This is the second part of a three part guest post by one of our GACP partners, Conversion Rate Experts.

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In the first part of this three part series, we looked at how many marketers rush into setting up their conversion rate optimization process but Conversion Rate Experts (one of our Website Optimizer Authorized Consultants) recommend instead applying a little bit more strategic planning, and how this can get you a much better outcome and avoid you overlooking some fundamental factors. Now we need to drill further into this approach so that you have can be armed with all the research that you need and make an informed decision going into your actual experimentation. Make sure you check out part 1 to see the previous three steps.

Step 4: Research the market

No business exists in a vacuum. You need to understand the ecosystem that you are working in. Study your marketplace by researching

• Your competitors
• Expert commentators
• Social media
• Review sites
• Anywhere your target market gathers.

Explore possibilities for improving your positioning against that competitive environment by building upon your company’s core strengths.

Step 5: Reveal the hidden wealth in your business

You will likely have elements within your business that would be highly persuasive to your prospects, if only your prospects could get exposed to them. The key is to identify all of these persuasion assets, then present them to the prospect at the right time in the buying process. In effect your website should be a "proof magnet", incorporating all the necessary support material, persuasive content and evidence necessary to move your prospect forward with confidence.

Your website should be a “proof magnet”.

It can also be useful to identify assets that would be compelling to your prospects —

• Invest time in gathering your company's existing material and sort through your collection to find under-used persuasive assets.
• Create missing assets that would be persuasive to your target market, if only you had them.
• Compile a wish-list of persuasive content and material that your company needs to acquire from outside sources, such as paying for material to be created or interviewing clients for case studies and results.

Step 6: Create your experimental strategy

Extraordinary improvements come from extraordinary ideas. Take all of the ideas you’ve generated from the research, and prioritize those big, bold, targeted ones that will grow your business in the shortest time. After collating all the ideas, prioritize them based on three simple metrics:

1. How likely is it to double your conversion rate?
2. How easy it is to implement the test?
3. Has this idea worked before?

Summary of Part 2

Rather than starting with the first optimization experiments that come to you, it will pay big dividends if you take a short step back and really research and prioritize what you should be working on. As you have seen, there might be gold hiding in terms of your positioning in the marketplace and in your previously under-used proof elements. You can see how Conversion Rate Experts used this exact process to ​quadruple Voices.com's conversion rate from under 5% to 22% here in this case study. In the next and final part of this series, we will put all of this research and planning to good use.

 Posted By Shane Cassells, Google Conversion Team

This is the first part of a three part guest post by one of our GACP partners, Conversion Rate Experts.

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Many marketers start their Conversion Rate Optimization process by going straight into creating a list of things to test.  Conversion Rate Experts (one of our Website Optimizer Authorized Consultants), however, advise you to resist the urge at this stage. Here are two good reasons why:

1. You don’t know why people aren’t converting yet.
2. You need to experience your business as a customer rather than a marketer.

Conversion Rate Optimization isn’t about tweaking a particular type of page element or simply setting up new tests. Instead it’s a well-defined, systematic process — a list of things you need to do. In this article series we will take you through the Conversion Rate Experts methodology so that you will have a full process to follow.

CRE Methodology Mind Map

First, in this article, we will cover some preparation steps:

Step 1: Define your strategy, long-term goals, and how you’ll measure success

First decide the strategy and vision for your business. You need to define the key performance indicators (KPIs) that will ensure you meet your goals. Next, it is important to have customer empathy and to understand the thought processes your visitors are going through, so become a customer of your own site. Discover what the actual visitor experience is really like. The insights gleaned from these activities will give you a better guide for what you need to work on.

Step 2: Understand (and tune) your traffic sources

It’s impossible to critique a website without knowing where its visitors are coming from, which landing pages they arrive on, and how they navigate around the site.

1. Seek to understand your entire conversion funnel
2. Aim to work on the areas of your business that will have the biggest impact on your goals.
3. Also prioritize your efforts on parts of your business that are easiest to make changes to.

Discover blockages and missing pieces in your funnel with web analytics tools.

Search for any aspects that are under-performing and any required parts of your conversion funnel that have not yet been created. For example:

• Turning a one-step sale into a multi-step sale
• Adding a well-placed refer-a-friend program
• Adding an effective email autoresponder sequence
• Adding a series of post-sale offers
• Growing a customer community
• Rolling out successes into other media

Step 3: Understand your visitors (particularly the non-converting ones)

Your key question to answer at this stage is, “Why is the visitor not converting?”. The answer typically comes from research in these core areas:

1. Understanding different visitor types and intentions
2. Identifying user experience problems.
3. Gathering and understanding visitors’ objections.

There is a list of 15 tools here that will help you with your visitor research.

Summary for Part 1

By the end of this part of the process you should have a great idea of the priority areas that you need to work on, both from a funnel and an end-user experience point of view. In the next article we will look at further refining your strategy so that you get the best possible outcome from your efforts. If you would like to see more about how to implement the CRE Methodology we have been outlining here, check out this case study which describes how sunshine.co.uk used the process to almost double their revenue.

Posted By Shane Cassells, Google Conversion Team