Insights Are The Key To Massive Conversion Rate Gains

With so many tools for generating data about web visitors, what they clicked, when they clicked how long they stayed before clicking away. Are we being drowned in a sea of data? With so much data it is vitally important to never separate the numbers from the activity of the visitors behind them. It’s simply too easy to have reports spit out at us that don’t become actionable tasks and insights. Simply put, when the numbers in a business loose their connection to people and an action the numbers become useless.

Connecting the data to people and personas keeps us firmly grounded in the mind of the customer. The key to knowing what action to take from your data is the ability to draw insight from the numbers. A lot of time those insights touch on our best guess in relation to a behavior we’re seeing based on the numbers. How we derive on those insights are key to improvements that often push us far beyond what we would have accomplished had we been more rigid in our model of thinking. This often means the difference between double digit and often triple digit gains as opposed to single or point digit conversion improvements.

We often get too caught up in knowing the what. What exactly was it that got that x% gain? When in business the lift is what is important and the higher the lift the better. Although there is a place for the what that may come later if allowed.

To gain true insight and push the lift into the double and triple digit lift we need to start thinking in a different way.

Traditionally there are three types of logic models that people use to draw such insights, essentially ways of thinking. The three models are, Induction, deduction and abduction.

Induction is the model of inferring what is probable as a result of observing. Inferring that a requires b. This is the kind of thinking that is used in a one on one usability test because you are a direct observer to a single user. It tells you a lot of the overall problems of your site and it may get you some conversion rate lifts based on fixing usability alone. Starting out here is not a bad place to begin but if you’re serious about long term improvements through conversion rate optimization you wont want to stay in this type of mindset for too long.

Deduction is the ability to derive an assumption. Deriving b as a consequence of a. This gets us closer to understanding the what. However if used too early in your testing and conversion rate optimization strategy you’ll most likely be stuck in small fraction of a digit gains at best with a little luck. Most companies are not patient enough for small gains and most businesses require more revenue.

Abduction logic is what might be. It’s the ability to see this and think that might be the following. It is inferring a as an explanation of b. This is very close to the concept of lateral thinking developed by Edward deBono. Abduction logic and lateral thinking is the type of thinking behind problem solving through a creative indirect approach.

Both Lateral Thinking and Abductive Logic are about logical deduction that is not immediately obvious through a step-by-step approach to thinking. It requires you to fill in the gaps with your best guess. This is where your landing page is going to get the biggest lifts in conversion. With wild out of the box radical redesign thinking that is grounded in the mind of the customer that connects the data to the people.

Any good conversion rate optimization strategy needs to include adductive lateral thinking at first to gain the most lift and then double back around to the what question as a method of fine tuning your conversion lift.