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

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. Read more…

How often have you placed an item in your shopping cart in a bricks and mortar store, a can of green beans for example, and then changed your mind before you forked over the cash and put those green beans back on the shelf without buying?

How about online? Ever drop something in the ol’ virtual shopping cart, but change your mind and decide not to buy?

If you’re like me, it’s very rare for you to change your mind in a physical store, but I do it online all the time. Why? And how can you reduce shopping cart abandonment and improve product pages on your own site? There is no one right answer to these very difficult questions, but we’re going to be sharing our latest research discoveries today at 4 p.m. EDT in our latest free Web clinic – Shopping Carts Optimized: How a few tweaks led to 12% more revenue across an entire e-commerce website.

But first, we asked your peers these vexing questions. Below are a few of our favorite responses… Read more…

Class was in session again at MECLABS, and this eager beaver right here decided to join in on the learning once more. Of course, I had the MarketingExperiments audience in mind, so I took my handy dandy notebook and jotted down what I saw and heard.

Once again, Senior Optimization Manager, Adam Lapp, was front and center teaching our Research Analysts about, you guessed it, optimization. But, this class he focused on radical redesigns and the importance of multivariable testing when transforming a page in such a drastic way. After a lesson, it was time to put the learning into practice. And once again, being the cool teacher that he is, Adam set up a fun optimization contest. With bragging rights, being the main prize.

This time it wasn’t a battle of the sexes, but I can say it had a few surprising twists at the end. On one team you had MECLABS Research Analysts Aimee Bolton and Spencer Whiting and on the other you had Dustin Eichholt and Zuzia Soldenhoff-Thorpe. Their mission was to create the most effective radical redesign for a homepage. I will show you their designs as well as some advice from the teacher, pupils and myself. Hopefully you can apply it on your next testing adventure, especially in the case your design is a bit…um, far out. Read more…

I was impressed by the clarity of the headline and imaging of RealGoodsSolar’s landing page and later provided suggestions for testing their various sources of traffic to build dedicated landing pages for distinct levels of motivation.

Today, I wanted to add one last piece of analysis: the thought sequence effected by the page. “Eye path” is a concept often invoked by usability and user interface (UI) specialists. However, “eye path” is passive. What we want to optimize is the thought sequences in the mind of page visitors to lead them to the desired action, and to do that we must deliberately position content in the clearest and easiest-to-absorb sequence.

The rest of this post is presented in the general order of the expected thought sequence of a visitor to RealGoodsSolar’s webpage. Read more…

Whenever I work with a Research Partner that is involved in e-commerce, I always come across problems with the product details page. A potential customer’s experience here should not be much different from the moment you pick up an item at a store and look at it. Imagine it:

• You’re browsing the aisles of your favorite store, going from category to category
• Finally, you see something that gets your interest
• The price doesn’t stop you from picking it up – you could buy it today, or come back next week when you get your paycheck

This is it…

• Do you put it in your cart or put it back?
• If you put it back, why? Does the price now start to look expensive seeing what you actually get compared to what you’d pay?
• Do you put it down and pick up a competing brand? Or do you look at both at the same time?
• Or do you decide it’s worth the money? Do you see yourself using it, feeling good about the purchase?

This happens on e-commerce sites just as much as it happens in stores. The only difference online is that the website is usually the one responsible for the final packaging/presentation of a product, whereas in a retail store they are mostly just responsible for placing the already packaged product on a shelf. Read more…

When it comes to designing a homepage, sometimes people forget that its purpose is to give multiple types of users what they want, and to do so as quickly as possible. After all, you only have their attention for a brief moment, and they can easily make your page disappear by simply clicking on that little “x” on the corner of their screen.

This is especially true, in the case of e-commerce Web sites — where visitors have differing motivations for visiting the page, and are probably looking for specific types of products. But, how do you effectively meet all those needs?

Well, that’s exactly what we wanted to find out during an Optimization Training Session class (which I infiltrated, by the way) taught at our labs by our Senior Optimization Manager, Adam Lapp.

This is a class where some of our newest research team members hone their optimization skills – they even have homework! But, Mr. Lapp, isn’t one of those boring, monotone-lecturing teachers who puts their students to sleep (which reminds me, I really don’t miss school). He’s that cool teacher who lets you call him by his first name. And one of his latest, fun teaching tactics included launching an e-commerce homepage optimization contest. So, I brushed up on my journalism skills and took notes to give you a report on the contest results. Read more…