Skip to main content

Methodology

We use the principles of science to help our clients to learn, grow, save money and make smart decisions.

6

steps to growth

Step 1: We understand your world – your business, your objectives and KPIs you want to achieve

Step 2: We understand your customer’s world using data – quantitative and qualitative. Lots of it.

Step 3: We’re good at research and getting inside the heads of your users, but we always test our hypotheses.

Step 4: We build an Experimentation Roadmap, share this with you and get buy-in.

Step 5: Experiment. Learn. Repeat. We test at high velocity, We test bold things, we test small changes. We always learn.

Step 6: Scale. We take this approach into other parts of the business. Experimentation is not a department. It’s an approach to growing businesses. Ask Jeff Bezos.

Overview

Experimentation delivers exponential growth

Companies like Amazon, Netflix and Booking.com frequently cite experimentation as central to their growth.

Creating an index of those companies that demonstrate a culture of experimentation, and those that don’t – Bloomberg compares the share price of these two indices.

Bloomberg found those who experiment significantly outperform the average in the S&P500.

Client Success

Whether your sales have flatlined or whether you believe your website is bleeding lost revenue we can help.

We’d done the easy stuff, we needed to up our game…

“The research that they did, and the insight that we got was probably the best that I’ve seen in my 15 years
in e-commerce.”

Ben Harness, Dunelm

Ben Harness

Director of Multi-Channel
Dunelm

Our methodology in detail

People buy stuff because they have needs. Theodore Levitt explained it best: you don’t buy a drill, but a hole in the wall. Needs could be functional (I need a desk for my computer), emotional (a standup desk will be good for my health) or social (an expensive-looking desk in my office will impress others).

The sales conversation looks different in each of these scenarios.

Of course we also want things that we don’t actually need. Dr David Lewis, a neuroscientist who studies consumer decision-making, has suggested that the vast majority of purchases happen when those wants evolve into needs. He mentions as an example the teenager for whom it is essential to be seen in the latest style. This has a major bearing on buyer motivation, which determines likelihood to purchase.

Again, the sales conversation looks very different depending on the level of motivation.

It’s tempting to obsess, as many do, over the experience (user experience, customer experience, digital experience – all common buzz phrases). Often that’s shorthand for making changes to the user interface. You can optimise the interface all you like, but unless you understand what is happening in the mind of the prospect, the results will always be modest.

To get good results consistently over time, you have to optimise the sales conversation. To do that, you have to peek inside the mind of the customer. Because there’s a difference between what people say and what they do, we use 32 different research techniques to give us a clear picture of your customer’s world. Without those insights, you’ll always be simply moving stuff around the page without making a real impact.

Nobody can predict the business impact of an idea. Harvard Business School found even the most experienced managers, backed by super talented teams, get it wrong 9 out of 10 times. This is why every core assumption is validated by running a controlled experiment. Most people are familiar with a/b-testing, but we use different types of experiments depending on the situation. Bloomberg, Forresters and other researchers have reported a link between experimentation and growth.

Some of our clients

78% of our business comes through word of mouth recommendation.

Canon
Interflora
Nike
LYCO
Woolworths
Pet Drugs Online
World Remit
Russell & Bromley
Dunelm

If your CRO programme is not delivering the highest ROI of all of your marketing spend, then we should talk.