34 Painful Lessons Amy Africa Learned from Failed Conversion & Testing Strategies

Everybody makes mistakes, but no one likes to talk about them. Optimization and ecommerce expert Amy Africa is one of the few exceptional people who isn’t afraid to admit and talk about failures. At Conversion Conference Las Vegas, Amy frankly talked about the things she’s done that were complete flops so others can learn from them.

Below are the lessons Amy has distilled from her years as a greedy, pig-headed optimizer:

1. Establish success rates

2. Know your numbers – How much can you spend per customer?

3. Formulate a plan

– Determine what’s broken

– Create a hypothesis

– Develop a strategy

– Run the experiment/test

– Measure the results

4. Stop conducting garbage “tests”

5. Segregate

– Direct/nr/branded vs non-brand

– Returning vs. new

– Email vs. no email

– Desktop vs. mobile

– Sale/overstock/clearance vs. “regular” buyer

6. It ain’t over till it’s over

7. Timing is critical

8. Sample size is key

9. Consider your traffic make-up

10. Use the right tools

11. Backtest the control

12. Stop measuring the immeasurable

13. Don’t chase fireflies

14. The obvious answer is often wrong – Make sure you are testing for relevance not curiosity.

15. Confirmation bias exists

16. You’ll see what you believe

17. Your competition is everything and nothing

18. Ask for what you want

19. Creative can make or break you

20. You are not pizza

“You are not pizza. Everybody doesn’t have to like you.” @amyafrica #convcon #cro pic.twitter.com/W6MNCVMI5v

— Karolina Kurcwald (@karolstefan) May 14, 2015

21. Prioritize – Regardless of scrolling, 84% of visitor attention is spent on first view of page (above fold) and 12% on the last view.

22. There is an order to success

23. Speed kills

24. Minimize vomit

25. Heuristics influence everything

26. Lead generation and ecommerce are not the same

27. Never underestimate good follow-up

“Follow up till they buy or they die, or till it’s no longer affordable.” @amyafrica #emailmarketing #convcon pic.twitter.com/5fXX9GmoOL — Karolina Kurcwald (@karolstefan) May 14, 2015

28. Coordinate online and offline efforts.

29. Measure for adoption, not just conversion

30. People get stuck in different places.

31. Navigation determines outcome.

32. Success can be boring…but changing for the sake of change will often kill you.

33. Account for fatigue

34. Take big swings – Death by 1,000,000 papercuts is far more painful than one good knock to the head.

There are no silver bullets in conversion rate optimization. Digital marketers often have to learn what works through trial and error. But with these 34 nuggets of conversion wisdom from Amy, at least they no longer have to suffer the painful lessons of devastating mistakes.