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

At our March 11 clinic, Surprise Winners: How “wild card” tests achieved gains up to 86%, the MarketingExperiments team elaborated on a theory of change as it applies to landing page optimization.

Journalist Alfred Edward Perlman wrote about the necessity of change: “After you’ve done a thing the same way for two years, look it over carefully. After five years, look at it with suspicion. And after ten years, throw it away and start all over.”

Our team works on shorter deadlines, but our approach to change is similar: for growth to happen, change must come, whether in life or in landing page optimization. In landing page optimization, improvements can come in two ways, either by baby steps — fine-tuning landing pages by changing single page elements slightly — or by radically redesigning the appearance of a page, or even the presentation of an offer.

At the end of our Surprise Winners clinic, the team put theory into practice by quickly reviewing a handful of audience-submitted landing pages. The focus was on trying to improve the pages in their current categories by providing suggestions for improvements through incremental changes and radical redesigns.

Participant page: Goldline International

The purpose of this page is to get people to call the 1-800 number or complete a sign-up form requesting a contact from a salesperson.

Jimmy Ellis: For incremental changes, I’d revise the headline so that it included a clearer value proposition. The intro copy has enough information but could be transformed into three to five bullets that are easier to scan. In addition, I’d revise the layout so that the content on the page flowed more easily for users. I don’t think you need both the image of the coin and the animated graphic — the two images together are too much distraction for viewers. It is simply not clear why, if I am going to invest in gold coins, I should choose Goldline to do so.

Dr. Flint McGlaughlin: The major mistake this page is making is that it has two evenly weighted columns. Landing pages are conversations that flow in sequence. People don’t want to have to skip all over the page to find the information that they need. Evenly weighting your columns is providing people with only random conversations, like making them work an entire party just to find a single piece of information. What you want to do is experience the conversation in your mind in a vertical fashion. One of your two columns should be the main column and the other column should be there only to support the main one.

Aaron Rosenthal: To follow up, I’d like to ask: what’s the motivation for someone trying to call this number? Is it about purchasing gold coins or is the main call to action the free investor kit? If the purpose of the call is not to get someone to buy, but only to build relationship through the free kit, then the free kit needs to have a value proposition of its own. The start of a radical redesign is to make that free kit the primary focus of your page.

A second radical redesign is going to be taking down the lead on this page. Don’t ask them to call just yet. Get them to tell you where to send their free kit and then you can make the outbound call to them to begin to establish the relationship. For your first radical test, present the free kit as your primary offer. For the second redesign, I’d collect the lead for the page and allow your salespeople to make the follow up calls.

Summing up

All three presenters focused on the idea that the most productive changes to this page would be ones that brought it closer to its true goal of relationship-building.

In your optimization efforts, one way to judge the effectiveness of any change is whether or not it brings you closer to your goal of communicating clearly and effectively with your customers.

Audience: What do you think? Use the comments field to post your suggestions for this landing page, agree/disagree with our assessment, and let the Goldline folks know what you would do.

One concept that gets continually emphasized in our webinars is the importance of supporting your offer with specific, quantifiable information. Yet, which information and in what order?

Because marketers are intimately familiar with their products or services, generic descriptions of products or services seem perfectly clear. Or, certain characteristics of the company, product or service that are most valuable to customers are overlooked.

For example, in our recent B2C live optimization clinic, the MarketingExperiments team reviewed Artnet.com, an online art auction site.

For the clinic, the site submitted this landing page:

Our Director of Optimization Research Jimmy Ellis’ primary recommendation was, “Test specifics in your ad copy and on your landing page. Work with quantifiable numbers. How many pieces of art have you sold to satisfied customers? What kind of art do you specialize in? How many auctions do you run in a given period of time?”

Great advice, however…

If the site can accurately answer all those questions, how should all that information be organized so that it’s relevant to prospects and not a blur of facts and numbers?

The math behind the face mask

I was recently impressed enough with an Oil of Olay television commercial that I spent $30 on face cream. That’s more money than I’ve spent on my beauty regimen in the last ten years.

It wasn’t the miraculous sculpting-lifting-firming-warding-off-vampires quality of the cream that sold me. It was the strategic presentation of the benefits of their product.

The genius of the Oil of Olay Regenerist commercial was in the layered, purposeful presentation of their facts.

The voiceover begins, “We were surprised when we beat out the $100 cream.” From there, the announcer (female) continues, “And shocked when we were preferred over the $700 one.” And then, after a few shots of glowing complexions, the spot ends with: “Oil of Olay Regenerist: preferred over 32 of the most expensive brands.”

While I’m sure brand recognition and high production values had something to do with its success, the commercial worked, in part, because it focused on a single category of specifics: the specifics of price comparison. In addition, it built its facts in a credible manner. Reverse the order of the information — 32, $700, $100 — and it becomes less believable and less inspiring.

Making the most of your numbers: 3 strategies

Supporting your offer with specific, quantifiable information is both a necessity and an art. When adding such information to your emails or landing pages, consider the following factors:

1. Grow your numbers: There’s a reason “The Twelve Days of Christmas” doesn’t start with a dozen drummers. Instead, it works up from a single partridge (more easily gift wrapped if you tuck the head under the wing) so that by the time you get to the really extravagant stuff, it seems natural.

2. Label with numbers: Oil of Olay didn’t mention any of the virtues of its cream other than that it beat out more expensive creams. But those facts implied other positive qualities.

A friend once told me she had a lot of flip flops.

A lot of flip flops turned out to be fifty-seven pairs.

The oddest thing about her disclosure? Once she told people how many she had, people gave her more pairs of flip flops.

The marketing lesson here? Attribute a specific number of virtues or benefits to your product or company and people may give you credit for more.

3. Strength in numbers: Gather your numbers together, but in moderation. Sprinkling specifics about all the different quantitative aspects of your company all over a landing page will only muddle the eyepath, distract and confuse. But a few, significant numbers, strategically placed, will help prospects see your offer as tangible and desirable.

An example from Dr. Flint McGlaughlin’s paper, “Transparent Marketing,” details how to keep asking “So what?” to transform your offer from general and unremarkable to unique and intriguing. In the paper, he used this approach to revise the value proposition for a hypothetical company called Mediwidgets.

Replacing vague modifiers with specific, quantitative facts, supported by concrete numbers, makes the value proposition shorter, easier to grasp, and more attractive to potential customers.

Paint by numbers

One of the new offerings on Artnet’s site demonstrates how a few, well-chosen numbers can illustrate the numerous benefits the site has for art lovers and collectors:

“artnet’s new Design Marketplace features 20th-21st century furniture and decorative arts for sale from 150 of the world’s top galleries in 75 international cities.”

Sometimes a picture paints 1,000 words and, sometimes, with strategically applied specifics, using the right words paints 1,000 pictures.

Our analyst Adam Lapp looks at the Men’s Wearhouse homepage through the perspective of a first-time visitor and determines several ways to optimize an already strong page.

So, let’s say I need a suit, pronto.

I go to Google, search for “suit” and, not surprisingly, Men’s Wearhouse, the largest men’s dress apparel retailer in the United States, appears first in the natural search results. I know the brand, I can see that they sell “suits,” so I click on this link:

On the page, I immediately see two promotions that compel me to continue:

1. Get up to 50% off
2. Buy one get one free

These are both great offers and if either one of them is a long-term event, then I would definitely recommend briefly including it in the meta description. For example, if you “always” offer customers buy one, get one, then this definitely needs to be communicated in the ad copy via the meta description. This is a huge incentive to stimulate the prospective customer to click on the link. They’ve probably heard of your brand, they know you sell quality suits–you just need to communicate that one benefit that is going to tip the scale.

As for the landing page, my first impression is that it is a good page and I see how it would be difficult for a marketing team to know where to begin when designing a test. What do you test first?

The Conversion Sequence

That’s why the MarketingExperiments Conversion Sequence is so helpful. It focuses your energies, forcing you to move methodically through each variable as you analyze a page.

For the remainder of this blog post, I’ll analyze this page by viewing it through some of the variables of the conversion sequence: motivation, value proposition, friction, incentive and anxiety.

Motivation

Your landing page or your homepage must connect to the customer’s demand or need for a product. If they clicked on your ad, something in the ad motivated them to do so. To continue reaching that motivation, the landing page must immediately connect with your natural search ad. The best place to do this is with a headline. Without a headline that connects with the channel, the visitor may initially question if they are in right place to buy a suit.

They may know brick-and-mortar Men’s Wearhouse stores sell suits and they can see pictures of suits on this page, but can you actually buy a suit on this website? Many large retailers have websites that just “show” the products in their catalog but don’t actually “sell” the products. Add to that uncertainty the fact that a suit needs to be tailored. One of the motivation challenges you face is overcoming any visitor’s ingrained belief that suits must be bought in person rather than online (this is also a source of friction).

I recommend testing a simple headline at the top of the page, below the navigation and above the main images, that clarifies what a visitor can do on this website and why they should do it. For example, “Shop Online for Suits, Sport Coats, Sportswear, and Outerwear and Take Advantage of Exclusive Discounts Not Available in Stores.” Create several headlines that connect with your visitors’ motivations and continually test them.

Value Proposition

Your value proposition communicates the unique value you have to offer your ideal prospect.

You need to communicate to the prospective customer that you are indeed the leading men’s dress apparel retailer. But you can’t just say this, you have to prove it. And the best way to do this is to let other people prove it for you. For example, under your logo you may want to test inserting something like “Voted #1 by [well known entity].

You will also want to convey your unmatched quality. If someone clicks on the “About Us” section, they can read detailed information about your “Value Commitment” that includes delivering guaranteed quality merchandise. But you are relying on the visitor to do all the work, to search for this essential part of your value proposition. It’s buried on your site and you make visitors dig for it. I would recommend incorporating it into your homepage where it is plainly visible and easy to understand.

Friction

In order to identify sources of friction, we need to look for any element that may make it more difficult for a visitor to buy a suit or garment. And we cannot just identify sources of friction by looking at the page. We have to analyze how a visitor will experience the page, because friction is psychological, existing in the mind of the visitor.

First, it is not completely obvious that the tags are clickable. When someone lands on the page, they shouldn’t have to think about where to click. It should come naturally and instantly.

Also, the left navigation is somewhat confusing. The links in the top section are unusual ways to navigate through a clothing store:

How many people know what “Xtreme Couture” is or want to join the “Fresh Shirt Club”? My guess is that most visitors will want to immediately navigate by a category such as suits, sport coats, or slacks. Look at your analytics: do most sales come from the categories or from links such as Xtreme Couture? If the latter is the answer, then you are organizing the navigation correctly. If not, I would definitely recommend testing the priority of the two left navigation sections.

I think the biggest source of friction may be located in a visitor’s uncertainty about how they can buy a “tailored” suit from an online store. If you buy a suit from MensWearhouse.com, do you have to take it to your own tailor? Or bring it into a physical Men’s Wearhouse location? I don’t know the answer, but I would recommend being crystal clear about this on the homepage. A simple, easily visible statement explaining the tailoring process after you buy a suit should suffice.

Incentive

An incentive’s function is to stimulate a desired action by your prospect. This page has two great examples:

1. Buy one get one free
2. Up to 50% off

However the BOGO link in the left navigation is difficult to find right away with a quick scan of the page. It is small and blends in with the content. Sure it is red, but it needs to be emphasized using size and shape in order to stand out. And the other BOGO section is located at the bottom of the page below the fold. Many people many scroll down to this section and see the bright orange font, but many will not.

As for the 50% discount, it is large, in the eye-path, and stands out. But how do you get more people to click on it? You may consider being more specific and quantifying the currently ambiguous “selected items.” For example, “Get up to 50% off over 200 suits, coats, and shirts.”

Anxiety

Anxiety is associated with a “concern” about something and is usually located in the payment process. As this is a home page with no real purchase commitment, the element of anxiety does not pose a major threat to your conversion rate.

But, there are actions you can take on this page that will help to mitigate anxiety that will occur in the future. First you can take information in the “About Us” section, such as your Value Commitment Guarantee, and find ways to communicate it on the homepage. A money-back guarantee can make so much difference if used correctly. When a customer is aware that any purchase is essentially “risk free,” then it makes the final click on the purchase button so much easier.

Also, consider prominently displaying your phone number for reassurance that it is easy to reach you in the event that a visitor has a problem or question. They may not call, but just knowing you are there, ready to help them at any time gives visitors confidence in their buying decision. There is an enormous gap between the ability of an online store to answer a question versus a sales person in a brick-and-mortar store. The level of accessibility an actual sales person offers is just nonexistent online, so anything you can do on your website to close this gap just a little will go a long way.

I hope this quick landing page optimization helps you formulate some great test ideas. Thanks to the folks at MensWearhouse.com for submitting it in our B2C landing page optimization web clinic. Good luck and keep us informed of your results.

Audience: What do you think? Use the comments field to post your suggestions for this landing page, agree/disagree with Adam’s assessment, and let the MensWearhouse.com folks know what you would do.

In a fast-paced online community where customer loyalty can be sealed or shattered by an inaccurate landing page or a poorly worded email, “Habla espanol?” isn’t a simple question. It’s a direct challenge for marketers.

If you’re operating outside the U.S., Spanish is the first language of over 330 million people.

If you’re doing business in the U.S., Spanish-language optimization gives you the opportunity to reach the more than 40 million Hispanics in the United States (and at least 14 million of them are online). As this graph from Terra.com shows, internet surfing is one of the top information-gathering channels used by this growing population.

And those Spanish speakers who aren’t online? According to an AOL/Roper ASW study, they’ll be connected in the next two years.

It takes knowledge and finesse to grow strong customer relationships in this diverse, complex, and rapidly expanding market. Arturo Silva, MarketingExperiments analyst, suggests that the key to Spanish-language optimization is “creating a cultural context people can connect to.”

Join Arturo, analyst Ana Gabriela Diaz, and the rest of the MarketingExperiments team at 11:00 a.m. on March 25th for a special live optimization clinic focusing on Spanish-language landing pages. Whether you already have a Spanish-language initiative in the works or are preparing the ground to begin one, this clinic will help you move beyond the level of targeting and customer surveys to create pages that connect with this powerful audience.

Please take note of this clinic’s special time.

For our recent live optimization clinic on B2C landing pages, an entry from PC.com came with a great question about using personas on the page:

“The audience is supposed to pick a user persona type they identify with. This wasn’t clear and most made no selection. How could personas [have] been presented in a way [the] audience would have better understood?”

We turned the landing page and the question over to senior researcher Boris Grinkot for his thoughts….

This page indeed does a poor job of engaging the visitor. However, I believe that your assessment that personas should be presented better, or that the action of picking isn’t clearly requested, may lead you in the wrong direction.

The headline “Click on a Personality Below” tells the visitor what to do clearly. The images and names of personas also communicate fairly well what each represents.

The primary problem on this page is lack of expression of its value proposition, which also causes friction due to confusion about how (and to what end?) to use this page.

Right now, the page is not starting a conversation with your visitors, but is instead jumping directly into the functionality of this guide. The headline tells the visitor what to do, but provides no reason why they should do it. Nor is there any copy to explain the benefits of going through this exercise.

Your visitor will always have this question in mind, “What will I get in return for my time on this page?” and you should build your pages to answer that question.

Recommendations for testing

You need to engage the visitor with a powerful headline that succinctly communicates the value proposition of this guide, and support it with brief copy (paragraph and/or bullet points) that provides specific reasons or highlights key benefits of this tool.

Try testing several combinations of headline and introductory copy that clearly communicate the purpose of this shopping guide. Or, test using a (longer) headline with no introductory copy.

In each test, choose one aspect of the value proposition to highlight in the headline. This way, you can find which expression of your value proposition works the best.

PPC ads are another excellent way to “micro-test” your expression of the value proposition, and find a winner which can then be tested in your page headlines.

Another area that is confusing is the copy that follows the persona selection. It creates friction because its purpose is unclear, and it neither supports nor expresses your value proposition.

What appear to be each persona’s primary needs/interests are positioned as a sub-navigation menu below the photos. Nothing in this design explains what these are, and the visitor is still left with only the photo and the one- or two-word name of the persona to decide whether it matches their preferences. You should not expect that it will be obvious to the visitor what this copy represents. Also, the way this text is positioned, it is not clearly tied to the persona (color is the only thing that links them).

• You may be able to solve both problems by testing several simple segues, like “Tech Newcomer’s key needs: Email, Web …” and turning that copy into a sentence that continues your conversation with the visitor (the conversation that was started in the headline), rather than something that looks like a navigation menu.

• The sub-headline for the specific persona (e.g., “Shopping for the Tech Newcomer” above) is another missed opportunity to express or support the value proposition of this guide.

• A more value-focused headline should be tested, such as “What a Tech Newcomer wants:”

To summarize, before presenting the persona-based choices to your audience this way, the page needs to express your value proposition and what visitors can expect if they take the action you’re recommending — and that guidance itself needs further clarification.

Audience: What do you think? Use the comments field to post your suggestions for this landing page, agree/disagree with Boris’ assessment, and let the PC.com folks know what you would do.

In our current economy, it’s easy for marketers to feel that survival depends on perfection.

Each broken link, mistimed offer, or lost lead seems like the difference between making your monthly goal and not making enough to keep your doors open. Right now, marketers are working harder than ever to avoid making strategic optimization mistakes.

Part of the current sinking feeling stems from the avalanche quality of error. Mistakes, once made, often have a way of piling up. Consider “For Want of a Nail,” the children’s nursery rhyme that starts with a missing nail from a horseshoe and ends with the loss of a kingdom.

Or this story from This American Life, about a rookie cop’s first day:

The young officer and his partner are called to a house. The homeowner says something is moving in the attic.

Trying to be nice, the rookie volunteers to scope the situation out. He climbs the attic ladder, hefting his police issue flashlight, and pokes his head through the crawlspace, only to find a squirrel six inches from his face.

And the error pile-up begins.

Startled police officer drops flashlight — right on the homeowner’s nose.

Startled police officer then falls off ladder — onto partner.

Squirrel hops down ladder, over the downed officers, and finds refuge under the sofa.

The cops try to herd the squirrel out from under the sofa and into a cardboard box.

Squirrel makes a break for it — instead of the box, chooses the (lit) fireplace.

Squirrels, as it turns out, are highly flammable.

So are sofas. Squirrel runs out of fire and back under sofa.

Trying to put out the fire, the policemen turn over the sofa, and give the smoldering fire access to all the oxygen it needs to turn into a first-rate blaze.

In less than five minutes, an evening, a face, a home, a little furry life and possibly a career are ruined.

The Parable of the Burning Squirrel

For marketers, there are a few lessons to be drawn from this story, including:

• Have a backup plan ready in situations for which you are unprepared, unqualified, or uncertain about the situational environment.

• After an initial mistake, pause to reassess the situation (or consult that backup plan) before plunging in with a quick fix.
• Remember that short-term corrective measures can temporarily make a problem even more intense — and have long-term ramifications.

On the other hand, the most important idea came from the storyteller, the young officer, now no longer a rookie but a respected veteran. When asked if, thirteen years later, he would make the same mistake again, the officer replied, “Probably not…but there’s always new mistakes to be made.”

Yes, mistakes can be fearful, destructive, humiliating. But when we learn from them, and reduce their frequency and intensity, they can also be the foundation for some of our most productive successes.

That certainly applies to the process of testing and experimentation with marketing. And we hope you’ll join us as our team explores a related topic with our next free web clinic, Surprise Winners: How “wild card” tests achieved gains of up to 86% (No animals will be harmed in this clinic.)