Jobhop Jobhop's blog : Say Hi To The Conversion Optimisation Specialist

It's not just about getting consumers to the website, it doesn't stop there…what happens when they get there?

Say hi to the “conversion optimisation specialist”, a much needed person for any company.

This particular specialist is one part of a digital team, working closely with the online and offline marketing assistants, the marketing manager and the social media manager.

The aim of any conversion optimisation specialist is to improve the conversion of the website traffic to deliver a greater return.

Every small percentage increase in conversion rates means more customers and more money, so this job role is a very important one.

Understanding consumer flow, you also need to understand the customer and their behaviour. For example, customers visiting a certain page of the website may be "hovering" on the middle left, more than any other part of the page, why is that? Can you turn that into an opportunity to convert? A conversion optimisation specialist would work out what action they'd like the customer to take at what part of the journey and ensure the potential customer can take it effortlessly.

Perhaps the company website has a high bounce rate, why is that? What can be done to bring the bounce rate down?

Overlooking the fact that customers are looking at the company website via their mobiles or tablets and the website not being responsive could explain a high bounce rate. A conversion optimisation specialist would be insistent that the company had a responsive website and it would be their job to report why.

It's up to the conversion optimisation specialist to find all the barriers and either take them down or try to reduce them dramatically. It could be lengthy forms to fill in which puts customers off, the solution to that problem could be a quick log in, maybe with a social media account.

How long do the pages take to load? 4 seconds is a long time to wait for a page to load, in that time the customer has probably found another site to view, the conversion optimisation specialist would make sure that customers don’t have to wait for pages to load.

Some jobs you’ll do as a conversion optimisation specialist.

Research consumer behaviour to target revenue by generating test campaigns.

Improve conversion.

Research new software.

Monitor KPI's.

Research the best tools for testing.

Split testing.

Determine weak pages.

Reporting.

Analysis of analytics.

Working with Google analytics

Heat mapping.

Provide data.

Familiarise yourself with some key terms interviewers will ask you about:

Conversion Funnel

This is the customer flow, they journey they go on before they convert.

A/B Testing or Split Testing

This is where two tests are done but slightly different versions to track which one achieves the best outcome. Only one thing at a time is ever tested, so if one post or advert had a red lollipop the other post/advert would be exactly the same but the red lollipop would be swapped with a yellow one. Perhaps one advert or post had the word "NOW" in capital letters but the identical advert or post had the word "now" all in lower case.

Multivariate Testing (MVT)

This is where multiple variations of testing is done, many different pictures used, different fonts, different colours etc..

(CTA) Call To Action

What will the call to action be? Grab now, Sign up, Join, Opt in, Register, Download, Share You have to call the right to call to action

Bounce Rate

As mentioned earlier, if there is a high percentage bounce rate then something is wrong, it could mean people aren't finding what they need immediately

Average Time On Site

This gives you an idea how long people are staying on your site

Exit Rate

Does one particular page have a very high exit rate? Perhaps on average the customer looks at two pages prior but always exits on one particular page, that page will need investigating.

Average Page Views.

Is quite self explanatory, it's the average amount of pages a customer looks at before leaving. What if the trend for most customers was to look at a high number of pages and then leave, a conversion optimisation specialist has to ask the question "why are they not converting?"

Is this the job for you? If so you’ll be in demand, companies have to get their websites to convert. If a company hesitates they’ll kick themselves when they get to hear about you working for their competitor!

JOIN Jobhop and spread the word.

Conversion optimisation specialist