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

In our recently released MarketingSherpa 2012 Website Optimization Benchmark Report, we asked about average conversion rates …

Q. Please write in your organization’s average conversion rate.

Click to enalrge

It’s human nature to see a number and to instantly think of it as a fact, so let me first briefly mention the limits of numbers. Just because you see the numbers above, don’t assume that all of your, for example, media and publishing competitors are getting 10% conversion rates for every offer.

These numbers are simply meant to give you a general idea of how certain industries are fairing as you work on your own conversion rate optimization efforts.

“Where ever you are, you should also try to figure out how you can improve your conversion rate 5-10% monthly,” is how Bryan Eisenberg, Managing Partner, Eisenberg Holdings, put it in “Average Conversion Rate by Industry 2012.”

  Read more…

Usually on the MarketingExperiments blog, we take a deep look at a specific topic, such as factors for choosing online testing and optimization platforms and landing page optimization. After all, our job is to help you do your job better. (Let us know how we can help.)

But, in today’s post, I want to take a step back from those granular topics, and to help you understand all of the free resources available to you through MECLABS, the parent company of MarketingExperiments.

If you’re unfamiliar with MECLABS, you can download the 403-page MECLABS Research Catalog for a look at the scope of our research and reporting. We make all of this information available to you through these free resources:

Read more…

Dr. Flint McGlaughlin, Managing Director and CEO, MECLABS, explains what he has learned from 15 years of marketing research in this video …

If you would like to jump to a specific point in the video, here are some key points that Flint covered:

00:34 – Three flaws in the funnel analogy

2:31 – The inverted sales funnel

9:34 – Conversion Heuristic

10:34 – Recent Experiments: 10,000+ Paths Tested

Related Resources

Conversion Rate Optimization: Building to the Ultimate Yes

Marketing-Sales Funnel Optimization: 3 questions to ask as you kickoff 2012

Landing Page Wireframe: Why focusing on ‘one variable at a time’ doesn’t work

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…

Do you shout, brag, or sell in the typical conversations you have in an average day?

If you’re not a professional wrestler, you will likely answer “no” to the above question. Yet, as Dr. Flint McGlaughlin showed in our live web clinic on February 3, many marketing email messages fall into the above traps because they don’t think of email marketing as just a conversation… Read more…

“Be sincere, be brief, be seated.” While some experts have dutifully penned entire tomes about this subject, the famous advice Franklin Roosevelt gave to his son about public speaking still resonates today for its stark honesty.

If Franklin Roosevelt 2.0 was giving advice about Internet marketing, he would probably change “brief” to “clear” (and perhaps “seated” to “testing”). While marketers invest the majority of their time and budgets on complex areas deeper down in the funnel, MarketingExperiments research has found that most of the gain from optimizing a website occurs in clarifying the first seven seconds of users’ experience.

Much of the complex analysis and formulaic methodologies used by our scientists to create optimized pages with triple-digit conversion improvements can be summed up in this truism…

Clarity Trumps Persuasion

The first seven seconds, and perhaps just those first three, are vital to clearly guiding your visitor into an inevitable conclusion to engage in a transaction with you. Below is a quick excerpt from a recent live web clinic in which Dr. Flint McGlaughlin, the Director of MECLABS (our parent organization), discusses how your visitors interact with your website in those first few moments they land on your page…

Yet Difficulty Trumps Clarity?

Of course, so many websites produced by experienced, professional marketers don’t follow this simple principle because, in reality, it can be quite difficult to truly be clear. Put another way, what is clear to an insider (a marketer that lives, breathes, and eats his product every day) can be meaningless and confusing to your visitor. And even when you have every intention to be clear, how many monkeywrenches get thrown your way (Sales wants one thing, Operations another, and don’t even get me started on Legal)?

To help you on your journey along the road to clarity and prosperity, you can view a replay of the clinic or read the latest issue of MarketingExperiments Journal. Our next live web clinic, Maximizing your Agency ROI: How adding science to the creative process reveals a 26% gain, will be taught on January 13th from 4 to 5 p.m. EST.