Episode Transcript
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Chris Bonney (00:10):
Hi everybody.
And welcome to another editionof web marketing insights
podcast from Gulo I'm ChrisBonney have a very special guest
today, Dan Hickey from DelCor.
Dan.
Welcome.
We're going to talk aboutconversion rate optimization
(00:30):
today, and that's not a term youhear a lot in association
circles.
I know that something you talkwith your clients a lot about,
or try to, and bring it up tobring some awareness to it.
But we wanted to break it downtoday.
I think you and I were talkingoutside of this podcast on the
phone and saying, this might bea really interesting topic to
(00:51):
talk about.
So we wanted to do that.
Before we do that, do you wantto just let people know that
don't already know who you are?
Dan Hickey (00:57):
DelCor is based out of Silver Springs, Maryland.
Before joining DelCor, I was inthe association space for 15
years.
And we're various hatsthroughout those years with a
(01:19):
strong digital background, butalso did a fair amount of
project management, IT director,and some, virtual CIO, strategic
work in an it maturityassessments.
Part of that is looking at, someof t heir d igital components
into their overall technologystack.
(01:41):
Ye ah.
So e xcited to talk about thistoday.
Chris Bonney (01:48):
So,, conversion rate optimization, or sometimes
known we have to have anacronym, right?
If it's associations, we've gotto have very funny acronym, so
we'll call it C R O, that's what,, the, the, you know, the
industry likes to call it CRL.
So again, not a term that youhear a lot of,, a lot about, but
I think it is moving in adirection where even if people
(02:10):
aren't talking about it, per se,it's something that I think
we're more and more aware of.
Maybe we don't know what thelabel for it is, and it's not
the best name for what it is,but it is what it is.
But basically, you know,conversion rate optimization is
when you look at a particularwebpage or a flow of web pages
where you want someone toconvert on something, some sort
(02:34):
of transaction of some kind,whether it's an eCommerce sale
or even something like, Hey,give us your email address.
What's the flow of things thathappen either across pages or
maybe even down one page, howmany times versus when someone
arrives at a page, are theysubmitting that call to action?
And how many times are they not?
(02:55):
And if we look at that rate, howdo we optimize for it?
Right.
I mean, that's more, the literalterm is what are we doing to
that page or flow of pages tomake sure that that conversion
rate is continually improvingand examples of conversion rate
optimization.
The simplest form is that, youknow, the real world examples
out there to say, we changed ourbutton for submitting something
(03:18):
from red to green and, you know,and our rates went up because
green is more of a gold color orwhatever.
There's a lot of differentexamples on, we can talk about
sort of what those are, but justfor the sort of the layman's
terms, it's, it's reallychanging or enhancing elements
of the flow of getting someoneto do something on your website,
perpetually looking at those andoptimizing whatever it might be.
(03:40):
And we'll talk about what thoseelements are here in a minute.
So that's really what conversionrate optimization is.
And you know, what, what for anassociation and, and chime in
here,, you know, for me it feelslike there's things like,, event
registration, and there's alsosome, you know, obviously member
(04:03):
renewals or kinds of things thatmembership joins.
But I'm curious to hear fromyour perspective, Dan, when you
talk to your clients aboutconversion rate optimization,,
you know, do you call it that,you know, how do you intro that?
What's the response when youtalk about it, what do you think
some of the basics are forassociations to think about, you
(04:24):
know, around this
Dan Hickey (04:26):
Sure.
In terms of kind of theacknowledgement of that term?
, definitely not always, butdepends.
It seems to be more acknowledged, you know, in meeting with
marketing teams, like marketingfolks, much more,, dialed into
that term.
, Earl some, as you mentioned,other or some kind of concept,
but, but it is kind of a focusin terms of,, at the end of the
(04:49):
day, what do we want our endusers to do, you know, and make
it a really clear,, action, youknow, an actionable item that
you want your end user to takeplace.
, when working with otherdepartments,, you mentioned, you
know, membership, renewal
Chris Bonney (05:04):
Application mapping, your members,
Dan Hickey (05:06):
, registration certification.
, really when we're talkingabout looking at a lot of this,
you hear some of, you know, youmeet with our,, clients, they
talk about kind of the userexperience.
It was kind of go back to that.
You know, they think that a lotof their experiences that their
members or constituents have togo through is kind of a poor
user experience.
(05:27):
And so you mentioned layman'sterms, that's kind of how we try
to talk to them about it
Chris Bonney (05:31):
And even break it down.
So if you look at like themembership join process,
Dan Hickey (05:35):
, you know, one can, one thing we do see quite often
is just that how many stepsdoes, you know, it does a member
to a prospect need to jp
Chris Bonney (05:45):
Through to join your organization.
Dan Hickey (05:47):
, and it, you know, it varies some groups who work
with have a more simplisticapproach,, and others are very
complicated.
They have, you know, at the highend I've seen client, you know,
35 steps,, that you two that theend user needs to go through.
And I know there's somefrustration with, you know, how
with a website or their AMS andits inability to kind of provide
(06:09):
it user experience, but youknow, try to push back a little
bit on that and say, well, doyou really need to capture all
that information?
You really need to make them gothrough all, all of those steps
to, to join.
And,, it has varying degrees ofsuccess.
And the good, the good news is Ithink a lot of more
organizations are becoming muchmore acutely attuned to it.
(06:30):
They know that it's an area thatthey need help on and that it's
frustrating.
Whereas even just five, 10 yearsago, I'd say more like 10, 15
years ago.
, I think there was just anunderstanding, well, that's
what, you know, if yourassociation and your, your
member you're joining is kindof, well, that's just going to
happen.
You have to go through, but Ithink the digital space has
changed so much and you know,everything, but digital
(06:52):
transformation the last 10years, it made like so much
easier to transact online thatit's kind of catching up that,
you know, you can't just say,well, I remember as well,
they're, they're fine goingthrough 10 different steps to
join us.
That's not the case, especiallywith younger.
I hate saying that, but withyounger members too, that are
trying to get them engaged withyour organization, you really
want to make things as simple aspossible.
(07:13):
So we kind of start there likelooking at the business rules
and what are absolutely iscritical.
Again, I'm focusing on the jointprocess, but just as an example,
what absolutely is critical tohave that person or that end
user,, transact with you.
Chris Bonney (07:30):
Yeah, absolutely.
I think you make a good pointabout the younger membership
because that's, you know, that'sthe future of any organization,
whether it's your user grouptrade professional society,
that's part of this,, factor,right?
That's what we want to achieve.
And I think thinking about howwe're converting on membership
is a perfect example of thinkingabout how to do this
(07:51):
differently.
And so yes, 35 steps, 38 fieldsto fill out is too much for most
people, especially someonethat's younger, they're not as
patient.
They're not understanding whythat's all important, but I do
think another aspect to tie inis that one way to understand
how to better optimize thethings that you're trying to get
(08:12):
conversion on is what's anequivalent to what they might be
doing out there in the realworld as well.
It might not be in theassociation world, but right.
Everything in the web is gearedaround your audience.
Okay.
Right.
If we're not thinking about ouraudience first, we've already
kind of lost a thread, but whatdoes our audience and younger
members, let's just say, whatare they used to in their life,
(08:34):
right?
What are they, what, what istheir expectation for what they
want to be able to do?
And any sort of, you know,friction and the joint process I
think is, is definitely a lostopportunity if we're talking
about getting in to, to youngermembership, for sure.
, now the elements of conversionrate optimization.
(08:58):
So here, let me here, here'ssomething I want to actually
back up and maybe talk about iscan you talk about when it comes
to AMS?
Okay.
And regardless of, you know, theorganization's mindset around
how many fields of informationthey need to see, what do you
think the temperature is offolks with how AMS is, are
(09:21):
working for them in thoseprocesses?
And is there something that AMSis, could be doing for their,
for their,, clients aroundconversion rate optimization?
How do folks like you at DellCora as a consultant, you know,
fit into that equation?
Is it a strategy issue?
Is it a tool issue, right?
Is that the application itselfis inflexible flexible?
(09:43):
Is it a mindset issue?
Where do you see if I'm saying,Hey, I'm an association, I love
this idea, but you know, what'sthe butts that we're going to
hear out there on the world,around those, those elements.
Dan Hickey (09:54):
Yeah.
It's, it's a really importantconcept to,, to address early
on.
So in relation to the AMS and wereally depends, again, I'm gonna
keep kind of harping on themembership joint process we're
using that.
Well,, looking at, I mean, someorganizations do have a fairly
simple joint process.
And so therefore, you know, thatmembers have joint process, you
know, leveraging your, your AMScapabilities there.
(10:17):
It's kind of,, public facinginterfaces to, to leverage that
may work.
But,, other times, you know,again, for those more complex
processes, you know, there's,there, there are a lot of
challenges,, to making kind of aseamless user experience.
And one thing I would justrecommend anyone want to take
(10:37):
away from this is reallyleveraging an outside vendors
such as you guys plug, but,, but,, you know, a digital agency to
help that specializes inusability and user experience
because,, not all of them, butmost of the AMS vendors just
don't have that expertise interms of when you're kind of
(10:58):
building those work flows orthose,,, different designs in
terms of what that your jointprocess may look like, your
event registration too.
, there are nuances, as youmentioned with this that I think
you're gonna get to momentarilya little more detail that really
helped that do have a big,,impact on the conversion rates.
(11:18):
And, and so how are youcollecting that data what's
necessary to flow?
You know, obviously if neededmost sites are now,, but really
making sure you have that, thatoversight from a,, kind of a UX
expert to make sure that thatprocess is as seamless as
possible.
And I just, my experience isthat gets continually
(11:40):
overlooked.
And again, there are patientsthat do associations that do
focus many don'ts,, just kind ofconfigure their,, econ processes
up and then kind of getfrustrated.
They aren't as optimal as theywould like.
Chris Bonney (11:56):
Yeah,
Dan Hickey (11:59):
Just how important it is to factor that in whether
you're doing an implementationto make sure that you are
factoring a usability testingand getting actual user back.
, but also making sure that likewireframing and some proponent
is factored into that processtoo.
And if you're already stayingwith your current system, when
you go to revisit same thosesame principles, do some
lightweight usability,, perhapsget a third party vendor that
(12:22):
does specialize in,, you know,usability best practices to make
sure that that is a seamlessexperience.
Cause all the way end to end,you know, from that first pro
from when you, when you accessthe homepage or however you're
going to access the site,whatever the entry point is all
the way through the orderreceipt page, but sometimes
there's follow up tasks orfollow up steps that are needed
(12:44):
from there.
So really end to end making surethat that is an easy, seamless,
clear experience for the enduser.
Yeah.
Chris Bonney (12:50):
Yeah.
I think you brought up somethingthat I wanted to touch on real
quick too, is,, reporting ortesting.
Right.
, you know, I think there's thistransitional point as someone
that works on websites, mostlythat you're, you're bringing
user down a path and thenthere's a cuddle over usually
maybe through a single sign onwhen they head over to the AMS
side of things.
Right.
You know, we need to track them,their AMS is do a pretty good
(13:13):
job of tracking the activity andwhat's happening during that
flow.
But it's a matter of matchingthat up with what's happening on
the web.
And I think a lot of times whatwe see as a people,, you know,
organizations, I think everyonehas Google analytics on their,
on their site capacity, right.
On some capacity, but there'sthings like Google tag manager,
there's things like Googleoptimize.
(13:34):
There's a bunch of other toolsthat I would, you know, I would
say, you know, go out there andtake a look at those and see
what kind of things that you cando to help understand how to
test and how to report on thethings that are happening on
your website.
Really simply within Googleanalytics.
There's the goal tracking whereyou can set up, right?
(13:55):
You think people should befollowing or you'd like them to
follow across your website andit tracks and gives you a thbs
up or a point when you actuallyget someone to follow that goal.
And that's what we're talkingabout.
That's a conversion, that's apath.
And as you're building awebsite, just in general, you
know, we want, we were saying,this is about knowing who your
audience is and then knowing whythey're coming to your site,
(14:18):
what are they trying to do?
And then let's formulate yoursite in a way that allows them
to walk through that path.
Right.
And then we'll see along the waywhere we lose people, we see
where we've lost them, go backand take a look at it and
optimize it.
, and AB testing is anotherthing that we can do, whether
it's wrong, copy or buttoncolors, or what have you there's
tools out there to do that.
(14:38):
Google optimize, optimize likeothers.
And I think they'll, I want toget your feedback on this.
You know, what we try to say istesting super important on any
level.
But I think people imagine labcoats
Dan Hickey (14:52):
And strings computers and people are hunched
over and they're looking at, andthere's so many easy ways now to
do testing, right?
Whatever it is, usabilitytesting.
So what, what kind of, you know,if you had something to say
about that or how, when you talkto folks, how they react to
that, or, you know, where do youthink people's heads should be
(15:13):
at around, around testing?
What would you say about that?
Yeah, we'll also doesn't you'reright.
And that's a great point.
I think even when we haverecommendations, so we, you
know, Dell core does a, an itmaturity model assessment in
which,, when we go in there andthere's different quadrants that
we look at their businessinfrastructure, data, technology
(15:33):
management, and then digitalbeing one of them.
And on that digital quadrants.
Yeah, we do the, are I likehaving recommendations about,,
regarding usability testing andthey're, they're, you're you're
right.
I think you said the lab coats,but yet that are just dollar
signs to, they're concernedabout it's going to cost me tens
of thousands of dollars yet.
I think it's going to be somereally high tech expensive
(15:54):
endeavor, and it doesn't need tobe, I mean, there are various
tools out there that I'm really,especially now that I was
getting more comfortable withthe zoom and,, you know, really
can just schedule this online.
And you can, if you want to, youknow, engage with a third party,
, you know, vendors such asyourself, you can, or else you
can do some lightweight testingyourselves, maybe from your
(16:14):
marketing team that can justreach out to some of your key
members and just take, you know,10, 15 minutes of their time and
walk through some of thoseprocesses and get feedback.
And you really just need ahandful of participants.
You're seeing trends.
This is years ago before Ijoined DelCor.
So really it was a really coolexperience.
We had, you know, not even thatmany, really about five steps to
(16:38):
join with a particularassociation.
And one of them was goingthrough the chapter process, you
know, a lot of associations havechapters and,, yeah, well, it's
kind of eye opening to us iswhen we went through this, a lot
of the newer members that noidea what a chapter was, you
know, they picked their stateand we'd ask them, well, why are
you, you know, you live inIllinois or in Chicago, why are
you picking up?
(16:58):
And they're like, well, that'sjust where I live.
They're like, what do you evenknow what a chapter is?
And it was eye opening that theydidn't, and they didn't
understand the benefit.
Why am I being forced to evenpick a chapter?
, the organization subsequentlykind of removed, there's a
requirement for those, that's adifferent story.
But,, when we presented thosefindings to the senior
(17:19):
leadership team, I think therewere stunned that, you know,
something is basic that everyonejust takes for granted.
Some basic is that we didredesign and simplify the whole
joint process.
And we did see an increase inconversions, but interesting
story, I just, it was like, thatwas tangible proof that we can
kind of bring back and say, Hey,this is a problem for us.
(17:40):
You know, they're not sustainingthe benefit, simple testing,
then you didn't have to talk toa hundred people to figure that
out.
Right.
And it really wasn't thatexpensive, but it made huge
impact,, and strategic data, bigimpact.
And we're even, you know, wefelt the roles with the chapters
are, so it's just one example ofsome,, again, it was a little
light, more lightweight, but didhave an impact in the
(18:01):
organization.
You know, another thing too,with usability testing sometimes
talk about,, completelyrearchitecting redesigning the
whole page.
And I've seen sometimes it'sliterally shifting a button.
You mentioned the button beforemaking kind of a red degree or
something like that.
I've seen just some more subtlechanges like that, that have,
can pay big dividends.
You know, the subtle changes tothat.
(18:23):
Maybe you don't think it's kindof hard.
Cause a lot of, especially onthe marketing side, you spoke to
her looking know the working inthe content management system,
they're working with these pagesdate out and they kind of take
it for granted,, you know, someof these processes and they
don't think through that, youknow, for a brand new user, some
of them may becomes your siteyear.
, things that you may, you know,components that you may feel
(18:45):
make perfect sense that aren't
Chris Bonney (18:49):
Yep.
Dan Hickey (18:49):
It comes back to, you know, you, you know, you
mentioned the AMS too.
And so,, we hear that a lot too.
You know, we want our AMS to bemore user friendly or greater
usability, which of course isimportant, but you need to have
tangible steps to then improvethose,, those interfaces you
gotta like, what are theinterfaces,, and transactions
(19:10):
that are absolutely mostcritical to the business.
And then, you know, again, Ikeep going back to like the
business rules and what can youdo to simplify and track those,
those changes you make and makesure that they, those
improvements are made
Chris Bonney (19:21):
Well, you raise a lot of good points there and,
and you know, one of the thingstoo, and I don't think this is
exclusive to associationsnecessarily, but I'm thinking,
you know, thinking in our ownterms, we've been doing this,
like you said, for so long, wehave the jargon, we know what a
chapter is.
We know what this is.
We know what advocacy means.
We talking about this all daylong and, and folks outside
don't.
So I think there is just anoverall good lesson in there
(19:44):
that says we are not ourmembers.
Even if we feel like we are,we're not, and, you know,
creating personas and scenariosand having, like you said,
someone like whether it's GulloDel cor or someone else helping
you understand who that audienceis and giving you that outsider
perspective that, wow, we don'tknow what chapters are either.
(20:04):
So let's maybe think about whatthat experience might look like.
That's one of the benefits too,I think from bringing people
outside, but I want to talkabout the nuts and bolts of CRO.
So I, you know, I think we'vemade a pretty compelling case
that it's something we shouldthink about.
It's going to enhance yourbusiness.
It's a worthy investment tothink about how to test and
optimize, but what do we want todo and how could we do it if we
(20:26):
wanted to do it ourselves?
Or what elements are we lookingat?
, I want to talk first aboutjust overall user experience and
design and that kind of thing.
And I know you have somethoughts about, you know, what
that should be for associationsjust on a bigger scale, but you
want to just talk about that fora minute, just how you feel
design impacts it and howassociations should be thinking
about design.
(20:46):
Like, you know, just in general,
Dan Hickey (20:49):
, absolutely a couple thoughts on that.
You mentioned audience, I mean,first and foremost, that's maybe
it sounds like I'm stating theobvious, but really
understanding your audience.
, audiences are most important,but even with that said you do
you have to prioritize and needto be a little discipline on
that.
, one problem I've seen onvarious, you know, website
(21:09):
engagements with,, it'sassociations.
I, I, you know, there is adesire to kind of please
everyone and cater to allvarious audiences, but it do
need to kind of hone in on who,
Chris Bonney (21:20):
Who are the most critical audiences that are most
impactful to your business.
Dan Hickey (21:26):
The other thing I would also say in terms of your
approach to it is think of itholistically too.
You know, there are again, anber of good web vendors that do
this a lot.
A lot of the focus that we seeis just on your website.
So we're wireframes and we'regoing to, you know, you look at
the design palette and you know,all the design elements, but the
focus always tends to be solelyon just their am or I'm sorry,
(21:47):
the website, the contentmanagement portion of their
digital portfolio, when reallyyou're interacting with AMS
components, LMS components, youronline community,, various,
various other entities, digitalproperty that abstract
submission, you know, thoseknown systems and one issue.
This is something we see quiteoften is there is no holistic
(22:10):
overview of all this.
I mean, at the end of the day,you know, an end user doesn't
care what the platform is.
They wanna make sure that,, youknow, they came to their site
for whatever reason, they justwant to do what they need to do,
and they rather do it fairlyquickly too.
So that's another key takeawayis really making sure that,, and
I get that there's budgetimplications and resource
(22:31):
implications, but really lookingat all of your digital assets,,
holistically in terms of thatfrom that user experience,,
because to VC can be kind ofjarring experience and you're
kind of bopping around thedifferent platforms and,, with
varying degrees of, you know,ease of use.
So again, you can just look atit more holistically.
(22:52):
I mean, of course it's importanton the main website, but take
that same lens or that sameperspective with your, your,
your
Chris Bonney (22:58):
Other digital properties and assets too.
Yeah, no, it's, yeah, that's agreat point.
And I think, you know, and, andjust to, you know, I think the
design is a part of this, right?
If, if someone's arriving atyour site, whatever page it may
be and they're disoriented, theydon't know what it's about.
That's at the highest level,like, you know, we, we get not
(23:18):
good and how do we optimize forthat?
Well, we want to make sure thatpeople see themselves when they
arrive at your site, right?
It doesn't have to be a personthat looks like them.
It just has to be like, theseare my people.
I understand so many websiteshave just, you know, on a
homepage, especially you see theacronym without a lot of
explanation about what it is,and then they just go into it as
(23:40):
if they, everyone arriving justasse they know what your
organization is.
And so, you know, I think, youknow, that that disorientation
of folks,, you know, is, is areal simple example of how you
can optimize your homepage tosay, wait a minute.
Let's not asse everyone knowsand jped right into our jargon
and our news.
And everyday absolutely a pointto do that.
(24:04):
, and want to take this to thenext level, because what we're,
you know, we understand peopleare arriving at our homepage as
an association.
How did they get there a lot ofdifferent ways?
, we're sending emails to peopleand directing them to certain
areas of our website, morespecific landing pages, per se.
We're talking to associationsmore and more and more about
(24:26):
search engine optimization andhow it just because your acronym
comes up, if they search it andyou're nber one, it goes way,
way beyond that.
And what, how can search engineoptimization really,, improve
what you do?
A lot of times we hear peoplesay, well,, we don't need search
engine optimization,, becausewe're not trying to get people
(24:46):
to find us online.
So they join, you know, a lot ofhealthcare organizations, they
know every doctor type and everypotential member in the
industry, they don't need them.
The doctor's not going to Googleand go, Oh, I didn't know this
organization existed.
Maybe I should join.
Right.
That, isn't what it's about.
As much as creating authority inyour industry.
(25:07):
Perhaps we talk a lot aboutthat.
, and just following SEO, bestpractices as a rule, not only
make school like your pagesmore, but it's better web
practice in general.
It makes you think about howyou're putting a website and
webpage together.
That then is a better ultimateuser experience in and of
itself.
(25:27):
So thinking about this andsaying, we're going to optimize
our pages.
We want people to show up onthis page event reg page.
And we were using search engineoptimization because we've got a
competitive,, commercial,, eventthat's competing with our
nonprofit association of it thathappens.
So we want to be in the gamefrom a search engine
(25:48):
optimization perspective andmake sure our event is bubbling
up.
Well, that seems like a realreasonable case, right.
So, okay.
So now we're going to use SEO todrive people to the page.
Okay.
Now we're on the page and weneed people, like we said, the
design needs to be a quality.
It needs to have a userexperience that they're familiar
with.
It speaks to the audience.
Now we want them to convert on,you know, on to that page.
(26:12):
So a lot, a big part of whathappens there is,, how
compelling are the words andwhat's the layout of the
sections of that page.
And I think what people, youknow, I think, you know, some
marketers are very in tune withthis is that there needs to be a
flow down that page.
(26:33):
That's leading to that call toaction.
And there's certain formulas,even that can be a part of that,
that you can look up.
There's a whole bunch of them.
One, we talk to our clients alot about is ADA a I D a, which
is awareness, interest, desire,action.
That can be a sales funnel.
It can be a whole bunch ofthings, but it can also be
components of a landing page tosay,, you know, you ended up at
(26:58):
this page because you wereinterested in, you know, X
here's why that makes a lot ofsense.
, you know, here's what otherpeople in the industry are
saying about it.
Here's proof that this is theevent for you, right?
Why don't you register asopposed to just saying, well, if
we put the register button uptop as high as possible, so they
see it as soon as they're moreinclined to do it, right?
(27:20):
So there's just, you know,components on the page and
layout of the page is a hugepart of it.
It's one thing to be able tosay, we successfully brought
people through search engineoptimization to this page.
That's half the battle.
The other part of the battle isto get them to hit that CTA and,
, you know, copy as well.
(27:42):
The words on the page, I thinkare a big part of what we do.
If, if you want someone to signup for your newsletter, this is
an example that I thinkresonates just saying, sign up
for our newsletter.
And then having a box that says,submit is likely not going to
convert as high as join 71,000other people in our industry
(28:06):
that find our tips amazing eachand every month, guaranteed, you
know, grow your business rightnow, tips to help you grow your
profession.
Right.
It seems like a, you know, avery small price to pay suddenly
to get in on what a big thingis.
So it's one thing to say, let'sdrive people to a page.
It's another thing to say, let'sget it formatted in a way that
(28:28):
makes sense as another part tosay, let's get the design,
right.
But if we're not compelling inour copy, people have better
things to do, right.
We've, we've taken theirattention away.
And, and now how are we going totake it to one step further,, in
your mind, what, how shouldfolks, what would a next step
(28:50):
be?
You know, based on the thingswe've talked about for today,
people are saying, look, I, theCRO thing makes sense.
I know a new term, I know a newacronym, Dan and Chris made some
sense.
This is something I want to lookinto.
How would you, what would yousay to somebody as far as what
their next steps should be, whatthey should be?
What's the low hanging fruit forthem to sort of get on a CRO?
Dan Hickey (29:14):
I would say at the very least really have,, have an
inventory of those keytransactions and be,, you'll be
strategic.
And then I think about what areany of those places on the
website that are absolutelycritical to the business,,
because you have to, you have tostart somewhere.
And so again, whether it's anillustration, the whole thing
(29:35):
that we've seen with, you know,
Chris Bonney (29:37):
COVID-19
Dan Hickey (29:39):
Any association space, a lot of,, revenue is
dependent on event forillustrations, right.
Or, or, you know, meeting room.
And so, you know, there's beenchanges in terms of going from
in-person to virtual meetings,but,, and understanding kind of
what your,, you know, yourrevenue model is.
And what's most important.
(29:59):
You really making sure thatthose key areas of transactions
are, are an area of focus fromthere, I'd say, yeah, making
sure that those PA thoseprocesses really revisiting any
kind of business processes youhave around,, those interfaces,,
revisit those.
And if you need to, again, bringin a third party designer to
help with that.
(30:19):
But I think a lot of this caneven be done in house too, and
just revisiting those and seeinghow can you simplify that as
much as possible.
The other takeaway with that, Isee this a lot with associations
is they're trying to piggybackon those processes to capture as
much data as possible duringnext they know, well, it's our
one time and renewal to captureall that demographic data.
(30:40):
So we're going to make you jpthrough seven hoops, you know,
seven pages of demographics tocollect that.
, but you're burdening your enduser.
So again, focus on that.
And really it kind of thenbecomes a little bit of a data,
somewhat of a data governanceexercise to really look at every
field of data that you'recollecting.
Is it absolutely critical forthat process?
Yes or no.
So again, inventory the keyprocesses, and then even within
(31:02):
there, look at the data you'recollecting with any of those
processes to make sure it'sabsolutely necessary.
You're doing something with thatdata, if you are collecting it,
but try to simplify as much aspossible if you can do some
lightweight usability aroundthose products, you know, those,
those,, transactions,, try doingthat too again, now that we're,
you know, everyone's kind ofgetting more comfortable with
(31:23):
zoom and again, whether theteams go to webinar, whatever
you may go to meeting, whateveryou want to use, some tools that
go out and actually just pingsome of your key members and get
feedback on that.
So I'd say just again, lowhanging fruit, things like that.
You can do.
, you started talking, youtalked about the copy and that's
really important, too.
It does touch on another areathat we see as kind of
(31:44):
problematic is con some of themore mature organizations have a
pretty solid content strategy.
, but some of the smallermidsize,, groups that we work
with with donuts and a desire toget people to the website, but
once they get there, what then?
Right?
So everything you just don'timportant to.
So again, just focus like youcan't please everyone, but
(32:07):
focused on the key transactionpages or processes.
And then also those key pagesthat have a, you know, make sure
that call to action is verydistinct and making sure that
the copy on those pages, as youjust mentioned,, revisit those.
And if you can't, you know, youdon't have the expertise or
bandwidth in house, then,,engage someone with such as
Gullo to help you with that andhang those up.
(32:29):
I think you can do small, smallefforts can have a,, a bigger
conversation.
So I'd say start there.
Yeah.
I mean, those are great words toclose on,
Chris Bonney (32:40):
Honestly, because I think a lot of these things
can seem daunting.
People hear SEO and it feels alittle daunting cause they don't
even know what it means or howto do it.
Now you're telling me, I got todo CRO after the SEO, all of
this testing, a B a B testingafter the CRO and the SEO.
And like, it feels like a littlemuch, especially if you're not a
(33:01):
marketing person, maybe you'rein it.
And your website's under yourbrella.
That happens a little bit stilland you know, we get it.
But I think that's, I thinkthat's a great takeaway.
Dan is to say, you don't have tobe perfect and you don't have to
be a master at it and it doesn'thave to be wildly successful.
And it also doesn't have to beexpensive.
, it can just be something liketaking what we're talking about
(33:22):
here in this podcast.
Take it to heart.
Think about it, do a littleresearch.
I know you are, I would be happyto talk to somebody for 15
minutes to get them off theground and go where they need to
go to do with.
That's just, you know, helpingpeople get where they need to
go.
, but just start and then you'lllearn as you go, don't be, you
know, don't have to be too sodaunting that you don't start to
(33:43):
do it.
And the minute you do something,the simplest smallest change, it
could be the wording on a buttoncould change everything.
And imagine the hero you becomeby making a, trying a simple
change like that.
So definitely worth theinvestment in the learning on
that.
, so,, Dan, listen, I think wecould talk for two more hours on
(34:03):
this because it's a reallyfascinating topic.
And,, I think though this was agreat way to kind of get the
word out, let people know whatit is, let them know how
important it is.
You come with a great deal ofexperience, obviously from, from
talking with folks on this andmaybe, you know, next year we'll
follow up and do another webinarand we'll test and we'll see
where everybody is.
(34:24):
, but we really appreciate youtaking the time to be with us
today.
, so thank you for that.
Well, thank you Chris.
I appreciate it all.
Good.
And thanks to everyone forlistening today.
We really appreciate it fromGullo here.
Next time, maybe I'll have Zachwith me again.
, we look forward to having Danback again real soon, but it is
the web marketing insightspodcast from Gullo solutions.
(34:47):
If you're watching this onYouTube, feel free to subscribe
below.
If you're listening to us anyover the podcasts platforms,
we'd love to hear any commentsor ratings that you might have.
Thanks again.
And we'll see all again realsoon.
Speaker 3 (35:00):
Thank you.
Hi everybody.
And welcome to another editionof web marketing insights
podcast from Gulo I'm ChrisBonney have a very special guest
today, Dan Hickey from DelCor.
Dan.
Welcome.
We're going to talk aboutconversion rate optimization
(00:30):
today, and that's not a term youhear a lot in association
circles.
I know that something you talkwith your clients a lot about,
or try to, and bring it up tobring some awareness to it.
But we wanted to break it downtoday.
I think you and I were talkingoutside of this podcast on the
phone and saying, this might bea really interesting topic to
(00:51):
talk about.
So we wanted to do that.
Before we do that, do you wantto just let people know that
don't already know who you are?
Dan Hickey (00:57):
DelCor is based out of Silver Springs, Maryland.
Before joining DelCor, I was inthe association space for 15
years.
And we're various hatsthroughout those years with a
(01:19):
strong digital background, butalso did a fair amount of
project management, IT director,and some, virtual CIO, strategic
work in an it maturityassessments.
Part of that is looking at, someof t heir d igital components
into their overall technologystack.
(01:41):
Ye ah.
So e xcited to talk about thistoday.
Chris Bonney (01:48):
So,, conversion rate optimization, or sometimes
known we have to have anacronym, right?
If it's associations, we've gotto have very funny acronym, so
we'll call it C R O, that's what,, the, the, you know, the
industry likes to call it CRL.
So again, not a term that youhear a lot of,, a lot about, but
I think it is moving in adirection where even if people
(02:10):
aren't talking about it, per se,it's something that I think
we're more and more aware of.
Maybe we don't know what thelabel for it is, and it's not
the best name for what it is,but it is what it is.
But basically, you know,conversion rate optimization is
when you look at a particularwebpage or a flow of web pages
where you want someone toconvert on something, some sort
(02:34):
of transaction of some kind,whether it's an eCommerce sale
or even something like, Hey,give us your email address.
What's the flow of things thathappen either across pages or
maybe even down one page, howmany times versus when someone
arrives at a page, are theysubmitting that call to action?
And how many times are they not?
(02:55):
And if we look at that rate, howdo we optimize for it?
Right.
I mean, that's more, the literalterm is what are we doing to
that page or flow of pages tomake sure that that conversion
rate is continually improvingand examples of conversion rate
optimization.
The simplest form is that, youknow, the real world examples
out there to say, we changed ourbutton for submitting something
(03:18):
from red to green and, you know,and our rates went up because
green is more of a gold color orwhatever.
There's a lot of differentexamples on, we can talk about
sort of what those are, but justfor the sort of the layman's
terms, it's, it's reallychanging or enhancing elements
of the flow of getting someoneto do something on your website,
perpetually looking at those andoptimizing whatever it might be.
(03:40):
And we'll talk about what thoseelements are here in a minute.
So that's really what conversionrate optimization is.
And you know, what, what for anassociation and, and chime in
here,, you know, for me it feelslike there's things like,, event
registration, and there's alsosome, you know, obviously member
(04:03):
renewals or kinds of things thatmembership joins.
But I'm curious to hear fromyour perspective, Dan, when you
talk to your clients aboutconversion rate optimization,,
you know, do you call it that,you know, how do you intro that?
What's the response when youtalk about it, what do you think
some of the basics are forassociations to think about, you
(04:24):
know, around this
Dan Hickey (04:26):
Sure.
In terms of kind of theacknowledgement of that term?
, definitely not always, butdepends.
It seems to be more acknowledged, you know, in meeting with
marketing teams, like marketingfolks, much more,, dialed into
that term.
, Earl some, as you mentioned,other or some kind of concept,
but, but it is kind of a focusin terms of,, at the end of the
(04:49):
day, what do we want our endusers to do, you know, and make
it a really clear,, action, youknow, an actionable item that
you want your end user to takeplace.
, when working with otherdepartments,, you mentioned, you
know, membership, renewal
Chris Bonney (05:04):
Application mapping, your members,
Dan Hickey (05:06):
, registration certification.
, really when we're talkingabout looking at a lot of this,
you hear some of, you know, youmeet with our,, clients, they
talk about kind of the userexperience.
It was kind of go back to that.
You know, they think that a lotof their experiences that their
members or constituents have togo through is kind of a poor
user experience.
(05:27):
And so you mentioned layman'sterms, that's kind of how we try
to talk to them about it
Chris Bonney (05:31):
And even break it down.
So if you look at like themembership join process,
Dan Hickey (05:35):
, you know, one can, one thing we do see quite often
is just that how many stepsdoes, you know, it does a member
to a prospect need to jp
Chris Bonney (05:45):
Through to join your organization.
Dan Hickey (05:47):
, and it, you know, it varies some groups who work
with have a more simplisticapproach,, and others are very
complicated.
They have, you know, at the highend I've seen client, you know,
35 steps,, that you two that theend user needs to go through.
And I know there's somefrustration with, you know, how
with a website or their AMS andits inability to kind of provide
(06:09):
it user experience, but youknow, try to push back a little
bit on that and say, well, doyou really need to capture all
that information?
You really need to make them gothrough all, all of those steps
to, to join.
And,, it has varying degrees ofsuccess.
And the good, the good news is Ithink a lot of more
organizations are becoming muchmore acutely attuned to it.
(06:30):
They know that it's an area thatthey need help on and that it's
frustrating.
Whereas even just five, 10 yearsago, I'd say more like 10, 15
years ago.
, I think there was just anunderstanding, well, that's
what, you know, if yourassociation and your, your
member you're joining is kindof, well, that's just going to
happen.
You have to go through, but Ithink the digital space has
changed so much and you know,everything, but digital
(06:52):
transformation the last 10years, it made like so much
easier to transact online thatit's kind of catching up that,
you know, you can't just say,well, I remember as well,
they're, they're fine goingthrough 10 different steps to
join us.
That's not the case, especiallywith younger.
I hate saying that, but withyounger members too, that are
trying to get them engaged withyour organization, you really
want to make things as simple aspossible.
(07:13):
So we kind of start there likelooking at the business rules
and what are absolutely iscritical.
Again, I'm focusing on the jointprocess, but just as an example,
what absolutely is critical tohave that person or that end
user,, transact with you.
Chris Bonney (07:30):
Yeah, absolutely.
I think you make a good pointabout the younger membership
because that's, you know, that'sthe future of any organization,
whether it's your user grouptrade professional society,
that's part of this,, factor,right?
That's what we want to achieve.
And I think thinking about howwe're converting on membership
is a perfect example of thinkingabout how to do this
(07:51):
differently.
And so yes, 35 steps, 38 fieldsto fill out is too much for most
people, especially someonethat's younger, they're not as
patient.
They're not understanding whythat's all important, but I do
think another aspect to tie inis that one way to understand
how to better optimize thethings that you're trying to get
(08:12):
conversion on is what's anequivalent to what they might be
doing out there in the realworld as well.
It might not be in theassociation world, but right.
Everything in the web is gearedaround your audience.
Okay.
Right.
If we're not thinking about ouraudience first, we've already
kind of lost a thread, but whatdoes our audience and younger
members, let's just say, whatare they used to in their life,
(08:34):
right?
What are they, what, what istheir expectation for what they
want to be able to do?
And any sort of, you know,friction and the joint process I
think is, is definitely a lostopportunity if we're talking
about getting in to, to youngermembership, for sure.
, now the elements of conversionrate optimization.
(08:58):
So here, let me here, here'ssomething I want to actually
back up and maybe talk about iscan you talk about when it comes
to AMS?
Okay.
And regardless of, you know, theorganization's mindset around
how many fields of informationthey need to see, what do you
think the temperature is offolks with how AMS is, are
(09:21):
working for them in thoseprocesses?
And is there something that AMSis, could be doing for their,
for their,, clients aroundconversion rate optimization?
How do folks like you at DellCora as a consultant, you know,
fit into that equation?
Is it a strategy issue?
Is it a tool issue, right?
Is that the application itselfis inflexible flexible?
(09:43):
Is it a mindset issue?
Where do you see if I'm saying,Hey, I'm an association, I love
this idea, but you know, what'sthe butts that we're going to
hear out there on the world,around those, those elements.
Dan Hickey (09:54):
Yeah.
It's, it's a really importantconcept to,, to address early
on.
So in relation to the AMS and wereally depends, again, I'm gonna
keep kind of harping on themembership joint process we're
using that.
Well,, looking at, I mean, someorganizations do have a fairly
simple joint process.
And so therefore, you know, thatmembers have joint process, you
know, leveraging your, your AMScapabilities there.
(10:17):
It's kind of,, public facinginterfaces to, to leverage that
may work.
But,, other times, you know,again, for those more complex
processes, you know, there's,there, there are a lot of
challenges,, to making kind of aseamless user experience.
And one thing I would justrecommend anyone want to take
(10:37):
away from this is reallyleveraging an outside vendors
such as you guys plug, but,, but,, you know, a digital agency to
help that specializes inusability and user experience
because,, not all of them, butmost of the AMS vendors just
don't have that expertise interms of when you're kind of
(10:58):
building those work flows orthose,,, different designs in
terms of what that your jointprocess may look like, your
event registration too.
, there are nuances, as youmentioned with this that I think
you're gonna get to momentarilya little more detail that really
helped that do have a big,,impact on the conversion rates.
(11:18):
And, and so how are youcollecting that data what's
necessary to flow?
You know, obviously if neededmost sites are now,, but really
making sure you have that, thatoversight from a,, kind of a UX
expert to make sure that thatprocess is as seamless as
possible.
And I just, my experience isthat gets continually
(11:40):
overlooked.
And again, there are patientsthat do associations that do
focus many don'ts,, just kind ofconfigure their,, econ processes
up and then kind of getfrustrated.
They aren't as optimal as theywould like.
Chris Bonney (11:56):
Yeah,
Dan Hickey (11:59):
Just how important it is to factor that in whether
you're doing an implementationto make sure that you are
factoring a usability testingand getting actual user back.
, but also making sure that likewireframing and some proponent
is factored into that processtoo.
And if you're already stayingwith your current system, when
you go to revisit same thosesame principles, do some
lightweight usability,, perhapsget a third party vendor that
(12:22):
does specialize in,, you know,usability best practices to make
sure that that is a seamlessexperience.
Cause all the way end to end,you know, from that first pro
from when you, when you accessthe homepage or however you're
going to access the site,whatever the entry point is all
the way through the orderreceipt page, but sometimes
there's follow up tasks orfollow up steps that are needed
(12:44):
from there.
So really end to end making surethat that is an easy, seamless,
clear experience for the enduser.
Yeah.
Chris Bonney (12:50):
Yeah.
I think you brought up somethingthat I wanted to touch on real
quick too, is,, reporting ortesting.
Right.
, you know, I think there's thistransitional point as someone
that works on websites, mostlythat you're, you're bringing
user down a path and thenthere's a cuddle over usually
maybe through a single sign onwhen they head over to the AMS
side of things.
Right.
You know, we need to track them,their AMS is do a pretty good
(13:13):
job of tracking the activity andwhat's happening during that
flow.
But it's a matter of matchingthat up with what's happening on
the web.
And I think a lot of times whatwe see as a people,, you know,
organizations, I think everyonehas Google analytics on their,
on their site capacity, right.
On some capacity, but there'sthings like Google tag manager,
there's things like Googleoptimize.
(13:34):
There's a bunch of other toolsthat I would, you know, I would
say, you know, go out there andtake a look at those and see
what kind of things that you cando to help understand how to
test and how to report on thethings that are happening on
your website.
Really simply within Googleanalytics.
There's the goal tracking whereyou can set up, right?
(13:55):
You think people should befollowing or you'd like them to
follow across your website andit tracks and gives you a thbs
up or a point when you actuallyget someone to follow that goal.
And that's what we're talkingabout.
That's a conversion, that's apath.
And as you're building awebsite, just in general, you
know, we want, we were saying,this is about knowing who your
audience is and then knowing whythey're coming to your site,
(14:18):
what are they trying to do?
And then let's formulate yoursite in a way that allows them
to walk through that path.
Right.
And then we'll see along the waywhere we lose people, we see
where we've lost them, go backand take a look at it and
optimize it.
, and AB testing is anotherthing that we can do, whether
it's wrong, copy or buttoncolors, or what have you there's
tools out there to do that.
(14:38):
Google optimize, optimize likeothers.
And I think they'll, I want toget your feedback on this.
You know, what we try to say istesting super important on any
level.
But I think people imagine labcoats
Dan Hickey (14:52):
And strings computers and people are hunched
over and they're looking at, andthere's so many easy ways now to
do testing, right?
Whatever it is, usabilitytesting.
So what, what kind of, you know,if you had something to say
about that or how, when you talkto folks, how they react to
that, or, you know, where do youthink people's heads should be
(15:13):
at around, around testing?
What would you say about that?
Yeah, we'll also doesn't you'reright.
And that's a great point.
I think even when we haverecommendations, so we, you
know, Dell core does a, an itmaturity model assessment in
which,, when we go in there andthere's different quadrants that
we look at their businessinfrastructure, data, technology
(15:33):
management, and then digitalbeing one of them.
And on that digital quadrants.
Yeah, we do the, are I likehaving recommendations about,,
regarding usability testing andthey're, they're, you're you're
right.
I think you said the lab coats,but yet that are just dollar
signs to, they're concernedabout it's going to cost me tens
of thousands of dollars yet.
I think it's going to be somereally high tech expensive
(15:54):
endeavor, and it doesn't need tobe, I mean, there are various
tools out there that I'm really,especially now that I was
getting more comfortable withthe zoom and,, you know, really
can just schedule this online.
And you can, if you want to, youknow, engage with a third party,
, you know, vendors such asyourself, you can, or else you
can do some lightweight testingyourselves, maybe from your
(16:14):
marketing team that can justreach out to some of your key
members and just take, you know,10, 15 minutes of their time and
walk through some of thoseprocesses and get feedback.
And you really just need ahandful of participants.
You're seeing trends.
This is years ago before Ijoined DelCor.
So really it was a really coolexperience.
We had, you know, not even thatmany, really about five steps to
(16:38):
join with a particularassociation.
And one of them was goingthrough the chapter process, you
know, a lot of associations havechapters and,, yeah, well, it's
kind of eye opening to us iswhen we went through this, a lot
of the newer members that noidea what a chapter was, you
know, they picked their stateand we'd ask them, well, why are
you, you know, you live inIllinois or in Chicago, why are
you picking up?
(16:58):
And they're like, well, that'sjust where I live.
They're like, what do you evenknow what a chapter is?
And it was eye opening that theydidn't, and they didn't
understand the benefit.
Why am I being forced to evenpick a chapter?
, the organization subsequentlykind of removed, there's a
requirement for those, that's adifferent story.
But,, when we presented thosefindings to the senior
(17:19):
leadership team, I think therewere stunned that, you know,
something is basic that everyonejust takes for granted.
Some basic is that we didredesign and simplify the whole
joint process.
And we did see an increase inconversions, but interesting
story, I just, it was like, thatwas tangible proof that we can
kind of bring back and say, Hey,this is a problem for us.
(17:40):
You know, they're not sustainingthe benefit, simple testing,
then you didn't have to talk toa hundred people to figure that
out.
Right.
And it really wasn't thatexpensive, but it made huge
impact,, and strategic data, bigimpact.
And we're even, you know, wefelt the roles with the chapters
are, so it's just one example ofsome,, again, it was a little
light, more lightweight, but didhave an impact in the
(18:01):
organization.
You know, another thing too,with usability testing sometimes
talk about,, completelyrearchitecting redesigning the
whole page.
And I've seen sometimes it'sliterally shifting a button.
You mentioned the button beforemaking kind of a red degree or
something like that.
I've seen just some more subtlechanges like that, that have,
can pay big dividends.
You know, the subtle changes tothat.
(18:23):
Maybe you don't think it's kindof hard.
Cause a lot of, especially onthe marketing side, you spoke to
her looking know the working inthe content management system,
they're working with these pagesdate out and they kind of take
it for granted,, you know, someof these processes and they
don't think through that, youknow, for a brand new user, some
of them may becomes your siteyear.
, things that you may, you know,components that you may feel
(18:45):
make perfect sense that aren't
Chris Bonney (18:49):
Yep.
Dan Hickey (18:49):
It comes back to, you know, you, you know, you
mentioned the AMS too.
And so,, we hear that a lot too.
You know, we want our AMS to bemore user friendly or greater
usability, which of course isimportant, but you need to have
tangible steps to then improvethose,, those interfaces you
gotta like, what are theinterfaces,, and transactions
(19:10):
that are absolutely mostcritical to the business.
And then, you know, again, Ikeep going back to like the
business rules and what can youdo to simplify and track those,
those changes you make and makesure that they, those
improvements are made
Chris Bonney (19:21):
Well, you raise a lot of good points there and,
and you know, one of the thingstoo, and I don't think this is
exclusive to associationsnecessarily, but I'm thinking,
you know, thinking in our ownterms, we've been doing this,
like you said, for so long, wehave the jargon, we know what a
chapter is.
We know what this is.
We know what advocacy means.
We talking about this all daylong and, and folks outside
don't.
So I think there is just anoverall good lesson in there
(19:44):
that says we are not ourmembers.
Even if we feel like we are,we're not, and, you know,
creating personas and scenariosand having, like you said,
someone like whether it's GulloDel cor or someone else helping
you understand who that audienceis and giving you that outsider
perspective that, wow, we don'tknow what chapters are either.
(20:04):
So let's maybe think about whatthat experience might look like.
That's one of the benefits too,I think from bringing people
outside, but I want to talkabout the nuts and bolts of CRO.
So I, you know, I think we'vemade a pretty compelling case
that it's something we shouldthink about.
It's going to enhance yourbusiness.
It's a worthy investment tothink about how to test and
optimize, but what do we want todo and how could we do it if we
(20:26):
wanted to do it ourselves?
Or what elements are we lookingat?
, I want to talk first aboutjust overall user experience and
design and that kind of thing.
And I know you have somethoughts about, you know, what
that should be for associationsjust on a bigger scale, but you
want to just talk about that fora minute, just how you feel
design impacts it and howassociations should be thinking
about design.
(20:46):
Like, you know, just in general,
Dan Hickey (20:49):
, absolutely a couple thoughts on that.
You mentioned audience, I mean,first and foremost, that's maybe
it sounds like I'm stating theobvious, but really
understanding your audience.
, audiences are most important,but even with that said you do
you have to prioritize and needto be a little discipline on
that.
, one problem I've seen onvarious, you know, website
(21:09):
engagements with,, it'sassociations.
I, I, you know, there is adesire to kind of please
everyone and cater to allvarious audiences, but it do
need to kind of hone in on who,
Chris Bonney (21:20):
Who are the most critical audiences that are most
impactful to your business.
Dan Hickey (21:26):
The other thing I would also say in terms of your
approach to it is think of itholistically too.
You know, there are again, anber of good web vendors that do
this a lot.
A lot of the focus that we seeis just on your website.
So we're wireframes and we'regoing to, you know, you look at
the design palette and you know,all the design elements, but the
focus always tends to be solelyon just their am or I'm sorry,
(21:47):
the website, the contentmanagement portion of their
digital portfolio, when reallyyou're interacting with AMS
components, LMS components, youronline community,, various,
various other entities, digitalproperty that abstract
submission, you know, thoseknown systems and one issue.
This is something we see quiteoften is there is no holistic
(22:10):
overview of all this.
I mean, at the end of the day,you know, an end user doesn't
care what the platform is.
They wanna make sure that,, youknow, they came to their site
for whatever reason, they justwant to do what they need to do,
and they rather do it fairlyquickly too.
So that's another key takeawayis really making sure that,, and
I get that there's budgetimplications and resource
(22:31):
implications, but really lookingat all of your digital assets,,
holistically in terms of thatfrom that user experience,,
because to VC can be kind ofjarring experience and you're
kind of bopping around thedifferent platforms and,, with
varying degrees of, you know,ease of use.
So again, you can just look atit more holistically.
(22:52):
I mean, of course it's importanton the main website, but take
that same lens or that sameperspective with your, your,
your
Chris Bonney (22:58):
Other digital properties and assets too.
Yeah, no, it's, yeah, that's agreat point.
And I think, you know, and, andjust to, you know, I think the
design is a part of this, right?
If, if someone's arriving atyour site, whatever page it may
be and they're disoriented, theydon't know what it's about.
That's at the highest level,like, you know, we, we get not
(23:18):
good and how do we optimize forthat?
Well, we want to make sure thatpeople see themselves when they
arrive at your site, right?
It doesn't have to be a personthat looks like them.
It just has to be like, theseare my people.
I understand so many websiteshave just, you know, on a
homepage, especially you see theacronym without a lot of
explanation about what it is,and then they just go into it as
(23:40):
if they, everyone arriving justasse they know what your
organization is.
And so, you know, I think, youknow, that that disorientation
of folks,, you know, is, is areal simple example of how you
can optimize your homepage tosay, wait a minute.
Let's not asse everyone knowsand jped right into our jargon
and our news.
And everyday absolutely a pointto do that.
(24:04):
, and want to take this to thenext level, because what we're,
you know, we understand peopleare arriving at our homepage as
an association.
How did they get there a lot ofdifferent ways?
, we're sending emails to peopleand directing them to certain
areas of our website, morespecific landing pages, per se.
We're talking to associationsmore and more and more about
(24:26):
search engine optimization andhow it just because your acronym
comes up, if they search it andyou're nber one, it goes way,
way beyond that.
And what, how can search engineoptimization really,, improve
what you do?
A lot of times we hear peoplesay, well,, we don't need search
engine optimization,, becausewe're not trying to get people
(24:46):
to find us online.
So they join, you know, a lot ofhealthcare organizations, they
know every doctor type and everypotential member in the
industry, they don't need them.
The doctor's not going to Googleand go, Oh, I didn't know this
organization existed.
Maybe I should join.
Right.
That, isn't what it's about.
As much as creating authority inyour industry.
(25:07):
Perhaps we talk a lot aboutthat.
, and just following SEO, bestpractices as a rule, not only
make school like your pagesmore, but it's better web
practice in general.
It makes you think about howyou're putting a website and
webpage together.
That then is a better ultimateuser experience in and of
itself.
(25:27):
So thinking about this andsaying, we're going to optimize
our pages.
We want people to show up onthis page event reg page.
And we were using search engineoptimization because we've got a
competitive,, commercial,, eventthat's competing with our
nonprofit association of it thathappens.
So we want to be in the gamefrom a search engine
(25:48):
optimization perspective andmake sure our event is bubbling
up.
Well, that seems like a realreasonable case, right.
So, okay.
So now we're going to use SEO todrive people to the page.
Okay.
Now we're on the page and weneed people, like we said, the
design needs to be a quality.
It needs to have a userexperience that they're familiar
with.
It speaks to the audience.
Now we want them to convert on,you know, on to that page.
(26:12):
So a lot, a big part of whathappens there is,, how
compelling are the words andwhat's the layout of the
sections of that page.
And I think what people, youknow, I think, you know, some
marketers are very in tune withthis is that there needs to be a
flow down that page.
(26:33):
That's leading to that call toaction.
And there's certain formulas,even that can be a part of that,
that you can look up.
There's a whole bunch of them.
One, we talk to our clients alot about is ADA a I D a, which
is awareness, interest, desire,action.
That can be a sales funnel.
It can be a whole bunch ofthings, but it can also be
components of a landing page tosay,, you know, you ended up at
(26:58):
this page because you wereinterested in, you know, X
here's why that makes a lot ofsense.
, you know, here's what otherpeople in the industry are
saying about it.
Here's proof that this is theevent for you, right?
Why don't you register asopposed to just saying, well, if
we put the register button uptop as high as possible, so they
see it as soon as they're moreinclined to do it, right?
(27:20):
So there's just, you know,components on the page and
layout of the page is a hugepart of it.
It's one thing to be able tosay, we successfully brought
people through search engineoptimization to this page.
That's half the battle.
The other part of the battle isto get them to hit that CTA and,
, you know, copy as well.
(27:42):
The words on the page, I thinkare a big part of what we do.
If, if you want someone to signup for your newsletter, this is
an example that I thinkresonates just saying, sign up
for our newsletter.
And then having a box that says,submit is likely not going to
convert as high as join 71,000other people in our industry
(28:06):
that find our tips amazing eachand every month, guaranteed, you
know, grow your business rightnow, tips to help you grow your
profession.
Right.
It seems like a, you know, avery small price to pay suddenly
to get in on what a big thingis.
So it's one thing to say, let'sdrive people to a page.
It's another thing to say, let'sget it formatted in a way that
(28:28):
makes sense as another part tosay, let's get the design,
right.
But if we're not compelling inour copy, people have better
things to do, right.
We've, we've taken theirattention away.
And, and now how are we going totake it to one step further,, in
your mind, what, how shouldfolks, what would a next step
(28:50):
be?
You know, based on the thingswe've talked about for today,
people are saying, look, I, theCRO thing makes sense.
I know a new term, I know a newacronym, Dan and Chris made some
sense.
This is something I want to lookinto.
How would you, what would yousay to somebody as far as what
their next steps should be, whatthey should be?
What's the low hanging fruit forthem to sort of get on a CRO?
Dan Hickey (29:14):
I would say at the very least really have,, have an
inventory of those keytransactions and be,, you'll be
strategic.
And then I think about what areany of those places on the
website that are absolutelycritical to the business,,
because you have to, you have tostart somewhere.
And so again, whether it's anillustration, the whole thing
(29:35):
that we've seen with, you know,
Chris Bonney (29:37):
COVID-19
Dan Hickey (29:39):
Any association space, a lot of,, revenue is
dependent on event forillustrations, right.
Or, or, you know, meeting room.
And so, you know, there's beenchanges in terms of going from
in-person to virtual meetings,but,, and understanding kind of
what your,, you know, yourrevenue model is.
And what's most important.
(29:59):
You really making sure thatthose key areas of transactions
are, are an area of focus fromthere, I'd say, yeah, making
sure that those PA thoseprocesses really revisiting any
kind of business processes youhave around,, those interfaces,,
revisit those.
And if you need to, again, bringin a third party designer to
help with that.
(30:19):
But I think a lot of this caneven be done in house too, and
just revisiting those and seeinghow can you simplify that as
much as possible.
The other takeaway with that, Isee this a lot with associations
is they're trying to piggybackon those processes to capture as
much data as possible duringnext they know, well, it's our
one time and renewal to captureall that demographic data.
(30:40):
So we're going to make you jpthrough seven hoops, you know,
seven pages of demographics tocollect that.
, but you're burdening your enduser.
So again, focus on that.
And really it kind of thenbecomes a little bit of a data,
somewhat of a data governanceexercise to really look at every
field of data that you'recollecting.
Is it absolutely critical forthat process?
Yes or no.
So again, inventory the keyprocesses, and then even within
(31:02):
there, look at the data you'recollecting with any of those
processes to make sure it'sabsolutely necessary.
You're doing something with thatdata, if you are collecting it,
but try to simplify as much aspossible if you can do some
lightweight usability aroundthose products, you know, those,
those,, transactions,, try doingthat too again, now that we're,
you know, everyone's kind ofgetting more comfortable with
(31:23):
zoom and again, whether theteams go to webinar, whatever
you may go to meeting, whateveryou want to use, some tools that
go out and actually just pingsome of your key members and get
feedback on that.
So I'd say just again, lowhanging fruit, things like that.
You can do.
, you started talking, youtalked about the copy and that's
really important, too.
It does touch on another areathat we see as kind of
(31:44):
problematic is con some of themore mature organizations have a
pretty solid content strategy.
, but some of the smallermidsize,, groups that we work
with with donuts and a desire toget people to the website, but
once they get there, what then?
Right?
So everything you just don'timportant to.
So again, just focus like youcan't please everyone, but
(32:07):
focused on the key transactionpages or processes.
And then also those key pagesthat have a, you know, make sure
that call to action is verydistinct and making sure that
the copy on those pages, as youjust mentioned,, revisit those.
And if you can't, you know, youdon't have the expertise or
bandwidth in house, then,,engage someone with such as
Gullo to help you with that andhang those up.
(32:29):
I think you can do small, smallefforts can have a,, a bigger
conversation.
So I'd say start there.
Yeah.
I mean, those are great words toclose on,
Chris Bonney (32:40):
Honestly, because I think a lot of these things
can seem daunting.
People hear SEO and it feels alittle daunting cause they don't
even know what it means or howto do it.
Now you're telling me, I got todo CRO after the SEO, all of
this testing, a B a B testingafter the CRO and the SEO.
And like, it feels like a littlemuch, especially if you're not a
(33:01):
marketing person, maybe you'rein it.
And your website's under yourbrella.
That happens a little bit stilland you know, we get it.
But I think that's, I thinkthat's a great takeaway.
Dan is to say, you don't have tobe perfect and you don't have to
be a master at it and it doesn'thave to be wildly successful.
And it also doesn't have to beexpensive.
, it can just be something liketaking what we're talking about
(33:22):
here in this podcast.
Take it to heart.
Think about it, do a littleresearch.
I know you are, I would be happyto talk to somebody for 15
minutes to get them off theground and go where they need to
go to do with.
That's just, you know, helpingpeople get where they need to
go.
, but just start and then you'lllearn as you go, don't be, you
know, don't have to be too sodaunting that you don't start to
(33:43):
do it.
And the minute you do something,the simplest smallest change, it
could be the wording on a buttoncould change everything.
And imagine the hero you becomeby making a, trying a simple
change like that.
So definitely worth theinvestment in the learning on
that.
, so,, Dan, listen, I think wecould talk for two more hours on
(34:03):
this because it's a reallyfascinating topic.
And,, I think though this was agreat way to kind of get the
word out, let people know whatit is, let them know how
important it is.
You come with a great deal ofexperience, obviously from, from
talking with folks on this andmaybe, you know, next year we'll
follow up and do another webinarand we'll test and we'll see
where everybody is.
(34:24):
, but we really appreciate youtaking the time to be with us
today.
, so thank you for that.
Well, thank you Chris.
I appreciate it all.
Good.
And thanks to everyone forlistening today.
We really appreciate it fromGullo here.
Next time, maybe I'll have Zachwith me again.
, we look forward to having Danback again real soon, but it is
the web marketing insightspodcast from Gullo solutions.
(34:47):
If you're watching this onYouTube, feel free to subscribe
below.
If you're listening to us anyover the podcasts platforms,
we'd love to hear any commentsor ratings that you might have.
Thanks again.
And we'll see all again realsoon.
Speaker 3 (35:00):
Thank you.
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