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

We’ve been asked this question a number of times: how do you create an effective online banner ad that stands apart from the hundreds of thousands of others out there?

I would like to help answer that question by giving you the three major obstacles all banner ads face and options that you can use to overcome them. 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…

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…

After several months’ hiatus, I was motivated to write an “LPO analysis” blog post by my initial impression of RealGoodsSolar’s landing page. It greeted me with a large photo of solar panels and a worker installing them.

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No children in a blooming meadow playing with balloons, no college students posing as they take on global ills, no grandparents with a pensive gaze—all implying the broader point about the importance of environmental awareness and concern about our common future. Instead, this page told me immediately what it was about in a single image and clearly visible and instantly readable headline: Install Solar Panels & Save. Read more…

After being involved in our recent Web clinic on PPC ads, I feel it’s important to talk about one of the most misunderstood elements involved in effectively writing a PPC ad. This is the element of appeal. Let me take a step back for a moment. MarketingExperiments has done extensive research (here’s one example) about the elements of an effective value proposition in the hopes of creating a repeatable process that marketers can use to optimize their own value props. In an effort to help simplify this process, we have created a breakdown of what makes a value proposition truly forceful:

• Appeal – How much is this offer desired?
• Exclusivity – Is this offer available elsewhere?
• Credibility – How believable are your claims? Read more…

It’s the same problem, every time…

Someone new to online testing, excited to get started, eager to begin crunching numbers and reporting amazing results:

• They decide on a few things that they instinctively think will raise conversions
• They make all the changes on one page, maybe two
• Setup all sorts of tracking that they’re not sure what to do with
• And push the start button thinking that their one page will see a major increase

Rarely does a test actually perform the way we expect it to, though. We believe that one set of pages will completely outperform another, when the reality is that some performance is all over the place.

When the test is complete, what will you report upstream? That the test was a wash? Or did you learn something that will bring you closer to the key insights that will have an effect on your bottom line?

Most beginners run into a test without being able to tell you what they are really testing.

They typically say, “I’m testing to see if this page increases conversions!” The problem with this statement is that it doesn’t do anything for you if the page, well, doesn’t.

In addition, if it does raise conversion, you don’t really have the slightest idea why. Instead, you get a false sense of confidence about what works on your site and what doesn’t. Then you get yourself into much deeper trouble, making assumptions for other parts of the site or customer segments that end up costing you revenue in the long term. Read more…