I often talk about how it all started when I saw Tim Ash speak at a conference in London. Seeing him speaking about conversion optimization both passionately and objectively, I realized that this should be my thing. So, I set my objective – “Becoming Tim Ash in Sweden.”

So I had Guru ambitions. And then it seemed natural to be open and explicit with my aspirations. So I wrote “Conversion Rate Optimization Guru” as my heading on LinkedIn. Bad idea.

Last week I had lunch with a very wise woman named Mia Kolmodin. She explained to me why it was stupid to do so. Not just in one way, but in two ways:

Bad ideal 1

Firstly, I managed to create negativism and skepticism among those who were already in the industry – “Who is this newcomer who jumps in and calls himself Guru and by what right?”. There are not that many people in Conversion Optimization in Sweden, but there are a few here and there, and it’s not so smart to make these people your enemies the first thing you do.

Bad ideal 2

We often give our customers the advice to work with testimonials and letting others give their voice to increase a site’s credibility. Other peoples’ opinions about you is worth a lot. Your own statements about yourself are worth nothing.
In marketing we also talk about the importance of co-creation. Therefore, the slogans and payoffs that allow the viewer/reader to participate in creating the message are stronger.

- ”You can trust us”  - No one trusts this.
- ”We have been around since 1830“ - OK, that’s probably something I can trust.

- ”We have secure software”  - Yeah right.
- ”Our software is used by 10 000 companies” – All right, that should be secure
.
- ”I’m a Guru” –  Yeah right.

So I myself fell into the trap that I help my clients to avoid.

From Guru back to Fanatic

Bryan Eisenberg has great statement on this :

“You can’t read the label from inside the bottle”

Many thanks to Mia who set me straight.

I am now Conversion Optimization Fanatic.

To understand why and how it is funny you need to break it down and analyze what motional strings it is playing. Only then will you truly understand its success.

This is a Guest Post by Conversionista at ConversionScientist.com. You can read the whole post here:

The Secret Behind the Success of the DollarShave Video 

If You haven’t seen it you can watch it here. Is it any good? No, It’s F***ing great!

1. Ability first then motivation

The first keynote was BJ Fogg – One of the world’s leading behavioral scientists from Stanford.

He showed his Behavior Model: 
B = mat

A change in (B)ehavior will happen when there is (m)otivation, (a)bility and a (t)rigger, at the same time.

One of his conclusions is that the order must be the Trigger first, then the Ability and lastly Motivation. This means that, unless there is the Ability to perform a behavior, it doesn’t matter how much Motivation you try to apply – the sought Behavior will not happen anyway. I thought it was interesting because I think I see many examples of the reverse.

Since I am a detail nerd, I often obsess on how you should  write a form label , how to create  positive error messages, how to simplify forms, etc. I often find that there is plenty to improve just to make it easier for the user to finish what he or she came for. But such details get management bored and they jump directly to “Motivation”. Bigger Button! Steeper Discount! Free shipping! Try for free! I think many would benefit from looking at BJ Fogg’s ideas and start thinking about “Ability”.

You’ll find his Behavior model here »

2. From Tech to Features to Experience

Jared Spool of User Interface Engineering is a  UX heawy-weighter (in more ways than one). He talked about the three general stages in the evolution  of a new technology: Technology-Features-Experience. He gave an example of how word processing evolved:

T: Wang Word Processor. A 100-pound  thing that required a week of training

Q: WordPerfect with 1700 features

E: Microsoft Word launched with only 70 features. But they had picked the 70 most needed ones from WordPerfect.

If we apply this to the web, a good example would be weather sites:

Technology: How on earth are we supposed to take all of our met-data, and publish it on the web at all?

Features:Now we can – How do we make the most complete and detailed forecast – Yr.no

Experience: Umbrellatoday.com answers the question: Do I need to bring my umbrella today or not? Yes or no?

Yr & UmbrellaToday - Vhich one is Features and which one is Experience?

3. Users lie

Sandra Nieahaus from Closed loop marketing  had a great presentation. As usual. The one thing I I brought home from her preso was her statement – “Users lie”. If you ask a user at the end of a user test – “What happened?”,  they say – “Well, it went ok”. But if you look at the video you’ll see how they scratch their heads, roll their eyes, hammer on the keyboard and show general signs of despair and frustration Therefore it is necessary that the tests capture Non-verbal communication.

It also confirms what I always preach – That you can throw web surveys in the trash bin and start testing instead.

4.The most important component in optimization – The Brain

I'm getting my own copy of Brainfluence from Roger Dooley

I was fascinated by how much the focus of this conference had shifted towards  ”Neuro Marketing” and  ”Behavioural Economics”.

The first editions of the conference were  mostly focused on A / B testing case studies, test tools and similar.But now the focus is more on understanding the underlying factors of why people choose one option over another. Or why they choose not to choose at all.

I would guess that 1/3 of the presentations had at least one iamge of a brain. This confirms that I’m heading in the right direction with my work. On the other hand it shows that I’m not unique in this approach either

Here are some must-reads for the Neuromarketer:

Brainfluence by Roger Dooley
(buy here)

Influence by Robert Cialdini
(buy here)

Go there next year!

That’s all. If you didn’t go this year, schedule it for next year.

*Photos are  from the  Conversion Conference Facebook page by kind permission.

Du hittar också den svenska versionen här:

Topp 4 takeaways från ConversionConference San Francisco »

Every web marketer knows (or should know by now) that web forms in checkout, sign up or any other registration process play a big role in the conversion funnel.

Yet, not so many web marketers out there are aware of  the fact that what can really make the difference in conversion rate is how well error messages in web forms are handled.

A bad handling of error messages in forms is like saying NO to your customers, while you could say YES.  On the other hand, great error messages can dramatically increase your conversion rate.

This is a guest post published by Chief Conversionista on the Uxmagazine.

Read the all article here >>