On November 28th, at the lovely Glaziers Hall, myself, Olly and Reece headed to the quarterly CRO on Tap event by AB Tasty. The event was presented by Dr Nick Fine, a lead user researcher who’s worked for the likes of Eurostar, Virgin Media, BT and UK Home Office. He showed us how to use UX and scientific principles to drive conversion rate optimisation (CRO).
What we learnt
🔬 How scientific UX and web analytics drive conversions
🔎 How important user research is for driving conversions
📈 How user research works perfectly with analytics
👴🏼 A brief look into the history of UX
🚀 And much more!
Cognitive code circle
Throughout the talk, Nick emphasised the real power of looking into your user needs before producing any sort of product or service. Finding out your users needs is key to improving conversions – how will you know what will convert them if you don’t know their needs? This was one of the many points well proven by Nick. After running through some remote user testing, how to run user tests, and learning why they are so important, Nick presented an interesting model called the ‘Cognitive Code Circle’.
Using 5 tips for science
Nick uses Neil DeGrasse Tyson’s 5 tips for science which relate perfectly with UX and user research:
(1) Question authority.
No idea is true just because someone says so, including me.
(2) Think for yourself.
Question yourself. Don’t believe things just because you want to. Believing something doesn’t make it so.
(3) Test ideas by the evidence gained from observation and experiment.
If a favourite idea fails a well-designed test, it’s wrong. Get over it.
(4) Follow the evidence wherever it leads.
If you have no evidence, reserve judgment. And, perhaps the most important rule of all…
(5) Remember: you could be wrong.
Even the best scientists have been wrong about some things. Newton, Einstein, and every other great scientist in history – they all made mistakes. Of course they did. They were human.
CRO is something that Bulldog have been pushing internally recently, going hand in hand with our landing pages and PPC services. Learning the principles of CRO will help drive every PPC and landing page campaign forward.
