, their demographics and their behaviour on the site (most visited pages, abandonment pages, paths taken versus paths intended) and identifying the pages or forms that need work; premises, listing hypotheses such as fewer form fields lifting form conversions; prioritisation, because you cannot test everything at once and some changes collide on the same page; testing, with A/B and multivariate methods; and analysis, which overlaps with testing because you keep running experiments. To double or triple conversion she recommends Robert Cialdini’s six principles of persuasion: scarcity (only a few left, limited time, final sale), consistency (a small commitment first, then consistent marketing towards a purchase), reciprocation (an ebook or checklist earns a favour later), social proof (reviews and testimonials on landing pages, because people trust other customers over your promises), authority (endorsements from niche influencers and specialists rather than celebrities) and liking (a well-built About page with your story, goals and passions). The copy side of those principles is covered in five copywriting strategies that raise conversion rates.
Analytics and heat maps
The answer to how you learn all this is analytics, and more than the basic Google Analytics reports. Heat maps and eye tracking show what visitors look at, click and never notice. Uses she listed: checking whether calls to action are visible and above the point where people stop scrolling; finding elements that distract from the CTA, link or product video you want noticed; understanding which parts of your content people care about; spotting design flaws and pointless page elements; discovering that an extra lead form is stealing attention from the main CTA; fixing shopping cart leaks, as The North Face did when it found a banner pulling shoppers out of checkout and moved the checkout button for a 21 percent lift; and finding dead-end pages, such as a blog post with nowhere to go at the end, where a CTA or navigation keeps people on site. If you have not wired your own site to measure the actions that matter, start with how to create Google Analytics goals for conversions.
Testing, what to test, and the Amazon button
Testing is the basis of CRO, and negative results are fine as long as you know which change caused them so you can reverse it. She quoted Jeff Bezos on doubling experiments to double inventiveness. On timing, measure per fixed number of visitors, say every 10,000, on a high-traffic site, and by period, at least a couple of weeks and ideally a month, on a low-traffic one. A/B testing splits equal traffic between two versions differing in one thing; multivariate exists, but after years of tests she prefers A/B because it is clearer what made the difference. Bring hypotheses, prioritise, involve copywriters and designers, and do not be put off by inconclusive results: Nature Air tested 17 landing pages and the single change that mattered, contextual calls to action, took conversion from 2 to 19 percent. What to test: page layout and CTA placement guided by the heat maps, colours (build in greyscale first so you are not swayed by colour), headline wording, placement, font and size, copy (more contextual CTAs, bullets, shorter text, different testimonials), visuals, and the CTA’s wording, colour, shape and position. Her Amazon example makes the point that context decides: the late-1990s add to cart button told nervous first-time online shoppers they could remove the item later and that shopping was safe and guaranteed; today’s shoppers trust Amazon and want one-click checkout, so the reassurance is gone. Nine of the tactics she keeps coming back to are in tried and tested tactics for boosting conversions.
Personalisation
Personalisation was the closing tip: businesses using it see around a 14 percent lift in sales and 68 percent call it a top priority, because relevant content keeps people on site, reading more pages and converting. It can be manual or automated, and it starts with detailed audience personas built from your real traffic: demographics, a fictional name, how they arrive, what they expect, and how they buy, impulsive or research-heavy. HubSpot’s blog, split into marketing, sales, service and news blogs with topic-based subscriptions, is her example of segmenting content by persona. Pop-ups, annoying but effective, convert better personalised: a first name in the headline, a cart-based upsell like GoPro’s related products pop-up, or urgency (“only two dresses left”). Localise for a global audience the way Zara offers country sites with local products, stores and currency, or the Food Network redirects UK visitors automatically. And tools such as Pure360 change on-page content by past browsing and purchases, as Amazon does with recommended and related products and personalised email. Her close: getting traffic is not enough; you need it to act, and CRO is the most scalable way to generate leads consistently, so keep doing it.
See also 3 Ways to Effectively Increase Your Website’s Conversion Rate, which picks up where this leaves off.
Frequently asked questions
What is conversion rate optimization, as Lilach Bullock defines it in the webinar?
The process of increasing the percentage of website visitors who take a desired action, from micro conversions like viewing a piece of content up to filling in a form or buying. It raises the value of the traffic you already have, so you can grow leads and revenue without paying for more ads. It is continuous, not a one-off, because customer behaviour keeps changing. A conversion rate under 2 percent is a warning sign; aim for at least 4 percent.
What are the stages of the CRO process in the webinar?
Discovery (learn who your audience is and how they behave on your site, and find the pages or forms that need work), premises (list hypotheses such as fewer form fields will lift form conversions), prioritisation (pick the tests with the biggest likely impact and never test everything at once), testing (A/B and multivariate experiments) and analysis (evaluate, keep what worked, keep testing).
When was the webinar recorded and how long is it?
Simplilearn published the webinar on YouTube on 13 November 2019. It runs for about 42 minutes and is a presentation without a live question session.
Full transcript
Cleaned and condensed from the recording’s auto-generated captions. Filler removed, obvious caption errors fixed (including the names Cialdini and Nature Air), meaning kept. The presentation is Lilach throughout; the Simplilearn moderator, Dan, opens and closes.
Moderator: Hello and welcome to our webinar on five advanced conversion rate optimization tips that will skyrocket your conversions. A preview of what Lilach will cover: how to get your website visitors to take action, what conversion rate optimization is and why it matters, how to perform CRO testing like a pro, how to use your web analytics to improve conversions, and how to implement personalised experiences on your website. It is my pleasure to introduce our guest and CRO expert, Lilach Bullock.
Lilach: Thank you so much, Dan. It is fantastic to be here and I’m honoured. Before we get to the nitty-gritty of conversion rate optimization, a little about myself. In short, I’m a digital content specialist and digital marketing expert with over 14 years of experience. I work with enterprises, SMEs, startups and non-profits, helping them grow and generate an ROI from their online marketing. I have received various accolades over the years, including being one of the top 20 women social media power influencers in Forbes and being named Social Influencer of Europe by Oracle. But I don’t want to spend too long on myself, so let’s get to the tips and advice that will help you turn your web traffic into sales and conversions.
Conversion rate optimization is a process that essentially means increasing the percentage of website visitors who take a desired action, starting with micro conversions such as viewing a particular piece of content and leading up to all kinds of conversions, like filling out a form or buying an offer. In other words, it is a process that helps you increase the value of your website traffic by enabling visitors to take the actions you want them to take. It can be as simple as changing the colour of your call to action button or improving your page speed by a second or less, or it can be a bigger project like a complete revamp of your website design. To give you an idea of the impact a small change can have, here is a scary statistic: a one second delay in your mobile page speed can mean your conversions drop by as much as 20 percent. It is important to understand that this is a continuous process, not something you do once or twice and then forget about. Customers are constantly changing their behaviour and preferences, so it is essential to keep optimising your website to keep growing your conversion rate.
As for why, there are a lot of reasons to care about conversion rate optimization and make it a priority in your marketing and sales. For one thing, it gives you more bang for your buck. The higher your conversion rate, the higher your revenue: the more people you convert without paying for extra ads, the more leads on your list, and the more of them you can convert into paying customers. Not to mention that when you maximise the value of your existing traffic, you can cut down on your online ad and PPC spend. You won’t need to invest in more ads and more promotional channels just to get more traffic and leads; you are making the most of the traffic you are already driving, paid or organic. It is one of the most cost-effective ways to maximise your existing traffic. If you have a low conversion rate, under 2 percent, that could be a sign of alarm; it might mean your business is stagnating or struggling. Ideally you want a conversion rate of at least 4 percent, and if you are not getting that, it is quite possible you are unable to grow and scale. So I want to ask you this: what is your website’s and your landing pages’ current conversion rate? Write it down, and next to it write your new conversion rate goal, to be reached by the end of the year.
One of the biggest, best-known examples of conversion rate optimization at its best is Barack Obama’s re-election campaign in 2012. His campaign was so successful it surpassed everyone before him. He wasn’t just the first African-American US president; he was the first candidate to receive a billion dollars in donations, of which a staggering 690 million was raised online. How did he get these results? Obviously many factors counted towards his re-election, but when it comes to the donations raised online, much of it is down to the campaign’s conversion rate optimization strategy, as one of its major contributors pointed out. They did it by running a lot of tests, and I do mean a lot: over 500 different tests on the donation website and their landing pages. Online donation conversions increased a staggering 49 percent, and online sign-up conversions increased by as much as 161 percent. As an example of the type of change, here are two versions of their donation form. Just by revamping the form and making it as quick as possible to donate, they increased donation conversions by 5 percent. Add that to all the other little and big changes throughout the website and landing pages, and that is how the campaign was so successful. So what can you learn from it, and how can you improve your website conversion rate time after time? That is what we are here to talk about.
What does the CRO process look like? If one thing defines conversion rate optimization, it is testing, lots and lots of testing. Just as in the Obama example, the secret was constantly trying different variations of their landing pages, all designed to reach their goals faster. I’ll be talking about CRO testing throughout, as it is interlinked with most CRO strategies, but first, here is what the process should look like. There are several stages: discovery, premises, prioritisation, testing and analysis. The first stage is discovery. Before you start optimising you need to know who your audience is. Learn as much as possible about them so you can use that knowledge to optimise their browsing experience and grow your conversions. Establish who exactly forms your website audience and which of these users you want to target and convert: their ages, occupations, gender, location and similar data that helps you put together audience personas. You also need to study their behaviour on your website: which pages do they visit most, which pages make them abandon the site, what path are they taking and is it the path you want? Focus on collecting as much data as possible at this stage, because the more data you have the better equipped you will be to make the changes that improve conversion. Another essential part of discovery is identifying the exact areas of your website that need improvement: a page or a form that isn’t converting, or the need for a better path to get visitors to the point where they convert.
The second stage is premises. You know your target audience and what needs improving; now you need ideas for how to improve. It is about listing all the different premises you want to try or test to boost conversions. A premise could be: if I reduce the number of fields and questions in the lead gen form, I will boost form conversions by 5 percent. Can it be done? That is where testing comes in. After you have your premises, prioritise. At this stage you should have quite a few things you want to test. You can’t do them all at once or it will be impossible to tell which changes affected your results, and some of the changes might be on the same page or even the same elements. Take time to consider which changes are most important and which have the biggest chance of making a real difference to your conversion rate. Those are the ones to start with. Next comes testing and experimenting, which is self-explanatory: you know what you want to test and why, and you use A/B and multivariate techniques to see which hypotheses turn out true. And last comes analysis, where you evaluate results and work out which changes made a positive difference. This stage intertwines with testing, because you should continue to test while measuring the results of previous tests.
One of the best ways to make sure you achieve your conversion goals, of doubling or even tripling your conversion rates, is to use Robert Cialdini’s six principles of persuasion. They were established in the eighties and remain the standard for encouraging a sale. The first, scarcity, is something you have noticed your whole life, online and offline. When you use words like only a few left, limited time offer or final sale, you give visitors that final push to decide to buy. Consistency, the second principle, is a tiny bit more complex. To turn leads into regular customers, it is best to start small by getting them to commit to something small, like downloading a free gift or giving their email address. Once they have committed in this small way, through consistent marketing you increase the likelihood that they move on from that small step to purchases, or better, become regular customers. Another way of persuading visitors to buy is reciprocation: when you give a visitor a benefit, such as an ebook or a useful checklist, they are much more likely to return the favour in future and buy from you. Next, social proof. Customer reviews are extremely important to people, as evidenced by so many review platforms like TripAdvisor and Yelp, not to mention the biggest e-commerce sites like Amazon and eBay, which rely heavily on reviews to make sales. Add your own customer reviews and testimonials to your website and particularly to your landing pages; most people are much more likely to trust the reviews of other clients than your promises. It is not just customers who help you make sales. To boost your authority you need endorsements from influential people in your niche. You are probably thinking of stars and famous people, which is not feasible for most businesses; instead, get the support of social influencers in your industry, known specialists and thought leaders. The last principle is liking, and the idea is straightforward: the more someone likes you, the more likely they are to buy from you. In bricks and mortar it is easy to establish a personal connection because you deal with people directly. Online it is more difficult. The best way to connect with visitors on a human level is a well thought out About Us page where you show the people behind the business, your story, your goals, your passions and personal information that will endear you to visitors.
How exactly do you learn what you need about your visitors, their browsing and shopping habits, so you can boost your conversion rate? The answer is simple and yet complex: analytics, analytics and more analytics. There is so much to learn from analytics, especially if you use various methods and tools, not just the basic Google Analytics reports. Analytics let you learn about your visitors and audience and understand their behaviour, so you can change and improve the browsing and user experience even without changing any content. Heat maps and eye tracking tools are extremely useful. They show you what users look at on your pages, what they click on, what they don’t even notice even though you want them to. Here is what a heat map looks like, courtesy of the conversion tool Crazy Egg. This technology provides a lot of value from a CRO perspective, because it lets you see exactly why pages aren’t performing and how to improve landing pages, product pages, lead generation forms and calls to action. Different tools have different features; some let you see details about the people visiting, such as their company and contact details, in case a high-quality lead visits and you want to reach out directly. But we are here to talk about conversion rate optimization, so here is how to use heat maps to improve your conversion rate.
Determine the effectiveness of your calls to action. Heat maps tell you whether your CTAs are visible enough and whether you need changes to get more people engaging with the button. Scroll maps show how far people scroll on a page; if your CTA is below that mark, move it up so more visitors see it. An eye tracking heat map tells you whether your CTA is truly visible and which areas attract the most eyeballs, so you can move the CTA to improve visibility. Determine whether any elements are distracting visitors: heat maps show whether too many unnecessary elements are taking attention away from the elements you want noticed, a CTA button, a link, or a specific piece of content such as a product video. Understand how users interact with your content. Content can be a powerful conversion tool, building trust, keeping people on your site longer and in some cases encouraging actions, but how much do your visitors care about it, which parts interest them, how do they behave on your blog? Mouse tracking and scroll maps show which parts interest visitors and which don’t, so you can improve your content and the pages it lives on. Improve website design: heat maps help you notice design flaws that make it difficult to explore your site or make the experience unpleasant, and unnecessary elements that bring nothing. The more you improve the experience, the better your results. Discover elements that distract from taking action: you might think the extra lead form you added will boost conversions, but what if it is distracting from your more important CTA on the same page? Use heat maps to examine all these elements and find which help and which distract. Improve shopping cart conversions: The North Face noticed through heat maps that shoppers were being distracted from their cart by a banner. Instead of clicking on their cart and finishing, a lot of users clicked the banner, which took them out of the checkout path. The solution was simply changing the location of the checkout button, which led to a 21 percent increase in click-through to the checkout page. Discover dead ends: sometimes the problem isn’t distraction but that there is nowhere to go from a page. Someone reads a blog post to the end, and because there are no relevant navigation options they abandon the site then and there. Use heat maps to discover which of your pages are dead ends, so you can add calls to action and paths that keep people on the site longer and, preferably, converting.
To be a winner at conversion rate optimization you need to master testing. Testing is the basis of any successful CRO strategy. It is how you find out what works and what doesn’t, which changes lead to a higher conversion rate and which have no effect, or worse, a negative one. I should get this out of the way now: even if a change leads to a negative effect, don’t worry, that is why it is called testing. Some things will work and some won’t, but as long as you clearly know which change led to which result, you can reverse it. This is very much an ongoing process, and to keep growing conversion rates and sales you should keep testing new strategies and content. As Amazon’s founder Jeff Bezos puts it, if you double the number of experiments you do per year, you are going to double your inventiveness; what is dangerous is not to evolve. Amazon has been constantly changing over the years, from the look and feel of the call to action button to the content displayed for each user. Before you test anything, establish exactly what you are going to test and prioritise the most important tests. I’ll give recommendations on what to test soon, but first, one of the questions I get asked most: how long should you wait before measuring the results of your test? There is no straightforward answer. It depends a lot on the volume of traffic. If your website gets a lot of traffic, measure by specific numbers of visitors, such as every 10,000. If it doesn’t get that many, measure by time period, preferably at least a couple of weeks or even a month per change, to give people enough time to interact and to gather enough data for a truly informed decision.
Now, A/B testing. Also known as split testing, it is a CRO process that involves setting up two versions of a web page or landing page and sending an equal amount of traffic to each, so you can monitor the conversions for each variation. For example, to test a call to action button on a landing page, create two versions where one has the original design and the second has a different call to action: the placement, the colour, the wording, up to you. Once the test finishes, measure the conversions for each version and pick a winner. Then continue running as many tests as you need, for example further changes to the button: first the colour, next the wording. Multivariate testing exists too, but after many tests over the years I have found A/B tests a better solution, because the answer is much clearer. With multivariate tests it can be difficult to pinpoint which exact change made the difference; with A/B, as it is one change at a time, it is much easier to identify which elements make a real difference. Before you start testing, remember the CRO process: before the experimentation phase you need hypotheses. What tests should you run, which elements do you believe have the biggest impact on visitors and should be tested? Once you have a list, prioritise and choose the best test to start with. At this stage I recommend collaborating with other members of your team, from copywriters to web designers; their input can uncover new tests and variations and help you prioritise. Once you start testing, don’t be put off by inconclusive results or variants that perform worse than before. It is a natural part of the process, it is all about learning, and learning involves mistakes. The important thing is not to avoid mistakes but to learn from them and put that knowledge into practice. You might run dozens of tests and discover it was one change that made the biggest difference. Take Nature Air: they used 17 different landing pages and set up an A/B test for each. In the end, the change that made the biggest difference, an increase in conversion from 2 percent to 19 percent, was the only difference between the tested page and the original: contextual calls to action.
As for what to test, a lot of elements can make all the difference; even the smallest change can make the biggest difference, and it is up to you to find out which. First, page layout. Play with it to see how it affects conversion, for example the placement of your product or service copy, or the location of your call to action. Remember the heat maps and eye tracking: that information comes in handy here. Check whether your visitors’ attention is going where you want, and if not, change the layout. Next, the colours on your website should also be tested. Colour has a huge psychological impact on people without them realising. Test the colours you use, including CTA buttons and backgrounds. In fact it is recommended that new websites are designed in greyscale first, to avoid being influenced by colour while building. Headlines are usually one of the first things visitors see. Test the wording above all, and also the placement of the headline and the font, including size and colour. Then the copy on your page: maybe you need more contextual calls to action, like Nature Air; maybe change paragraphs into bullet points; maybe change the wording entirely, remove parts if it is too long, add different testimonials. The visuals you use are very influential too: images, videos and other visual content make a big impact, so test different ones and measure. Next, the call to action, which is extremely important and can make a huge difference: test the wording, the colour and shape of the button, and its position on the page. Basically, everything on your web pages can be tested; it is a matter of identifying the most important elements and prioritising.
I want to give you an example of how important the call to action button is and how it has evolved for the biggest e-commerce website, Amazon. If you look at Amazon’s add to cart button from the late nineties, it is very different from today’s. In fact, today’s button would most likely not have worked back then, and Amazon would not have got where they are if they had used it, because in the nineties people were very new to online shopping and to the internet in general. They had no reason to trust online businesses and didn’t really know how online shopping worked, so they needed reassurance, and Amazon gave them that reassurance within the button itself. They pointed out that adding something to the cart doesn’t mean you are automatically buying it, and that you can remove the item later, because people were afraid of buying by mistake by clicking the wrong button. They also told visitors that shopping with them was completely safe, and underlined the word guaranteed in a different colour. Now the add to cart button is completely different. More people than ever shop online and Amazon’s customers know they can trust the company. Customers are no longer bothered by safety guarantees; they just want to buy what they need as quickly as possible and get it delivered, without even entering card or delivery details, so Amazon gives them the chance to buy with one click.
Personalisation is one of the biggest buzzwords in marketing right now. Websites, online stores and even bricks and mortar stores are increasingly using personalisation to keep people around longer and, most importantly, buying more. How does it correlate with conversion rates? Personalisation can have incredible effects, and many studies back it up. One statistic shows that businesses that use personalisation on their website see a 14 percent increase in sales, and 68 percent of companies say personalisation is a top priority. It makes sense: if you visit a website and don’t resonate with any of the content, you are likely to leave and look for a better solution. If you see content that is highly relevant, you are more likely to spend longer, visit multiple pages, download something, complete a form or buy. In a nutshell, personalisation improves the user experience, and at the end of the day the goal of CRO is to improve the user experience so that it improves your conversion rate. There are two ways to go about it: manually, or automatically with a specialised tool. But to personalise effectively you first need to know all the different types of people you are targeting. HubSpot is a great example. Their products serve different departments: a marketing hub, a sales hub and customer service software. If you have visited the HubSpot blog you might have noticed it is not one unified blog but a collection: a marketing blog, a sales blog, a service blog, and beyond those a news and trends blog designed to attract a wider audience who will hopefully navigate to the more targeted blogs. When you subscribe you can choose the topics you are interested in, and they also offer Slack and Messenger subscription options, a different CRO method for boosting subscribers.
How can you start implementing personalisation on your website? It is not the first time I have brought up audience personas and it won’t be the last. The first step is to establish and define your customer or audience personas, and these are the audiences on your website, particularly the traffic you are getting, because that is who you want to convert. Create as many personas as you need, as detailed as possible: demographics, who they are, where they are from, how old, what gender; you can give them a fictional name; how they come to your website and what they expect from it, because the more you understand their motivation the better you can improve their journey and experience; and their customer behaviour, what they need in order to convert, whether they are impulsive and ready to buy first time or the opposite, keen to research and needing lots of proof. The more detail the better, because it helps you think of them as real people, imagine their motivations and expectations, put yourself in their shoes and understand their customer journey on your site, and the more you can personalise their experience.
Pop-ups can be annoying, I’m not going to deny that, but as much as people complain about them they are very effective at their jobs, and you can improve your results with pop-ups by personalising them. One simple way is to mention the visitor’s name right in the pop-up, as in this example from OptinMonster; using someone’s first name gets their attention, so they are more likely to read the pop-up, and the more people read it the more likely they are to act. Another way is to show a personalised upselling offer when someone adds something to their cart. Whenever you add a product to your cart on the GoPro store, a pop-up immediately appears showing the current items in your cart along with related and popular products you might also like. Such a simple and effective strategy for e-commerce: entice customers with more products relevant to what is already in their cart. If people are browsing your store or have added something to their cart, you can give them an extra push with a simple pop-up that creates urgency: hurry, there are only two more dresses left, or this offer is only available today. If you have a worldwide audience, create different versions of your website depending on where it is accessed. With a dynamic site, someone from a specific country can see content in their own language and exclusive offers for their region. Visit zara.com and you get multiple options depending on your location, with locations that have online shopping clearly marked, and depending on which you choose you see different products, local bricks and mortar stores and pricing in your currency. Or do it automatically: the Food Network sends you to its UK website if you log in from outside the US, even if you type the dot com. There are powerful personalisation tools out there. A tool like Pure360 changes the content displayed on your website based on users’ past browsing and past purchases, just as Amazon does: if they spent a lot of time looking at shoes, they see shoes when they return, so you promote exactly the type of product you want them to see first. And you can further improve conversions and sales by using the Amazon system of recommended and related products on each product page to encourage people to buy more, which also creates upselling opportunities. This type of personalisation is a huge part of Amazon’s success, together with their frequent personalised emails focused solely on products relevant to you based on what you viewed and bought.
CRO is an essential part of a growing business. Getting traffic is simply not enough; you need that traffic to take action. You need to generate leads consistently, and the best, most scalable way is conversion rate optimization. Use CRO to keep improving your website and boosting your results time and again, because it is a continuous process, something you keep doing regularly to improve time and time again. Thank you very much.
Moderator: Thank you everyone for joining us, and thanks again to Lilach Bullock.
Lilach: Thank you so much, Dan. It was wonderful to be here and I really appreciate it.
