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

As an avid online shopper, I often wonder why the checkout process is so markedly different and bare-bones when compared to the rest of the shopping experience. Sure, during this process customers aren’t shopping, they’re making the purchase.

But for someone like me – someone who often loses confidence in the final steps of the buying process – a little more resemblance to the look, feel and even emotion (the elements that likely brought me to checkout in the first place) would go a long way toward making that fateful, final click to buy.

Recently, I wrote a blog post covering a seemingly minor revamp of an online landing page that led to more notable results than initially expected. In writing this, I wanted to highlight another test we performed on the same British travel broker site to see if similar tweaks can improve its checkout process. Read more…

While we endure a winter that harkens back to our parents’ most impassioned tales of school commutes (“It actually snowed for six minutes in Jacksonville.” – D. Burstein, 2011) you’d think that a website offering discounted Florida vacations wouldn’t struggle with conversion rates. When you factor in that the website in question is based in the not-quite-sun-soaked United Kingdom, you’d probably think a text-only, free blog page would be more than enough to sell sunny getaways.

Of course, I’m exaggerating (though, as a MECLABS employee, I’m also intrigued by these testing possibilities). Still, as the following experiment shows, even a highly targeted Web page, offering deals exclusive to local residents, can benefit from seemingly minor alterations. Read more…

Some people might think that optimizing a payment form page is a waste of time. But, I would have to disagree. In fact, I would argue it’s one of the most important places to test. And when it comes to a form, the same elements of optimizing a landing page apply. If your analytics are telling you that you’re losing traffic in the form fields, that’s like if a person was standing in line at the grocery store, ready to check out, and then suddenly they drop their groceries and run to the car. You’re losing out on what otherwise could have been a sale.

In the case of our next example, UNICEF, you would be losing out on a donation that could help children worldwide. We’re going to be taking a look at UNICEF’s monthly pledge payment page. As always, we’re going to structure our thought process around the MarketingExperiment’s Conversion Heuristic, our thought model for conversions, and highlight how we can use some of those elements to achieve our objective – more monthly pledges for UNICEF.

Don’t assume these suggestions only apply to non-profits or NGO’s; many of the elements are exactly the same regardless of industry or business. Read more…

So, you’ve done all of this, right?

1)      Made sure you understand what your current site looks like through a variety of mobile operating systems. Is it good? Is it even adequate? (User Agents)

2)      Understand what people use your current site for? What is the top content overall, and top content immediately preceding a successful call to action. (Analytics)

3)      Understand your target audience? (Internal discussions)

4)      Lastly, determined if the benefits of building a mobile site or redesigning your current site outweigh the expenditure.

If not, refer back to our previous blog post, but now we’re moving on to actual mobile website design recommendations.

Now let’s say you’ve made the decision to create a website specifically for mobile devices. The main thing you need to understand about mobile devices is the difference in usability:

• They have much less real estate
• Buttons are harder to click
• People will be zooming in to see any small features
• When a potential customer clicks on a box to enter text a good portion of the screen is covered by the keyboard

So, you need to make your page as easy to use as possible. I can’t stress that enough! While there may be TONS of great content on your site, you need to keep your mobile site as easy to use as possible. Read more…

We say in our online courses that every element of a Web page must state or support the value proposition. But, what communicates the value of an offer better – a beautiful image or well-crafted copy? Do people tend to respond better to images or do they prefer copy?

All marketers have to face these questions at one time or another in the creative process, and recently, our research analysts had the opportunity to test this particular issue. You might be, as I was, surprised by the results. Read more…

“Art & Copy” is a recent film about advertising and the title pretty much sums up your marketing communication tools right there. In Wednesday’s free Web clinic – Images vs. Copy: How getting the right balance increased conversion by 29% – Flint McGlaughlin, the Managing Director (CEO) of MECLABS, will a strategic process for integrating images and copy to increase response.

But first, we wanted to hear how you balance art and copy. And while no one responded, “Steel cage grudge match between the copywriter and the art director,” here are a few of our favorite answers… Read more…