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

Color can be used to guide customer thinking on a landing page by placing stronger emphasis on particular elements in your offer, and less emphasis on others.

Today’s MarketingExperiments blog post will show how the MECLABS research team discovered the impact color emphasis has on conversion.

Background: Company provides educational resources for health and fitness professionals who subscribe to one of its online memberships.

Goal: To increase number of membership sign-ups.

Primary Research Question: Which landing page will generate the highest clickthrough rate?

Approach: A/B split test (Variable cluster)

Control

Treatment

The research team hypothesized the control did not place any emphasis on distinguishing between price points in the offer.

In the treatment, the team simplified and sequenced the pricing, and used a color design to emphasize the value of the offer.

Results 

What you need to know

By strengthening the communication of the offer’s value through color, copy and layout changes, the treatment increased clickthrough by 81%.

You can watch the full free Web clinic, “How Do Website Colors Impact Conversion?,”  to see Flint McGlaughlin , Managing Director, MECLABS, reveal four more surprising findings from our optimization testing and experimentation.

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Today at 2:00 p.m. EDT, I’ll be interviewing Shawn Burns, Vice President of Digital Marketing, SAP, during the MarketingSherpa webinar, “Testing: A discussion about SAP’s 27% lift in incremental sales leads.”

We’ll be discussing Shawn’s team’s impressive four-year effort to create a Test Lab within SAP, complete with the politics, change management and talent gaps involved in any truly transformative marketing initiative.

But first, right here on the MarketingExperiments blog, let’s take a look at one of SAP’s tests from this Test Lab initiative …

Background: SAP identified the “Spotlights” section on SAP.com as a key area at driving traffic to deeper levels of the website, where more topically specific content can be engaged.  This area was very text heavy.

Goal: Increase the level of engagement (as measured by clicks in the areas’ CTAs).

Primary Research Question: Does more of an “eye candy” approach drive more engagement?

Approach: A/B split test

Control

Treatment

RESULTS

The treatment, with thumbnails and clearer calls-to-action, yielded 62% more engagement. The team was able to isolate the conversion impact to one variable – the imagery – because another treatment (not pictured in this blog post) included the enhanced CTAs without the imagery, yet still lost handily to the treatment with imagery.

Segmenting your audience

With any test, it’s important to consider different segments of your audience. After all, a test is simply measuring audience interaction with a treatment. Your segments may be based on age, job title or primary product interest.

In SAP’s case, one segment they were testing was location, based on country. In fact, the 62% lift is an aggregate across seven country websites, so at an aggregate level, they found the imagery to be effective. However, they also found visitors to the China version of SAP.com engaged at a level 433% higher than the U.S. version of SAP.com, giving the China team extra impetus to use imagery.

Running your own visual tests

I talked to Taylor Kennedy, Senior Manager, Optimization and Strategy, MECLABS, about running tests using visuals to increase conversion. If you want to run tests on the look of your website, Taylor suggests you think of imagery on two levels:

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When it comes to how color design affects a site’s performance, simple changes can produce a significant lift.

So, in today’s MarketingExperiments blog post, we’re going to look at how the MECLABS research team used a background color test on a landing page to increase account sign-ups 10%.

Background: A large sports entertainment provider seeking to increase conversion on its main landing page

Goal: To increase premium account sign-ups

Primary Research Question: Which color scheme will result in a higher conversion rate?

Approach: A/B single factor split test

Control and treatment side by side

The control was a design with a dark background and white text, and the treatment was an almost exact color inverse.

Results 

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“So, why should I purchase from you rather than any of your competitors?” your ideal customer hypothetically asks you …

“Well, because …” you begin, “[insert your value proposition here].”

Until you can give your customers a convincing answer to that question, your company is simply surviving on pockets of ignorance. So, marketer, what’s the best way to answer that question?

The truth is, you can come up with preliminary answers using your intuition, but you’ll never know the best answer until you test …

And one of the most effective test-beds for getting the absolute best answer to the question is an email campaign.

At MarketingSherpa Email Summit 2013, presenter Austin McCraw, Senior Editorial Analyst, MECLABS, shared how an email can become much more than a one-off marketing message.

In his session titled, “How You Can Use Email to Discover the Essence of Your Value Proposition,” Austin explained how marketers can use email campaigns to understand the core motivations of their customers.

Austin provided a several key reasons for why email campaigns make a great proving ground for testing value proposition, including:

• Ease of change
• Large sample sizes
• Highly competitive environment

And my favorite …  it’s something you have to do already.

“Testing value propositions in your email sends is one of the easiest ways to create a culture of testing within your organization,” Austin said.

So today’s MarketingExperiments blog post will share Austin’s five steps for using your email marketing campaigns to discover your value proposition. Our goal is to provide a systematic approach you can use to aid your value proposition development and testing efforts.

Step #1: Identify potential claims of value

Identifying potential claims of value is really all about brainstorming. The example Austin gave for this was to imagine you are selling mortgages. What would be potential claims of value you could make?

Austin came up with some potential claims of value for selling mortgages:

• Reliability
• Lowest rates
• Easy process
• Brand name
• Payment plan options
• Reduced anxiety
• Service quality
• Community involvement

Step #2: Estimate the force of each claim

You can estimate the force of your claims by using elements of appeal and exclusivity to rank the potential claims you brainstormed for your product.

Austin explained how the elements are perceived by potential prospects.

Appeal – “I want this”

Exclusivity – “I can’t get this anywhere else”

Some of your offers will have a greater appeal, but they may not be very exclusive. Other offers might be exclusive, but offer little appeal to your customers.

“You want to test claims that have high levels of both appeal and exclusivity,” Austin explained.

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What can you learn about your customers from a test that produced a negative lift?

This was the central idea behind the opening keynote presentation, “The Internet as a Living Laboratory,” at MarketingSherpa Email Summit 2013 from Flint McGlaughlin, Managing Director, MECLABS.

In today’s MarketingExperiments blog post, we’re reporting live from Email Summit and will share one of the experiments featured in Flint’s session along with three important questions every marketer should ask themselves when a test results in a conversion decrease.

We hope you use these questions to view your negative lifts not as a failure, but as valuable learning tools about your customers that you would not have learned otherwise.

But first, let’s get some background on the experiment …

Research Notes:

Background: REGOnline is event management software that lets users create online registration forms and event websites to manage their events.

Goal: To increase the number of completed leads on homepage

Primary Research Question: Which page will achieve the greatest addressable lead rate?

Approach: A/B multifactor split test

Control:

The researchers hypothesized that in the treatment they could increase the appeal associated with the value proposition in the offer by focusing more on the product and its specific features and benefits.

Treatment #1:

So, in treatment #1, the research team changed the following:

• Headline was written to focus more on the product.
• Specific features and benefits are utilized to express the value.
• The page emphasizes “Free Access.”
• Ensured product-centric value was communicated in subsequent steps.

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On a recent MarketingSherpa webinar, sponsored by Paramore, I discussed statistical analytics techniques with Benjamin Fillip, Data Analyst, MECLABS …

Ben chose the techniques to feature on “Four Techniques to Improve Analytics Based on Customer Knowledge” from his experience working with MECLABS Research Partners. These are the same four techniques the MECLABS team of data scientists typically uses at the beginning of a Research Partnership to help guide testing and optimization.

Be Al Roker, not Tom Brokaw

Recent research in the MarketingSherpa 2013 Marketing Analytics Benchmark Report indicates 48% of marketers are using analytics platforms to customize reports, but only 24% are creating and testing hypotheses.

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