MarketingExperiments Blog: Research-driven optimization, testing, and marketing ideas

Nowadays the Internet is a battle royal. MySpace vs. FaceBook. We all know how that matchup turned out.

Google vs. Yahoo. This one’s scheduled for 12 rounds, but I think it will be a knock out.

And Google Buzz trained for years for a title match but failed a drug test. So for now, Twitter still holds the Light Heavyweight Belt, but eventually everyone meets their match. Anyone remember Buster Douglas knocking out Mike Tyson?

This spectacular entertainment is appreciated by so-called “gurus” of epic proportions. The fight for Internet marketing supremacy is a quality collection of bouts that will satisfy many an Internet guru, but how will it impact the masses in attendance?

Will they follow the hot trends blindly? Will tricks for quick bucks convince them to throw in their monthly budget for an unproven, highly touted secret weapon?

So whether it’s above-the-fold landing pages or live chats, you need to see the results before you invest your wad. There are reasons galore to believe “best practices” or “paradigm-shifting Internet sensation” hype and hope these latest and greatest tactics to generate revenue make a dent into your bottom line, but if you don’t personally see the fight through you are merely gambling. Do you really want to do that?  Before you start paying the piper, make sure you do your own research first so you have a high confidence level to make bets on the entire fight card.

Read more…

Editor’s Note: Troy O’Bryan and his team at Response Capture drove a 258% conversion rate increase for their client through two rounds of testing and optimizing a landing page. Yet when I interviewed Troy to write his team’s success story, he made clear that they weren’t content with their achievement. They’re constantly considering optimization ideas for a new test.

So I crept into the lab, distracted Dr. Optimize (a.k.a. Adam Lapp) from his current experimentation, and convinced him to apply his complex genius to this page. Here’s what he had to say…

It’s great to hear a fellow marketer realize the power of testing. Congratulations Troy! Without testing, how will you ever know if your landing page or website is performing the best that it could? Read more…

Editor’s Note: A few days ago, one of our Twitter followers sent us a tweet asking what we thought of her new page. At first, we were tempted to try a landing page optimization in 140 characters or less. But when Adam Lapp, aka Dr. Optimize, gets started, the knowledge he imparts could fill volumes. We limited him to one short blog post. And here’s what he had to say…

First I wanted to thank @jilbackstrom for asking our opinion. It takes a lot of guts to put your work out there for the critique of others. We never seek to tear down our audience’s work, only give them the ideas and tools to further build things up to newer heights.

OK, now that that’s out of the way, it’s time for Dr. Optimize to sharpen his scalpel. Here’s the page @jilbackstrom wanted us to take a look at:

The Wager
I’m not a betting man, but if I had a hundred dollars I’d have to put it all on the primary image of Ping Identity getting the majority of clicks on a heat map. Not only does it take up most of the real estate, but the drop shadow, the arrow, and the button all make me want to click.

Here’s what the heat map would look like:

Misguided Clicks
Index finger to the left button is such an easy movement and our primary goal. After all, clicks ultimately lead to revenue. But if that click is in the wrong place on your website, you’ve got some work to do. Of course, the worst place to misdirect this action is that “x” at the top right of your page. But if someone clicks in the wrong place – where you don’t necessarily want them to click – then it might as well be a click on the “x.” And on this page, the first few things I want to click on are simply not clickable. Odds are, many visitors will simply lose interest and bounce.

To add to the challenge, the headline is more of a “teaser” than a clear and articulate description of the product. Well, teasers usually lead people somewhere…like dangling a carrot from a stick. But in this case, there is no carrot for me to grab. There’s no place for me to click in order to learn more. How do I proceed from here?

The Mom Test
The Mom Test…a quick and easy usability criterion we should always consider when designing web pages, even for B2B sites.  A simple question, “How easy is this site for my mom to use?”  Sure, you don’t want to use a 30-point font. And you don’t have to, it’s not the “grandma” test. But you do need to have a site that is easy for the general Internet user to engage with.

Would my mom understand what you mean by “Email Sales” in the top-right corner?  There’s no implied action such as “Learn More.” And does “email” mean to email Ping Identity about a purchase or do you have an email product? Forget my mom, I don’t even know.

Cart Before the Horse
Here are several actions the page asks the visitor to take:

• Call toll free
• Email us about sales
• Read success stories

These are all good, particularly customer testimonials to reduce anxiety, but you need to have a conversation with the visitor and convey your value proposition before offering these possibilities.  If I don’t know what you are selling, does a bystander telling me “It’s great!!” really mean anything?  I’d say no.

Testing Ideas
So what do you do next?  Well, I don’t have a silver bullet, but I do have some testing recommendations that I firmly believe will provide you with better results.

1. Better headline – Needs to communicate what it does and why I should buy it. For example, “Log In to Every Website with One Password, Safe and Secure” or “Too Many Passwords? Ping Lets You Login Once and Get to Work.”
2. Tell me “who” you are – With the nature of the Internet enabling anybody and their brother to put up a site, you’ve got to separate yourself with copy and images that tell me I can trust you. For example, here is some buried treasure I found on the About Us page:
   • In business since 2002
   • Serves hundreds of enterprise companies and governments (If you use this, consider being more specific by stating the total number of licenses –  for example, one government agency may have tens or hundreds of licenses)
   • Serves 40 of the Fortune 100
3. Give me something to click – Tell me what it is, why I should use it, and then give me a place to click. Whether it’s “learn more” or “try for free,” for the amount of real estate the main image has been allotted on the homepage, it must deliver a return on its investment. That return comes in the form of a click forward.
4. Try for free – This is a perfect product for a free trial. Allow a business to try it for free for a period of seven or 30 days. Give them a license then let them get hooked. Of course, request the credit card up front so it’s not a complete impulse buy.

A free trial is powerful. It reduces anxiety associated with product quality (“Hey, if it’s no good I can cancel”), but it also communicates confidence in the product. If you test a free trial, the entire page should scream “free trial”…banner, headline, intro copy, and button.

I hope this feedback gives you new test ideas, @jilbackstrom. If you try any of them, be sure to let us know the results.

What other ideas do you think @jilbackstrom should test? Leave your advice in the comments section.

On December 3rd in Haarlem, The Netherlands, Dr. Flint McGlaughlin spoke at the Dutch Email Marketing Association Summit, also known as the “Sexy” Email Event. The Director of MECLABS (the parent company of MarketingExperiments) discussed how to improve email and related landing page conversions and conducted live optimization of audience submissions. Below is one of those submissions, along with a conversion diagnosis that will hopefully give you some ideas to improve the performance of your own marketing efforts. Please note, it has been translated from its original language of Dutch.

This submission is a B2B website seeking to drive downloads of a whitepaper.

[click to enlarge image]

For this particular page we have to assume that visitors are well qualified. They either have searched for “electric pallet trucks” or have navigated through the site to arrive here. Knowing this, the headline is pretty standard. It’s effective in several ways:
• Continuity between steps
• Communicates “where” visitors are

However, it does not answer two key questions:
• What can I do here? I don’t know if I can order, request more info, get a quote, or just view photos.
• Why should I order a pallet truck from Toyota instead of another competitor?

Several variations of the headline that add value and provide the visitor with guidance should be tested.

Value: You must add appeal, exclusivity, and credibility to give force to the value proposition of this product. Consider testing a quantitative variation such as: “Electric Pallet Trucks: 95% Customer Approval Rating” or “Electric Pallet Trucks: Crafted by Toyota for More Than 50 Years.”

Guidance: You must greet the visitor and “hold their hand” as they experience the page. In the primary headline, communicate value. But then in the sub-headline, you want to make it what exactly they can do on this page clear. For instance, “Download Product Details and Get Price Quotes.”

Once a visitor reads the headline, they are then forced to digest a bulky paragraph of six lines…a hard swallow. Most likely, your typical visitor may read the first or second line then have their eye-path drawn away from the paragraph by the large images. If you have important information in the last few lines, it will be missed. We recommend using a maximum of two-to-three lines of copy so that it’s easy to get to the point and move on to the next paragraph.

Also, there are no bolded words in the copy. This creates a disruption on the page that halts the eye-path and visitors just see one large chunk. Instead of moving seamlessly down the page, visitors may get lost in the copy. Important words such as “ergonomic” don’t stand out from trivial words such as “things.” It all just runs together.

You should also bold keywords so that your page adapts to different visitor segments. People who don’t like to read and just want to get to the point can just scan four words and move on. While people who need every single detail can still take their time reading the copy.

Where the heck do I click? Okay, so it looks like clicking on the triangles results in a whitepaper download. But they don’t appear clickable and they blend in with the images. This page should definitely make links that are directly below the images into buttons and ensure they have properties that make them appear clickable – such as bevel and drop shadow. Also, test button copy that is clear and provides a tangible benefit such as “Download Your Free Whitepaper.”

There is another place to click for visitors who already know all the information about the pallet trucks and are ready to buy. Do you see it? It takes a second, but it is at the bottom of the right column: “Yes, I want a quote for a pallet truck.” This is an important link for the actual bottom line of the company. People who click here are interested in buying. But it’s small, de-emphasized by location, and does not attract the visitor’s eye-path with color and so forth.

Someone ready for a quote does not need to download a white paper. So consider a test where this link is placed above the images, right after the paragraph. Also, a blue font will make it stand out from the other font. Blue is the Internet standard for a link and this color change will help make it more obvious that the link is clickable.

Dr. Flint McGlaughlin will next be speaking live about optimizing email response at MarketingSherpa’s Em@il Summit ’10 in Miami, Florida from January 20-22, 2010. He will also be teaching a live pre-summit Email Optimization Workshop on January 20.

In our October 28 web clinic, we discussed how to use color, shape, location, size, and motion to help guide our website visitors to where they should click. We all know designing web pages is somewhat of an art, especially for companies like ACS Creative. But designing the most effective webpages is also a science. You have to assess every element on the page to determine whether or not it:

• Helps guide the visitor to the primary objective
• Distracts the visitor from the primary objective
• Neither hurts nor helps conversion

I would like to thank ACS Creative for attending the webinar and also for submitting their page for expert review; it definitely takes a certain degree of bravery. Of course, our goal is not to tear you down, but to help you implement the most effective page possible.

Below is the page ACS Creative submitted for live optimization.

[click to enlarge]

First, we see that ACS Creative has designed a very clean and professional website. But I have to ask, where do you want your visitors to click?

This task, surprisingly, is not that easy to determine to the untrained eye. Here’s why:

1. The main “Web Services” image is moving visitors towards incorrect “implied” direction. If you notice, only one of the eight arrows is pointing towards the main objective. The others are pointing towards the supplementary blue image, the top navigation, the footer, and also towards that big red “X” that contributes negatively to your bounce rate.
2. The screen shot of the Stratford University website is bright blue and the footer is bright red, and both are drawing the eyepath away from the “gray” buttons.
3. Multiple objectives! Let’s say I do ignore the elements with more emphasis than the primary objective or I quickly scan them then revert back to the gray buttons, I still have to make a decision. And yes, the decision is not that difficult, but it is a decision nonetheless. It takes extra time. It is an extra step between deciding to act and acting. What should I click on? Web Services or Contact Us? I may want web services but I may also want to contact you for more information. It can become confusing.

If I were designing a version of this page to test, I would reconsider the percentage of width of the page dedicated to the primary web services objective. It should definitely be more than 50%, thus de-emphasizing the “size” of the bright blue secondary objective that is the Stratford University screenshot.

I would also create some space between the buttons and the footer. Show the visitors that the bright red footer is not that important by using a lower “position” on the page.

And finally, the buttons need to be a “color” that stands out from the page as a whole, the footer, and the secondary images. You may consider making the footer gray and the buttons red. Also regarding the buttons, the one which has the most importance to conversion should be a red button and the other one should be a simple text link… easy to see, but not overshadowing where you want most visitors to click.

Good luck!  Let us know if you decide to test this strategy and what your results are.

As I sat in the conference room of building 14 at the Googleplex last week, my excitement about what Google was doing to improve its analytics and testing platforms went through the roof. At the 2009 Partner Summit, Google gave a preview of the new Website Optimizer (GWO) features as well as soon-to-be-launched, feature-packed version 4 of Google Analytics.

So what’s new with GWO? Well, there is not a lot, but the few features Google added to its testing platform are HUGE! For me, two of the most notable updates are:

1. Management API for the creation and management of experiments outside of the Website Optimizer interface
2. Daily conversion tracking

The GWO API will allow you to much more easily set up tests and record stats, especially if you are using a content management system or a third-party shopping cart. Basically, you will be able to do almost anything you can do in GWO, but with your own interface.

As for the daily conversion tracking, I have always been one of those people who like to see test results to the minutest detail. Until now, Google has only allowed you to see aggregated stats for the entire testing period.

As of today, we can now see daily conversion rates:

This will give us much more intelligence regarding daily conversion swings and subtleties between the performance of experiment combinations. To read more, visit the GWO blog.

Now, I am even more excited about a couple of new features Google Analytics has included in its newest version. My favorites are:

1. 20 Goals, including brand new engagement goals
2. Custom alerts
3. Advanced filters built into report interface

I’m sure many of you have shared my frustration when trying to track more than four goals for one website. Before, we would have to create a duplicate profile of our website just to add goal five, six, seven….

Well, that’s all changed! Google has announced 20 goals for each profile. These will be grouped into four sets of five, but you will be allowed to use the 20 slots however you want.

Screenshot of new 20 goal limit:

But it doesn’t stop there. Add on top of that the fact that you will now have the ability to set user engagement goals. And you are no longer limited by a goal being attributed only to a pre-defined conversion page. The new engagement Analytics goals are:

1. Time on page
2. Pageviews per visit

You will also be able to set custom alerts to be emailed to you. By “custom,” I mean you set the variables however you want. So if I want to know if my website’s New York PPC traffic drops 15%, Google will let me know and I can act accordingly.

Screenshot of custom alerts:

Finally, they have added custom filters to the report interface. Sure you could export the data to Excel then sort, filter, and do whatever you wanted to make the data make sense to you. But now, Google has added the flexibility to get a clear and intelligent picture of what’s going on with your website without having to go back and forth between its interface and Excel.

Screenshot of advanced filters:

Say I’m looking at my Top Content report and I want to sort by bounce rate to see which pages are performing poorly so I can dedicate new resources for improvements to be made. Previously, I would see many pages with a bounce rate of 100% simply because they just had one or two visits.

Now, I can set the filter to only look at pages with a minimum of 100 visits and a bounce rate of less than 70%. This will allow me to make much more sense out of the heaps of data that Analytics is collecting.

You should be seeing all of these new features and many more appear in your Analytics and Website Optimizer interfaces over the next few weeks. We will be taking advantage of them right away with our research partners.

Check back next month — after we’ve tested some of these new features, we’ll offer suggestions on how you can make the most out of them.