CXL Institute CRO Minidegree Review Part 12

This is part 12/12 in my series reviewing the CXL Institute CRO Minidegree. I will be posting a new part every week!

CXL Institute offers some of the best online courses and industry-recognized certifications for those seeking to learn new technical marketing skills and tools highly useful to growth professionals, product managers, UX/UI experts, and any other marketing profile looking to become more customer-centric.

I was given an amazing opportunity to access and review one of their online course tracks, the Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO) Minidegree. For the next few weeks, I’ll be discussing the content of the course as well as what I think of it as I go through it. Here is part 12!

Applied Neuromarketing

André Moris is back with a course on how to apply neuromarketing principles in your optimization process and leverage this type of knowledge into growth.

People are starving for positive feedback. Instant gratification deriving from things like social media notifications trigger the brain’s reward system, delivering dopamine. The old brain, or Daniel Kahneman’s “System 1” is faster to react to any impulse. The limbic system, or the middle brain, is responsible for emotion and producing endorphins and dopamine. Last but not least, the cerebral cortex, or Daniel Kahneman’s “System 2” is the newest part of our developed brain. It is responsible for cognition, thought, processing language, and doing more complex things, such as mathematics.

System 1 works as an autopilot mode for your brain. It processes things faster than the conscious brain can and requires less focus. System 2 on the other hand, is more cognitively exhausting and requires much more energy and effort. Some say that 70% of decisions are based on unconscious processing, however, André argues that everything first passes through System 1, and then they are post-rationalized in System 2.

Perception and pre-rational processing are important because it already forms ideas in your brain before you can think about it more objectively. For example, think about most luxury car commercials. They’re usually featured driving alongside a clean road rising over a view or a skyline.

The course shows an example of a picture of a BMW driving alongside a hill road overlooking Dubai. The image is meant to convey the emotion of luxury and esteem as if the height of the road symbolizes the height of your status. There are no hills or mountains next to Dubai. What mattered for this example is the implicit code or feeling that the image conveys to your initial perception.

In order to have a good customer experience (which in turn leads to growth), you need to apply the following principles:

• Your website has to be perceived as relevant within the first 50 ms of a visit. André recommends using the “limbic map” to find how you can match visitor motivation and create the right resonance.
• Attention can be directed with the use of space, contrast, people/faces, movement, difference, names/real people, and directional cues.
• Personas should be more detailed and less focused on generic indicators (authentic, agreeable, introverted), and instead should be built around more clear core values from the limbic map.
• Aside from website elements and design, your brand design will also heavily affect how visitors perceive your business.
• Simple navigation, order, and less clutter lead to cognitive ease and more credibility.
• You can use 5-second tests to find out what people associate with your website, and which words they use to identify what they see.

How to Design and Roll Out an Optimization Program

This short course by Merrit Aho is about how to design, roll out, and scale an optimization program.

An optimization program depends first and foremost on a team of specialists. There are two common models for structuring your team. The first is centralized, which is the more common choice. A centralized model has a central CRO team led by one engagement/optimization/project manager who is responsible for the optimization activity. These types of teams often use pooled resources (developers, designers).

A distributed model is also common in highly technical organizations (SaaS or companies with access to development teams). This model implies a risk if it is not used in this context because CRO is inherently a very technical practice. Problems arise when tests clash with each other and learnings aren’t shared or consolidated properly.

The team model can either be insourced or outsourced. The insourced model is preferable and more common since you can optimize your CRO capabilities and long term objectives over more time. Ideally, in this sort of team, there will be one generalist CRO expert who should have a wide degree of technical skills. From there, you can then hire more specialized profiles, such as developers, designers, analysts, and project managers. An outsourced model is also an option and should involve a CRO agency while also keeping someone close to your business as an internal optimization manager. You will always need a specialist for each of these areas: development, design, data analysis, and statistics/testing.

The goals of your team should naturally be set around key business metrics, such as revenue, lead, or advertising targets. While you should have an estimate of the numbers you are trying to get to, it is better to focus on quality rather than volume (win rates).

Realistically, in the beginning, you will have to focus on quick wins and low-hanging fruit. You should make it clear to your entire company that what you are doing works, and in turn, this should lead to more resources and support being allocated to your optimization team. Early on, speed and execution and educating your company about your optimization program are more important than perfecting the process.

Key takeaways:

• Make sure your website delivers an experience that resonates with the motivations of your visitors. Use 5-second tests and models such as the limbic map to better understand how you can optimize the initial (strong) impression of your content.
• The typical structure of a team, which is preferably insourced, involves a CRO generalist and a set of technical specialists. “Done is better than perfect” — in the beginning, you will have to focus on quick wins and communicating the value of the optimization program to your organization.

Thoughts:

We’re already getting into the last set of courses. Most of them from these last two parts cover content about small details that you should not overlook when starting a CRO program within the context of a business.

These courses focus on the more practical advice to get you going as a CRO expert. For example, the neuromarketing course explains the value of starting and running 5-second user research. The course on how to roll out an optimization program provides the first steps for starting a CRO team.

The next and last part will focus on more practical advice surrounding how to get started, which tools you need, and how you can convince your superiors that your optimization program can have a huge positive impact.