Due to continued growth we are looking to increase the size of our industry respected conversion optimisation team.

Who we are looking for

Our works covers analytics, user research, heuristic evaluations, development of test hypotheses, sketching, wireframing & designing user interfaces, and planning and delivering on-going testing programmes.

We’re not daft, we know that there are currently very few people out there who will have experience in all these areas, but you should certainly have a genuine passion for understanding how online experiences can be improved and the appetite to deliver optimisation programmes with our clients. You’ll be personable, genuine and have high integrity too.

What you can expect

You can expect to be working directly alongside our team and in-house with any of our phenomenal clients which include The North Face, Speedo, Schuh, Monsoon, British Cycling, The Student Room, AllSaints and Lakeland. You’ll be continually learning what techniques and experiences affect user behaviour. You’ll become an integral part of our team and someone who our clients trust, respect and look forward to working with.

If you are interested

If you are interested and you feel you have what it takes to become an industry leading conversion optimiser, irrespective of your experiences, please email interested@prwd.co.uk and tell us why.

It isn’t a new concept, it isn’t technical and it might not seem groundbreaking but working collaboratively is one of the most important elements of our conversion rate optimisation programmes.

Collaboration is defined as the act of working with another or others on a joint project. This probably sounds like most of the projects that you might work on, but the quality and the investment made in working together can reap amazing results.

Working collaboratively can improve and support knowledge sharing, learning and consensus building. It can also help to obtain greater resources, recognition and reward when facing competition for finite resources.

But at what cost? It can also have negative impacts. Collaboration can eat up resources and in the worst cases, result in design by committee and conflict. Below are three reasons we think it’s worth the effort.

Collaboration & CRO

Academic and business writer Robert J. Thomas¹, suggests that collaboration is most successful when working on problems that:

1. Don’t have an obvious solution — the problem addressed is not a routine one
2. Lack structure — there isn’t always a familiar process to follow
3. Require collective volition — some sort of sharing is needed but cannot be mandated

(Source: http://blogs.hbr.org/cs/2011/06/the_three_essential_ingredient.html)

So what do these mean for CRO?

1. There’s no simple answer, if there was, they’d be doing it.

In many ways these criteria apply to the problems that need to be improved in order to run a successful CRO programme. For most companies embarking on a CRO programme for the first time, there aren’t going to be obvious solutions, otherwise you might have made the improvements already. For CRO to work really well we collect internal insights, dig deep into the data and carry out fresh user research. The skills required to do each of these tasks means that a team of people is almost always the best way.

2. There are endless ideas and limited resource to build and test them

Any CRO programme should be well planned with targets, milestones and a testing road map, but the reality is that CRO has such a wide scope that sometimes you need to re-prioritise as issues arise. From major conversion blockers to ‘just do it’ tweaks and everything in between data analysis and research will throw up all sorts of issues. CRO will typically involves a range people from different areas of the ecommerce team with different plans and priorities. By working collaboratively it is possible to focus effort and attention on the right work at the right time on the issues that will bring the greatest reward.

3. Who is responsible for sales? UXers? CROs? Developers? Designers? Merchandisers?

A successful optimisation programme will require buy-in from the whole team and involve everyone. It won’t always be clear at the start what type of areas of the site will need to be optimised and who has ownership of that area. We regularly engage with a wide range of specialists such as merchandisers, the customer services team and developers. Investing in working collaboratively allows you to spend time with the right people at the right time and get their buy-in as you go, rather than storing up objections until the end.

By working collaboratively we believe that you will see the best return on your conversion rate optimisation efforts.

Last week’s Conversion Thursday saw over 40 eCommerce Managers from the country’s top brands meet up to network and hear about A/B and MVT testing techniques from two of the top experts in the field. Read more to learn about the top take-away points from the evening.

Our very own Paul Postance kicked off the evening with a talk on why a culture of testing is important and how to embed it in an organisation.

Top Tips:

• Marginal gains all add up
• “It could be done better is not an insult” – let testing take the politics out of optimisation

Matt Althauser, our testing partner from Optimizely and Head of European Sales travelled over from Holland to present an interactive talk on the importance of split testing and lessons learned from over 100,000 A/B and MVT Tests. Having worked on the Obama presidential campaign, Matt used the creative, ranging from inspirational to tear jerking to see which the audience thought would perform best to surprising results.

Top Tip:

• Small details matter. Consider adding dynamic content that builds consistency in the user experience. For example, matching your H1 header tag with the search term that brought the user to your site.

It was a great turn out and fantastic to meet so many people within the industry. The free chilli wasn’t bad either. Thanks to all who provided feedback on the event too, we’ll be putting it into practice at the next event.

Conversion Thursday is a series of free international events. The next Manchester event will be held in conjunction with this year’s Sascon on the 6^th June, with talks focused on Multi-channel attribution.

Sign up now to avoid disappointment as there are only a limited number of tickets available.

If you can’t make it along, follow the action on #CTman or follow us on Twitter

That’s what I’ve been saying since 2011 and looking ahead in to 2013 I still very much see this as being the case. More and more businessess will invest continuously each month on optimising their digital experiences, knowing that they can reduce their growing acqusition costs and increase their customer lifetime value (CLV).

At the end of 2012 myself and two of our team Paul Postance and Craig Sullivan provided a range of predictions for the conversion rate (or more specifically profit) optimisation industry in 2013.

Here is a quick snapshot in case you’d rather stick around on our blog rather than heading over to Econsultancy to get the full lowdown…

• The growth of low cost and DIY testing solutions (e.g. Visual Website Optimiser and Optimizely) will accelerate as more brands take the plunge and start testing
• More brands will start to talk about the concept of ‘putting it to the test’ as a way of challenging assumptions, perceptions and perceived best practice
• More brands embarking on full redesign processes will truly adopt an agile, iterative, user-centered design approach and bring the voice of the customer in at the very start of the process. User research will be less of an afterthought when redesigning
• More brands will realise that on-site conversion improvement is the way to build on a saturated acquisition strategy. If you haven’t read this before then here goes… “For every $92 spent acquiring customers, only $1 is spent converting them.” – Bryan Eisenberg, Conversion Conference London 2011
• 2013 will be the year that CRO becomes a competitive advantage for companies

You’d like a quote to use?

Go on then, here are some quotes from me, Craig and Paul as featured on the original post “Will 2013 be the year of conversion optimisation?“…

Craig Sullivan

2013 is when more companies will start to deliver on the promise of conversion rate optimisation, by investing in the tools, techniques and staff to execute a conversion optimization strategy. Whether you are a startup or an established business, the maths is pretty simple; if you convert 10% of your site visitors and your nearest competitor only converts 5%, you’re going to grow faster, spend less and kill their ability to compete with you.

Paul Rouke

CRO will become the new SEO. Businesses will eventually understand that the likes of ‘voice of the customer’ and ‘testing and optimisation’ aren’t just name checked or for the select few.

On-site optimisation will become an on-going, integrated strategy for brands alongside their acquisition and retention strategy. 2013 will certainly see a continued progression towards this promised land, although there may still be years to go.

Paul Postance

Organisational understanding and maturity will start to bring optimisation out of the shadows. It will be increasingly seen as a highly cost-effective way to increase performance while reducing acquisition spend – so it becomes a requirement not a ‘nice to have’.

Here is one of the ways we are preparing for CRO (Conversion Rate Optimisation) becoming the new SEO with our recent appointment to our highly experienced optimisation team at PRWD.

Filtered navigation is widely adopted as one of the best ways to let users browse through large categories of products. It really doesn’t need to be complicated, but there are a few things that you should get right. Here are our top tips.

1. Indicate the number of products in each filter-category

(Schuh)

It’s a really simple one, but it’s surprising how often this isn’t done. Indicating next to a filter-category how many items a user can expect to get helps users to make decisions about whether a category is worth selecting. This can reduce disappointment for users who otherwise might select a category and then find fewer items than they hoped for.

2. Allow multi-select

(Monsoon)

This is nearly always the first thing that we check for when reviewing filtered navigation. We find that for some users it is vital to be able to configure filters to show products from a few important filters. We’ll take no excuses. Multi-select is a must.

3. Visual Filtering – Allow users to remove certain options from the filters

(ASOS)

Visual filtering allows user to change their filter settings from the product listing without interacting with the filters. The example above from ASOS (pretty much the only retailer we see doing this) shows that when you hover over a product, you can choose to ‘Hide this brand’ which de-selects that brand from the brand filtering. This allows users to even more quickly edit the products displayed without have to read through large lists of filter settings.

4. Give users control when entering values

(Speedo)

In recent user testing we have found that users want control over how they enter pricing. Some preferred to have a flexible slider, while others wanted to manually enter their own values. Suggested pricing bands came out worst because they offer the user least control.

5. Provide filters that matter to customers

Not so much feature or functionality, but we find that asking users which filters they would like to use can be an eye-opening experience and can reveal some user priorities that had not been previously anticipated. Adding new filters or changing the prominence of existing filters can really benefit from user feedback. It is also important to add analytics tracking to filter in order to identify which filters are most widely or commonly used.

6. Provide more information if filters are complex

(Schuh)
Sometimes the names of the filters themselves are not easy for users to understand. In the example above, Schuh have made it easy to access more information about sizing conversions.

We have seen other examples where retailers provide a link to their size guide, which is a great idea. We have also identified retailers who have filters with complex or technical options that would benefit from a quick modal pop up with explanations or clarification. Why not make it easier for users to filter accurately?

7. Maintain users filter choices

Another no-brainer, but we see too many examples of users navigating back to lister/sub-category pages only to find that their filter selections have reset. This can really frustrate users and reduces their patience with the website and ultimately the amount of time that they are likely to spend browsing.

BONUS – Introduce social proof and consumer behaviour tailored filters

(Lakeland)

Often overlooked, one of our clients that recognises that filtered navigation can be used to provide visitors with recommendations based on not just product specific attributes but different types of product categorisation. In this case visitors can choose to look at what are the customer favourites in this particular range (have we ever mentioned that social proof is one of the most persuasive techniques you can use to encourage visitors to buy). In addition they can filter out only the new products, or interestingly just the products which have video reviews.

When we conducted user research with Lakeland following the launch of their website this was one of the many recommended improvements, as without this visitors were often not realising that some products did have video demonstrations.

What do you think?

If you agree, disagree or think we’ve missed a key one, let us know in the comments below.

Paul’s been straight back in the public speaking arena early in 2013, but this time through a SmartInsights webinar. His presentation, “The Most influential Persuasive Design Priorities for 2013” seemed to go down really well. If you missed it then you can catch up here (please note FREE basic registration with BrightTalk is required to view the webinar).

Useful Links On Persuasion for Conversion

• Booking.com: improving conversion with best practice persuasive design – view article
• Persuasive checkout best practice from ASOS – view article
• Shopping basket best practice from ASOS – view article
• Lings Cars and the art of persuading visitors to buy – view article
• Nine valuable techniques to persuade visitors to buy in 2012 – view article

It’s time to wrap up our blog for another year, but just in case you have missed anything, we’ve created this handy list of our most popular posts covering usability best practice, persuasion, optimisation and loads more.

1. What I loved and loathed about Conversion Conference – view
2. 5 of the most influential techniques to persuade visitors to buy – view
3. Applied techniques for conversion rate optimisation – view
4. What are the most influential persuasive techniques for retailers- view
5. Postcode look-up best practice – view
6. Conversion conference slides on e-commerce best practice persuasion – view
7. 7 tips for moderating user research sessions – view
8. On-site survey tools comparison & review – view
9. Mega-menu hints and tips – view
10. Romania versus Estonia: my speaking experiences – view

Hope you find this useful,

Let us know if you had any favourites!

Press Release

The former Head of E-commerce Conversion at Shop Direct Group, Paul Postance, has joined PRWD as they continue to increase their expertise and capacity.

At Shop Direct Group, Paul was responsible for generating additional sales revenue exceeding £50 million through optimisation of desktop, tablet and mobile websites. He built and led a talented team to ensure maximum conversion was consistently being delivered across the brand portfolio. During his time he developed, implemented and enjoyed the results of a unique operating model, whilst working closely with brand directors across the group to ensure customer experience was as vibrant as the conversion figures.

Prior to working in multi-channel retail with Shop Direct, Paul worked at both Royal Bank of Scotland and Thomas Cook in senior optimisation and customer experience roles, and these experiences contribute to Paul’s wealth of commercial, data driven expertise. During the last 7 years Paul has regularly presented at boardroom level, allowing for stronger business cases to be developed to invest in testing tools, user research projects and on-going optimisation strategies.

PRWD are a usability and conversion rate optimisation consultancy who work with multi-channel retailers including AllSaints, Molton Brown, Footasylum, Monsoon Accessorize, Speedo and Lakeland. Paul’s addition to the team has strengthened their ability to provide strategic services to new and existing clients. This involves establishing a robust research, testing and optimisation strategy to provide a platform on which to continually increase on-site conversion whilst reducing acquisition costs. Paul’s appointment perfectly complements PRWD’s existing skills and experiences in understanding consumer behaviour and site performance. This combination of customer research, data and on-going testing allows them to deliver improved commercial impact for clients.

This, Head of Usability & Conversion at PRWD Paul Rouke explains, is the future:

“When the opportunity arose to bring Paul in to our team, we were absolutely delighted and moved very quickly. What Paul was responsible for at Shop Direct in planning and implementing their optimisation strategy is exactly what our clients are starting to ask us to help them with. Combining this with both customer insights and analytics, I genuinely see as being the future for brands in sectors such as retail, banking and travel and tourism. On-site optimisation will be the new search engine optimisation.”

“Our clients, including our latest multi-channel retailer Footasylum, are already starting to harness our teams enhanced skills and experiences to become more customer centric and data driven businesses. We are working closely with brands to optimise the performance of their website, mobile and tablet experiences to increase conversion and most importantly profit.”

“Taking on Paul also continues our approach of only enhancing our team with the most respected people working in our industry. What you see is what you get with PRWD – our team all have a wealth of commercial experience which clients begin harnessing from the moment they begin working with us.”

On joining the PRWD team, Paul Postance commented:

“Having followed PRWD’s usability and research work over time, I saw a unique opportunity to combine these mature skills with the newer disciplines of conversion optimisation and am very happy to be collaborating with Paul and the wider team.

“What’s it all about? Well, data driven improvements alone will take your progress to a certain level by shifting performance measures and levers, and research led improvements give benefits but the specific measurement of these is problematic. So, by linking these two areas we have a far more valuable and useful toolset to offer. What this essentially gives clients is a synergistic value-add where we understand the business proposition, advise improvements, then follow through with a strategic programme to measure, monitor, and monetise the customer interactions.”

“It’s far easier to increase conversion than to increase the number of customers but many sites have not embraced this yet (‘For every $92 spent acquiring visitors, only $1 is spent on converting them’ – Econsultancy 2012). We have a multi-disciplinary and robust system that we can apply to both large and small businesses, to help them increase their value without increasing acquisition cost.”

About PRWD
http://www.prwd.co.uk
PRWD was established in 2006 by usability and optimisation specialist Paul Rouke, and they specialise in web usability, persuasion and on-site optimisation. Paul Postance joins PRWD’s highly experienced optimisation team.

Clients include:

• AllSaints
• Lakeland
• Molton Brown
• Hitachi
• Speedo
• Monsoon Accessorize
• Molton Brown
• Manchester Tourist Board
• Stella McCartney
• Bank of America
• Oxfam
• Footasylum
• Pentland Brands
• British Cycling

For more information please contact:
Paul Rouke at PRWD
Tel: 0161 228 0585
Email: paulrouke@prwd.co.uk

Fresh from 2 of the most productive conference days I’ve had in recent memory, at Conversion Conference London, here are the things I loved and the things I didn’t have quite so much affection for.

If you attended please share your favourite or worse bits in the comments.

Loved

• The conference brought together all the leading optimisers in the UK
• There were a diverse range of presentation styles on show to keep the audience engaged
• Seeing some of the people I respect in the optimisation industry in the flesh for the 1st time
• There was quite simply tons & tons of shared learnings being provided (see a write up of day 1 and day 2 from Koozai)
• There were enough genuinely useful links to sink a battle ship
• I was surrounded by very, very intelligent people
• Conversion Conference isn’t about the sponsors or exhibitors, but the attendees & presenters
• Seeing Mr Dark Patterns in the flesh
• Being on the advisory board of a conference that was around double the size of 2011
• Getting away with playing a 40 second video clip of an eccentric karaoke singer

Loathed

To be honest loathed is a bit strong – this is what I didn’t enjoy as much or could be improved for 2013…

• Having a guy fall asleep in my presentation – a first, that I’ve seen anyway
• Some of the short talks deserved more time to deliver their message
• Having 2 tracks which meant I missed out on some other great talks
• The general subdued nature of the audience and lack of participation
• The timing of the conference meant that it simply wasn’t feasible to attend for our multi-channel retail clients who are currently in the Christmas madness

If you attended please do share the stuff you liked and didn’t like, as I can take this on-board for when we are planning next years.

A quick round-up of our speaker highlights from conversion conference.

1. Paul Postance (@deepconversion)

Paul distilled his years of experience in blue-chip brands to share coal-face lessons and tips on creating a conversion team capable of making and demonstrating massive sales improvements. A must see for anyone looking to build an optimisation programme across mobile and desktop, and a team to carry it out.

2. Natalie Nahai (@TheWebPsych)

In the final session of the first day Natalie introduced us to some gems from her fantastic new book that’s storming up the charts nationwide. Natalie moved on to discuss and show examples of how cultural differences affect users’ behaviour and expectations online with a dive into some academic theory that will be fascinating to anyone selling internationally.

3. Harry Brignull (@harrybr & @darkpatterns)

A highlight of Day two for us, Harry introduced us to the murky world of Dark Patterns. Showing us some new examples of companies that flout usability best practices in order to meet business objectives, but hugely compromising their user experience in the process. See examples of companies named and shamed here: http://wiki.darkpatterns.org/Home/

4. Rich Page (@richpage)

Rich offered some great practical advice on how to structure a conversion team. If you’re looking to develop your team his slides are definitely worth digging out.

5. Dr Karl Blanks (LinkedIn)

Karl delivered two excellent sessions brimming with practical tips full of common sense. Techniques that are not always orthodox, but are tried and tested left the audience lots to take away.

6. Stephen Pavlovich (@conversionfac)

Stephen delivered an engaging presentation covering strong persuasive techniques and how these can be scaled up to impact the full business proposition rather being limited to fiddling with small website tweaks.

7. Rob Jackson (@conversion_guru)

Short and sweet from Rob Jackson on the final day with a compelling round up of some of the most important tools and some more innovative new tools that had people scribbling in their notebooks. Hat tip too, for great moderation on day two and insightful questions asked when the audience were a bit shy.

8. Craig Sullivan (@optimiseordie)

Engaging as ever, Craig invited us into his world of optimisation, sharing his most helpful hints, tips and hacks. And on the final day, jumped in to join Rob to share a huge number of tops conversion tools to help conversion optimisers.

This list could go on and on, and unfortunately we weren’t able to be at every session, but we hope you enjoyed this post!

If you have a favourite speaker let us know who and why in the comments.