PrintAbout grew in a short time from a webshop for the Netherlands and Belgium to a platform active in Germany, France and Austria. Together with Online Dialogue, PrintAbout made the professionalization step necessary to make this international step manageable.
In short: a clear example of how to CRO can professionalize for international growth.
Harold Rijsdijk is Webshop & Conversion Manager at PrintAbout. In this role he is responsible for the webshop, the CRO program and international expansion. With a background in behavior and experimentation, he strongly believes in the power of iteration: small short-term improvements that add up to long-term structural impact.
‘CRO energizes: with sometimes small subtle changes you make a big difference.’ - Harold Rijsdijk
PrintAbout is the webshop for everything around printers: from hardware to cartridges and cables. The strategy revolves around promoting the house brand, quality equivalent to A-brands, but much more affordable.
A large proportion of clients are between the ages of 45 and 65. In practice, this means that clear, explicit communication often works better than subtle visual changes. ‘We once got feedback from a customer: ‘I managed to order, not bad for an 81-year-old.’ Such responses remind us that simplicity and clarity are crucial.’ - Harold
Expansion into Germany, France and later Austria was a strategic choice by management. But that move immediately exposed that the existing CRO process was deficient.
When Harold resumed the CRO program, PrintAbout was still working with an Excel sheet to keep track of tests. Fine for one or two experiments in the Netherlands, but untenable as soon as you want to test in four countries at once.
Together with Online Dialogue, a scalable framework was therefore set up in Airtable. Ideas now only enter the backlog when they are fully substantiated, automatic reminders prevent half-filled proposals from getting stuck, and clear views make results and prioritization transparent.
Harold compares it to police work: ‘Putting a test live is fun, documenting less so. But without good documentation you can't make policy in the long run. It's like the police: after an arrest, administration follows. Not the most exciting work, but the basis for improvement.’
That structure and discipline proved essential. PrintAbout gained not only a grip on ongoing experiments, but also the confidence to take on international expansion. Online Dialogue's framework, automations and semi-annual MDE analyses provided the foundation that made the move to four countries manageable.
That was only part of the collaboration. Online Dialogue provided the right specialist each time, from behavioral psychologist for hypothesis generation to data analyst or UX designer for execution. They also thought along at the strategic level, so that CRO remained not only an operational process but also connected directly to PrintAbout's international growth goals.
Harold: ‘We have never received an unsatisfactory answer. If our consultant doesn't know, there is always a specialist to solve it.’
With a scalable process in place, PrintAbout dared to take the next step: experiment in new markets. It quickly became clear that culture in those new markets plays at least as big a role in conversion optimization as page design or call-to-action wording.
In Germany we noticed that a lot of traffic comes from price comparison sites. Visitors therefore land directly on product pages and expect immediate security there, for example visible payment methods such as Klarna. In France, literal translations proved disastrous: where the Dutch are used to “add to cart,” French people expect “ajouter au panier.” A small nuance difference with a big conversion effect. And in the Netherlands, the older target group actually shows that explicit, textual communication works better than subtle visual changes.
Sometimes things even go wrong because of one wrong word. In Germany, “color ink jet printer” was translated to “colors for an ink jet printer,” leading visitors to think it was separate ink. Similarly, a favorites button was incorrectly translated to “Für später speichern” instead of “Zu Favoriten hinzufügen.”.
Harold: ‘Such an automatic translation sometimes comes across as coal German. Since then we check copy changes more strictly or test them via our Lyssna panel. For €50 you already get valuable feedback from native speakers. That, plus additional QA per country, we've now learned more than ever.’
Professionalization was not only about processes and documentation, but also about the right tooling. In addition to Airtable, the foundation of the new CRO framework, PrintAbout now uses additional tools to work faster and more efficiently.
With Kameleoon allows the team to build simple A/B tests independently, without depending on IT. This keeps experiments running even when development capacity is scarce. In addition, Airtable provides automatic emails on going live and completing a test. That keeps all the teams involved (marketing to customer service) informed, sometimes as many as 24 times in one week.
This clever combination of tooling makes it possible to run dozens of tests simultaneously without losing track.
CRO is no longer something of one department at PrintAbout, but connects marketing, IT, sales and customer service. A core competence that affects the entire organization. Thanks to the professionalization drive with Online Dialogue, CRO was anchored as a working method: not only to optimize websites, but also to structurally learn better from customer behavior.
Marketing, IT, sales and customer service are now actively providing input. During three-week sprints, Harold and his colleagues listen in on customer calls from the service department. Issues that come up there are immediately translated into new hypotheses. Feedback via Tally and Clarity sessions. is included in the experimentation process.
In addition, anyone in the organization can submit test ideas via a form. Those ideas are transparently scored in Airtable, making it clear to everyone why one proposal is prioritized and another is not. This makes CRO a shared language in the organization and increases support.
Harold: ‘We are the arbiter between customer and business. We advise based on data. Not because I want it, but because 16,000 people in an A/B test show it.’
‘Working with Online Dialogue has made us stronger. We substantiate more and more with data, not assumptions.’ - Harold Rijsdijk
With growth in sales and number of countries, PrintAbout still sees many opportunities. More capacity in the CRO team is desirable both to keep test volume high and to do more research. Harold: ‘We find that we gain different learnings in each country. This is precisely why cross-cultural CRO is so important: it makes your choices sharper and avoids assumptions.’
For Harold, there is no doubt that Online Dialogue is the right partner for their international CRO program:
Online Dialogue has a lot of specialist knowledge in-house, for every part of the CRO process. Combined with flexible scaling capabilities, this makes collaboration very nice! Are you looking for this? Just give them a call.
- Harold Rijsdijk, Webshop & Conversion Manager at PrintAbout
Wondering how you can grow internationally and make smart use of the differences between countries in your CRO approach? Contact us.
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