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

Toward the end of last year, Active Network, a technology and media company specializing in online registration and event management software, began a testing and optimization program on the website of one of its brands, RegOnline.

This week’s MarketingSherpa B2B newsletter article is a look at that entire program, but for this blog post I want to highlight an interesting test conducted in the middle of the cycle. This particular test deserves a closer look because it created impressive results, but more importantly, it illustrates why it is important to be flexible with a testing program.

At the beginning of Active Network’s testing cycle, the tests were conducted on the RegOnline homepage. The problem was that tested treatments were not producing positive results — and the homepage accounts for about 90% of RegOnline’s revenue.

Essentially, with the treatments being outperformed by the control, the homepage tests were hurting RegOnline’s bottom line.

This caused concern and discouragement with both the testing team and top-level management at Active Network.

A decision was made to begin testing other channels, such as landing pages, PPC ad copy and email messaging, to hopefully find some learnings that could inform future homepage tests. Another benefit was because these other channels had a more singular purpose than the homepage, it was easier to design a test to get a “win” and ease some of the discouragement.

Lauren Guinn, Director Online Marketing, Active Network, explains, “Because there is so much business risk testing on our homepage, we shifted to smaller tests on other channels and then applied these learnings to big tests on our homepage.” Read more…

In college, I had a journalism professor who said, “Make your headline twice as powerful as the event.” This is sage advice if you’re covering the Kardashian beat for a weekly tabloid, but it doesn’t seem to directly apply to today’s marketers.

(Apologies to any members of the Kardashian marketing team who may have been offended by the previous comment. You’ve done a terrific job promoting whatever it is that made them famous.)

But maybe it is applicable, after all. Despite a marketer’s goal of thoroughly conveying value on a landing page through well-crafted body text and use of images, there often remains a need for a powerful “hook” to further motivate a potential customer.

(Just recently, MarketingExperiments held a Web clinic that covered this very subject.)

When it comes to landing pages, one would think that it would be much easier to get users to convert, as they have already expressed a certain amount of interest via search or email clickthrough. But these users still need to be quickly reminded of why their clicks landed them there in the first place.

In the following test, you’ll see that a continuation of the value proposition was deftly handled with the addition of a few short, powerful words, alongside a much-needed change in the way our partner asked for information. Read more…

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Relevance is not born on your landing page. Relevance starts with the ad that the visitor clicked. With SES New York right around the corner (hope to see you there!), I wanted to discuss how your ads effectively shape your site visitors’ motivation. When you understand motivation, you can build ad-page pairs that maximize relevance, and consequently conversion.

Recently, I discussed how clarity helped RealGoodsSolar landing page keep visitors on the page. Today, I wanted to take a closer look at the different motivations that their landing page meets from paid Facebook, LinkedIn and AdWords traffic. Read more…

Recently, I sat in on what I like to call a “meeting of the minds” – where the research team in our lab sits down to discuss their ongoing research in online marketing, and optimizes pages together. Here in the labs, we call this a Peer Review Session. So, I took notes to share their advice with you and make you feel as if you were right there with us.

While there was a lot of helpful content being discussed, I decided to share their optimization suggestions for a landing page that I got to present to them, thanks to the help of the Director of Editorial Content, Daniel Burstein. The page was from the CBS Sports Web site, and it had to do with their Fantasy Football league (I play in the ESPN league, by the way). Yea, yea. I know, the 2010 NFL season ended a couple of weeks ago, but this advice will last forever (was that too much?)

Because, while CBS Sports submitted this page for live optimization during a Web clinic about homepage optimization several months ago while football was actually in season, we thought it might be more interesting to provide optimization suggestions for what they do in the off season.

After all, many marketers have a product that has an on and off cycle. I wondered what optimization and testing ideas our researchers would have for an off-cycle product page.

Here’s the page they reviewed:

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THE GOOD

Before I go on and show you what the team (pun intended) felt this page was doing wrong, let me tell you what they did think it did right.

This page is making a push for the upcoming fantasy football season, even though the 2011 NFL season is months away (and may not even happen because of a potential lockout). When we looked at their competitors’ respective fantasy football league pages, they were either static or had no option to start planning next season’s registration early (even my beloved, ESPN league was guilty of this…Tisk, tisk).

Research Manager, Jon Powell, noted that at least CBS Sports had an interactive page and was giving potential players a reason to get engaged early and maybe even play ball (another very intended pun). The fact that they’re starting a conversation could give them a slight edge over competitors who are probably waiting for the season to get closer before making a move.

So ask yourself, if you have an off cycle product, what landing page is currently awaiting your off-cycle traffic? Are you just showing them that the last event closed? Or offering up a reason to join you for the next, future event.

THE BAD

And now, what you’ve been waiting for, the bad.

This page is a bit confusing. The problem is, it has no focus. It has two calls-to-action, making the page “conflated,” according to Jon.

On one section it’s asking you to put in your email address to get notified about next season’s launch, meanwhile, in the other it’s asking you to start a free trial. Another thing Research Analyst, Dustin Eichholt, pointed out was that the calls-to-action were flip flopped.” “Why are they asking for an email and then selling you the product?”

Exactly! A person is not going to just put in their email address all wily nilly, especially if they don’t understand what they’re being offered in the first place.

THE SOLUTION (WHICH ISN’T UGLY AT ALL)

Step 1: Focus on one main objective

So, in a unanimous decision, everyone agreed that the page needed to be focused on one main objective. The research team’s suggestion was to get rid of the section that asked you to start a free trial and remove pricing all together.

But wait! You might be asking yourself, “isn’t the objective to sell a product?” Yes! But, you can’t sell something without first starting a conversation with the visitor and showing them why it’s valuable to them. The objective here should be to start up an email nurturing campaign. Especially, considering this page is trying to pre-sell.

So, CBS Sports has more than enough time to get the potential gamer interested by showing them over time why they’re the best fantasy football option for them. You show them price in the emails. But, I won’t go into depth with that, because we’re still trying to optimize the landing page and get people interested. Email campaign stuff comes after engaging the visitor.

Step 2: Find the differentiator

So, now that we have a clear objective, what’s the next step? Senior Director of Sciences, Bob Kemper, said they needed to express their value proposition, which is essential in online marketing. Clearly show the audience the value of the product through a quantifiable statement.

Your value proposition should be you conversation starter and show the visitor what makes your product their best option. This is especially important for CBS Sports’ fantasy football league, the only online fantasy football league that isn’t free (according to our limited research of visiting three sites)!

So, they need to really express the “differentiator” as Bob said during the meeting. Senior Optimization Manager, Adam Lapp, (who happens to play fantasy football using CBS Sports) mentioned they had some great features, which they had buried all the way at the bottom of the page – where the free trial section is. He suggested they move those up to show visitors the product quality. Those features can support your value proposition and make your product more enticing. But remember, you’re not selling the product just yet, you’re getting the visitor pumped about your league and getting them interested.

Step 3: Capture the email address

So, you’ve focused your page objective, have expressed your value prop and got the visitor a little interested in your product. How do you drive in for the touchdown and get that email address?

Time to optimize that form field! People get anxious when it comes to putting in their email address, because they think you’re going to spam them ‘til they go crazy. So, as our Managing Director/CEO, Dr. Flint McGlaughlin says, you need to show the visitor that the offer is worth the risk of putting in their email address.

How do you do that? Simple, offer something. You don’t want to come off as if you’re just trying to get their email address. In this case our research team had a few incentives CBS Sports could try.

• A free preview guide for the upcoming season for all those potential commissioners who sign up early to get information about the league. Trust me, fantasy football players love that stuff!
• An exclusive top players draft list for the potential commissioners, (the first year I started playing fantasy football, I probably would have given up my first born for that list. I kid, I kid. I don’t even have a child, but yea, I definitely would have been interested in that list of top prospects.)
• Another nice incentive that Adam suggested was offering those potential commissioners an exclusive 20% discount just for signing up early and reserving their spot. That discount could be used if they finally do decide to register for the league that season.

The next way to optimize that form field is changing the look a bit. One thing Adam suggested was changing the birth date section to a pre-selected “Yes, I am 18 years or older” line. It takes away the hassle of having to type in your date of birth to confirm you are the appropriate age to use that product. Remember, you want to make the process as smooth as possible for the visitor.

My two cents on that form field would be changing the call to action from the current, “sign up now,” to something like, “Get in the game now,” “Reserve your spot now,” or “Get an early start.” Obviously it would have to be a phrase that complements the incentive. I think that would get me more pumped about signing up than what’s currently there.

Well that’s it for my notes! I hope these tips helped you. I will make sure to take notes at my next infiltration of a “MECLABS meeting of the minds” and bring you some more insight.

(Now that you’ve read our two cents, I welcome you to use the comments section and tell us what you would do to optimize this page!)

Related Resources

Landing Page Optimization: Identifying friction to increase conversion and get a Nobel Prize

Landing Page Testing: Designing and prioritizing experiments

Internet Marketing: Optimizing form fields to maximize conversions

MarketingExperiments Quarterly Research Journal, Q3 2010

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…

The 2010 Nobel Prize in Economics was awarded to Peter Diamond, Dale Mortensen and Christopher Pissarides for their research trying to explain why unemployment remains so high in the U.S. and other advanced economies. More specifically, they won for their analysis of markets with search frictions – any factors that keep markets from operating efficiently.

Being the amateur economist I am (CV: 11^th grade with Mr. Lamar, I’ve read several issues of The Economist), I was elated to hear about this selection. Theoretical economics is sometimes too, well, theoretical. Supply A meets Demand B and they live happily ever after.

With the notable exception of Dan Ariely, I often wonder if these economists live in the real world or just a magical Shangri-la where everyone always behaves rationally, and mere trifles like food and energy aren’t important aspects in the average family budget (I believe this Eden is called Princeton).

The world I live in doesn’t work that way. Which gets us to your landing page… Read more…