In celebration of International CRO Day, we launched a contest asking all of you to share your conversion optimization stories for a chance to win an Apple Watch. We were very impressed with the creative conversion tales you told, and deeply appreciate that so many people took part in the contest. Everyone who participated shared valuable insights on optimizing all phases of the digital commerce lifecycle, including acquisitions, upgrades, and renewals. We enjoy learning about our journey towards maximizing revenue and customer lifetime value.
We’d like to congratulate contributor Valentin Espagné, who won the drawing for the Apple Watch. He’ll soon have another gadget to help optimize his personal and professional life!
To continue inspiring your conversion rate optimization efforts, we’re including a sampling of the conversion optimization tips provided in the contest (including Valentin’s!) below.
Derrick: An interesting learning we found was our perception around recurring billing. We viewed recurring billing as a means to increase our customers’ lifespan and in turn this would net more revenue. That of course was/is the case but what we later found was recurring billing was something many customers also want. We’ve run numerous campaigns trying to increase the number of our customers who have recurring billing ‘turned on’ but the most effective in converting our customers has been informing them of the benefits of the ‘service’ and encouraging them to sign up. More effective then upgrade offers and other incentives a straight forward approach worked the best. What we initially envisioned solely as one sided turns out to be a win/win for all involved. :)
Claudiu: One of the projects I am really happy about is one in which we added a gamification module to increase the conversion inside the on-boarding process. It was a 5 step process and at completing each step the user would increase his free account tier. My colleagues were concerned about the fact that we could lose customers, as many would be able to increase easily the limit of the free account, but in reality that never happened. On the contrary, it had a strong impact on sales as we almost doubled the number of people that got to step 5. That step 5 allows users to share on their social networks about the whole 5 step experience and that actually got us more users trying us out. All in all, the results were great. Whenever I start a new project, the onboarding process is now center stage.
Clayton: Cultural context is everything. What makes good sense in the United States can be very confusing for someone in Japan. I have enjoyed the complexities and challenges working with an international customer base has brought to my company. I have learned that listening and being patient is the key to delivering excellent and relevant services to my international customers. Tweet
Valentin: One of the tests we had great success with, was for a lead generation website. Part of the process was a survey followed by sign-up and a date picker for a personal phone call. We moved the sign-up to the first page, including a precise description of how long the upcoming process would be. Our hypothesis, that we would have less people signing up, but more people staying until the end of the process, [proved] to be right. The percentage of people entering the funnel dropped in double digits, but the conversion rate for our primary metric doubled, since we set the right expectations.
Anton: Experimenting with checkout and prices is important. I found that going bellow a certain price actually led to less conversions for a specific product. Also changing the order page layout to fit current German law (buttonloesung) instantly led to more German buyers.
Annelise: In our early days, we used to capitalize all our efforts on gaining new customers. It was all about new sales and we kind of left behind our existing clients. We didn’t really believe that “attracting new customers costs a company 5 times more than keeping an existing customer”. But we soon realized how valuable our client base was, not only in terms of loyalty, but also for feedback, word of mouth, etc. Tweet Especially in countries where we did not have a strong base and in an ever competing software business environment, one client gained must be retained and cared for. This is why we treat each of our software user as part of the family: we thrive to offer top customer service in 6 languages, keep them informed with a monthly newsletter, offer renewal discounts, keep an entertaining blog, engage with our fan base, and ask etc. Creating customer loyalty and catering for each specific region’s language and way of life has been essential in VSO Software development and conversion rate. Avangate of course helped us tremendously with localized payment methods and the subscription system.
Thanks again to everyone who participated – we appreciate your willingness to share your expertise. For more conversion optimization tips, including some that could increase conversion rates by 10-20% within 3 weeks, listen to our latest webinar on Increasing Conversions in the Purchase Funnel.
