Optimise

1. Results are data-driven not based on personal opinion

Peep laja We firmly believe website optimisation and marketing decisions should be based on data; not opinion or design vision. Opinions are subjective and varied, whereas data is based in fact. Too often client’s opinions and the designer’s vision are neither data-driven or conversion-minded.

2. A broad range of specialisation gets results

Online marketing is most successful when the promotion aligns with the website to create a seamless experience for the user. The delivery of a successful campaign from promotion to checkout and beyond involves a diverse range of specialties such as data analysis, planning, design, build and someone to manage the work.

The online world is complicated and constantly evolving. To keep ahead you need a team of specialists. Zeald employs a diverse range of specialists that follow a strategy aligned to your objectives.
Coordinating a team of specialists has its challenges but we believe the results of this approach beats the alternatives:

Jack of all trades is great for a first website, but as the competition lifts you need more specialist skills and knowledge.
Specialist company will achieve a great result in a single discipline ie SEO. Such companies promote their one specialty as the only solution but that method might not be the most effective investment for your budget.

3. Don't underestimate the importance of planning

Sometimes it is difficult to see the value in planning. It is tempting to skip the boring data analysis and jump straight to the fun design.
Marketing without data is like driving blind - Data forms the foundation of a successful website optimisation project

We need to understand your business, your products and services, your competitors and your target customer.

To avoid delivering against subjective opinions, we need to work hard to implement measurement, gather data, research and formulate strategies based on fact. We can then implement and test ideas.

It takes time - We ask that you bear with us and not underestimate the importance of this work.

4. Changing things can be risky

This is especially important for a high performing website with large volumes of traffic, strong conversion rates, or large sales volumes.

If you make changes without testing and measuring how do you know if the change is improving results or having a negative effect?

We need to know what is working, and what is not. Then we aim to keep the good parts and re-think the bad ones.

When we make many changes at once it is impossible to measure which changes have a positive impact and which ones are negative. There is sometimes a place for a radical redesign (if the results stink.) But this is a scary proposition if the website is currently generating leads and sales.

5. Sometimes we go backwards before we go forwards

Results are rarely achieved overnight. Like getting better at anything you have to do it again and again. It often takes many changes to determine what works and what doesn't for your unique business & customers.

To improve we need to make changes. We can follow best practices &theory, but that only takes us so far. Ultimately we need to prove new ideas by testing.
Not every change will be successful. We go into every project expecting some ideas to fail along the way. Industry leaders consider 1 in 8 tests being a success as a good hit rate (Founder of Appsumo Noah Kagan).

We can invest a portion of the budget to test an idea. We will learn if the initiative is worth investing further or decide to divert the budget in a different idea. Fire bullets as opposed to cannonballs.

The better your website becomes the harder it is to make large gains.

Testing is not easy:

It takes longer to test websites with limited traffic and conversions
External influences such as seasonal changes or business adjustments can make it difficult to measure
In some cases we will agree not to test every change we make, and push on with what our experience tells us will be the best.
The results may call for fine-tuning, or a complete rethink of the approach.

6. The best websites evolve

The easiest way to increase your conversion rate by 100% is to increase it by 1% 100 times. The best websites grow and develop over time. This approach requires an ongoing investment to continually grow and optimise your website.
This is an investment in your business to attract, engage and convert prospects. To grow your customers, sales and revenue.
Online marketing best practice is to allocate both ‘always on’ and ‘campaign’ budgets.

Always on budget covers general updates, optimisation and day-to-day promotion. This is traditionally a fixed monthly budget.

Campaign budget is more flexible to ramp up for special occasions and seasonal events. Ie. a florist will ramp up efforts and spend for special occasions such as Valentine's and Mother’s Days.

7. We can't guarantee results

There are many things outside of our control

that affect website results:

Your product might not be unique, or valuable. No conversion miracle is going to help if people don’t want what you sell
Your commitment to the process and to implement recommendations and business changes
Your team’s ability to turn enquiries and leads into sales, or deliver orders placed.
The competitiveness of your industry. Gains are hard won and expensive when competing against well established and trusted brands with large marketing budgets.
You marketing investment
Your customer service and business reputation

8. A collaborative partnership built on trust

Results take time. From our many years experience working with thousands of clients, we know the optimisation projects that achieve the greatest results, sooner and more efficiently, are those where there is an ongoing collaborative partnership that is built on trust.

We need to work closely together. We need your input and guidance along the way. and there needs to be solid trust between us.
If at any stage you feel a break in this trust, you should speak to us so we can look into your concerns and address them.

9. The Zeald Optimisation Process

A process of continual, ongoing improvement

At the beginning, we will work out a regular cycle to meet with you to present the progress and results. Cycles are usually weekly Review plan-918 but could be as long as a month depending on your budget and traffic/ conversion volumes. We recommend that any optimisation project requires at least 6 months.

Objectives & Success Metrics
The first step is to understand the objectives of the website. What are we trying to achieve? Based on the objectives we can work out how we will measure success. This might be ecommerce revenue or email marketing signups. We will investigate the current health of the website to know our baseline to grow from.

Project Plan
Once we have our objectives & success metrics we can begin making our plan. The Project Plan is a list of ideas and steps to develop and improve your website. The Project Plan is at the centre of the project. It keeps track of new ideas and past ideas. We use tools like Google Analytics, Customer surveys, Heat mapping etc, to gather data and develop new ideas for improving the website.
We prioritise the list of ideas based on your objectives. We want to prioritise the changes that we feel will have the most potential to achieve your objectives. It is important that we work on the tasks that matter most. (the low hanging fruit)

Review & Plan

At the end of each cycle we meet and present the progress and results.

What we did last cycle, the results and the learnings
How much budget we used. And how much budget we have left
What we plan to do next cycle

Implement

Once we have agreed on the priorities to focus on for the next cycle, we will schedule the work to be done. Your MS will develop wireframes provide copywriting, and work with our team of specialists to implement the changes.
Because the project is broken into manageable chunks, there is no waiting around for everything to be complete before pushing the button. As each item in the Project Plan is completed it goes live, and we start to measure the effects.
The more changes we make, the more we learn about your customers, and this quickly leads us towards new ideas for continual improvement.

Measure & Test

Of course, the ideas are just a hypothesis. Even though they might be based on sound theory, best practice, solid data and experience we need to test to ensure it has a positive effect.

Index

1. Results are data driven not based on personal opinion
2. A broad range of specialisation gets results
3. Don't underestimate the importance of planning
4. Changing things can be risky
5. Sometimes we go backwards before we go forwards
6. The best websites evolve
7. We can't guarantee results
8. A tight collaborative partnership built on trust
9. The Zeald Optimisation Process

Zeald Solutions

Fixed price website redesign (Radical) - For when your website has little result, is non-existent or the business has completely changed - the entire thing needs to be completely overhauled and we need to start again
Smart Marketing program (Fixed price monthly) - When you have a set budget to work within and manage each month.
Individual Online marketing services (Fixed price monthly - Adwords, SEO, Social )
Evolutionary CRO website redesign (T&M - minimum hours required) (Website optimisation programme) - Data driven, continual improvement - We split test and optimise the entire conversion pathway over time - Comes with marketing like Adwords.
Website design services (T&M design services) - Personal opinion - Subjective - Third party designers - We will do by the hour. If you’re not comfortable with following the data, and would rather go with your personal design preferences, we are happy to provide general design and build services to you, and you can direct the design yourself. We will provide a time and materials estimate for this.