Recently I interviewed Chris Goward, a conversion rate expert who has a company called WiderFunnel. I first met Chris at IMC Stockholm and saw him run a fantastic workshop about conversion and landing page testing. When I was up in Canada a couple weeks ago to speak at IMC Vancouver, we met and he agreed to do an interview for the 10e20 blog. I hope you enjoy getting to know Chris a bit and learning the ins and outs of conversion optimization!

Chris Goward from WiderFunnel

Tell us about yourself. How did you get involved in Internet marketing?

I built my first website in 1994 and have been working to test and improve online and offline marketing since then. I also have a background in Analytical Chemistry, which may seem unrelated to web marketing, but I think my education in the scientific method set the tone for my marketing career. I believe that creativity and intuition are important to making leaps forward and that we need the rigour of measurement to prove our instinct.

Give us the WiderFunnel spiel – what they do, where they’re based, all that jazz.

WiderFunnel is the full service Conversion Optimization services company that guarantees results. We improve lead-generation and sales conversion rates for companies by testing in all industries for clients like eBay, Epson, BabyAge.com, SAP, and Google.

You recently wrote a couple blog posts about how to combine conversion optimization with SEO (see here and here). Do you think that conversion optimization is getting more widespread adoption/acknowledgement, or is it still being underutilized?

I would agree with both of those, Rebecca.

On one hand, conversion optimization is getting more awareness. A couple years ago we were convincing people that testing would help them. Now clients call us because they’ve tried testing and are disappointed with the results they’ve been getting with their internal or technology provider’s teams.

On the other hand, we’re still in the early stages of growth and a true testing and optimization organizational culture is rare. Most companies do not have the expertise in-house to support a continuous improvement strategy. It’s also rare to find an agency that knows how to develop an effective testing strategy.

The SEO concern is just one common misconception about testing. A well-designed conversion optimization testing plan is actually a powerful method to minimize risk.

What’s the biggest conversion mistake you see on websites?

There are many common mistakes and I couldn’t narrow it down to one, but here are a few typical issues to think about:

• Does your headline include a clear statement of your value proposition?
• How many products or pricing options are on the page? Can you reduce the options?
• Do you have white text on a dark background, gradient or image? Black text on a white background usually works better.
• An obvious issue that is still surprisingly common is very long lead generation forms. Are there any you can remove without compromising the required data?

You’re on the Landing Page Optimization panel at PubCon Las Vegas next month. Can you give us a sneak peek and share a quick conversion test businesses can try out?

At PubCon, I will be sharing recent tests we’ve run and demonstrate how to use the LIFT Model to get results on your site too. We use the six Conversion Optimization factors in the LIFT Model to drive all of our tests.

If a company hasn’t tested at all yet, the easiest way to try it out is a simple headline or button test on a landing page. It’s easy to run an A/B or multivariate test on Google Website Optimizer, and the tool is free.

Most importantly, keep it simple for your first test. Just test one element with no more than three variations and you’ll start to get a sense for the process that’s involved. You’ll be hooked!

Have you worked on conversion optimization for social media? If so, what have you discovered about converting social media efforts into sales?
Social media visitors generally have a different mindset than Search traffic visitors. People engaging with social media are generally looking for entertainment or connection rather than solutions. You have to be even more focused and relevant to get conversions from social media.
The best results we’ve seen with social media are for B2B companies using LinkedIn or Twitter to point to relevant case studies, webinars or product launches.
Ultimately, any traffic group, whether from social media or other sources, can be fed into a relevant conversion funnel and improved through testing.

What do you think is in store for Internet marketing over the next year? What shifts do you think will occur and what would you like to see happen?
Internet Marketing is surviving the recession predictably well. Research released recently by AAC shows that 92% of marketers are taking steps in 2009 to increase accountability for their marketing spend. Another study by eMarketer shows that many are increasing online marketing spend while making huge cuts to offline media.
We saw a dramatic spike in phone calls for Conversion Optimization services as of December, 2008 and it hasn’t slowed down.

As our neighbor to the north, what’s the biggest Canadian stereotype that’s fake and the biggest one that’s real?

• Canadians live in igloos – Not True.
• Canadians ride polar bears – Not True. Probably not even possible.
• Canada is covered in snow – Not True. Most of Canada’s population lives in a relatively moderate climate with hot, sunny summers. Where we are in Vancouver, for example, rarely has snow.
• All Canadians are hockey fans – True.
• Canadian beer is better – True.
• Canada has a high percentage of comedians, musicians and internet marketers – True.

Any interviews you’d like to see, or would you yourself like to be interviewed for the 10e20 blog? Tweet at us and let us know!

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