Conversion-rate optimization (CRO) can be intimidating.

For many marketers just starting out in this area, one of the hardest things to find can be clear advice on how to avoid common pitfalls, generate strong ideas, and run tests that get real results.

With his new book, Website Optimization: An Hour a Day, author and optimization consultant Rich Page lays out a framework that nearly all marketers can use to improve their conversion rates.

I asked him to elaborate on a few key areas of the book, and he responded with some excellent insights in our Q&A.

Hunter Boyle: Your book cites studies by Forrester and eMarketer showing that for every $80 spent on driving online traffic only $1 is spent on converting that traffic (Chapter 1). What are some reasons for that disparity?

Rich Page: I think it's because, traditionally, the easiest and quickest method of increasing online revenue is by throwing huge sums of marketing dollars to drive more traffic to your website. Think of the grandiose excesses of the dot-com boom era, like how wasteful those sock puppet ads were!

Fast-forward to today, and conversion rate optimization enters like a knight in shining armor to save the day. Unfortunately, it hasn't made a big enough impact on this ratio yet because it's still a relatively new field, with many online businesses not understanding its true ROI or best-practices, like investing in the right tools and resources to ensure success. And when they don't get great results from their CRO efforts (no surprise there), companies simply revert to spending huge dollars on marketing to increase online revenue. That hasn't been helped by sexier and cooler methods of driving traffic, like social media!

HB: What are some of the biggest obstacles that keep marketers from testing more? How can they get past those obstacles?

RP: To sum it up, the biggest obstacles are animals that wallow in large pools of mud: HiPPOs. These "highest-paid persons' opinions" in organizations often don't really understand the true benefits and ROI of effective CRO, and they believe they know what's best for their website and visitors. This reduces effective testing, leading to poor results and ROI. Sound familiar?

The best way to help overcome these HiPPOs is by taming them with education and peer pressure. For education, you need to present to them the potential revenue and ROI from doing CRO on your website (with examples of pages on your website with great potential), not just the impact on conversion, as they probably won't be well-versed in conversion rates.

For peer pressure, you need to gain an executive sponsor at the senior level to help champion the benefits and help with test prioritization. That will make it much easier to get testing done quickly and effectively. Gaining and building support from key department heads like those of IT and Marketing will also help increase the pressure on your HiPPOs that your business should be running CRO. And combine that with showing them proof that your competitors are doing effective conversion rate optimization, and your HiPPOs will soon turn into mice...

HB: Where do the best test ideas come from? Can you provide a few examples of recent tests that you found inspiring?

RP: One thing is for sure: the best test ideas usually don't come from random ideas! Overall, there are three main sources of great test ideas:

• Your web analytics data. This is a goldmine for great test idea insights, for example finding leaks in conversion flows (like your signup process pages), and other problematic pages that need optimizing, like your top entry pages with high bounce rates.
• Feedback from your visitors. This really is key; don't just presume you know what is best for your visitors. The best way to gain such feedback is from frequent usage of visitor surveys (using tools like Survey Monkey or Qualaroo) and running cheap and effective usability sessions (UserTesting.com is great for this). Do a survey every time you launch something major on your website—to gain new ideas!
• Competitive website analysis. Spend some time each month analyzing what your website competitors are doing and improving on their website in terms of new functionality or content. Doing so can help form some great test ideas for your own website. Don't rip them off, though, and don't presume what will or won't work well on your website.

HB: You recommend looking for the "low-hanging fruit" to start or gain traction from testing. What are some common areas on sites that fit this description?

RP: Yes indeed! Great examples of low-hanging fruit are testing simple, easy-to-change elements on pages that relate to your conversion goals and also have high amounts of traffic. For example, testing wording such as headlines on product pages involves little effort to change quickly, yet it still can have a high potential impact on conversion rates. That's the opposite of running tests involving major overhauls of pages that are difficult to change, like checkout pages, as these often need considerable effort from IT teams to implement and run tests on.

Other simple "low hanging fruit" test ideas include adding simple imagery like trust and security logos in the header or guarantee logos (risk reducers). The key is to make sure the related pages have adequate traffic and are seen somewhere along your main conversion flow, like service signup pages, or on multiple pages, like navigation elements.