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

Dion Jones, director of online marketing for Richter7, center, reviews a landing page with Boris Grinkot, analyst, MarketingExperiments

The test is over, the scores are in, and I’m happy to say that the vast majority of the students at our two-day workshop passed the Landing Page Optimization professional certification exam today. We certainly hope that we met our goal: Help marketers improve their landing pages and give them something substantial to take back to their respective businesses.

Thanks to everyone who made our event a success. Here are a few more pix from the sessions:

Internet Marketing News

Until you are the best choice for your ideal customer, you do not deserve to exist in the marketplace.

That was just one of the interesting suppositions the students of Dr. Flint McGlaughlin heard this morning during the first day of the MarketingExperiments LPO workshop in Ponte Vedra Beach.

The context was the importance of value proposition.

“88% of all landing pages I see have a problem with the value proposition,” said Flint. “What you must answer for your customer is this: ‘If I am your ideal customer, why should I buy from you instead of from any of your competitors?’ … You must figure out why you are best and learn to communicate it effectively.”

The students I spoke with at the lunch break were certainly eager to get started on that effective communication, expressing a range of goals for attending the intensive training. Some hoped to take back “evidence” to a boss to show why a company’s landing pages should be changed, others were expanding their portfolio of professional certifications.

At least two students were shipped here by a marketing-savvy CEO.

Kacy McRae, a marketing communications specialist and graphic designer for Illinois-based B2B Pacific Bearing, and Dominick Doyle, the company webmaster, were sent to the conference by CEO Robert Schroeder, a long-time member of MarketingSherpa. McRae and Doyle confirmed their number one goal is to better manage Schroeder’s marketing dollars.

They certainly got his money’s worth for him today.

From how to design a channel map, through that great overview of the importance of identifying and expressing a value proposition, to the importance of reducing friction (but not completely), balancing it with incentive, and alleviating anxiety, Flint guided students through the “sequence of thought” required to achieve optimal conversion results for their companies, backing it all up with solid test results ranging from the 1,052% cumulative gain we achieved with the New York Times, to impressive lifts for lead generation, retail, and B2B sites.

I’m sure that most students who attended today will agree: The training they got was not only fast-paced, detailed, and useful, it was definitely thought-provoking. Here are a few of my other favorite “Flintisms” from today’s sessions:

• Optimization happens in the mind, not on the page.

• Adequacy is the enemy of excellence.

• Service is a threshold expectation.

• Clarity trumps persuasion.

Day two will encompass a review, then a comprehensive test. Those who manage to be at least 80% correct will come out on the other side with their certificate.

Good luck, you guys.

Internet Marketing News, Internet Marketing Strategy, Marketing Insights alleviating anxiety, landing page optimization, LPO, marketing sherpa, reducing friction, sequence of thought, site flow disruption, Value Proposition

As Managing Editor Hunter Boyle said a couple of weeks ago, we’re test driving a new format that allows on-demand replay of our popular Web Clinics.

Click here for the second installment of that test drive — the complete audio and slide presentation from our May 21, 2008 Clinic entitled “Simple tests, significant gains: How our partner increased revenue by 130% with small changes”.

We plan to roll out the new format to all of our MarketingExperiments Journal subscribers later this summer, but until then our loyal blog readers will get to test drive it first.

We’d really appreciate your feedback on the new offering. Do you like it? Find it useful? Want more of it? I’d also like to know if you’re passing it along, telling others about it.

Clinic Notes increased revenue, marketing experiments, significant gains, simple tests

What’s the best way to keep visitors on track, moving through extensive fields requiring personal information?

At this week’s Training and Solutions Session (TSS), our roundtable of optimization experts brainstormed ways to help a partner offering a credit counseling and debt management service.

While the team has offered a design that streamlines the process as much as possible, it still requires an extensive amount of personal information and effort. Many visitors run off the rails, abandoning the process before they finish. In other words, it’s a Friction and Anxiety generator.

The challenge? Design an email that will convince these folks to come back and finish what they started. Perhaps a radical copy change will work. The present one is fairly generic.

Our previous research has shown that starting an email “basket recovery” sequence with a customer service-oriented message works really well, so I imagine a personal email from the credit counselor assigned to the potential customer. The subject line says “Do you still need our help?” She offers to assist the customer through the process. The copy prominently features a toll-free number with a direct extension to the counselor. She also offers to call at a convenient time if the visitor would prefer that.

Ending an email campaign with an attractive incentive works well, too.

In the case study I have in mind, the objective was to recover partially completed but abandoned orders for a financial services company. We started with two basket recovery emails and then added a third email offering a discount. Adding the third email and using a great incentive recovered 152% more orders than the basket recovery emails alone.

We’ve seen that a warm, personal, customer care attitude and a great incentive pay off, but we know timing is everything, too.

In a previous test of a basket-recovery campaign for a subscription site, emails in sequence “A” were sent 24, 48, 72, and 96 hours later. Emails in campaign sequence “B” were sent 30 minutes, 24, 48, and 72 hours later.

While both Recovery Email Sequences (A&B) had a positive impact on the final conversion rate, Sequence B performed much better.The key factor was when the first email was sent.

Sequence B’s first email, sent 30 minutes after visitors submitted an incomplete order, produced a 350% higher conversion rate than Sequence A’s first email, sent 24 hours after a visitors’ incomplete order.

It seems it is more effective to remind and convince visitors to complete their orders while their mind is still fresh with the purchase they were considering.

Embedding a hyperlink in the email bringing visitors right back to where they left off and allowing them to easily complete a process instead of starting all over is extremely important as well. It supports continuity and reduces Friction.

Another idea at TSS was to add elements of urgency and incentive to the subject line and copy, something like “You’re only 2 steps away from debt-relief” or, “. . . days away . . . ” or, “your debt analysis report is almost ready.”

Hopefully our new email tests will begin in the near future and we’ll have some interesting results to report on what increased open and click-through rates as well as conversion for this partner.

Email Marketing, Internet Marketing Strategy, Marketing Insights basket recovery sequence, conversion, email campaign, friction and anxiety, higher conversion rate, increased open click-through rates, recovery email sequence

We know from a November 2007 BBMG survey that if products are of equal price and quality, consumers are more likely to buy from companies that:

• Manufacture energy-efficient products

• Promote health and safety benefits

• Support fair labor and trade practices

• Commit to environmentally friendly practices

Those are great differentiators in the present market conditions, but it’s not enough to find success online: You must still attract visitors with a unique Value Proposition and make finding the green and ethical products they came for (or what you want them to buy) fast, easy, and stress-free.

During last week’s free web clinic our optimization experts looked at the homepage of Greenfeet.com. In 1997 they were on the bleeding edge of earth-friendly eCommerce. Now that everyone is on the green bandwagon, Jill Richard wanted advice on how to maintain her advantage.

Director of Optimization Research Jimmy Ellis got right to the point: Jill’s Value Proposition needs to express clearly and succinctly why a visitor should buy from Greenfeet.com instead of somewhere else.

“The page says ‘Things you can do to go green today’,” said Jimmy. “But visitors aren’t coming here to learn how to go green. If I’m shopping for environmentally-friendly products, I’m already green. The site has to help me understand which products to buy. Help me find the best products to suit my needs.”

(To read the entire analysis, see our latest Journal brief here.)

Once a green/ethical product and service provider has attracted a Hunter or Browser with a killer Value Proposition and optimized page elements, they are also well-positioned to charge more, even in the current economy.

The Wall Street Journal recently tested how much difference ethical production makes to consumers when it comes to price point. They showed shoppers coffee and t-shirts, telling one group they were manufactured using “high ethical standards” and another group that “low standards had been used.” A control group was not given any information.

In all tests the shoppers were willing to pay a premium for the ethical choice, and were only willing to buy products manufactured by “unethical methods” if they got a steep discount.

Not sure what to charge, or if you’re charging too much or not enough? Read this eye-opening MarketingExperiments Journal brief on finding the ideal price point.

Conscious consumers willing to pay a premium for products and services that meet their criteria are online right now, hunting and browsing. Test, optimize, and test again to ensure the ones they find and buy are yours.

Clinic Notes, Internet Marketing Strategy conscious consumer, green ethical products, ideal price point, online testing, optimization experts, optimized page elements, Value Proposition

The same way the telephone replaced the telegraph and the Internet surpassed snail mail, email is running out of gas when comes to communicating with Gen Y.

Texting is increasingly associated with convenience, immediate gratification, instant results, friends, and fun. Email is associated with responsibility, work, relentless spam, and long-winded missives from boomer parents.

So I’m going to make a leap: If your business model falls into the convenience, immediate gratification, instant results, or fun categories (or all four of them), and you haven’t yet added texting to your marketing mix, it’s time.

Let’s look at some hard numbers to bring it home.

Papa John’s earned $400 million in online sales in 2007, and in November of last year rolled out a text-ordering service. Today, more than 20% of all sales come from online and text messaging, and profit from those channels is projected to grow by 50% a year.

WJBQ (Portland, Maine) just had its second annual WJBQ “Q Baby Idol” contest. According to a recent Mobile Insider article by Steve Smith, the contest drew 400,000 emails and 231,000 text votes last year. This year it saw almost a million texts and just 250,000 emails.

Mainstream marketers are also forging ahead with texting services as a primary way to connect with their customers.

Hearst Magazines has provided a texting option for its Gen Y CosmoGirl! readers for over two years, but recently teamed up again with ShopText.com to roll out text-based coupons, free samples, and contest entries to their Good Housekeeping, O,The Oprah Magazine, Redbook, and Seventeen readers as well.

Amazon recently launched its TextBuyIt service, which allows customers to enter UPCs and product names in their phones, compare prices, and buy immediately if they like the Amazon offer best.

Email obviously isn’t in danger of extinction any time soon, but a recent study by The Yankee Group is projecting 1.7 billion global active messaging users by 2009. Why not start communicating with your future customers now via the channel they respond to best?

As Paul Golding said so eloquently: “Email is like placing a letter in someone’s in-tray, whereas texting is like tapping them on the shoulder and saying look at this. . . .”

And if you need a translation of this entry’s title, check out the links below, courtesy of lingo2word.com:

f UR nt txtN UR lEvN $ on d table

Internet Marketing News, Internet Marketing Strategy marketing, online marketing, texting

We received some great feedback today from Eric Stevenson, the editor of co-brandnews.com. Eric increased his site’s conversion rate by 69% after he implemented the recommendations from our recent Web Clinic.

(See optimized version, right, and earlier version, below.)

“Giving your suggestions a chance to show results, I waited sixty days since rebuilding the site following your webinar participants’ helpful comments,” Eric said. “Conversion rate rose from 3.9% to 6.6% (30-day results).”

“I should also point out that we took the opportunity to target our paid-click advertising on those keywords which were more relevant — and cut out those which were not productive. That reduced our ad spend by 60% yet increased conversion 200%.

“In conclusion, design and delivery of the message is foremost and many websites would benefit from your work — I highly recommend you for that.”

You can click here to read our brief containing the recommendations Eric received. It also includes the extensive guidance five other sites received at the same clinic.

You’re also welcome to join our next free Web Clinic on May 7. Our optimization experts will be reviewing eCommerce websites, making specific recommendations, and answering audience questions. If you haven’t participated in one of our live optimization clinics yet, what are you waiting for?

You don’t want to pass up the chance for a double-digit increase in conversions, do you?

Clinic Notes, Internet Marketing Strategy, Marketing Insights, Site Design increased conversions, live optimization clinics, optimizing landing pages

Optimizing your transaction pages is one of the best investments you can make in your website. All too often, these are the pages that stop qualified prospects in their tracks.

But while copywriters are focusing on snappy offer language, and designers are worrying about typefaces and buttons, information graphics (like a comparison matrix) can get lost in the shuffle. So does the ROI that these page elements can help produce.

Our sister company, MarketingSherpa, recently reaffirmed this with a test.

By adding a comparison matrix (see image) to underscore the benefits of membership, Sherpa increased free trial subscriptions by 76%.

Testimonials to the right of the new chart and below the call-to-action also reinforced the facts, demonstrated the value of a membership, and helped relieve anxiety.

Why did a simple matrix table get such a dramatic response – especially when its length increased the amount of friction on the page? Because the eyes and mind process the comparison much faster than if the information was written out in copy.

Scan the matrix and the thought process goes something like: “OK, non-members get this. Members get all that. Wow, that’s a lot more good stuff for members. Seems worth it to me. And this is a free trial? Let me get my credit card. . . .”

When potential customers are in a hurry, weighing their options and facing a decision, the best thing your transaction pages can do is make their choice easy, comfortable, and fast.

Tony Vacarcel, Marketing Optimization Manager for MECLABS, contributed to this blog post.

Internet Marketing Strategy, Site Design increased conversion rate, marketing experiments, marketing optimization

What if every time you visited your favorite store, everything looked exactly the same? Or it was so crammed with stuff you could barely move down the aisles? Would you keep going back?

Probably not. So why is this problem so common with eCommerce websites?

Instead of staying lean, they grow larger and larger . . . and things get ugly. The sites end up with dozens or even hundreds of bloated pages with no eyepath; they get overrun by ever-smaller fonts, graphics, ads, and photos; obsolete information and broken links sprout like weeds.

A friend of mine works in a brick-and-mortar store where the owner believes that if you can’t turn around without knocking something over, people will think he’s going out of business. “The shop looks empty,” he says when my friend tries to change things up, knock off the dust, and discount stuff that hasn’t sold in years.

The reality is that even the conservative display changes and occasional culls my friend gets away with allow customers to “discover” products that have been there awhile. “The store looks great,” they often say. “Did you get some new things?”

On the other end of the design spectrum are my friends Brad, Lew, and Gregory, who own a contemporary home furnishings store in Phoenix. They believe in frequent, major revamps, mashing older and newer things together in dramatic ways that keep their regular customers guessing (and excited).

For most retail websites, the sweet spot falls somewhere in between. And they have an advantage over brick-and-mortars, because eCommerce sites can test a radical redesign idea and see what happens before rolling it out. Multivariable testing gives online businesses the opportunity for “breakthrough thinking” and much higher conversion rates if executed properly.

As our research brief on the subject says:

“When you can test only one change at a time, you are under pressure to think of a ‘good’ change . . . something you think has a high likelihood of delivering improved results. This can lead to cautious thinking. However, with multivariable testing you can test as many changes as you like. This takes the pressure off and gives you enormous creative latitude, opening the door to breakthrough ideas you might otherwise never have tested.”

The caveat is whether a site will get enough traffic in the time allotted for a test. That determines whether the tested changes are statistically valid and significant. In other words, if showing your redesign to only 10% of your traffic means it will take years to get to 95% confidence in your findings, you might want to up the ante.

So go on, move some things around. Try a whole new approach. The payoff could be huge.

And if you’re looking for ideas to test, come to our 5/7 Web Clinic on optimizing eCommerce websites.

Internet Marketing Strategy conversion rates, Ecommerce, multivariable testing

One of my favorite “Flintisms” is a warning against “unsupervised thinking.”

In essence, it means that when a visitor gets to your landing page, it should be easy to find what they really want. Make sure they know they’re on the right site, and don’t obscure what they came for. Think Alice, always keeping that Brady house in order.

Simple, right?

Not so fast.

Our TSS team was recently brainstorming ways to help a partner with a very cluttered landing page, “featuring” at least twelve different, competing products, plus an extensive left nav list for a hundred product categories, a deal alert sign-up competing with a search field, warranty purchase options, shipping account logins, shopping cart item counts.

The page looked like a Moroccan bazaar.

“You have a shotgun approach on this page. It takes you everywhere,” Flint said.

Now, some folks enjoy strolling through the Internet equivalent of a Moroccan bazaar, nav’ing and clicking through pages and pages of products they didn’t necessarily come for.

It’s called shopping.

Some folks like it, and some (including me) just want to go in, get what they came for, and get out.

In my humble opinion, the current design was friction-city because of all the competing information blasting visitors.

“They’ll lose to someone with a cleaner Value Proposition,” said Flint. “Why should someone buy from this site and come back again?” AKA, no relationship was established.

Another problem was no—zero—eyepath, due to competing constituencies. It looked to me like LP turf battles had brand managers and co-op manufacturers fighting like The Brady Bunch kids (plus Alice) all trying to get in the front seat of Carol’s 1970 station wagon.

Key questions began to emerge. We needed a framework.

What new page design would result in the best “mind trail”? That is, what are people doing now; what do we want them to do; and what’s in the customer’s mind? Where do we want to send people to make the most money?

This page needed help, and that’s what we’re all about—what will get it done; for the partner, and for the customers. We’re here to eliminate that unsupervised thinking and clean up that confusing clutter.

Stay tuned to find out how we do it.

Internet Marketing Strategy friction, Landing Page, Value Proposition