How can you improve your case for experimentation?
Do you sometimes feel that the budget-holders have stuffed their ears with cotton wool when you make the case for Conversion Rate Optimisation (CRO) experiments or evidence-gathering in your organisation?
For those immersed in experimentation and CRO, the need for investment usually seems obvious. Why wouldn’t any business want to pursue an optimisation strategy, encourage a CRO culture and reap the benefits of increased revenue and returning customers?
But there will always be hurdles to overcome. The leadership team are likely to feel shaking up processes and design features can be a waste of time and energy when things are apparently working well. The keyword for experimentation advocates to seize on here is ‘apparently.’
The last few years have shown that ‘business as usual’ is a misnomer. Businesses need to be agile and adapt to changing circumstances - be they macroeconomic or very specific - at speed. Without a culture of innovation and flexibility based on data and the evidence to understand customers and deliver what they want, businesses run big risks.
To make the case for CRO budget you’ll need to marshal arguments into a compelling story – many of your points will be rational but you’ll also need to be creative and paint a picture that emotionally engages decision-makers to be truly persuasive.
Paint a picture of risk
When assembling a persuasive case for budget, the ‘two-way door’ concept as outlined by Jeff Bezos is a good place to start a discussion.
Any business making a decision on big changes to their site without testing for evidence is stepping through a one-way door – the business will have no idea of the potential impact of changes or unintended consequences. And it’ll be costly or even impossible to row back.
A two-way door decision is built on pre-tested possible outcomes and robust data and is much easier to step back through and reverse quickly. Running experiments actually reduces risk.
A second argument for evidence-based decisions focuses on missed opportunities that are potentially costing the business revenue and reputation. This is a powerful argument if couched in a relatable story based on customer behaviour. A personalised story about customer disappointment or frustration and a failure to convert at the last step packs a punch. This is where gathering qualitative verbatim customer data can be incredibly useful – the C-suite often don’t encounter direct customer feedback and it can grab their attention.
As an example, we worked with the Post Office to optimise its website e-commerce sales. Our analysis of the site and visitor journey revealed that although the homepage’s landing page was receiving significant traffic, 30% of visitors were unable to find the all-important call-to-action (CTA) button. It might seem a small factor but implementing an always-visible sticky button helped potential customers with seamless navigation. We also emphasised the need for consistency in the mobile UX and ensured this CTA button was featured on all devices.
Use KPIs to clinch the case
The argument for experiments will cut through strongly if you can align your proposals with the top KPIs and ROI targets the C-suite cares about. KPIs vary across departments and can range from increasing margins or revenue per active user to improving customer service metrics like Net Promoter Score (NPS).
More than one C-suite stakeholder can need convincing, so it’s important to have a thorough understanding of the KPIs of each department head and how these can specifically link with CRO. The metrics that matter to the Chief Product Officer might differ from those of most concern to the Chief Technology Officer.
Tailoring the case you’re making for a particular experiment or an evidence-gathering exercise to individuals and showing how it can help them will have both rational and emotional appeal - whether it’s resolving a difficult customer complaint issue or driving more users to download a particular product.
Taking the lead on CRO puts practitioners at the confluence of related fields and you’ll have to manage relationships across the organisation from the data department to the commercial and financial teams at the business end. But knowing they all have metrics they want to improve and challenges you can help solve is empowering and sets you up for success when you assemble your case.
Make the right case for your business
There is no one-size-fits-all approach to experimentation. You don’t have to ‘go large’ because that’s how you think the biggest organisations operate and that running research requires expensive optimisation tools. You are more likely to get leadership buy-in if the budget ask is reasonable and you can outline how running a specific experiment will help benefit the company – small incremental gains are important proof points for further budget requests.
The persuasive case made by storytelling needs to be underpinned by a clear and affordable business plan with resource requirements carefully laid out. Starting small is the best way to build up expertise, knowledge and case studies.
To get you started, you can download our Building a Business Case for CRO guide and framework. It gives you everything you need to convince the stakeholders CRO and experimentation are the way to go
Don’t claim you can transform the company into the next Airbnb overnight but explaining why an innovative mindset will help future-proof the business. If you can show you can deliver small but meaningful wins, rest assured that everyone will soon be listening to you.
