When you think of email marketing for your eCommerce site, what comes to mind? Like most eCommerce business owners or managers, you might be thinking about the newsletters you send to your email list subscribers or the transactional emails that go out automatically once a shopper on your site completes a purchase.

But think about this:
Time and time again, email has proven to be an excellent tool to help you not only engage with your shoppers but ultimately increase conversions for your eCommerce site.

With that in mind, what if you could leverage the power of email to convert more traffic into sales?
I’m talking about using automated email responses to bolster your conversion rate optimization strategy.

If you’re wondering what email and CRO have in common, not to worry. (We’ll get to that in a minute.)

As an online retailer or eCommerce manager, your ultimate goal is to convert your site traffic into sales, right?
In this article, I’m going to share with you the powerful connection between email marketing and conversion rate optimization, plus I’m going to show you the exact four automated email campaigns you can use to drive a winning conversion rate optimization strategy for your online store.

Using Email to Convert More Window Shoppers Into Paying Customers

The scary truth about eCommerce is this: Most of your traffic isn’t converting. That’s traffic that you’ve likely put in a lot of effort to driving to your store, in the first place, whether it be from PPC, SEO, or social media.

Naturally, this is where CRO comes in.

And as you probably already know, optimizing your site for conversions is truly a science.

It takes careful examination of data to really win at CRO. And in 2017, there’s no shortage of tools at your disposal to do so.

Have a look at this eCommerce site’s analytics, for example:
image05
In this case, nearly 90% of this eCommerce site’s traffic left without adding anything to a cart.

Generally, only about 5% of your website’s traffic will make it to your cart page, so while it’s great to implement on-site CRO tools to keep shoppers on your site for as long as possible in the hopes that they’ll complete a purchase, there’s got to me more that can be done to leverage the rest of your site traffic that’s slipped away.

At this point in digital marketing history, most retailers and marketers know about and may be using cart abandonment emails to bring back lost traffic. Cart abandonment campaigns and exit-intent technology powering on-site messaging are just two examples of how you can increase the reach of your overall conversion rate optimization strategy.

But how can you take that same approach of addressing seemingly lost shoppers who’ve expressed high levels of purchase intent and apply it to more of your site traffic to lift conversions?
The answer is Browse Abandonment Emails.

Browse Abandonment Email Campaigns: The Key to Unlocking More Conversions

Automated email responses can address visitors at all stages of the purchase decision.

Browse automated email responses can address visitors at all stages of the purchase decision.

What is browse abandonment?
As you can see, your eCommerce site traffic reaches various steps in the shopping funnel. About 30% reaches a category page; 20% reaches a product page.

When you take a look at this data, you may be asking yourself, how can I effectively convert shoppers at each step of the way rather than losing them?
The most common tactics for getting more site traffic to convert generally address the elements on your actual site.

On-site optimization is great. You can:

  • Add strategically placed popups to various pages and keep shoppers on your site for longer
  • Optimize your pages with trust signals like ratings and reviews to increase the likelihood that a shopper will purchase
  • Incentivize shoppers with special offers and discounts
  • Improve UX/UI to make it easier for your shoppers to sail through the checkout

But what about when the shopper leaves before completing the purchase? Are you just going to let them get away forever?
Enter Browse Abandonment Email Campaigns.

Similar to cart abandonment email campaigns, browse abandonment campaigns help you engage with these shoppers through automated emails that bring them back to your site. This helps you recapture the site traffic you nearly lost.

How much more?
They can be used to reach up to 5x more shoppers, bringing them back to your site to complete a purchase.

These emails are great because you can send them to the shoppers who drop off at various steps in the shopping funnel, creating more engagement and conversion opportunities, and therefore, getting more out of your site traffic.

Here’s an example.

If a shopper left after visiting your homepage, you can send a Homepage Browse Campaign.

If a shopper viewed a category but never went on to check out individual products, you can send a Category Browse Campaign.

If a shopper viewed specific products on your site yet never added any to their cart, you can send a Product Browse Campaign.

Another point in the shopping funnel you can address is your site search. If a shopper searched for a term or product keyword on your site yet never continued in their shopping journey, you can send a Site Search Abandonment Campaign, too.

Take a look at how well browse abandonment campaigns perform:

Browse abandonment email had a conversion rate six times that of newsletter email.

Browse abandonment email had a conversion rate six times that of newsletter email.

In this case, browse campaigns converted almost 7x higher than all other channels and campaigns, including the site’s newsletter.

Automated email had a 3x the conversion rate of the sitewide average and was the highest converting channel.

Automated email had a 3x the conversion rate of the sitewide average and was the highest converting channel.

Here, the conversion rate of automated email responses beat the conversion rate of all channels by more than three to one.

What makes these automated emails so effective?
For one, these campaigns engage the shoppers who dropped off earlier on in your shopping funnel, so your reach is much greater than other email campaigns.

It gets better.

Browse abandonment emails can be highly personalized, which means they can work extremely well for any online retailer. Given that 81% of shoppers report they are highly likely to purchase from a site that sent them personalized emails, these behaviorally-triggered and highly personalized messages work.

Now that you know how browse abandonment campaigns work, I’m going to show you examples of the 4 automated emails we spoke about earlier so that you can send them to your shoppers and convert more browsers into buyers.

Capturing Emails For Automated Responses

So how do we capture emails when users are just browsing?
The simplest answer is that there is no correct answer. There are literally hundreds of lead capture strategies, with new technologies coming out every day.

That said, here are a few different methods you might use to grab browser emails:

  • Exit-intent popups
  • Discount offers
  • Newsletter signups
  • Site login
  • Lead magnets
  • Etc.

It’s also possible that you already have the user’s email address through previous engagement or the way they arrive at your site.

For example, if you run a cross-promotion with a 3rd party’s email subscribers, you can set it up so that when they click-through from the email to your website, you automatically receive their email address.

Regardless of how you collect the email address, these are some of the best automated email responses you can send to visitors after they leave your site.

Automated Campaign #1: Homepage Browse Abandonment Email

Choxi showcases its best deals for homepage automated email responses.

Choxi showcases its best deals for homepage automated email responses.

Homepage browse emails are a great way to engage with shoppers who landed on your homepage but never went on to explore your site further. Invite them back with product recommendations that showcase your site-wide top sellers.

  • Average open rate: 22%
  • Average CTR: 16%
  • Average revenue per email sent: $0.61

Automated Campaign #2: Category Browse Abandonment Email

J. Crew can lead visitors back to the category page they favored with abandonment email.

J. Crew can lead visitors back to the category page they favored with abandonment email.

You can send category browse emails to the shoppers who expressed interest in a category, brand or department on your site but did not proceed to view any individual products.

Peak the interest of these shoppers by displaying product recommendations that are related to the category they viewed and additional options that include site-wide top sellers.

  • Average open rate: 42%
  • Average CTR: 27%
  • Average revenue per mail sent: $1.71

Automated Campaign #3: Product Browse Abandonment Email

French Connection uses abandonment email to bring prospects back to the products they dwelt on.

French Connection uses automatic email responses to bring prospects back to the products they dwelt on.

Product browse emails are very similar to cart abandonment emails in that you can use them to engage with abandoning shoppers who expressed a high level of purchase intent. The kicker here is that there are a lot more of your shoppers looking at products than those who click “add to cart” so your conversion potential here is much greater.

Invite these “warm leads” back to your site by displaying the product they viewed plus related product recommendations.

  • Average open rate: 52%
  • Average CTR: 26%
  • Average revenue per mail sent: $3.42

Automated Campaign #4: Site Search Abandonment Email

In this Calvin Klein example, shoppers get automated emails that reflect their search activity.

In this Calvin Klein example, shoppers get automated emails that reflect their search activity.

Site Search emails are important because they allow you to reach out to shoppers who were clearly searching for something on your site yet for some reason they did not find what they were looking for.

Use these emails to invite back those lost shoppers and help them find what they were looking for.

  • Average open rate: 52%
  • Average CTR: 28%
  • Average revenue per mail sent: $2.85

The Expert CRO Strategy That Most Merchants Aren’t Using

By now, you may be asking yourself, if browse abandonment emails perform so well, why aren’t more online retailers using them as part of their CRO strategies?
Larger retailers like Amazon have been sending personalized email messages like these for ages, but smaller guys, not so much since it used to take large development and marketing teams and even larger budgets to implement strategies like this one.

Luckily, things are now changing.

With more automated personalization tools for email available to eCommerce businesses, you can now send highly-targeted, behaviorally triggered browse abandonment email campaigns to your shoppers, no matter how big or small your business might be.

This year, optimize your business for higher conversions by using the most effective marketing channel to leverage more of your site traffic, and reap the rewards all year long.

Generate more sales leads. Follow this sure fire 4-step process for seriously increasing inbound calls.

Phone calls don’t get cold.

Phone calls are answered and voice mails are returned. There is no CRM icebox where your contacts can be sent to chill while everyone updates their lead reports.

Even if you have highly sophisticated marketing automation campaigns that move people through the sales funnel, none of them is as efficient and successful as a human being — listening, answering questions, and handling objections.

In our experience, inbound calls are worth between 500% and 1,000% (that’s five to ten times) more in revenue than a completed contact form.

Your business wants more calls. Your sales team wants more calls.

Today, I’m gong to give you a 4-step process for drastically increasing your inbound calls.

Understanding Your Inbound Callers

Before we attempt to increase calls, we must first understand who our callers are.

There are two kinds of people coming to your website who need to talk to someone. They won’t be satisfied by completing a form or reading a report.

We know something about these two kinds of people.

The first kind has a Myers-Briggs type index including NT, iNtuiting and Thinking. Well-known consultants Bryan and Jeffrey Eisenberg call them Competitives. They are on a mission to find the things that make them better. They expect things to work logically and abhor sloppiness. They are smart and goal-oriented.

The second kind has a Myers-Briggs type index that includes N and F, iNtuiting and Feeling. The Eisenbergs call them Humanists. They don’t do business with companies, they do business with people. They seek relationship and connection. Trust and empathy are the things they look for.

When you say, “Let’s put a phone number on our site because someone might actually call,” you are thinking of these visitors. The problem is, that adding a phone number as an afterthought is exactly what these visitors don’t want. The Competitive sees it as sloppy. The Humanist sees it as stand-offish.

Increasing inbound calls is both about appealing to these users AND making it easier for everyone else to call your business as opposed to contacting you via different channels.

Leverage Your Growing Mobile Traffic

If you are equipped to accept phone calls, you have an advantage over businesses that can’t. Too many businesses are ignoring their mobile traffic because it converts at a quarter to one-half the rate of their desktop traffic.

We have more than one client whose mobile conversion rate is higher than their desktop conversion rate. This is because they accept calls.

Buried deep inside every mobile phone is a phone. That’s why we call them mobile phones. With the right testing program, we can find the right calls to action and proper placements to turn tepid mobile traffic into gold.

Regardless of where the calls are coming from, there are some important steps to take when optimizing for phone calls.

The 4-Step Process For Drastically Increasing Inbound Calls

Now that you understand your inbound callers and leveraged your mobile traffic, let’s dive into the proven 4-step process for increasing your inbound calls and generating more sales leads.

Step #1: Improve Your Website Data Tracking

In order for this to work, dear marketer, you first need to get credit for these calls. Instead of slapping the company sales number on the website, you need to be able to measure calls sent from the site. Inexpensive services will give you a unique number. We use Grasshopper for our 800 number service. Google Voice is a source of local phone numbers. Counting calls will be largely done by hand.

To tie calls back into an analytics package, we’ve worked with a number of services, including IfByPhone and Marketing Optimizer. Others on the market include Mongoose Metrics, LogMyCalls, and RingRevenue. This allows you to calculate a conversion rate with more accuracy.

The ways these packages work are different and beyond the scope of this column. Nonetheless, they let you take credit for real activity in sales.

Step #2: Perfect Your Offer

We too often think that those who would prefer a call will think of calling. It ain’t true. Someone predisposed to call still needs to understand why they should call and what to expect. The only number that doesn’t need a call-to-action is 9-1-1.

Those who bother to write an invitation alongside their phone numbers resort to engaging messages such as, “Call,” “Call us,” “Call us today,” or the daring “Contact us.” None of these offers a why or tells you what to expect. Adding an exclamation point doesn’t help.

Home Instead Senior Care is really working hard to get visitors to pick up the phone. Discover the 4 steps for dramatically increasing inbound calls.

Home Instead Senior Care is really working hard to get visitors to pick up the phone.

There are four things that you can use to make your phone number more enticing to those who would call:

1. Alignment means that your “call-to-call” mirrors the need of the visitor. Often, it is sufficient to match the invitation in the ad or link what brought them to the page.

2. Adding Emotion shows that you relate to their real non-logical pain or desire.

In the example above, “Struggling with caring for a parent” would be aligned, but not emotional.

“Feeling guilty about caring for a parent?” definitely carries emotion. If you think that this kind of message is too bold, think again. We had a 43% increase in calls for an invitation that read, “Ready to stop lying to yourself? We can help. Call …”
Emotion is a powerful tool.

3. The visitor wants Clarity about what will happen if they call. Who will be on the end of the line? Will they be an expert? Will they try to sell me or educate me? Can I call on weekends? Be clear about what will happen on the call.

4. Finally, you must build the Value of the call. Like all good calls-to-action, the call-to-call must reek of WIIFM (“what’s in it for me”). It has to promise enough to the visitor that they would prefer to call you over any alternative. Lay it out there.

These four components — Alignment, Emotion, Clarity and Value — make for effective calls-to-call, and are great for other calls-to-action as well.

Step #3: Put Things In The Right Place

Just sticking the number in the upper right corner isn’t going to get you those calls that make you powerful. The number should be there, as this is where callers look. But the other two places that make the phones ring are:

  • In the headline at the start of content.
  • About 75% down a page of content.

The following image shows a wireframe of a typical content page with proper placement of calls-to-call. We’ve tested them all over the page.

Ask for the inbound call in the headline and again about three-quarters of the way down the page. Increasing sales calls best CTA placement.

Ask for the inbound call in the headline and again about three-quarters of the way down the page.

We tested messages at the top, left, right, bottom and middle. These are the places that worked for us on several sites. Bigger and bolder text can also increase your calls.

Step #4: Make Your Contact Forms Long & Unattractive

You may have noticed an item on the wireframe image above: “Long, ‘Nasty’ Form.”

To maximize the number of calls you get and cast fewer of your visitors into the frigid desert of the CRM, make your forms long, and ask for some personal info. Yes, this is the opposite of what we tell you to do when you want visitors to fill out a form.
This will cook your noodle. When trying to maximize the number of calls we get, a long, nasty form works better than no form at all. That’s right. No form generates fewer calls.

I think this highlights the way our visitors assign a price to their time and attention. On its own, a phone call may seem “expensive.” However, when a long, nasty form is on the page, it makes the cost of taking action by form more “expensive.” The call looks cheap by comparison.

This is a pricing exercise, but the cost isn’t money. It’s time and attention.

The power of a ringing phone gets noticed. If visitors to your site start calling your sales team, it will be noticed. You need to be able to measure the calls and toot your own horn as well. Unlike leads, calls have a power beyond a graph in a PowerPoint presentation. To become an indispensable marketer, make the phone ring.

Bonus: Make Click-to-Call Prominent on Mobile

Maximizing phone calls from the web means maximizing your mobile traffic. There is an entire separate set of strategies for getting more mobile calls.

Visitors on a mobile phone are coming with a completely different mindset from those coming on a desktop computer or tablet. To understand how to engage these visitors, download Designing for the Mobile Web 2.0.

Increasing Inbound Calls Conclusion

There are three kinds of visitors visiting your website:

  1. Those that will not call under any circumstances. They hate the human touch.
  2. Those who are going to call because they trust the human voice explicitly.
  3. Those who might call if given the right incentives.

When you focus your strategies on getting group 3 to call, you can enjoy significantly higher sales rates, bigger average order values and new customers that are more satisfied with their first buying experience.

Make calls a key part of your focus, and harvest more of those fickle visitors coming on mobile phones.

Searching for taglines for business growth? Take a look at these 9 business tagline examples that drove multi-million dollar growth. Understand when taglines and slogans are important and how to write a winner.

Taglines and slogans can get a bit of a bad rap in the conversion world.

When the goal is immediate conversion, we know from years of providing Conversion Optimization Services that a targeted, well-written value proposition will beat a vague tagline every day of the week.

But that doesn’t mean taglines aren’t important.

In fact, depending on your company size and marketing strategy, a tagline can have an even greater impact on your total revenue than your highest converting value proposition. The key is to understand when taglines are important, why they are effective, and how to write a winner.

Today, we’re going to cover all that plus look at 9 tagline examples that helped drive multi-million dollar growth.


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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When & Why Taglines Are Important

Just so we’re on the same page, a tagline is a catchphrase or slogan used to advertise a brand. It’s a short phrase or series of phrases, often presented in conjunction with the brand logo, that is intended to add meaning to the brand.

So, when is it important?

The simplest way to put this is that if branding is very important for you business, your tagline will also be very important.

Now, you might say, “Branding is important for every business,” and while you wouldn’t be wrong, the spectrum from “important” to “very important” is actually quite large.

Let me explain.

Business #1 sells clay coasters on Amazon. Their #1 marketing goal is to get their Amazon listings to show up at the top of both Amazon and Google’s algorithms for that product category, and they spend 90% of their marketing budget on PPC.

Branding really isn’t that important for Business #1.

Not everyone needs to invest in a compelling tagline. Clay Coasters on Amazon. Tagline examples.

Not everyone needs to invest in a compelling tagline.

Business #2 sells luxury cars. Their #1 marketing goal is to be top of mind year-round for consumers making between $85k – $300k per year, and they spend 75% of their marketing budget on television ads.

Branding is VERY important for Business #2.

Taglines can really help if you need to stay in your prospects' minds. TV ad tagline example for luxury car.

Taglines can really help if you need to stay in your prospects’ minds.

These two examples demonstrate both ends of the branding spectrum, with most businesses falling somewhere in between.

For the purposes of this article, we’ll just say that you will typically want to use a value proposition when you are looking for a direct response and a tagline when you are looking to make a brand impression that leads to a sale down the road.

That said, a good tagline will often demonstrate similar traits to a good value proposition. The two aren’t mutually exclusive. They just have different purposes.

A value proposition’s goal is to explicitly describe why the product is the best available option for the consumer and should be purchased immediately. A tagline’s goal is to attach significant, lasting meaning to the brand in a way that resonates with the consumer.

So how do we create a compelling tagline?

How To Create A Compelling Tagline

There are 3 primary qualities every brand tagline should have:

  1. It captures your mission
  2. It reflects your persona
  3. It resonates with your target audience

Your tagline is your chance to immortalize your company’s purpose in a brief phrase or series of phrases. It first and foremost needs to reflect your mission.

Your tagline is also a prime opportunity to reflect your brand’s persona or personality. It’s important that your tagline communicates an idea about not just what you do but who you are as a brand.

Finally, the goal of your tagline is to resonate with your target audience and connect your brand to a powerful set of positive emotions and ideas.

In order to best demonstrate these qualities in action, let’s take a look at several exceptional tagline examples that helped their companies create multi-million dollar brands.

1. Skyrocketing Business Profits: SoulCycle “Find Your Soul”

Co-Founders Elizabeth Cutler and Julie Rice wanted to create an exercise experience that was fun, exciting, and felt like a community. Noticing a void in the market, they opened the first SoulCycle in a former New York funeral home in 2006. Since their scrappy beginnings of handing out fliers for free classes (it was against building regulations to put up any signage), they’ve expanded to 85 locations and continue to expand to new locations in 2017.

SoulCycle’s tagline:

“Take Your Journey. Change Your Body. Find Your Soul.”

Soul Cycle’s tagline focuses very much on their target customers – fitness enthusiasts who see exercise as something physical, mental, and spiritual. The statement exudes a sense of excitement and empowerment for riders, and implies that something metaphysical can come out of an intense 45 minute stationary bike session.

The tagline is sometimes shortened to simply “Find Your Soul”, which emphasizes the brand’s mission of connected, community-based workouts.

Tagline examples: SoulCycle doesn't say

Tagline examples: SoulCycle doesn’t say “find a cycle,” they say “Find your soul”

The key idea here is that SoulCycle plays into the innate human desire of being part of a community. It’s exceptionally smart, because how we relate to others and the world around us affects our buying decisions. This explains Soul Cycle’s customer loyalty, which has skyrocketed the business’ profits.

This tagline isn’t just a tagline either. It is reflected in everything the brand does. Cyclists ride by candlelight in ‘epic spaces’ where they feel like they’re part of a ‘tribe’, and instructors constantly howl motivational phrases and speeches at the riders.

The Business Results

Even with a costly fee of $35+ per session and minimal discounts for monthly memberships, SoulCycle has still found its niche in the world of standard gym equipment.

  1. The business amassed a rider base of nearly half a million people by catering to their specific customers. For example, they play different music for the 5pm university crowd compared to their 6am pre-work crowd.
  2. Their explosive growth is partially fueled from upsold products, including branded swag, bottled water, and shoe rentals, adding another $85 million in revenue on top of monthly fees.
  3. Each franchise earns an average of $4 million per year.
  4. Their total revenue grew from $36M in 2012 to $112M in 2014.

2. TOMS: One For One

TOMS shoes started when founder Blake Mycoskie went to Argentina in 2006 and saw children running around without shoes.  He also took note of the Argentinian traditional shoe, the soft alpargata that TOMS shoes are modeled after. He came back to America with a vision of the “buy one, donate one” and had 250 samples made. He approached American Rag to sell the shoes, and the LA Times picked up the story. The story created a demand for nearly 10 times as many shoes as what was in stock.

TOMS shoe company was officially born.

TOMS Socially Conscious Tagline

“One for One”

Tagline examples: Tom's pioneered the One for One business model and the tag line says it all.

Tagline examples: Tom’s pioneered the One for One business model and the tag line says it all.

TOMS tagline is incredibly powerful because of the message it communicates. Buy one pair of shoes, and one additional pair of shoes is donated to a child in need.

Not only is this a brilliant business model, as 62% of modern consumers are willing to pay more for socially or environmentally conscious goods, allowing TOMS to sell $4 worth of shoes for $40, but it also directly counters the often vague language and spending that accompanies most charities. The consumer knows exactly what is happening. The get a pair of shoes they want, and a child in Africa gets a pair of shoes they need.

This tagline hits on all the right notes. It communicates the mission and resonates with the target audience. You could even argue that it communicates a straightforward personality.

Not only that, but 86% of those customers tell their friends and family, giving socially conscious businesses like TOMS plenty of free advertising.

The phrase is also crystal clear: it describes the company’s business model in 3 words.

The Business Growth Results

The “One for One” tagline and business model has been a huge success for TOMS:

  1. The company has donated over 60 million pairs of shoes.
  2. As of 2016, they have made over $625m in revenue.
  3. The company is now as widely known as Nike and Adidas.
  4. They have expanded the one-for-one model to other products.
  5. For every pair of sunglasses they sell, TOMS provides a full eye exam and prescription glasses to those in need.
  6. For every purse TOMS sells, the company provides medical materials to help with safe childbirth.

Fastest Growing Private Company in the U.S.: “Discover a different nite out”

Powerful business tagline examples: Paint Nite is not a painting class, it's a different nite out.

Powerful business tagline examples: Paint Nite is not a painting class, it’s a different nite out.

Paint Nite’s tagline is deceptively powerful. It’s communicating something very specific to it’s customer base comprised of 90% women.

By offering a “different nite out”, they’ve attracted a crowd that still want to get out, socialize, and have some libations but outside the usual scene of bars or clubs. This is a brilliant strategy as the bar and club scenes have experienced declining popularity with millennials. One study found that those under 35 felt that the traditional night out is too impersonal and too exhausting.

Paint Nite met this need by creating a fun group environment where participants have common ground to talk to one another. Sitting and painting while sipping wine requires a lot less energy than drinking and dancing until closing time, and this “differentness” is reflected beautifully in their slogan.

The Results:

It turns out Paint Nite is on to something, as demonstrated by their remarkable success:

  1. It’s revenue has grown by more than 36,555% in three years.
  2. Is now available in 155 cities world-wide.

4. Canada Goose: Canadian Craftsmanship

Canada Goose began nearly 60 years ago and became popular in the 1980’s when their red down-filled coat (aka Big Red) was developed for scientists at Antarctica’s McMurdo Station. Its popularity increased further in Europe due to its decision to keep manufacturing in Canada, and Americans took to the brand when celebrities like David Beckham and Kate Upton were spotted sporting their signature coats.

Canada Goose’s tagline:

“Our uncompromised craftsmanship defines Canadian luxury.”

Even when it was vogue to move manufacturing overseas for cost reduction, CEO Dani Reiss knew that keeping the manufacturing in Canada was a huge selling point for customers, so Canada Goose reaffirmed its value proposition around that selling point.

The above tagline is more of value proposition mixed with a tagline, and a simpler version with only “Canadian Craftsmanship” can be found on the site as well.

Tagline examples: Canada Goose, Craftsmanship.

Tagline examples: Canada Goose, Craftsmanship.

This tagline is a great example of matching mission to customer in as little as two words. “Canadian Craftsmanship” speaks volumes about both the products being produced as well as the consumers who purchase them. This focus on quality craftsmanship is further enforced by the brand’s lifetime guarantee on it’s signature products.

The Results:

Canada Goose coats are not only known for their high quality but also for being some of the warmest on the market. Because of their commitment to quality, expressed beautifully in their tagline, they achieved incredible success.

  1. Expanded brand recognition when movie crew members were spotted wearing the coats while shooting in cold locations.
  2. Featured on the cover of Sports Illustrated’s Swimsuit edition, modeled by Kate Upton.
  3. Grew their revenues from $3 million in 2001, to $200 million in 2014.

5. GoPro: Be A Hero

GoPro is the brainchild of Nick Woodman who noticed that the only way to capture a surfer’s tricks was from land or on a jetski. He bootstrapped the company by selling belts decorated with beads and shells out of his van, and the prototype was born.

GoPro’s tagline:

GoPro actually has two primary landing taglines.

  1. “Be a HERO.”
  2. “Capture + share your world”

Both of these taglines do a great job of representing the brand, albeit in different ways.

Business tagline examples: GoPro, Be a HERO.

Business tagline examples: GoPro, Be a HERO.

GoPro was invented for the purpose of capturing extreme sports like skydiving or snowboarding, and their taglines encapsulate that, inviting users to “be a hero” and take extreme action, capture their exploits on film, and then share their adventures with the world.

These taglines are very customer focused, which fits with GoPro’s marketing strategy. GoPro’s marketing revolves around user generated content, and their taglines help to invite new users to participate in sharing their GoPro captured activities with their friends.

The Results:

While GoPro has recently been having to compete with smartphone cameras and mounts, they are still a massive success:

  1. GoPro made $150,000 in revenue from the Home Shopping Network in its first year of official sales in 2004.
  2. As of 2016, GoPro has grown to be a $2.5 billion enterprise.

6. Stella Artois: Be Legacy

Stella Artois has a nearly 700 year history, so their taglines have evolved over the better part of a millennium.

Here’s a brief history of how the brand has evolved:

Stella has been around since 1336 and was originally brewed as a pricey, limited edition treat for Christmas. That was until 1981 when they turned their price point into a positive with a “Reassuringly Expensive” tagline. The statement worked and Stella Artois successfully flipped the narrative from “too expensive” to “classy”.

 

Stella Artois turned high price into a selling point. 9 tagline examples for business growth.

Stella Artois turned high price into a selling point.

That was until football fans realized that Stella contained a higher percentage of alcohol than other beers and began drinking it to get drunk. It caused a rift between the company’s brand and public perception as fans were pictured rioting with a Stella in hand.

To turn their image around, they repositioned themselves in 2008 with a new tagline: “A thing of beauty”. The marketing campaign displayed their ‘9 Step Preparation Guide’ that implied the consumer needed skill and a certain amount of grace to pour the perfect pint of Stella.

Stella Artois tagline:

“Be Legacy”

Last year saw another revamp in their marketing, as the company sought to make its beer appear not only more classy, but more personal.

Stella’s new tagline shows off their brand personality by reaching back into their history to the beginnings of Sebastian Artois, a man who sold all of his belongings to buy the brewery down the street.

Tagline examples that drove multi-million dollar growth: Stella Artois, Be Legacy.

Tagline examples that drove multi-million dollar growth: Stella Artois, Be Legacy.

They also preface their tagline with the phrase, “what will you be remembered for?”. It does a great job of targeting an emotion behind their beer that isn’t partying on a boat. You drink their beer to live life.

The Results:

Not many products survive for centuries, yet Stella Artois’ has used their branding to achieve success and longevity:

  1. Stella is the best selling beer brand from Belgium and is sold in over 100 countries worldwide.
  2. The beer has is also widely recognized as being “sophisticated” by consumers, and “the best premium lager” in 2013 by the Morning Advertiser.

7. BuzzSumo: Find Shared Content and Key Influencers

BuzzSumo allows people to find the most popular content around a given keyphrase. Instead of manually searching websites for your keyword, Buzzsumo amalgamates the most popular content for that keyword, how many social shares it received, and who shared it.

BuzzSumo’s tagline:

“Find the most shared content and key influencers”

Tagline examples: BuzzSumo's tagline is found in its interface.

Tagline examples: BuzzSumo’s tagline is found in its interface.

This tagline doubles as a value proposition. It’s a no fluff explanation of the real value being provided by the brand. Do you want to find the most shared content? Are you looking for key influencers? Well, then you’re in the right place.

The Results:

Even though Buzz Sumo is a young business (not even 3 years old), it has gained incredible traction:

  1. They received 160,000 “freemium” subscribers and 2,000 paid subscribers in their first year.
  2. After 1 year of operations, Buzz Sumo generated $2.5 million in revenue.
  3. Used and promoted by Neil Patel, Matthew Barby, and Mari Smith.

8. Headspace: Treat Your Head Right

Headspace began with a meeting between two men. Andy Puddicombe, an Englishman, became a monk after having the traumatic experience of losing two friends and a step-sister. He wanted to bring the technique of mindfulness to the masses, and created a meditation app called “Jeeves”.

At the same time, Richard Pierson, another Englishman, was burned out from his job. To help calm his anxiety, a friend of his had recommended Jeeves. Inspired by the app, he approached Puddicombe with a proposition – he’d market the meditation app in return for one-on-one meditation lessons.

The men tapped into the 1.2 trillion dollar mindfulness industry in 2010, when they brought meditation to where most people were spending their time – their phones.

Headspace’s Tagline:

“Treat Your Head Right”

Tagline examples: Headspace's tagline makes mental health common sense.

Tagline examples: Headspace’s tagline makes mental health common sense.

Traditionally, the general public in North America has viewed meditation as something exclusive to monks, hippies, or other niche groups. Headspace has helped change this perception withe their broad outreach.

Through their approachable brand personality, exemplified through their tagline, they showed that meditation isn’t some ethereal experience meant only for “mystics”, but rather, something anyone can do to “treat their head right” as part of an everyday mental health routine.

The Results:

The app’s approach to meditation worked. Headspace has gained huge traction over the last few years:

  1. It received $30 million via a Series A in 2015.
  2. The subscription based model of pricing has resulted in the app reaching a net worth of $250 million.
  3. Headspace has been adopted by celebrities like Richard Branson, Jessica Alba, and Lebron James, fueling its growth.
  4. It is ranked as the highest quality “mindfulness-based” app according to the peer-reviewed Journal of Medical Internet Research.

9. Dollar Shave Club: Shave Time. Shave Money.

Dollar Shave Club was born out of a party conversation between Mark Levine and Michael Dubin, where they shared their frustrations on the high cost of razor blades. They came up with the idea to send blades via a monthly subscription box for $1 (with $2 shipping). The pair launched Dollar Shave Club’s website in 2011.

Dollar Shave Club’s tagline:

“Shave Time. Shave Money.”

Business tagline Examples: Dollar Shave Club's tagline is the perfect pun

Business tagline Examples: Dollar Shave Club’s tagline is the perfect pun

Dollar Shave Club showcases brand personality incredibly well in their tagline, website, and across all of their marketing campaigns, branding their company as a club for common sense, sarcastic smart alecks… you know… what every guy aspires to be.

Up until Dollar Shave Club’s existence, many had griped about the absurd cost of disposable razor blades, but very little had been done about it. Dollar Shave Club cashed in on the strategic idea of delivering blades bought in bulk but repackaged for individual use, capturing the sentiment that we all need to save time and money, even in the smallest of ways.

The Results:

Questioning consumer norms paid off for Dollar Shave Club in big ways:

  1. Their initial ad in 2011, “Our Blades Are F***ing Great”, went viral and got

    12,000 subscribers in 48 hours

    . The add also attracted $1 million in investment in the company.

  2. The following year, the company raised $9.8 million to expand internationally into Canada and Australia.
  3. In 2016, Dollar Shave Club was bought out for

     $1 billion by Unilever.

Conclusion: Business Tagline Example Takeaways

Now that we’ve seen what a winning tagline looks like, let’s review the key qualities you should include in yours:

  1. It captures your mission
  2. It reflects your persona
  3. It resonates with your target audience

Create a tagline that reflects these qualities, and you’ll have secured a key piece in your branding campaign.

Need help climbing into the heads and hearts of your visitors to understand what they need and then testing your way to a powerful tagline? It might be time to hire a Conversion Agency to help take you to the next level.


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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Copywriting is the focal point of conversion rate optimization. It’s the glue that holds the conversion funnel together. We offer ten copywriting tips to create copy that converts.

Without copywriting, your business has… well, nothing.

Unfortunately, most people (and dare I say most copywriters) are just awful at writing copy. They can tell you all the right principles and even write a fantastic blog post on the best copywriting tips, yet when it comes to actually writing the copy, all that knowledge goes out the window.

So that’s what brings us together… today.

We’ve already discussed the psychology of persuasive writing, but in this post we’re going to focus on some incredibly practical and insanely important copywriting tips that most everyone can recite in their sleep yet somehow rarely make it the published landing page.

You can’t afford to get these wrong.

1. Take Your Readers Through A Narrative

They say that good storytellers make the best salespeople, and that’s not a hard concept to believe.

We all know those people – the people who have a way with words and make anything they’re talking about interesting. When you hear someone telling a story (and telling it well), it’s easy to feel like you’re a part of it. We get sucked into the flow of words, thoughts, and ideas.

The psychological term for this phenomenon is called “neural coupling“, and it describes how the listener’s brain patterns tend to mirror that of the speaker during communication. This coupling occurs when the listener is engaged with the flow of communication and breaks when they get distracted or are unable to comprehend what’s being communicated to them.

Now, notice this point didn’t read “tell a story”.

Storytelling has a place in marketing, but when we’re writing copy for a website landing page, telling a story in the traditional sense isn’t always the best use our limited space.

Instead of story, think narrative.

A narrative is an account of connected events, with connected being the key word here. It’s very, VERY important that every piece of copy on your landing page is connected.

Many landing pages I see today consist of a bunch of copy segments that cover a range of topics and hit on everything the site owner thought would be important to cover. In the worst cases, the site owner selected a WordPress template and then hired a copywriter to fill in the text spots.

There is no flow. There is no connection. There is no chance to create that neural coupling effect with the reader.

Instead of creating multiple segments, think through the journey you want to take your readers on. Where are they when they land on your page? Where do you want them to be when they get to your final Call to Action (CTA)?

To help you get started, here’s the narrative template I like to use with many of my clients:

  1. Open with your value proposition to let the reader know exactly what you’re offering.
  2. Hit on the core problems your product/service is designed to solve.
  3. Transition into the way your product/service solves those problems.
  4. Hit on all the key benefits that go along with using your product/service.
  5. Paint a picture for the reader of their lives with your solution.
  6. Call the reader to take action.

Connecting your landing page in a narrative flow will go a long way in engaging readers with your message.

2. Simplify & Condense Whenever Possible

“The most valuable of all talents is that of never using two words when one will do.”

– Thomas Jefferson

You have a limited amount of space and time to communicate your value and capture your reader’s’ interest.

55% of visitors spend less than 15 seconds viewing a landing page before deciding to leave. It’s incredibly important that you effectively communicate your core value proposition within that brief window.

You already know the importance of a great value proposition, but this condensed approach shouldn’t end after the fold. Each segment of your landing page needs to be treated as though you have an extra 15 seconds to compel the reader forward to the next section.

At no point do you the luxury of babbling. At no point can you take the reader for granted.

Every word on a landing page needs to be optimized. Every sentence needs to be intentional, clear, and concise, from the opening headline to the closing CTA.

This does NOT mean your page should be brief. It’s important that you say everything you need to say. It simply means that you should communicate everything you need to communicate in as few words as possible. Every segment needs to be the optimal version of itself.

3. Keep The Visual In Mind

When writing the copy for a landing page, it’s important to remember that the copy will be viewed within the context of a visual design.

Reading a landing page is not at all like reading a letter, a blog post, or even an email. Images, video, visual design elements, and even interactive features can be a big part of the user experience. The copy is still THE most important element, but it will be viewed in the context of the page’s design.

It’s important that you keep this visual experience in mind when writing the copy.

In other words, NO WALLS OF TEXT.

  • Utilize headings and subheadings.
  • Keep paragraphs to 2-3 sentences.
  • Use bullets and numbers.
  • Use proper spacing and kerning.
  • Make sure there is plenty of “white space”.

In other words, don’t do this…

This company description doesn’t talk about the reader

Visual elements like those I just recommended allow the eye to easily track from point to point without distraction. While the copy is king, it needs to play nice with the design to ensure its narrative is easy to read, follow, and comprehend.

This is why I always recommend my next point…

4. Collaborate With The Designer

When creating a new landing page, you should always have your copywriter and designer work together from the beginning. This should be standard practice for ANYONE hiring a copywriter… and yet, in my experience as a freelance copywriter, it’s very rare.

Too often, copywriting is viewed as a “fill in the gaps” activity that occurs after the website design is finalized.

This is a massive mistake. The purpose of the copy is NOT to fit the design. The purpose of the design is to highlight and facilitate the copy. If your copywriter is filling in lorem ipsum text blocks, you are seriously hampering their ability to create a compelling narrative.

Don’t use latin as a placeholder in your designs. Design should follow copy.

At the same time, copywriters (especially beginning or intermediate copywriters) can be a bit text heavy and ignorant of how to create copy segments that are compatible with modern design, resulting in the problems I mentioned in Point #3.

This is why I always recommend that clients have their copywriters and designers collaborate on landing pages simultaneously. When the two work together, the copy can be highlighted without compromising the visual design.

5. Write With Personality

Look, have you ever talked with someone who has no personality?

Yeah, that’s what it feels like to read formal copywriting.

If you are anything like everyone I’ve ever known, you will nod your head sagely and agree with this point. You probably even have a blog post on your site with this exact copywriting tip proudly displayed in a list similar to this.

This seems to be one of those points that is widely understood yet somehow flies right out the window the moment fingers hit keyboards.

The reality is that most people struggle getting thoughts to paper. By the time they are able to articulate what they’re trying to say, there’s no mental capacity left for personality or nuance, and as a result, the copy comes out sounding formal and stale.

Or worse, it’s nothing more than a paragraph full of buzz words…

This is a paragraph full of buzzwords.

Write copy like you are speaking directly to your target audience. How do they speak? How do they like to be spoken to? If you are talking to doctors, your copy might need to be academic or a bit more formal, but if you are speaking to patients on behalf of doctors, your copy shouldn’t sound like a medical conference presentation.

If you struggle with this, either hire a copywriter, pay for tone-focused editing, or write, write, write until you don’t have to think so much in order to translate your thoughts to words on a page.

6. Write Multiple Drafts

Remember in high school when you had to submit a 1st draft and then a 2nd draft and then a 3rd draft?

There was actually a reason for that, and the reason is that your 1st draft usually sucks.

Don’t believe me? Maybe you’ll believe Ernest Hemingway:

‘The first draft of anything is shit.’ – Ernest Hemingway

So yeah, stop settling for your first draft like a chump and start taking advantage of the revision process. Even better, create multiple versions of your most important talking points and then get 3rd party feedback on the variations.

And ultimately, you really don’t need to guess perfectly with your copy. The ideal copywriting strategy is to write multiple versions, each optimized around a different conversion hypothesis, and then A/B test them with real site visitors.

Want to know if your copy converts?

7. Prioritize Clarity Over Cleverness

If you were super into Mad Men, you probably suck at digital copywriting.

Prioritize clarity over cleverness, not the Mad Men approach.

Prioritize clarity over cleverness, not the Mad Men approach.

Clever copy doesn’t convert. Clear, compelling copy converts (say that 5 times fast).

Your goal as a copywriter is to clearly communicate the value of the offer, the problems it solves, and the benefits of using it to the intended user. If you can be clear and clever, that’s fine, but only one of those will pay you back for the time you spent writing it.

8. Focus On The Emotions Behind The Decision

“Sell the sizzle” and “be emotional” are pretty stereotypical copywriting tips, and while they are not universally applicable, they tend to be correct more often than not.

Human beings very rarely make decisions from a purely analytical standpoint. We are an emotional species and our emotions heavily dictate our behavior.

There are two primary ways in which emotions affect our decision-making:

  1. Immediate emotions
  2. Anticipated emotions

Immediate emotions are those experienced in the moment the decision is being made. These can be related to the decision itself or they can be the result of other external stimuli.

For example, if you get in a big argument with your spouse, leave angry, and then begin evaluating a purchasing decision, that anger is an immediate emotion effecting your decision-making.

Anticipated emotions are the emotions someone anticipates experiencing as a result of a given decision.

For example, if you are debating whether to purchase a new SaaS product, and you are thinking about all the time it could save you, the associated emotions are anticipated emotions.

When you are writing your copy, it’s important to think through any consistent immediate emotions that might surround your visitors’ journey to you. What motivated them to click that add or search for that keyphrase, and how might that give you a read on their immediate emotional state?

Even more importantly, how can you resonate with the problems your readers are facing and then help them genuinely imagine a positive future with your product?

This is what your copy should be focused on.

9. Write To One Person

One of the biggest mistakes businesses make with their copy is trying to communicate to everyone at once. It’s been quite surprising to me how often a business owner will come to me to write copy, and when I ask them, “Who is your target audience?” they reply, “Everyone”.

Here’s a secret. “Everyone” is NOT your target audience. In fact, The more people you are trying to fit into the same sales pitch, the less effective it will be.

The best copywriting is written to a single reader. It’s focused on a specific customer profile and the interests, needs, and aspirations that come along with that profile.

If you don’t already have that profile defined, all you have to do is go talk to your customers.

A great example comes from Sujan Patel, who spent hours upon hours reviewing customer support logs and talking directly with the customers themselves. The onboarding improvements that came from those conversations resulted in an incredible 250% lift in conversions for his business.

Write your copy to someone specific instead of using a catch-all mentality.

10. Break The Rules & Test The Results

General rules and best practices are great. When you start with what works on average, you will probably end up in a better spot than if you were to just winging it.

That said, if you do what everyone else is doing, you’ll get the results everyone else is getting. Sometimes, it’s beneficial to break the rules and try something new.

But the difference between strategic rule breaking and “winging it” is data. You should always be A/B testing your copywriting, but if you are going to break away from best practices, you absolutely need to begin A/B testing your content.

“The difference between strategic rule breaking and “winging it” is data.”

Copywriting Tips Conclusion

Okay… my sermon is delivered, and now I’m washing my hands of this.

You can’t afford to get these wrong.

Whether you write your own copy or bring in outside help, it’s critically important that you follow all 10 of today’s tips when creating your landing pages and conversion funnels.

Obviously, there are many more important tips for great copy, and I’d love to hear your favorites. Let me know your #1 copywriting tip in the comments.

Do you know how much money you’re losing to shopping cart abandonment?
Do you know how much more money you could be earning with an optimized checkout experience?
The statistics don’t lie. The average shopping cart abandonment rate currently stands at nearly 70%. That means 7 out of 10 highly qualified leads – people who like your product enough to click “Add to cart” – are being lost during the checkout process for one reason or another.
There is no better place to stop your optimization efforts than the checkout process. Today, we’re going to cover the most common reasons customers abandon ship during checkout and review the anatomy of an optimized checkout experience with the help of this incredible infographic from our friends at SurePayroll.
 
How to Build an Effective Shopping Cart for Your eCommerce Site
Let’s look at some of the key takeaways for eCommerce store owners and optimizers. If your goal is create an optimized checkout experience, the follow points are a must read.

The Top 4 Reasons Customers Abandon Shopping Carts

There are a lot of reasons a given visitor might abandon your website during checkout. Using the data listed above, we can see some major themes about what most influences cart abandonment.

1. Extras Costs & Price Ambiguity

According to consumers, the #1 reason for cart abandonment BY FAR is hidden costs that don’t show up until they have begun the checkout process. In a similar vein, the 4th most cited reason was that consumers were unable to ascertain the total cost of the transaction before starting checkout.
What this tells us is that consumers want to know EXACTLY what to expect when they begin checkout and they absolutely do not want any new information thrown at them along the way.
In some niches, costs like taxes or shipping might be expected and acceptable, while in other niches, they will be considered new information. In all cases, however, extra fees and other costs that aren’t disclosed ahead of time will often result in cart abandonment.

2. Overly Complicated Checkout Process

As we see in the infographic, consumers hate complicated checkouts. They don’t want to create an account. They don’t want to fill in layers of unnecessary information. They don’t want to jump through 5 rounds of hoops.
They want to pay you money, get their stuff, and leave.
The longer and more complicated your checkout process is, the more primed buyers will cancel their transaction instead of paying you money.

3. Checkout Has Errors

If you can’t complete checkout… you can’t complete checkout.
Usability testing and eliminating errors should always be your #1 priority. It’s simple. There’s no guesswork or strategy involved. If you’ve been dragging your feet on this, you are literally throwing away money.
Eliminate checkout errors now.

4. Lack Of Trust In The Website Or Brand

Trust is a very important piece of ecommerce. Thanks to the Wild-West-like landscape of the internet’s opening decade, many consumers have a deeply ingrained level of mistrust towards any brand or website they haven’t already bought from.
While the landscape is much cleaner today, and consumers have many levels of protection in place, those feelings of mistrust tend to surface during the checkout process.
When it’s time to actually pay money, consumers want to be confident that they will get what they paid for. During this process, any signals that can cause skepticism will likely result in cart abandonment. Even just a lack of positive trust signals can be enough to cause abandonment.
It’s important to plant a continuous stream of encouragement, proof, and other trust signals within your checkout process.

How To Reduce Abandonment & Create An Optimized Checkout Experience

Now that we’ve discussed some of the primary reasons consumers abandon ship during checkout, let’s discuss how to reduce abandonment and create an optimized checkout experience for your customers.

1. Tell Users What To Expect Before Checkout

One of the best ways to reduce care abandonment is to tell users exactly what to expect before checkout and then avoid springing new information on them during the checkout process.
For some niches, this is as simple as including the full price on the landing page. For other niches, this can be more complicated.
The travel industry has gotten pretty good at this. In a situation where there are numerous fees in place, they will included all of costs in the price users see, and make a point of clarifying that rate covers all included costs:

If the cost will depend on a future variable, then you can either clarify that a future cost is still on the table – “Shipping cost not included” – or you can change your business model to eliminate variables for the user.

2. Simplify And Streamline The Checkout Process

The checkout process should feel simple and intuitive. Sometimes there are unnecessary steps or requirements that need to be eliminated, but at the same time, putting everything on one page isn’t always the answer.
In the example below, the two-step checkout on the left converted better than the one-step checkout on the right. This is likely due to the one-page checkout overwhelming the visitor with 15+ lines of data to enter, while the 2-part checkout broke things down into more manageable sections.

When it comes to optimizing your checkout experience, it’s very important that your are incorporating a proven A/B testing framework. Simpler is usually better, but the specifics of implementation can be tricky to predict.
Here are some great examples to pull from: 8 Ecommerce Testing Examples You Should Have Tried Already

3. Eliminate All Checkout Errors

As I mentioned before, this is really simple conceptually. Eliminate errors.
Remember that while things might be running smoothly on the Chrome browser in your desktop computer, when you change browsers and devices, errors can pop up, and there are a lot of different devices being used out there.
One of Conversion Sciences clients had a strange error that only appeared for Internet Explorer visitors. The spinning “thinking” icon appeared after the visitor selected their state. But instead of disappearing after updating checkout information, a new spinning icon was added. This happened every few seconds.

This checkout error only happened on Internet Explorer. Every few seconds, a spinning icon was added to the page.

This checkout error only happened on Internet Explorer. Every few seconds, a spinning icon was added to the page.


An AB test revealed that this error was costing them $1,500,000 per year. Ouch.
Here’s an in-depth look at some of the shopping carts bugs that can popup in your code.

4. Build Trust Throughout The Checkout Process

It’s easy to forget that “conversion” isn’t the moment someone clicks “Buy Now” on your landing page.
It’s not a true conversion until the money has been transferred.
Accordingly, we need to view the checkout process as an extension of the landing page, and just like we want to establish and build trust on the landing page and the preceding funnel, we want to continue building trust during the checkout process itself.
There are many ways to do this, but one of my favorites can be seen below:

In this example from SamCart, the user is shown a phone number for immediate customer service, as well 4 customer testimonials with included pictures.
Instead of just hoping the user goes through with the purchase, SamCart is actively building trust on the checkout page by displaying other customers who were happy with their purchase and reminding the user that if they have any trouble, help is only a call away.

Conclusion

The checkout experience is one of the more complicated optimization puzzles you’ll tackle, which is why sound A/B testing is such an instrumental part of the process.
I hope today’s infographic has provided with you some insightful ideas for how you can optimize your website’s checkout process and increase revenue for your business.

2017 is just around the corner, and that means a new year with a fresh batch of goals and milestones.
If you increased your website’s conversion rate by 10%, how would that affect your business’ overall growth this year? How would that accelerate your career or revolutionize your bottom line?
Now’s the time to get optimization efforts in motion, and we’re excited to hear about what you have planned for 2017. Leave us a comment and let us know what you’re up to!
In the meantime, here’s a quick recap of Conversion Sciences’ 10 most popular articles from 2016.

  1. 5 Elements of Persuasive Writing that Make Your Posts Takeoff
  2. 7 Best Practices for Using Exit-Intent Popovers, Popups
  3. 5 Tactics for Increasing Your Telephone Sales
  4. 12 Rules for Maximizing Conversions from AdWords
  5. 10 Value Proposition Upgrades That Increased Conversions
  6. AB Testing Statistics: An Intuitive Guide
  7. The 20 Most Recommended AB Testing Tools By CRO Experts
  8. Can Live Chat Increase Conversions?
  9. The Ultimate A/B Testing Guide: By Conversion Sciences
  10. The Proven AB Testing Framework Used By CRO Professionals

And of course, if you’d like to have a group of proven experts handle your CRO efforts in 2017, the Conversion Sciences team is here to help. Our calendar fills up fast this time of year, so don’t put it off.
Contact us right now to schedule a free consultation.
 

How do you choose a Christmas Card for your boss? Better yet, how do you choose one that will get you a CRO budget for next year? Simply apply these Christmas Conversion Principles for a happy new year and a new budget.

We’ve examined a number of holiday cards to determine the one most likely to win you some conversion optimization (CRO) budget for the coming year. Watch this critique and give your manager the card that will deliver.

Primary Conversion Principle Metrics

Christmas cards are a lot like landing page on the web. They have to appeal to visitors quickly and deliver something meaningful.

primary conversion principle metrics

Christmas Metrics

We’ll be examining the Christmas Card Graph for each card.

Christmas Card Graph

Christmas Card Graph

Christmas Conversion Principles: Lessons Learned

When Choosing a Card for your Boss, Don’t be too Safe.

Playing it safe often means being boring. Open rates will suffer.

christmas conversion principles: Do not play it safe or open rates will suffer.

Do not play it safe or open rates will suffer.

Don’t let your designer make the decisions.

One man’s beautiful design is another’s reading nightmare. Don’t let design get in the way of communicating. Do not lose your message, you are after a brand new CRO budget, after all.

Don't let your designer make the decisions.

Over Designed Card

Don’t deliver less than you promise.

Making promises is the best way to get people to open your cards — and read your landing page. However, if you over-promise, you can do more damage than good. Conversion rates improve when there are good reasons to open the card.

Flattery works, but underpromise and overdeliver.

Flattery works, but underpromise and overdeliver.

Use copy that engages the reader.

Our brains need to be challenged to be engaged. Rhymes, humor and alliteration will work to engage the reader and get them to take action.

Use engaging copy to convert.

Use engaging copy to convert.

Be interactive.

Sometimes you just have to get them involved to get them interested and your CRO budget secured. Consider asking them to do something on your page.

Be interactive: Budget Secured Card

Budget Secured Card.

It shouldn’t be a surprise that all of these lessons can be applied to your website and landing pages. This is what we do at Conversion Sciences.

Once you’ve secured that budget, schedule a free Conversion Strategy Session.

Christmas conversion principles holidays

Happy holidays!

The AB test results had come in, and the result was inconclusive. The Conversion Sciences team was disappointed. They thought the change would increase revenue. What they didn’t know what that the top-level results were lying.

While we can learn something from inconclusive tests, it’s the winners that we love. Winners increase revenue, and that feels good.

The team looked closer at our results. When a test concludes, we analyze the results in analytics to see if there is any more we can learn. We call this post-test analysis.

Isolating the segment of traffic that saw test variation A, it was clear that one browser had under-performed the others: Internet Explorer.

Performance of Variation A. Internet Explorer visitors significantly underperformed the other three popular browsers.

Performance of Variation A. Internet Explorer visitors significantly under-performed the other three popular browsers.

The visitors coming on Internet Explorer were converting at less than half the average of the other browsers and generating one-third the revenue per session. This was not true of the Control. Something was wrong with this test variation. Despite a vigorous QA effort that included all popular browsers, an error had been introduced into the test code.

Analysis showed that correcting this would deliver a 13% increase in conversion rate and 19% increase in per session value. And we would have a winning test after all.

Conversion Sciences has a rigorous QA process to ensure that errors like this are very rare, but they happen. And they may be happening to you.

Post-test analysis keeps us from making bad decisions when the unexpected rears its ugly head. Here’s a primer on how conversion experts ensure they are making the right decisions by doing post-test analysis.

Did Any Of Our Test Variations Win?

The first question that will be on our lips is, “Did any of our variations win?”

There are two possible outcomes when we examine the results of an AB test.

  1. The test was inconclusive. None of the alternatives beat the control. The null hypotheses was not disproven.
  2. One or more of the treatments beat the control in a statistically significant way.

Joel Harvey of Conversion Sciences describes his process below:

Joel Harvey, Conversion ScientistJoel Harvey, Conversion Sciences

“Post-test analysis” is sort of a misnomer. A lot of analytics happens in the initial setup and throughout full ab testing process. The “post-test” insights derived from one batch of tests is the “pre-test” analytics for the next batch, and the best way to have good goals for that next batch of tests is to set the right goals during your previous split tests.

That said, when you look at the results of an AB testing round, the first thing you need to look at is whether the test was a loser, a winner, or inconclusive.

Verify that the winners were indeed winners. Look at all the core criteria: statistical significance, p-value, test length, delta size, etc. If it checks out, then the next step is to show it to 100% of traffic and look for that real-world conversion lift.

In a perfect world you could just roll it out for 2 weeks and wait, but usually, you are jumping right into creating new hypotheses and running new tests, so you have to find a balance.

Once we’ve identified the winners, it’s important to dive into segments.

  • Mobile versus non-mobile
  • Paid versus unpaid
  • Different browsers and devices
  • Different traffic channels
  • New versus returning visitors (important to setup and integrate this beforehand)

This is fairly easy to do with enterprise tools, but might require some more effort with less robust testing tools. It’s important to have a deep understanding of how tested pages performed with each segment. What’s the bounce rate? What’s the exit rate? Did we fundamentally change the way this segment is flowing through the funnel?

We want to look at this data in full, but it’s also good to remove outliers falling outside two standard deviations of the mean and re-evaluate the data.

It’s also important to pay attention to lead quality. The longer the lead cycle, the more difficult this is. In a perfect world, you can integrate the CRM, but in reality, this often doesn’t work very seamlessly.

Chris McCormick, Head of Optimisation at PRWD, describes his process:

chris-mccormickChris McCormick, PRWD

When a test concludes, we always use the testing tool as a guide but we would never hang our hat on that data. We always analyse results further within Google Analytics, as this is the purest form of data.

For any test, we always set out at the start what our ‘primary success metrics’ are. These are what we look to identify first via GA and what we communicate as a priority to the client. Once we have a high level understanding of how the test has performed, we start to dig below the surface to understand if there are any patterns or trends occurring. Examples of this would be: the day of the week, different product sets, new vs returning users, desktop vs mobile etc.

We always look to report on a rough ROI figure for any test we deliver, too. In most cases, I would look to do this based on taking data from the previous 12 months and applying whatever the lift was to that. This is always communicated to the client as a ballpark figure i.e.: circa £50k ROI. The reason for this is that there are so many additional/external influences on a test that we can never be 100% accurate; testing is not an exact science and shouldn’t be treated as such.

Are We Making Type I or Type II errors?

In our post on AB testing statistics, we discussed type I and type II errors. We work to avoid these errors at all cost.

To avoid errors in judgement, we verify the results of our testing tool against our analytics. It is very important that our testing tool send data to our analytics package telling us which variations are seen by which segments of visitors.

Our testing tools only deliver top-level results, and we’ve seen that technical errors happen. So we can reproduce the results of our AB test using analytics data.

Did each variation get the same number of conversions? Was revenue reported accurately?

Errors are best avoided by ensuring the sample size is large enough and utilizing a proper AB testing framework. Peep Laja describes his process below:

peep-lajaPeep Laja, ConversionXL

First of all I check whether there’s enough sample size and that we can trust the outcome of the test. I check if the numbers reported by the testing tool line up with the analytics tool, both for CR (conversion rate) and RPV (revenue per visit).

In the analytics tool I try to understand how the variations changed user behavior – by looking at microconversions (cart adds, certain page visits etc) and other stats like cart value, average qty per purchase etc.

If the sample size is large enough, I want to see the results of the test across key segments (provided that the results in the segments are valid, have enough volume etc), and see if the treatments performed better/worse inside the segments. Maybe there’s a case for personalization there. The segments I look at are device split (if the test was ran across multiple device categories), new/returning, traffic source, first time buyer / repeat buyer.

How Did Key Segments Perform?

In the case of an inconclusive test, we want to look at individual segments of traffic.

For example, we have had an inconclusive test on smartphone traffic in which the Android visitors loved our variation, but iOS visitors hated it. They cancelled each other out. Yet we would have missed an important piece of information had we not looked more closely.

pasted image 0 39

Visitors react differently depending on their device, browser and operating system.

Other segments that may perform differently may include:

  1. Return visitors vs. New visitors
  2. Chrome browsers vs. Safari browsers vs. Internet Explorer vs. …
  3. Organic traffic vs. paid traffic vs. referral traffic
  4. Email traffic vs. social media traffic
  5. Buyers of premium products vs. non-premium buyers
  6. Home page visitors vs. internal entrants

These segments will be different for each business, but provide insights that spawn new hypotheses, or even provide ways to personalize the experience.

Understanding how different segments are behaving is fundamental to good testing analysis, but it’s also important to keep the main thing the main thing, as Rich Page explains:

rich-pageRich Page, Website Optimizer

Avoid analysis paralysis. Don’t slice the results into too many segments or different analytics tools. You may often run into conflicting findings. Revenue should always be considered the best metric to pay attention to other than conversion rate, after all, what good is a result with a conversion lift if it doesn’t also increase revenue?

The key thing is not to throw out A/B tests that have inconclusive results, as this will happen quite often. This is a great opportunity to learn and create a better follow up A/B test. In particular you should gain visitor feedback regarding the page being A/B tested, and show them your variations – this helps reveal great insights into what they like and don’t like. Reviewing related visitor recordings and click maps also gives good insights.

Nick So of WiderFunnel talks about segments as well within his own process for AB test analysis:

nick-soNick So, WiderFunnel

“Besides the standard click-through rate, funnel drop-off, and conversion rate reports for post-test analysis, most of the additional reports and segments I pull are very dependent on the business context of a website’s visitors and customers.

For an ecommerce site that does a lot of email marketing and has high return buyers, I look at the difference in source traffic as well as new versus returning visitors. Discrepancies in behavior between segments can provide insights for future strategies, where you may want to focus on the behaviors of a particular segment in order to get that additional lift.

Sometimes, just for my own personal geeky curiosity, I look into seemingly random metrics to see if there are any unexpected patterns. But be warned: it’s easy to get too deep into that rabbit hole of splicing and dicing the data every which way to find some sort of pattern.

For lead-gen and B2B companies, you definitely want to look at the full buyer cycle and LTV of your visitors in order to determine the true winner of any experiment. Time and time again, I have seen tests that successfully increase lead submissions, only to discover that the quality of the leads coming through is drastically lower; which could cost a business MORE money in funnelling sales resources to unqualified leads.

In terms of post-test results analysis and validation — besides whatever statistical method your testing tool uses — I always run results through WiderFunnel’s internal results calculator which utilizes bayesian statistics to provide the risk and reward potential of each test. This allows you to make a more informed business decision, rather than simply a win/loss, significant/not significant recommendation.”

In addition to understanding how tested changes impacted each segment, it’s also useful to understand where in the customer journey those changes had the greatest impact, as Benjamin Cozon describes:

benjamin-cozonBenjamin Cozon, Uptilab

We need to consider that the end of the running phase of a test is actually the beginning of insight analysis.

Why is each variation delivering a particular conversion rate? In which cases are my variations making a difference, whether positive or negative? In order to better understand the answers to these questions, we always try to identify which user segments are the most elastic to the changes that were made.

One way we do it is by ventilating the data with session-based or user-based dimensions. Here is some of the dimension we use for almost every test:

  • User type (new / returning)
  • Prospect / new Client / returning client
  • Acquisition channel
  • Type of landing page

This type of ventilation helps us understand the impact of specific changes for users relative to their specific place in the customer journey. Having these additional insights also helps us build a strong knowledge base and communicate effectively throughout the organization.

Finally, while it is a great idea to have a rigorous quality assurance (QA) process for your tests, some may slip through the cracks. When you examine segments of your traffic, you may find one segment that performed very poorly. This may be a sign that the experience they saw was broken.

It is not unusual to see visitors using Internet Explorer crash and burn since developers abhor making customizations for that non-compliant browser.

How Did Changes Affect Lead Quality?

Post test analysis allows us to be sure that the quality of our conversions is high. It’s easy to increase conversions. But are these new conversions buying as much as the ones who saw the control?

Several of Conversion Sciences’ clients prizes phone calls and the company optimizes for them. Each week, the calls are examined to ensure the callers are qualified to buy and truly interested in a solution.

In post-test analysis, we can examine the average order value for each variation to see if buyers were buying as much as before.

We can look at the profit margins generated for the products purchased. If revenue per visit rose, did profit follow suit?

Marshall Downey of Build.com has some more ideas for us in the following instagraph infographic.

WTW TLE Post Test Analysis Instagraph Marshall Downy

Revenue is often looked to as the pre-eminent judge of lead quality, but doing so comes with it’s own pitfalls, as Ben Jesson describes in his approach to AB test analysis.

ben-jessonBen Jesson, Conversion Rate Experts

If a test doesn’t reach significance, we quickly move on to the next big idea. There are limited gains to be had from adding complexity by promoting narrow segments.

It can be priceless to run on-page surveys on the winning page, to identify opportunities for improving it further. Qualaroo and Hotjar are great for this.

Lead quality is important, and we like to tackle it from two sides. First, qualitatively: Does the challenger page do anything that is likely to reduce or increase the lead value? Second, quantitatively: How can we track leads through to the bank, so we can ensure that we’ve grown the bottom line?

You might expect that it’s better to measure revenue than to measure the number of orders. However, statistically speaking, this is often not true. A handful of random large orders can greatly skew the revenue figures. Some people recommend manually removing the outliers, but that only acknowledges the method’s intrinsic problem. How do you define outlier, and why aren’t we interested in them? If your challenger hasn’t done anything that is likely to affect the order size, then you can save time by using the number of conversions as the goal.

After every winning experiment, record the results in a database that’s segmented by industry sector, type of website, geographic location, and conversion goal. We have been doing this for a decade, and the value it brings to projects is priceless.

Analyze AB Test Results by Time and Geography

Conversion quality is important, and  Theresa Baiocco takes this one step further.

theresa-baioccoTheresa Baiocco, Conversion Max

For lead gen companies with a primary conversion goal of a phone call, it’s not enough to optimize for quantity of calls; you have to track and improve call quality. And if you’re running paid ads to get those phone calls, you need to incorporate your cost to acquire a high-quality phone call, segmented by:

  • Hour of day
  • Day of week
  • Ad position
  • Geographic location, etc

When testing for phone calls, you have to compare the data from your call tracking software with the data from your advertising. For example, if you want to know which day of the week your cost for a 5-star call is lowest, you first pull a report from your call tracking software on 5-star calls by day of week:

image00

Then, check data from your advertising source, like Google AdWords. Pull a report of your cost by day of week for the same time period:

image01

Then, you simply divide the amount you spent by the number of 5-star calls you got, to find out how much it costs to generate a 5-star call each day of the week.

image02

Repeat the process on other segments, such as hour of day, ad position, week of the month, geographic location, etc. By doing this extra analysis, you can shift your advertising budget to the days, times, and locations when you generate the highest quality of phone calls – for less.

Look for Unexpected Effects

Results aren’t derived in a vacuum. Any change will create ripple effects throughout a website, and some of these effects are easy to miss.

Craig Andrews gives us insight into this phenomenon via a recent discovery he made with a new client:

craig-andrewsCraig Andrews, allies4me

I stumbled across something last week – and I almost missed it because it was secondary effects of a campaign I was running. One weakness of CRO, in my honest opinion, is the transactional focus of the practice. CRO doesn’t have a good way of measuring follow-on effects.

For example, I absolutely believe pop-ups increase conversions, but at what cost? How does it impact future engagement with the brand? If you are selling commodities, then it probably isn’t a big concern. But most people want to build brand trust & brand loyalty.

We discovered a shocking level of re-engagement with content based on the quality of a visitor’s first engagement. I probably wouldn’t believe it if I hadn’t seen it personally and double-checked the analytics. In the process of doing some general reporting, we discovered that we radically increased the conversion rates of the 2 leading landing pages as secondary effects of the initial effort.

We launched a piece of content that we helped the client develop. It was a new client and the development of this content was a little painful with many iterations as everyone wanted to weigh in on it. One of our biggest challenges was getting the client to agree to change the voice & tone of the piece – to use shorter words & shorter sentences. They were used to writing in a particular way and were afraid that their prospects wouldn’t trust & respect them if they didn’t write in a highbrow academic way.

We completed the piece, created a landing page and promoted the piece primarily via email to their existing list. We didn’t promote any other piece of content all month. They had several pieces (with landing pages) that had been up all year.

It was a big success. It was the most downloaded piece of content for the entire year. It had more downloads in one month than any other piece had in total for the entire year. Actually, 28% more downloads than #2 which had been up since January.

But then, I discovered something else…

The next 2 most downloaded pieces of content spiked in October. In fact, 50% of the total year’s downloads for those pieces happened in October. I thought it may be a product of more traffic & more eyeballs. Yes that helped, but it was more than that. The conversion rates for those 2 landing pages increased 160% & 280% respectively!

We did nothing to those landing pages. We didn’t promote that content. We changed nothing except the quality of the first piece of content that we sent out in our email campaign.

Better writing increased the brand equity for this client and increased the demand for all other content.

Testing results can also be compared against an archive of past results, as Shanelle Mullin discusses here:

Shanelle Mullin, ConversionXL

shanelle-mullinThere are two benefits to archiving your old test results properly. The first is that you’ll have a clear performance trail, which is important for communicating with clients and stakeholders. The second is that you can use past learnings to develop better test ideas in the future and, essentially, foster evolutionary learning.

The clearer you can communicate the ROI of your testing program to stakeholders and clients, the better. It means more buy-in and bigger budgets.

You can archive your test results in a few different ways. Tools like Projects and Effective Experiments can help, but some people use plain ol’ Excel to archive their tests. There’s no single best way to do it.

What’s really important is the information you record. You should include: the experiment date, the audience / URL, screenshots, the hypothesis, the results, any validity factors to consider (e.g. a PR campaign was running, it was mid-December), a link to the experiment, a link to a CSV of the results, and insights gained.

Why Did We Get The Result We Got?

Ultimately, we want to answer the question, “Why?” Why did one variation win and what does it tell us about our visitors?

This is a collaborative process and speculative in nature. Asking why has two primary effects:

  1. It develops new hypotheses for testing
  2. It causes us to rearrange the hypothesis list based on new information

Our goal is to learn as we test, and asking “Why?” is the best way to cement our learnings.


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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Have you ever found yourself in the middle of a conversation or argument and it suddenly hits you that the two of you aren’t talking about the same thing? Then you have that brilliant “aha” moment where you can actually start making some progress.

One workplace conversation that can be particularly tricky is whether your company should redesign its website. It’s important to make sure everyone is talking about the same thing when you talk about redesign because it’s costly, risky, and emotionally charged.

There are a few common reasons companies choose to redesign their websites:

  • The site performs poorly
  • The desire to be “mobile-friendly”
  • The site is “dated”
  • The desire to be “unique”

These reasons have a common denominator: you’re not happy with a very particular aspect of your site. There are many ways you can approach finding a solution to the problem, and we – the universal We – attach the word “redesign” to those solutions even though it means one of many methods are used to get the result we want.

Synonyms for redesign from dictionary.com

Synonyms for redesign from dictionary.com

According to Dictionary.com, the above are some of the more common synonyms for “redesign”. The way Conversion Sciences uses this term is very industry-specific, so it has a certain jargon-y quality. Someone working in marketing at a tech or ecommerce company probably understands our jargon more than their colleagues in other departments.

If you’re that marketing person and you’re trying to convince your boss and other departments that you need conversion optimization, it’s really important that you’re all speaking the same language. You might be experiencing some miscommunication and not even realize it.

What are the different ways each of you might be using the word “redesign”?

Before you dismiss it as juvenile to keep returning to basic, dictionary definitions of “redesign”, make a mental tally of important people who don’t work in marketing, conversion optimization, or graphic design.

  • Your CEO and CFO, maybe your boss
  • Your customer service representatives answering chat, phone calls, and emails
  • Your customers

All of us feel great satisfaction in knowing the real definition, but ultimately being right isn’t helpful if no one understands each other.

A Full Redesign: Starting Over From Scratch

When we say “redesign” in its purest sense, we mean a brand spanking new website. You hired a designer, you have a new color palette and CSS, you completely threw out the old. Every page is new, the entire structure is different.

Redesign can be used to mean a brand spanking new experience

“Redesign” can be used to mean a brand spanking new experience

When Conversion Sciences cautions against redesigns, this is the definition we’re using. We say there are only two good reasons to undertake a website redesign:

  1. You are re-branding or
  2. Your CMS (content management system) is too limiting

When I worked at Westbank Library our website used a proprietary CMS built by the company that built our ILS (integrated library system). An ILS is used to search for books or connect to an online resource or check to see when books are due back. In other words, an ILS isn’t meant to be the platform for a very specific kind of online application.

Westbank's homepage in 2008, built with a CMS that was only intended to be used for online library catalogs

Westbank’s homepage in 2008, built with a CMS that was only intended to be used for online library catalogs (screenshot via the Way Back Machine)

The ILS wouldn’t support some very important non-book-related features:

  • We couldn’t optimize the site for the search engines
  • We couldn’t embed a calendar
  • We couldn’t choose which photos appeared where on the page
  • We couldn’t create customized landing pages for special events
  • We couldn’t make the site ADA compliant
  • We couldn’t add widgets other libraries were using

We needed a new site built on a new CMS, one that met our present-day needs. The only way to do that was to dump the old one. The new website was built using Drupal, and it meant everything was new. The change was necessary and long overdue.

Westbank's new homepage after the from-scratch redesign

Westbank’s new homepage after the from-scratch redesign (screenshot via the Way Back Machine, which is why the images aren’t loading)

We were excited that on smartphones, the phone number was tel-linked and that the site was now searchable without going back to Google. Best of all, we had an actual, legitimate calendar. Before the redesign, the best we could do was make a list of what was going on.

Calendar of events on old site

Calendar of events on old site

After the redesign, people could see an actual calendar with clickable events where they could go find more information.

Calendar of events on new site

Calendar of events on new site

Without a doubt, the new site was an immense improvement. The lack of functionality on the old site was crippling us.
In this case, a full redesign was justified, but the results weren’t what we had hoped.


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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This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.


Conversion Optimization as Redesign: Making Incremental Changes

When the new site launched, our traffic went through the roof – hundreds of times more people were visiting our website. But since the change was long overdue, people who used the old site for a decade were totally lost.

Dozens of people called us saying “I can’t find anything on this new website, you need to redesign it!” and dozens more sent us angry emails saying the same. With the amount of time we spent working on the new website, it was disheartening to hear. Small public libraries don’t have the resources to do projects like this often – and in some cases, they can’t do projects like it at all. We knew we’d been fortunate, and we were suddenly terrified we had blown our only chance to fix our site. There were very serious discussions of applying for grants, then hiring a new design team to start over.

But after spending time talking to our patrons, we’d find out what they actually meant by “redesign”.

In one case, a gentlemen received an email reminding him to renew his books and included a link for him to do it online. Before our redesign, that link took him to his library account where he was automatically logged in on his home computer. All he had to do was click “renew”. After the redesign, this link took him to our homepage, so he had no idea where to go. When we say that your landing pages need to fulfill the promises you’ve made in your ad, this is a great example of what we’re talking about. Instead of changing the design of anything, we needed to fix that link.

Another way we knew people were lost is by analyzing how they used the site.

One problem in particular was how people used our site’s search box. All of the searches were for titles of popular books and movies, but the search box wasn’t connected to the online catalog. Our old site had one search box, and its only use was to look for books and movies. Everyone assumed the new search box had the same function, but it didn’t.

Our search bar at the launch of our new site.

Search options on the new website

We used the data from our search box the same way you can use heat maps. You can accommodate how your visitors are already using your site with the data you gather. Instead of forcing them to use our search box the way we wanted, we changed it to do what they wanted.

But that change meant our visitors, once again, didn’t have a site search option.

We changed the site search bar to be a catalog search, but it still wasn't perfect

We changed the site search bar to be a catalog search, but it still wasn’t perfect

From this point, we found a widget that gave us a more dynamic search bar. Then we replaced images at the bottom of the page that linked to adult, teen, and children’s programs with widgets featuring new books and the library’s Instagram account. And we featured upcoming events more prominently, moved the contact information into the footer, added navigational links along the top of the page, and worked to make the site ADA compliant. The current homepage design is very different compared to what it was when we first rolled out the new website.

The homepage as it is now

The homepage as it is now

These changes were slow-going, careful, and made one at a time. The redesign 1.0 and current iteration look similar because of branding and tabbed browsing, but for library patrons, these are two very disparate experiences. It is safe to say the new homepage underwent another redesign, but you might hesitate to use that word because the changes didn’t happen all at once.

 

Looking back at synonyms of “redesign”…

Redesign can be used to describe incremental changes

“Redesign” can be used to describe incremental changes

The website wasn’t perfect, but there was a lot to work with. We couldn’t start over every time we realized the site could be doing better.

Big Swings as Redesign: Changing Several Variables at Once

We use the term “big swing” to talk about sweeping changes we make on a page. Often these changes are on a page that’s particularly important or special, like a homepage or landing page.

It means we’ve changed several features all at once instead of testing one thing at a time. The downside of this strategy is that no matter how the page performs after the test goes live, we don’t really know why. If the page continues to perform with the exact same conversion rate, we don’t really know why: our changes may have offset each other.

Big, sweeping changes are exciting when they are successful, and people love to share these kinds of successes. They make great headlines and engaging stories. They give us hope that our big change will work out the way we want, or perhaps even better than we imagine. The problem is that there are usually third variables at play in these stories.

Think about the diet book industry. Every book boasts of its followers’ drastic life improvements due entirely to the diet. But when someone starts to pay attention to what she eats, she may also make other changes like exercising more, quitting smoking, and getting more frequent checkups with her doctor. Was her success really due to the diet book? Or was it purely chance since she made so many other changes? There’s no way to know.

Michael Scott’s Big Swing

Humans have the potential to be rational, logical creatures, but we often fall prey to our emotions when we make decisions, dole out praise, or attach blame. In an episode of The Office, Office Manager Michael Scott has the brilliant, big idea to send out paper shipments with five golden tickets tucked into the boxes at random. Each ticket awarded a 10% discount to its recipient.

The promotion quickly goes south when Dunder Mifflin’s largest client receives all five tickets, and there are no disclaimers or expiration dates. Michael arranges for a fall guy who will be fired for the idea, but then finds out this client has decided to send Dunder Mifflin even more business because of the discount. Naturally Michael wants the credit but doesn’t want to be reprimanded for almost bankrupting the company.

Michael Scott dressed as Willy Wonka, presenting his Golden Ticket idea

Michael Scott dressed as Willy Wonka, presenting his Golden Ticket idea

The Golden Ticket promotion was a big swing because Dunder Mifflin didn’t isolate the variable Michael was hoping to test: will current clients be more loyal to Dunder Mifflin because of a special, one-time-only, 10% discount?

The consequences of the Golden Ticket run the gamut of possible results of big swings:

  • Positive Result: When it seemed like the promotion would put Dunder Mifflin out of business, the responsible party was fired
  • Negative Result: When it became apparent the promotion would solidify a relationship with an important client, the responsible party was publicly commended
  • Neutral Result: Dunder Mifflin lost a huge amount of revenue due to the promotion, then gained more revenue, also due to the promotion

Big Swings at Conversion Sciences

In a staff meeting last week, Conversion Scientist Megan Hoover told us, “We completely redesigned this landing page for our client, and it was a big improvement”. In a different staff meeting, fellow Conversion Scientist Chris Nolan told us, “Our first test was to redesign our client’s homepage, and it was a huge success”.

Conversion Sciences doesn’t do website redesigns, we do conversion optimization. So what did Megan and Chris mean?

  • We switched from two columns to three
  • We wrote a new headline
  • We changed the copy
  • We changed the wording on the call to action

These changes mean they were speaking accurately when they described their big swings as “redesigns”.

Redesign describes what we do when we do big swings

“Redesign” describes what we do when we make big swings

We didn’t change the functionality of the page, the page’s purpose, or the CMS. We definitely made some big changes, but we certainly didn’t start from scratch, and all of the changes were very localized to a landing page and a homepage.

It’s worth noting that even though it’s tough to measure results when you make a big swing type of redesign, we still take the risk sometimes because Conversion Sciences has run so many successful tests. We are very good at making educated hypotheses about what kinds of changes will work well together, but we don’t attempt these big changes often. There is a lot of room for error in the big swing.

What is Your Desired End Result?

We covered three approaches to redesign in this post:

  1. Throw-out the old, start from scratch
  2. Incremental changes
  3. Big swings

Let’s return to the most common reasons a company chooses to redesign:

  • The site performs poorly
  • The desire to be “mobile-friendly”
  • The site is “dated”
  • The desire to be “unique”

When you have the conversation at work about redesigning your site, try starting with the end goal.

If you work backwards, the conversation has a good chance of staying on track because it’s likely that everyone wants the same thing, even if it comes out of their mouths sounding very different. I’m willing to bet that everyone wants a home page with lower bounce rates. Everyone wants to reduce cart abandonment rates. Everyone wants more downloads of your industry reports. Everyone wants to sell more merchandise.

Redesigns are seductive. They come with big budgets and a chance to make a visible impact. The question at the heart of my arguments is this: do you need a website redesign, or do you need a website optimization program?

An optimization program can begin delivering results within weeks. Full redesigns take months and months to develop. An optimization program tells you which of your assumptions are good ones. Full redesigns are big gambles.

With a short Conversion Strategy Session, you will be able to make the case for a full redesign or optimization program for your growing online business. Request your free session.
Brian Massey

If you compete online in the retail electronics industry, there is ample opportunity, according to a study completed by Conversion Sciences and Marketizator.

The full report, Optimization Practices of Retail Electronics Websites, can be downloaded for free. It is the latest in our series of industry report cards that include reports on Higher Education, and B2B Ecommerce.

Who Should Read The Report

The report is a report card on the adoption of key website optimization tools for businesses advertising on “electronics” search keywords. It is meant for managers of websites competing for a slice of the retail electronics market like:

  • Retailers of digital cameras, TVs, home theater, and tablets.
  • Retailers of complimentary products, such as computers and laptops.

We believe that the lessons learned here can be applied to any online retail business with high-prices and commoditized products.

Why Focus on Website Optimization?

There is a set of tools and disciplines designed to increase the number of sales and leads generated from the traffic coming to a business website. Collectively, they are called website optimization.

In the seasonal online retail space, websites seek to achieve one or more of the following goals:

  • Increase the revenue generated per capita, also known as “revenue per visitor.”
  • Reduce shopping cart “abandonment” in which visitors add items to cart, but do not purchase.
  • Increase the average size of each order, or “average order value.”
  • Decrease bounce rates for traffic from paid advertising.

Website optimization utilizes easily-collected information to identify problems and omissions on these sites that may prevent achievement of these goals.

This information can be collected in several ways:

  • Web analytics tools track prospect’s journey through a site. Examples include Adobe SiteCatalyst and Google Analytics.
  • Click-tracking tools (also called heat map tools) that track where a prospects are clicking and how far they are scrolling. This reveals functional problems on specific pages.
  • Screen Recording tools will record visitor sessions for analysis.
  • Split testing, or A/B testing tools allow marketers to try different content and design elements to see which generate more inquiries.
  • Site Performance tools help companies increase the speed with which a website loads. Page speed correlates with conversion performance.
  • Social Analytics track the performance of social interactions relating to the site, such as likes, shares, and social form fills.
  • User Feedback tools provide feedback directly from visitors on the quality of the site and content.

The existence of these tools on a website indicates that the site is collecting important information that can be used to decrease the cost of acquiring new prospects and customers.

This is a strong competitive advantage. Increasing conversion rates decreases acquisition costs, which means:

  • All advertising gets cheaper.
  • Businesses can outperform competitors with bigger advertising budgets
  • Businesses reliant on SEO aren’t as vulnerable to algorithm changes.

This report targets companies investing in search advertising in a variety of formats.

How much are these businesses pending on paid online advertising?

Of the businesses competing for consumer electronics sales, 83% are spending between $500 per month and $5000 per month on paid search ads. See Figure 1.

Fourteen percent are spending between $5000 and $50,000 per month, and only 3% spend more than $50,000.

Figure 1: Range of spending on paid search ads by businesses.

Figure 1: Range of spending on paid search ads by businesses.

Web Analytics Investments

Of the organizations that spend at least $500 per month on search ads, 75% have some form of Web Analytics installed on their site. Web Analytics is a broad category of web software that in some way measures the behavior of visitors to a site. It includes most of the website optimization tools discussed in this report.

Figure 2: Breakdown of web analytics installations by ad spend.

Figure 2: Breakdown of web analytics installations by ad spend.

When we break the list down into categories of spending, we find that the highest-spending organizations are less likely to have web analytics installed (77%) despite having the most to lose.

Google Analytics, a free tool, is the most pervasive analytics package, found on 77% of the sites with analytics. Adobe SiteCatalyst (formerly Omniture) is installed on 4.5% of these sites.

Optimization Software Investments

By looking at the software installed on the websites in the asset and inventory marketplace, we can get an idea of how these organizations are investing in the tools of optimization.

This doesn’t tell us how many are making good use of these tools, but indicates how many have the potential to optimize their site.

The graphic in Figure 3 shows that retailers spending $50,000 on search ads are most likely to invest in

optimization tools. Of this segment, 24% have at least one of these tools installed vs. 7.7% for the entire industry.

The largest spenders focus investments on A/B testing tools, social analytics and survey feedback solutions.

Figure 3: Adoption rate of Web optimization tools by ad spend.

Figure 3: Adoption rate of Web optimization tools by ad spend.

Use of AB Testing Tools

It is clear from the information presented here that, the largest group of retailers – those spending between $500 and $5000 each month on search ads — invest the least in AB testing tools. Furthermore, they invest most in social media analytics tools with 6.1%.

The question is this: Do they not have the tools budget because they don’t invest in website optimization, or do they not have the tools because they don’t see optimization as important.

Certainly, both are true for some portion of the sample. However, 75% of all organizations spending at least $500 a month have web analytics installed. At some point, most of the industry came to the conclusion that you must understand the basics of your traffic.

Yet, only 7.7% have at least one website optimization tool installed.

Over 82% of organizations spending between $5,000 and $50,000 have web analytics installed, and 15.6% have some sort of investment in optimization tools.

Recommendations

Give Your Team Time to Review Analytics

Most of the businesses in our review – 75% – have gotten the message that web analytics should be installed on their website. The majority of these have installed Google Analytics, a free package with capacity to capture the behavior of their visitors.

The value of an analytics database like this is in the insights it can provide. Incentivizing your team to glean insights from this analytics database will guide online investment decisions, increasing the performance of the website.

Businesses with Smaller Ad Spends Should Focus More on Reducing Acquisition Cost

Those businesses with larger ad spends are able to bid more for better placement on their ads. Those with smaller budgets, however, will win by reducing the overall acquisition cost.

Businesses with low acquisition costs get more inquiries for less money. This is the leverage businesses with fewer resources need.

Those businesses that learn to optimize the fastest will gain a cost advantage in paid ad auctions. An investment in free and inexpensive tools, such as click tracking, screen recording and site performance solutions will tip the scales.

Given the low adoption rate of so many of these tools, schools with few resources are in a position to disrupt their competitors by investing in them.

Leverage Your Comparatively High Purchase Price

For those businesses with higher average order values, small increases in conversion rates will deliver big increases in revenue. In short, it takes less time to get your money back from an investment in website optimization.

This can be seen in the relatively high adoption rate of A/B testing tools by businesses spending between $500 and $5000 per month (21%). While these tools require a more formal discipline, they are very effective at finding increases in conversion rates month after month.

There is still a significant opportunity for businesses spending below $5,000 to drive acquisition costs down with testing.

Decrease Your Search Ad Costs

Google favors sites with better performance. The search engine gives advertisers with more relevant sites ad placement higher on the page. Data indicates that sites with lower bounce rates are given a higher quality score than sites that elicit “pogo-sticking”, that is, sites for which visitors are returning to search results pages quickly.

Website optimization will reduce bounce rates by getting visitors into the site before they jump back to their search results.

Don’t Over Invest in Social Media Sharing

It is telling that social analytics tools have the highest adoption rates among consumer electronics retailers.

Social ads are delivering qualified traffic at a relatively low cost. In our experience, social sharing has not.

Your analytics will reveal if social traffic is delivering new leads and sales for your business. If the results aren’t there, consider using this investment elsewhere.

Begin Adoption Soon

Retail marketers are clearly behind the curve in terms of their adoption of website optimization tools. This creates an opportunity in the market. However, this window will close.

As more businesses begin optimizing, it will become harder more expensive to compete for prospects online.

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