ConversionXL Live 2018: Growth, Optimization & Testing

CXL Live is a digital conference about growth, optimization and testing. This year, 400 people attended from 22 different countries! I interacted with people from Norway, Japan, Netherlands, Australia, Taiwan, Hungary and Canada. This was my second year attending this conference and the speakers were again, incredible.

The very first speaker of the conference, Bryan Eisenberg, ended up being one of my favorites. Eisenberg is a NY Times Best Selling Author and co-author of the book Be Like Amazon: Even a Lemonade Stand Can Do It. He talked about company growth. I started reading his book on my flight back home and couldn’t put it down! One of my favorite quotes from the book says this:

“When you care about your customers and care about your employees and care about your suppliers and care about your investors, you can build a rocket ship while you’re flying it. Caring is the fuel.” – Be Like Amazon: Even a Lemonade Stand Can Do It

Company Growth

Bryan spoke about Amazon’s three rules for company growth:

1. Don’t water the soup. It’s dumb to do things that produce immediate profit when what you’re doing isn’t in the best interest of the customer.
2. Don’t fall into the trap of linear, no-threshold thinking when looking at the data. Just because your data tells you one thing at a certain time, doesn’t mean it’ll stay that way forever.
3. Don’t eat the marshmallow. There was study where someone gives you a marshmallow and tells you that you can eat it, but if you wait a little while longer, they’ll bring a second marshmallow and you’ll have two to eat. You may see immediate results eating the one, but by waiting and being patient, you’ll see bigger results that last much longer.

Understand the User

Another speaker I learned a lot from was Els Aerts, the Information Architect, Usability Expert & Owner at AGConsult in Belgium. Her presentation was titled: “Without Research, There is Nothing.” I couldn’t agree more! It’s so important to gain an in-depth knowledge of our users to find what motivates them, their emotions and what drives them in order to give them the best possible experience. There are three methods she spoke about that companies should follow to increase empathy we have for our users:

1. Targeted surveys, AKA “top task” survey, asking the users who they are and what they’re here for on your website. Google Analytics can tell you what users do on your website. It does not tell you what users want to do on your website.
2. Sometimes users won’t type how they feel, but in person, they’ll tell you. Don’t assume your users’ fears and worries; ask them.
3. In-person moderated user testing. This is not the same as a focus group. Focus groups are good for ideation, but useless for user testing. In user testing, the data is observed behavior and not customer opinions. The keys to a successful moderated user test are recruiting the right users (use your target audience, not your mom), writing a good scenario (don’t ask questions; set tasks) and having a good moderator (your biases can influence your test participant).

These were just two speakers in the three-day conference. I learned so much about company growth, optimization and user testing; I could write a post for each speaker! These speakers gave me something I could use right away upon returning to SA. I’ll be back for a third year. See you in 2019, CXL Live!