Osama
Over the last week, which was week 3 since I started my www.cxl.com Growth Marketing course, I broadened my information with regards to Conversion Research and A/B Testing. The two courses served as a deep dive for understanding conversion and the concept behind it as well as gaining immense knowledge with regards to the processes that align a business team, increase their revenue, and make their customers tick. The two courses were linked together because conversion research is highly dependent on testing methodologies such as the A/B testing in order to be carried out successfully. This is also why I considered it best to learn about the courses during the same week so that they would both support each other’s concepts and make me better understand the concept behind data gathering and hypothesis testing. The course of Conversion Research was taught by the incredible marketer himself i.e. Peep Laja, who also increased our understanding with regards to the importance of Research and Testing in the marketing growth world. According to him, “Your opinions don’t matter. It’s true, they don’t. Would you rather have a doctor operate on you based on opinion or careful examination and tests? So every optimization project has to start with conversion research. It’s where you diagnose a website, and figure out where and how it’s leaking money. Once we know that, we can go ahead and start plugging the holes.” These quotes very beautifully sum up the concept behind conversion research, which is the methodical and organized search aimed at finding newer, better, and more useful information with regards to your consumers’ behavior. The essence of conversion research is the joining of qualitative and quantitative methods to gather useful data for the making of a hypothesis that can be verified or nulled using methodologies such as the A/B testing. A/B testing is the fundamental element in growth marketing, which allows you to identify, arrange, test, and evaluate the marketing efforts of your business that would lead to increased sales and subsequently increased revenue. However, it is important to realize that proper and successful testing requires major and repeated efforts. This is to say that you have to dive in the testing process with the mindset that your first effort can never be your last effort no matter how great of a team you have assembled to collect and analyze the data and hypothesis. Instead, you have to believe in the idiom that ‘practice makes perfect’ just as repeated experimentation and testing will help you gain the required data and ultimately the desired results. However, it has been strongly recommended that one experiment is tested at one time to receive the best and most reliable outcomes. Ton Wesseling, who is the tutor of this course and also a trainer, consultant, lead for conversion optimization (CRO), digital experimentation, and A/B-testing is of the opinion that successful testing requires at least 1,000 conversions per month. An amount less than that means that your sample size is too small and would probably not bring about efficient or productive results. The small sample can then also lead to false results as it is not a realistic representation of the customer pool. The results received from the sample will also make you feel that their implementation might lead to positive results whereas in reality no major improvements would be seen after its implementation and on the contrary might even reduce your business organizations performance. Thus it is safe to say that determining the required sample size and duration for running a given experiment is a crucial step in achieving the best possible results. To yield successful results it is important that proper opportunities are availed, the uncovering of which according to Wesseling requires you to ask questions with regards to the 6 V’s of conversion research:1. Value: What company values are important and relevant? What focus delivers the most business impact? I.e. what is it that company values most and which impact the business to the greatest extent?2. Versus: What competitor analysis and best practices can be found? I.e. what are the best ways to gain competitor advantage?3. View: What insights can be found from web analytics and behavior data? I.e. what results can be found from the existing data?4. Validated: What insights are validated in previous experiments or analyses? I.e. what insights are validated in previous experiments or analyses?5. Verified: What scientific research, insights, and models are available? I.e. what scientific research, models, and theories are available and most suitable for carrying out successful testing?6. Voice: What insights can be taken from voice of customer data such as surveys, customer feedback, and service contact? I.e. what insights can be received from the feedbacks, surveys, and reviews of the customers and client pools? To summarize, the course talks about how A/B testing puts effectiveness at the very top of the process, whilst making sure that enough data and proper methods are being utilized for the testing process. Focusing on the ROAR model, the course teaches us through graphs about the perfect number of experiments that should be run within a specific period alongside teaching about picking the right KPI in accordance with your goal metric. Teaching us about the do’s and don’ts of the course, Wesseling has brought the concept of “design, develop and QA the A/B test”. The main idea behind the teachings was the provision with regards to calculating the length of the A/B test. In accordance with this the course also increases our awareness about how to shorten the length, if needed, and why it is important that the test is discontinued once completed. To say, it is safe to say that conversion research and A/B testing not only help organize and align the various elements in a business organization’s marketing campaigns but also helps increase managements awareness related to the likes and dislikes of their consumers. This data can be crucial and critical when it comes to increasing the sales and revenue of your business organization.
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