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Color preferences are deeply rooted emotional responses that seem to lack any rational basis, yet the powerful influence of color rules our choices in everything from the food we eat to the clothes we wear to the cars we buy.

        

  • One study found that magazine readers recognize full-color ads 26% more often than black-and-white ads.
  •     

  • 92.6% of people say the visual dimension is the #1 influencing factor affecting their purchase decision (over taste, smell, etc.).
  •     

  • 2 out of 3 consumers will not buy a large appliance unless it comes in their favorite color.

Color has a powerful psychological influence on the human brain. Others have used color to their advantage and now you can do the same. Check out this infographic by our friends at KISSmetrics.

How Colors Affect Conversions
Source: How Colors Affect Conversions – Infographic

The Strongest Online Persuader You’ll Ever Encounter: Yourself

The things that make us effective marketers or stand in our way often aren’t external, but internal. Being a good marketer, copywriter or Conversion Scientist means coming to terms with our own demons, limitations and neuroses.

Dr. Aaron Balick maps out how our overburdened Ego does it’s best “while being goaded on by the Id and being told off by the Superego.”

Dr. Balick knows how to help us relate to these kind of issues in his latest article.

Why The New Google Search Ads Design Is a Subtle Work of Genius

If you didn’t know, Google has redesigned their search results pages recently. The change is primarily to the portion of the page that contains “sponsored content”, or ads.

The eye-tracking images provided by the folks at EyeQuant are telling.

The pages now drive more attention to the ads, taking attention away from the free results. Ironically, it also makes the ads more evident, with a bright icon beside each.

EyeQuant calls this “a Subtle Work of Genius”. What do you think?

11 A/B Split Testing Mistakes I See Businesses Make All The Time

Peep Laja has put into one blog post most of the hard lessons we’ve learned over the years of testing here in the Conversion Lab. Peep doesn’t mince words (“There is no best color”).

Don’t let all of this scare you. It’s better to try and learn from your mistakes than to not make any mistakes at all. Test away!
Read Peep Laja’s article in its entirety here.

Are you a CRO Junkie? It Could Ruin Your Split Tests

Do you get a shot of adrenaline every time you see an uptick in conversions? We do. However, we often find our early excitement tempered when a test turns out to be inconclusive.

It can be hard to announce to a customer that you didn’t find a winner. In fact, it’s a discipline here.

Find out what you can do to keep from getting addicted to good test results.

For Further Study

Want to get Brian’s For Further Study posts delivered right to your inbox?

Click HERE to sign up.

I have to admit, I was a little more nervous than usual presenting in front of an audience of psychologist-marketers.

You’ll see what I mean in the video.

Why would a Conversion Scientist be invited to speak at a Psych conference? Because our testing is designed to tell us things about your visitors that they cannot even explain themselves. This is why split testing is such a valuable tool. Visitors tell us what they prefer by how they act.

One thing testing has taught us is that there are bouncers in the human brain, and these bouncers must be dealt with before our messages will be processed and acted upon.

It’s just 20 minutes or so.

Hat tip to Roy H. Williams and the Wizard Academy for introducing me to the research I present here.

References

Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman

Albert Mehrabian on Amazon


21 Quick and Easy CRO Copywriting Hacks to Skyrocket Conversions

21 Quick and Easy CRO Copywriting Hacks

Keep these proven copywriting hacks in mind to make your copy convert.

  • 43 Pages with Examples
  • Assumptive Phrasing
  • "We" vs. "You"
  • Pattern Interrupts
  • The Power of Three

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Brian Massey

Here we thought we were the only ones who loved a good periodic table. Data collected from Convirza based on millions of phone calls analyzed in the first quarter of 2014 answers the critical question: what are the differences between a converted call and a non-converted call?
McKay Allen shared the results from this study in this incredible infographic. Some interesting facts you will find:

  • Agents asked for the business 3x more frequently on converted calls than non.
  • Converted calls were 42% longer than non-converted calls.
  • Lead quality score was 65% higher on converted calls than non.

Please share and enjoy.
Infographic, Logmycalls, converted calls

The Elements of a Converted Call

Conversion Sciences shows you how to get phone leads in our free Webinar with Convirza.

The audience for any website is unique.
In fact, it would be presumptuous to conclude that two websites selling the same or similar product are going to have equal successes. If this were the case, where would the challenge be? And what would we be doing for a living?
This is why we let your website visitors decide what works best. Seems legitimately reasonable to us. Your website’s success is measured by conversions. Whether that is a completed purchase, email obtained or newsletter subscriptions.
But how do we work through this process? Is there a specific protocol that we follow? Guided questions that we ask ourselves?
We live by a few mantras; truisms if you will.  These 9 mantras assist and guide us through the decision making process, ultimately leading us to CRO victory for your website.
We proudly want to share these with you. We don’t keep them locked in a vault like Pepsi or Buschs’ Baked Beans, so here are our 9 CRO mantras. Enjoy!

The Nine CRO Mantras of the Conversion Scientist!

Nine CRO Mantras of The Conversion Scientist

Let us make your accountant smile.
You can get a free strategy session with a Conversion Scientist. We’ll help you see the possibilities for your visitors.

In this presentation, I talk about predicting the future.
The problem with predicting the future, even using CRO, is that our visitors are very unpredictable. Here are some of the assumptions we use to predict the future that just don’t work.
Because, really, all of us are predicting the future. When we’re building our sites and we’re putting our ads out, we’re trying to predict what that ad or that site is going to do for our business.
We’re all trying to predict the future and we’re not very good at it.
The Conversion Scientist Podcast


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Brian Massey posed a great question to me the other day: If you could ask your site visitors only one question, what should it be? I love this question because it distills pre-conversion user research down to its essence: how can you best glean the “why” motivations behind what your users are thinking – and, equally importantly, the concerns they may be feeling – early in their experience? And how can you choose a question that, after you analyze user responses, will be actionable – will allow you to confidently make and test design updates that better address these concerns and improve your conversions?
In this article I’ll focus on what question to ask, and in a future article I’ll unpack where and how you should ask this question.

Start with the research end in mind

Start with the insights goal you’re trying to achieve by asking the question. Are you trying to expose the general concerns or questions (what marketers call “objections”) your visitors may have, or are you more interested in learning something more specific, such as whether your Product Detail page is missing any key information? If you’re new to user experience research, or your website hasn’t undergone any significant usability testing, you should typically start with the “general” goal and ask more open-ended questions.
In this article I’ll assume that you are asking the question of a person who doesn’t yet know and trust your brand and is early in her shopping experience (e.g. just arrived on your website or landing page). A different question – or set of questions – would apply for your converted customers.

First, avoid asking the wrong questions

First, let’s talk about questions you shouldn’t ask. The prospect is already on your site, so clearly your marketing has worked (at least partially). So early in the experience you should avoid asking marketing questions like:

  • How did you first hear about us?
  • What prompted you to start looking for this type of service?
  • What other competitors are you considering?

Instead, focus on the questions most tied to your research goals, and that uncover questions and concerns that would negatively affect your visitor engagement and conversion. Save the marketing questions for further down your sales funnel – for example, on order confirmation pages, in your social media channels, or on your email response pages.

Some possible questions

OK, let’s finally get to the question you should ask. Based on my experience leading research projects for six Fortune 500 clients, and my recent survey of the latest user feedback solicitation tools, here are my top 5 possible questions (in no particular order), along with some pros and cons for each:

Drumroll, please…

In my opinion, the #1 question I would ask is Question #5. Coming in a “Close 2nd” is Question #4.
The two questions are really variations on the same theme. By asking either of them you are communicating, “I value you as a potential customer and am truly interested in learning where our website is missing the mark relative to your needs, wants and expectations. This question is specifically not calling attention to your offer, it’s not “going for the close”, and it’s not asking your visitors to be designers; it’s simply saying “we care, we want to improve your experience, and we’re listening.”
A key thing to remember: for many shopping scenarios, “making a positive brand impression” or “building brand memory” is as important as closing a sale or generating a lead. Connect with the visitor first; sell to her later. Another thing to bear in mind: with the rapid growth of mobile devices usage, prospect experiences are often multi-touch:  the prospect hits your website on their iPad the evening of Day 1, briefly visits your site during lunch on Day 2, and again visits your site during an afternoon coffee break on Day 2. So, except in some small dollar amount, single widget sales cases, it’s not a “once and done” interaction (or if it is, it shouldn’t be).

A sample scenario

Let’s say that Judy, a middle-aged woman from Austin, is shopping for a place to board her dog Max while she’s on vacation. She’s willing to pay extra for a better facility and service. After doing a web search for “dog boarders austin,” she lands on www.campbowwow.com.

Camp Bow Wow

Judy’s main concerns are:

  • Pricing – how much will it cost for the week?
  • How much play time her dog will get
  • How clean the kennel is kept

Judy sees that these questions are not answered on the top half of the home page. After about 10 seconds of scanning, she’s a bit disappointed and clicks her browser’s Back button. End of experience – for now and perhaps forever.
If our “one question” were asked, she’d have the choice (and who doesn’t like choices?!) to express her questions and concerns. Even if Judy decides to go with another dog boarder this time, there’s a decent chance that a thought like, “Ah yes… Camp Bow Wow… they were the ones who asked for my input,” will get lodged in her longer-term memory. If she were not completely satisfied with the other boarder’s services or staff, a couple weeks before her next trip she might just give Camp Bow Wow a call.

Summing up

Whether or not you consider your organization “customer centric”, you need to start a dialog with your prospects. And the sooner you can do this, the better (both in the experience, and on your website release roadmap). By doing so you’ll discover expectations that your site is not meeting so that you can better address them through user experience and copy updates, and thereby grow your bottom line.

About the Author

Mark is the Owner and Research Director at Hallmark Experience, an agency that focuses on voice of prospect research, usability testing and expert design reviews. He’s had the privilege to work with top brands like Macys, Kaiser Permanente, American Express and AutoZone, as well as smaller, fast-growing companies in the San Diego area. You can reach him here.

 

This is a guest post by Ryan Farris.
According to a study conducted by Bain and Co., the cost of acquisition for a new customer can be 600-700% more expensive than retaining an existing customer. This is not surprising to anyone.
So, why is that so many companies still struggle with high rates of attrition. Sure, part of it is “the grass is always greener” mentality that some consumers adopt, but part of it is that the people on the front lines are not equipped with the tools needed to build the trust and provide the value that customers need.
With the availability of information online, on television, and real-time social media updates, customers are equipped with more information than ever before. With access to all of this free information, it is more important than ever to prove your worth. Today, your worth is measured by customer service, trust, and convenience.

State of Customer Service INFOGRAPHIC

The State of Customer Service in a Consumer Driven Marketing – ClickSoftware Field Management


If you cannot prove to be more valuable to them than the other sources, then you’re on your way to paying those inflated acquisition costs again.
Businesses find themselves unable to provide that value. In a recent study, Forrester determined that poor systems, outdated customer service interfaces and archaic applications meant that forty-two percent of customer service agents were unable to efficiently resolve consumer issues and disputes.
This poor service is not without consequences. A study by Global Customer Services indicates that consumers are twice as likely to share negative customer service experiences as they are positive ones. Avoiding negative reviews by equipping your reps with the tools necessary provide a positive experience would be a priority for any company.
This Zendesk infographic highlights the effects of bad customer service.

Loyalty Test Infographic

It isn’t sufficient to offer a great product at a great price.

According to Bain and Co., a customer is 400% more likely to switch to a competitor if their problem is with a company’s service.
According to Bain and Co., a customer is 400% more likely to switch to a competitor if their problem is with a company’s service.
Your excellent service must be delivered promptly. Customers are 33% more likely to recommend a brand that provides a quick response, even if it proves ineffective. Twelve percent are willing to recommend a brand that provides an effective response even if it is slow. Clearly, speed is king.
To summarize, fast service is how you keep customers and minimize your acquisition costs. Fast service requires that your service reps have instant access to information that will allow them to deal with customer issues. This is as much a marketing issue as a service issue.
We call this “Relationship Marketing.” Relationship marketing platforms put important information in the hands of sales reps and service agents, information needed to satisfy customers. Marketing is no longer at the mercy of other organizations to retain customers with tools like these. Instead, they can feed the necessary content, assets and data sources directly to the people on the front lines.
When you retain customers, you retain revenue and can reduce acquisition costs. Relationship management empowers your sales and service organizations to succeed with existing clients.
Ryan Farris
Ryan Farris is the President of EarthIntegrate.  At Earthintegrate, he has focused his energies on aiding and empowering enterprise companies to grow and manage sales/marketing in complex or regulated industries.You can connect with Ryan on LinkedIn.   Visit Earthintegrate Resources to get more Technology Powered Resources, such as whitepapers and case studies, from Earthintegrate.

As scientists, we like to break things down to their essence, to understand the things that make them work. This works well when we’re optimizing websites.
Now it’s St. Patrick’s Day. What are the components of this rowdy holiday?

We decided to create our own website optimization holiday modeled on St. Patty’s Day. Our analysis indicates that we need two things:

  1. A Patron Saint
  2. Beer

Here’s what we did for today’s celebration.

Select a Patron Saint

How CRO is Like St. Patrick's Day: Tell us who your patron saint will be.

Tell us who your patron saint will be. Image Credit: iconsatoare.

In selecting a patron saint for our holiday, we considered a number of the saints of the Web.

St. Phatty is the the patron saint of online apparel stores. St. Maverick is the patron saint of industry changing online services like Amazon. St. Splatrick is the patron saint of online paintball vendors. St. Hattrick is the patron saint of magician websites. Can you guess the what St. Latte is the patron saint of? You pick your own patron saint and get ready to celebrate.

We decided that St. Buyschtuff would be the patron saint of online business. We created a mythology for St. Buyschtuff.

St. Buyschtuff: The Patron Saint of Marketers and Advertisers

St. Buyschtuff is a mythical figure frequently credited with influencing important purchases. For example, St. Buyschtuff is credited with selling both the watch fob and brush set detailed in the classic story “The Gift of the Magi”. When the three wise men were debating what to get the future king of the Christian faith, who did they consult? St. Buyschtuff is often credited with recommending the Frankincense and Myrrh, but thought the gold a bit garish.

St. Buyschtuff’s name is invoked whenever transactions are made. He is rumored to have been the original Easter Bunny and to have worked under the pseudonym “St. Valentine.” Saint Nicholas (aka Santa Claus) is said to have consulted with him about how to best use flying reindeer. Historian Herman Sellers said, “History is rife with bad deals and ill-advised transactions. However, whenever there is a purchase or transaction that results in great good for both buyer and seller, St. Buyschtuff’s name is frequently invoked.”

Tell us who your patron saint is in the comments.

Before we can have a party, we have some work to do. The second step is to “make beer.” For this article, “make beer” is a euphemism, like “make bank”, “print money”, “rev the revenue”, or “buy papa a new pair of shoes.”

If you’re St. Patrick and just had a long day of driving snakes out of Ireland, you want a cold brew with a little kick.

If you’re St. Buyschtuff and just had a long day driving abandoners out of websites, you want cold hard cash with a big kick.

St. Buyschtuff’s Day Brew or How CRO is Like St. Patrick’s Day

St. Patty’s brew is created in a boiler with hops and malted barley. Heat is applied at key points and carefully monitored to bring out the starches. Then yeast is introduced as a catalyst that turns the starch into buzz-inducing ethyl alcohol.

The St. Buyschtuff brew, in similar fashion, is created on a website rather than a boiler. It is filled with content and offers instead of hops and barley. The heat comes from traffic. Trust and proof are the catalysts that convert visits into buzz-inducing conversions.

Content and Offers

Before you begin brewing your content and offers, you need to go through a process of cleansing the content of self-serving, posing and irrelevant messages. You want a pure value proposition, enticing offers and nothing more. We’ll add some of your company information into the mix near the end of the process.

Don’t neglect images and video. Avoid filler images and stock photography, what we call “business porn”. Instead use images to better communicate your value proposition.

Turn on the heat (more how CRO is like St. Patrick’s Day)

Our mix is heated in the fire of live traffic. Traffic may come from search engines, paid ads, email or social networks. Each of these kinds of traffic burns at different intensity levels.

Our beer-brewing brothers and sisters must maintain the temperature of the flame in a tight range. We try to control our traffic quality as well. We may get less traffic than we could, but bringing qualified visitors is key to keeping the right temperature.

StumbleUpon traffic is the wrong traffic for most businesses. Social media networks deliver visitors who were doing something else, and work mostly for spontaneous purchases. Where are your qualified visitors. Yes, this is the question we are always asking. We never stop asking this.

Add some Catalysts

To drive fermentation, beer brewers introduce a bacteria called yeast. It processes the sugars extracted from the barley and convers them into CO2 and ethyl alcohol. The CO2 is vented off. The alcohol is kept.

Likewise, we need to add a catalyst to our website. We choose trust and proof. If your brand, company and products demonstrates proof or builds trust, now is the time to introduce this to the site.

Proof and trust process the content on the site and convert it into abandonment and conversion. Abandonment is, by definition, vented off. It is an inevitable part of the process.

Conversion is kept and will give us a nice “checkbook buzz” on the celebratory day of our patron saint.

Experiment (yes, CRO is like St. Patrick’s Day)

Brewmasters experiment with their mix, and they can’t just test one stage. They change the process, the temperature, the length of each stage and even add unexpected elements like fruit to the process.

But they always complete the beer before judging their changes. They can’t sample the “wort” or the “trub” and predict how the final beer will taste.

Likewise, we must test our website to the dollars. We like metrics like Revenue per Visit and Revenue per Click when testing. Testing to “engagement” or email “click-through rate” doesn’t let us test the right result.

We always measure to the dollars.

Happy St. Buyschtuff Day!

We celebrate our wins like the Irish celebrate the St. Patrick’s driving away of the snakes. We summarize the results, take the credit, and slap high fives.

Then we start working on the next conversion rate increasing brew.

Tell us what you’re brewing up for your day of celebration in the comments.

Brian Massey

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How To Conduct A Conversion Optimization Experiment | Relative Bearing

Here’s the first line from this very helpful little post:
“0 sales! What? But we got 517 unique visitors this week!”
Airing your mistakes is not seen as smart marketing in many circles, but this kind of thing really is helpful. Besides the important moral of this story, there’s another:
Failing the right way leads to success faster. Failing without knowing why invites unnecessary failure.
I predict good things for these folks.
To read the full article by Ethan Jones, visit Clearpath.

Our Biggest Problem is Brand Awareness

@sethgodin says “awareness isn’t a scalable problem to solve.” As website optimizers, we couldn’t agree more.
He continues, “The solution lies in re-organizing your systems, in re-creating your product or service so that it becomes worth talking about.”…or in making your website so intuitive that it isn’t worth complaining about.
Seth sums is up better than we could have ourselves, “When you produce something remarkable, more use leads to more conversation which leads to more use.”
To read the full article by Seth Godin, visit Seth’s blog.

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