Conversion Conference Chicago 2012 schedule

Monday 25th June 2012

• Keynote Presentation: "Pay Attention: Understanding the Brain's Need for Novelty & Shortcuts"

  by Tim Ash

  Take a wild ride through neuroscience to understand the basic functioning of the brain and how it perceives the world. By understanding the how the brain functions and treats incoming information you will be better equipped to influence your website visitors to complete your conversion action.

  At 9:00am to 9:45am, Monday 25th June

• Beat the Back Button: How to Optimize for Engagement

  by Dan Siroker

  Do you want to optimize for keeping visitors on your site and engaging with your content? Traditional A/B testing tools only allow you to optimize for specific conversion goals: did someone add a product to a shopping cart, download a whitepaper, or filled out a form. In this talk Dan will share the best practices & lessons learned from working with thousands of Optimizely customers who run A/B tests focused on improving engagement. Dan will share key insights from these experiments and leave you inspired to start testing today.

  At 10:15am to 11:00am, Monday 25th June

• Fact or Crap: Putting Optimization Best Practices to the Test

  by Chris Goward

  Want to know what really works in Conversion Optimization? Find out, from tested case studies, which "best practices" are myths and which are true. See examples from companies like Electronic Arts, SAP, BabyAge.com, and Wine Enthusiast how to get dramatic lift in the lead generation, sales conversions and revenue. Whether you are in B2B, B2C, lead gen, e-commerce or affiliate marketing, you will learn something that you can use today.

  At 10:15am to 11:00am, Monday 25th June

• Small Screens, Big Conversions: Insights on Mobile Behavior

  by Ian Everdell

  Conversion actions are different on mobile devices than on a desktop. Using the latest eye-tracking technology, this session will give you new insights into some of the key behavioral nuances that exist in the mobile environment. Learn how people interact with hand-held devices and get practical tips you can leverage to address the challenges that exist when users try to complete a conversion action on a small screen.

  At 11:15am to 12:00pm, Monday 25th June

• Testing+Analytics: A Detailed Formula for Anticipating User Behavior

  by Eric J. Hansen

  If you're wondering how to combine your testing efforts with your web analytics data, you've come to the right session. There's a natural relationship between testing and analytics: one is designed to drive improvements on your site and the other to help measure user behavior so that those improvements can be quantified. Eric J. Hansen, Founder and CEO of web/mobile optimization firm SiteSpect, will discuss key considerations in the integration between testing and analytics.

  At 11:15am to 12:00pm, Monday 25th June

• Moving the Needle: Test What Matters

  by Keith Hagen

  With a myriad of conversion optimization tools, it is easy to get hung up on technology when you should be focused on gaining insights. Learn several powerful ways to gain meaningful insights into what is and is not working on a website. Once you have this, deciding what to test is easy, and the quality of results always follows the quality of the insights.

  At 1:15pm to 2:00pm, Monday 25th June

• Recovering Abandoned Shopping Carts & Web Forms

  by Charles Nicholls

  On average 70% of visitors that place items in their shopping carts do not complete the process. Equally, 65% of visitors that start a web form do not complete the form. Email remarketing programs can recover up to half of these abandoners, boosting conversion rates significantly. This presentation draws on extensive analysis of email remarketing campaigns to show you how to make these programs deliver significantly more conversions. Using examples and split tests, this 'how to' session covers what to send, when to send it, and how to use promotions without cannibalizing future sales.

  At 1:15pm to 2:00pm, Monday 25th June

• End-to-End Conversion: From Acquisition to Repeat Customer

  by Ben Hunt

  What's the difference between an ordinary web site and a great one? This session will present a collection of simple yet powerful solutions involving design, copy, appropriate analysis, classic optimization techniques, and targeted testing. Learn the "Multiplicity" model that will help you attrack more targeted visitors, provide a personalized user experience and maximize your click-through and conversion rates. This is the perfect session for anyone new to conversion rate optimization who wants to see how all the pieces fit together.

  At 2:15pm to 3:00pm, Monday 25th June

• The Matrix: Getting the Right People Through the Right Activities with Ease

  by Brian Lewis

  If you're not utilizing Use Case Analysis to guide your site design and information architecture, you're likely frustrating visitors, depressing conversion and wasting marketing dollars. In this session, you'll learn what Use Cases are, why they're an integral step in the design process and how to use them to create a conversion-optimized site. You'll also learn how Use Cases can help you successfully harvest visitor intent that lead to higher conversions.

  At 2:15pm to 3:00pm, Monday 25th June

• Channeling Cialdini: How Persuasive Messaging Increased Click to Cart by 40%

  by Phillip Klien

  Behavioral psychology and stimulating the "lizard brain" is emerging as one of the hottest topics in conversion optimization. This session presents the case study of an über-optimized web site with over $200 million in sales, and how it used persuasive messaging to drive an increase of 40% on their click-to-cart KPI. Using Robert Cialdini's six weapons of influence as the foundation of their strategy, this consumer goods e-commerce powerhouse (that had already maxed-out the traditional conversion rate optimization strategies) moved the needle by tapping into the subconscious mind of its visitors. Come see how these principles work, and what you can do to leverage them in your messaging for dramatic results.

  At 3:30pm to 4:15pm, Monday 25th June

• The Top 10 Things Every Designer Needs to Know About People

  by Susan Weinschenk

  You design to elicit responses from people. You want them to buy, read, register, and take action of some kind. Designing without understanding about people is like exploring a new city without a map: results will be haphazard, confusing, and inefficient. From her book, 100 Things Every Designer Needs To Know About People, Dr. Weinschenk has picked her top 10 "things" that every web designer needs to know in order to design intuitive and engaging websites that match the way people think.

  At 3:30pm to 4:15pm, Monday 25th June

• Afternoon at the Improv: Live Website & Landing Page Reviews

  by Charles Nicholls and Tim Ash

  Know your landing page has problems, but don't know where to start? Here's your chance to get some free conversion advice from the experts. This session, always a Conversion Conference favorite, is fast-paced, unpredictable, and fun. Our conversion and usability experts will provide live, spontaneous assessments of attendee web sites, along with actionable advice on changes that could have an immediate impact on conversions. Whether you submit your site for review, or watch while your colleagues take the heat, there's no better way to see conversion best practices in action. You don't want to miss this session!

  At 4:30pm to 5:30pm, Monday 25th June

Tuesday 26th June 2012

• Keynote Presentation: 'Power Selling: Absolutely Essential Tips for Moving Visitors to Action"

  by Amy Africa

  Regardless what action you want your website visitors to take, this session will give you the information you need to generate leads, drive sales and increase the ROI of your online marketing.
  Amy Africa, the leader in driving web usability through ground-breaking research, reveals how people navigate websites and what you absolutely need to know for increasing conversions on your site. She'll share the facts about selling on the web, including:

  How navigation is designed to leverage the way people's eyes move across the web page
  How and where visuals should be placed on the page
  How to use triggers that spur customers to action
  How to keep customers engaged from entry through purchase

  Amy will share her extensive experience and insight gained from years of website design and research in a straight-forward style that cuts through the jargon and gets right to the point - how to build a website that drives profit.

  At 8:45am to 9:45am, Tuesday 26th June

• Busting Barriers: How to Overcome Testing Program Obstacles

  by Mary D'Alatri

  Mary will identify four common hurdles to landing page testing and present real world examples of how to overcome them. - Knowing where to start - How to get out of a testing rut - Testing in a multi-media world - Building a long-term testing strategy / Attendees will take away key strategies to overcome the common testing hurdles and a roadmap to creating a testing culture within their organization. Real-world cases will be presented.

  At 10:15am to 11:00am, Tuesday 26th June

• Social Persuasion: Selling More Through Influence & Authority

  by John Lawson

  When it comes to social media, you don't just want to be part of the conversation, you want to be heard, repeated, valued and influential. Learn the 6 weapons of influence and the 5 methods for transactional success in online commerce. This session is a must for any small retailer trying to compete online.

  At 10:15am to 11:00am, Tuesday 26th June

• Making the Connection: Anatomy of a Linked-In Group Conversion

  by JD Gershbein

  People join LinkedIn groups for various reasons. Whether aligned with business pursuits, personal interests, alumni organizations, or other affiliations, the goal is to build relationships. The groups are where salespeople can locate and qualify prospects; where entrepreneurs can find their angel investors; where C-level executives can receive peer guidance and advance thought leadership; where recruiters can tap the talent pool and, reciprocally, where job seekers can connect with others who can propel them forward in their search. In this informative and eye-opening presentation, J.D. Gershbein will take you through the steps for successful LinkedIn group conversion, focusing on specific touch points and communication strategies that influence decision-making and drive dollars.

  At 11:15am to 12:00pm, Tuesday 26th June

• Using Psychology to Increase Conversion at PayPal

  by Jim Hudson

  Last year PayPal processed more than $100,000,000,000 in payments to our merchants. At this scale, a 1% improvement in conversion means a lot more money in our merchants' pockets. In this talk, we'll examine some of the psychological principles that drive our efforts to maximize conversion for our merchants. For example, a long history of psychological research has shown that our brains are incredibly poor at perceiving time. In fact, our perceptions of time affect our experiences far more than time itself. In other words, the number of clicks or the time on task is largely irrelevant as long as a task feels fast. Drawing on examples from PayPal and other websites, we'll look at how these fundamentals of human psychology can structure our thinking about how to improve task conversion.

  At 11:15am to 12:00pm, Tuesday 26th June

• Guerrilla Research: Thrifty Usability Methods That Work

  by Russ Unger

  This session will cover a number of low cost, yet powerful research methods to help you make better data-driven design decisions. You'll learn techniques for recruiting research participants, performing research on a restrictive time and financial budget, and what to do with your data once you've conducted your research. Get tips for selling guerrilla research into a project from the start, designing better research questions and how to conduct inexpensive, quick, and highly effective research even when time and budget are limited. You'll walk away with tons of valuable "how-tos" for executing guerilla usability research, as well as a clear understanding of how these approaches compare to more traditional research methods.

  At 1:15pm to 2:00pm, Tuesday 26th June

• Persona > Intent > Content > Action: The B2B Success Framework

  by Chris Pinkerton

  B2B companies have two very critical conversion paths: one is fast and the other is complex. Through a clear understanding of your customers' buying behavior, you can create a digital environment that will match your site content to your users' intent to ensure that you're driving the right type of action for each visitor. This session will provide actionable tips to optimize both the 'Fastest Path to Purchase' and 'Complex Sale' conversions. Learn how to create an environment that can facilitate both conversion types, and see examples of this approach in action.

  At 1:15pm to 2:00pm, Tuesday 26th June

• Powerful, Low Cost Video Marketing Strategies To Improve Conversion

  by Arnie Kuenn

  Today's internet marketing strategy should enhance and support your business' overall marketing objectives, including getting more leads and business from every website visitor. Creating video content that gets a visitor to act is critical to your online business. How do you get started using video as part of your marketing strategy? Join Arnie to learn how to create powerful, low cost video to grow your business.

  At 2:15pm to 3:00pm, Tuesday 26th June

• Testing A/B/Cs: Constructing Winning Tests from Concept to Conversion

  by Justin Rondeau

  Testing is a balancing act between cold hard statistics and innovation. In this session, Justin will run through the testing steps necessary for identifying what elements to test, what variables to develop, constructing and measuring your A/B tests. This session is geared toward testing professionals who really want to develop a systematic approach to their conversion optimization efforts through A/B tests, by reviewing the iterative testing process coupled with real-life testing examples.

  At 2:15pm to 3:00pm, Tuesday 26th June

• Innovative Retargeting Strategies for Converting More from Paid Campaigns

  by Libardo Lambrano

  With more than 400,000 visits per day, www.univision.com is the most visited Hispanic site in the US. Through a partnership with Mastercard, Univision launched a second site, www.univisiontarjeta.com, to promote a prepaid bank card. Early efforts to drive traffic to the new site had limited traction, so the organization initiated a retargeting campaign directed at its main site traction. This case study will outline the steps Univision took to increase its remarketing list from 16,000 to 7.1 million, and present ideas on how other publishing sites can create value-added traffic for advertisers targeting specific audiences. You'll also see how Univision increased conversions on the new site by 2% by optimizing the page layout, navigation and enrollment flow. You don't need to manage a publishing site to get lots of innovative ideas from this session.

  At 3:30pm to 4:15pm, Tuesday 26th June

• Killer Copy: Why Words Matter & How to Make Yours Work

  by Brian Massey

  Much has been written, and taught, about writing great marketing copy. But this session will go beyond style, tone, and engagement. Conversion copy - words that persuade a person to take a desired action - is a unique combination of science and art that is critical at all stages of your campaign. If you want to produce irresistible offers, headlines, subject lines and content, you need to know what makes killer conversion copy get past your readers' natural mental filters. Whether you write copy or manage people who do, you'll leave knowing exactly how to create copy for all elements of your campaign that moves readers to action.

  At 3:30pm to 4:15pm, Tuesday 26th June

• Ten Usability Bloopers You're Probably Making

  by Michael Summers

  Michael has watched over 1000 web and mobile device purchases. Using examples from sites of actual conference attendees, he'll demonstrate 10 of the top usability mistakes that cause users to leave your website and shop elsewhere. Come see specific eyetracking video examples of UI characteristics that stop users in their tracks – and learn how to avoid them.

  At 4:30pm to 5:30pm, Tuesday 26th June

Wednesday 27th June 2012

• Half-Day Workshop: Landing Page Optimization Intensive

  by Tim Ash

  Landing page optimization expert and SiteTuners.com CEO Tim Ash will help you to improve conversions by applying "The Matrix" methodology to your landing page or website. The Matrix is a framework for understanding your audience from a user-centered design perspective, and ensures that you will consistently get the more of right people through the right activities in the right order.

  Note: Requires separate registration. For more info, see http://www.conversionconference....

  At 9:00am to 1:00pm, Wednesday 27th June