In the last couple of years, there has been an increase in online searches for the term conversion rate optimization.

Many books have been written, articles published online, videos produced, and agencies formed.

As experts and thought leaders in the industry, we’ve put together a list of conversion optimization resources (best books on conversion rate optimization etc).

We’ve compiled a list of the top 100 conversion rate optimization books, videos, and articles that you need to own, bookmark, and/or read on conversion optimization.

Conversion Rate Optimization Books

1. Don’t make me think – Steven Krug
2. Considered by many experts as the ‘layperson’s usability bible’. This book is recommended for all those who want to know how to get started with web usability. It’s also a great refresher course in the basic steps for advanced users as well.

2. Web Analytics: An Hour A Day – Avinash Kaushik
3. This book provides a step–by–step guide into creating a successful web analytics strategy. The book helps you glean more than the average number of actionable insights from your web analytics data.

3. Call To Action – Bryan Eisenberg
4. This book provides foundational information on how to plan, achieve and evaluate performance results.

4. Landing Page Optimization by Tim Ash
5. Tim Ash is the Founder of Conversion Conference and CEO of SiteTuners. This book explains all the basics and goes beyond specific roles to provide a practical and pragmatic view of CRO.

5. Conversion Optimization: The Art and Science of Converting Prospects into Customers– Ayat Shukairy and Khalid Saleh
6. The book introduces  the Conversion Framework process developed by the folks here at Invesp and used by optimization teams across the globe to help companies increase their website conversion rates.

6. Always Be Testing – Bryan Eisenberg
7. This is one of the first books that focused on conducting A/B and MVT testing. Although many tools have been developed since then, this book continues to be one of the best in the field.

7. You Should Test That – Chris Goward
8. The book helps you learn how to convert your leads into buying customers. This book helps you understand the testing procedures that are necessary to optimize website elements in order to encourage visitors to take specific actions.

Beginner Guides On Conversion Optimization

3. 3. 8. DIY: How to map your buyer personas to improve conversions

Any marketing effort requires a good deal of market research. It’s important to anticipate customers every move, how they think, and what their interests are: this can be achieved through the creation of personas. This guide helps you through a step-by-step process to develop the right personas for your website.

3. 3. 9. Guide to Competitive Analysis for Conversion Rate Optimization

You can learn a lot from your competitors, both good features and elements to avoid. A comprehensive competitive analysis is fundamental to any CRO program. This guide will help you in conducting a full competitive analysis.

3. 3. 10. The Beginner’s Guide to Conversion Rate Optimization

This is a step-by-step tutorial that helps you convert all kinds of site visitors to buying customers. This guide will help you learn the basics of CRO, and guide you to build your own conversion plan and test it. You’ll be able to improve your site’s performance while being wary of the common CRO pitfalls.

3. 3. 11. The Definitive Guide To Conversion Optimization

Ensuring good Conversion Rate Optimization should be every business’s top priority. Aimed at marketers, founders, entrepreneurs, and bloggers, this guide provides a detailed, and very scientific, approach to CRO needs and processes. A useful resource to anyone who wants to learn about CRO and wants to know how to get the best out of their CRO testing plans. This guide is  and others.

3. 3. 12. The SEOgadget Guide to Conversion Rate Optimization

This handy infographic helps you get started with Conversion Rate Optimization and maximize business ROI from the start. Learn about the Good Path and the Bad Path of CRO, to avoid random testing and guesswork.

3. 3. 13. Your Step-by-Step Guide to A/B Testing with Google Analytics

A guide to help you using a free tool for conducting A/B tests. You will learn how to set up tests, and how to identify when to stop testing. Whether you’re planning to build a blog or opening up an online retail business, you need these tips to succeed.

3. 3. 14. The Landing Page Makeover Guide – 7 Tips for Higher Conversions

This article shares the most successful landing page optimization projects with the reader. Learn seven tips to achieve higher conversions with your landing pages, from studying your audience to creating benefit driven copy.

3. 3. 15. Learning Zone By Conversion Rate Experts

A collection of CRO advice articles from conversion rate experts. A must read for anyone interested in digging deeper into conversion optimization.

3. 3. 16. What is conversion rate optimisation (CRO) and why do you need it?

This is a series of beginner’s guides aimed at educating on what CRO is and how to measure and improve conversions. The guides stress CRO as being extremely critical to the success of any business, even if a site is doing very well in other areas. The takeaway is that no matter how good the design or how good the content, the important thing is to ensure the site converts well.

3. 3. 17. 20 Conversion Rate Optimization Experts Share Their Top Tip for eCommerce

This slideshare presents 20 top tips shared by conversion rate optimization experts who’ve succeeded in various ecommerce ventures. The guide stresses on hyping underutilized pages, such as the Thank You page, to up conversions, and the importance of guiding visitors back to their cart. There’s also emphasis on remarketing.

3. 3. 18. 4 Principles For Higher Conversion

Increasing CRO is a complex issue for all businesses, big or small. Through conversion marketing, it is possible to address the huge percentage of visitors who don’t make it to the conversion bracket. This guide focuses on the shopping conversion rate enjoyed by online retailers and how it can be increased through best practices, usability principles, and determining and sticking to KPIs.

3. 3. 19. MarketingSherpa Quick Guide to Conversion Rate Optimization

This guide offers several tactics to make sure that you are running valid tests to optimize conversions. Many important decisions are made based on inaccurate data. The guide emphasizes calculating the statistical significance of the data you’re testing instead of going with just any data. This guide presents you with 9 tactics that will help you run valid tests. You’re also provided a validity tool that’s free so you can evaluate testing data.

3. 3. 20. The Ultimate Guide to Conversion Rate Optimization

One of the objectives of CRO is to optimize visitors’ experiences on your site, to convert them into customers. As fundamental as search engine rankings are, this guide focuses on CRO, which is what impacts your business’s bottom line.

3. 3. 21. Split-testing 101: A quick-start guide to conversion rate optimization

This guide presents 108 methods to increase your website’s profits. It also introduces split-testing software and how such software can be used to increase CRO. You’ll understand how to carry out split-tests and evaluate the stats.

3. 3. 22. Conversion Optimization Guide

This guide emphasizes the need to reduce friction during visitor’s interaction with your site. The idea behind getting a visitor to complete the steps required for conversion is to provide the visitor with a pleasant and unhindered experience. This guide talks about increasing sales with your present traffic itself, testing conversions and what mistakes to avoid.

3. 3. 23. A Guide to Conversion Optimizer

This guide helps you understand how Conversion Optimizer works. Your bottom-line depends not on clicks or impressions, but on maximizing conversions. Conversion Optimizer gives you the maximum or the average amount you’re willing to pay for a conversion. Based on the conversion bid metric you choose, Conversion Optimizer will focus on converted clicks or on conversions.

3. 3. 24. The definitive guide to multivariate and A/B testing

A collection of several articles that delve into creating an A/B and MVT tests.

3. 3. 25. The Beginner’s Guide to Simple A/B Testing

This guide emphasizes on A/B testing for improving online conversions, achieving growth in business, improving sales and getting the maximum out of web traffic. A/B testing can be used to test emails, copy, landing pages and much more. There are definite advantages to split-testing methods, and this guide goes on to illustrate these advantages.

3. 3. 26. A/B Testing Best Practices Can Save You Time, Money and Effort

This guide focuses on the best practices of A/B testing, and how they can save you money, time and effort. A/B testing can ensure a pleasant and rewarding experience for users on your site, by optimizing each page element.

Conversion Rate Optimization Blogs

3. 3. 27. 5 reasons to get obsessed with conversion rate optimization

This blog post provides 5 excellent reasons for any business to get really obsessed with Conversion Rate Optimization.

3. 3. 28. What to do When Your Split Test Fails

This blog post explains in detail why split tests, or A/B tests as they are known, fail. One reason could be invalid tests. Another reason could be the SEO expert failed to run tests that are significantly different. The variation between the A and B tests should be significant in order to consider the results.

3. 3. 29. How To Get Management Excited About Conversion Optimization

A search marketer’s job is to generate more web traffic, leading to more sales. However, more traffic doesn’t necessarily mean greater conversion rates. This blog  post explains why the pursuit of traffic might distract businesses from the actual goal – CRO – and how higher conversion rates bring down search marketing and acquisition costs.

3. 3. 30. Supercharge Your Conversion Rate Optimization: How to Structure CRO & Win

Creating the right kind of web traffic has become extremely challenging these days, thanks to algorithm changes everywhere. The traffic that you do enjoy is doubly precious. This blog post explains how to use various persuasive methods and acute data analysis to leverage existing traffic and increase conversions.

3. 3. 31. Conversion Optimization Tactics in Action

This blog post shares a number of successful tactics to help businesses leverage conversion optimization advice. The blog focuses on boosting ecommerce sales, getting more customer reviews, getting the most out of call to action buttons and more.

3. 3. 32. Marketers Have It Wrong: Forget Engagement, Consumers Want Simplicity

This article mentions the efforts of businesses in building brand loyalty and impacting purchase decision. The author points out that customers follow brands on social media not for the sake of the community, but mainly for discounts and coupons. The article explains further on how to leverage this customer behavior to have a bigger impact on purchase decisions.

3. 3. 33. Website Redesign for Higher Conversions? Tread Lightly

This blog post is meant for businesses who decide to redesign their entire website to up their conversion rates. With advice on why it’s not recommended to make too many sweeping changes or opt for a radical web design, the blog goes on to explain why a major change in web design might actually bring the conversion rate down, instead of up.

3. 3. 34. Make your visitor your fan in 6 easy ways

Your business website is the most critical part of your business. This blog talks about why it’s important to keep visitors engaged with content on your site. The blog goes on to explain the many tricks you can try to keep visitors coming back to your site to check on the content, including basic changes to your site.

3. 3. 35. Experiments at Airbnb [Case Study]

This blog post discusses the need to run various controlled experiments in order to learn customer behavior. The blog provides the example of Airbnb, a two-sided online marketplace on which experiments were recently run. The blog shares both the gains and the pitfalls of conducting similar experiments on a business site.

3. 3. 36. 8 Questions about increasing your website conversion rates

Find out the answers for the most common questions on CRO. From best strategies, to tools and overlapping tests, you will learn great insights to improve your conversions.

3. 3. 37. Online Lead Generation Through Your Website: A Guide For B2B Companies

This blog post deals with a question that troubles many businesses – are sufficient leads being generated by their websites? This blog is aimed at B2B companies that are struggling with online lead generation strategies. The blog goes on to explain how to generate high quality leads that company sales teams can close easily to increase profit margins.

3. 3. 38. Bridging The Gap Between Phone Calls & Analytics in 2014

This blog post is aimed at marketers who understands the importance of everything that goes into conversion optimization. With all that effort and knowledge, such smart marketing companies might forget how to address web visitors who actually calls in using a telephone. All the collected data and data analysis fail in this case.

3. 3. 39. A/B Tests That Destroy the Myths Created by A/B Testing

A/B testing has resolved many issues for web retailers, helping them achieve greater CROs all around. However, A/B testing has created some myths. This blog explores why this is and breaks many of the myths that A/B testing has generated over time.

3. 3. 40. What’s Wrong With A/B Testing

Granted, A/B testing is a marketing standard as far as ecommerce goes. However, A/B testing, while sounding simple, can be quite complicated. How does one determine small differences in customer behavior based on A/B testing? This blog questions if A/B testing is appropriate in all cases and what are the alternatives.

3. 3. 41. 3 Ways to Convert Shoppers with Effective Website Navigation

This blog demonstrates how effective site navigation helps convert more visitors. With effective navigation, customers can quickly find what they need and complete their purchase. Depending only on a navigation tool aimed at not-so-aware customers might defeat the purpose.

3. 3. 42. 9 Things You Must Know About Conversion Rate Optimization (Before You Start!)

This blog explains several conversion rate optimization techniques that every keen business should know. Among the recommendations, a business should always learn about competitors’ progress, and understand which techniques worked for them but might not be applied to every situation.

3. 3. 43. The Ultimate Guide to Increasing Ecommerce Conversion Rates

This blog provides an excellent guide to increasing your website’s conversion rates. Several tips are provided on how to enhance user experience and thereby increase conversion rates. This blog is a good beginner’s guide on CRO techniques and how to enhance user experience.

3. 3. 44. 8 Ways You Can Tweak Your Microcopy To Boost Your Conversion Rates

This blog presents 8 simple techniques on writing web copy that truly converts. Each technique relies on years of research and A/B tests done on web copy samples. The blog is a good guide for web copywriters and businesses.

3. 3. 45. A 5-Step Framework for Conversion Rate Optimization

This blog explains the common conversion roadblocks that can be found on a business website, and how these blocks prevent conversion. Main among these is lack of trust among users, and the importance of building a strong relationship with them through security signals and safe shopping.

3. 3. 46. 12 Rules for Maximizing Conversions from AdWords

This blog provides an excellent guide on Google AdWords and how to use its various features and tools to excel in your campaigns. Some of the suggestions include rotating Google Ads and otherwise manipulating their placement.

3. 3. 47. 9 Insanely Simple Ways to Optimize Your PPC Landing Page

This blog is a wholesome guide on how to prevent your PPC Ads from taking your visitor’s attention elsewhere. There are ways to leverage PPC Ads to increase your site’s conversion rate.

3. 3. 48. Cart Abandonment is Rising: 5 Tips For Cart Recovery

This blog focuses on how to prevent shopping cart abandonment rates through various tactics. The blog offers tips to personalize shopping carts and follow up with customers when a cart is abandoned. A good guide for any online retail business that’s suffering high shopping cart abandonment rates.

3. 3. 49. Why Use AdWords? Here Are 10 Reasons

This blog explains why marketers and businesses should use Google AdWords. Filled with many examples and scenarios.

3. 3. 50. 25 Tips to Optimize Landing Page Conversions

This blog details 25 excellent tips for optimizing landing page conversions. Apart from the obvious design and user experience changes any business should attempt to up landing page conversions, the blog also describes how savvy marketing techniques can gain more user eyeballs.

3. 3. 51. A Step-By-Step Process for Creating the Ideal Landing Page

This blog talks about the perfect landing page and what it should contain, ideally. It goes on to provide a step-by-step process for creating such a landing page. Knowledge of the user plays a huge role in the creation. This is a good guide for those who want to increase their landing page conversions.

Conversion Optimization Lists Guide:

3. 3. 52. 75 Resources for Writing Incredible Copy that Converts

Great web copy can entice, pull and convince users to commit to your CTA. That’s why great copy writers are highly valued by businesses. Use this list of 75 copywriting resources to understand and learn how to write masterful web copy for your website.

3. 3. 53. 31 Conversion Optimization Tips – How to Increase Conversion Rates

This list provides 31 top tips for Conversion Optimization. Each tip is less than 140 characters long, which is the perfect length for a tweet. These tips have been used by several businesses to lift conversion rates successfully.

3. 3. 54. 21 User Activation Hacks You Need To Know

Acquisition is only the first step of the conversion funnel. Making them stay on your site and commit to the action you put in front of them is called activation. This is the stage where you have to use every bit of your cunning to convince users to stay. This list of 21 user activation growth hacks helps you understand the reasons for user retention.

3. 3. 55. Top 20 Conversion Optimization Tips

This list of top conversion rate optimization tips is exactly what any small or big business needs to grow profits. This list gives you a clear idea of what to test, where to begin and what to avoid during the conversion process.

3. 3. 56. 16 Ways to Simplify Your Prospects’ Decision-Making Process

This list provides 16 ways to help you simplify the decision that users have to make on your site. You can use this list to make it easy for customers to buy from your site and avoid all the confusions that come up when we try too hard to convert leads.

3. 3. 57. 10 Principles of Successful Landing Pages

The 10 elements of a successful landing page list helps you understand what should go into your landing page and what you should avoid. It’s a simple list, easy to understand and implement, and useful for any business.

3. 3. 58. 7 Steps to Higher Conversion Rates

This list presents 7 steps to higher conversions that will make a real difference to your business. If marketers simply learn A/B testing mechanics without knowing what to test, the tests won’t glean results worth a penny. This list is meant to help marketers understand what to test for higher conversions.

3. 3. 59. 5 Ways to Improve Your Contact Form Conversion Rate

Most marketers ignore the contact form when optimizing their sites for conversion. Contact forms allow users to directly interact with the company, and therefore have great potential for conversion. This list shows 5 excellent ways to use contact forms to increase conversions.

3. 3. 60. 21 Conversion Rate Optimization Best Practices for Beginners

This list provides you several great best practices for conversion optimization. You can use them to make changes to your website, one at a time. The list encourages marketers to take risks and explore ideas to improve conversion as well.

3. 3. 61. Statistical Significance for CRO: 6 Things You Need to Know

This list helps you understand the statistical significance between two different numbers, so you can make better sense out of your A/B tests and analytics data. This list is a good reference point for A/B testing initiates.

3. 3. 62. 17 Of The Best Conversion Optimization Blogs On The Internet

This is a list of 17 blogs that will help boost your knowledge on conversion rate optimization; each blog has been written by a conversion rate optimization expert. This list is a good reference point to anyone who’s trying to increase their website conversion rates.

3. 3. 63. 30 Conversion Rate Experts to Follow on Twitter

This is a list of 30 conversion rate experts that are worthy of being read and followed on Twitter. Beneath each expert, you’ll find a small excerpt introducing the person and an introductory bit on their achievements and published materials.

3. 3. 64. Best Practices in Conversion Rate Optimization Debunked

Do you believe every so called conversion rate optimization ‘best practice’ thrown about out there? Not all of them come from experts who’ve tried them out. Here’s a list of several CRO best practices debunked, so you know what to follow and what not to.

3. 3. 65. CRO Statistics: How to Avoid Reporting Bad Data

Read this blog to learn how to avoid reporting bad data to your clients. A clear understanding of statistics is necessary if you are to present valid, testable data. This blog is a ready reference to those who are in the business of managing CRO for their clients and superiors.

3. 3. 66. Mobile Landing Page Optimization – 10 Best Practices for Success

This blog gives you several best practices to help you create well-optimized mobile landing pages to boost conversions. Marketers can no longer ignore mobile landing pages, and this blog makes a point of this awareness.

3. 3. 67. Conversion Rate Optimization Round table – 11 Conversion Rate Experts Weigh In

This blog discusses how important it is to focus on improving conversion rates via landing page optimization. It also talks about ways to make the checkout processes friendlier and easier for better user experience.

3. 3. 68. Holy Grail of eCommerce Conversion Optimization – 91 Point Checklist and Infographic

This blog presents 91 touch points where users engage with the site. Each of these touch points is an opportunity to optimize conversion. This blog is a good reference point for CRO beginners and marketers.

Case studies and Surveys On Conversion Optimization.

3. 3. 69. 4 Simple Tips That Doubled Our Conversion Rate

This case study shows how 4 simple tips actually doubled the company’s conversion rates. The study includes various conversion optimization best practices such as writing compelling copy and optimizing CTAs.

3. 3. 70. 100 Conversion Optimization Case Studies

This list of 100 conversion optimization case studies aims at educating and informing marketers on how to optimize their websites for better conversions. The tactics included in these case studies have been curated from top CRO experts.

3. 3. 71. 50 A/B Split Test Conversion Optimization Case Studies

This blog presents 50 A/B split testing case studies and explains how important testing is, what to test, and how to test various elements for maximizing conversions.

3. 3. 72. 20 Landing Pages Torn Apart by Rand Fishkin, Oli Gardner and Peep Laja

This study lists 20 landing pages of well-known companies along with professional critiques on each one of them. These critiques are provided to help marketers understand that a truly optimized landing page has nothing to do with money, but with clever strategy.

3. 3. 73. Case Study: Removing Video increased conversion rate by 88.46%

Does every optimization trick work on every site? Apparently not. Despite all the best practices out there, what works for your site might differ from best practices. In the blog under study, removing a video actually increased conversion rates.

3. 3. 74. Improving Website Navigation Increased conversion rate by 18.5%

This case study illustrates how improving site navigation helped customers locate products easily and thereby improved conversion rates for the company. Apart from CRO, improving site navigation also helped impact overall customer satisfaction positively.

3. 3. 75. 59% of businesses say conversion rate optimization is crucial to their digital strategy

This case study illustrates the growing awareness among companies of the importance of conversion optimization. The increasing awareness of CRO has led to a very competitive marketplace, with companies vying with each other to achieve max conversions.

3. 3. 76. 30 Conversion Rate Optimization Stats You Should Know

Conversion optimization is a largely numbers-driven marketing discipline. This slideshow depicts 30 very interesting CRO stats gleaned from several case studies. This slideshow is useful to CRO experts and marketers as a reference point.

3. 3. 77. 4 default settings that will destroy your AdWords account

This blog presents default settings in AdWords that you should probably change. The blog is a good reference point for marketers and CRO experts.

3. 3. 78. Lessons from the personalization pros

This report presents the result of the 2014 Digital Marketing Optimization Survey. Marketers and optimization experts can benefit from finding out how fully CRO-optimized companies run tests and obtain quicker results.

3. 3. 79. TrustRadius Conversion Rate Optimization Survey Results 2014

This slideshare presents the results of the “Conversion Rate Optimization: A Survey into CRO Practice Maturity, Software Usage & Spend August 2014” event. It’s an excellent reference point for marketers as it contains many CRO guidelines and examples.

3. 3. 80. 6 Conversion Rate Optimization Case Studies With Surprising Results

This blog presents 6 case studies on conversion optimization that are different from the norm. Common, every day elements, such as social media sharing buttons, are tested for conversion impact. The blog is a good reference point for those who want to approach CRO differently.

3. 3. 81. 5 Conversion Rate Optimization Case Studies You should Bookmark

Not all marketing agencies put conversion optimization to good use. This blog focuses on CRO tactics instead of on-page CRO elements. The blog presents the larger picture of conversion optimization, something that goes beyond just achieving success in CRO.

3. 3. 82. 47% of Ecommerce Sites Commit This Usability SNAFU

This blog talks about various snafus that companies commit and the negative impact they have on CRO and usability. For example, many companies refuse to get rid of home page carousels.

Conversion Rate Optimization Videos/Webinars.

3. 3. 83. How Some Companies Succeed at Converting Visitors yet Fail to Earn Great Customers – Whiteboard Friday

Conversion is not the end of the marketing goals for any company. To ensure long-term success, businesses must focus on building loyal relationships with their customers. This presentation explores why even so-called loyal customers decide to leave and what businesses should do to retain them.

3. 3. 84. Preparing Your Website for Conversion Optimization

This webinar discusses some of the top case studies on conversion optimization. Top tips that are gleaned from various successful conversion optimization projects are shared with viewers. This webinar is a useful watch for marketers and business owners who are new to conversion optimization.

3. 3. 85. Ecommerce Product Page Optimization – Webinar Recordings

This webinar talks about the importance of removing distractions on the landing page, and retaining the CTA and the “the Add To Cart” buttons on every page. The webinar also covers why it’s important to consider the location of upsells/cross-sells and other items.

3. 3. 86. 20 Tips to reduce shopping cart abandonment

This Flash presentation provides 20 excellent tips to all marketers on how to reduce shopping cart abandonment rates. The material presents an excellent view towards improving sales fulfillment by building customer loyalty.

Conversion Optimization Infographics:

3. 3. 87. How to Optimize Your Landing Pages [Infographic]

This infographic provides a succinct view into what a landing page’s actual purpose is, and why businesses should improve their landing pages. It also presents 16 top tips for higher converting pages.

3. 3. 88. How to Create Effective E-commerce Product Pages [Infographic]

This infographic uses 21 simple steps to help businesses understand how to create effective product pages, to ensure better customer experience and high conversion rates.

3. 3. 89. Shopping Cart Abandonment Rate Statistics [Infographic]

This infographic presents clear stats of shopping cart abandonment. It also helps readers understand why online shoppers abandon their shopping carts and what can be done to prevent this from happening.

3. 3. 90. Online Shopping Personalization – Statistics and Trends [Infographic]

This infographic talks about the importance of personalizing the customer’s online shopping experience. What you take away from this infographic is how to engage online customers and keep them feeling cared for through personalization techniques.

3. 3. 91. Top 2014 Conversion Optimization Statistics (Infographic)

This infographic helps you understand conversion optimization statistics across businesses. It also presents what marketers are doing to increase CRO and the various devices through which users are converting online, for the year 2014.

3. 3. 92. How To Test Your Landing Pages [Infographic]

This infographic talks about the importance of testing your landing page elements using the split, or A/B and Multivariate testing methods. Both these testing methods are explained diagrammatically along with examples.

3. 3. 93. The A-Z Guide to Conversion Rate Optimization (Infographic)

This infographic presents a total A to Z guide to conversion rate optimization. 26 top tips are presented to help you improve your conversion rates. The tips cover a broad range of topics, from A/B testing, browser testing, customer relationship development, landing page optimization and much more.

3. 3. 94. Integrating digital media in-store [Infographic]

This infographic explores the techniques being employed by retailers in the UK and USA, and their similarities and differences. Why do 52% of American consumers feel let down, as opposed to only 28% in the UK? If you want answers, read this infographic.

3. 3. 95. How to use Conversion Optimization to Battle Shopping Cart Abandonment – An Infographic

What causes cart abandonment and how to battle this regularly-occurring phenomenon? That’s the question answered by this infographic, which explores cart abandonment rates across businesses, along with how to make customers feel more comfortable with shopping online.

3. 3. 96. How to Optimize Your PPC Campaigns [Infographic]

This infographic explores why PPC Ads don’t perform as planned and what should be done to increase their performance. The infographic presents 20 top tips to optimize PPC campaigns, including geo-targeting, testing Ad placement and more.

3. 3. 97. Infographic: 7 Ingredients to Create the Perfect Landing Page(@Convert)

This infographic presents the 7 absolutely must-have elements for the perfect landing page. Getting your landing page right is probably the best thing you can do for your online retail business. Use this infographic to learn how to fine-tune your landing pages to get the conversions you want.

3. 3. 98. A Simple Guide to Optimizing Your Landing Pages [Infographic]

This infographic provides simple tips on how to optimize your landing pages. It charts the path that a user takes to convert on the site, and how to optimize landing pages to take advantage of this process.

Landing page templates:

3. 3. 99. Free Landing Page Templates

You can download and use these two landing page templates to achieve high conversion rates. If you’re planning on creating your own templates, we recommend that you base the page design on well-defined buyer personas.

3. 3. 100. The Ultimate List of Free Landing Page Templates From LeadPages

Use this free landing page templates to achieve the kind of conversions that you want to enjoy.

The post 100 Must Read, Bookmark, Save, Listen to Resources On Conversion Optimization appeared first on Invesp.

With all the buzz around the use of social media platforms for business, it might be a bit of a downer to find out that social media marketing strategies represent 1.08 percent of e-commerce website visits that result in purchases.

These low conversion rates should not scare you, though. There is gold for your business in social media interactions.

Find out below is why and how you can better exploit the hidden benefits of Social Media.

Social Media and the Customer Journey

By engaging one out of every five minutes spent online, social media takes up a significant portion of internet users’ behavior. Nearly 2.1 billion people have social media accounts and some of these active users access social media platforms more than once a day.

For business, though, this intense social activity does not bring a direct increase in sales, representing just 1.55 percent of all e-commerce traffic, staying behind search and trailing email.

In most cases, the brand awareness built by social media impacts early in the customer journey to online purchase process, in rather qualitative attributes. Depending on industry and country, social media impact might also happen later on the customer journey.

The early impact of social media platforms sets up three main needs:

Additional steps in the purchase process: As users access social media platforms to socialize, not to shop, it takes extra steps to drive them from social browsing to a buying mindset. ASOS addresses it by putting an item ID next to the Instagram image

And Forever21 has Facebook posts with carousels featuring one of the trends

A relevant call-to-action:  With so much going on in social media platforms, users need an attracting call-to-action to get hooked on offers of products and services. Look how Uniqlo addresses this issue by promoting its thermal wear during the autumn season:

Tailored landing pages: Streamlined purchase processes improve conversions of prospects stepping out of social media platforms by effectively switching them to buying mode. For instance, when Yoox, an online fashion retailer, features a designer, it changes the link in the Instagram bio

So that it goes to a landing page devoted to this designer:

If you need extra steps, relevant calls-to-action, and tailored landing pages, how come Social Media is so important for conversions?

Social Media builds brand awareness like nothing else.

Business who are active in social media create an aura of closeness with their followers. With heightened awareness, these businesses are able to drive targeted traffic to their sites, while improving their site’s SEO and providing a quality experience to their audience. All these steps build trust between them and their future (and present) customers.

You already know how trust plays a vital currency on online markets, so keep in mind that:

1. You can drive targeted traffic to your site through social media posts.

A well-planned strategy of engagement can drive valuable targeted traffic to your business’ website. Through organic and advertised reach, social media posts can find your ideal customers and direct them to your business’ site.

A successful social media strategy relies on defining clear objectives, according to your business current needs.

Some amazing facts and statistics on social media reach:

• Average advert click through rate on Facebook is 9%, adding a CTA button can lift click-through-rate by 2.85 times
• Facebook adds 500,000 new users every day; 6 new profiles every second
• 72% of all online US adults visit Facebook at least once a month
• The average (mean) number of friends is 338, and the median (midpoint) number of friends is 200
• Half of internet users who do not use Facebook themselves live with someone who does. Of those, 24% say that they look at posts or photos on that person’s account
• The last two years have seen a5x increase in customer service conversations on Twitter
• Companies using Twitter for customer service see a 19% lift in customer satisfaction

2. You can improve your site’s SEO with social media.

Social media helps you create and share high-quality, authoritative content to naturally attract external links. The increase in external links help your site rank higher in search engines as part of your inbound marketing strategies. For this strategy, you have to focus on creating appealing content to your business’ personas.

These Twitter statisticscan give you a better idea of users’ engagement with businesses on social media:

• The average Twitter user follows five businesses
• 80% of Twitter users have mentioned a brand in a Tweet
• 54% of users surveyed by Twitter reported that they had taken action after seeing a brand mentioned in Tweets (including visiting their website, searching for the brand, or retweeting content)
• Tweets with images receive 18% more click-throughs, 89% more likes, and 150% more retweets.
• The last two years have seen a5x increase in customer service conversations on Twitter

3. You can give a quality experience to your audience through social media.

By providing your followers a quality experience, you build authority and strength your relationship with prospects. This experience transforms followers into customers and customers into returning customers.

All because they relate to the brand image you created on social media. Over half of Americans who follow social media are more loyal to those brands.

Brands’ interactions with followers in social media present some interesting statistics:

• People aged 55-64 are more than twice as likely to engage with branded content than those 28 or younger
• 96% of the people that discuss brands online do not follow those brands’ owned profiles
• 78 percent of people who complain to a brand via Twitter expect a response within an hour
• 49% of users like a Facebook page to support a brand they like
• 77% of Twitter users feel more positive about a brand when their Tweet has been replied to
• 80% of Twitter users have mentioned a brand in a Tweet

4. You can use social media to build trust

When your business gains authority through social online presence, it also brings in amazing social proof, especially if you maintain contact with your followers by, for instance, answering inquiries and helping them solve problems.

Both authority and social proof help your brand build customers’ trust.

How can Social Media help you achieve higher conversion rates?

Customer Retention

By engaging your customers on social media, you will likely retain them. Always keep in mind that the probability of selling to an existing customer is 60 – 70%, while the probability of selling to a new prospect is 5-20%.

In theory, new customers who interact in social media with your business have a higher chance of staying customers for longer.

Focus on creating content that captivate customers, make them relate to the brand and become loyal. Take advantage of social media to build lasting relationships with customers.

Customer Service

Customers are using social media to contact companies when they are not satisfied with a product or service.

Prepare yourself and your team to handle complaints on social media. Be ready to answer fast and come to the platforms with a problem-solving mind.

Customers will feel listened and welcomed.

Would you like to take more advantage of these social benefits? Check our 5 ways to increase conversion rates with social media.

The post Social Media Conversion Rate – 4 Reasons to Continue with Social Media Despite Their Low Conversion Rates appeared first on Invesp.

One of the most effective market strategies you can choose to boost your sales and distinguish your company from competition is creating a unique brand. A solid and creative branding campaign can successfully induce an emotional connection between your company and customers, increases their loyalty to your business through your products and services, and engage them as unconditional fans of your organization.

I wish I could tell you that there is a list of simple and easy to apply steps to build a solid and strong brand for your company. It is however much more complicated and it demands an acute understanding of your market, a little creativity, and a whole lot of consistency. Do not mistake a brand with just a logo or a name, it is more than that, it is an integration of the distinctive characteristics of your company in an expressive identity. More importantly, a brand is a living creature with a life span and continuous needs, feeding over a good reputation and positive images. I will present to you in this post the most crucial items to consider while building your branding strategy to promote your organization in the most successful and consistent manner, and nurture your brand for gains further gains in conversions and engagement.

Communicate your value proposition

By building a brand centered on value proposition, you will be able to unlock the strategic potential of your organization. Moreover, you will succeed in delivering maximum traction to your services and products based on your visitor’s need.

1. The first step would be to utilize the personas you developed for your website to help you recognize their pains, gains, and their functional needs and exploit them in delivering a brand that communicates a unique value proposition .
2. Develop the different aspects of your organization in terms you can associate with your brand. Articulate your vision, mission, and culture and communicate them throughout your online outlets. Don’t forget to show your experience, qualities and the perks of dealing with your organization.
3. Define your long-term objectives:
   • think of where your business will be in the next few years,
   • what it will achieve,
   • what it will aspire to,
   • and what will it will offer to your visitors.

These key messages are very important; they help your visitors gauge your vision, and allows them to buy into a brand they believe in since they feel they have grown with it.

Ads that show Volvo’s shift in market positioning

Think very well of your brand strategy, once established it is very difficult to change the perception people have of a brand. Volvo has always been recognized for its leadership in safety, and has built a solid reputation selling the safest cars in the world, primarily appealing to women and family men. In the late 90s the company decided to change its market positioning to attract well-established men with luxury, design, and speed. The Swedish company hoped to compete with upper class cars such as BMW, Mercedes, and Cadillac. However, they were unable to meet their goal. Their brand was too strong to change, and they never managed to change the image it imprinted in the minds of people.

Build brand awareness

Ideally, your brand should be the first one that comes to people minds when they think of a specific product or service. Therefore, they initially should be able to identify which benefits, products, and services are associated with your brand, and most importantly know where to get it. The first step to build brand awareness is to make sure you are reaching the right people, and that you are accessible to them in return. Here are some crucial elements to put you on track:

1. Optimize your website. Optimal performance on search engines is one of the first things companies can do to drive traffic to a website and improve the brand’s visibility.
2. Use a consistent visual suite, so that visitors start to associate your specific colors and fonts with your online brand. Use the same logo, font, etc, on your website, blog, e-signature, newsletter banner and all other forms of communication.
3. Create and maintain active social media profiles for your brand. Social media marketing promotes visibility, brand loyalty, recognition, and can grow your sales; moreover, it enables businesses to reach worldwide audiences.
4. Educate your visitors by providing business insights and tips, but most importantly the benefits of your brand. Write a blog that shows you experience, notoriety, and helps you build a relationship with your readers. Regularly engage potential customers through webinars, listen to them and propose adequate solutions
5. Engage your visitors, by producing and distributing useful and creative content. By providing free original content, you encourage visitors to share it with others, hence attracting new visitors. Infographics, tutorials, white papers and case studies have proven to be extremely efficient driving traffic to website through Social Media.

One of the most crucial conditions to increase your brand awareness online is consistency in the content you are posting in your website and in your messages and general narrative. Visitors are extremely sensitive to inconsistency and it easily raises doubts in the authenticity of your business.

“Experience the power of a bookbook” an Ikea TV ad for its catalog viewed over 17 million time on Youtube

IKEA is considered one of the most successful brands in the world, and currently operates 338 stores in 40 countries worldwide. Setting their objective to appeal to mid-class families, IKEA positioned itself to serve them with useful DIY solutions at reasonable prices. Indeed, IKEA has done many things right, their printed catalog is highly on demand, their TV ads are successful and acclaimed, and they have a strong online presence. I am not going to discuss their branding strategy in details, I will rather concentrate on how powerful engagement is in promoting brands.

photo credit: ikeahackers.net

IKEAHackers.net is a website that publishes thousands of IKEA product customizations. The site, which started in 2006 as a Blogspot webpage by a fan, grew to become IKEA’s most popular fan site, with over 2 million visitors per month.

The “hacks” have helped the site blossom into a strong, international community where people share their newest creations. IKEA did not have to pay a single penny to support the blog that produced free publicity and more reasons to buy its furniture for the last ten years. When the owner decided to host ads to finance the website, IKEA objected it in fear of association with other brands and took legal action to shut it.

This resulted in a social media backlash; the blog fans flooded it and clearly expressed their discontent with IKEA. The company eventually had to make a choice, either to let the blog live or to protect its brand from potentially undesired brand associations. IKEA finally privileged customer engagement, by backing off legal action and allowing the blog users to keep on promoting its furniture free. It was able to sustain a powerful source of influence and brand notoriety. Engaging your visitors with your brand is as a powerful as any well thought-out campaign.

Finally, you must know that building a solid online reputation takes time and demands a lot of effort. Your key to success is consistency and persistence. Keep testing different techniques, approaches and ideas, and keep tuning in your messages to preserve your brand.

The post Grooming your brand for engagement appeared first on Invesp.

The first assumption everyone makes is to believe that increasing traffic to his or her website automatically leads to more sales; even though this is partially true, it is more likely they also suffer from lower conversion rates. You will always have the chance to work on your SEO ranking and on driving traffic to your website, but if your website is not ready and if it doesn’t satisfy the needs of your visitors, you will only contribute to an overall poor shopping experience. So how can you distinguish your company to the current visitors you have in such a competitive market?

Our 12 years of experience in online marketing, and specifically conversion optimization, has proven both to us and to our partners that it is possible to distinguish yourself enough to see great gains. There will always be room to continuously optimize your site, because like any marketing activity, conversion optimization is a long-term process and commitment. The key to a successful conversion optimization plan of course is for you to better understand your market, and follow a methodological approach to testing your optimized designs and copy.

It’s likely that you’ve read a number of articles describing the key successful conversion optimization factors. I don’t claim that I am going to reveal secrets here, however I will guarantee that you will be able to learn the best practices, in a logical and comprehensive manner, and never forget them again. This article is a general guideline, directing you to the most effective and rich sources of information and inspiration.

1. Get to know your customer

photo credit: Village9991

You have done an extensive market research, and you have been able to immaculately identify your market segment. Congratulations! You have achieved the first and most important step in marketing. Unfortunately, I am going to break the bad news to you, knowing your market is not enough to generate more sales. Trying to appeal to the masses means pleasing no one in particular. Instead, you need to select few personas, and fine-tune your message to meet their needs. Demographic data is useful to group your market segments by common factors; personas on the other hand enables your business to tap into your visitors’ key differences.

A buyer persona is a model that humanize and individualize a specific target market, its purpose is to relate to customers at an individualized level.

Our common practice with partners has been to create five to seven personas that represent your different key target market segments. This will enable you to cover the majority of your visitors while preserving the value of specificity of your choices. Developing personas for your website will help you answer the following questions: Who is your visitor? What does he value? And, How to speak to him?

Keep in mind that the goal of this exercise is to create real characters, with names, ages, jobs, social stands, and most importantly a set of fears, doubts, and needs. Identifying these particularities is what will enable you to best address them, and exploit them.

2. Maintain your value proposition throughout your site

It doesn’t matter how small or new your business is; as long as you distinguish yourself enough from competitors and as long as you offer what your site visitors need and want. Regardless of their persona type, whether they are logical, caring, aggressive or impulsive buyers, your site visitors must be able to see value; i.e. the problem you solve, whilst appealing to the greatest decision drivers.

Craft a value proposition that explains how your product improves your visitor’s situation while delivering specific benefits that differentiate you from what the competition offers. Keep in mind the two factors that increase your value proposition efficiency: clarity and its relativeness. Your value proposition statement should articulate your uniqueness; additionally it should motivate your customers and stimulate their internal and external needs.

Remember that your visitors are humans with fears, doubts and inspirations; arm yourself with this knowledge in order to effectively appeal to them. Use the insights you discovered while creating your business personas to bring the best solutions to your visitors problem. Do not hesitate to use their language and jargon, after all the objective of your value proposition is to BEST communicate your real value to them.

3. Enhance conversion drivers

Not everyone who lands on your website will convert into a client, visitors come to your website at different buying stages. Some visitors are simply browsing; others are looking for specific information or comparing prices, while others are ready to make a purchase. Each of these stages requires site elements to be specifically designed and structured to deliver the information the visitor is looking for. At this point, you might be asking what the buying stages are. Costumers typically go through these five stages before making a buying decision:

1. Need recognition: your potential site visitor recognizes a personal need simulated by internal or external stimuli, and realizes that your online business can potentially fulfill it. He is looking to be educated, and consequently his commitment level is at its lowest. Provide him with inspirational content to arouse his curiosity.
2. Information search: during this stage, your potential customer is gathering information about different products and services he needs. He understands his options better, and he is examining details. Provide him with educational material to quench his thirst.
3. Evaluation of alternatives: at this stage, the customer has made his pick, and he is looking for the best provider, he is currently weighing his options ultimately leading to a purchasing decision. Provide him with validating tools to convince him you’re the right choice.
4. Action: the customer has made the buying decision, and he is currently making the order. His commitment is at its highest peak; provide him with the necessary information to prove your value, worth, and reliability.
5. Post-Action: this stage is crucial, you need to tend to your customer needs and fears, and take through the emotional and logical process that will hopefully leads to a repeat purchase. Make sure he is happy with your service and product, and engage him as a fan and supporter.
   Your optimal goal is to play on their needs and wants in order to drive them to make a purchase. Your biggest challenge is to determine where, when, and how will you deploy these tactics.

4. Eliminate visitors anxieties and FUDs

photo credit: Lishmay

Even though online shopping has been around for a while, buyers are still apprehensive when they first interact with a new website. Your visitors have fears, uncertainties, and doubts (FUDs). They are afraid of falling victim to frauds or identity theft, or maybe just deal with a company that has bad service, doesn’t deliver on time, and sells cheap products. Your website content and design should address the questions, concerns or objections of your visitors. Dealing with FUDs head on will help relieve anxiety and decrease friction. By applying the personas to your website you can anticipate the fears and concerns that the different market segment have, thus applying cognitive progression.

Reducing visitors’ anxiety is important for successful conversion optimization. This can be achieved by addressing customer’s fears and questions about product and service quality, product description, website security, and pricing. Your site design and processes should induce trust and propose a user-friendly experience. You can reach this goal by providing proofs of security, authenticity, and reliability.

Keep in mind that there is no magic formula to completely reduce your visitors FUDs, but always be on the listen, learn what tick them off, and work on providing the most reinsuring solutions.

5. Implement an iterative comprehensive conversion optimization strategy

Conversation Optimization is a continuous process, and a long-term commitment. It’s not a light switch you turn on off, and much like any marketing activity, must be continuously improved upon. If you are not committed to embark on this journey, you can never really know what you’re missing, and you will never really see the true value.

Successful online marketing projects are delivered in an iterative manner; conversion optimization projects are no exception. By following a dynamic approach, there will always be room for improvement. Adopt a structured approach and successively implement your hypothesis. Perform A / B and multivariate tests to measure your solutions impact. Finally, don’t content yourself with early and first rounds of success, resist the urge to stop testing and seek professional advice when you face a brick wall.

Even though conversion optimization is promising by principal, it might take you some time to show relative and encouraging results. Therefore, my final advice for you is to secure management buy-in for the long haul.

The post The 5 key conversion optimization factors that lead to great success appeared first on Invesp.