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

Affiliate marketers have it tough these days. So many affiliates are attracted by the promise of building a business without having to involve themselves in the details of actually filling orders. With a marketplace so saturated, it’s difficult to get any kind of ROI out of affiliate campaigns.

So, how can affiliate marketers increase their ROI?

The same way a merchant would increase its ROI: by providing enough perceived value to guide the prospects to, and through, the offer.

Of course, increasing ROI is always easier said than done. And because that’s part of the job of our research analysts, Adam Lapp, Associate Director of Optimization teaches an optimization training class every Thursday here at MECLABS. In it, Chris Rochester, one of our research analysts, developed a treatment homepage for affiliate website Safari.com as a thought exercise.

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Now, before I go any further and show you Chris’ treatment, it needs a heavy disclaimer. Because Safari.com was submitted by one of our Web clinic audience members, we didn’t have any actual metrics for the site. In other words, Chris may not have made the suggestions he did in the treatment had he seen the real data behind the site.

Fortunately, our Associate Director of Optimization, Adam Lapp, developed some example metrics Chris could work from. So here’s some imaginary background for you…

(Imaginary) Background

Safari.com is an affiliate website generating leads for ziarasafaris.com

• We don’t sell vacations, but instead get paid for each lead we generate for Ziara Safaris
• We get paid more for leads that turn into sales
• We sell ads on our website, which accounts for 10% of our revenue

If you want the full set of metrics Adam developed, you can download the PowerPoint detailing them.

Treatment

Using the imaginary metrics, Chris was able to create this treatment wireframe:

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Chris’ wireframe is what we call a “radical redesign” of the homepage. While it may not look too different, the strategy for the page has completely changed.

Change #1: Give the people what they want

The first thing Chris did was make the page focus on the images.

“According to the data that we had, people liked browsing images,” Chris said. Essentially, by focusing on the images, the treatment should be able to give the visitor what they want up front to begin the process of delivering value.

Please note, we are not suggesting that images are the answer. This is, after all, a vacation site. For many vacation sites, images are crucial. After all, people often need to envision the relaxing/exciting vacation possibilities before they click.

If you sell, say, generic widgets, images may be less important to your visitors, but they are likely looking for something else. This leads us to our first principle. …

Transferable Principle:

• Look at your data and figure out what your visitors are trying to do. If you simply give them what they want up front, you can start to guide their thought sequence through the value to your offer.

Change #2: Repurpose content for an incentive

Once the visitor has looked at the pictures or reads the generic widget specifications he or she needs, they need more value to stay on the page. Chris provided that with a downloadable PDF safari planning guide. The PDF guide would simply be repurposed content from the blog in the form of a PDF to help visitors plan their safari.

Transferable Principle:

• If you have an affiliate site (or any other site), one of the best ways to provide value to your merchant (or regular customers) and site visitors is with content. It not only draws the visitor in, but also generates higher quality leads/prospects for your merchant. In this case, Chris completely changed the strategy of the site with lead generating content.

Change #3: Provide more information

This change really goes back to “giving the people what they want.” After visitors were done looking at pictures and downloaded the guide, Chris wanted to meet them with more information on the individual safaris offered. He did that with a bold headline and a tabbed safari explorer.

Transferable Principle:

• Once your prospect is ready, continue to provide value all the way through the site. Helpful and valuable content is one of the best ways to do that.

Change #4: Reduce anxiety

Because the site is an affiliate site, it needs to convey its l legitimacy. To accomplish that, Chris did two things.

First, he added a phone number so visitors could call a representative if they had questions. Phone numbers also relieve anxiety for visitors that don’t call because they know that someone’s there if they will need them.

Second, he included testimonials directly under the lead generation form. This was designed to help relieve anxiety at the precise point where it most occurs on the page.

Transferable Principle:

• Affiliate sites by nature create a lot of anxiety for visitors. You can over-correct for anxiety with specificity, proximity and intensity.

Change #5: Remove distractions

According to Adam’s imaginary metrics, ad space accounted for about 10% of the revenue for the site. Of course, with a properly optimized page, ads can hurt the bottom line more than help. Many times, the revenue you can generate from removing the distraction of ads on your site is much higher than the revenue the ads generate themselves.

To counteract this without hurting the ad revenue too much, Chris decided to move the ad space to the bottom of the page where it was out of the main eye-path of the visitor.

Transferable Principle:

• Distractions like ad links or multiple calls-to-action on a page can often hurt the overall potential revenue of the page, even if they are generating a small amount of revenue themselves. Always test whether removing them will help or hurt the bottom line.

Live Optimization in the Comments

To thank Safari.com for submitting their page for review, I’d love to help them out by giving them access to some of the smartest marketers on the planet … y’all (we’re in North Florida, the southern-most part of the state). So now that you’ve seen what a researcher from our lab would do, tell us how you would optimize Safari.com’s homepage in the comments. You might even write a post about it and link to it in the comments. Whatever you decide, give them some tips for getting more revenue out of their site.

Related Resources:

New Commissions, Landing Page Tests Power Affiliate Success: 5 Steps to Triple Sales

Affiliate Marketing – Web clinic replay

Affiliate marketing clinic study guide: 12 resources to get you going

Manage Your Affiliates’ Social Marketing: 4 Tactics to Protect Your Brand and Encourage Proper Social Outreach

Friction is one of the greatest obstacles to your conversion process, and though most marketers currently have some idea of what Friction is, many are only seeing half the picture.

When asking marketers to identify the Friction associated with a conversion process, the response is often very confident. Usually, the number of form fields on a page will be pointed out first, the number of steps in a process next, and occasionally a third comment might focus on the length of the individual pages themselves. The overall consensus from marketers is that if you can eliminate these simple elements, then you can eliminate Friction.

However, our research suggests that most of the Friction in a conversion process goes undetected. Further, this “hidden” Friction often is the most lethal to conversion. So, in this post I wanted to lay out 7 of the most undetected ways that Friction might be threatening your conversion rates. I have dubbed these The 7 Silent Killers of Conversion.

SILENT KILLER #1: A Misguided Eye-path

The first, and probably most common of these silent killers is a misguided eye-path. A Web page’s eye-path is the natural way in which a visitor’s eyes move through a Web page.

Often times, the eye-path of a visitor is sent all over a page without any logical order (see example). When this happens, a visitor will experience a level of Friction that lessens their probability of converting.

We discuss how to properly direct the visitors’ eye-path here.

SILENT KILLER #2: Multiple Equally-Weighted Objectives

Another common problem is providing two or more equally-weighted options for the visitor to choose between (see example). Giving your visitors multiple options to choose from might seem polite, however, more often than not, our tests show that this only increases the Friction a visitor experiences in a conversion process. Your visitor needs to be led. They need to know where they can get the most value. So, point them in a clear and decisive direction to a main call-to-action.

But what do you do when you have multiple CTA’s on a single page (like a homepage)? We discuss how to handle this here.

SILENT KILLER #3 Underemphasized Calls-to-Action

Related to the last problem, many Web pages work hard to convince a visitor to convert and yet drop the ball when it comes to designing something as simple as a button. Often, a visitor has to hunt for the call-to-action, and this creates unwarranted difficulty.

If a button’s primary goal is to elicit a click, it should be emphasized using size, shape, and color, in the main eye-path, and most importantly, look clickable (see example).

SILENT KILLER #4: Multimedia

What? Multimedia? Say it ain’t so…

For online marketers, there’s often much excitement that surrounds video, Flash, and other forms of interactive media. However, our research suggests there is a lot of Friction that goes under the radar when it comes to multimedia. In fact, for many pages we have tested, the “coolest” aspect of a web page was actually hurting conversions the most. We hypothesize that this is for two main reasons:

1. Reason #1: Multimedia assumes a technological standard on the visitor (e.g., “Everyone has flash.” Or “Everyone can stream this without having to wait”). When this standard is beyond that of the visitor, Friction is created.
2. Reason #2: Multimedia often comes with a steep usability learning curve. This is especially the case with multimedia that leans heavily on interaction. If your visitor has to learn how to engage with a particular type multimedia, there is another layer of Friction.

Now, I am not forbidding the use of multimedia. I truly believe it can actually be a great tool for expressing the Value Proposition and/or leading your visitor through the conversion process. We just need to be aware that multimedia is often a double-edged sword, and we must ensure that our use of it brings more value to the table than Friction.

SILENT KILLER #5: Overuse of Different Fonts (sizes and styles)

This seems to be less of an issue nowadays, but still watch out for the overuse of different font sizes and font styles throughout a Web page. This can make readability very difficult. As the saying goes, “When you emphasize everything, you emphasize nothing.”

Instead, use variation in font size and style sparingly to lead the visitor through the text (emphasized headlines and section headers), and to call out specific points of value (impactful phrases, key points, testimonials)

SILENT KILLER # 6: Unorganized Content

Another big silent killer is poorly organized content. This is particularly relevant to ecommerce Websites offering a wide array of products (see example), but also applies to any Web page that has a substantial amount of content. If the content is not organized clearly, then most of your visitors will experience confusion. And in the midst of confusion on a webpage, there is really only one way for the visitor to regain clarity – by clicking the back button.

So, how do marketers ensure that their Web pages are organized properly? Well, when our researchers seek to organize a page, they start out first by ensuring the page answers three critical questions for the visitor:

1. Where am I?
2. What can I do here?
3. Why should I do it?

I think this is a good place to start, and for more on how to answer these three key questions, see this Web clinic.

SILENT KILLER #7: Difficult Color Combinations

Finally, the seventh silent killer: difficult color combinations. Now I love color and I love creativity. But there is an often-crossed line where creativity actually hinders conversion. Our research suggests that certain color combinations can actually decrease the readability of a webpage, and subsequently increase the Friction.

To minimize Friction associated with color combinations, make sure you select high-contrasting colors. Our research has led to the following consistent – though not absolute – observations.

And it doesn’t end here…

As stated at the beginning of this post, Friction is not limited to form fields and page lengths. It’s not all about getting everything above the fold. It goes much deeper, and requires a marketer put themselves in the shoes of their customers.

These 7 Silent Killers of Conversion are a good start at doing that, but keep in mind that these seven are not the only ways that Friction hides on a web page. In order to really identify and address Friction holistically (both length and difficulty), we must begin to see our web pages from the perspective of our visitors. We can’t just rely on a list of seven rules. Ultimately, as with all optimization, we must strive to understand our visitor’s thought sequences, and experience the conversation process from their point of view.

QUESTION: What other ways have you seen Friction hidden on a Web page? Let us know in the comments…

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Related Resources:

No Unsupervised Thinking: How to increase conversion by guiding your audience

Homepages Optimized: How using the homepage as a channel led to a 59% increase in conversion

Clarity Trumps Persuasion: How changing the first seven seconds of user experience drove a 201% gain

When planning a testing and optimization cycle, there are plenty of marketing elements to tackle — landing pages, pay-per-click ad copy, form fields and more. The question is: What test will provide the biggest impact?

A great place to start is to ask your customers.

CrazyEgg, an analytics company that creates heat map data visualizations for websites, did just that when beginning a complete overhaul of its website.

Background

The software-as-a-service company had a website that was dated, had been created in an ad hoc manner with no overall hierarchal structure, and didn’t effectively feature its product or provide visitors with information.

Once CrazyEgg decided to redesign the website, it obtained customer feedback through two groups of surveys:

• It segmented its user base and sent email surveys to find out how satisfied these customers were, how they described the product and how they intended to use the product in the future.
• It also placed pop-up surveys on different pages of its website, with questions geared toward the location of the survey. For example, a survey on the online application page would ask the applicant what products they had previously used.

The new website featured a streamlined design, and a homepage with minimal copy and a large call-to-action (CTA) button. Based on feedback from its customers, this CTA was an obvious place to test.

“We got a bunch of customer feedback and wanted to see if we could improve our conversions by modifying the button copy to match the feedback,” explains Hiten Shah, co-founder, CrazyEgg.

He adds, “Improving the conversion rate here directly impacts revenue, so we thought it’d be a great place to start.”

Treatments

CrazyEgg tested three versions of call-to-action copy with an A/B/C split test:

CTA #1

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This CTA treatment was chosen as an example of very generic button copy.

CTA #2

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This CTA copy was inspired by tests CrazyEgg noticed other SaaS companies running.

CTA #3

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This CTA treatment was based on customer feedback CrazyEgg obtained through its surveys.

The confidence level for this test was 99%.

Results

Conversion rates for the three tested calls-to-action:

• “Get Started Now” — 1.85%
• “See Plans and Pricing” — 2.13%
• “Show Me My Heatmap” — 2.96%

“Show Me My Heatmap” is obviously very specific to CrazyEgg’s product, and outperformed the more generic “Get Started Now” by 60%, and “See Plans and Pricing” by 39%.

The winning treatment was based on customer feedback, and it also works with the flow of copy on the homepage.

About this test, Shah says, “Getting qualitative feedback to inform A/B tests is the way to go. It allows you to get a better idea of how your actual customers describe the product which leads to more informed test.”

He adds that small changes based on customer inputs can have a big impact, and that CrazyEgg is incorporating “voice of the customer” data in more of its marketing efforts.

“We don’t just guess,” Shah states, “We actually take more educated guesses by trying to understand customers better first.”

Related Resources

Website Redesign: Customer surveys and testing help increase conversion by 21.6% (Open access)

Digital Telepathy — vendor for website redesign and testing

Page Tests Lift Site Registrations and Conversions: 3 Examples that Stopped Site-Design Bickering (Members library)

Master the Art of Multivariate Testing: 7 Lessons from Avis Budget Group (Members library)

Marketing Intuition (Contest): Which homepage generated more conversions?

Blog Optimization: Button change leads to 39% increase in comments

Landing Page Optimization: 2 charts describing the best page elements to test and how to test them

“Clarity trumps persuasion.”
– Dr. Flint McLaughlin, Managing Director (CEO), MECLABS

The above statement has become somewhat of a mantra around the MECLABS offices. Not only because it’s quotable, but also because of just how applicable it is across all facets of marketing. Whether discussing a simple print ad or a complex integrated campaign, at the end of the day our goal as marketers is clear – tell people what you offer and why they should buy from you. If you’re clear in your messaging, there’s no need for persuasive tactics that don’t directly support your value proposition.

Still, it’s somewhat ironic that simplifying a marketing message can be such a complicated process. In this post, we’ll be looking into a recent test conducted on the website of a large international financial services company, pointing out why even the most basic offerings were diluted by an overly complicated process and unclear calls-to-action.

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Background

Our research partner is a major Canadian financial services institution (anonymized to protect Research Partner competitive advantage), which services more than 18 million clients, positioning the bank as one of the largest in the world. With a broad scope of services offered to both its local and international clients, its primary messaging needed to be clear and catered to each of its audiences.

For this test, we will be analyzing a page intended to get new Canadian residents interested in establishing checking and/or credit card accounts with the bank. We addressed this through testing the page’s messaging – in this case, whether potential clients view the credit card or checking account offer as the most important aspect of doing business with the bank – as well as the page’s overall layout and user experience.

Our goal was to determine:

• Which messaging emphasis would result in a higher conversion rate?
• Would reducing the number of user steps (alongside a heavier emphasis on the calls-to-action) result in a higher conversion rate?

The control page presented two variables to consider when testing:

• Friction
• Clarity of the value proposition

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Control: I just emigrated to Canada and boy are my clicking fingers tired!

The control layout opens with a well-defined target, asking visitors if they’re “New to Canada?” followed by two fairly clear value statements – first, “Save with the XXX Welcome to Canada Banking Package” followed beneath by “Get 12 Months of FREE Banking with XXX.”

Simple enough, right? Putting myself in the user’s shoes, I’d probably end up at this page because I recently arrived in Canada and need to establish a basic bank account. And for a moment, the headline and two supporting statements make me feel right at home. But then, things quickly become confusing.

Though the headline targets those who want to open a basic bank account, the tabs beneath introduce a number of new ideas seemingly unrelated to the initial focus.  The bank account tab heads the list, but is followed beneath by “Credit Card,” “Safe Deposit Box,” “Enrollment Offer,” “Business Banking” and the somewhat cryptic “Cell Phone Offer.”

While all of the these terms (well, maybe not “Cell Phone Offer”) could certainly be a part of opening a bank account, the layout and graphical treatment leads the user to believe that these are separate, unrelated entities. Likewise, this becomes confusing for users because the complicated array of options and tabs belies the simplicity promised by the headline. What should have been a one-click process becomes much more complicated and click-heavy by breaking out the page in such a manner.

By the time the user reaches the call-to-action (ironically labeled “Get Started Now”) s/he has already been exposed to a wealth of information, making the intended action(s) unclear.

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Treatment #1: A little less leaf, a little more maple

Though I’m regularly exposed to MECLABS page tests, I have yet to see a page that better exemplified the term, “addition by subtraction.”

As mentioned earlier, the goal of this test was two-fold. Basically, if either treatment yielded higher conversion, it suggested that the multi-step process/layout increased friction and as such, hurt conversion. Likewise, whichever treatment yielded higher conversion than the other suggested which part of the free banking package is most valuable to consumers in this audience.

Treatment #1 gets right down to brass tacks. By eliminating the somewhat confusing menu layout and instead focusing on what the headline promised all along, this treatment offers a very smooth, informative experience that considerably reduces friction and directs users to a very clear call-to-action.

From the headline through the intended action, the page contains a focused eye-path, with easily seen subheads along the way that further the initial value statements. There is no visual clutter, and though a tad text-heavy, the page is both detailed and scannable, using bolded subheads, clear bullets and thoughtfully laid out copy to lead users to the call-to-action, sans confusion or misdirection.

I’m feeling more welcome already.

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Treatment #2: I’m sorry, we don’t take American Express

The second, more subjective portion of the test occurred when we aimed to find out whether new customers were more interested in either credit card or checking account information.  As you can see, our team stayed very close to the first treatment, in terms of layout, copy length and overall visual presentation.

The only significant change in this treatment is the addition of the Visa card image, which breaks up the still-lengthy text, but also shunts the copy both downward and toward the right column, which breaks up the eye-path, possibly increasing friction.

Also, the credit card offer – while part of the bank’s introductory package for new residents – does not connect to the value proposition introduced in the page header as well as the checking account offer.

Ultimately, despite showing a touch less clarity about the offerings, this treatment still accomplishes its goal of reducing the number of steps required to learn about a particular offer, and maintains a steady flow toward the call-to-action.

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Results

It warrants mention that these results reached a near 100 percent level of confidence (99.984%, to be exact).

More importantly, both treatments dramatically improved conversions over the control. Treatment #1 achieved a 200 percent lift over the control. Treatment #2 also performed extremely well, posting a 184 percent lift over the control, yet it appeared that more people wanted this page to help them conduct the most basic bank activities.

Is this cut-and-dry, concrete proof? No. But both elements of this multivariate test show that people didn’t come to this page for a boatload of options and unrelated text. They arrived here to perform a simple task, devoid of any additional offers or promotions. After sifting through all of the numbers and percentages above, we can deduce one thing – distinct, relevant calls-to-action were needed on this page.

If I was a fly on the wall at this bank’s website design sessions, I guarantee at least one of the major ongoing discussions was about presenting users with a wealth of options – not only to show the breadth and scope of the institution, but also to give users a “hub” in which to conduct as much business with the bank as realistically possible per visit.

I opened this piece by stating, “Clarity trumps persuasion” — not just because it sounds cool (t-shirts and novelty mugs will be available soon) but also because it is almost universally applicable across marketing practices. In this case, the bank was trying to persuade users to explore the site by presenting them with myriad offers, options and calls-to-action. Instead, it seemingly created confusion, friction and – based on the significantly lower conversion rate – frustration on the part of the user.

Yes, giving users options can be a good practice, but not at the expense of clarity…especially when the options in question do not clearly follow the value first offered to the user.

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Related Resources

B2C Testing: A discount airline looks to increase conversion

Homepage Optimization: How a more logical eye-path led to 59% increase in conversions

Copywriting: Find your best headlines by going Bento

Optimization Summit 2011

It was time to get radical at Senior Optimization Manager, Adam Lapp’s optimization class, and once again I was there to document it all for your reading pleasure. Because I care, naturally.

Since my last post, the student body has grown, and we now have five new research analysts eager to learn. Due to our uneven number, Adam decided to pit all of the analysts against each other for his optimization competition, instead of taking the usual team approach. This time around, their challenge was to create the most effective radical redesign for the Arbor Day Foundation homepage (which was submitted for live optimization during our Homepage Web clinic).

But before I show you the original page, I’d like to add that this lesson not only sharpened our optimization skills, but also proved that great minds don’t always think alike. And, believe it or not that can be a really good thing.

Diagnosing the homepage

Now, let’s get to down the “nitty gritty”…here’s the audience submission:

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Before being given the task to create radical wireframes for the original homepage, Adam and the class discussed the page’s main issues. Here is their analysis the key problems visitors might face:

• The logo is too small. It gets lost in the page and also doesn’t help the visitor know exactly where they are
• There’s not a clear focus on the page

o   It has a confusing top navigation

o   It has three equally weighted columns (Trees, Programs, Lend Your Support)

o   It also has confusing objectives (Where do I click, what can I do on this page?)

1. What is the difference between a membership, a donation and buying a tree?

• Unclear call-to-action

o   The first and largest call-to-action a visitor sees is “Visit the tree nursery”

o   Makes the visitor ask, “What is a tree nursery? Is this a place to buy trees or a clever metaphor for a type of product or page?”

o   Visitors have unclear expectations of what the next page will be and are a little lost at this point.

Radical Solutions

After pointing out these issues, the analysts had to figure out how to tie in all these objectives together into one goal. And when it was time to present their radical wireframes, each analyst came up with a completely different design and goal in mind (remember the original page had several objectives).

Each submitted wireframe focused on one of the following goals:

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-Directly pushing a membership

• The headline is action oriented, specific and includes a membership incentive
• It drives the visitor’s attention to a primary call-to-action (become a member)

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-Getting visitors to donate and help the Arbor Day Foundation’s mission

• Headline immediately says where you are
• The options on left let visitors know what to do on the page (donate/help)

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- Giving the gift of a tree or allowing visitors to pick 10 trees for themselves now

• Page objective is simplified and the incentive of 10 free gifts with donation is emphasized
• De-emphasized supporting column with core information about the foundation

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-Engaging visitors with an interactive game

• Headline tells visitors exactly where they are
• Focuses on letting visitors interact and become familiar with the product through question game

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-Pushing all objectives in a new navigation-focused design

• Visitor can quickly choose a path from the easy to see, simple, and short left navigation on the top portion.
• Has a rotating banner will draw the eye path to the four most important objectives, then presents four core values in a controllable (and testable) sequence

Five heads are better than one

These five separate takes on one Web page got us thinking about the brainstorming process and how important it is for marketers to create a blissful marriage between individual ideas and teamwork.

In a marketing team, not everyone is going to think the same way, but this doesn’t mean that these differing thoughts can’t turn into a great collaborative effort.

This reminds me of the weekly peer review meetings we have at out lab, where the research team gets together and reviews Web pages as a team. Usually, one person starts off the conversation and then another person bounces off an idea about that topic, sometimes agreeing or challenging the previous comment. The idea here is to brainstorm in the correct way, by being open to different ideas and avoiding groupthink. Of course, not every idea is a good idea, which is why you have to test.

This is exactly what happened during Adam’s class. Each analyst initially came in with a different idea for the homepage and after everyone’s thoughts were put on the table, each individual thought grew into one improved and cohesive approach to developing treatments.

“If one person in charge of this page only relied on their own ideas, we may not [be] able to achieve the highest level of success,” Adam said. Of course, this hypothetical collaborative effort would have to be tested to make sure it’s actually effective.

“There’s no such thing as expert marketers, only expert testers,” Adam said. “AND the best way to get diverse test ideas is to leverage other people with other ideas.”

Lesson learned

In the end, even though it started as a free-for-all competition, with the right guidance and frame of mind, it turned out to be a great team effort.

Now that we’ve learned that lesson, I would love to start a collaborative effort with the audience, and ask you to share your ideas to optimize this homepage. Feel free to use the comments section to get this brainstorming session rolling.

Related Resources

Homepage Optimization: Radical redesign ideas for multivariable testing

Homepage Optimization: Creating the best design to quickly meet multiple visitors’ needs

Informed Dissent: The best marketing campaigns come from the best ideas

Landing Page Optimization: What cyclical products can learn from CBS Sports