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

If you’re into online testing, you’ve probably experienced this problem:

1. You changed more than one element on a page (or an ad)
2. You ran the test
3. You recorded a significant gain (or loss)
4. Your boss asked you to replicate it somewhere else

What do you do now? What made the difference here that will make a difference somewhere else?

Any time you start changing more than one element in an ad, page or process, you start making interpretation and reapplication more and more difficult.

However, there is a way to interpret your radical redesign so that you can make it work somewhere else.

And, we’re going to show you how in this blog post. Plus, we’ll talk more about radical redesigns in our next Web clinic on Jan. 11 – Rapidly Maximizing Conversion: How one company quickly achieved a 53.9% lift with a radical redesign.

The answer is found in elementary math

Let’s take a trip back to the third grade to help us solve today’s problem.

Remember fractions? I remember the days when a teacher would ask me to add two fractions together by hand. What was rule number one?

If I wanted to do the addition, I would have to have a common denominator. The bottom number must be the same on both.

So what in the world does this have to do with marketing?

Read more…

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In my job as a Senior Research Manager at MarketingExperiments, I talk to a lot of people who are new to online testing. Before I started, I used to think the most intimidating factor for newbies would be coming up with page designs and development. But it’s not. Dealing with metrics, by far, is the most intimidating.

Maybe it’s because, when they reached the fork in the road, they took the marketing path because they simply didn’t like math.

Or maybe metrics are intimidating simply because there are so many of them!

• Which metrics should I care most about?
• How do I interpret them?
• Which metrics should I install for my test?

I have some good news: You can eliminate all the confusion and anxiety you have if you organize your metrics into four major groups. And guess what? Specific groups (like Source and Nature) are far more important to planning great tests than others (like Amount and Result). Let me explain. Read more…

We’ve all heard the saying “someone’s trash is another one’s treasure.” The same holds true to the value your product and/or service offering brings to the world. If different pockets of people like you better for different reasons, how can you create a single, competitive value proposition that addresses all of them?

Austin McCraw and Flint McGlaughlin are researching and writing a book to help you craft effective value propositions. With the topic buzzing through the labs of late, over the past couple of months, I have been surveying various members of the MarketingExperiments optimization research team as well to try discover how they approach this challenge. Here are some key discoveries so far, and I look forward to reading the final book:

Read more…

So you’ve got a piece of marketing collateral you’re working on (an email, landing page, direct mail piece or ad perhaps) and you just can’t figure out what to use for your headline. You’ve asked your friends and associates and they’ve given you some ideas, but you’re not sure which one is right for what you’re doing. How do you decide? Read more…

We’ve been asked this question a number of times: how do you create an effective online banner ad that stands apart from the hundreds of thousands of others out there?

I would like to help answer that question by giving you the three major obstacles all banner ads face and options that you can use to overcome them. Read more…

Whenever I work with a Research Partner that is involved in e-commerce, I always come across problems with the product details page. A potential customer’s experience here should not be much different from the moment you pick up an item at a store and look at it. Imagine it:

• You’re browsing the aisles of your favorite store, going from category to category
• Finally, you see something that gets your interest
• The price doesn’t stop you from picking it up – you could buy it today, or come back next week when you get your paycheck

This is it…

• Do you put it in your cart or put it back?
• If you put it back, why? Does the price now start to look expensive seeing what you actually get compared to what you’d pay?
• Do you put it down and pick up a competing brand? Or do you look at both at the same time?
• Or do you decide it’s worth the money? Do you see yourself using it, feeling good about the purchase?

This happens on e-commerce sites just as much as it happens in stores. The only difference online is that the website is usually the one responsible for the final packaging/presentation of a product, whereas in a retail store they are mostly just responsible for placing the already packaged product on a shelf. Read more…