Highlights from Conversion Jam 6
Once every year Stockholm plays host to Conversion Jam, a gathering of like minded conversion fanatics, organised by Conversionista. Here is our review of the 2016 event which we recently attended.
Conversion Jam, now in its 6th year, is promoted as ‘A must-attend event for UX, Marketing and Online Managers’.
Naturally as a UX and CRO loving ecommerce consultant working for Trollweb in Sweden, this was a must-attend event for me, just like it was last year for my fellow Magento Trolls from the North.
World’s biggest conversion-focused conference
I was one of the last people to enter the impressive auditorium at Cirkus in Stockholm and I was pleasantly surprised by the scale of things which raised my expectations about the potential quality of the event.
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650 conversion heroes, in the same room, making Conversion Jam the largest CRO & Growth event in the world![/caption]
My hopes that it would be a well spent afternoon were soon raised even further with the announcement that Conversion Jam, with over 650 delegates, was officially the largest conversion focused event in the world.
John Ekman leading the show
Thanks to John’s tireless commitment to traveling the world in search of the best conversion brains (the poor guy) Conversion Jam delivers the best speakers and the best content. This claim was backed up with the announcement of the days impressive line up of keynote speakers.
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Our host for the day John Ekman (CEO of Conversionista) dressed in a bright red two piece suit and matching shoes (brand consistency = better conversions ) took to the stage for the opening remarks.[/caption]
Here’s a recap of my favorite keynote presentations and my thoughts on what they had to say.
Bryan Eisenberg
Twitter: @thegrok
Blog: bryaneisenberg.com
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Best selling author, recognised authority, pioneer and the Godfather of CRO are just some of the terms that are often used to describe Bryan, so he was the perfect speaker to kick things off.[/caption]
Bryan’s presentation was titled ‘Secrets of how Amazon Growth Levers the competition’ and it explained the reason why Amazon has achieved such astronomical success.
The answer is simple; The vision of Jeff Bezos — the CEO of Amazon — and his four pillars of success, are:
- Customer Centricity — focusing obsessively on the customer and using the internet to harness huge volumes of user data to gain a competitive advantage over traditional brick and mortar stores.
- Continuous Optimisation — a culture of continuous improvement in every facet of the company from the website through to operations and finance
- Culture of Innovation — with an R&D budget higher than most companies annual revenue Amazon remain committed to innovation and continue to trailblaze in the world of ecommerce and business
- Corporate Agility — they have maintained their agility by structuring the business into to small cross functional teams that are given the freedom to make decisions and innovate, essentially operating as lots of startups.
Bryans presentation was a great reminder that culture, vision and strong leadership are key to the success of a business, and that customer centricity is where ecommerce business can gain a competitive advantage.
Bryan writes about Amazon’s performance secrets in more detail on his blog.
Talia Wolf
Twitter: @TaliaGw
Blog: taliagw.com
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Talia specialises in helping businesses use emotional targeting, consumer psychology and behavioral data to improve online business performance.[/caption]
Talia’s lively presentation was focused on mobile which I’m sure was very well received given the fact that mobile conversion rates continue to be a challenge for ecommerce.
The first half of Talia’s presentation served as an excellent reminder that mobile users are different to desktop users and should therefore be treated as such. It was also highlighted that many ecommerce companies are failing to either recognise this or act on it and as a result mobile conversion rates suffer.
Fact: Shopping on a mobile phone is equally as stressful as watching a horror movie
A strong point was made that companies need to understand their mobile visitors as people and then shape user experiences around their lifestyles and behavioural patterns.
I agree with this, mobile optimisation is much more than just a responsive website. People want different services, content and experiences when they are using their mobile phone because they are in different situations, environments and mindsets. So why so often do we think resizing a desktop website to fit on a mobile device is adequate?
Perhaps it’s time we stopped obsessing over conversion rates on mobile and accept that people don’t want to buy (as much) on mobile as they do on desktop, and instead take a more of a holistic view of how people interact with brands across multiple devices and the role each device plays. Or at least try to increase mobile sales by offering a unique and personalised mobile experiences.
Talia’s actionable tips on how to optimize for mobile
- Improving website speed on mobile e.g. optimising images
- Offer ways to save products for later
- Provide information that is relevant to mobile users
- Provide features that mobile visitors need e.g. store finders and easy contact forms
- Use relevant mobile keypads on forms e.g. numeric for phone numbers
- Provide clear instructions on what to do next
- Incentivise purchases e.g. mobile only offers
Martijn Scheijbeler
Twitter: @MartijnSch
View articles by Martijn@The Next Web here
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Martijn is the Director of Marketing at The Next Web, one of the world’s largest online publications popular with techy folk.[/caption]
I believe Martijn’s presentation was the most useful to merchants because rather than focusing on the quick wins (e.g. move stuff above the fold, include green ticks) Martin provided generous advice on how to implement a successful conversion rate optimisation programme, which is ultimately more valuable.
Martin is well qualified to provide this advice because TNW have grown their CRO programme from running a modest 1–2 tests a month in 2014 to 5–7 tests week in 2015. Martin explained in detail how TNW were able to scale up their CRO programme to this level. The main reasons were as follows:
- They have small multi-functional team with the skill-sets required to plan and execute a high volume of tests.
- A CEO who is supportive, interested and involved in conversion optimisation. This helps with creating a culture of continuous improvement which is the foundation of a successful and sustainable programme.
- A startup mentality that encourages experimentation and innovation. Martins team are trusted and have the freedom to try new things with an understanding from above that not everything works first time.
- Other teams and departments contribute ideas. This ensures a healthy backlog of hypotheses to test and once more this helps to create the right culture.
- A fully supportive development team has helped to rollout the testing programme across multiple platforms and develop in-house tools to meet their unique testing requirements.
- Data analysis automation is used to reduce time spent crunching the numbers and increase efficiency.
The main take away from this presentation was that corporate culture is the most important factor determining the success and longevity of a CRO programme.
If the boss and your coworkers do not believe in a data driven approach or the need for continuous testing and improvement, you will meet too many obstacles and your CRO programme will be short lived and unsuccessful.
Karl Gilis
Twitter: @AGConsult
Blog: agconsult.com/en/usability-blog
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Karl Gilis is a managing partner at AGConsult, a conversion and usability agency based in Ghent, Belgium. He also happens to be the funniest Conversion Comedian on planet Earth and a very charming personality.[/caption]
Karl came on last and in my opinion completely stole the show. His energetic and fast paced presentation, called ‘Don’t do anything on your web you wouldn’t do on a first date’, was full of practical conversion advice and hilarious jokes.
We were laughing whilst learning! What more could we ask for?
Here’s a quick recap of Karl’s invaluable dating advice
- Don’t’ start with a French kiss (build trust before moving users to the next stage in the conversion funnel)
- Be on time (fast loading times are super important)
- Don’t tell your life story at the start (don’t overwhelm visitors with info)
- Don’t shout for attention (less banners and cries for attention)
- Get the attention you deserve (minimize distractions to focus the user)
- Show interest (ask questions, get to know the users, give them what they want)
- Be fun (show some personality and make users smile)
- Be yourself (don’t use stock images and be honest)
- Don’t interrogate (make forms easy and explain why you want the info)
- Be patient (don’t go for the conversion too early)
- Initiate a next step (use clear CTAs in the same language users use)
Karl’s pro-tips on what tools to use
- Morae for user testing
- MyGaze for eyetracking
- Google Analytics for analytics
- Inspectlet for user session recording
- Hotjar for heatmaps and user session recordings
- Formisimo for form analysis
To this list I would add common sense and rigorous testing as there are no golden rules to increasing conversions.
Karl’s presentation was fantastic and with it came lots of actionable tips that can help a business a pick those low hanging fruit.
However no websites or customer groups are the same therefore achieving significant improvement requires continuous research and optimisation. Who knows your date might want you to move in for a passionate kiss on the first date and not knowing that would be a missed opportunity, and a lonely taxi ride home.
Summary of Conversion Jam 2016
This recap reflects a tiny percentage of the knowledge shared at Conversion Jam and probably doesn’t do justice to the quality of the speakers and their content.
Overall the content was well balanced, containing a mix of inspirational stories, reaffirming best practice, useful tips and actionable advice. I believe that anyone attending Conversion Jam will leave energised, focused and with a head full of ideas.
There will almost certainly be Trollweb trolls at future Conversionista events — and we strongly recommend our dear clients to get involved too. Conversion Jam 2016 proved conversion work is alot of fun as well!
See you in 2017!
