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

You know, I could tell you about the latest issue of the MarketingExperiments Quarterly Research Journal. But it represents three months of blood, sweat, and (virtual Internet) tears for myself and the rest of the MarketingExperiments team.

So my description would be highly biased, full of hyperbole, and probably be along the lines of… “Our latest Journal includes four never-before-published marketing research articles featuring 12 experiments and…well…this Journal is the single most important piece of writing since the invention of the Internet!”

Out of control. That’s why you don’t need to hear from me. Instead, I’ll share what our readers have been telling us about the Journal through email and Twitter. But first, here is your free digital copy…

(click Full Screen to zoom in)

“Wonderful publication!!! Many compliments from Italy.” – Andrea Berselli, Partner and COO at Markeven srl

“Take some time to read this ebook: The @mktgexperiments Research Journal, 132 pages of marketing+science” – @Sparksheet

“Fusing online/offline campaigns for impact (and how not to do it!) – new insight from Marketing Experiments” – @eugenieverney

“This is full of good stuff – ‘The MarketingExperiments Quarterly Research Journal, Q2 2010′” –@HomeportCrew

“@MktgExperiments new online journal out. Loads of great content, thorough and readable” – @dotpinkney

We’d love to hear what you think of the latest Research Journal. Share your comments below, email us, or fill out our seven-question survey.

Related Resources

Q2 2010 issue of the MarketingExperiments Quarterly Research Journal

Q1 2010 issue of the MarketingExperiments Quarterly Research Journal

Research Directory

Optimizing Landing Pages: The four key tactics that drove a 189% lift

Landing Page Optimization, Lead Generation, Research Topics, Site Design, Social Media

In our October 28 web clinic, we discussed how to use color, shape, location, size, and motion to help guide our website visitors to where they should click. We all know designing web pages is somewhat of an art, especially for companies like ACS Creative. But designing the most effective webpages is also a science. You have to assess every element on the page to determine whether or not it:

• Helps guide the visitor to the primary objective
• Distracts the visitor from the primary objective
• Neither hurts nor helps conversion

I would like to thank ACS Creative for attending the webinar and also for submitting their page for expert review; it definitely takes a certain degree of bravery. Of course, our goal is not to tear you down, but to help you implement the most effective page possible.

Below is the page ACS Creative submitted for live optimization.

[click to enlarge]

First, we see that ACS Creative has designed a very clean and professional website. But I have to ask, where do you want your visitors to click?

This task, surprisingly, is not that easy to determine to the untrained eye. Here’s why:

1. The main “Web Services” image is moving visitors towards incorrect “implied” direction. If you notice, only one of the eight arrows is pointing towards the main objective. The others are pointing towards the supplementary blue image, the top navigation, the footer, and also towards that big red “X” that contributes negatively to your bounce rate.
2. The screen shot of the Stratford University website is bright blue and the footer is bright red, and both are drawing the eyepath away from the “gray” buttons.
3. Multiple objectives! Let’s say I do ignore the elements with more emphasis than the primary objective or I quickly scan them then revert back to the gray buttons, I still have to make a decision. And yes, the decision is not that difficult, but it is a decision nonetheless. It takes extra time. It is an extra step between deciding to act and acting. What should I click on? Web Services or Contact Us? I may want web services but I may also want to contact you for more information. It can become confusing.

If I were designing a version of this page to test, I would reconsider the percentage of width of the page dedicated to the primary web services objective. It should definitely be more than 50%, thus de-emphasizing the “size” of the bright blue secondary objective that is the Stratford University screenshot.

I would also create some space between the buttons and the footer. Show the visitors that the bright red footer is not that important by using a lower “position” on the page.

And finally, the buttons need to be a “color” that stands out from the page as a whole, the footer, and the secondary images. You may consider making the footer gray and the buttons red. Also regarding the buttons, the one which has the most importance to conversion should be a red button and the other one should be a simple text link… easy to see, but not overshadowing where you want most visitors to click.

Good luck!  Let us know if you decide to test this strategy and what your results are.

Practical Application, Site Design

We’ve all got that one friend. If you went to high school with Paul Rudd, he’s personal friends with Paul McCartney. If you just got back from St. Louis, he’s bragging about his tan from St. Barts. I call this the 1up effect. And it is prevalent on web pages as well – where each element is trying to outdo the other.

Sure, we can cite many reasons for it. Designing a functional and attractive page can be quite a task. In most cases, we have many things to consider and people to please. The sales team wants us to collect lead information with a capture form. Legal wants visible terms and conditions. Corporate wants branded images. We want our call to actions, great copy, and killer headlines. And the list goes on.

So if you’re not careful, the elements on your page may be competing against each other instead of working in sync to guide your visitors to conversion. I recently commented on this 1up effect in the latter portion of the October 28 web clinic. It boils down to is a simple question – are elements on your page competing so much for attention that you are overwhelming users and losing sight of your main goals?

A great example of this is a TV commercial from Tide. A gentleman was interviewing for a job, but the hiring manager is literally focusing on a shouting stain on the poor applicant’s shirt. Because of this stain, the interviewer misses the conversation completely:

In the same way, strong elements of the page can shout so much that users have trouble using the page for its main goal/purpose. Below is an actual web page submitted by NASCAR.com that we reviewed on the October 28 web clinic. The page seeks to draw attention to a service for watching the races live:

As you can see, color is splashed throughout the page. If you make support items very colorful, you must then use even more color to 1up the support items and make your main goal stand out. However, as you can see in the picture, the main call to action (boxed in red) is totally lost on the page with all of the color and elements shouting for attention. I know that we are all in the hunt to have great-looking, impactful sites, but marketers take heed:

“In the pursuit of cutting-edge websites and pages, do not lose sight of primary page principles.”

A clear and easy to identify goal for the user on the page is a must. Consider the path some users take to arrive at your page. Traffic coming from search and PPC has just seen a list of alternatives (other company listings). If they arrive at your page and do not find a way to engage with your message (buy a product to fix their problem, learn more about the offer, etc), then they click the back button or close the tab and to your competitors they go.

Even if a user does not leave shortly after arriving, support elements that stand out too much can cause users’ eyes to bounce around the page. This can cause them to potentially miss the juicy parts of your copy, product features, testimonials, awards, value proposition, or a whole host of other things.
Plan out your pages with your main goal always in the forefront, then keep support items just as they are supposed to be – SUPPORT items. Use size, shape, color, position, and motion with caution to ensure you are not creating aspects of the page that are in a shouting match for the user’s attention and overwhelming them as a result.

Your challenge is to create a page with elements that work together as a team, not elements that continually try to 1up each other – leave that to your friend who just got back from St. Barts.

P.S. The Tide To Go Stick works pretty well.

Clinic Notes, Marketing Insights, Practical Application, Research Topics, Site Design

Editor’s note: During our October 28 web clinic about properly guiding visitors to your conversion objectives, researchers Boris Grinkot, Corey Trent, and Heather Andruk fielded several audience questions.

Q: Does left navigation diminish conversion rate?

It all depends on the purpose of the page. For a simple landing page to which you drive prospects from PPC ads, affiliates and banner ads, this additional navigation will likely distract visitors and drive down conversion rates. It ends up being just one more competing objective. The answer to the “What can I do?” question now has multiple answers.

Of course, there are degrees of distraction. Deemphasized navigation with supportive elements such as FAQ is less distracting than very prominent navigation with several drop-downs and hover-over pop-ups.

For a page that is an integral part of your site, navigation is often essential to help guide your users through the overall site. If there is navigation on every other page, having one or two pages without navigation will cause a disconnect and you will likely lose the visitor.

Overall, you must remember that these are just guiding principles developed from our years of research. In the end, the best answer is to test these elements to see how they affect conversion on your specific pages.

Q: How do you know when to offer competing products?

There is no single answer, but we can give you a few good test ideas. If you have secondary products that do not compete with your primary offer, you may try to offer them before a purchase is made. If you have auxiliary offers that may distract from the primary offer, wait until the purchase is complete to offer the upsell. An excellent example is Amazon.com, which is a master at upselling additional products both in the cart and after purchase.

To decide what to test, look at your metrics to see where people enter and exit your site. For example, do they hunt for different features or go straight to purchasing a product? From these metrics, try to decipher what products users may be looking for in addition to what you are currently offering. The metrics can provide actual data to back up your decision about which competing products you want to test, and where you want to offer them.

Q: Do the five elements of directing visitor eyepath apply to B2B sites with long sales cycles?

These are tactical recommendations meant to help guide your visitors’ thought process through a page. The specific product or offer does not matter, since we are not trying to optimize a page; rather optimize the thought process of the visitors to a page. So using shape and color to emphasize your key points, and size to draw attention to your headline only helps more effectively express your value proposition in the conversation you are having with your customer.

Therefore, these elements apply to any page and it is worth noting that they may be especially important for B2B sites. This audience tends to scan pages more frequently than consumer audiences, so using color and shape to help emphasize key points in a way that is easier for your audience to digest is especially relevant.

Q: Are there any tools that can help me select colors?

Yes. Kuler.adobe.com and colorschemedesigner.com can help you choose color palettes.

Q: Should images have humans in them?

It depends on what you’re trying to accomplish with the image. For some products, it makes more sense to show a point-of-view orientation to give visitors the sensory feel of what it is like to use the product, such as showing the driver’s view from a car or the view from a hotel. For others, you need people in the picture to show the product being used.

When you do use people, having a good understanding of your demographic is extremely useful. Use images that your visitors can relate to (e.g., young, middle aged, seniors).

Images of people will also help guide visitor eyepath. The image should be “looking” at where you want the user to go. So for example, if you have an image on the left and copy on the right, be sure the person in the image is looking to the right to direct the user’s eyepath towards the copy.

As you test your pages, keep in mind how powerful images are. In the initial one or two seconds many visitors take to judge your page, your images can connect with them and draw them in or repel and cause them to bounce. Be careful in using stock photography, as consumers are becoming increasingly savvy to its use and may consider it to be misleading – especially if used with believability elements such as a testimonial.

Have additional questions? Other things you’d like to Ask an Optimizer? Use the comments section below or post your questions to our MarketingExperiments Optimization group.

Clinic Notes, Marketing Q&A, Research Topics, Site Design

Thank you to InterstateBatteries.com for submitting its View All Batteries page for an optimization review. We hope you find this diagnosis helpful for testing new ideas and improving results.

You’ve probably heard of Interstate Batteries, whether it was while getting your last oil change, paying too much for your last set of tires, or even under your hood. Interstate Batteries is one of the premier automobile battery companies in the country.

But did you know they sell batteries for everything? I certainly did not. In fact, “batteries for every need” is what they told us is their value proposition.

Ironically, the biggest problem they may have to overcome is not on the page below, but rather correcting the misconception that they only sell automobile batteries.

THE CHALLENGE: Improve usability of the View All Batteries page by making it easier for visitors to quickly find the battery they need.

Let’s look at the page to diagnose problem areas and provide actionable recommendations (click to enlarge):

Conversion diagnosis: 5 ways to improve this page’s results

1. Optimize your product

If you’re Interstate Batteries, you have several obstacles to overcome:

• Common misconception that you only sell automobile batteries
• Your company name, URL, and logo conveys that you only sell “interstate” batteries
• Huge competition! (Do you also have batteries to power a drum major bunny?)

Outside of the page, you are going to have to make strides to inform consumers that you do have “batteries for every need.” Whether it’s accomplished with your PR, branding, or advertising departments, this is a product problem that this blog post cannot solve. But it is a very important issue to address as indicated by the MarketingExperiments Optimization Sequence:

Our research has shown it is most important to optimize your product first, then the presentation of your product (your web site), and finally your channels, such as PPC ads and natural search. Improving your product may include its name, perception, quality, and so on.

I’m definitely not recommending changing your name or URL as you have a significant amount of brand equity. Interstate Batteries is well known across many demographics, the logo is memorable, and consumers trust the quality of product. But somehow, consumers must simultaneously identify Interstate Batteries with BOTH your flagship product and also your secondary products.

Take Nike for example. Everyone identifies them as an athletic shoe manufacturer. But at the same time, the vast majority of consumers are acutely aware of the fact that they sell clothing, soccer balls, footballs, watches, and even sunglasses.

2. Effectively communicate the page’s value proposition

You have utilized color (red font) to emphasize that you sell every type of battery. You have quantified the word “every” by stating you sell over 16,000 different batteries. These are both good starts to communicating your value proposition, but it’s incomplete.

You need to take a more holistic approach to expressing your value proposition. This means ensuring that every element of your page either states or supports the value proposition:

• Design
• Copy (including font style)
• Images
• Colors (if you sell natural products, use green)
• Logo
• Price

And every element on your page, those listed above and others not mentioned, must be strategically positioned so that you “supervise” the thought process of the visitor. Whether they are at the top, bottom, or side navigation of the page, something should state or support the value proposition.

Recommendations:

• Headline – Place it at the top left where the eyepath starts and make it a larger font.
• Intro paragraph – Use a bold font to highlight key points such as “16,000 different batteries.”  Consider replacing it with three bullet points that are easy to scan.
• Button copy – Do not use “submit”!  How about “Find my Battery”?
• Image – Instead of making a visitor work to see all the batteries (scanning horizontally, moving their eyes closer to the screen to see a small image, scrolling), immediately show an image at the top that has 5-10 diverse types of batteries. This will give someone the picture of what’s available.
• Sorting functionality – Take a look at sites like Best Buy, Amazon, or eBay which are all companies that sell a variety of products. One page element that communicates “variety” is a left column that narrows results by type, function, component, price, and more. If I see that you have batteries that cost $5 and batteries that cost $500, I’ll know that you sell a large variety.

3. Make it EASIER for customers to find the right product

Q: What can I do on this page?

A: Take a long time scanning back and forth to figure out exactly what you sell and if you sell what I need.

That’s not a good answer. Instead you want your customers to say “quickly and easily find the battery I need.” It’s part of our job as marketers to make it as easy as possible for someone to buy from us. That means reducing the difficulty and time elapsed to get from point A (motivation to buy a product) to point B (adding that product to cart).

One way to do this is to add the homepage’s “Battery Finder” selection box to this category page. That will give visitors to this page the same opportunity to narrow their choices with a three-step process, especially if they overlooked this feature on the homepage.

Another option is to emphasize the search box as the primary objective of this page. Currently, your search box is tucked away up in the header. And if that’s not enough to make it difficult to find, there are a lot of heavy images drawing the eyepath away from the search box. Test changes that will make the search feature more prominent, such as moving it or setting it off with visual cues, to see if usage increases.

4. Reduce the number of steps to get to purchase

Current process:

Six steps just to find a simple AA battery!

A six-step process, whether it’s for a battery or a sailboat, gives the visitor too much time and opportunity to exit the process. Don’t turn a sprint into a marathon.

Implementing the recommendations in diagnosis 3 will help reduce the number of steps to get to a purchase. You may also consider adding some JavaScript to each one of the links so that all six steps are located on the first page.

Here is one example to test:

Finally, review your metrics platform to see where people are dropping off. If most people exit on the “chemistry” page, then you can speculate that either that word or concept may be confusing to your average customer. In that case, you may want to add some clarification either in the form of copy on the page or a tool tip.

5. Take advantage of your (empty) shopping cart indicator

This page follows the typical approach of ecommerce websites with regard to notifying customers how many items are in their shopping cart. When there are no items in the cart, the shopping cart says no items.

The customer probably knows when they haven’t pressed an “add to cart” button, so this indicator is not providing any value.  Instead of letting this space go to waste, take advantage of it by communicating information such as discounts, shipping rate, free shipping, or secure shopping.

We’ve found through testing that clarifying shipping information can significantly reduce shopping cart abandonment rate. This is because many online shoppers will add something to the shopping cart and click into it only to see the shipping price. This strategy manages the customer’s expectations. If they expect to see $5 shipping and instead see $10, then you may lose them — not because of product quality, but simply because of shipping.

Here’s an example to help visualize the strategy:

or:

For more tactics and suggestions on how to optimize an eretail website, join us for our Sept. 30 web clinic: Ecommerce Optimization: A holiday playbook for procrastinators.

Ecommerce, Practical Application, Site Design

Our new Ask an Optimizer column addresses questions we’ve received through our website and from members of the MarketingExperiments Optimization LinkedIn Group. The following question was submitted by Nikolay M.

Q: Does anybody have experience with load speed impact on conversion or bounce rates?

This is a very good question Nikolay, one that many people don’t think about. Because this area is something we address with our tests and treatment versions as a best practice, I don’t think we have case studies specific to this issue. However, I can offer insights on factors to consider and resources to use.

The first thing you should do is assess two items:

1. Traffic sources
2. Technology resources for your audience

Know your top traffic sources

More important than a list of tips or statistics is understanding how the majority of your visitors arrive at your website.

If you aren’t keeping an eye on this, it’s possible to spin your wheels trying everything when stepping back and understanding your audience could save you serious headaches.

Where users are coming from and how they arrive at your site or funnel pages will often dictate how long they will put up with the nuances of your site. For example, visitors arriving from searches (PPC and organic) are likely to be among the least patient site users. Think about it: they have just seen a sizable list of alternatives, so if your pages are confusing, overwhelming, or take too long to load, those visitors are out of there. I typically find these users (especially from Google) to be back-button happy.

Know the technology that the bulk of your audience is using

Through analytic tools you can get a good idea of what technology resources users have at their disposal. For instance, with Google Analytics you can see connection speed, operating system used, and a whole host of other items.

Use these insights to see how much wiggle room you have with how heavy your pages and website can be with content elements. If a large portion of your users are on dial-up or even DSL, or older operating systems, then you might want to increase efforts on CSS-based quick loading pages.

Now, some people will be stuck with a heavy website due to factors outside their control. If that’s the case, look to edit the order in which your website loads. Have some of the lighter elements load first, so there are at least some items on the page while the heavier elements are being compiled. This gives users a glimmer of hope that the greatest part is on its way. However, make sure the initial loading items aren’t information collection or other friction points, because users can be scared away before the incentives or explanations load.

Another element to try in this situation is an animated loading bar. This again shows the user that the site isn’t broken, just taking a while to load. I think people are a little too quick to dismiss this method, but feel that users have a greater propensity to stay if they know items are happening in the background.

Best practices and resources

As a general rule, we like to keep page load times under 8-9 seconds for 56k users. Shorter than that is even better if you can do so without sacrificing site quality or functionality. This covers a wide audience, and seems to fit the typical short attention span that internet users have.

For more on this area, I’d recommend WebsiteOptimization.com, which has several helpful resources, including an excellent Web Page Analyzer Tool that will scan a page, let you know load times, and give you tips to how to improve your page load times.

Marketing Q&A, Practical Application, Site Design