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

Some people might think that optimizing a payment form page is a waste of time. But, I would have to disagree. In fact, I would argue it’s one of the most important places to test. And when it comes to a form, the same elements of optimizing a landing page apply. If your analytics are telling you that you’re losing traffic in the form fields, that’s like if a person was standing in line at the grocery store, ready to check out, and then suddenly they drop their groceries and run to the car. You’re losing out on what otherwise could have been a sale.

In the case of our next example, UNICEF, you would be losing out on a donation that could help children worldwide. We’re going to be taking a look at UNICEF’s monthly pledge payment page. As always, we’re going to structure our thought process around the MarketingExperiment’s Conversion Heuristic, our thought model for conversions, and highlight how we can use some of those elements to achieve our objective – more monthly pledges for UNICEF.

Don’t assume these suggestions only apply to non-profits or NGO’s; many of the elements are exactly the same regardless of industry or business. Read more…

It’s always great to see our students set sail in the world of testing. When Seth Jenks of G5 Leadership (a company that provides online leadership training) submitted his treatments for the MarketingExperiments Optimization LinkedIn Group members [Editor’s note: It’s reassuring to see that, after Boris first sent me this post for editing, some of our group members offered similar optimization and testing advice] to review and critique, I wouldn’t have guessed that it was one of his first attempts to structure a split test.

The results of his test are not only useful in the immediate sense—he doubled the conversion rate—but also are highly valuable as a starting point for building future iterations of tests.

What we can glean from Seth’s results, and how might subsequent testing be shaped? I thought Seth was already on to the key issue here: he called it “trust.” At MarketingExperiments, we’re used to calling it “credibility” and “clarity of the value proposition.” Both of these must be understood in the context of what motivation (another special term in our jargon) the visitors bring to the page. So let’s start from the top—what are visitors looking for when they arrive? Read more…

On our June 30 web clinic, Flint McGlaughlin, the Director of MECLABS Group, will be discussing the Compounding ROI of Sequential Conversion Rate Increases: How one company took a small gain and multiplied it tenfold.

As we prepare the content for that web clinic, I wanted to get the perspective of Andy Mott, Senior Manager of Research Partnerships at MarketingExperiments. As his title would suggest, Andy manages Research Partnerships with some major, enterprise-level companies.

As he is on almost every topic from email copy to Jacksonville Jaguars’ draft picks, Andy was fired up about holistic marketing optimization and what marketers who feel lost in large organizations can do to really make an impact… Read more…

This is the second in a series that examines the various roles which might be present on your company’s Web team and how those roles affect the implementation and success of your marketing campaigns. Today’s installment addresses the Web developer.

In my last article, I gave an overview of the Web designer role. Today I am looking at the yin to the Web designer’s yang – the Web developer. Often, the casual observer will have the most difficultly drawing a clear distinction in a corporate Web team between the Web designer and the Web developer. They are both conversant in Internet jargon. They can both have direct access to Web pages and ancillary systems that affect the website. To confuse matters more so, in some organizations, they are the same person.

So if the Web designer is primarily responsible for the overall design of pages and graphics, what exactly does the Web developer develop on the site? In short, Web developers develop applications. An application uses business logic to manipulate data or customize the visitor’s experience. To put it in simpler terms, “developer” usually refers to a programmer – someone who enjoys building complex rules to drive and maintain systems. Read more…

When I view the Internet marketing landscape through the lens of an IT professional, I routinely come back to a fundamental conflict – most companies have at least two teams which are responsible for the performance of the website.

One team – the IT team – is responsible for the functional performance of the site. The other team – the marketing team – is responsible for the business performance of the site. Unfortunately, the performance of these two objectives are frequently misaligned.

Marketing professionals face distinct challenges to launch and maintain Web-based initiatives. They must constantly quantify business returns through the website, yet they frequently do not have the tactical (technical) tools at their disposal to make this happen.

This means that they must routinely coordinate their initiatives through the IT team. Aside from the traditional hurdles of culture and jargon, marketers can also be stymied by an expanding and splintering list of roles that may be present in any company’s “Web team.”

I have often seen marketers spin their wheels because they direct their requests to members of the Web team who are either ill-equipped or, in some cases, forbidden to fulfill the marketer’s request. Like a shopper who asks a butcher for a loaf of bread, the marketing team too often finds itself directing its requests to any member of IT who will listen – and then becoming frustrated when those requests are ignored or the final product fails to live up to the marketing vision.

For this reason, I believe it may save some headaches if we spend some time simply defining the typical roles in corporate Web teams. More importantly, you should know that every role on the IT team represents certain skills that could drive the success of your marketing campaign – or sabotage it before it ever gets off the ground.

So over the summer, I’m going to blog about these roles to help you get the most value from your IT resources. In this first installment, I’m going to address one of the most generic and misunderstood roles on a Web team – the Web designer. Read more…

Start mammograms at 50, not 40. With this advice, the United States Preventive Task Force set off a firestorm of controversy questioning everything from its motivation to wisdom.

These recommendations, and the controversy that surrounds them, are just the tip of the comparative-effectiveness iceberg. For those not familiar with the term, you will hear it more and more in the near future. The federal government is investing $1.1 billion in comparative effectiveness research to find the most effective treatments for common conditions.

Does evidence change behavior?

Hard data about what works best sounds good in theory, but researchers are finding that evidence is only part of the story. Convincing the public to accept new medical guidelines takes more than numbers. As Christie Aschwanden explains in the latest issue of Miller-McCune, “When it comes to new treatment guidelines for breast cancer, back pain and other maladies, it’s the narrative presentation that matters.”

So what do these insights into human nature mean to the evidence-based marketer? While the power of the testing-optimization cycle is discovering what really works for your organization, this knowledge alone does not drive change. Beyond proof, you need a few good communication skills. To that end, here is some quick advice to turn test data into action… Read more…