First off, I am going to say that taking a plane from San Diego to Phoenix and then to San Jose is just plane crazy. (Pun intended) It took over 5 hours to get from San Diego to San Jose. Possibly the worst flight ever. Now I feel better. On with the post…

At the start of the month I had the privilege of attending the conversion conference and I have to say I like where it’s going. For me CRO (Conversion Rate Optimization) is where SEO (Search Engine Optimization) was a few years ago. Companies are starting to realize that this is something they might need, yet don’t really know or understand why.

Because of this it’s important for a conference like the Conversion Conference to start to take shape. There will now be an event each year (hopefully) that allows for the gathering of the minds. Similar to SEO, CRO will thrive because of our ability to gain and share knowledge.

Below are a few of the many keys that the conference hit on:

  1. Trust: This was part of the Keynote delivered by Tim Ash and I think he hit the nail on the head with this. As it stands right now, trust is a big issue on the web. And it’s something that every company can focus on improving, especially from a conversion point of view. With out trust, the user has no reason to interact with out sites.
  2. Design: We all have good sites right? That’s why we paid designers thousands of dollars to make the site. Well if it’s not properly managing the users expectations then it might not be as effective as you thought. If it’s too much of a distraction it might not be as effective as you thought. This list could go on but you get the point.
  3. Test: Test, test, test… There could be many things that cause a site not to convert well. Use tools too look at what those things maybe, and test changes. And I don’t mean just changing the colors of a button.

These are some of the things that were hit on in almost every session. All valuable and usable, and expect to see many more posts from me soon.

With that, I would say that the Conversion Conference was a huge success, and I look forward to next year.