You don’t have to do very many split tests before you find your secret weapon for high converting websites. I predict your secret weapon will be the same as ours.
Of course, if I reveal what it is, it won’t be a “secret” anymore, now will it. So, I’ll just drop a few clues and you can guess.
The people who are good at it have names like ____hackers.
2. The secret rhymes with “poppy” but I’m not implying anything by that.
As a noun, it’s very important. As a verb it’s plagiarism.
As a noun, it’s very important. As a verb it’s plagiarism.
My CRO Day Ask me Anything session partner, Joanna Wiebe gets it big time.
Now that you’re part of the inner circle, you have a golden opportunity to get better at deploying this secret weapon. Send us your questions now (right now) and listen in on CRO Day, April 9 as me and Joanna answer your questions on _________ (almost gave it away!) and other conversion optimzation issues.
You questions could address the two steps to making this work:
What are the proven best practices.
How to test to find what works for your unique audience.
But you can Ask Us Anything about Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO).
The truth is, if you don’t have your value proposition down — the words and images that define what you offer and why it’s good to have — you won’t have much luck testing forms, carts and such.
Updated April 5, 2015
What could keep a highly motivated potential buyer from completing a transaction on your website? What could make a highly educated visitor feel like a bumbling child? Here’s one way.
I am a fan of the blubrry podcasting service. Founder Todd Cochrane hosted one of my favorite podcasts way back after the turn of the century. They do a good job of hosting The Conversion Sciences Podcast and offer good analytics on listeners.
So, when my account was cancelled due to a change in our PayPal account, I was keenly interested in restoring the account and my data. I mean, we’re talking about $12 a month here. No big deal.
What could possibly keep me from completing such a transaction? Well, I didn’t complete the resubscription process without leaving the site in confusion first. Wait until you find out why.
Early Optimization Success Comes From Embarrassing Places
It can be really hard to fend off a determined buyer. It can be really easy to confound a less-committed buyer.
Conversion optimization services promise sophisticated analysis and testing to make websites more effective. At Conversion Sciences, our Conversion Catalyst process is built on one simple assumption: We don’t know what will make an online business more money. We don’t know what changes will release hidden money.
We just have to be really good at finding out.
Our first discoveries inevitably come from two sources:
1. Technical problems on an untested device.
You don’t have just one website. You have 20 or 30 or more. Every device serves up a slightly different website. Every browser interprets your site in its own way.
The most reliable way to see how well your many websites are performing is with the actual systems. Our QAtion Station consists of computers, tablets and phones of varying vintages, from Windows XP computers running IE 6 to the latest iPhones.
We are in a unique position to see all of your websites. You’ll be surprised at some of the twisted “interpretations” these devices make of your site. We only check devices that make up a good-sized portion of your visitors. So, when we find an obscure bug, our clients make more money.
2. Things only a newbie to the site would find.
This is where our ignorance comes into play. We don’t need to be up on the best practices for conversion optimization, though we are. We just need to be human. It is one of our more charming characteristics.
You can’t see the problems you create for your visitors because you are too close to your business. Your website is a familiar place that is comfortable to you and to few others. We are thorough and know how to document problems so that they can be fixed or tested.
My blubrry experience is a case study in this last category. Schedule a call with us and we’ll tell you what we can do for your online business. If you have five-hundred transactions or more a month, we can find the sales, leads and subscribers you’re missing every day.
How blubrry Made a Scientist Want to Cry
It took me a while to find the right place on the blubrry site to re-order service. The navigation menus weren’t labeled in the way I would label them. And I’m an experienced podcaster. I finally stumbled upon a link buried on a page that would allow me to repurchase my service.
Here’s the link in my blubrry account I was looking for.
Triumphantly, I clicked this link. This is what I got:
The blubrry checkout page doesn’t offer any help.
I was offered a choice of four amounts to pay, with no other information to guide my choice. All confidence drained from my body. Clearly I missed something.
I’m a college graduate! I’m a trained web expert! And I cannot buy a subscription for a podcast hosting service?
I’m a college graduate! I’m a trained web expert! And I cannot buy a subscription for a podcast hosting service? Self-loathing quickly followed.
Which would you choose. Is the cheapest enough?
Any bright individual would choose the cheapest. But then, I didn’t want to risk my content by being a cheapskate. Ultimately, I left and went back to the emails informing me that my account had been cancelled. There were no links to this page nor any page offering solice.
I came back and, acting on a sliver of memory, chose the $12/month option because that was what I thought I was paying.
It was only when putting this column together that I found the page with the details I was missing. By clicking from my blubrry account page on “blubrry home” and then “blubrry store” I found this.
No matter which “Order Now” button you click, you are taken to the same confusing page.
Guess where “Order Now” takes you? Yep. The same obscure page listing four undefined prices.
The page of frustration cannot be defeated.
Of course, this could be fixed with a little logic that selected the proper level for the visitor and listed the name of the service level.
The point of this case study is this: conversion optimization gold may not be as far away as you think.
Blubrry is a Good Service, But…
I have already invested the time to make this service work for me. I’ve been a client for a couple of years. I’m committed. I did, however, check out competitor Libsyn to see if I should just jump ship. I didn’t.
Those less committed prospects who might be making a similar decision won’t be so forgiving.
The site is a user experience disaster, one of the hardest to use I’ve encountered. My account is not setup properly, but I’ve been able to make it work. I just found out that blubrry has options for advanced analytics. What a shame that I didn’t have this data sooner.
I suspect I am not the only one who has trouble with blubrry.com.
The site doesn’t need a redesign, but it needs some guiding elements on key pages. Only then can we begin to optimize for those subtle changes that make a site really convert.
Todd, please contact us and let us help you. It may be the most profitable call you make all year.
Any sites you think need a re-read? Let us know in the comments.
Update
The folks at Blubrry read our post. See comment below from Todd Cochrane. A simple change to the order page may decrease their abandonment rates.
I hope we’ll hear from them if their fortunes improve.
As content writers, we’re trying to persuade others to see our point of view – to agree with us. Regardless of whether it’s to click on a link or to purchase a product, we want our writing to influence others in a positive manner.
To write in an engaging and persuasive way is an art form – it’s elegant, refined and exercises discernment. And it’s worlds apart from the distasteful, strong-arm tactics employed by spam marketers.
Crafting content that influences isn’t necessarily hard, but it does take a bit of practice. So, without further ado, let’s have a look at five key elements that contribute to successful and persuasive content writing.
1: Be an Expert
Few things are more influential than the opinion of an expert. Why? Because true experts know what they’re talking about. It’s clear in their authenticity and transparency. Experts don’t use fluffy filler material in their persuasive writing, and they don’t try to distract the reader with gimmicks.
If you want to establish yourself as an influencer in your niche, you need to be the premier expert in your field. You don’t need a degree or years of related experience, but you need to demonstrate that you’re a specialist. You want to be so knowledgeable in your particular market that your content is oozing with confidence and certainty.
Note the word specialist.
Experts don’t try to cover all the bases, and they don’t pretend to know everything remotely related to their topic.
They specialize in one particular aspect or angle, and by sharing their knowledge they become an authority. And authority bestows persuasion.
La Carmina, a very successful travel blogger self-describing her approach as “spooky-cute”, embodies this idea to perfection because her success is not the result of trying to be all things to all travelers. Her advice? “Be niche. Don’t be afraid to focus on a specific topic or audience…” Read more of her suggestions for being a specialist on the Huffington Post.
La Carmina Travel Blog specializes in “spooky-cute” travel.
2: List the Most Important Information First
Writing persuasive copy for web pages is similar to that of writing news articles. That is, the most important information comes first – which is quite different from writing an essay or a short story. Journalists refer to this method as writing in an inverted pyramid, and it starts with the most relevant points which are then followed by related details and background information.
In this manner, you have the opportunity right at the start of your post to motivate your readers to continue on to your benefits, features and call to action.
By highlighting the outcomes that you or your products can provide at the beginning, you’ll give them a clear understanding of the big picture. Don’t wait for the conclusion of your piece to deliver the vision they want, because they’ll be long gone.
Gregory Ciotti at Unbounce gives a great example of this idea in his post on how research can affect the way we write copy. He captures the essence of his entire topic in the second sentence, leaving no doubt in the readers’ mind about whether reading the post will be beneficial or not.
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
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3: Give Your Readers Reasons Why
Written or spoken, few words are more persuasive than the word because.
In her book Mindfulness, social psychologist Ellen Langer clearly demonstrated that people are more likely to comply to a request if they’re given a reason via the word because. Even if the reason is redundant or doesn’t make sense!
Another persuasive word to work into your copy is imagine – asking your readers to imagine their desired outcome is a safe alternative to asking them to take action. It’s make-believe, so their inner gatekeeper (the voice in our head suspicious of others’ motives) won’t be inclined to object. And getting your prospects to imagine themselves in happy situations is a powerful influencer.
At Enchanting Marketing, Henneke shows us how to master this element with the words ‘because’ and ‘picture’ right in the introduction of her post (picture being a synonym of imagine). She first suggests we may be making a mistake in our web writing, then gets us to picture a client clicking where we want them to and finally shows us ‘why’ we’re making the mistake – with the word because.
You can’t help but continue reading, and for web content, that’s a big deal because, as Henneke says, you are writing for people who probably aren’t going to read what you write. People don’t read articles all the way through online like they do in print.
Picture your customers as wild animals when you write copy suggests Henneke Enchanged Marketing
4: Benefits First, Then Features
This point may seem a bit counterintuitive, but only because you know your products or services so well – still, you need to remember that your prospects don’t. Keep in mind that they’re looking for specific outcomes.
It might help to think of the benefits as the outcome they desire, while the features are part of the solution to their problem. For example, “You can look like a supermodel in two weeks with our Magic Pills – no need for diets or exercise!” The benefit is looking like a supermodel in two weeks. The features are no dieting or exercising.
Brian Clark shows us how to successfully highlight benefits, and to differentiate between benefits and features, with the ‘forehead slap test’ in this great post on Copyblogger.
5: Write for Scanners
It’s important to remember that most online consumers are scanners first and readers second. To persuade your prospects actually to read your content, use some of these eye candy elements to draw them into your article:
Headings and subheads, relevant and on topic
Bullet lists to highlight benefits and features
Font variations, bold, italics, and colored links
Short sentences and short paragraphs, each with one idea only
He establishes himself as an expert on writing persuasive content with solid research, and results, to establish his status.
The most important information is listed first. The graph shows us that a headline that includes research received a +40% increase in click throughs.
He gives us the reason ‘why’ in a big way – right there in the first sub-header: “why you should write research-backed content”.
The benefit is shown in a graph demonstrating the increase in click through rates.
The post is easily scanable. Lots of relevant subheads, graphs, images, bold and colored fonts. And the sentences and paragraphs are short and concise, with a memorable caption: “ROI is about the MECHANIC using the tool.”
With a bit of practice in applying these key elements, you’ll be successful at writing persuasive content that your readers will understand and appreciate – and that’s a winning situation for everyone.
Video helps your marketing. It’s not a very controversial statement, but for years now YouTube has been hovering around the number two spot of the most-used search engines, yet somehow video in online marketing still has a feeling of just emerging from its infancy.
Despite that, marketers feel very comfortable using video for their own projects, with close to 80% of marketers polled by eMarketer claiming they’ve leveraged video for their own brand’s marketing. Marketers are starting to see that they can benefit greatly from leveraging video in channels like email marketing.
Email and Video: An Unlikely Marriage?
Email marketers are among many starting to see the benefit of video in their campaigns. Jon Spenceley of Vidyard.com reported that the brand Clear Fit saw a 53% higher click-to-open rate on emails that featured a video call-to-action over their non-video counterparts.
Even mentioning the word “video” can increase open rates by 20% as reported by the Daily Egg blog. In fact, it’s preferred over even more precise terms like “webinar” and “conference”.
A white paper released by The Relevancy Group LLC showed an increase in customer engagement across the board when videos were used in email campaigns. This includes conversions, click-through, social sharing and even average order size!
What are the benefits of using video in your email marketing messages? Source: The Relevancy Group, LLC Executive Survey, n=66 2/13, United States Only
Video also has the added benefit of being mobile friendly and this is especially good news since last year mobile finally overtook desktop-fixed internet-access hubs.
Number of global users on desktop versus mobile from Smart Insights
These numbers are no doubt impressive and there is some psychology behind why video is so effective.
Why Do Customers Prefer Video?
While numbers are definitely indicating a preference for video, we’re interested in exploring why? Let’s start with a simple video-email analogy.
The process of checking email is largely a passive activity. You have information sent directly to you and you review it. Checking your email is a simple process, and it’s precisely the reason marketers find video such an attractive transition within the user’s experience.
Videos can engage customers without requiring them to change their current state which is important because your customers don’t have to do work in order to do business with you.
Video content allows customers to enter into your sales funnel without feeling like they’ve abruptly left another activity behind.
Video content allows customers to enter into your sales funnel without feeling like they’ve abruptly left another activity behind. That’s a hugely beneficial psychological component supporting why video seems to increase the effectiveness of marketing activities.
Carefully Weighing Video in Email Marketing
Videos are great for the user but how much should they be used and where? What should your marketing campaigns look like? A lot of the focus on video and improved conversions in the research cited above touts the benefits of video specifically in email marketing campaigns. But don’t go and blindly add video to every email and marketing document you send out!
Embedding video is great for the user and engaging them with your brand in their current state of mind, but there are also drawbacks. Even well-rounded and optimized email campaigns need to consider what can go wrong before including video.
Thumbnails
Thumbnails, perhaps the most overlooked aspect of video, can actually create several unintended problems for your campaigns. YouTubers have long known that thumbnails matter and email marketers inexperienced with video should take some notes. A good thumbnail needs to be good-quality with a central focus and also be adaptable to changes in sizes. A thumbnail may have to scale from as small as a couple of hundred pixels to over a thousand. Size considerations also apply to text included in the thumbnail, since it can quickly become unreadable.
The best thumbnails:
Evoke emotion
Leverage controversy
Focus on a human face with an engaging expression
Accurately represent the content
These need to be used carefully and in accordance with the brand’s overall messaging and feel.
Embedding
While thumbnails are important, email marketers need also to consider whether to leverage the new video embedding feature that many email clients now support. There’s more support now for this feature than ever, but its current ubiquitousness might have you question whether all your customers are receiving your marketing messages. Since approximately 58% of email users (via Social Mouths) cannot view video embedded in their emails, marketers should be careful about placing all their eggs in that basket.
Even if a customer can open the content, the ability for your customers to engage with your brand in an individual email is limited. Ideally you want your customer to engage with your site more directly.
Leveraging Landing Pages Can be Confusing
Landing pages can support email marketing and help take visitors from the email to the website or to an important conversion in between. You may have a landing page AND an email sporting an embedded video, but that creates a bit of confusion for your customers on how they should share this information. Do they forward the email with the video? Do they email a link to the landing page? If the customer forwards the email, will it create formatting issues with the video?
If you prefer to use a landing page to support your email marketing, you should embed the video in the landing page and use a call-to-action that mimics the look and feel of a video player. The slight disruption is outweighed by side-stepping user confusion of where to share and of course by drastically improving the user’s ability to actually access the video content.
Final Thoughts
There is a lot to consider when working with video in email marketing. It may not be the right move to include video in your email marketing efforts. If it is the right move, you may have a separate set of considerations when it comes to landing pages. Pascale Guay, CEO of Dialog Insight, responds to the limitation of video content in email marketing on her company blog saying the most important strategy for email marketers is to make use of the channels used by their target audience above all else. If your target audience responds to email marketing – use this channel! If your open-rates soar because of video content – use this channel…carefully.
Are you using video in your email campaigns? If not, how come? If so, how is it working for you? Leave a comment below!
About the Author
Jenix is a journalist who specializes in discovering and documenting digital media. She makes a living as a copy writer specializing in web content and recently began writing for her personal blog: www.jenixwrites.com. Jenix is also a proud new mother and when she isn’t writing she’s sharing in the daily discovery of her beautiful daughter. Reach out @JenixHastings.
Split tests are a favored tool of economists, direct response mailers and website optimizers. The primary challenge when creating a split test is being sure that you’re measuring exactly what you think you’re measuring.
As my grandmother used to say, “The road to bad conclusions is paved with uncontrolled variables.” Yes, we are a geeky family.
When your variables get out of hand, all hell breaks lose, and you end up testing something you didn’t intend to test.
When comparing humans, nothing beats twins for experimenting. I feel sorry for twins because of the number of medical and economic studies that tap them for “controlled” experiments. It must be like living on the Island of Dr. Moreau.
The following YouTube video uses twins to perform an experiment that tests the social axiom that, “Chewing gum isn’t attractive.” Watch the following video and see if you can name some of the uncontrolled variables that may be putting this experiment on the statistical road to invalidity.
This is an art exhibit, not a controlled experiment. However, many who watch it may believe that it provides scientific evidence that we should all go out and pick up a few sticks of Wrigley’s if we want to be more charming. In fact, that is what the makers of Beldent want you to believe.
Is this test really telling us to put our jaws in motion if we’re to be more likable?
Controlling Variables
The artist who created this experimart controlled for appearance quite effectively. Genetically identical twins are used as the control and the variation. They are dressed identically. They wear identical makeup. They are sitting in a neutral position on identical chairs. They have identical facial expressions. The lighting is the same on both participants.
The only apparent difference is that one of them is chewing delicious Beldent gum (Beldent is the South American brand from Trident).
Test subjects sit in front of these two doppelgangers and listen to questions piped in through a headset.
“Which one seems like he has more friends?”
“Which one has more imaginary friends?”
“Which one gets invited to more parties?”
“Which one gets invited to more bridge tournaments?”
“Which of these bosses would give you a raise?”
Participants chose the left or the right by pressing one of two buttons vaguely reminiscent of The Family Feud.
It looks like all variables have been controlled, and that the results can be considered valid.
The Unsuspecting Twists that Ruin Experiments
One thing experienced testers learn quickly is that little things will influence your tests more than you would have imagined.
For instance, this experiment could be testing if people favor pressing the left button when they are unsure of their answer. In every situation, the gum chewer is sitting on the left. To control for this, the gum chewer should have been on the left sometimes and on the right sometimes.
This experiment could be comparing gum chewers to people who look like total bummers. In every situation, the control twin is sitting with a neutral expression. In any situation, they would look boring. To control for this, they could have asked the twins to be smiling sometimes.
The handlers who setup the test, a test paid for by Beldent, may have unconsciously chosen the more attractive twin of each pair to be the gum-chewer. Certainly, the artists wanted Beldent to win. This creates a bias. To control for this, the twins should have taken turns as the gum chewer.
The designers of the test attempt to control for age and gender biases. A mix of twins is used: men, women, older, younger.
The people pressing the buttons may represent a skewed sample set, however. The experiment was done in a museum. Only a portion of the total population enjoys museums. Thus, the test subjects are probably not representative of the population as a whole.
Basically,
Beldent can only conclude that chewing gum makes you more attractive to museum-goers when you’re sitting to the left of your boring twin.
Beldent can only conclude that chewing gum makes you more attractive to museum-goers when you’re sitting to the left of your boring twin.
A More Rigorous Experiment
To really get a handle on the social benefits of constant mastication, you would design a test that controlled for even more variables.
Participants should be shown only one twin. This, of course, means you don’t need twins. Just one person from each set, chewing, not chewing; smiling and not smiling.
Questions would have to be reworded.
“Does this person make friends easily?”
“Does this person get invited to parties frequently?”
I would scratch the “bridge tournament” question. You’ve got to be smart to play bridge well. Smart people are likable, right?
This new design would require a larger sample size than the 481 participants in the Beldent artsperiment. You now have sixteen different treatments (four chewing, four not cheweing; four chewing and smiling; four not chewing and smiling). You would need 1600 participants or more to get close to statistical significance.
Unfortunately, this new experiment wouldn’t deliver such dramatic video footage. But without this rigor, Beldent may be lying to themselves — and to us — about the value of chewing gum.
Imagine Your Web Pages as Twins
Our job at Conversion Sciences is to design website tests for companies, tests that tell us exactly what we want to know about a web page and nothing more. We agonize over the subtle things that introduce bias into our test. We always want to test the right thing.
We create two or more versions of a page that are like identical twins, with only one thing changed. We make sure that the visitors in our tests are representative of the site’s visitors at large.
And we must control our natural human biases. Like the artists who setup the experiment, we want to get wins for our clients. If we give in to this desire, we can find ourselves calling tests too soon, or running with statistically insignificant results that favor our treatment. Even when our testing tools tell us we’ve got a winner, we are skeptical.
It isn’t hard to tell if we make a bad call. If our tests didn’t increase the fortunes of our clients, our reputation isn’t worth a p-value. The accounting department’s numbers don’t lie.
Let us test some pages for you. If you have five-hundred transactions a month or more, you have the sample size to test your way to more sales, more leads and more subscribers. And we’ll throw in some chewing gum.
I am one of the many people obsessed with increasing conversion rates. Were you to wake me up in the middle of the night with the word ‘conversion,’ I would probably respond with a long, haunting sigh, “…raaaates.”
That’s how much I’ve been possessed by the topic.
I’ve seen lots of unsuccessful attempts at increasing conversion rates based on conventional wisdom that isn’t necessarily backed up with data. Make your calls-to-action (CTAs) big! Change your layout! Make it scroll horizontally and design it in Adobe Flash! One funeral home changed all their colors to blacks, and it proved to be successful in increasing conversion rates: it is bound to work for you, even if you sell lollipops!
The lists are endless, and sometimes they are just empty promises.
What you really need is data: tangible, real-life data which is related directly to you, your website and your customers’ needs.
What you really need is data: tangible, real-life data which is related directly to you, your website and your customers’ needs.
Click tracking is one of the methods for gathering real data about what your website’s visitors do. It is a good start when optimizing your design and understanding how your customers behave and why.
What is Click Tracking?
By using a click tracking tool, you can see where your users place their cursor and press the mouse button, usually in the form of a convenient heat map. The studies are qualitative and allow you to have tons of participants.
You can learn a lot from these studies such as where people focus their clicks the most, whether they react to the buttons placed on the website, whether they navigate the website properly, is something distracting them and so on. You figure out the questions, and click tracking will provide the answers.
What are the benefits? First of all, the study is incredibly cheap – you don’t have to gather tons of participants in a lab and pay them; you can do it remotely and even without your users’ knowledge. Secondly, because the study is not overt, visitors on your site behave normally rather than exhibiting the unnatural behaviors inherent in those being observed. They simply react to visuals like they usually would because they are in their natural environment.
Armed with this knowledge, you are well on your way to optimizing your website’s design and increasing conversions.
Case Studies
The North Face & ClickTale
ClickTale is one of the services offering click tracking, and one of their clients, The North Face, wanted to increase the conversion rate of their shopping cart, but their own tools had been inadequate in accomplishing that goal.
With the heat maps provided by ClickTale, The North Face saw that many users didn’t pay attention to the checkout button on the shopping cart page. Instead, they were focused on the promotional banner above the button, which invited everybody to become a rewards member.
While attracting more rewards members was one of the goals for The North Face, the placement of the banner resulted in the loss of potential conversions in the shopping cart.
In order to fix that problem, they ran an A/B test which tested a different position of the checkout button. The results were much better:
Mouse-move heatmaps revealed that visitors interacted more with the checkout button when it was moved above the banner (B) with a 21% increase in clicks
Optimal Energy & UsabilityTools
Optimal Energy – one of the largest price comparison systems for energy distributors in Europe – had a big takeaway from a study with click tracking service UsabilityTools.
Optimal Energy’s website had a slider with images that appeared to be clickable CTAs, containing words like ‘Start’; these images were only samples, however, so they were not clickable. Click tracking data showed that up to 24% of clicks on the website as a whole were on unclickable elements and about half of them on these false CTAs.
Click tracking tools will reveal where visitors are clicking. These “start buttons” aren’t clickable.
In order to solve this problem, Optimal Energy immediately made these elements clickable, leading the user to a submission form. Thanks to this change, the effectiveness of CTAs increased by 66.2%, and the conversion rate increased by 122.6%.
Closing Thoughts
Click tracking provides actual, real data instead of relying on hunches or unfounded hypotheses. The success of optimization projects on one website doesn’t necessarily generalize to other websites because every company has a unique set of clients, so you need study the behaviors of your clients to inform design changes.
In addition to ClickTale and UsabilityTools, other click tracking tools include Mouseflow, CrazyEgg, EyeQuant, and Inspectlet.
Sezgin Hergül is the marketing manager at UsabilityTools. He specializes in content marketing and website growth. Besides his love for marketing, he enjoys good design and music. Image of mouse licensed through Creative Commons by Erin Kohlenberg & adapted for this post.
If the Zombie Apocalypse struck tomorrow, and the only way not to become the walking dead was to throw away your mobile device, who would be the winners and losers?
According to an intriguing infographic, you’d be more likely to be file-swapping on Dropbox than binge-watching on Netflix. You’d be more likely to get your news the same way your grandparents do. You’d be back to reading the New York Times online instead of Buzzfeed, which now interprets world events by comparing them to your favorite episodes of Friends.
Would you have predicted that Sears would suddenly be more popular than Pandora. I guess we’ll be needing somewhere to buy a new Walkman to take to the gym.
Somehow Google would still manage to rule the Internet world which is hardly surprising since
“Encarta it” just doesn’t have the same ring as “Google it.”
In case you’re wondering where Encarta falls into the mix, I had to Google it to read a Wikipedia article about it.
This little thought exercise underscores the winners and losers in the mobile game. Many businesses claim that mobile isn’t important enough yet, or that their offering doesn’t lend itself to mobile. Netflix and Buzzfeed dominate their marketplace in part because they embraced mobile early and often.
If you believe your visitors are hunched over a desktop when they visit your site, you are setting yourself up to be the mobile-unfriendly loser in your marketplace. Are you creating your own Zombie Apocalypse?
And let’s all breathe a collective sigh of relief that Craigslist would still be a solid option for finding your next creepy roommate since its popularity doesn’t take quite the hit of more fashion-forward websites in this mobile-devoid alternate universe.
They had tried everything, and if you looked at their site, you would find a competent site from an optimization standpoint.
Products were presented in a clear way. Navigation made sense. Product pages handled most desires for information. Still, they struggled with a low conversion rate.
This company was not a customer of ours, but I gave the owner a few ideas and some Google Analytics reports to look at. In one of those reports, he found a culprit. But the news isn’t as good as it sounds.
Having a Team with Time to Investigate
Before I reveal the secret, I’d like to highlight the value of giving your business time to digest what it knows. This means that someone is given the mandate to pull out of the day-to-day rush, and begin answering important questions about your website.
Is something broken on one of the many browsers visitors use to buy? This is the source of many of our “wins.”
When we make a change to the site, does it impact our bottom line? This is the purpose of improving your site, is it not?
Is there some suspect traffic? This turned out to be key to our story.
Even if you have dedicated optimization people, do they have this important time to be rigorously curious?
Rent a Conversion Scientist
It’s expensive to hire. That’s why we’ve configured Conversion Sciences to provide conversion optimization services that are completely turnkey at a fraction of the employee rate.
You can have someone experienced, curious, and very good with data analysis finding undiscovered gold on your website. Our value proposition is simple.
We will find the money to pay for our conversion optimization services, and a whole lot more.
With Conversion Sciences, you get a team for less than the cost of an employee. And our fixed monthly fee covers everything:
Analytics setup
Testing
Design
Development
Administration
We’ve been so successful that 97% of our clients have continued with us after our initial engagement.
For Established Businesses
You don’t have to be an enterprise to take advantage of our talents. You only need have an established online business with around five hundred monthly transactions.
With some free advice, the owner of this ecommerce business found that his conversion rate had been artificially suppressed by visits from a robot called Halebot, like Halibut. This was very fishy (sorry).
So, while his website changes did improve his conversion rate, Halebot made it look like his conversion rate was going down. Had we been working with him, we would have discovered this early on and would have removed this invalid traffic from the equation.
We didn’t put any more money in his pocket, but, with just a few minutes of thought, we showed him that he was on the right path.
Let us put you on a path to growth with the traffic you are already getting. Schedule the call now.
Would you be brave enough to let a bunch of conversion experts tell you what is wrong with your website? Flex Fitness’s Ryan Ehler did just that when he won the privilege of having five website optimization experts evaluate a landing page for one of his ads. Digital Marketer published all of the recommendations.
The critiques may seem a little rough, but in the end Ryan was the recipient of some really solid advice (estimated to be worth $25,000).
Our own Brian Massey pointed out some problems that needed to be addressed. Here are the note from which his full critique was created.
Notes from Brian Massey’s review of Flex Fitness landing page.
What can you take away from this?
1. Make your landing page match the promises in your ad. Ryan does a good job here, matching copy and images.
2. Don’t try to be too cute with your copy.
Why do we want to catapult our results?? We want to keep them, don’t we?
Why do we want to catapult our results?? We want to keep them, don’t we?
3. Use images that support your value proposition. The image of the gym are supportive. The stock photos in the “Three Words…” section is not.
4. Make your calls to action clear. What will happen if your visitor submits a form or clicks on a button.
Read the full critiques from Brian and website optimization experts Chris Goward, Tim Ash, Justin Rondeau, Peep Laja.
Learn more about landing pages on The Conversion Scientist Blog.
If Austin is the conversion capital of the world, it was a supernova of conversion optimization brilliance this past week when the Conversion XL Live conference was held here. Luminaries from around the globe converged here for a program that covered topics from landing page design to “bandit” algorithms.
I learned a lot.
Here were some of the highlights for me.
The Dame, The Detective and the Double-cross
I used Humphrey Bogart detective movies to illustrate that conversion optimizers use a variety of data sources to determine what to test and what not to test. The femme fatale will appear in the detective’s office and pose a problem. The salty detective will investigate, looking for clues. If he’s not careful, he can be double-crossed by the data.
For a data detective, the initial hypothesis is the “dame’s” story. Of course, she is hiding something. He must find clues to tease out the truth using alternative data sources. He can use post-test analysis techniques to make sure he wasn’t double-crossed by his data.
Some of the alternative sources I discussed were:
Aggregated Behavioral data like Google Analytics and AB Testing Tools.
Aggregated User Interaction data like click tracking tools and form-tracking tools.
Individual User Interaction data, like session recordings, ratings and reviews data and live chat transcripts.
Self-reported data, such as surveys and online feedback.
Customer knowledge, often found by interviewing sales and customer support people.
When you prioritize hypotheses that have lots of support in data, you keep yourself from being double-crossed by unexpected results.
Mobile Website Design
We believe that the mobile Web is like the desktop Web in the 1990s: we will look back and laugh at the choices we are making today.
Amy Africa has done a lot of testing on mobile websites, and gave us a flood of Mobile Web 2.0 tips. My notes were extensive, but some of the her revelations were surprising.
Don’t think in terms of pages. Think in terms of screens and scrolls.
Make your “action directives” (action buttons, search options, etc.) big and bold.
80% of mobile success is having the right navigation.
One third to one half of mobile visitors will use search. Design search results pages as if only three items will be seen.
Mobile forms are abandoned more often on mobile.
Email is of even bigger importance with mobile users than desktop users.
Social logins can reduce abandonment if done right.
“Oversell the phone number” in the purchase process.
Responsive design comes with a mobile performance hit.
Transfer mobile visitors to the desktop by sending email or text.
Email will make up for deficiencies in the mobile experience.
She introduced me to some new terms, including “donuts”, “spreaders” and “cart hoppers.”
It’s clearly an exciting time in the mobile world.
Predictive Analytics and Machine Learning
Matthew Gershoff introduced us to the world of predictive analytics and machine learning.
Optimization = Learning efficiency + Applying the “best” learnings
New tools, such as his company Conductrics provides tools that use the key ingredients of optimization.
Setting goals
Sensing the environment, usually through analytics.
Having the ability to act and execute on learnings.
Observing outcomes.
Learning the decision logic of visitors.
These ingredients are the basis for machine learning.
He recommended courses on VideoLectures.com to get up to speed on machine learning and artificial intelligence.
Conversion Maturity Model
Brooks Bell was interviewed by conference host Peep Laja about the Conversion Maturity Model that defines how advanced an organization is with respect to optimization.
Her namesake company surveyed 300 companies, rating them on six criteria.
Culture
Team
Tools and Systems
Process
Strategy
Performance
The executive sponsor at a company is key to the success of the optimization effort, she pointed out. Very true.
Conversion Optimizers from Everywhere
Austin truly was the Conversion Supernova of the World.
In from Vancouver, Oli Gardner of Unbouce took us through the rules of good landing page design. He provided us all with some free tools to help us evaluate our landing pages and forms.
André Morys runs one of the largest conversion optimization companies in the world. He’s both hugely entertaining and German.
Michael Aagard flew in from Denmark to share some of his most embarrassing testing mistakes and his triumphs.
Yehoshua Coren is a cross-cultural phenomenon as the Analytics Ninja from Israel.
High Converting Websites: What's the Secret Weapon?
News & EventsYou don’t have to do very many split tests before you find your secret weapon for high converting websites. I predict your secret weapon will be the same as ours.
Of course, if I reveal what it is, it won’t be a “secret” anymore, now will it. So, I’ll just drop a few clues and you can guess.
Now that you’re part of the inner circle, you have a golden opportunity to get better at deploying this secret weapon. Send us your questions now (right now) and listen in on CRO Day, April 9 as me and Joanna answer your questions on _________ (almost gave it away!) and other conversion optimzation issues.
You questions could address the two steps to making this work:
But you can Ask Us Anything about Conversion
RateOptimization (CRO).The truth is, if you don’t have your value proposition down — the words and images that define what you offer and why it’s good to have — you won’t have much luck testing forms, carts and such.
How This Online Service Makes Smart People Feel Stupid [CASE STUDY]
Conversion Marketing StrategyUpdated April 5, 2015
What could keep a highly motivated potential buyer from completing a transaction on your website? What could make a highly educated visitor feel like a bumbling child? Here’s one way.
I am a fan of the blubrry podcasting service. Founder Todd Cochrane hosted one of my favorite podcasts way back after the turn of the century. They do a good job of hosting The Conversion Sciences Podcast and offer good analytics on listeners.
So, when my account was cancelled due to a change in our PayPal account, I was keenly interested in restoring the account and my data. I mean, we’re talking about $12 a month here. No big deal.
What could possibly keep me from completing such a transaction? Well, I didn’t complete the resubscription process without leaving the site in confusion first. Wait until you find out why.
Early Optimization Success Comes From Embarrassing Places
It can be really hard to fend off a determined buyer. It can be really easy to confound a less-committed buyer.
Conversion optimization services promise sophisticated analysis and testing to make websites more effective. At Conversion Sciences, our Conversion Catalyst process is built on one simple assumption: We don’t know what will make an online business more money. We don’t know what changes will release hidden money.
We just have to be really good at finding out.
Our first discoveries inevitably come from two sources:
1. Technical problems on an untested device.
You don’t have just one website. You have 20 or 30 or more. Every device serves up a slightly different website. Every browser interprets your site in its own way.
The most reliable way to see how well your many websites are performing is with the actual systems. Our QAtion Station consists of computers, tablets and phones of varying vintages, from Windows XP computers running IE 6 to the latest iPhones.
We are in a unique position to see all of your websites. You’ll be surprised at some of the twisted “interpretations” these devices make of your site. We only check devices that make up a good-sized portion of your visitors. So, when we find an obscure bug, our clients make more money.
2. Things only a newbie to the site would find.
This is where our ignorance comes into play. We don’t need to be up on the best practices for conversion optimization, though we are. We just need to be human. It is one of our more charming characteristics.
You can’t see the problems you create for your visitors because you are too close to your business. Your website is a familiar place that is comfortable to you and to few others. We are thorough and know how to document problems so that they can be fixed or tested.
My blubrry experience is a case study in this last category.
Schedule a call with us and we’ll tell you what we can do for your online business. If you have five-hundred transactions or more a month, we can find the sales, leads and subscribers you’re missing every day.
How blubrry Made a Scientist Want to Cry
It took me a while to find the right place on the blubrry site to re-order service. The navigation menus weren’t labeled in the way I would label them. And I’m an experienced podcaster. I finally stumbled upon a link buried on a page that would allow me to repurchase my service.
Here’s the link in my blubrry account I was looking for.
Triumphantly, I clicked this link. This is what I got:
The blubrry checkout page doesn’t offer any help.
I was offered a choice of four amounts to pay, with no other information to guide my choice. All confidence drained from my body. Clearly I missed something. I’m a college graduate! I’m a trained web expert! And I cannot buy a subscription for a podcast hosting service? Self-loathing quickly followed.
Which would you choose. Is the cheapest enough?
Any bright individual would choose the cheapest. But then, I didn’t want to risk my content by being a cheapskate.
Ultimately, I left and went back to the emails informing me that my account had been cancelled. There were no links to this page nor any page offering solice.
I came back and, acting on a sliver of memory, chose the $12/month option because that was what I thought I was paying.
It was only when putting this column together that I found the page with the details I was missing. By clicking from my blubrry account page on “blubrry home” and then “blubrry store” I found this.
No matter which “Order Now” button you click, you are taken to the same confusing page.
Guess where “Order Now” takes you? Yep. The same obscure page listing four undefined prices.
The page of frustration cannot be defeated.
Of course, this could be fixed with a little logic that selected the proper level for the visitor and listed the name of the service level.
The point of this case study is this: conversion optimization gold may not be as far away as you think.
Blubrry is a Good Service, But…
I have already invested the time to make this service work for me. I’ve been a client for a couple of years. I’m committed. I did, however, check out competitor Libsyn to see if I should just jump ship. I didn’t.
Those less committed prospects who might be making a similar decision won’t be so forgiving.
The site is a user experience disaster, one of the hardest to use I’ve encountered. My account is not setup properly, but I’ve been able to make it work. I just found out that blubrry has options for advanced analytics. What a shame that I didn’t have this data sooner.
I suspect I am not the only one who has trouble with blubrry.com.
The site doesn’t need a redesign, but it needs some guiding elements on key pages. Only then can we begin to optimize for those subtle changes that make a site really convert.
Todd, please contact us and let us help you. It may be the most profitable call you make all year.
Any sites you think need a re-read? Let us know in the comments.
Update
The folks at Blubrry read our post. See comment below from Todd Cochrane. A simple change to the order page may decrease their abandonment rates.
I hope we’ll hear from them if their fortunes improve.
5 Elements of Persuasive Writing that Make Your Posts Takeoff
Conversion-Centered DesignAs content writers, we’re trying to persuade others to see our point of view – to agree with us. Regardless of whether it’s to click on a link or to purchase a product, we want our writing to influence others in a positive manner.
To write in an engaging and persuasive way is an art form – it’s elegant, refined and exercises discernment. And it’s worlds apart from the distasteful, strong-arm tactics employed by spam marketers.
Crafting content that influences isn’t necessarily hard, but it does take a bit of practice. So, without further ado, let’s have a look at five key elements that contribute to successful and persuasive content writing.
1: Be an Expert
Few things are more influential than the opinion of an expert. Why? Because true experts know what they’re talking about. It’s clear in their authenticity and transparency. Experts don’t use fluffy filler material in their persuasive writing, and they don’t try to distract the reader with gimmicks.
If you want to establish yourself as an influencer in your niche, you need to be the premier expert in your field. You don’t need a degree or years of related experience, but you need to demonstrate that you’re a specialist. You want to be so knowledgeable in your particular market that your content is oozing with confidence and certainty.
Note the word specialist.
They specialize in one particular aspect or angle, and by sharing their knowledge they become an authority. And authority bestows persuasion.
La Carmina, a very successful travel blogger self-describing her approach as “spooky-cute”, embodies this idea to perfection because her success is not the result of trying to be all things to all travelers. Her advice? “Be niche. Don’t be afraid to focus on a specific topic or audience…” Read more of her suggestions for being a specialist on the Huffington Post.
La Carmina Travel Blog specializes in “spooky-cute” travel.
2: List the Most Important Information First
Writing persuasive copy for web pages is similar to that of writing news articles. That is, the most important information comes first – which is quite different from writing an essay or a short story. Journalists refer to this method as writing in an inverted pyramid, and it starts with the most relevant points which are then followed by related details and background information.
In this manner, you have the opportunity right at the start of your post to motivate your readers to continue on to your benefits, features and call to action.
By highlighting the outcomes that you or your products can provide at the beginning, you’ll give them a clear understanding of the big picture. Don’t wait for the conclusion of your piece to deliver the vision they want, because they’ll be long gone.
Gregory Ciotti at Unbounce gives a great example of this idea in his post on how research can affect the way we write copy. He captures the essence of his entire topic in the second sentence, leaving no doubt in the readers’ mind about whether reading the post will be beneficial or not.
21 Quick and Easy CRO Copywriting Hacks
Keep these proven copywriting hacks in mind to make your copy convert.
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3: Give Your Readers Reasons Why
In her book Mindfulness, social psychologist Ellen Langer clearly demonstrated that people are more likely to comply to a request if they’re given a reason via the word because. Even if the reason is redundant or doesn’t make sense!
Another persuasive word to work into your copy is imagine – asking your readers to imagine their desired outcome is a safe alternative to asking them to take action. It’s make-believe, so their inner gatekeeper (the voice in our head suspicious of others’ motives) won’t be inclined to object. And getting your prospects to imagine themselves in happy situations is a powerful influencer.
At Enchanting Marketing, Henneke shows us how to master this element with the words ‘because’ and ‘picture’ right in the introduction of her post (picture being a synonym of imagine). She first suggests we may be making a mistake in our web writing, then gets us to picture a client clicking where we want them to and finally shows us ‘why’ we’re making the mistake – with the word because.
You can’t help but continue reading, and for web content, that’s a big deal because, as Henneke says, you are writing for people who probably aren’t going to read what you write. People don’t read articles all the way through online like they do in print.
Picture your customers as wild animals when you write copy suggests Henneke Enchanged Marketing
4: Benefits First, Then Features
This point may seem a bit counterintuitive, but only because you know your products or services so well – still, you need to remember that your prospects don’t. Keep in mind that they’re looking for specific outcomes.
It might help to think of the benefits as the outcome they desire, while the features are part of the solution to their problem. For example, “You can look like a supermodel in two weeks with our Magic Pills – no need for diets or exercise!” The benefit is looking like a supermodel in two weeks. The features are no dieting or exercising.
By succinctly outlining the benefits first, then the features, you’ll generate greater interest in your clients’ minds.
Brian Clark shows us how to successfully highlight benefits, and to differentiate between benefits and features, with the ‘forehead slap test’ in this great post on Copyblogger.
5: Write for Scanners
It’s important to remember that most online consumers are scanners first and readers second. To persuade your prospects actually to read your content, use some of these eye candy elements to draw them into your article:
Case Study
Alex Turnbull at Bufferapp expertly includes all five of these elements in his post on research-backed content. You’ll notice that:
With a bit of practice in applying these key elements, you’ll be successful at writing persuasive content that your readers will understand and appreciate – and that’s a winning situation for everyone.
What to Consider When Using Video in a Blog
Conversion Marketing StrategyVideo helps your marketing. It’s not a very controversial statement, but for years now YouTube has been hovering around the number two spot of the most-used search engines, yet somehow video in online marketing still has a feeling of just emerging from its infancy.
Despite that, marketers feel very comfortable using video for their own projects, with close to 80% of marketers polled by eMarketer claiming they’ve leveraged video for their own brand’s marketing. Marketers are starting to see that they can benefit greatly from leveraging video in channels like email marketing.
Email and Video: An Unlikely Marriage?
Email marketers are among many starting to see the benefit of video in their campaigns. Jon Spenceley of Vidyard.com reported that the brand Clear Fit saw a 53% higher click-to-open rate on emails that featured a video call-to-action over their non-video counterparts.
Even mentioning the word “video” can increase open rates by 20% as reported by the Daily Egg blog. In fact, it’s preferred over even more precise terms like “webinar” and “conference”.
A white paper released by The Relevancy Group LLC showed an increase in customer engagement across the board when videos were used in email campaigns. This includes conversions, click-through, social sharing and even average order size!
What are the benefits of using video in your email marketing messages? Source: The Relevancy Group, LLC Executive Survey, n=66 2/13, United States Only
Video also has the added benefit of being mobile friendly and this is especially good news since last year mobile finally overtook desktop-fixed internet-access hubs.
Number of global users on desktop versus mobile from Smart Insights
These numbers are no doubt impressive and there is some psychology behind why video is so effective.
Why Do Customers Prefer Video?
While numbers are definitely indicating a preference for video, we’re interested in exploring why? Let’s start with a simple video-email analogy.
Video content allows customers to enter into your sales funnel without feeling like they’ve abruptly left another activity behind. That’s a hugely beneficial psychological component supporting why video seems to increase the effectiveness of marketing activities.The process of checking email is largely a passive activity. You have information sent directly to you and you review it. Checking your email is a simple process, and it’s precisely the reason marketers find video such an attractive transition within the user’s experience.
Videos can engage customers without requiring them to change their current state which is important because your customers don’t have to do work in order to do business with you.
Carefully Weighing Video in Email Marketing
Videos are great for the user but how much should they be used and where? What should your marketing campaigns look like? A lot of the focus on video and improved conversions in the research cited above touts the benefits of video specifically in email marketing campaigns. But don’t go and blindly add video to every email and marketing document you send out!
Embedding video is great for the user and engaging them with your brand in their current state of mind, but there are also drawbacks. Even well-rounded and optimized email campaigns need to consider what can go wrong before including video.
Thumbnails
Thumbnails, perhaps the most overlooked aspect of video, can actually create several unintended problems for your campaigns. YouTubers have long known that thumbnails matter and email marketers inexperienced with video should take some notes. A good thumbnail needs to be good-quality with a central focus and also be adaptable to changes in sizes. A thumbnail may have to scale from as small as a couple of hundred pixels to over a thousand. Size considerations also apply to text included in the thumbnail, since it can quickly become unreadable.
The best thumbnails:
These need to be used carefully and in accordance with the brand’s overall messaging and feel.
Embedding
While thumbnails are important, email marketers need also to consider whether to leverage the new video embedding feature that many email clients now support. There’s more support now for this feature than ever, but its current ubiquitousness might have you question whether all your customers are receiving your marketing messages. Since approximately 58% of email users (via Social Mouths) cannot view video embedded in their emails, marketers should be careful about placing all their eggs in that basket.
Even if a customer can open the content, the ability for your customers to engage with your brand in an individual email is limited. Ideally you want your customer to engage with your site more directly.
Leveraging Landing Pages Can be Confusing
Landing pages can support email marketing and help take visitors from the email to the website or to an important conversion in between. You may have a landing page AND an email sporting an embedded video, but that creates a bit of confusion for your customers on how they should share this information. Do they forward the email with the video? Do they email a link to the landing page? If the customer forwards the email, will it create formatting issues with the video?
If you prefer to use a landing page to support your email marketing, you should embed the video in the landing page and use a call-to-action that mimics the look and feel of a video player. The slight disruption is outweighed by side-stepping user confusion of where to share and of course by drastically improving the user’s ability to actually access the video content.
Final Thoughts
There is a lot to consider when working with video in email marketing. It may not be the right move to include video in your email marketing efforts. If it is the right move, you may have a separate set of considerations when it comes to landing pages. Pascale Guay, CEO of Dialog Insight, responds to the limitation of video content in email marketing on her company blog saying the most important strategy for email marketers is to make use of the channels used by their target audience above all else. If your target audience responds to email marketing – use this channel! If your open-rates soar because of video content – use this channel…carefully.
Are you using video in your email campaigns? If not, how come? If so, how is it working for you? Leave a comment below!
About the Author
Jenix is a journalist who specializes in discovering and documenting digital media. She makes a living as a copy writer specializing in web content and recently began writing for her personal blog: www.jenixwrites.com. Jenix is also a proud new mother and when she isn’t writing she’s sharing in the daily discovery of her beautiful daughter. Reach out @JenixHastings.
Twins: Spotting Flaws in this Viral Split Test
CRO Tests | Multivariate | AB TestingSplit tests are a favored tool of economists, direct response mailers and website optimizers. The primary challenge when creating a split test is being sure that you’re measuring exactly what you think you’re measuring.
As my grandmother used to say, “The road to bad conclusions is paved with uncontrolled variables.” Yes, we are a geeky family.
When your variables get out of hand, all hell breaks lose, and you end up testing something you didn’t intend to test.
When comparing humans, nothing beats twins for experimenting. I feel sorry for twins because of the number of medical and economic studies that tap them for “controlled” experiments. It must be like living on the Island of Dr. Moreau.
The following YouTube video uses twins to perform an experiment that tests the social axiom that, “Chewing gum isn’t attractive.” Watch the following video and see if you can name some of the uncontrolled variables that may be putting this experiment on the statistical road to invalidity.
This is an art exhibit, not a controlled experiment. However, many who watch it may believe that it provides scientific evidence that we should all go out and pick up a few sticks of Wrigley’s if we want to be more charming. In fact, that is what the makers of Beldent want you to believe.
Is this test really telling us to put our jaws in motion if we’re to be more likable?
Controlling Variables
The artist who created this experimart controlled for appearance quite effectively. Genetically identical twins are used as the control and the variation. They are dressed identically. They wear identical makeup. They are sitting in a neutral position on identical chairs. They have identical facial expressions. The lighting is the same on both participants.
The only apparent difference is that one of them is chewing delicious Beldent gum (Beldent is the South American brand from Trident).
Test subjects sit in front of these two doppelgangers and listen to questions piped in through a headset.
Participants chose the left or the right by pressing one of two buttons vaguely reminiscent of The Family Feud.
It looks like all variables have been controlled, and that the results can be considered valid.
The Unsuspecting Twists that Ruin Experiments
One thing experienced testers learn quickly is that little things will influence your tests more than you would have imagined.
For instance, this experiment could be testing if people favor pressing the left button when they are unsure of their answer. In every situation, the gum chewer is sitting on the left. To control for this, the gum chewer should have been on the left sometimes and on the right sometimes.
This experiment could be comparing gum chewers to people who look like total bummers. In every situation, the control twin is sitting with a neutral expression. In any situation, they would look boring. To control for this, they could have asked the twins to be smiling sometimes.
The handlers who setup the test, a test paid for by Beldent, may have unconsciously chosen the more attractive twin of each pair to be the gum-chewer. Certainly, the artists wanted Beldent to win. This creates a bias. To control for this, the twins should have taken turns as the gum chewer.
The designers of the test attempt to control for age and gender biases. A mix of twins is used: men, women, older, younger.
The people pressing the buttons may represent a skewed sample set, however. The experiment was done in a museum. Only a portion of the total population enjoys museums. Thus, the test subjects are probably not representative of the population as a whole.
Basically,
Beldent can only conclude that chewing gum makes you more attractive to museum-goers when you’re sitting to the left of your boring twin.A More Rigorous Experiment
To really get a handle on the social benefits of constant mastication, you would design a test that controlled for even more variables.
Participants should be shown only one twin. This, of course, means you don’t need twins. Just one person from each set, chewing, not chewing; smiling and not smiling.
Questions would have to be reworded.
I would scratch the “bridge tournament” question. You’ve got to be smart to play bridge well. Smart people are likable, right?
This new design would require a larger sample size than the 481 participants in the Beldent artsperiment. You now have sixteen different treatments (four chewing, four not cheweing; four chewing and smiling; four not chewing and smiling). You would need 1600 participants or more to get close to statistical significance.
Unfortunately, this new experiment wouldn’t deliver such dramatic video footage. But without this rigor, Beldent may be lying to themselves — and to us — about the value of chewing gum.
Imagine Your Web Pages as Twins
Our job at Conversion Sciences is to design website tests for companies, tests that tell us exactly what we want to know about a web page and nothing more. We agonize over the subtle things that introduce bias into our test. We always want to test the right thing.
We create two or more versions of a page that are like identical twins, with only one thing changed. We make sure that the visitors in our tests are representative of the site’s visitors at large.
And we must control our natural human biases. Like the artists who setup the experiment, we want to get wins for our clients. If we give in to this desire, we can find ourselves calling tests too soon, or running with statistically insignificant results that favor our treatment. Even when our testing tools tell us we’ve got a winner, we are skeptical.
It isn’t hard to tell if we make a bad call. If our tests didn’t increase the fortunes of our clients, our reputation isn’t worth a p-value. The accounting department’s numbers don’t lie.
Let us test some pages for you. If you have five-hundred transactions a month or more, you have the sample size to test your way to more sales, more leads and more subscribers. And we’ll throw in some chewing gum.
Beldent Almost Identical on YouTube
Use Data from Click Tracking Heat Maps to Increase Conversions
Conversion OptimizationI am one of the many people obsessed with increasing conversion rates. Were you to wake me up in the middle of the night with the word ‘conversion,’ I would probably respond with a long, haunting sigh, “…raaaates.”
What you really need is data: tangible, real-life data which is related directly to you, your website and your customers’ needs.That’s how much I’ve been possessed by the topic.
I’ve seen lots of unsuccessful attempts at increasing conversion rates based on conventional wisdom that isn’t necessarily backed up with data. Make your calls-to-action (CTAs) big! Change your layout! Make it scroll horizontally and design it in Adobe Flash! One funeral home changed all their colors to blacks, and it proved to be successful in increasing conversion rates: it is bound to work for you, even if you sell lollipops!
The lists are endless, and sometimes they are just empty promises.
Click tracking is one of the methods for gathering real data about what your website’s visitors do. It is a good start when optimizing your design and understanding how your customers behave and why.
What is Click Tracking?
By using a click tracking tool, you can see where your users place their cursor and press the mouse button, usually in the form of a convenient heat map. The studies are qualitative and allow you to have tons of participants.
You can learn a lot from these studies such as where people focus their clicks the most, whether they react to the buttons placed on the website, whether they navigate the website properly, is something distracting them and so on. You figure out the questions, and click tracking will provide the answers.
What are the benefits? First of all, the study is incredibly cheap – you don’t have to gather tons of participants in a lab and pay them; you can do it remotely and even without your users’ knowledge. Secondly, because the study is not overt, visitors on your site behave normally rather than exhibiting the unnatural behaviors inherent in those being observed. They simply react to visuals like they usually would because they are in their natural environment.
Armed with this knowledge, you are well on your way to optimizing your website’s design and increasing conversions.
Case Studies
The North Face & ClickTale
ClickTale is one of the services offering click tracking, and one of their clients, The North Face, wanted to increase the conversion rate of their shopping cart, but their own tools had been inadequate in accomplishing that goal.
With the heat maps provided by ClickTale, The North Face saw that many users didn’t pay attention to the checkout button on the shopping cart page. Instead, they were focused on the promotional banner above the button, which invited everybody to become a rewards member.
While attracting more rewards members was one of the goals for The North Face, the placement of the banner resulted in the loss of potential conversions in the shopping cart.
In order to fix that problem, they ran an A/B test which tested a different position of the checkout button. The results were much better:
Mouse-move heatmaps revealed that visitors interacted more with the checkout button when it was moved above the banner (B) with a 21% increase in clicks
Optimal Energy & UsabilityTools
Optimal Energy – one of the largest price comparison systems for energy distributors in Europe – had a big takeaway from a study with click tracking service UsabilityTools.
Optimal Energy’s website had a slider with images that appeared to be clickable CTAs, containing words like ‘Start’; these images were only samples, however, so they were not clickable. Click tracking data showed that up to 24% of clicks on the website as a whole were on unclickable elements and about half of them on these false CTAs.
Click tracking tools will reveal where visitors are clicking. These “start buttons” aren’t clickable.
In order to solve this problem, Optimal Energy immediately made these elements clickable, leading the user to a submission form. Thanks to this change, the effectiveness of CTAs increased by 66.2%, and the conversion rate increased by 122.6%.
Closing Thoughts
Click tracking provides actual, real data instead of relying on hunches or unfounded hypotheses. The success of optimization projects on one website doesn’t necessarily generalize to other websites because every company has a unique set of clients, so you need study the behaviors of your clients to inform design changes.
In addition to ClickTale and UsabilityTools, other click tracking tools include Mouseflow, CrazyEgg, EyeQuant, and Inspectlet.
Sezgin Hergül is the marketing manager at UsabilityTools. He specializes in content marketing and website growth. Besides his love for marketing, he enjoys good design and music.
Image of mouse licensed through Creative Commons by Erin Kohlenberg & adapted for this post.
What if the Mobile Internet Wasn’t Important? [INFOGRAPHIC]
Conversion-Centered DesignIf the Zombie Apocalypse struck tomorrow, and the only way not to become the walking dead was to throw away your mobile device, who would be the winners and losers?
According to an intriguing infographic, you’d be more likely to be file-swapping on Dropbox than binge-watching on Netflix. You’d be more likely to get your news the same way your grandparents do. You’d be back to reading the New York Times online instead of Buzzfeed, which now interprets world events by comparing them to your favorite episodes of Friends.
Would you have predicted that Sears would suddenly be more popular than Pandora. I guess we’ll be needing somewhere to buy a new Walkman to take to the gym.
Somehow Google would still manage to rule the Internet world which is hardly surprising since
In case you’re wondering where Encarta falls into the mix, I had to Google it to read a Wikipedia article about it.
This little thought exercise underscores the winners and losers in the mobile game. Many businesses claim that mobile isn’t important enough yet, or that their offering doesn’t lend itself to mobile. Netflix and Buzzfeed dominate their marketplace in part because they embraced mobile early and often.
If you believe your visitors are hunched over a desktop when they visit your site, you are setting yourself up to be the mobile-unfriendly loser in your marketplace. Are you creating your own Zombie Apocalypse?
Ask Conversion Sciences how we turn low-converting mobile visitors into leads and sales.
And let’s all breathe a collective sigh of relief that Craigslist would still be a solid option for finding your next creepy roommate since its popularity doesn’t take quite the hit of more fashion-forward websites in this mobile-devoid alternate universe.
How this Ecommerce Company got a 37.5% Conversion Rate Lift Overnight
Ecommerce CROThey had tried everything, and if you looked at their site, you would find a competent site from an optimization standpoint.
Products were presented in a clear way. Navigation made sense. Product pages handled most desires for information. Still, they struggled with a low conversion rate.
This company was not a customer of ours, but I gave the owner a few ideas and some Google Analytics reports to look at. In one of those reports, he found a culprit. But the news isn’t as good as it sounds.
Having a Team with Time to Investigate
Before I reveal the secret, I’d like to highlight the value of giving your business time to digest what it knows. This means that someone is given the mandate to pull out of the day-to-day rush, and begin answering important questions about your website.
Is something broken on one of the many browsers visitors use to buy? This is the source of many of our “wins.”
When we make a change to the site, does it impact our bottom line? This is the purpose of improving your site, is it not?
Is there some suspect traffic? This turned out to be key to our story.
Even if you have dedicated optimization people, do they have this important time to be rigorously curious?
Rent a Conversion Scientist
It’s expensive to hire. That’s why we’ve configured Conversion Sciences to provide conversion optimization services that are completely turnkey at a fraction of the employee rate.
You can have someone experienced, curious, and very good with data analysis finding undiscovered gold on your website. Our value proposition is simple.
We will find the money to pay for our conversion optimization services, and a whole lot more.
With Conversion Sciences, you get a team for less than the cost of an employee. And our fixed monthly fee covers everything:
We’ve been so successful that 97% of our clients have continued with us after our initial engagement.
For Established Businesses
You don’t have to be an enterprise to take advantage of our talents. You only need have an established online business with around five hundred monthly transactions.
To be sure that we can keep your business from leaking dollars, schedule a free call with a Conversion Scientist.
The End of the Story
With some free advice, the owner of this ecommerce business found that his conversion rate had been artificially suppressed by visits from a robot called Halebot, like Halibut. This was very fishy (sorry).
So, while his website changes did improve his conversion rate, Halebot made it look like his conversion rate was going down. Had we been working with him, we would have discovered this early on and would have removed this invalid traffic from the equation.
We didn’t put any more money in his pocket, but, with just a few minutes of thought, we showed him that he was on the right path.
Let us put you on a path to growth with the traffic you are already getting. Schedule the call now.
Photo Credit: wplynn via Compfight cc
Entrepreneur Unleashes Website Optimization Experts
News & EventsWould you be brave enough to let a bunch of conversion experts tell you what is wrong with your website? Flex Fitness’s Ryan Ehler did just that when he won the privilege of having five website optimization experts evaluate a landing page for one of his ads. Digital Marketer published all of the recommendations.
The critiques may seem a little rough, but in the end Ryan was the recipient of some really solid advice (estimated to be worth $25,000).
Our own Brian Massey pointed out some problems that needed to be addressed. Here are the note from which his full critique was created.
Notes from Brian Massey’s review of Flex Fitness landing page.
What can you take away from this?
1. Make your landing page match the promises in your ad. Ryan does a good job here, matching copy and images.
2. Don’t try to be too cute with your copy. Why do we want to catapult our results?? We want to keep them, don’t we?
3. Use images that support your value proposition. The image of the gym are supportive. The stock photos in the “Three Words…” section is not.
4. Make your calls to action clear. What will happen if your visitor submits a form or clicks on a button.
Read the full critiques from Brian and website optimization experts Chris Goward, Tim Ash, Justin Rondeau, Peep Laja.
Learn more about landing pages on The Conversion Scientist Blog.
Conversion Optimization Supernova
Conversion OptimizationIn 2014, we declared Austin, Texas the Conversion Optimization Capital of the World. We will be updating our yearly list of Austin’s greatest conversion minds on CRO Day, April 9. Subscribe and see if you agree.
If Austin is the conversion capital of the world, it was a supernova of conversion optimization brilliance this past week when the Conversion XL Live conference was held here. Luminaries from around the globe converged here for a program that covered topics from landing page design to “bandit” algorithms.
I learned a lot.
Here were some of the highlights for me.
The Dame, The Detective and the Double-cross
For a data detective, the initial hypothesis is the “dame’s” story. Of course, she is hiding something. He must find clues to tease out the truth using alternative data sources. He can use post-test analysis techniques to make sure he wasn’t double-crossed by his data.
Some of the alternative sources I discussed were:
Aggregated Behavioral data like Google Analytics and AB Testing Tools.
Aggregated User Interaction data like click tracking tools and form-tracking tools.
Individual User Interaction data, like session recordings, ratings and reviews data and live chat transcripts.
Self-reported data, such as surveys and online feedback.
Customer knowledge, often found by interviewing sales and customer support people.
When you prioritize hypotheses that have lots of support in data, you keep yourself from being double-crossed by unexpected results.
Mobile Website Design
We believe that the mobile Web is like the desktop Web in the 1990s: we will look back and laugh at the choices we are making today.
Amy Africa has done a lot of testing on mobile websites, and gave us a flood of Mobile Web 2.0 tips. My notes were extensive, but some of the her revelations were surprising.
She introduced me to some new terms, including “donuts”, “spreaders” and “cart hoppers.”
It’s clearly an exciting time in the mobile world.
Predictive Analytics and Machine Learning
Matthew Gershoff introduced us to the world of predictive analytics and machine learning.
Optimization = Learning efficiency + Applying the “best” learnings
New tools, such as his company Conductrics provides tools that use the key ingredients of optimization.
These ingredients are the basis for machine learning.
He recommended courses on VideoLectures.com to get up to speed on machine learning and artificial intelligence.
Conversion Maturity Model
Brooks Bell was interviewed by conference host Peep Laja about the Conversion Maturity Model that defines how advanced an organization is with respect to optimization.
Her namesake company surveyed 300 companies, rating them on six criteria.
The executive sponsor at a company is key to the success of the optimization effort, she pointed out. Very true.
Conversion Optimizers from Everywhere
Austin truly was the Conversion Supernova of the World.
In from Vancouver, Oli Gardner of Unbouce took us through the rules of good landing page design. He provided us all with some free tools to help us evaluate our landing pages and forms.
André Morys runs one of the largest conversion optimization companies in the world. He’s both hugely entertaining and German.
Michael Aagard flew in from Denmark to share some of his most embarrassing testing mistakes and his triumphs.
Yehoshua Coren is a cross-cultural phenomenon as the Analytics Ninja from Israel.
Lukas Vermeer traveled from The Netherlands to share his conversion challenge game, So You Think You Can Test?
Michael Summers of Rockville, MD showed us the powerful insights to be gained from eye-tracking studies.
Anita Andrews showed us how using the wrong goal will result in poor testing decisions.
You should be at ConversionXL Live next year.