In conversion rate optimisation HIPPO’s are not welcomed unless they are your wife.
We all know a HIPPO right? During the day, they remain cool by staying in the water (office) or mud(Café).
They emerge at dusk to graze on grasses and by now I hope you gathered that they are not the cute large mammals you’re thinking but the ‘Highest Paid Persons Opinion’.
One of the reasons the HiPPO is highly paid is it’s his or her responsibility to make a judgement call on proposed actions make things look good on paper and proposals and play on the quantitative VS. qualitative conundrum.
Testing and split testing landing pages, making changes to framework, adding proof elements, changing copy, freshening up pictures and the rest of the basics of conversion rate optimisation tactics does not often sit well with HIPPO’s.
Why?
Well think about when the ROI needs to look good today, and that future proofing online sales and KPI’s need to be in the forecast tomorrow, conversion rate optimisation tactics take a back seat and often get replaced with more advertising budgets or the coolest new social network strategy.
Conversion Rate Optimisation is the method of using analytics and user feedback to improve the performance of a website.
Conversion Rate Optimisation (CRO) can be used to improve any metric on your website that’s important to your business–often called key performance indicators (KPIs)–that you’re trying to improve, but it’s often associated with acquiring new customers, registrations, downloads, etc.
So when you have the right analytics in place and using data-driven decisions, why would you take an opinion or instinct (no matter how long they have been ‘doing this’) from a hippo to build your conversion rate optimisation strategy.
Site owners need to recognise that data, and not subjective opinion, are what drives successful change.
You’re not the target market most of the time and even if you are. You’re still way to involved with the process to out smart data!
The data is mined and aggregated by analytical software but its created by humans and there behaviours! Yes humans like you and me.
This is why its important to humanise conversion rate optimisation and always remember what David Ogilvy said ‘the consumer isn’t a moron; she is your wife”
Now if your HiPPO is Oli Gardner, Bryan Eisenberg, Brian Massey, Scott Brinker, Rich Page, Linda Bustos or Peep Laja then listen to them carefully as they know what they are doing.
Have you had problems with HIPPO’s in the past? Write your experience below in the comments.