There are two broad categories of visitors to your site. Understanding them will make you a better at conversion copywriting. You’ll deliver copy, offers and landing pages that perform.
By “better” I mean “money generating” or “lead generating.” Interested?
We recently completed a test for one of our clients that generated a 42% lift in leads for them simply by analyzing the kind of buyer that was coming.
We can find these kinds of wins for your business. Do you want our help?
Roy H. Williams of the Wizard Academy introduced these two buyers to me: Transactional and Relational.
Transactional buyers are those whose greatest fear is paying one dollar too much for something. They are the competitive shoppers. They love the shopping experience and will visit many stores and sites in search of bargains.
They want to be the expert.
They aren’t loyal to any brand or outlet, but seek the best price du jour.
On a landing page, these buyers are enticed by offering coupons, deals and discounts.
Relational Buyers’ greatest fear is buying the wrong thing. They see shopping as part of the cost of the purchase.
They seek out expert help, and will pay a premium for trusted guidance.
They rely on brands to help them make choices.
These buyers are drawn to assurances of quality, ratings and reviews, and information to help them choose.
Does Your Audience Lean Transactional or Relational?
Like Republicans and Democrats in the US, your visitors may naturally lean to one side or the other. You may even have an extreme “Tea Party” transactional audience or a “Bleeding Heart” relational audience. Testing is one way to find out.
Here’s an example. Laithwaites sells wine online. They did a test that took the exact same offer and presented it in relational and transactional ways.
This split test shows that more wine buyers prefer a good wine to a good deal on wine. They are relational buyers.
In their case, they found that the transactional message, leading with “Save $100 on 12 World-Class Reds” didn’t perform as well as the relational message that started with “Enjoy 12 World-Class Reds…”.
Laithwaites apparently has a relational audience, or the ad that drove traffic here made an offer with relational appeal.
Roy Williams makes another important point. Transactional shoppers are the least profitable of them all. They hunt relentlessly for your lowest price and don’t come back if they find something cheaper. We prefer not to optimize for these “LMLLV,” or “Low Margin, Low Lifetime Value” visitors.
If most of your advertising offers discounts, deals and coupons, you may be leaving your most profitable buyers behind.
Simple Copy Changes Can Make All the Difference
Our client sells home furnishings, and the offer was an on-site visit and consultation.
The best performing search ads for this client offered discounts, like “Now 20% Off – Save up to $100 on Advanced.”
However, the landing pages featured reasons to buy the product and benefits of the brand. This is a relational approach. The highest performing ads, however, are clearly transactional, offering discounts and savings.
Our hypothesis was that the landing page copy wasn’t appealing to the transactional shoppers the ad was drawing. The page didn’t keep the visitor on the scent.
To test our hypothesis, we created a “Transactional” landing page that emphasized the savings, and reinforced that the consultant would be able to offer even more savings.
The headline was changed from
FREE Design Consultation and Installation
Take the stress out of shopping
to
In Home Manufacturer Discounts
Our Certified Designers can offer you $100 off each unit you purchase.
This shifted the headline from a relational consultation to inviting someone into your home who can dole out the savings – very transactional.
We also added some additional copy touches that appeal to transactional shoppers. “Combine Discounts,” proclaimed one bullet. “Limited time only,” chirped another.
These changes gave us a 42% jump in conversions.
Let us design some tests for your business and draw more revenue from your existing traffic. We offer a free strategy session to help you map out our own optimization roadmap.
Conversion Copywriting Guide: Transactional vs. Relational Buyers
Persuasion ScienceThere are two broad categories of visitors to your site. Understanding them will make you a better at conversion copywriting. You’ll deliver copy, offers and landing pages that perform.
By “better” I mean “money generating” or “lead generating.” Interested?
We recently completed a test for one of our clients that generated a 42% lift in leads for them simply by analyzing the kind of buyer that was coming.
We can find these kinds of wins for your business. Do you want our help?
Roy H. Williams of the Wizard Academy introduced these two buyers to me: Transactional and Relational.
Transactional buyers are those whose greatest fear is paying one dollar too much for something. They are the competitive shoppers. They love the shopping experience and will visit many stores and sites in search of bargains.
They want to be the expert.
They aren’t loyal to any brand or outlet, but seek the best price du jour.
On a landing page, these buyers are enticed by offering coupons, deals and discounts.
Relational Buyers’ greatest fear is buying the wrong thing. They see shopping as part of the cost of the purchase.
They seek out expert help, and will pay a premium for trusted guidance.
They rely on brands to help them make choices.
These buyers are drawn to assurances of quality, ratings and reviews, and information to help them choose.
Does Your Audience Lean Transactional or Relational?
Like Republicans and Democrats in the US, your visitors may naturally lean to one side or the other. You may even have an extreme “Tea Party” transactional audience or a “Bleeding Heart” relational audience. Testing is one way to find out.
Here’s an example. Laithwaites sells wine online. They did a test that took the exact same offer and presented it in relational and transactional ways.
This split test shows that more wine buyers prefer a good wine to a good deal on wine. They are relational buyers.
In their case, they found that the transactional message, leading with “Save $100 on 12 World-Class Reds” didn’t perform as well as the relational message that started with “Enjoy 12 World-Class Reds…”.
Laithwaites apparently has a relational audience, or the ad that drove traffic here made an offer with relational appeal.
Roy Williams makes another important point. Transactional shoppers are the least profitable of them all. They hunt relentlessly for your lowest price and don’t come back if they find something cheaper. We prefer not to optimize for these “LMLLV,” or “Low Margin, Low Lifetime Value” visitors.
If most of your advertising offers discounts, deals and coupons, you may be leaving your most profitable buyers behind.
Simple Copy Changes Can Make All the Difference
Our client sells home furnishings, and the offer was an on-site visit and consultation.
The best performing search ads for this client offered discounts, like “Now 20% Off – Save up to $100 on Advanced.”
However, the landing pages featured reasons to buy the product and benefits of the brand. This is a relational approach. The highest performing ads, however, are clearly transactional, offering discounts and savings.
Our hypothesis was that the landing page copy wasn’t appealing to the transactional shoppers the ad was drawing. The page didn’t keep the visitor on the scent.
To test our hypothesis, we created a “Transactional” landing page that emphasized the savings, and reinforced that the consultant would be able to offer even more savings.
The headline was changed from
FREE Design Consultation and Installation
Take the stress out of shopping
to
In Home Manufacturer Discounts
Our Certified Designers can offer you $100 off each unit you purchase.
This shifted the headline from a relational consultation to inviting someone into your home who can dole out the savings – very transactional.
We also added some additional copy touches that appeal to transactional shoppers. “Combine Discounts,” proclaimed one bullet. “Limited time only,” chirped another.
These changes gave us a 42% jump in conversions.
Let us design some tests for your business and draw more revenue from your existing traffic. We offer a free strategy session to help you map out our own optimization roadmap.
Selling Visual Products Online: Case Study
CRO Tests | Multivariate | AB TestingHow important are images to your landing page? The formula we use in our Chemistry of a Successful Landing Page includes the element “Image” as a necessary component. At the heart of this is the need for the visitor to imagine owning the product or service. That’s right, even services.
For some, it’s difficult to “show the product.” If you’re offering an expensive software solution or consulting service, how do you communicate what it will be like to own that? Screen shots, flow charts and explainer videos are typical go-to solutions.
Lazy designers drop happy, smiling people on the page. Avoid this business porn.
At the other end of the spectrum is the visual product or service. Photographers, artists, decorators and designers have a portfolio of past work to help visitors imagine buying from them.
Vacation Beach Portraits is such a visual business, and they have some test results that offer some insights. I love it when small businesses take up testing.
Vacation Beach Portraits takes family portraits of tourists to the Orange Beach and Gulf Shores areas of Alabama. The beautiful white beaches and sunsets over the Gulf of Mexico offer an ideal setting.
The folks at Vacation Beach Portraits tried testing a landing page against their home page, a blog filled with samples of their work.
The Vacation Beach Portraits home page was full of delicious images showing off the work.
Then landing page features a prominent call to action and portfolio video.
The landing page, built using Unbounce, provided an explainer video with samples from their portfolio. It is shorter and features a bulleted list of benefits as part of the copy.
Serial Test
This local business will have few transactions each month. Therefore, Jason Odom of Vacation Beach Portraits did tests in series.
From May 1-15, he sent his search traffic to the landing page.
From May 16-31 he sent his search traffic to the home page.
Comparison of visits to inquiries shows a 42.1% increase in conversion rate for the home page. However, this is not statistically valid. Source: ABTestGuide.com
Given the relatively low number of clicks and inquiries, the two pages converted at the same rate statistically. When testing low-traffic sites, we are looking for treatments that beat the control by large margins — 50% or 100%.
In this test, the home page generated 42% more inquiries and 105% more paying clients. Neither of these results was statistically significant, though. The sample sizes were just too low.
Why Didn’t the Landing Page Outperform the Home Page?
Anytime we hear that people are sending “store-bought” traffic to their home page, we roll our eyes. We are almost always able to improve conversions by sending visitors to a landing page.
In this case that didn’t happen. What’s the deal?
Two hypotheses emerged from this test.
1. The long page full of gorgeous pictures found on the home page is what visitors want.
2. The clear call to action found on the landing page kept it in the running.
For their next test, we recommended either adding a bunch of these big gorgeous pictures to the landing page, or adding a call to action button at intervals down the home page.
The quality of the images in the landing page video was lower than the full-width photos found on the home page.
When someone decides they want an amazing family photo like those shown, a button with “Schedule Your Photo Session” is exactly what they will be looking for.
Other Considerations
There were some additional hypotheses we felt would improve the performance of these pages.
This font is pretty, but very hard to read.
We felt that the script font used on the home page was hard to read, recommending a serif print font instead.
Beach Clothing Color Ideas is at the bottom.
The navigation on the site was not particularly logical. The very helpful navigation item “what to wear” seems to link to anything but topics on what to wear. Every link on a site should keep its promise.
Making the phone number more apparent my close the time it takes to book a client from the web or landing page. We find that adding the phone number to the headline (yes, the headline) will significantly increase calls without depressing form fills.
Advice for Businesses with Visual Offering
If you have a visual product, you should leverage this with high-quality, high-resolution web images. Don’t be afraid of long pages. Visual visitors know how to scroll and will appreciate the wealth of stimulation.
However, don’t forget the calls to action.
You never know when someone has seen enough to buy. Lace a buttons or links among your images. Keep in mind that the buttons or links are going to have to compete visually with the images, so make them pop.
The button or link will go to a more traditional landing page or product page that handles objections, allows selection of size, color or format, and asks them to buy.
In almost every case, use captions. These are the most read copy on most pages and are a great place to include a call to action. Tell them what they are looking at, even if it is obvious to you.
Results From the Follow-up Test
This is the busy season for Vacation Beach Rentals, and their landing pages are already converting very well for them. We won’t know the results another test for some time. Subscribe to the Conversion Scientist by email to find out the rest of this story.
You Are What You Wear: Why Conversion Scientists Wear a Lab Coat
News & EventsWhy do superheroes wear costumes when a simple mask would suffice? What is behind the legend of the “Power Tie?”
Why do Conversion Scientists wear a lab coat?
This is one of the questions I answer in my interview with Roger Dooley for the Brainfluence Podcast. Roger is one smart cookie, and our conversation flows to a number of interesting topics.
You should certainly give this a listen, or pop over the the Brainfluence Blog to read the transcript.
Subscribe to Podcast
This interview originally appeared on Roger Dooley’s Brainfluence Podcast.
21 Quick and Easy CRO Copywriting Hacks
Keep these proven copywriting hacks in mind to make your copy convert.
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Use These Surprising Web Tactics to Get More Phone Leads
Lead GenerationFor many of our clients, phone calls are far more valuable to the business than a completed form. You should prioritize phone calls when:
You get two scientists for the price of one.
Brian Massey and Joel Harvey – The Conversion Scientists – talk about the tactics that they used on a website to make the phone ring without compromising form fills.
Getting the Phone to Ring: How the Conversion Scientists Enticed New Clients to Call with One Simple Change
Subscribe to Podcast
This originally appeared on the LeadPages ConversionCast.
21 Quick and Easy CRO Copywriting Hacks
Keep these proven copywriting hacks in mind to make your copy convert.
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It's Too Late to Optimize. It's Too Laaaaaate.
CRO Tests | Multivariate | AB TestingOne Republic’s breakout hit in 2007 was “Apologize.” It’s a very sad-yet-beautiful tune.
It’s also one of those songs that our brains like to play with.
“It’s too late to order fries. It’s too laaaaate.”
Every year when September rolls around, my brain hears a different word than “Apologize.”
“It’s too late to optimize. It’s too laaaaaate.”
Do you hear it? Many of the businesses we work with have huge spikes in traffic during the November and December holiday season. Unfortunately, if we hear from them in September, we have to confess that they’ve missed the window to do meaningful conversion optimization before the holiday rush locks everything down.
“It’s too late to optimize…”
It may not be too late to optimize.
Right now, it’s not too late to optimize. We can make meaningful progress on your conversion rate before Black Friday and Cyber Monday hit.
If you would like to ride the holiday season with 10% or 15% more sales, we can help you.
But we have to start soon.
Contact us now and ask about our Conversion Catalyst™, our proven 120-day process for finding improvements quickly and scientifically.
Optimize so you don’t have to apologize.
You tell me that you need me, then you go and cut me down.
You tell me that you’re sorry, didn’t think I’d turn around, and say.
It’s too late to optimize. It’s too laaaaaate.
Before You Pop the Champagne, Do Some Post-test Analysis [INFOGRAPHIC]
CRO Tests | Multivariate | AB TestingOne of the best reasons to do website optimization is for the wins, when you’ve found a change that delivers real revenue to the bottom line.
But before you celebrate, check out this infographic for Marshall Downy’s sobering presentation at Which Test Won’s The Live Event. The event was held in Austin, Texas, The Conversion Capital of the World.
Marshall is with Build.com and gave several examples of post test analysis that changed the decisions he would make based on the pure test data.
What is post-test analysis? It’s what comes after you’ve completed a split test or multivariate test and have a winning change.
The problem is that we often can’t test the right metric to determine if a winner is actually helping the business. A typical example of this is products with long sales cycles. You can’t really test much if you’re waiting six months to see which leads close. You can increase the lead conversion rate, but you’ll always wonder if the lead quality was the same.
Another example is subscription services. Your test may show you how to get more subscribers, but what if the cancellation rate goes up?
Marshall lists the following types of post-test analysis to help us evaluate the true impact of our test results.
1. Customer Satisfaction Scores – If the customers aren’t as satisfied, it may not matter if you’re selling more.
2. Return Rate – If significantly more people are returning the product, increased sales may not have been good for profits.
3. Profitability – I can increase your conversion rates by slashing your prices, but will that really help the business?
4. Customer Lifetime Value – An important metric for subscription and repeat-purchase businesses.
5. Brand- and Category-specific sales – What if we increase sales of one product line at the cost of another. Also see “Cannibalism.”
6. Signup to Purchase Rate – You may get more triers, but are they turning into buyers?
Marshall didn’t share his slides, but here is my Instagraphic infographic from his presentation.
CLICK TO ENLARGE
CRO Secrets of The Conversion Scientist [VIDEO]
Conversion OptimizationBrian Massey is a professional website optimizer. He runs the company Conversion Sciences and is the author of the book Your Customer Creation Equation: Unexpected Formulas of The Conversion Scientist.
In this interview, Alex Harris uncovers:
1. The real reason Conversion Optimization works.
2. How his company gets the most out of a website.
3. A secret trick for getting higher conversion rates out of sliding headers.
Visit Alex Harris Marketing Optimization Blog.
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Listener comments
Christine Draper said, “I was struck with your point about people being drawn to movement. Love the idea of a high converting slideshow.”
Paul Colaianni said, “Wow, great take away on the static image test. Gotta try that! Great interview for sure!”
ClearlyInfluential said, “Thanks for the advice!”
Celest Horton commented, “Such a great interview alex harris – alexdesigns. I LOVE Brian’s stressing the importance of optimization is really understanding one’s listeners or followers so that we can really work harder to serve them and it becomes a win / win situation!”
Justin Williams liked when Brian said, “Our definition of optimization is understanding your visitors.” He commented, “I certainly agree with you on this one. Great advice, Brian!”
Charlie Poznek quoted Brian saying, “With every test, you learn something.” He continues, “So very true! Test, test, and test some more to get the most information you can. Thanks for a great episode!”
Anthony Tran was very kind, saying, “Wow Brian is truly the expert in this arena. I learned a ton from listening to this episode. I like how he mentioned that the best way to ask questions is to make sure it’s an open-ended question … something that can’t be answered with a simple yes. Get’s your audience wondering and wanting to learn more.”
Amber Hurdle liked Brian’s comment that, “You have to address [the offer] before you have permission to talk about yourself.” She said, “Wow. That is the best part of it all. I have so much room to grow, but I do try! This is simply more to pull from as I move forward. Thanks, gents!”
FireStartersFireStarters said, “Great advice from Brian! Reminds me of measure twice, cut once to get it right. Thanks for the highly valuable interview Alex, great as always and looking forward to leveraging moving forward.”
Here's What a $10 Million A/B Test Looks Like to Us
CRO Tests | Multivariate | AB TestingWe don’t really know what $10 million in cash looks like, but we do know what $10 million in additional revenue looks like to us: it looks like winning A/B test results.
It’s the graphs and spreadsheets that calculate the impact of often small changes on the fortunes of an online business. Sometimes, we print out some of our favorite winning tests and roll around in them.
Each graph represents a series of steps designed to pull stubborn revenue from online businesses. The well may have looked dry to our clients, but our process is a proven way to get that old well gushing again.
Before we can roll around in the winnings, we have to do a number of very important steps.
Choosing the Right Hypotheses
When we start a project, we don’t know what is going to work. However, we have a lot of good ideas. Our job is to figure out which will raise the conversion rates and revenue for the business.
Designing A/B Tests
We design tests that will tell us exactly what persuades more visitors to act. Is it the copy, the images, the layout or the trust symbols?
Coding and Design
We do the coding and creative work. We’re a turnkey operation for any business.
Execution
You can’t learn anything until you launch the A/B tests. We execute a test and let it run until the statisticians are happy.
Harvesting
When a winner is found, our clients expect to see the results when winning changes are rolled out onto the site. We call this harvesting the revenue found in the tests.
Ask Why
We then have to ask a very difficult question: Why did visitors respond to a winning treatment? In this business there are no answers, only better-informed questions.
Our answers to the question, “Why” are simply the hypotheses that need additional testing. This takes us back to the beginning.
It is the cycle of constant testing that turns online businesses into online leaders.
If you’re site is ready, we will take your site through two test complete cycles. It promises to be quite a ride.
To see if you’re ready, contact Conversion Sciences and schedule a call. Who knows. You could be rolling around in your own million-dollar graphs before long.
Tides of Your Website and Tests that Lie [AUDIO]
CRO Tests | Multivariate | AB TestingWhat if this test had been stopped on Thursday?
We encourage every online marketer to begin experimenting with split testing as soon as possible. It is a skillset that empowers marketing to really understand their visitors and generate more revenue from existing traffic.
One of the first hurdles you will have to get through is the “damn lying test” phenomenon. This is when a test has been run and has found a way to significantly increase results. The confidence level reported by the testing tool is 95%. You are going to be a hero.
Then you roll out the change to the site and nothing happens. Conversions don’t go up. Revenue per visit doesn’t move. What’s going on?
It’s the Damn Lying Test. One of the reasons tests lie is that they didn’t take into account the ebb and flow of traffic on your site. Tests must take into account peak and off-peak times. Form most sites, a test must run for a full week and end on seven-day boundaries.
How can you discover the rise and fall of tides in your website?
In Ride The Tides Of Your Website To Make More Money With A/B Split Testing, I discuss the various cycles and how to detect them on your site using analytics.
Listen to me read the column
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Subscribe to the Podcast
If you enjoyed this, please leave a review on iTunes!
I provide graphs and examples to illustrate a variety of website tides:
Understanding the rise and fall of the tides in your website will help you design better tests that deliver results you can take to the bank. Use your knowledge of website tides and some discipline to steadily increase the profitability of your site.
Special thanks to Craig Sullivan for inspiring this column with his Digital Elite Camp presentation 20 Simple Ways to Mess Up Your AB Testing.
This shop on a busy street is split testing, and you won't believe what they sell.
CRO Tests | Multivariate | AB TestingA “split” is not usually considered a good thing in the world of prophylactics. However, a condom shop that is “split testing” is going to have happy customers and prosperous owners.
I had the great pleasure of visiting Estonia and the Netherlands on a speaking tour. While in the Netherlands I stayed in a real 19th century windmill, hung out in an 18th century farm house, and walked by a condom shop housed in a 16th century building.
There are a lot of old places in the Netherlands.
I mention the condom shop because I discovered that this shop, called Condomerie® was split testing their store front.
It begs an important question: if a condom shop in the red light district of Amsterdam is split testing, why aren’t you? We can get you started.
While I was impressed that the Condomerie was split testing their products, I was just as excited about the number of condom jokes I could make in a blog post.
Start counting.
The Windows of Condomerie
The store front of the Condomerie was tasteful, consisting of two large windows separated by a door. In each window a selection of condoms were well-hung, having been blown up like a balloon to show off the size and shape.
I found the collection of colorful condom most interesting. As you can see from the photo below, these condoms were animals, vegetables, soccer balls, skeleton heads… there was even a Eiffel Tower condom. You needn’t worry about size when you’re sporting the Eiffel Tower.
And what says “I love you” better than a condom that says “I love you?” See them all in the picture below.
Click to “Enlarge” (snicker)
The Qondom
Being a geek, my attention was drawn to an artificial condom made from laminated paper that contained a secret QR code. I call it a QR condom, or Qondom.
Scott Stratten says that every time a QR code is used a kitten dies. However, you have to get creative when designing tests. Use whatever tools are at your disposal.
I scanned it with my phone to see where it would take me. The URL contained a word my Dutch friend understood: “Right”.
We looked to the left window. Sure enough, there was a qondom there too. When I scanned it, the URL that was revealed contained the Dutch word for “Left.”
The Condomerie was split testing its windows! They had placed a Trojan Horse in the window designed to trap sightseers with smartphones.
The Hypothesis
If they were doing a good job of testing, they would be working from a specific hypothesis. At a glance, the hypothesis became pretty clear:
“If we display our funny condoms in the window, we will draw more attention and sharing as measured by QR Code scans and visits to our website.”
Their test placed the colorful cartoon condoms in the right window. I’m going to call this the right-brained window that’s creative, emotional and completely unconcerned that these condoms are far more intricate than necessary.
On the other side were condoms arranged primarily by size. This is the left-brained, “just the facts” side of the store. You can imagine that those interested in this window would be looking for a calibration scale to ensure they got the best fit.
The left window of the Condomerie is about size and fit.
The right Condomerie window features colorful and whimsical condoms.
Which window would you linger at? The left-brain, functional window? The right-brain imaginative window? Or, the window of the cheese shop next door?
At this point, only the proprietors of the Condomerie know.
An Inflated Sample
A problem with this test is that only tech-savvy condom users with smart phones are going to be part of this sample. Those with feature phones and those who’ve never bothered to load a barcode scanner app will not be able to participate.
This is a real problem, as it probably skews the results, inflating the sample toward early adopters. The sample taken wouldn’t be expected to represent the typical condom-buying public.
There are some fundamental issues with the landing pages that may be suppressing conversions, but we can expect all marketing channels to improve as an organization learns from split testing.
This shop is learning something about their tech-savvy audience, an audience who can often afford the more expensive condoms and profitable condoms. Revenues can be expected to rise when tested changes are rolled onto the shop floor.
What are you learning about your website visitors? How are you testing your assumptions about what people want, like and are persuaded by? Testing is the most effective way to consistently increase your revenue. The Condomerie knows this and so should you.
Let Conversion Sciences get you started on a website split testing program that will get more revenue from the traffic you already have.
Get a free copy of my book if you are the first person to provide a correct count of the double entendre in this post. Put your number in the comments.