Hi everyone, me again 👋
To wrap up this roadshow, I’ve brought in the big guns. 💪
@leeann_sverko has been instrumental in helping our customers get the most out of Smart Traffic. Odds are, if you’re using this new feature, you’ve chatted with LeeAnn at one point or another.
LeeAnn is a Customer Success Manager who has spent a large portion of her time meeting one-on-one with customers to help them understand Smart Traffic and answer any and all of their questions. This makes her a goldmine for useful insights, and a perfect candidate for all of our burning questions about Smart Traffic.
Backstory for anyone who is thinking this is brand new information: I’m sharing interviews with some of the masterminds behind Smart Traffic here in the community. We put various Unbouncers in the hot seat and asked them all our burning questions (these questions were curated by the most frequently asked questions that we received from you – brilliant marketers).
Smart Traffic is impressive, but it’s also new, and savvy marketers like yourself aren’t going to blindly switch anything on on your campaigns unless you’ve done your homework.
Now, let’s get to the Q&A!
What are the most common mistakes you see with customers adopting Smart Traffic for the first time?
Ooh, great question! The most common but easy-to-remedy mistake involves skipping two essential tasks when you use Smart Traffic for the first time: turning on Smart Traffic without creating multiple variants, and without setting a conversion goal.
These are the foundations of Smart Traffic success. Without setting up a variant, there’s no content journey to optimize for new audiences. What gets measured gets managed, and so without a conversion goal you won’t be measuring or benchmarking success.
There you have it, two easy ways to start seeing a lift in conversions when you start using Smart Traffic! By diversifying your content and setting goals, Smart Traffic is going to truly show you the value of machine-driven conversion paths.
How many variants should I create to get the most out of Smart Traffic?
As a rule of thumb, I recommend 3-5 variants. Having 3-5 variants gives enough variety that a variant will likely resonate with a visitor, but not too many that Smart Traffic will spend a lot of time continuously learning what works best for different audiences.
You can definitely add more variants, especially if you have more elements you want to test, but it’s important to note that the more variants you have, the more visitors and time it takes Smart Traffic to optimize your content, and serve you with improved conversion rates.
💡 Hint: Need some tips on what to test in variants? Head over to this video: https://learn.unbounce.com/make-more-variants/
How long does it take Smart Traffic to ‘learn’ enough about my visitors?
Time-to-learn is based on the volume of visitors to a page. Each visit to a page will teach the Smart Traffic algorithm more about the preferences of similar audiences, allowing you to create higher and higher converting experiences.
It takes approximately 50 visitors to a variant for Smart Traffic to learn enough about your visitors and start optimizing; so it’s great for relatively low traffic pages!
We know time is one of the most finite and valuable resources our customers have—so don’t let time to learn put you off! It’s super important to note that Smart Traffic is still faster than A/B testing, and has proven to score you up to 30% higher average conversion rate. ! Smart Traffic not only takes the time-consuming guesswork out of variant creation, but as Emily said before me, “Smart Traffic also one-ups an A/B testing approach in that the machine never stops learning, and so it never stops optimizing visitor paths.” We can’t argue with that.
What happens if I create a new variant while Smart Traffic is still in the ‘learning’ phase?
Like all of us as we learn something new; by increasing complexity we get better, but it takes time. You might be able to juggle 3 balls, but adding a 4th will take additional practice to master.
If you create a new variant while Smart Traffic is still in the learning phase it will take Smart Traffic a little longer, (approximately 30 additional visitors), to enter the optimization phase. Additional variants added = more experiences to learn about; but ultimately more optimal conversion results. Practice really does make perfect.
What happens if I make changes to existing variants and republish them during the ‘learning’ phase?
The feature is designed so that you, as a user, always know the status of intelligence of your Smart traffic campaign; moving from “Learning” about a page to “Optimizing” it.
Any time you change a campaign e.g. republish an existing variant or publish of a new variant will make the learning process longer. Smart Traffic needs to relearn about the changes that were made, which it will do with additional visitors and more time.
From what we’ve seen and our customers have told us, it’s best to create all the variants that you want— and watch the magic happen!
Welp, that’s a wrap for our Smart Traffic Q&A Community Roadshow 🚌, it’s been a pleasure interviewing these smartypantses and sharing their insights here in the community.
But don’t worry, if you still have questions and haven’t seen them answered here, you’re more than welcome to post 'em in the thread below. We’re all ears!
Happy Smart Traffic-ing! 🧠