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

Sometimes great products can be hard to sell on a website. The market is so saturated with mediocre goods and services that when a truly great one comes along, the same old marketing tactics simply don’t work anymore. Excellent products need excellent websites to communicate their full potential.

And that’s the main problem with this website submitted for live optimization by the makers of the Npower PEG on a past Web clinic.

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The product is essentially a battery you can hook to almost any device. But the fun part is that it charges with the kinetic energy you produce while you go about your daily life.

I personally found it fascinating. And I want one.

Unfortunately, (as the owners of the site probably know) the website doesn’t effectively communicate the prodigiousness of the product.

Perhaps you’re in the same boat as the Npower PEG. Maybe you’ve got a great product but you feel like your website doesn’t live up to it. Don’t tune this post out because it’s about someone else’s company.

To help you, I talked to Adam Lapp, Associate Director of Optimization and Strategy, MECLABS, about Npower’s website. From his years of optimization experience, you can hopefully glean some wisdom for your own site.

There are eight main test ideas that Adam highlighted in our conversation about how to improve this website.

Test Idea #1: Make the homepage more like a landing page

One thing Adam noticed was that this entire site is for a single product. Because of that, you could potentially make the homepage a lot more like a landing page with most of the information they need to make a buying decision right there on the first page.

Generally, a homepage like the one they currently have is used to funnel different segments of the audience to the correct sections of a site so they can further engage with the products and services they need.

But it’s not needed here, because you have a single audience looking for a single product.

• Transferrable Principle:

Determine the correct use of your homepage based on the number of audience segments and products/services you have. Many segments and products need a homepage that reflects a high number of offers. But single product homepages can generally be thought of as a landing page.

Test Idea #2: Make the entire site more like a micro-site

Another thing Adam mentioned along the lines of idea #1 was that the whole site might benefit from more of a micro-site look and feel.

“Don’t make a complex traditional website for the sake of making a complex traditional website,” Adam said. “You don’t have to have a big elaborate 10-20 page website with dropdown navigation. Keep it simple. Determine what your objective is and make it as simple as possible to accomplish that objective.”

One way to do this might be to create a navigation that is made up of four (or so) key benefits. So for instance, the links might be:

• Compatibility
• Battery Life
• How it works
•  FAQ

No dropdowns needed. Just four key sections, four single clicks.

• Transferrable Principle:

Sometimes you don’t need a website in a traditional sense. What you need is a way to effectively sell a product for the most profit. A website is just a means to an end. With that in mind, think of what your customer needs to know to make a decision and give it to them in the simplest and clearest way possible.

Test Idea #3: Communicate your credibility

Because of the novelty of the product, there might be some credibility issues in the visitor’s mind. Someone looking to purchase the product may be thinking about how reliable it is and what kind of track record it has.

To correct this, Adam proposed using the testimonials that are currently on the blog and moving them to a more appropriate place on the homepage to boost credibility. There is also the issue of who is giving you credit. It might also help to have some statements like, “Used by all the members of xyz hiking club in Portland, Oregon.”

Associations or organizations that use your products can be great credibility sources.

• Transferrable Principle:

Consider whether your ideal customer is questioning your credibility (Hint: they almost always are). If so, cite reliable and well known sources who like or use your product.

Test Idea #4: Optimize your buying process

Currently, the funnel for the buying process appears a little over-complicated. The site asks visitors to reserve a Powerpeg, then wait for it to be manufactured, and then pay if they’re still interested by the time it’s done. But it seems like it would be a lot simpler to go ahead and get the payment up front.

Once that’s in place, Adam pointed out that he would “make it clear that they are made to order. Tell the visitor how long it will take to build it and have some specific money back guarantees to reduce anxiety.”

If the reason for reserving the product ahead of time instead of a purchase was to get leads, there may be alternate means of achieving that goal. For instance, you may try testing an offer like: “First-time customers sign up for our newsletter and you’ll receive a coupon code for 10% off your first order.”

That way if they don’t order the same day, they have a coupon code to come back and complete the order, and you have an email address.

You might even lead the checkout page with a coupon code link under the code box that says: “Don’t have a coupon code? Get yours here.” And collect the lead that way.

• Transferrable Principle:

Friction in the buying process is one of the easiest things to reduce for large conversion rate lifts. Make your buying process as easy as possible and don’t ask for a lead when you should be asking for a sale.

Test Idea #5: Consider an up-sell

As Adam astutely observed in our conversation, an up-sell for this kind of consumer electronic product might also be a great idea. This is the kind of product that people might want two or three of for each member of the family. So depending on how many items people are currently buying per order, you may want to offer something like, “Buy two, get 10% off the second,” or “Buy 20, get one free.”

• Transferrable Principle:

If your product is something people may want multiples of or you have auxiliary offers, test having an up-sell or cross-sell in your purchase process. You may be leaving money on the table because someone wanted to buy more, but you didn’t offer it at the right time.

Test Idea #6: Lead with a clear headline

One of the main problems with this page that Adam pointed out was the lack of overall clarity about what the product is and what it can do.

As Adam said, “I see this image of people hiking. Although there is a description of what this image means, and since its small text, I’ll probably overlook this headline. So you’re wasting about 200px of space here with an image that doesn’t really communicate where I’m at or the value of the product.”

To fix this, lead with a clear headline at the top of the page, rather than the middle, that clearly states the name of the product and the primary benefit. Your sub-headline could then state the different uses or some secondary benefit of the product.

• Transferrable Principle:

The purpose of a headline is to drive the reader into the sub-headline or first paragraph. In doing that, it should help the viewer understand immediately that they are in the right place and they should stay on the page.

Test Idea #7: Use relevant imagery

Another problem Adam mentioned was the actual image used on the homepage.

“Instead of a picture of hikers, I’d use an image that more clearly communicates what the product is and how it works. The current image doesn’t connect the dots for me yet.”

One idea for a better image might be a diagram of how the product works. A video may also be a great idea here.

• Transferrable Principle:

Images should be as relevant as possible to the offer on the page and should communicate the value of the product in a way that copy cannot.

Test Idea #8: Move the call-to-action into the eye-path

The right side of the page looks like ads … which wouldn’t be so bad if the primary call-to-action (CTA) wasn’t there. The last thing you want your website visitors to think is that your CTA is an ad.

To fix this, simply drag your call-to-action to the bottom of the page after the viewer has been guided through the value of the product.

• Transferrable Principle:

As Flint McGlaughlin says in almost every Web clinic we’ve ever aired, keeping the CTA above the fold is like asking for a kiss before you’ve even had a conversation. What’s worse is putting the CTA among things that look like ads. Generally, a CTA should always be directly in the eye-path and after the visitor has been convinced of the value of the product.

Related Resources:

Website Optimization: Landing page test leads to 548% increase in conversion

How to Increase Conversion in 2012 — Web clinic replay

Website Optimization: How your peers increase their conversion rate…quickly

Great things happen … when you extend your manufacturer’s protection right away!

I recently wrote a blog post about the audacity of hype – how companies can overreach with their advertising claims … and the potential customers who just don’t believe them.

So today, on the flip side, let me address the copywriting that doesn’t say anything at all. Take the above headline, for example. For lack of a better word, let’s call this …

Blandvertising

Blandvertising is a wishy-washy marketing claim. Like the italicized headline above, it wants to mean something … but it just doesn’t mean anything.

Maybe because the marketer didn’t want to have to deal with Legal. Or maybe because the marketing manager or copywriter had an empty text box in InDesign and just had to throw something in there.

This background noise, this elevator music copywriting is a total waste of your marketing budget. If you’re paying for the opportunity to say something, whether with a direct mail piece, a PPC ad, on product packaging, or just on your website … then actually say something.

But what exactly? You’re crazy busy. Perhaps you’re not a writer. And you have an empty text box staring you in the face. What do you put in there?

Through our testing, we have found that …

@veronica Thanks for the response!

Editor’s Note: You’ll never find the right answers if you don’t ask the right questions. So my hat’s off to Veronica Cisneros, lead Web designer and developer at websonlized.com, for continuing to push us to dive deeper into the best use of search engine marketing.

After answering her initial question in “PPC Ads: What is search engine marketing best used for?” Paul Cheney takes our exploration of the most effective use of pay-per-click advertising one level deeper today …

In the post, Daniel points out that search engine marketing (PPC Ads) are best utilized in communicating “the value of a click to your landing page, not to get a sale.”

That is his main point. And he’s absolutely right.

What he didn’t mention (probably for the sake of brevity) was the idea that “the value of a click to your landing page” should be a derivative of the “value of the ultimate sale.”

That is what I mean by “the ultimate click.” The ultimate click is the sale. And in many cases, the sale comes after a series of micro-yeses.

So in other words, it makes more business sense to run an ad for toothbrushes when you are selling toothbrushes, than to run an ad for a free car when you are selling toothbrushes.

This is because in the toothbrush ad, the value of the click to the landing page is to get more information about the toothbrushes your company offers.

The toothbrush ad is a derivative of the ultimate value of buying a toothbrush. The free car ad is not.

That is what I mean when I say it’s important to get “the correct clicks” rather than simply as many clicks as possible. If the goal was to get as many clicks as I could, I would obviously want to run an ad for a free car.

But because the goal is sales, not clicks, I need to run an ad for a toothbrush.

Now, while I’d be open to testing it (especially if I’m selling toothbrushes), the copy of that ad probably wouldn’t be:

Buy Our Toothbrushes

They’re really great

Only $45 each!

I’d most likely run an ad along the lines of:

Designer Toothbrushes

Explore our catalogue of

50 brands used by celebs

In the first ad, I tried to sell in the ad. I made it seem like the reader should click on the ad and buy a toothbrush for $45.

In the second ad, I made the value of the click about being able to browse high-quality designer toothbrushes. And hopefully, that’s exactly what they’ll be able to do when they click the ad.

Daniel, correct me if I’m wrong, but I think this is the point you were trying to get across:

Selling in the ad is usually bad. The goal of an ad should be to get a click.

I’m simply adding that the click should also be as relevant as possible to the ultimate offer.

I hope that clears things up.

Editor’s Note: Spot on, Paul. And might I add that, this is not simply an academic discussion. Remember, these are pay-per-click ads. Why pay for traffic that will not convert?

So while Paul’s examples are purposefully extreme to make a point (although, I’ll admit, he’s got me seriously Jonesing to find out which toothbrush Brangelina uses), it would help you to take a second look at your AdWords account to determine whether your aim is to get a click, or get a click that will convert.

Related Resources:

Banner Ad Design: The 3 key banner objectives that drove a 285% lift

Banner Design Tested: How a 35% decrease in clicks caused an 88% increase in conversion

Converting PPC Traffic: How clarifying value generated 99.4% more conversions on a PPC landing page

In this world, there are systems that underperform. It is a fact of life. A quick look at the world’s distribution of wealth is all anyone needs for proof of that. It happens all the time on a macro level. And when a system doesn’t just underperform but is truly broken, it usually means you need to tear it down and start from scratch.

And while it may not be humanly possible to do that for the world’s economic system, it’s very doable with your website.

Our websites are simply little systems that should present enough pieces of our value proposition in the right sequence to our ideal customer so that they take the desired action. You can make many tweaks to your site to improve how well it does that … and in so doing, improve conversion.

But for some websites, the system is broken. A new approach is needed. At MECLABS, we call this a category shift.

How can I implement a category shift for my website?

To implement this category shift, you need a radical redesign.

A radical redesign is simply an experimental approach in which the experimental treatments are “radically” or “categorically” different from the control.

While definitions are certainly interesting, it’s probably easier to give you an example of a radical redesign. So here’s a radical redesign experiment we recently ran with one of our research partners to flesh out that definition. It also happens to be the same experiment we’ll study in-depth for today’s free Web clinic at 4:00 pm EST: Rapidly Maximizing Conversion: How one company quickly achieved a 53.9% lift with a radical redesign.

Experiment Details:

Background: The company is a leading automotive head gasket repair solution

Goal: To increase total orders on cart page

Primary Research Question: Which landing page/cart will result in a higher conversion rate?

Approach: Radical redesign of cart page through a variable cluster A/B split test

Control:

The control is a single product shopping cart process with six steps. Get ready to look at a lot of creative samples:

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Treatment:

The treatment attempted to fix the obvious problem with the control by shortening the number of steps down to two. But besides that, it was a completely different approach in design and layout.

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Results:

Now if you read the title of today’s Web clinic earlier in the post, you probably know which of these treatments won and by how much. But what’s really interesting about this test is WHY the treatment won.

Once you can figure out why a treatment performed the way it did, you can apply the underlying principle to your own pages and likely get better success than simply copy/pasting the specific tactics in the treatment.

So to test your marketing intuition, tell us why you think the treatment outperformed the control in this experiment.

The marketer who comes closest to our Sciences team’s expert speculation will win a mention on this blog with a link and the adoration and envy of their peers.

And once you’ve left your comment, be sure to sign up for today’s free clinic to learn more about radical redesigns.

 UPDATE: 

Congratulations to Kai for having the closest reason (in our opinion) for why the treatment outperformed the control. To get a better idea of what went into this experiment, checkout the replay for this Web clinic.

Related Resources:

Web clinic replay – Rapidly Maximizing Conversion: How one company quickly achieved a 53.9% lift with a radical redesign

Landing Page Optimization: How to plan a radical redesign so you get a lift AND a learning

E-commerce Shopping Carts: How a redesigned checkout process led to 13% increase in conversion rate

Homepage Optimization: Radical redesign ideas for multivariable testing

This time of year, many marketers are beginning to execute on their new marketing plans. However, sometimes you have to deviate from the plan and just need a sale or lead generation lift… RIGHT NOW!

When your boss or client challenges you to gain a quick conversion increase on your landing pages, what tools do you turn to in your marketing toolbox?

In Wednesday’s Web clinic – Rapidly Maximizing Conversion: How one company quickly achieved a 53.9% lift with a radical redesign – MECLABS Managing Director Flint McGlaughlin will share our top discoveries around how to quickly improve your conversion rate.

But before we share what we learned, we wanted to hear from you. Here are a few of our favorite “quick hit” tips from your peers …

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Headline optimization

I have found that headline and subhead optimization works well for the B2B SaaS clients I typically work with. Even after I think I have tested my way to the perfect headline, I run more tests and get more lift. I regularly get 10% lifts from this tactic. If I have more time to gather data, I will multivariate test headline, CTA button and benefit/bulleted text.

Finally, if you haven’t already, make sure there is just one key CTA button which is huge and obvious. I’m always surprised at how many sites don’t do this.

– Chris Neumann, General Manager, TextMarks

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5 Quick Tips

A few quick things come to mind:

1) Drop prices and provide free shipping: This one is pretty obvious, but nothing converts like low prices and free shipping.

2) Add security/trust logos and other “credibility” links (security policy, etc.) to checkout process: These types of additions have proven to immediately bump the conversion rate by providing a visual feel of safety and security, even if the users never do anything besides see the presence of the icons or links.

3) Simplify checkout process, including NOT requiring users to create an account in order to checkout: A simple checkout process reduces the likelihood users will drop-off.

4) Increase frequency of targeted email campaigns: There is so much email going around these days, from so many different sources, for so many different purposes. Research and testing has shown that sending a single email campaign up to 9 times can continue to provide incremental benefit in sales, with very little subsequent downside in customer satisfaction. The truth is, most people don’t see a very high percentage of their email.

5) Implement abandoned cart targeted emails: Enticing users to complete the checkout process can be very effective because you are targeting shoppers that you know are already interested in some of your products.

The above items are all proven to increase conversion – some are more quickly implemented than others.

– Todd Stalter, Senior Visualization Analyst, OneSpring

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Contests and chatting

For quick results I would implement the following:

1. An online contest where all the visitor needs to do is provide a name and email address, Facebook “like,” and/or Twitter follow, depending on what kind of lead capture you want. Online contests with enticing prizes can go viral and get you many followers quickly.

2. Implement a live chat feature on the site to make it easier to interact with visitors. However, I have found that live chat software with the standard popup window do not convert as well as the newer live chat programs such as Zopim and Olark that have a more social feel to them. Another option is to implement a video live chat program so customers can see the site representative on video, which helps even more with building trust in your company.

– Shai Atanelov, CEO & Founder, BigtimeWireless.com

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Related Resources:

Rapidly Maximizing Conversion: How one company quickly achieved a 53.9% lift with a radical redesign – Web clinic

Most-Tweeted Posts of 2011: Social media marketing, copywriting, email testing and more …

Landing Page Optimization: How to plan a radical redesign so you get a lift AND a learning

Marketing Campaign: Landing page optimization can help improve the return on your media spend

After our recent Web clinic, How to Increase Conversion in 2012: The last 20,000 hours of marketing research distilled into 60 minutes, we received this question from Veronica Cisneros, lead Web designer and developer at websonalized.com …

Question

1.            Assertion:

• If I remember correctly, the ad excluded the product, or description of the product, and only made reference to awards received. The presenter indicated that the ad was only competing for clicks and position? Which I understood to mean that the vendor did not care to make a sell, but simply wanted traffic to website.

2.            Question:

• Was my interpretation correct?
• If not, what was meant by “competing for clicks and position”?
• If yes, what did the vendor achieve by increasing the traffic to this landing page?

Answer

The point is that many people try to flat out sell with a PPC ad. The only thing the PPC ad should sell is the value of the customer clicking.

Once the customer clicks, then the landing page should sell the value of the next step (which may be lead capture, a sale, or some other objective, perhaps even just getting to the next stage in the funnel).

So for example, no one is going to buy business accounting software because of a PPC ad. However, you might be able to sell them on the value of clicking that ad to learn more. It is essential to understand where the buyer is in the process, and speak to the potential customer with value that resonates at that stage in the process.

So what is search engine marketing best used for? To communicate the value of a click to your landing page, not to get a sale.

You can hear Flint McGlaughlin, Managing Director, MECLABS, discuss our discoveries about search engine marketing and pay-per-click ads further in the free How to Increase Conversion in 2012: The last 20,000 hours of marketing research distilled into 60 minutes Web clinic replay.

Related Resources:

Optimizing PPC Ads: How to leverage the full potential of 130 characters by clarifying the value proposition

Converting PPC Traffic: How clarifying value generated 99.4% more conversions on a PPC landing page

Search Engine Marketing: Finding appeal for your PPC Ads

PPC Advertising: 5 winning display ad tactics that increased paying customers by 2,900% and dropped cost-per-lead 37%

The Small Business Website: Response Time to Internet Generated Leads - via websonalized.com