I have been privileged to be on the advisory board for the conference as well as presenting at 2 of the sessions, on e-commerce best practice and rapid fire live page critiques.

Read on to find out more about this 2 day conversion conference.

1) Confessions of a Conversion Rate Optimiser – Bryan Eisenberg (Conversion Guru!)

With three best-selling books and more than 15 years of conversion optimisation experience under his belt, Bryan Eisenberg is legendary for his work is persuasion architecture, persona development and conversion rate optimisation. In this tell-all keynote, he reveals the intimate secrets that few insiders ever get to hear.

Glimpse into the history of CRO and understand what will happen to this discipline in the future. Learn from almost two decades of successes and failures — why Bryan thinks most marketers are still in the dark ages in terms of conversion and testing, and how his simple three-step formula has streamlined the testing process for some of the most successful companies on the web.

If time permits, we put Bryan in the hotseat when he opens up the session for a no-holds-barred question and answer period that could transform the way you think about online marketing.

2) Mobile & Realtime Optimisation – Amy Africa (Eight by Eight)

Why is your established online strategy not transferring well to mobile? What are the important factors (and what aren’t) in determining how to increase your mobile conversions? What delivers results, how do you deal with “abandons” and save up to 60% of them? What should you be tracking? For anyone currently active in mobile, or planning to be, this is a keynote session you really cannot afford to miss. You’ll hear why your mobile conversion strategy has to be different and pick up the tips and tricks you need to put it in place.

3) Praxeology – Lessons from a lost science – Rory Sutherland (Ogilvy)

Advertising and communication has changed immeasurably over the last twenty years. But our tools for understanding people and brands remain largely trapped in the 1970s – if that. Can a missing science fill in some of the gaping gaps in our knowledge?

4) E-commerce Best Practices – Paul Rouke (PRWD) & Stephen Pavlovich (Conversion Factory)

How do you design your ecommerce website to persuade more visitors to convert? What guidelines should be followed when designing product and category pages? Learn guiding principles for making changes to your ecommerce website that will significantly increase your conversion rate.

5) Rapid Fire Landing Page Critiques – Paul Rouke (PRWD), Stephen Pavlovich (Conversion Factory) & Rob Jackson (Conversion Thursday)

Your landing page stinks – it’s just a question of degree. Bring your URL and our experts will give you some quick and actionable tips to immediately improve performance. Guaranteed to be an educational and entertaining session.

6) Plus lots more engaging and insightful sessions

Along with these 5 reasons to attend, take a look at the day 1 and day 2 agenda to see what other sessions are on which may interest you.

Use #ConvCon to follow the conference live

If you are unable to attend you may want to keep any eye on the #ConvCon twitter hashtag which I expect will be getting used extensively during the course of the 2 days.

Further resources on conversion optimisation

If you are looking for more resources on usability and conversion optimisation, view my up-to-date list of articles, case studies and presentations – Conversion Optimisation Resources

What you’ll find here is:

• Usability & conversion optimisation articles for lead generation
• Usability & conversion optimisation articles for e-commerce
• Tools that you can use to monitor & improve your website
• Conversion rate optimisation case studies
• inks to presentations & slides from events & conferences

Thanks for reading, and I hope to see you at the conference!

Following Dave’s presentation I felt compelled to write up what I felt are some of the key ingredients to how Dave does his stuff. So here goes…

1. Roam around the stage
2. Use plenty of single image slides
3. Tell real life stories
4. Reference things that have driven you on
5. Know your content inside out
6. Don’t conform to the usual presentation style/delivery
7. Engage the audience
8. Take the piss with some of your content (particularly data & graphs)
9. Use clever, striking photos, not the usual stock photography crap
10. Don’t take yourself too seriously
11. Grow your hair

I chatted to Dave after my presentation, and he was upfront in saying that he presents very regularly, although doing something regularly doesn’t necessarilly mean you’ll become a master in it – but Dave sure has in my opinion.

Anyway, you can follow Dave on Twitter and read more about him on his blog and his Linkedin profile.

Right I’m off to grow my hair…

What is Conversion Thursday?

Conversion Thursday Manchester is an inspiring and exciting bi-monthly networking event that centres around online conversion and web optimisation. Conversion Thursday is already held in six cities across Europe, having begun in Barcelona. We hold the events at comfortable and relaxing venues that provide the perfect setting for debate and discussion of the important issues in online conversion and marketing.

The evening begins with a brief round-table discussion about recent events in the digital arena, then we have an interactive quiz (with prizes for the best team), before moving on to our main presentation of the evening. After the presentation, people are welcome to hang around for another drink and network with other attendees.

Who is it for?

Conversion Thursday is open to anyone interested in improving the web and increasing online business, including online marketeers, conversion and SEO/PPC experts, and web analysts. This free event is a fantastic opportunity to meet like-minded professionals, and build long-lasting relationships within the industry.

Conversion Thursday is sponsored by Applied Web Analytics and Elisa DBI.

When and where?

• Date: 24th February 2011
• Time: 5.30 – 9pm
• Location: Bar 38 in Manchester (downstairs)
• Event Twitter Tag: #CTMan

Registration

• Register for FREE online

Details are below of an upcoming event I’m talking at, at MMU in Manchester. I must say I’m really looking forward to it, and there should hopefully be quite a large number of people attending.

“Usability & User Experience 101″

• When: Thursday, February 10, 2011 from 5:00 PM – 7:00 PM (GMT)
• Where: Michael E. Porter Lecture Theatre, MMU Business School, Aytoun Street, M1 3GH Manchester
• Who with: Paul Rouke, Head of Usability at PRWD
• Twitter Hashtag: #UX101
• Register for FREE: http://saschoolux101.eventbrite.com/

Event Overview

In this event, Paul will introduce you to usability and user experience, and provide you with a range of insights, tips and best practice that can be used when working on web projects.

The talk will cover key site areas such as homepages, landing pages and enquiry pages, and will include time for questions both during and after the talk.

You’re encouraged to tweet about the talk before, during and after, using the hashtag #UX101.

Presentation Slides

About Paul Rouke

Paul is Head of Usability and founder of PRWD, a Manchester based usability consultancy who help businesses generate more leads and more sales from their websites.

Paul is a usability consultant, trainer and speaker who absolutely loves sharing tips, advice and customer insights to SME’s through to blue chip companies on how they can improve their usability and on-site conversion rates.

Paul works with a range of well known and respected brands including Speedo International, Lakeland, JD Williams, Econsultancy, Smart Insights (run by Dr Dave Chaffey), The Royal Mail and The Scout Association who all recognise the increased sales and profit they can gain by investing in improved on-site usability to improve their conversion rates.

Paul is one of Econsultancy’s well respected training team, and he delivers two courses, Usability and User Experience and E-commerce Usability and Best Practice. Paul also writes articles for Econsultancy’s award winning blog, sharing tips, advice and recommendations.

In addition to working with Econsultancy, Smart Insights co-founder Dr Dave Chaffey brought Paul in to be the expert commentator on usability and conversion optimisation for Smart Insights, a digital portal and consultancy who provide advice and software to help businesses succeed online.

Paul’s business PRWD also has a usability blog sharing tips and advice and company news. You can follow Paul on Twitter for his latest insights, links and commentary on all things usability and conversion optimisation, or if you prefer you connect through Linked In.

At the start of 2009 the official PRWD blog launched, which obviously didn’t impact too much on me writing content here during that year, but it most certainly has during 2010.

Thankfully I’m able to confirm that I have been keeping busy, and having taken a look at the PRWD blog there are a wide number of projects, news stories, tips and best practice articles that its worth sharing on here.

Case Study – Hyde Group Intranet Evaluation and User Testing

During January 2010 we caried out an extensive evaluation of the intranet for the Hyde Group, who are one of the largest housing associations in the UK, owning or managing over 43,000 homes to over 120,000 customers.
The project involved extensive user testing with staff, an expert usability evaluation and many days of usability consultancy.

Article – 5 Tips When Conducting User Research

Whether its referred to as user research, customer research, field studies, qualititive research or one of the other terms used, finding out the wants and needs of people who use websites, intranets and software is a crucial part of designing usable solutions which deliver return-on-investment.
I wrote this tips article to share some of my experiences and methods when I look to maximise the benefits of conducting user research.

News – Usability Evaluation and Benchmarking App

In April 2010 we provided a screenshot to our usability evaluation and benchmarking app, which I use as part of my e-commerce usability and best practice training course.

Case Study – Isabella Oliver Advanced Google Analytics Training

In early 2010 we provided in-house Google Analytics training for fashion retailer Isabella Oliver, and I was delighted as usual with the feedback the delegates provided after the training.

Case Study – E-commerce User Testing with Isabella Oliver

In February 2010 we carried out user testing down in London for fashion retailer Isabella Oliver. This was a great user testing project and we thoroughly enjoyed working with the Isabella Oliver team.

News – I Featured In Drapers Magazine

In May 2010 I was delighted to be asked to feature in Drapers magazine, providing some tips and advice on e-commerce conversion optimisation.

Client Project – Speedo E-commerce Usability Evaluation and Interaction Designs

During the Summer I was absolutely delighted to be working with Speedo again, following a project at the start of the year. I was asked by Speedo to provided a comprehensive usability (heuristic) evaluation of the e-commerce shopping experience, followed by me designing new interaction designs for key pages within their shopping process – namely product page, shopping basket and checkout process.
Following this work we published a press release about my work which included a fantastic testimonial from the Head of E-commerce at Speedo.

Book Review – REWORK by 37Signals

Yeh yeh I know this isn’t what I usually write about, but having been recommended the book by Dan Donald, once I’d read through it for the first time I genuinely felt compelled to write a review. And yes its a fantastic read if you work for yourself or manage a small team!

News – Lewis Marshall Joined PRWD

In July 2010 I was absolutely delighted that Lewis Marshall joined me at PRWD. As it turned out Lewis was with me until the end of 2010 when PRWD finished providing technical capabilities to design and build user-centered design solutions. All that I have to say about Lewis is that he is a remarkable person who has an extremely special career ahead of him, and I’m just happy that I have benefitted from working with him over the 7 months he was in my business. We are also very good friends and will continue to see each other going forward.
Oh and if you know someone that is looking for an exceptional Ruby on Rails developer, let me know and I’ll put you in touch with Lewis…

Best Practice Advice – Don’t Force New Customers To Register To Checkout

As one of the guest expert commentators for Econsultancy, I published an article on their blog discussing handling 1st time customers within checkout, in particular when retailers force 1st time shoppers to register in order to checkout.

One of our clients Speedo handle this very well, by only asking 1st time shoppers if they would like to create a password and set-up their account on the order confirmation page.

The full article on Econsultancy entitled Reduce Checkout Abandonments and Increase Registrations has proved pretty popular, with a big number of comments and lots of advice and recommendations put forward, by both myself and some of the people commenting.

What Does PRWD Stand For?

We get asked many times what does PRWD stand for, and I wrote an article on the PRWD blog explaining just this. PRWD is An Acronym for ‘PRoductivity Without Difficulty’ – read more about the rationale behind this, as well as lots of case studies demonstrating what we’re about.

News – User Testing Lab Launch at MMU in Manchester

Having being the first company to use Manchester Metropolitan Universities User Testing Lab facility for commercial purposes in 2010 (we carried out a user testing project for a well known highstreet retailer of homewares) we were absolutely delighted to be asked to help launch the lab.

News – Usability Testing in Manchester

Following on from the user testing lab launch I wrote an article explaining more about PRWD’s user testing services. It also included links to a couple of case studies, e-commerce user testing for Isabella Oliver and intranet user testing for the Hyde Group.

Press Release – PRWD Help Launch Manchester’s First User Testing Lab

Following on from the lab launch we were delighted to send out a press release explaining about the facilities and our partnership with MMU. MMU are one of the organisations that are featured on our website, which also includes Econsultancy, Smart Insights, Manchester Digital and the Usability Professionals Association.

Best Practice Advice – Increasing New Customer Conversion Rates (for Smart Insights)

This year I was very privileged to have been invited by Dr Dave Chaffey to start providing expert commentary pieces for his online portal Smart Insights. My first post was looking at the variety of ways retailers handle new customer checkout, as well as providing a range of best practice tips to retailers looking at reducing checkout process abandonments.

Merry Christmas from Me and PRWD!

And finally, our last monthly newsletter of the year was dedicated to wishing our subscribers a merry Christmas, although I decided to mix up the formula a bit by not including a single Christmas image. Instead I opted to include a variety of images which demonstrate some of the key client challenges we tackle as well as images which I use in usability and conversion optimisation event presentations.

Finally may I wish anyone that has managed to read through all this post a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

Course Overview

Usability for e-commerce sites is one of the largest contributors to customer conversion and retention rates. Can you afford not to be following best practice?

The course objective is to expose and explain a wide range of vital best practice techniques taken from SME and blue chip retailers which you can implement into your organizations’ own e-commerce platform in order to drive improvements of conversion rates.

Focusing on 3 key stages of the buying journey, Product Page, Shopping Basket and the Checkout Process, this training course will provide you with a wealth of knowledge and industry-leading insights that can be utilised to make iterative usability improvements to your e-commerce platform.

By applying best practice usability principles throughout the customer journey, your organisation can increase the amount of visitors who convert from browsing to shopping. In turn, increasing customer conversions will lead to increased returning visitors and average lifetime order value, which subsequently can reduce your customer acquisition costs.

Book Online at Econsultancy

To book online visit the Econsultancy website where you can see available dates.

Turn your speakers up (a nice soundtrack is your reward) and enjoy…

“Shifts in online business objectives are becoming apparent, from increasing traffic to optimizing on-site conversions & sales”

This is a quote taken from the recent trending report by Econsultancy (Measurement, Analytics and Optimization: Market overview) that I tweeted about which led to the following twitter conversation with @techvs:

@techvs – Hi Paul. Who is presenting this as ‘new and innovative’? It is as old as the sea for the enlightened few. Logical & obvious.
@paulrouke – I agree, although the enlightened few have yet to convert the masses who still focus on traffic over on-site conversions
@techvs – that is SO SO true. I am still surprised by number who do not recognise / understand / work the sales process
@paulrouke – this need for enlightenment is a main reason why I developed my conversion optimisation masterclass – http://is.gd/bs9v8
@techvs – trying to teach the old master? I remember (trying) to do it before mobiles, PC’s, etc – database was paperwork! Happy days
@paulrouke – fingers crossed I won’t be making the same comments in another 2 years! Surely the penny will drop at some stage for website owners
@techvs – It hasn’t dropped for the majority in the years since I started in 89….why now? People follow the crowd – down the wrong road
@paulrouke – good point. Also, wait till they hit the roundabout with a new exit called Social Media Marketing Avenue – more traffic anyone?

At PRWD we are continually banging the ‘conversion optimisation‘ drum, and the challenge of educating, enlightening and winning over the majority of business owners (apart from the ‘enlightened few; as @techvs described) is something that I genuinely love doing.

The New Challenge – Social Media Marketing is More Sexy Than ‘Usability’

As I eluded to in my final tweet, there is a very real possibility that alot of businesses will miss the ‘turnoff’ for improving the usability and conversion rate of their online presence and instead follow the bright lights down the social media marketing road. So rather than making sure their existing website has been correctly configured with analytics, allowing them to accurately track their on-site conversion rates and ROI from any SEO and SEM that they invest in, they may well proceed with investing in new, exciting and sexy social media strategies to drive yet more potential customers to their website.

Education, Education, Education

One of the ways in which I tackle the challenge of educating business and website owners about the importance of on-site performance measurement and conversion optimisation is by delivering my masterclass, succinctly titled ‘Generating More Leads and Sales from your Website’.

The masterclass description goes as follows:
Learn a range of tools, tips and techniques so you can understand how your website is performing for your business and how you can improve it so you can get more visitors to ‘do what you want them to do’ once they arrive on your website (enquire, place an order, call you, request quote, download brochure, sign up to your newsletter).

Sample slides from the masterclass

Calculating the ROI of improved on-site conversion rates

As well as the educational element, another vital tool in helping to demonstrate the sales and profit impact to businesses by improving the conversion rate of websites can be seen in our e-commerce conversion optimisation calculator and our lead generation conversion optimisation calculator.

So, More Traffic or a Better Conversion Rate?

Why not both I would say! Just don’t ignore the significant opportunities to improve your on-site conversion rates before investing in driving traffic to your website…

In summary I’m looking forward to PRWD continuing like many other conversion optimisation focused businesses such as FutureNow to beat the ‘optimising on-site conversion rates’ drum.

Anyone care to join us?

What is interesting is to look at the key differentiators between our SME clients and our other much larger, well known clients.

• Budgets - of course budgets vary significantly, from a few thousand pounds to ten thousand pounds and upwards
• Expectations - SME clients tend to feel like online can’t always play an integral role in their sales and marketing activities, but bigger brands expect much more from the online channel
• Traffic versus conversions – SME’s will rely mainly on traffic generation techniques to increase enquiries and sales, where bigger brands look at both traffic generation and visitor conversion (to varying degrees I must add!)
• Are all visitors potential customers? – SME’s will tend to treat all site visitors as ‘potential customers’, especially when viewing web analytics, whereas bigger brands focus on segmenting their traffic information to identify which visitors are more likely to convert into an enquiry or sale

What Usability Doesn’t Mean for SME’s

There are a wide variety of services within the ‘usability’ field which, realistically, aren’t going to be used often by SME’s due to budget constraints. These services include:

• user testing in labs
• field studies
• focus groups
• expert evaluations
• card sorting
• in-house usability consultancy
• full user-centered design processes
• information architecture planning and development

What Usability Does Mean for SME’s

This isn’t to say that SME’s can’t benefit from the principles of ‘good usability’ to help them improve the effectiveness of their website and online marketing activities.

Primary ways for SME’s to embrace and benefit from usability include:

• using the free web analytics tool Google Analytics to track and monitor visitor activity
• carrying out guerilla style usability testing (more on this explained in this presentation on improving online performance)
• consider how your website currently caters for your key target customer (messages, information, services, useful tools, easy contact methods)
• use another free tool Google Website Optimiser to test a different version of your primary action page on your site
• calculating the potential sales and profit improvement you can expect to get using a ROI calculator (either for lead generation websites or for e-commerce websites)
• treating your website not just as a complimentary promotion of your business but with the potential to become an intregal part of your sales and marketing activities

Masterclasses for SME’s and Micro Businesses

I am delighted to not only be taking part in the first official LEAD programme (a leadership and business development programme) delivered by TMI with 17 other managing directors of micro businesses, but I am also delivering a masterclass to these business owners on ways in which they can start to improve their websites to generate more business. The first masterclass I am delivering is on Monday 15th March 2010, and it is open to non LEAD business owners by prior arrangement.

What SME’s Can Learn About Usability To Increase Profits

For the masterclass which is delivered over two and half hours, the outline of what I will speaking about is below:

• Google Analytics – how you can use this free tool quickly and efficiently to understand whether your website is performing well
• Online enquiries – how you can encourage more visitors to make an enquiry
• E-commerce – best practice advice if you are selling online to encourage more people to buy from you
• Case studies – how to improve online enquiries
• Making the move from offline to online sales/marketing strategy – myths, considerations, opportunities

Masterclass Plans and Objectives

My plan is certainly to make the masterclass sessions very engaging with lots of participation from the SME business owners who will attend. I would say the three main objectives for this masterclass are:

1. Generate genuine awareness of what tools and techniques SME’s can use to improve their websites
2. Demonstrating that ‘usability’ isn’t just for big businesses, and that any size business can benefit from better measurement and usability led improvements
3. Planting the seed for business owners to consider making online a much more integral part of their sales and marketing strategy

Summary

As this article points out although there are many usability led activities which aren’t feasible for many SME’s, there is absolutely no doubt that micro businesses and SME’s can benefit from improved usability of their website and online marketing. If you are in this position or have friends and colleagues who run small businesses, feel free to give us a call to see how PRWD can help increase your sales and leads from the online channel.

New features that have recently gone live are expanded and more intelligent conversion goal tracking, and new Intelligence reporting and alerts.

You’ll see the videos below which give a great overview of both of these new features:

Expanded and More Intelligent Conversion Goal Tracking

Intelligence Reporting and Alerts

Looks like we’ll have to make our Advanced Google Analytics Training Course a bit longer to squeeze these new features in!