Creating content is important, but let’s face it, sometimes it’s difficult to come up with new content ideas. When you get to that inevitable stuck point, review this list to help trigger your next brilliant content idea.
1. List Article
Seeing as how this very article is a list article (sometimes referred to as a listicle) it seems to be a fitting item to start off our list. Creating a list article is simple, you choose a topic that allows you to outline multiple options. Each of those options then become a list item. The articles almost always start with a number such as 9 Incredible Ways To…, 16 Super Simple Things You Can Do To…, or The 6 Cheapest Tools To…. Titles with a number have also been shown to be one of the most commonly shared pieces of content on social media.
2. Debunking Myths
Every industry has myths. Highlight some of the common myths and reveal the truth behind the myths. You can also take the opposite route and create an article about facts. Or, you can mix the two together with an article that lists statements and then reveals if each item is factual or a myth.
3. Bizarre Holidays
There are a ton of bizarre holidays. From National Beer Day to Hairstyle Appreciation Day there is a bizarre holiday to fit almost every industry. Review the bizarre holidays and identify any that can be related to your business. Keep track of those holidays on your editorial calendar. You can create a content piece around that topic and inform your readers about the holiday.
4. Interview Experts
Interview experts in your industry. For your content piece, you can interview one or more experts. A popular method to gather this content is to prepare your questions ahead of time. Then determine the experts you’d like to interview. Contact them either via e-mail or social media and explain the situation. Let them know that you’re writing an article about a particular topic and you’re looking for experts to share their opinions. Give them a question or set of questions you’ve put together and let them know you’d love to include their opinion in the article if they have time to respond by your deadline. When your article is finished, reach out to each expert referenced in the article. Thank them for participating and provide the link. They will typically want to share the interview with their followers.
5. Build a Glossary or Complete Guide
Create a useful resource specific to your industry. Create a glossary defining terms, acronyms, and jargon commonly used in your business. Or, you can choose a specific topic within your business and create a complete guide explaining exactly how to do that particular item. If you decide to create either of these content ideas, make sure they are detailed, beautiful, and meaningful. If they are, they will get shared and be a wonderful source of backlinks.
6. Share a Study or Survey
Create a content piece using unique research. The simplest way to do this is to send a survey to your users and then share the results in an article. You can also share a case study. Interview a user that has been very successful with your product and outline the experience and successes. Users naturally want to share this type of content with others.
7. Post Reviews of Industry Items
Review items related to your field. This can be applied to physical items or digital items. You can review apps, software services, or physical goods. You can write an extensive review on one item, or create a comparison guide which reviews the pros and cons of multiple similar items.
8. Infographics
Infographics combine data with visuals. Infographics are shared more often than list articles. You may already have content with a lot of data that you can build into an infographic. If you don’t have design experience, you can build an infographic easily using Canva.
How do seasonal trends affect business in your industry? Are you in the health or beauty industry? How do the seasons affect skin care or allergies? And for the fitness industry, new years resolutions and bathing suit months can cause seasonality trends. There’s also the more obvious seasonal trends such as the holiday gift giving rush for e-commerce shops. Write content specific to the time of year. Try and write this towards the beginning of the season so you can share it throughout the season.
10. Industry Updates
Keep your audience up to date with the industry in general. Things are always changing, make it easy for your users to stay up to date on current trends and best practices.
11. Top News Stories
Need even more content ideas? Share current events and highly discussed news stories. Give your opinion and unique point of view on the situation. Don’t just copy and paste the same story but add value to it.
12. New Product Updates
You can also write content highlighting updates to your product. Of course, you only want this to be a small percentage of your content. However, it is valuable for your users to stay updated with changes to your product. It could also be beneficial to create tutorials and guides to help users get the full potential out of your product features.
Hopefully these content ideas will help provide inspiration for your next post. Do you have an idea for an article not mentioned on this list? Let us know in the comments.
Do you want to listen to this article? Here’s the podcast episode:
There’s nothing quite like the excitement of running a split test. In fact, the excitement always seems to generate a flurry of great ideas for the next test. How do you organize and prioritize all of these thoughts into actionable test ideas? You create a conversion test scoring system.
What is a Conversion Test Scoring System?
The important thing to know about a conversion test scoring system is that it organizes, clarifies, and prioritizes your split test ideas. The actual system can vary depending on your business. Several industry leaders have documented their systems for scoring conversion test ideas, including Optimizely and Chris Goward. The conversion test scoring system I’m going to outline is a combination of those systems. It’s meant to be easy to use with simple yes/no questions. With this system the hardest part is coming up with the hypothesis, determining the prioritization is quick and simple.
How to Create a Conversion Test Scoring System
Chris Goward’s system uses a simple formula where you put in a value for the potential (P), importance (I), and ease (E) for each idea. The result is a numeric value representing the average of those numbers, PIE. This is a nice system and a great way to think about your test ideas. However, the problem I’ve had with this system is it’s subjective. I’ve found that the PIE metric doesn’t accurately prioritize the test ideas unless I review and adjust the parameters for each test every time. The values seem to vary depending on my mood, data from recent split tests, and changes to business priorities. So, it’s important to review and update all metrics when any new data is added.
Optimizely has created a different system. Their system looks at ten different rules. If a test idea meets a rule, it gets one point, otherwise it’s assigned zero points. The points are added together and the idea with the largest sum is the highest priority.
I liked the idea behind Chris Goward’s system, and the simplicity of a yes/no system introduced by Optimizely, so I made a system that combines these two great tactics.
This combined system looks at a total of nine rules that are assigned one point if an idea meets the requirement, and zero points if it does not. Three of the rules identify the potential, four of the rules determine the importance, and two of the rules measure the ease. We then calculate a PIE metric by taking the sum of the average of the three categories, and dividing by 3.
Category
Rule
1 Point
0 Points
Potential
Fold
Makes a change above the fold
Makes a change below the fold
New Information
Adds new information or a new element or removes an element from the page
Makes a change to the existing elements (copy, color, UI, etc.)
Benchmark
Borrows from a success on one of our prior experiments
No benchmarking best practice
Importance
Main Metric
Supports our main metric (such as payment)
Supports a secondary metric (such as subscribe or share)
Location
Tests a change at the end of the funnel process
Tests a change located on a landing page, or top of the funnel
Targeting
Targets 100% of users
Targets a subset of users
PPC
Could help reduce the CPA for PPC campaigns
Has no impact on PPC
Ease
No Developer
Doesn’t require a developer to implement
Requires a developer
Length
Can be implemented in an hour or less
Would take more than an hour to implement
The rules you follow could vary depending on your product. The important thing to remember is to determine the rules you want to follow to calculate the potential, importance, and ease of your test ideas. Creating concrete rules will allow you to determine the PIE metric without being subjective.
Additional Items to Include with the System
Creating and following the rules to score your test ideas is important. Of course, there is a little more to a conversion test scoring system than just the rules outlined above. Let’s discuss some of the additional fields you should include.
Submitted By
I always like to include a column that documents who submitted the test idea. This helps establish a data-driven culture in your workplace. It’s important to encourage everyone at the office to submit test ideas. If the test is implemented, share the results and findings with the person who submitted the idea. If a test is successful, you can share the results with the entire company and give some credit to the idea submitter.
Hypothesis
The test idea should be written in the form of a hypothesis. The idea should be structured in an If…,then… statement. Creating a hypothesis helps you identify the underlying reason you are performing your test.
Action
Once you have a hypothesis, you can identify the specific action you want to take to test the hypothesis. Structuring it in this manner provides an easy way to progress after a failed experiment. If a test fails, the action you took wasn’t the correct one. But, do you still believe in the hypothesis? If so, determine another action you can make to test the hypothesis.
Page / Location
Document the specific page you will be testing.
KPI
Identify the Key Performance Indicator (KPI). This will be the main metric you track to determine if the test was successful or not. It’s best practice to track multiple KPIs, but you need to understand the primary KPI this test will affect.
Keep in mind, you want to choose a KPI directly related to the test idea. If the idea tests an element on the homepage which is at the very top of the funnel, choosing payment or a KPI that triggers at the end of the funnel is likely not a good choice. Users will encounter many other variables in the middle of the funnel that could skew the data.
How to Calculate PIE
So, now you have documented the person who submitted the idea, created the hypothesis and action, determined the page and KPI, and determined if each rule receives one or zero points. Now, the PIE metric to determine the priority needs to be calculated.
PIE=((((Value of Fold + New Information + Benchmark)*10)/3)+(((Value of Main Metric + Location + Targeting + PPC)*10)/4)+(((Value of No Developer + Length)*10)/2))/3
The PIE calculation can vary depending on how you adjust the rules. You want to calculate it by taking the sum of all values within each category and multiplying the result by ten. Then you divide the result by the number of values within the category. You add the calculated value for each of the three categories, and then divide it by three. Once you have the final metric, you’ll want to sort the list from highest to lowest value. The higher the PIE metric, the higher the priority of the idea.
As ClearPath was stepping closer and closer to a product we were eager to share with the public, we knew we needed to start gathering beta testers. We knew we’d need a group of users willing to test our product and provide us feedback in exchange for free access. If you do a quick Google search, or ask around, you quickly learn that being featured on BetaList.com is the best way to accomplish that. With that knowledge, our BetaList journey began and we were determined to get ClearPath featured.
The First Step to Being Featured on BetaList
We read through all of the BetaList FAQs and selection criteria. We were confident that ClearPath met every requirement and with much anticipation we submitted our startup.
When we submitted ClearPath initially, this was what the homepage looked like:
Once we pressed submit, we just sat back and waited for our acceptance email.
Unfortunately, we received our notice but it was of rejection. However, they were nice enough to include a reason. The reason they provided was:
Our audience places a high value on clean, refined and user-friendly designs. Based on our experience having featured thousands of startups we feel your homepage design would provide disappointing results. Design is a tricky topic and we wish we could point to specific parts to change, but it’s more the overall look and feel which is very difficult to say anything productive about over email.
I, of course, was disappointed. Yet, I really appreciated this feedback and opportunity for improvement. Our design was custom, and fairly clean, but there were certainly areas that could be improved. The site was text heavy, and contained mainly stock images.
Learning from Reject #1
I decided to review the look and feel of every site featured on BetaList at that time. What I found was that most of the sites did look very modern. Most of the designs were full-width and had nice parallax scrolling effects. I saw a lot of videos and product screen shots. I also noticed on the actual BetaList listings, most of the startups had multiple images featured and the images weren’t just homepage screenshots.
We applied as much of this feedback as we could to ClearPath. We changed the design to be full-width. We created custom images and broke the text out so it wasn’t as concentrated in one section. We improved the header by adding an image of our product in the background and bringing more attention to the call-to-action. We even created an explainer video for users who don’t want to read.
At this point, this is what the ClearPath homepage looked like:
We decided, once again, that ClearPath met every criteria and we were ready to re-submit. This time, we decided to include some featured images with our listing submission. We added the homepage to a desktop and mobile phone, we added screen shots of the product, we altered a stock photo of a hand holding a phone to include a ClearPath screen shot. We also decided to pay to expedite the process. BetaList makes it clear that paying doesn’t improve your chances of being selected, but we figured it couldn’t hurt. We mainly decided to pay because we liked the idea of being featured during a weekday.
Once again, we waited for approval. And, once again, we received a rejection notice. This notice also included a reason, but the reason was identical to the one we received in the first email.
At this point, we started to become a little frustrated. I was under the impression that BetaList only allowed you to re-submit once. However, the email said I could re-submit again and when I logged into my BetaList dashboard the re-submit button was certainly still there. So, I decided this time I’ll do my research and get this approved once and for all.
Another Rejection – Another Opportunity on the BetaList Journey
I was surprised how little information I found on the BetaList approval process. What I did learn was the BetaList team is very small, only a few people. That made me think that it’s very likely the same person reviewed the site both times. Because of that, we made some optimizations to the caching. We wanted to ensure the next time it was reviewed, the reviewer wouldn’t see a cached version instead of the current version with all of our changes.
We decided to start asking around. We asked people what they thought of the design and the homepage overall. In general, we got positive responses, which felt good but wasn’t all that helpful. The most helpful criticism we heard was the message wasn’t very compelling. We decided to focus on the messaging this time and highlight exactly how ClearPath will help you.
We re-arranged items, added some custom icons, and added content in an attempt to explain the ClearPath value proposition. This time, when we re-submitted we took advantage of a little box that provides the opportunity to communicate with the BetaList team. The box says that you can leave a joke or a comment and the information will not be visible to the public. I took this opportunity to thank the BetaList team. I let them know that I, of course, would like ClearPath to be accepted, but even if it isn’t, the process has already provided us so much value. I wasn’t just sucking up, I was being honest. Our homepage was looking much better and I was really happy with the progress we had made.
Here is what the ClearPath homepage looked like at this stage:
We got rejected again, for the third time. But, this time the reason they included was more helpful. The reason they provided for the rejection this time said:
Your landing page is based on a template or does not have a distinct enough design. For a landing page to do well on BetaList it needs to either have real product images or have a distinct design that sets it apart from other startups.
One Final Attempt to Get Past Rejection
Our landing page was not based on a template, but the message was simple. We needed to add product images. We did have a product image in the background of the header, but clearly that wasn’t obvious enough. So we made one more change to our homepage and added a step-by-step guide on how it works with screen shots of every step. We put this right at the top, below the header, so it was still above-the-fold.
This is what those changes looked like:
We updated our featured images. And this time we decided to add a joke to the private message box. The joke we added was:
Why was the SEO expert so furious on his way to work? Too much traffic!
In addition to the joke, we thanked them once again and asked that they please let us know if they have any feedback.
The Result from Our BetaList Journey
To our surprise, only days after re-submitting, we were featured on BetaList! We were listed at the top of the email blast, and they tweeted about ClearPath. The tweet received 173 retweets and 26 likes. So far, we have received 42 beta requests and more come in every day.
And the best part, the beta requests we have received seem to be from users who are interested and likely to engage. We took the advice from BetaList after we were featured, and sent out a welcome email to thank those users for their interest. So far, our welcome email has a 54% open rate. The email also included a link to follow us on twitter, 7.3% of the respondents took that action and now follow our twitter account.
We were very happy with our BetaList journey. We have already learned a lot just from the process. We are excited to share ClearPath with these beta testers and eager to learn from the feedback they provide us.
Do you have a BetaList journey you’d like to share? Please add it in the comments.
Improving SEO and getting people to visit your website is only half of the puzzle. Once they get there, you want to make sure they convert. Increasing conversion rate should be a priority for your website to ensure you get the most value from the traffic you’re receiving. We’ll outline the conversion optimization tools that will help you identify where you may be losing visitors. These are the tools you’ll want to leverage to improve conversion rates.
Heatmaps
Heatmaps visually indicate where your website visitors move their mouse, click, and scroll. Mouse movement is a good indicator of where people are looking. Often, where the mouse goes is where the eyes go.
Viewing clicks and scroll data can help you decide how to optimize your page layout. The data allows you to understand what people see and where they click. Is your primary call-to-action visible in the area the majority of people see? Do people have to scroll to see your call-to-action? If so, what percentage of people are doing that? Look where people are clicking too. Are they clicking on an element that isn’t clickable? This means they probably want some more information on this topic. Either add the information to this page or create a new page and add a link where people are already clicking.
This data allows you to rearrange your pages and format them in a manner that makes the most sense for your website visitors.
The tool I use to view this data is Hotjar. They provide heatmaps for mouse movement, clicks, and scrolls. They separate the heatmaps by desktop, tablet, and mobile too. Hotjar also includes many other features which are useful conversion optimization tools; a few of those will be discussed later in this article.
If you’d rather use a standalone heatmap tool, CrazyEgg is a great choice. CrazyEgg allows you to see click and scroll heatmaps as well as what they refer to as a confetti map. The confetti map allows you to color code the clicks based on parameters such as referring site, time of day, day of week, and new versus returning. It is a helpful way to determine how a particular segment behaves.
Browser Testing
Verifying that your site runs properly across all popular browsers will save your website visitors a lot of headache. If you only test in one browser it’s possible that there’s an equally popular browser where your main call-to-action doesn’t work properly. If there’s a functionality issue with your site the majority of people will just leave and find a different site. The few people that remain will become frustrated and annoyed.
Before you start reviewing your website on different browsers, check to see what the most popular browser and screen resolutions are for your website visitors. You can do this by reviewing your Google Analytics data. You can determine which browsers are the most popular by going to Audience > Technology > Browser & OS. In that same report, you can adjust the Primary Dimension to Screen Resolution to view the most popular screen resolutions as well. Once you have this data, you’ll be able to confirm the specific browsers and resolutions that the majority of your website visitors view look and function as expected.
To check how your site works in different browsers, the best way to do it is open up those various browsers and take a look. If you need to test on a browser that you don’t have access to, you can leverage a paid tool such as CrossBrowserTesting. With CrossBrowserTesting, you can check compatibility with different browsers and operating systems. You can either do a live test where you can navigate your website or get snapshots of all the popular browser/OS configurations for a particular URL.
There are a few options to check various screen resolutions. If you already have the paid CrossBrowserTesting tool discussed above, you can use that. Otherwise there are a few free options.
You can test screen resolutions directly in Google Chrome. Visit the page you want to test. Then right click and select Inspect. Then either click the Toggle device toolbar icon or press ctrl + shift + M. At the top of that interface you’ll be able to select a device from the dropdown or input a custom resolution.
You can also use Responsinator or Screenfly to view screen resolutions. In both, you enter in the URL you’d like to review then just scroll down and it displays the page in several different resolutions.
User Testing
It’s important to ask real people what they think. Test your assumptions and make iterative changes based on your community.
There are a variety of user testing tools that you can leverage to make it easy to communicate with people. We’ll go over some of the popular tools, but regardless of the tool you use there are a few principles you should be aware of.
Provide specific tasks. You aren’t looking for people to give their opinions. Instead, you want to observe how website visitors perform a particular action. Then, you can decide if that matches your assumptions or how you can improve the experience.
A task can range from using the internal site search to registering for the product. You can ask people to gauge their initial impressions. You can have them explain what they think the product is that you sell based on your homepage. Or, find out if they trust your website and believe it’s secure.
Also, when performing user tests, you don’t need to stop at your own website. You can use user testing for competitor research. There are no domain limitations so you can conduct reviews of competitors’ sites too.
On any user test, you want to review at least 3-5 people to get useful results. Any less than that and it’s harder to identify patterns and changes that will have a large impact. If you have the budget and time, more data (more tests) can be helpful.
UserTesting.com and TryMyUI are robust tools that allow you to structure a user test for their users to perform. UserTesting.com is pricey so you’ll want to make sure you have a large marketing budget and time dedicated to review tests and implement changes. TryMyUI is a nice alternative to get started with a smaller budget. The videos you receive back from these tools are about 15 minutes long. You also receive short text responses.
UsabilityHub is a great choice to do user testing with almost no money. You can perform a test for as low as $1 per user. The interface is not as robust as the previously mentioned tools. Instead of watching how users navigate your site, they view an image you’ve uploaded for them to answer specific questions. These tests take about 2 minutes and you receive back just text answers.
If you specifically want to test your navigation or website hierarchy, check out Optimal Workshop. Their Treejack and Optimal Sort tools can help provide insight as to what structure makes the most sense to your users.
If you want to perform user tests using your own community you can use Hotjar to recruit testers. Then, you can use these tools to capture the tests with your own audience instead of theirs.
User Feedback
Ask for feedback from visitors that are on your site or have previously converted. You can do this with polls and surveys.
Feedback polls can be placed on particular pages or appear after a certain amount of time. You can use them to ask questions about the user’s hesitation (what is preventing you from purchasing?) or inquire about what led to a recent conversion (what made you decide to buy?).
Surveys can be used similarly to polls. After a user converts you can send them a survey to better understand what influenced their decision. You can also ask what the primary benefit was that they received from your product. Learning the biggest benefit from the customer’s perspective can help you shape your marketing text into highlighting customer benefits.
You can also survey users that abandoned their cart and didn’t convert. This is a good way to identify some customer pain points and hopefully identify ways to overcome them.
As far as tools go, Qualaroo specializes in feedback polls and SurveyMonkey specializes in surveys. They are both great tools. As another option, Hotjar offers both feedback polls and surveys as part of their conversion optimization tools.
Visitor Recordings
Record actual site visitors to see how they use your site. These videos can help you identify usability issues. You won’t be able to hear the user and understand the thought process like a you would with a user test, but you’ll gain valuable insight by watching real visitors.
There are a number of tools you can use for this. ClickTale is a nice robust tool that you can use to capture visitor recordings, but it also has a hefty price tag. If money is no issue, then ClickTale is a great tool to use. If you’re looking for something more cost efficient, both SessionCam and Hotjar are great choices.
Split Testing
Split testing is when you have two or more variations of your site live at the same time and gather data to determine which variation converts higher. The variation can be as small as one button on one page to as large as entire brand overhaul across the entire site. Running split tests on your site removes any doubt about which image, button, headline, or any other variable performs best.
There are a few different tools you can use to perform split tests. My favorite split testing tool is Google Optimize. Google Optimize allows you to run split tests without involving a programmer. You can edit or rearrange text and images. You can manipulate your site in order to create test variations without any coding knowledge required.
Once you start the test you’ll have graphs and data for each goal you’ve set. Goals are easily selected from your Google Analytics account. You’ll be able to review data both in Google Optimize and Google Analytics. This data can help determine a winner or understand why a test failed.
Google Optimize is available for free. If you have the budget, there are a few other split testing tools that are worth using. Optimizely and VWO are both great options.
Make Sure Your Test Results are Significant
Regardless of which tool you choose, remember, don’t end your split test until your results are statistically significant. Google Optimize will notify you when you’ve reached a statistical significance, but you still need to make sure your sample size is large enough.
For your results to be the most accurate you’ll want to run the test for a minimum of one week. Only stop the test in full week increments so the data isn’t skewed due to traffic inconsistencies based on the day. You’ll want to run tests for a maximum of 4-6 weeks because users start to delete cookies after that range and your results will begin to deteriorate.
If your website doesn’t convert at least 500 visitors per month it will be difficult for you to reach a statistical significance. To optimize a site with low traffic, use the other tools mentioned above and make changes based on them until your traffic is large enough to run split tests.
And remember, as you come across new test ideas always document them so you can prioritize split test ideas easily. Even if you don’t have enough traffic to test now, you’ll want to implement these tests soon.
Which conversion optimization tools could you not live without? Leave a comment and let me know!
Do you want to listen to this article? Here’s the podcast episode:
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