Bmibaby is a low-cost airline that flies from four UK bases to 34 European destinations, and around 95% of its sales come through its website. Because bmibaby is selling a discount product — airline seats in this case — getting the most value from each customer really impacts the bottom line.

Ian Stewart, Head of Commercial at bmibaby, says, “Anything for me that increases our conversion, that increases the number of people that book flights with us is great.”

One way bmibaby looks to increase its conversion is through regular testing on its website.

Testing seat reservation

An area where bmibaby looks for additional revenue is seating. During the booking process, one step offers customers the opportunity to choose their seat in advance. This step is optional, but it does provide bmibaby an additional revenue stream. Last year the company decided to perform formal testing on the seat booking step to determine the best combination of messaging, calls-to-action and page layout to effectively increase conversion while avoiding negatively affecting flight bookings.

This test ran for two months and included three elements on the page:

1. The call-to-action
2. The order and position of the help content
3. The position of the seat selector

A number of calls-to-action were tested, including:

• Book your seats together
• Secure your seats together
• Book now and save by choosing your seats
• Don’t leave it to chance — buy your seats now

The winning call-to-action was “secure your seats together.” Bmibaby also found changing the order of the help content affected the page’s performance.

At the conclusion of the testing cycle, the winning page resulted in an 18% increase in seat bookings (at a 95% level of confidence over the control).

Testing highlight low inventory

A second test conducted by bmibaby involved highlighting low inventory. When less than five seats are available on a flight, the prospective customer is shown a “low inventory” message. The purpose of the test was to find out the best way to present this message.

Once again, three elements were tested:

1. The use of “strikethrough” font
2. The use of color in the header
3. The addition of a “!” character next to low inventory flights

Testing found that the strikethrough font and adding color to the header improved conversion, but the “!” character did not.

Stewart says, “The exclamation mark is one (idea) that didn’t work out. One interesting thing you find in these things, you always go to look for the positives in it, but the negatives are equally important. We’ve made changes to a site or a display that made it look better, but perform worse.”

The winning version:

The results for this test were not quite as dramatic as with the seat booking test with the winning version of the low inventory message creating a 2.5% increase in flight booking conversion (at a 95% level of confidence over the control).

However, because of this test, bmibaby did solve an internal debate on whether highlighting low inventory flights was a worthwhile business practice, and it also learned that subtle layout changes — such as adding color to the header — can result in an increase in conversion.

Related resources

Bmibaby

Maxymiser

E-commerce: How your peers optimize shopping carts and product pages

Homepage Optimization: Radical redesign ideas for multivariable testing

This Just Tested: Stock images or real people?

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.

Clarity of the Value Statement

This page does a good job clearly giving a value statement and answering every visitor’s first three questions: Where am I? What can I do here? Why should I do it?  It’s communicated in the headline, subheadline and image.  “Give monthly to end the preventable deaths of children,” as well as the bullet points underneath describing what my donation will be used for, strikes a solid chord with their visitors.  The image of the girl, eyes planted to the camera, drives the value statement home.

There is one area I see needs improvement: the button.  “Process” seems pretty dry and well…boring.  Given the push to donate on the top of the form, the button text seems to fall short.  I suggest mirroring the powerful word choice in the top portion below in the button.  A short sentence before the button would also help reemphasize the value statement as well.

Friction

Friction deals with length or difficulty of the page or form in the mind of the visitor.  This is an area where this page falls short.  The good news though, is it can be an easy fix.  Friction is an area that when identified and improved, especially in form fields, can lead to a big increase in conversions. Having form fields in the neighborhood of 25-30 is not optimal.  Let’s see if we can reduce friction a bit, here are my suggestions:

1. Decide what fields are unnecessary (company name and phone number – if you’re not going to use it, don’t ask for it)
2. Have some fields side by side: Title, First Name, Last Name ; Spouse First Name, Last Name ; Street 1, Street 2 ; City, State, Zip.  This would reduce the overall length of the page and make it look less daunting.
3. Billing information is the most important, so start with that. Have a selector box to use that information as contact information as well.
4. With the monthly gift amount, have some pre-selected options with the option of putting “other.”  Carry the suggestion from the above text to the form fields.

Anxiety

Recall that anxiety is present in the mind of the visitor as a concern.  At first, look UNICEF is doing a pretty good job accounting for anxiety.  The site is on a secure server (https ://) and the VeriSign logo is placed near the button.  A visitor would feel confident, given these elements as well as UNICEF’s long history, that the information provided is safe.  However another element of anxiety is not accounted for, and in fact subtly outlined in the small text at the bottom:

1. You give your email in the form, but you’re NOT able to opt out of emails from UNICEF.
2. They do not define how many emails you will be getting

This can lead to 2 problems:

1. Loss of that conversion entirely
2. Visitors enter a bogus or unused email and that email capture is useless anyway

I’m well aware of the good work UNICEF does around the world and the nature of non-profits.  That said, not being able to opt-out of emails seems like spam waiting to happen, or at least a concern over possible spam.  It’s the concern that we’re trying to mitigate.  UNICEF may just send out two emails a year, the problem is that the concern goes unaccounted for, and this can hurt conversions.  A suggestion would be to allow opt-out by clicking a box, but have the box pre-checked when the visitor enters the form.  This is a common practice around the web and I think losing a few emails is favorable to losing a few conversions (especially visitors that have already entered in ALL their information).

Overall I think UNICEF is doing a good job with their form page and a higher conversion rate is just around the corner of a few suggestions and some testing.

Related Resources:

Landing Page Optimization: Identifying friction to increase conversion and win a Nobel Prize

Internet Marketing: Landing page optimization for beginners

Simple Registration Form Changes to Lift Conversions: 5 ideas to test – MarketingSherpa’s Members’ Library

Quality traffic is essential for any marketing campaign. Shoot, it’s essential for any successful business. You could have a highly valuable product (let’s say a real cure for male baldness), at the best price (let’s say for just a shipping address with no strings attached), and the most optimized website presentation on the interwebs (let’s say it has undergone a year of MECLABS testing), but despite these advantages, if there are no address-owning bald men who can find your website, well then your business will look a lot like me trying to drive a stick-shift.

Ok, crazy example, but the point is this: Quality traffic is essential.

The question for marketers is – where can we find the most quality traffic on the Web? Should we work with Pay-Per-Click (PPC)? Is it smart to invest in social media? Will external website banner ads be worth the costs? There are many options out there, but today, I want to bring your attention to an experiment that compared the traffic quality between two of the most common online channels: PPC vs. Banner Ads.

Now, explaining this test will be a little more tedious than usual because it deals with multiple experiments of a unique multi-step conversion funnel. But, rest assured, if you can just get a bird’s eye view of the optimization strategy, that viewpoint will be sufficient for what I am talking about in this post.

The first experiment

With that said, the company we were working with is a consumer service provider that has both a significant online and offline presence. The goal on their website is to have visitors schedule onsite appointments with a brick-and-mortar store located nearby. This included choosing a store, choosing a time, and filling out some basic information. It was this process we were seeking to optimize.

Immediately, we noticed that the original online scheduling process had significant unnecessary friction. As the process stood, it took each visitor a series of eight steps to make an appointment. Many of the steps were redundant, unnecessary, and even confusing.

So, our first test was a no brainer; we removed four of the unnecessary steps in the process. As expected, this new conversion funnel easily outperformed the original by over 357%.

The second experiment

Now, this increase was for homepage traffic and we wondered what kind of improvement this new conversion funnel would have across other channels (traffic sources) for their website. The partner was no doubt excited about the potential business the new process might generate site-wide.

But, this is where things get a bit interesting. When testing the new online scheduling process with their PPC traffic vs. their banner ad traffic, we noticed a remarkable difference in results. One of these channels increased conversion by 534%; while the other achieved a comparatively dismal improvement of 28% for such radical changes. Why was there such a swing?

Looking deeper into the numbers, our researchers have attributed the swing to the differing motivation levels of traffic sources. Not all channels will convert at the same rate because they represent different demographics at different places in the conversation. And one of these channels for this partner is obviously more motivated than the other.

Was it the PPC traffic or banner traffic?

So which of these sources of traffic do you think is more motivated? Which of these channels saw the 534% increase and which saw the 28%? It’s very interesting at the least to see the difference that channel quality can have, but could you identify the more effective channel?

UPDATE: If you guessed PPC, you are correct. As we revealed in yesterday’s live web clinic, the PPC ad traffic had the increase of 534%, and the banner ad had the increase of 28%.

Now both were increases, so no complaining there, but it is very interesting to see the significant difference in motivation levels. This test really underscores the importance of understanding and tapping into the unique motivations of specific channels in the conversion process.

Now a huge question that remains is why the difference in response? Is banner traffic always this unmotivated? Is PPC traffic always the motivated? I’m sure it depends on the scenario, but I want to hear what you think. When and why will PPC ads outperform banner ads?

Related Resources:

Top Lessons from 2010: What worked and what didn’t in the last 365 days of experimentation

Online Marketing: Your peers’ top lessons from 2010

This Just Tested: How PPC specificity drove 21% more clicks and cut costs 66%

This weekend I was paying for the 10 gallons I had just put into my old 1997 Honda Civic, when I decided that I’d purchase a nice cold soda for the road. I pointed out the pump where my fueled-up car was located and then slid the cold beverage to the convenience store clerk. He informed me that my total came to $25.89 and then he stopped.

Looking me dead in the eyes, he asked me what my name was. “Austin,” I replied a little hesitantly. “Austin, are you sure you want to spend $25.89 for 10 gallons of gas and a cold soda?” he asked. I nodded and attempted to hand him my Visa credit card.

He denied my overture and informed me that he could only help me if I were a member of his store. So not wanting to cause a scene with the five people who were now behind me, I conceded.

Can I just buy a soda?

He asked for my name again, and then moved on to more personal information. He informed me that my phone number, home address, and email address were all required for membership, but then gave me the option of telling him my age, date of birth, marital status, and household income level.

I, of course, declined. After all the information had been gathered, the clerk then passed me about 60 pages of the legal terms which I needed to sign to become a member.

Finally he took my card. However, in the middle of processing it, another clerk approached me saying that he noticed I was purchasing a can of soda. The coworker then made some suggestions concerning what I might like to buy along with my soda based upon previous customer patterns.

Once I had assured his coworker that I just wanted a soda, the clerk then again reminded me that my total came to $25.89 and again stopped, looked me dead in the eyes and asked, “Austin, are you sure you want to spend $25.89 for 10 gallons of gas and a cold soda?”

This might be how customers see our shopping carts

Ok, so this story is a bit of a stretch for a convenience store, but is an accurate reenactment of the experience at many ecommerce sites. This is exactly what we see across the Web with shopping cart experiences everywhere. In fact, we recently ran a test with one of our Research Partners and here is what the original checkout process looked like:

1)     Product page (click to purchase)

2)     Cart page (confirm you are ready to order)

3)     User account page (if you are new you must choose to create a new account)

4)     Create a user account page #1 (enter name, email and account password)

5)     Create a user account page #2 (enter shipping information)

6)     Create a user account page #3 (enter payment information)

7)     Order confirmation page (confirm order and account information again)

8)     Receipt page

To go from the product page to the receipt page took eight different steps. A customer has to register before being able to place the order, as well as confirm that order twice. After reorganizing and removing unnecessary steps, we were able to optimize this process to a single basic step. The increase in order completions was over 68%.

Is your shopping cart trying to do too much?

What this experiment illustrates is something we see over and over in the shopping cart process. Most shopping carts that companies use are bulky and have more features than needed (i.e. cart registration, order confirmations, cross-promotional offerings, etc.). Sometimes this means a shopping cart looks less like a basic transaction facilitator, and more like a boot camp obstacle training course with high walls and flaming hoops.

For instance, how many times have you had to join a web site before actually buying a product? How many “if you like this product, you might like this product” offers have you endured while checking out? Have you ever counted how many times you actually have to confirm your order before it goes through?

None of these features are bad per se, and some might even be helpful in the overall customer-client relationship. The only problem is when they get in the way of the natural thought sequence of a customer looking to purchase something at a specific moment in time.

Please, just let me out of here!

If I come to a web site, place an order in my cart, and hit “check out,” then please just let me check out. We must make sure our cart processes is sticking to the main objective – namely, closing the sale.

All these customer retention features and cross-promotional options can be strategically accomplished after the initial sale has already been completed. For instance, you can ask for the customer to create an account for future purchases or send them to a thank-you page that has cross-promotional offers.

Overall, this experiment leaves us with one key question: How many people might we be losing in the process by interrupting their order process? For this company, simplifying the checkout process meant 68% more orders. What is your potential?

Want to learn more?

For more information on how to optimize your shopping cart process, listen to our good friend Joel Book, the Director of eMarketing Education at ExactTarget and Charles Nicholls, the Founder of SeeWhy, in the free webinar entitled The 7 Secrets To Recovering Abandoned Shopping Carts.

Photo: http://www.flickr.com/photos/rickharris/ / CC BY-SA 2.0

Our most recent free webinar included case studies and live optimization focused on subscription-path pages. But the underlying principle we covered is just as important to ecommerce, demand and lead generation, email — across all marketing communications, really.

The principle: Clarity trumps persuasion.

Sounds simple, right? Maybe even too elementary? Perhaps you’re thinking, “My CEO and six-figure marketing budget don’t need catchy maxims. Give me something I can use.”

Don’t be fooled. There’s a powerful idea hiding in those three little words. But it’s easy to miss because we’ve been trained to persuade. To sell the sizzle, not the steak.

We try to entice prospects into our sales funnels with peppy copy, splashy offers and incentives that don’t cost too much. Meanwhile, behind the curtain of our clever creative, we’re not concerned about connecting with people. We’re chasing sales numbers and revenue goals. So we ignore the fact that our prospects hate being pitched and sold to — just like us, when we’re in their shoes.

Problem is, that leads to web pages that make prospects wary and distrustful. Sites that make users jump through hoops. Transaction pages loaded with elements that create friction and anxiety in users’ minds.

Want to slash through all that on your site, and improve conversions? There are many ways to do that, but the foundation starts with building simple, straightforward pages and processes that match your visitors’ intentions. In other words, clarity trumps persuasion.

Click here to learn how to apply this principle and see how three sites used it to lift their conversion rates by 200%, 76% and 38%.

For those who attended our free webinar on lead generation yesterday, we’d like to thank you for your time and trust. Despite some initial tech glitches, the session got rolling quickly and we covered a lot of ground, including:

• three lead-gen case studies, with some surprising results
• the impact of friction and incentive on the leads process
• a guest appearance by our good friend and partner, lead-generation expert Brian Carroll, and
• a live site review and optimization session.

Regular blog readers already know that we’ll be posting a link to the clinic content here in a few days. In the meantime, here are some of the takeaway points:

• Never use an incentive that requires you to sell it before the main offer is clear. Even good incentives can fail due to presentation errors.
• Friction is typically a negative factor, but not in every case. There are ways to use it to your advantage.
• Friction occurs at the page level as well as throughout the lead-gen process. Look for ways to reduce it in both areas.

We also looked at three key questions you need to ask (and answer) when optimizing your lead-gen strategy:

1. Have you looked at your site pages the way a customer does vs. the way your company does?
2. How does your process demonstrate to your ideal customer that you understand him/her?
3. Have you analyzed your competition’s lead-gen process from start to finish and compared it against your own?

On their own, these quick bulleted lists are great for scanning, but they don’t really do justice to the session. We hope you’ll check back next week, when we’ll post a link to the full presentation along with answers to some of the questions raised at the clinic. (Note: You can also be notified by email via the MarketingExperiments Journal.)