Chris Goward's Blog, page 21

What is the purpose of branding?

Marketers are a confused bunch.

In what other industry do professionals disagree so vehemently about the basic goal of their work?

Do engineers debate whether their buildings should stand up or fall down?

Do accountants wring their hands over whether their beans should add up?

Do teachers wonder whether it’s important for their students to learn stuff?

Nope.

But ask 12 marketers what the goal of their job is and you’ll get 13 answers.

Today, let’s see if we can find a workable definition of the pu...

Seven Answers Conversion Optimizers Want to Know

Have you been to Bucharest?

I hadn’t until last week, and I have to say, I loved it!

The GPeC eCommerce Summit organizers invited me to keynote at their 500+ attendee conference and, due to popular demand, I also did a workshop the following day with 200+ registrants.

I wasn’t sure what to expect, but was pleasantly surprised by the quality of content, merchants and technology environment there. They’re also a very warm, inviting and open community of marketers. If you get a chance, I totally...

The Surprising Power of Testing your Gut Instinct for Business

You can’t analyze how a great painting makes you feel. You can’t compute the beauty of a sunset. There’s no algorithm for the ocean’s majesty.

Similarly, some of the best ideas in business come in a wonderful, inexplicable flashes of insight.

I was in New York for a couple days this week and then in Tofino, a beautiful beach town perched on a rock outcropping on British Columbia’s Vancouver Island.

The experience of the ocean, wind, rain, fog, sun and golden eagles can’t be explained. It must b...

Test Being Different To Make Massive Gains

Or, How to Warm Your Head in Winter and Lift Your Conversion Rate

Liv Tyler wearing a toque

I’m going to tell you two things today:

1. A “toque” is a kind of knitted hat worn in Canada in winter

2. To make big wins, sometimes you need to try something different.

The other day, my daughter decided that her grandma’s tea cozy would make a good toque.

It wasn’t because the other kids were wearing tea cozies on their heads – it wasn’t a new trend and she wasn’t following fashion. She just felt like try...

The Truth Behind the Yin and Yang of Conversion Rate Optimization

I’m going to advocate for the flip side of the conversion coin today. I’m delving into the “dark side” that is rarely discussed.

At WiderFunnel, we always advocate the importance of testing and data-driven decision making. The truth is that you can’t do conversion optimization without testing and web analytics is important for identifying optimization opportunities.

But, testing and data alone don’t tell the whole the story.

The truth: testing is the easy part.a.tooltip {outline:none;text-deco...

Nine Strategies for Becoming the Marketing Optimization Champion Your Company Can’t Live Without

I’d like to share a few techniques today that will help you more effectively sell good ideas within your organization. You can use these tips to advocate for conversion optimization or any other business improvement.

But first, why do we need “techniques” to “sell” good ideas? Conversion optimization, for instance, should be an easy sell into an organization, right?

How could you not want to gain double and triple-digit conversion rate lifts in your most important business goals? How could you...

14 Ways to Have Digital Marketing Success in 2014

2013 was a great year for conversion optimization. We saw digital marketers making it their #1 priority, tied with Content Marketing. Conversion Optimization moved up from 34 to 39% of marketers making it their top priority.

Demand for knowledge about “conversion optimization” continues to grow since it emerged in 2007, as shown in Google Trends:

At the same time as “search engine optimization” is declining in popularity:

We’ve seen the industry evolve considerably. In the “early days” of WiderF...

Brains have Limited Bandwidth like Computer CPUs

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8 Steps to Amazing Website Segmentation Success

In a previous blog post, I talked about the dangers of over-segmentation. Although I said segmentation is helpful, I didn’t elaborate on how segmentation should be done. Some readers even thought I was disparaging segmentation, which wasn’t my intent.

My previous post was aimed at helping marketers who have become over-enamoured with the promise of technology alone solving marketing optimization challenges.

Segmentation should indeed be a part of your conversion optimization strategy.a.toolti...

Is Your Website a Lemming?

Sometimes, few words are needed to say a lot.

Today, we’re starting a new series of short posts to highlight short quotes that aim to do just that, like this one:

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