What would happen if you suddenly pulled the plug on your website optimization efforts? The question behind the question is, “How much has website optimization contributed to our online sales?”
We all know that the results we see in our tests don’t reflect reality when rolled out to the website. So, how much faith should we put into test results?
And I tell you what happened to one company when they removed the months of optimized changes from their site.
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The Massey Observer Effect states that,
“The act of measuring an audience will change the way the audience behaves.”
This means that what our tests tell us are going to be somewhat inaccurate. This is just one reason that the results of our tests won’t be seen when rolled out onto the website.
You’ll learn how to overcome several sources of error in our tests.
The Massey Observer Effect
Statistics Lie
Test Segments
Market Coincidences
I go into detail on each of these, explaining why these issues is important and how to overcome them when doing website optimization for leads and sales.
How a B2B eCommerce company used a stepwise strategy for their website redesign and got 250% more leads before they were done.
We recently began the split-testing process for a B2B eCommerce company. This is only remarkable because we signed this deal over a year ago. What happened to delay testing so long?
A website redesign.
The four-month redesign turned into a six month redesign and then into a 14-month redesign. This is not unusual in our experience. The new design has launched and, after all this time, the conversion rate and revenue per visit remained about the same.
We see this as good news. Too often, redesigns actually decrease site performance for a period after launch. There are storied website redesign disasters, such as FinishLine and Marks&Spencer.
Nonetheless, the conversion optimization testing was delayed. They can never recover the revenue or the lost testing time. Let’s see then how this website redesign got 250% more leads before it was finished. Step by step.
How to Make More Money During Your Website Redesign
Conversion Scientists look at websites quite differently. You may see a valuable online revenue engine. We see a laboratory for growing sales in petri dishes, and then scaling that to business-changing proportions.
When Wasp Barcode came to us, our vision fell on the ears of a brave and daring team. The approach allowed them to grow the number of live demos by more than 200% in just a few months.
We started with our Conversion Catalyst, a six-month process designed to grow revenue quickly and permanently. We started by getting Wasp setup for website optimization. This included setting up the digital lab, a set of tools that includes analytics, click-tracking, session recording and split testing.
Download and Read the entire case study: This Website Redesign Got 250% More Leads Before it Was Finished-Wasp Barcode
Wasp Barcode sells inventory and asset tracking solutions. Their most profitable offering is a complete inventory- or asset-management system that may include software, scanners, and labelers for the things businesses need to track. The most effective way to help their prospects choose the right system is with a live demo. During this demo, a sales person will walk the visitor through their software and answer any questions they have.
Our main goal was to increase the number of visitors filling out a form to request a live demo.
We did a stepwise redesign, in which all of the assumptions about the new design were tested to ensure that they had a positive or at least neutral impact on demos. Our approach was this:
Step One: Test Things that Can Be Used in the Website Redesign
Our first step was to find the calls to action that would move more visitors to request a demo. This was a series of tests to find out what language should be placed on buttons. For example, we learned that language offering “Free Live Demo” or “Free Consultation” generated more clicks to the demo landing page and more completed demos.
Step Two: Test the New Page Design on a Portion of the Site
Their design team integrated what we learned into a redesign for one of the site’s product category pages. We tested this new design against the existing category page, the control.
Our tests showed that the new design did a great job of getting more visitors to the Demo Request page. By driving more visitors to this page, we had more resources to test lower in the funnel.
Step Three: Optimize the Demo Landing Page
We then went to work on the Demo Request Page, a page on which the prospect can complete a form requesting a Live Demo.
Our tests here revealed that removing video and adding a product shot increased form completions significantly.
This key landing page went through several tested iterations to reach a high-converting design.
The redesign was just getting started, and we had already begun generating significantly more demo requests for the business.
Step Four: Move to Another Section of the Site and Repeat
The Wasp design team designed another category page for the next section of the site. They integrated elements that visitors were clicking on frequently, such as feature lists.
While the visitors in this section of the site behaved somewhat differently, we saw a positive lift in visits to the Demo Request page. This page was optimized, and delivered more demo requests to the sales team.
The step-by-step Wasp Barcode website redesign sped up.
The Wasp design team then took what we had learned and redesigned the home page. This drove a significant increase in visits to the high-converting Demo Request page.
250% Increase in Demos over Six Months
Most website redesigns would still be sitting on a staging server. Wasp has enjoyed significant increases in demos during their first six months. Together, we rolled their redesign out step by step, testing along the way to ensure each change had a positive or neutral impact.
Designers and UX people may be rolling their eyes. It is an old truism that a visitor should have a consistent experience across a site, or they will feel lost.
During our stepwise rollout, we violated this rule. But when we have completed the process, providing this consistent experience, we can expect another increase in demos.
This approach also allowed us to change the design for different sections of the site. Those visitors looking for Inventory Management solutions are fundamentally different from those looking at Asset Management tools. One design would not have worked well for both.
Not everything we tried increased the conversion rate, and the Wasp team made adjustments accordingly.
Let Us Guide Your Site Redesign
Your website redesign doesn’t need to be an “all in” gamble. Find out if your website would benefit from a stepwise redesign with a free consultation.
21 Quick and Easy CRO Copywriting Hacks
Keep these proven copywriting hacks in mind to make your copy convert.
Every Marine goes through two weeks of basic marksmanship training. Before they fire a single live round, they spend an entire week sitting in the grass, aiming at a white drum and squeezing the trigger until they hear the metallic “click” of the firing pin.
During this week of “dry fire,”
Marines re-learn how to breathe, sit, stand, kneel and squeeze – basics that each of us learned as infants.
Marines re-learn how to breathe, sit, stand, kneel and squeeze – basics that each of us learned as infants. But to be a great marksman, you have to do them with more focus and intention. Mastering fundamentals and having the discipline and mindset to apply the techniques is what leads to excellence.
Have you ever spent a lot of money on a website and had disappointing results? Did it fail to “accomplish its mission?” You probably had the right technology, the right server and a beautiful design.
But as the Marine Corps recognizes, what matters most is not the best rifle, but the right rifleman. Accomplishing your mission isn’t about having the prettiest website in the world, but about having a disciplined conversion optimizer with the right mindset applying proven techniques that lead to excellence.
The Marines are notorious for training excellent marksmen. They taught me how to shoot when I was 18. Almost 25 years later, I picked up an AR-15 and placed every round in the bulls-eye after my initial calibration shots. The discipline, techniques and mindset overcame 25 years of dormancy. Who is driving your website design? Do they have the discipline, techniques and mindset to deliver targeted, accurate changes? Or are they firing randomly into the wind like a Hollywood movie?
Marksmanship Training for Marine Recruits
Proper Fundamentals Change Outcomes
“Although equipped with the best rifle in the world, a unit with poorly trained riflemen cannot be depended upon to accomplish its mission. . . On the other hand, a well trained rifleman has confidence and can usually deliver accurate fire under the most adverse battle conditions. It is the latter who can best contribute to mission accomplishment.” – U.S. Marine Corps Rifle Marksmanship Manual
Patience Before You Fire
One of the challenges that faces online marketers is patience. As we work with our clients throughout a discovery process, their eyes light up as new revelations come into focus. Once a company has decided they want to invest in conversion optimization, they want to change everything and change it instantly.
We understand that excitement. But this is where you want to spend more time aiming than shooting. Isn’t that a paradox? In preparing Marines for a fast and chaotic environment, they continually teach the virtue of slow, well-aimed shots.
The slow, well-aimed shot is essential both to conserve resources and to be effective.
The slow, well-aimed shot is essential both to conserve resources and to be effective. Our focus is on having the discipline that leads to mission accomplishment.
Managing Resources
The value of slow, well-aimed shots becomes clearer when you understand the math behind the situation. The M16 has an effective firing rate of 850-1000 rounds per minute. If you are firing rapidly (Hollywood style), you need to carry around 30 pounds of ammunition for every minute of rapid fire. As you can see, that load of ammunition quickly overburdens the rifleman trying to carry it, especially considering that most of those rounds don’t hit their intended targets.
The same is true for your businesses. Rapid firing changes to a website consumes enormous resources. With a majority of resources diverted to these scattershot changes, the essential business mission is in jeopardy. A seasoned conversion optimizer won’t rush a bunch of changes, but instead will take slow, well-aimed shots to maximize the impact.
Using Data to Improve Accuracy
A seasoned conversion optimizer will take the time to understand your customers, dig through your analytics, study user behavior and formulate the best strategy to hit your targets.
For example, once we form an initial hypothesis, we start working on a “B” version of the web page to test against the “A” version. Before sending the page live, we perform additional user testing on a number of metrics. One test we run, the “5-second test,” helps measure the clarity of a page among other things. More than once, we have caught issues that would have been detrimental and were able to address them before sending the page live.
All of these steps take time. But it makes sense to be patient if you want to see meaningful, revenue-generating changes on your website. Look for conversion optimizers who work like Marine rifle experts and take the slow, well-aimed shots. These are the people who will help you accomplish your mission.
About the Author
Craig Andrews is the Principal Ally and founder of internet marketing agency allies4me. He has over 25 years of experience in search engine optimization, internet marketing software, and social media strategies.
You can connect with Craig Andrews on Google+ and LinkedIn. You can find allies4me on LinkedIn, Google+, Facebook, and Twitter.
One of the great benefits of speaking at great conferences is getting to learn from your peers in the industry. Joel Harvey and I did our first LIVE tag-team presentation called “The Chemistry of the Landing Page.”
Tim Ash gave an insightful and “inciteful” keynote presentation at the PPC Hero Conference here in Portland Oregon. Here are my instagraph notes taken live as he spoke.
I’ve seen plenty of websites that are beautifully designed and portray a strong sense of professionalism.
And that’s great. But it’s not enough.
Many businesses are missing out on a crucial opportunity to get their visitors to actually engage with their website. Think about it. If you can get your visitors to actually do something while on your site and engage them, there’s a greater chance that you’re going to push them through the funnel.
Case Study: Increasing Homepage Engagement
Here’s a brilliant example. Take a look at the Super Fast Funding website.
This is their original page. There was not a lot of opportunity for visitors to engage upon landing on the home page.
Super Fast Funding’s original website didn’t offer many ways to engage.
The picture on the right hand side doesn’t tell us much. It’s nearly impossible to decipher or read the text on documents at which our friendly smiley faced cartoon is pointing.
There are also several other things going wrong here.
The main headline asks “Are you fundable?” There are two possible answers to that question: yes or no.
Don’t ever ask your visitors a question that could be answered negatively with a “No” response.
Don’t ever ask your visitors a question that could be answered negatively with a “No” response. It creates doubt and in their minds, could immediately disqualify them from further engagement with your site.
Instead, give them hope like in this new version of their home page. Kudos to this new design. Super Fast Funding has added several elements to dramatically increase visitor engagement.
The slider bar invites the visitor to start interacting with the page and this can increase conversion rates.
They’ve preceded their phone number with the verbage “Questions?”. They’ve added a video rather than just an “Our Video” link in the main menu bar since many people opt out of watching a video if there isn’t a propelling thumbnail to get them interested.
A Live Chat link has been added at the very top of the page. A blog has been added. And they’ve also added a “Get Started” button.
Now that’s engagement.
But what I really liked about this page is the slider bar that they’ve added that allows visitors to choose the amount of funding that they’d like to receive.
Not only did they eliminate the possibility of a “No” answer, but they’ve made the experience very interactive for their visitors (while also giving them a sense of control), and by doing so, they’ve dramatically increased visitor engagement.
Do you see now why amping up the opportunities for visitor engagement is important to increasing sales, revenue, customer acquisition and a larger portion of the market share? A website provides far greater opportunity for engagement over other marketing collateral mediums. It’s a shame if you don’t take advantage of that.
Case Study: Screen Sharing for Easier Engagement
LiveLOOK – which was acquired by Oracle last year – has added a bit of brilliance in how they’re tackling online customer service issues: their solution makes it possible for merchants to assist their online shoppers through screen sharing.
Have you ever been in a brick and mortar store where a clerk has had to help you step by step with a transaction? I experienced it recently when a clerk had to help me through a scanning system that I had no clue how to operate. Had he not been there to help me, there would have been no transaction.
Screen sharing, in essence, does the same thing. When your visitors are completely stumped, merchants can get onto the shoppers’ screen and take actions for the visitor to assist them in the transaction.
One of the nation’s leading health insurance organizations utilized LiveLOOK’s co-browse solution to improve upon customer service issues, and it helped guide visitors through a variety of online processes including registering, paying bills online and finding more information. The most immediate result was the drastic reduction in call handling times. Calls that previously took up to an hour were reduced to 7-10 minutes on average.
That 85% reduction in call times created a savings in resources and compensation for those resources. Call center agents have also reported less visitor frustration which helps them to generate loyalty and customer satisfaction.
Tools to Increase User Engagement
Don’t forget, there are other ways to engage visitors and – just as importantly – ways to track that engagement. HotJar is a company that has made it really easy to track engagement by offering multiple tools in one bundled solution. Not only do they offer the engagement tools, but the solution also offers tools to track visitor engagement.
In a brick and mortar store, clerks are face to face with shoppers, so if they’re smart, they can communicate directly with those shoppers to help them through the buying process.
It’s vital that you do the same with your online store. The HotJar bundled solution includes:
Surveys
Exit Polls
Heat Mapping
Visitor Playback Sessions
User Tester Recruitment
Form & Funnel Analysis
There are other options for click tracking, session recordings, and heat maps that you can read about at MyConversionLab.com.
Surveys
In an effort to find out how knowledgeable users were on tech terms, a survey conducted by Vouchercloud.net revealed that 27% thought a “gigabyte” was an insect found in South America, 23% believed that an “MP3” was a Star Wars robot and 18% thought that a “Blu-ray” was a marine animal. According to the Harvard University’s 2014 Senior Survey, 13.17% of Harvard seniors admitted to cheating during their tenure at the school.
Who would have known unless the questions were asked?
Surveys are another way to obtain valuable feedback from your visitors. You can ask your visitors all of the questions you’d like to ask if you were face to face. When you’re putting together a survey, be sure to ask open ended questions that will provide you with more information rather than yes/no questions.
For example, rather than just ask “Did you find it difficult to shop on our website?” ask “If you found it difficult to shop on our website, what were the 3 biggest issues you experienced?”
And then there’s the tracking and analysis part. If you can’t analyze visitor engagement – how will you know how to improve it?
Exit Polls
Exit polls are boxes that pop up, but this time while your visitors are leaving. They typically ask visitors what issues they experienced that kept them from making a purchase, so it’s a quick and easy way to find out what’s keeping a website’s visitors from converting.
Heat Mapping
If you’re not familiar with the technology, heat mapping is where a small piece of code is inserted into your web page so that a visual representation can be created showing where visitors are clicking. And just as importantly, where they are not.
As you can see from the graph bar in the heat map image below, colors show just how many clicks are being made in a particular area. The color coding gives a visual representation with the color red representing the most clicks.
An incredible number of people click on the About link in the upper right corner. What does this mean?
We know that a percentage of visitors want to learn more about the people behind a company website before they feel comfortable moving forward through the funnel, but as you can see from click-tracking, it’s a little surprising just how many people are actually clicking on the second “About” button. Using this kind of technology may yield some interesting and unexpected results.
Visitor Playback Sessions
Visitor playback sessions take this type of tracking to another level. With visitor playback sessions you can actually watch a recorded video of visitors as they move around your site. You can see where they stop, where they scroll and where they click which means you can see where they get stumped and what might keep them from spending money on your site.
User Tester Recruitment
I’ve had some strong debates with companies in regards to my website audit recommendations – that is until the user tests come in and back up my findings. I wait to view user tests last to see if the users agree with what I’ve recommended.
User Testing allows you to look over the shoulders of people while they browse your site. You get a first hand glance as to where they are getting stuck or having issues.
Form and Funnel Analysis
Funnel and form analysis gives you data on where visitors are dropping out of your forms and funnels and lets you fix those issues.
Conclusion
Without tracking and analyzing your visitors engagement, it’s going to be very difficult to figure out how to improve their experiences. You could have a site complete with copywriting, images, and design that are absolutely spectacular, but it’s that interaction and engagement that’s going to provide you with the valuable feedback you need in order to be aware of issues that are frustrating and confusing your visitors, and it’s also going to give you the opportunity to assist them in getting past those frustrations.
About the Author
Marie Dean is the Innovation Director at CoversionLifters and has been an expert in the field of conversion optimization for 12 years. She helps clients improve their website conversions, increase revenue, lower acquisition costs and capture more of the market share through in-depth website analysis.
Feature Image Photo Credit: KayeNicole via Compfightcc and adapted for this post
I love the bubbles, but I doubt they are helping conversion rates. I haven’t seen animations like this since the 1990s. The background image slows load time and confuses the eye. The graduated fill on the buttons makes them all but unreadable.
Don’t laugh at my friends design. Here is a WordPress theme I recently reviewed. Check out the stars.
These stars don’t move the value proposition forward. Maybe it works for NASA.
Then there’s this:
Animation for animations sake is not helpful for scanners. Note the slow loading of the background image.
My friend needed a new theme for his WordPress site.
Fortunately, I had been asked to be a judge in the ThemeForest PageWiz template contest. More specifically, my task was to pick the themes that would make the best landing page templates.
I’ll tell you how I ranked these themes based on my experience, based on tests we’ve conducted here at Conversion Sciences, and based on my work as an online marketer who uses WordPress in my business.
47 Landing Page Templates, One Winner
The typical “Banded Sales Page” delivers the value proposition for a page in separate sections, or bands.
I reviewed 47 different PageWiz landing page templates created by designers. I was tasked with picking one I felt embodied the best practices in conversion-centric landing page design.
The goal of a landing page is to:
1) Keep the promise of an ad, email or link.
2) Get the visitor to take some action, to convert.
Most of the themes I reviewed followed a common pattern, one I call a “banded sales page.”
These are designed to unfold like a sales letter: Big promise at the top, and an unfolding story, or value proposition, as you scroll. Key parts of the story are separated into sections, often with bands of color or images to identify them.
The support for the value proposition is like that found in an old-style sales letter: claims, features and proof. Trust builders, such as testimonials and client logos are also an important part of the this style.
Most themes chose big images for background filler. This is an unfortunate choice, because slow load times mean lower conversion rates. It looks cool, but you know what’s cooler? More sales.
This style of page templates doesn’t provide a significant amount of space for copy, and this may be to their detriment. Instead, they provide bite-sized information to build the value proposition, perfect for scanning the page. These bite-sized sections are most commonly presented in bands of different background colors.
For example, the Landing Page Elements Theme wastes a lot of valuable space for a rather irrelevant image.
Large images take a long time to load and often don’t move the value proposition forward.
Some of the themes used parallax scrolling features, which we have not tested, but which may actually add friction to the experience, reducing conversions.
The Theme Should Serve Your Market
The landing page really needs to serve it’s audience. I found the highest scoring templates to be those that were for specific kinds of businesses: fitness, real estate, conferences, travel.
My pick is the Avira Homes template because of its creative calls to action and excellent mobile experience. It suffers from big images and almost fell out of the running.
Mobile Friendly is a Must
I’ll get this out of the way now. No responsive design made my list of top templates. I know it’s an easy way to get a mobile site, but mobile is different than desktop. Design a separate template for mobile.
Look for a landing page template that supports a separate mobile experience.
The Knights Theme offers a mobile theme separate from their desktop implementation.
Mobile Visitors Want Different Content
I made mobile support an important part of the criteria, because it is a growing traffic source for almost any industry. Most themes relied on responsive designs. Others had dedicated mobile templates. Many themes actually break when displayed on phone-sized screens.
We favor designs with dedicated mobile designs, as responsive designs have myriad problems for landing pages. Responsive designs often don’t make sense as desktop content is stacked in non-intuitive ways. These mobile sites also tend to load slower than their dedicated mobile cousins.
Most desktop themes won’t offer a map on their home page or landing pages. For mobile visitors, where we are is important. Maps are a great addition to your mobile experience.
Mobile-oriented content like maps are often lost in responsive designs.
Mobile visitors also want bigger buttons, click-to-call functionality and mobile-focused calls to action. Notice how the Avira site (my winner) offers click to call as the first-screen call to action in their mobile theme. Their desktop site offers a form and the “Contact Me” button.
Avira’s separate mobile app is designed for a uniquely mobile experience.
The Avira Real Estate Theme was my choice for overall winner.
The Page Should Load Fast
I was happy to see that none of these pages had scrolling hero images, called sliders. These slow load times and can distract readers from the information on the page.
The slow load time of the VPropos theme left us with nothing to watch.
The slow load time of this theme left us with nothing to watch.
The Theme Should Make Good Use of the First Screen
It is important that a landing page communicate that the visitor can take action on the page. It should be done early. There is a segment of your visitors that are looking to take action. They don’t want to read, they want to put things in motion.
The FlatVault theme makes good use of the top of the page using calls to action.
In contrast to the landing page templates with large images, I felt that FlatVaulth did a good job of utilizing the top portion of the page, with not one but two calls to action.
The Copy Should Be Easy to Read
I favor designs with dark text on light backgrounds for readability. Knockout text is hard for eyes over 40 to read. Pages that are mostly dark cause our pupils to widen. This larger aperture makes focusing more difficult. That’s why we squint when we are trying to read small text. It makes our aperture smaller.
Light text on a dark background is more difficult for older eyes that have trouble focusing.
The App Cast Theme may be best for young eyes.
A good designer uses color to guide the eye. The use of the same color makes it harder to locate the information that is important. For example, pricing tables job is to help us choose. In this pricing table, it’s clear that the center offering is more important, but the color choices make it hard to compare across offerings.
The poor color choices make it hard to compare options.
The Landing Elements Vol 2 Theme make poor color choices.
Contrast is your friend, especially when your presenting headlines and calls to action.
The headline and call to action are difficult to read here because of a low contrast between background and text.
The green and red backgrounds offer a low contrast background for the headline and form’s call to action in the Brom theme.
Make Good Use of Images and Video
If a theme didn’t explicitly support video, I didn’t hold it against theme. Several did. Video is all over the map in terms of whether it works or not. It is a powerful medium that can work for you or against you.
Images are powerful ways to move the value proposition of the site forward. Unfortunately, designers often punt, using filler stock images instead of well-thought out pictures. Unfortunately, theme builders really can’t offer one image that communicates well for all of the possible sites their theme may ride on.
The Cube Consulting Theme makes good use of image placement here.
This image is in the right place, but is clearly a stock image. The human eye knows when it sees what we call business porn.
The man in this theme is what we call “business porn.” It is a stock image, not someone who works at the company or is a customer. The placement of this image is smart. It anchors the call to action form visually which partly covers the image.
A better image would have been looking down at the form, or to the value proposition at the left. We tend to linger on faces, especially when they are looking right at us. If we’re looking at a face, we’re not reading the offer text or the calls to action.
Be careful of images that work against you.
The dot-matrix background and gratuitous keyboard image only work to make the text hard to read in this image.
The Expo Theme uses a dot-matrix background that messes with the eyes and makes the text harder to read. Why is there a keyboard in the background?
This background image conflicts with the call to action, confusing the eye.
One problem of our winning theme, Avira, is the poor choice of a background image. This image conflicts with the call to action form.
Shapes
The shape of your images can have impact as well. After viewing over 40 different themes with the banded designs, I found these curved images refreshing.
The shape of your images can draw the eye to important page components.
The Dyxalot Theme curved hero image draws the eye to the center where the key messages are.
Avoid Useless Images
If I have to find a large, high-resloution image that’s relevant to my visitor and figure out how to not screen it back, that’s a theme that is too much work.
This design is typical of the designs that waste precious real estate at the top of the page with nothing relevant.
A lot of space was dedicated to red buildings in this theme. What’s the message?
The Mobis Theme wastes a lot of space with a background picture of buildings. Unecessarily large images push your value proposition and calls to action down on the page, where they are less likely to be seen.
Make Images Clickable
Make images clickable, even if there’s a button below. These are not.
Clicking on the buttons works, but the images are not clickable. Don’t get in your visitors’ way.
The MyCourse Theme should make their images clickable.
Calls to Action
Calls to action should be the most visually prominent items on the page.
The use of arrows and button colors that clash with the other colors on the page signal that the call to action should be addressed by the visitor.
High contrast buttons and arrows signal to the visitor that they should address the call to action.
The My Earth Non-profit Theme enhances the visibility of the call to action.
More Calls to Action
For long banded pages, they should be frequent. You never know when your visitor is seeing the content that pushes them to take action in a long-scrolling landing page.
Our winning theme, Avira, offered a variety of calls to action, from the ability to inquire about specific properties to general inquiries. It invited visitors to call and offered lead generation forms at the top and bottom of the page.
You never know when copy or an image is going to incite a visitor to act. Use frequent calls to action.
Your Forms Should Behave
Form behavior should make completion intuitive and natural. When someone hits tab in your form, they should be taken to the next field, not another part of the page.
The form for the Urane Theme looks like this:
Be careful if you use the tab button here (and most of us do).
When I type my name and click Tab, it jumps to a random part of the page.
Surprise behaviors will kill your conversion rates.
Use a Dripping Pan
If someone reads your page to the bottom, this is a pretty good sign that they are interested. Themes should repeate the call to action at the bottom of the page. We call this a dripping pan because it catches the juices to make gravy.
This form appears at the bottom of the page. It’s a dripping pan.
The dripping pan for the MyPro Affiliate Theme offers a complete form and call to action.
App Store Buttons
If you’re doing a theme for an app download, the call to action is to visit an app store. I recommend that you not redesign these buttons. They should be recognizable as clicks to the Google Play store and iTunes app store.
The most recognizable app store button designs are used across the Web.
The Dyxalot Theme makes this call to action almost invisible.
These download calls to action are almost invisible
The App Cast Mobile Theme offers company logos, not app store logos.
Are these company logos or app store download buttons?
The Volax Theme offers more clues that this is an app download, but this is not a fimiliar image for the app stores.
The addition of download counts adds social proof, but what am I downloading exactly?
Plan for Proof and Trust
Presenting proof is very important, and several themes offered interesting ways to present proof. Claims made in your copy must be supported by a benefit and proof.
The Expo theme presents a place for proof points
The Expo theme presents a place for proof points.
Websites can “borrow” trust from other brands by showing logos, seals and badges. Client logos, partner logos, and even the logos of credit cards all conspire to build trust with visitors. Themes that support this were ranked higher in my judging.
Websites can “borrow” trust from clients, partners and media outlets by displaying their logos
Unfortunately, the MyPro Theme made a poor choice for the background of these trust building logos.
Induce Scrolling
One of the concerns with banded pages like those in this competition is that every scroll can look like the bottom of the page. Visitors may never scroll further to see the persuasive content lower on the page.
Themes that induced scrolling were ranked higher on my list.
The Upfold Theme provides several scrolling queues. The v-shaped header image invites visitors to scroll down.
A simple arrow-shaped image can induce scrolling, making your copy more effective.
Connective lines between sections signal visitors that there is more to see. This keeps people scrolling.
Subtle connective lines signal that there is more information to follow as the visitor scrolls.
Consider Introducing Scarcity
If your offer has a deadline, you can use countdown timers to introduce “scarcity.” This communicates that an offer is about to expire and that the visitor should take action immediately.
Countdown timers are effective, and several themes incorporated them into their pages.
Count down timers can introduce scarcity into the visitor’s decision making process.
The Pagewiz Event Conference Meetup Theme places a countdown timer in the body of the page.
Scarcity is a natural fit for events.
Elect! Political Charity Conference Theme places a countdown timer right below the hero image.
Social Distraction
The most common distraction I see on landing pages is social media icons. Traffic is never free. Even search traffic requires you to optimize and develop content. If you’ve paid for a visitor to come to your site, why send them off to Mark Zuckerberg? He’s god enough traffic.
The social icons are muted, but shouldn’t be at the top of the page competing with the call to action.
The social icons are muted here, but save them for the thank you page.
The social icons on the FlatBox Theme are the most visible (and thus the most important) items above the fold.
The social media icons really pop on this dark background. The message is that these are the most important things on the page.
Only use if social media is a great source of visitors for your site. Instead of a dripping pan at the bottom of the page, FlatBox offers a smorgasbord of distractions.
Most businesses aren’t good at turning likes and follows into business. Save these buttons for the thank you page.
The best use of social media I saw was the RealGym Theme, my runner up. This use of social media turns gym trainers into social sales people
Here the social icons support the business model directly by turning trainers into social salespeople.
Help Me Choose a Plan
If you offer multiple levels of service or product tiers, the job of your pricing matrix is to, Help Me Choose. Your landing page template should highlight one price package to help my visitors choose.
The Mobis Multipurpose Landing Page Theme offers three colors, none of which is more prominent than any other.
Which of these is most popular? Which should I choose? It’s hard to tell.
The Urane Theme offers a highlighted choice.
This design says,”I should pay attention to the middle one, and not just choose the cheapest.”
Pricing tables that make it easy to compare features will improve conversion rates.
The Landing Elements Vol 1 Theme offers banding to help guide the eye across features.
Alternating colors help guide the eye and aid in comparing features.
Pricing tables should not attempt to sell features. You should only select a few criteria–three or four–to be placed in the pricing table. Let the copy do the rest of the selling.
Use helpful names as well.
Choose the descriptive names for your feature levels.
The Flat Vault Theme suggests “Basic”, “Pro” and “Elite” levels. These generic names are translated as “Cheap”, “Expensive” and “Only for big companies”. Be more clear in your naming. Choose names that convey relevant value.
No Template is Going to Have It All
This is a lot to consider when picking a theme. None of the landing page templates I reviewed scored perfect on all counts.
Your business may have special needs. If building trust is important, focus on themes that support trust and proof. If you serve mobile visitors, be sure to use a separate theme for your mobile site.
For almost any site, Readability, Calls to action, and Load Time are going to be critical.
Any theme you produce will need to be optimized for your unique visitors. Contact Conversion Sciences for a free consultation on your site.
Now I can ride my new bike and know that I selected the best template for my carpet-cleaning friend.
Here’s the dripping pan.
21 Quick and Easy CRO Copywriting Hacks
Keep these proven copywriting hacks in mind to make your copy convert.
You can’t get into website optimization without it leaking into the rest of your life. You see the world differently. At Conversion Sciences, we obsess about optimization and the affect on our lives is interesting.
We tally the coffee orders of those in line ahead of us to help with your decision.
We leave the house at the EXACT same time each day when trying alternative commutes. Of course we use the stopwatch for accuracy.
We do a quick evaluation of the speed of the grocery store checkout people before choosing a line.
And we optimize our dating lives.
We see this as an opportunity to introduce landing page concepts to a broader audience. Lots of people get excited about optimizing their dating profile. Landing page optimization makes the accountant smile. Dating profile optimization makes the heart smile.
Basically, we are appealing to your base nature to help you make more money in your business.
Basically, we are appealing to your base nature to help you make more money in your business.
I would like to invite you into the world of optimization obsession by introducing you to a new series of blog posts coming your way: Optimize My Dating Life.
[dating-series]
We asked Megan – one of our Conversion Scientists – to document an optimization project in which she applies everything she knows about increasing conversion rates to her online dating profile. Ultimately, a dating profile is nothing more than a lead-generating landing page, so it’s just waiting to be optimized.
How is an Online Dating Profile a Lead-Generating Landing Page?
A dating profile certainly serves a specific purpose. You know what that purpose is, but do the people who visit your profile? You’ve undoubtedly heard horror stories at happy hours from your single friends, or maybe you have a few stories of your own. Misunderstandings occurring as a result of a miscommunication on a dating profile.
For a time, my profile listed my favorite book as Batman: the Dark Knight Returns. I came to understand this was an error in judgment on my part. I went on dates with four different people who assumed I would be able to keep up in a conversation discussing the history of the Marvel (or is it DC?) universe. Just to clarify: I couldn’t keep up.
Maybe you’ve created a landing page for an expensive giveaway only to receive a bafflingly low quality and quantity of leads. Were you really communicating what you thought you were?
Previous research has determined that it all comes down to the picture. These studies were only measuring inquiries, the number of people who try to connect. We want to go deeper. We want to judge the quality of the connections.
Look at her, she’s adorbs. Who wouldn’t want to date that face?
Looks aren’t everything, right? Well, the right images are important — on your dating profile and on your landing pages.
We’ll be testing other important components of dating landing pages: trust builders, proof points and offers.
Yes, I said, “offers”. Will the right offer on a dating landing page make the difference? We can’t wait to find out.
Finally, we want to measure the quality of our “leads”. You’ve probably been on dates with people you chose because of their level of attractiveness only to find out they’re as interesting as elevator music. You’ve probably been approached by someone who saw your lovely little mug and that person wanted to ask you on a date without knowing anything about how smart and cool and interesting you are.
And you’ve probably visited a landing page with a design that was absolutely beautiful. A work of art. But for the life of you, couldn’t figure out what you were being asked to do.
[dating-series]
What Are We Studying?
We will be attempting to make our little project as scientific as possible so that you will be better able to incorporate our successes (and avoid our failures) in your own landing pages.
Megan will be creating a few different dating profiles, and we will attempt to isolate the actual written content of her profile and her user pictures.
Example of a free-form question where answers could change across profiles and over the course of the project
okcupid tries to match people based on a series of questions, what each person is seeking by using the service, and location, and we will be keeping all of this information the same across all of the profiles so that she has a greater chance of showing up in the same searches for the same people.
Example of information that will be a control across all profiles
Example of information that will be a control across all profiles
Example of a potential okcupid question that will be a control across all profiles
Because lead-generation is the end goal, we will be measuring the quality and quantity of leads received on each of her profiles. Megan’s first task will be to create a quality matrix that will allow her to rate each of her leads and avoid relying on how physically attractive they are. So we’ll be looking at Megan’s own profile and making changes to increase the number of quality leads she receives, but we’ll also be looking at the potential leads’ profiles and rating them.
What’s a lead? Men who message her are her leads; conversions will be securing dates with said leads.
Will Megan rate leads higher when they mention their families? How will musicians fare? Are vegetarians a hard-pass? Be sure to read her next post to find out!
Use Our Love Lessons Learned to Build the Landing Page of Your Dreams
We’ll be writing posts as the project progresses. We really have no idea how things are going to turn out: will Megan find Mr. Right? Who knows, but we might as well make the search interesting.
As for your landing pages, generating leads is a bit more of a science than finding the love of your life, and for that reason, there’s a lot you can learn from dating profiles to help improve your landing page.
So here we go…we’ll keep you posted.
In January a large property listing website announced they’d increased conversions by 300%. They’d significantly changed the site’s design and the way they searched for properties, delivering results by travel time rather than miles radius.
In March a second property website announced a boost of 300% but this time no design change whatsoever. They started delivering results by travel time, and that was the only change they made. Timing was everything.
Why does providing travel time boost conversions?
As with any conversion boost, it’s down to optimizing consumer experience. The search results were more relevant, but why?
Personalization: the key to transforming conversion rates
We already know that personalization is key whether you’re composing an email campaign or doing post-sales follow-ups. Where’s the personalization in location? Personalization is nothing without people, which is the downfall of a distance search. A mile “as the crow flies” isn’t relevant if the crow is on a bus or in a car.
Acknowledging infrastructure networks transforms a circle into a polygon. This polygon changes shape depending on the surrounding location’s network. Local search results that use a polygon model will eliminate all the erroneous results that would have been delivered in a miles radius search.
Search result with radius model
Map acknowledging transportation networks
Search result with polygon model
Sorry, I’m running 5 miles late
A mile is not a human metric: we do everything by time. We need to arrive at locations on time, leave on time, spend time at locations or visit several places in an allotted time. The problem is that one mile can take five minutes or one hour depending on congestion, infrastructure and other factors.
Tell a hungry person their favorite restaurant is ten minutes away, and they know exactly what you mean. Tell them it’s a mile away, and they will need to know a lot more. Using time in local searching makes the results relevant and understandable. When the amount of consumer leg-work is reduced, they’re more likely to decide there and then.
Time to personalize
People search for location-specific results because they need to get there. Websites that use minutes instead of miles can ask two simple questions that will personalize each search so that no one will ever need to work out “will this work for me?”
What time of day are they planning on traveling?
What mode of transportation will they use?
Give it the time of day
This information alters the relevant results for three reasons.
Transportation timetables and open/close times will limit where a consumer can go.
The results they seek will also differ – restaurants open at 3:00 am are different from those at 6:00 pm.
Road congestion will most likely reduce in the early hours of the morning.
Some locations will always operate at the same time of day. Lunch reservations will always be in the same time window. Property searches may always use 9:00 am because the majority of people commute from home to work at that time.
Other sites may choose to automate the time function so that the visitor sees what is possible at the time of their search. This is useful if the site visitor wants to get there immediately, giving accurate results quickly.
Timely transport
The four polygons show different results for different transportation modes within 30 minutes. You can see that walkers can’t cover as much distance as drivers (obviously!). Adjusting for the exact mode of transportation ensures that every location result is reachable and removes any errors covered in distance searching.
Cycling
Public transportation
Driving
Walking
Case Studies:
Restaurant listing site OpenTable lets customers book tables so that they can reach their restaurant reservation within minutes.
The travel time to a restaurant changes by mode of transportation.
UK national tourism agency VisitBritain lets tourists plan their day based on what’s near their attraction of choice.
Planning your day by travel times.
The UK’s largest real estate agency group Countrywide lets property seekers pick how long they want their commute to be when listing new homes.
Coutrywide lets visitors shop for homes by commute time.
Time is mobile
With four out of five local searches on mobile devices ending with a purchase, marketers need to leverage their apps to ensure that they’re catering to the ever-moving consumer. Consumers can pick their search point or use mobile location searches to search by minutes from their current point.
Travel time search results on mobile device
Whose marketing efforts will benefit most from travel time search results?
Local businesses and listing sites can deliver local results within minutes rather than miles e.g. property, restaurants, bars, jobs.
Retailers providing click and collect services can navigate customers to the best pick up point and direct customers to access-friendly locations when products are out of stock.
Delivery services (food, laundry, furniture etc.) can create marketing campaigns around the minutes it takes to reach each individual customer.
Companies with location-specific geo-targeting campaigns can deliver location-based information in minutes rather than miles radius.
Classified listing sites eBay and Gumtree can supply product searches using travel time when users prefer to pick up locally.
It’s about time…I wrapped things up
Searching for locations by time delivers more accurate results. Consumers like it and convert.
Searching for locations by time delivers more accurate results. Consumers like it and convert.
Consumers convert when they are delivered more relevant results
As the crow flies isn’t accurate because we can’t fly!
Consumers need a human metric for location searching. Don’t reinvent the wheel, get a clock.
Ask site visitors more to deliver more accurate results
About the Author
Louisa is head of marketing at iGeolise.com. The company is the creator of the TravelTime Platform, an API that allows websites to search, rank, sort and display location results by minutes rather than miles. She’s cuckoo for conversions – particularly if they have to do with local search. To find out more follow them on Twitter @iGeolise or go to www.gettraveltime.com.
If you live in Chicago, we’re bringing one of our most important presentations right to you.
If you don’t live in Chicago, may I suggest you get that Ford Fairlane lubed and tuned up for a road trip. You’ll want to be there on June 2.
We’re going mobile to spread the results of our testing on the mobile web. It’s one of the most important presentations we’ve done because the mobile web is changing fast.
Conversion Sciences is Road Tripping to Chicago June 2.
We know a thing or two about your mobile marketing. Your Mobile traffic is probably one of your fastest growing segments. It converts at depressingly low rates. You have probably decided to focus your efforts on the desktop for now.
We were there once, too.
Come see the most interesting and lucrative things we’ve learned about mobile conversions from tests across industries. You’ll learn you how to avoid common conversion-killing “mobile best practices”, write CTAs that get mobile visitors to take action and employ simple UX tricks that will keep those CTAs constant without distracting or irritating visitors.
You’ll also get tips for bridging the 1st screen to 2nd screen gap, maximizing phone leads from mobile visitors and building forms that mobile visitors will actually complete.
You’ll leave this sessions equipped to make smarter decisions about your mobile experience.
We Get a Special Discount
We get a special discount since we’ve got the awesome wheels. Don’t tell our hosts at Unbounce that we’re sharing this code with you.
conversionsciencessentme
You better sign up before they get wise. This code lets you in the door for $149.50. That’s 50% off the already ridiculous price. You can use it here. Yes, it’s a damn long discount code. Copy it to your clipboard.
Did I Mention the Other Seven Awesome Speakers?
No? Well you can’t beat them. You should check them out after you’ve registered to see us.
We’re worth the $149.50 admission, but you also get these bright people.
Come see us in Chicago, or wait to see these great speakers at one of the overblown and expensive conferences in some far away city. Your choice.
There’s a formula for your landing pages that guide you to to get the reaction you’re aiming for. You’re paying for the traffic: now’s your chance to get the most from it.
The first ever online CRO conference is fast-approaching, and if you want that critical formula for high-converting landing pages (and of course you do), request an invite to the Conversion World Conference happening April 20-22.
You’ll never be able to learn from a more diverse, interesting and knowledgeable group of international conversion experts. Ever.
You don’t even have to change out of your pajamas. It’s all online. Invite some of your geeky friends over. Pop popcorn. Invent a Conversion World drinking game.
For my part, I’ll be sharing my landing page formula. You’ll get actionable tips and best practices to create the result-driven landing pages you need. I’ll also review several of your landing pages live and make suggestions on changes and improvements that will have an immediate impact.
What You’ll Learn
Why landing pages are so powerful in online marketing.
Why you build landing pages backwards.
The primary components that make landing pages work.
How to keep your landing pages from getting off track.
The Ultimate Question for Website Optimization
Conversion-Centered DesignWhat would happen if you suddenly pulled the plug on your website optimization efforts? The question behind the question is, “How much has website optimization contributed to our online sales?”
We all know that the results we see in our tests don’t reflect reality when rolled out to the website. So, how much faith should we put into test results?
My Marketing Land column The Nagging Little Question Of Conversion Optimization I explore all of the things that make our actual results different from that predicted by testing.
And I tell you what happened to one company when they removed the months of optimized changes from their site.
Subscribe to Podcast
The Massey Observer Effect states that,
This means that what our tests tell us are going to be somewhat inaccurate. This is just one reason that the results of our tests won’t be seen when rolled out onto the website.
You’ll learn how to overcome several sources of error in our tests.
I go into detail on each of these, explaining why these issues is important and how to overcome them when doing website optimization for leads and sales.
Photo © 2015 Third Door Media, Inc. All rights reserved.
This Website Redesign Got 250% More Leads Before it Was Finished
Conversion-Centered Design, Lead GenerationWe recently began the split-testing process for a B2B eCommerce company. This is only remarkable because we signed this deal over a year ago. What happened to delay testing so long?
A website redesign.
The four-month redesign turned into a six month redesign and then into a 14-month redesign. This is not unusual in our experience. The new design has launched and, after all this time, the conversion rate and revenue per visit remained about the same.
We see this as good news. Too often, redesigns actually decrease site performance for a period after launch. There are storied website redesign disasters, such as FinishLine and Marks&Spencer.
Nonetheless, the conversion optimization testing was delayed. They can never recover the revenue or the lost testing time. Let’s see then how this website redesign got 250% more leads before it was finished. Step by step.
How to Make More Money During Your Website Redesign
Conversion Scientists look at websites quite differently. You may see a valuable online revenue engine. We see a laboratory for growing sales in petri dishes, and then scaling that to business-changing proportions.
When Wasp Barcode came to us, our vision fell on the ears of a brave and daring team. The approach allowed them to grow the number of live demos by more than 200% in just a few months.
Download and Read the entire case study: This Website Redesign Got 250% More Leads Before it Was Finished-Wasp Barcode
Then, we went to work in a very unusual way.
Wasp Barcode sells inventory and asset tracking solutions. Their most profitable offering is a complete inventory- or asset-management system that may include software, scanners, and labelers for the things businesses need to track. The most effective way to help their prospects choose the right system is with a live demo. During this demo, a sales person will walk the visitor through their software and answer any questions they have.
We did a stepwise redesign, in which all of the assumptions about the new design were tested to ensure that they had a positive or at least neutral impact on demos. Our approach was this:
Step One: Test Things that Can Be Used in the Website Redesign
Our first step was to find the calls to action that would move more visitors to request a demo. This was a series of tests to find out what language should be placed on buttons. For example, we learned that language offering “Free Live Demo” or “Free Consultation” generated more clicks to the demo landing page and more completed demos.
Step Two: Test the New Page Design on a Portion of the Site
Their design team integrated what we learned into a redesign for one of the site’s product category pages. We tested this new design against the existing category page, the control.
Our tests showed that the new design did a great job of getting more visitors to the Demo Request page. By driving more visitors to this page, we had more resources to test lower in the funnel.
Step Three: Optimize the Demo Landing Page
We then went to work on the Demo Request Page, a page on which the prospect can complete a form requesting a Live Demo.
Our tests here revealed that removing video and adding a product shot increased form completions significantly.
This key landing page went through several tested iterations to reach a high-converting design.
The redesign was just getting started, and we had already begun generating significantly more demo requests for the business.
Step Four: Move to Another Section of the Site and Repeat
The Wasp design team designed another category page for the next section of the site. They integrated elements that visitors were clicking on frequently, such as feature lists.
While the visitors in this section of the site behaved somewhat differently, we saw a positive lift in visits to the Demo Request page. This page was optimized, and delivered more demo requests to the sales team.
The step-by-step Wasp Barcode website redesign sped up.
The Wasp design team then took what we had learned and redesigned the home page. This drove a significant increase in visits to the high-converting Demo Request page.
250% Increase in Demos over Six Months
Most website redesigns would still be sitting on a staging server. Wasp has enjoyed significant increases in demos during their first six months. Together, we rolled their redesign out step by step, testing along the way to ensure each change had a positive or neutral impact.
Breaking the Rules of Website Redesign
During our stepwise rollout, we violated this rule. But when we have completed the process, providing this consistent experience, we can expect another increase in demos.
This approach also allowed us to change the design for different sections of the site. Those visitors looking for Inventory Management solutions are fundamentally different from those looking at Asset Management tools. One design would not have worked well for both.
Not everything we tried increased the conversion rate, and the Wasp team made adjustments accordingly.
Let Us Guide Your Site Redesign
21 Quick and Easy CRO Copywriting Hacks
Keep these proven copywriting hacks in mind to make your copy convert.
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Why Conversion Optimizers Should Think Like a Marine
Conversion OptimizationEvery Marine goes through two weeks of basic marksmanship training. Before they fire a single live round, they spend an entire week sitting in the grass, aiming at a white drum and squeezing the trigger until they hear the metallic “click” of the firing pin.
Marines re-learn how to breathe, sit, stand, kneel and squeeze – basics that each of us learned as infants. But to be a great marksman, you have to do them with more focus and intention. Mastering fundamentals and having the discipline and mindset to apply the techniques is what leads to excellence.During this week of “dry fire,”
Have you ever spent a lot of money on a website and had disappointing results? Did it fail to “accomplish its mission?” You probably had the right technology, the right server and a beautiful design.
But as the Marine Corps recognizes, what matters most is not the best rifle, but the right rifleman. Accomplishing your mission isn’t about having the prettiest website in the world, but about having a disciplined conversion optimizer with the right mindset applying proven techniques that lead to excellence.
The Marines are notorious for training excellent marksmen. They taught me how to shoot when I was 18. Almost 25 years later, I picked up an AR-15 and placed every round in the bulls-eye after my initial calibration shots. The discipline, techniques and mindset overcame 25 years of dormancy. Who is driving your website design? Do they have the discipline, techniques and mindset to deliver targeted, accurate changes? Or are they firing randomly into the wind like a Hollywood movie?
Marksmanship Training for Marine Recruits
Proper Fundamentals Change Outcomes
“Although equipped with the best rifle in the world, a unit with poorly trained riflemen cannot be depended upon to accomplish its mission. . . On the other hand, a well trained rifleman has confidence and can usually deliver accurate fire under the most adverse battle conditions. It is the latter who can best contribute to mission accomplishment.” – U.S. Marine Corps Rifle Marksmanship Manual
Patience Before You Fire
One of the challenges that faces online marketers is patience. As we work with our clients throughout a discovery process, their eyes light up as new revelations come into focus. Once a company has decided they want to invest in conversion optimization, they want to change everything and change it instantly.
The slow, well-aimed shot is essential both to conserve resources and to be effective. Our focus is on having the discipline that leads to mission accomplishment.We understand that excitement. But this is where you want to spend more time aiming than shooting. Isn’t that a paradox? In preparing Marines for a fast and chaotic environment, they continually teach the virtue of slow, well-aimed shots.
Managing Resources
The value of slow, well-aimed shots becomes clearer when you understand the math behind the situation. The M16 has an effective firing rate of 850-1000 rounds per minute. If you are firing rapidly (Hollywood style), you need to carry around 30 pounds of ammunition for every minute of rapid fire. As you can see, that load of ammunition quickly overburdens the rifleman trying to carry it, especially considering that most of those rounds don’t hit their intended targets.
The same is true for your businesses. Rapid firing changes to a website consumes enormous resources. With a majority of resources diverted to these scattershot changes, the essential business mission is in jeopardy. A seasoned conversion optimizer won’t rush a bunch of changes, but instead will take slow, well-aimed shots to maximize the impact.
Using Data to Improve Accuracy
A seasoned conversion optimizer will take the time to understand your customers, dig through your analytics, study user behavior and formulate the best strategy to hit your targets.
For example, once we form an initial hypothesis, we start working on a “B” version of the web page to test against the “A” version. Before sending the page live, we perform additional user testing on a number of metrics. One test we run, the “5-second test,” helps measure the clarity of a page among other things. More than once, we have caught issues that would have been detrimental and were able to address them before sending the page live.
All of these steps take time. But it makes sense to be patient if you want to see meaningful, revenue-generating changes on your website. Look for conversion optimizers who work like Marine rifle experts and take the slow, well-aimed shots. These are the people who will help you accomplish your mission.
About the Author
Craig Andrews is the Principal Ally and founder of internet marketing agency allies4me. He has over 25 years of experience in search engine optimization, internet marketing software, and social media strategies.
You can connect with Craig Andrews on Google+ and LinkedIn. You can find allies4me on LinkedIn, Google+, Facebook, and Twitter.
Context: The Power of Framing feat. Tim Ash [INFOGRAPHIC]
Conversion Marketing StrategyOne of the great benefits of speaking at great conferences is getting to learn from your peers in the industry. Joel Harvey and I did our first LIVE tag-team presentation called “The Chemistry of the Landing Page.”
Tim Ash gave an insightful and “inciteful” keynote presentation at the PPC Hero Conference here in Portland Oregon. Here are my instagraph notes taken live as he spoke.
Click to Enlarge
User Engagement was Low on These Websites. See How They Changed That.
Conversion-Centered DesignI’ve seen plenty of websites that are beautifully designed and portray a strong sense of professionalism.
And that’s great. But it’s not enough.
Many businesses are missing out on a crucial opportunity to get their visitors to actually engage with their website. Think about it. If you can get your visitors to actually do something while on your site and engage them, there’s a greater chance that you’re going to push them through the funnel.
Case Study: Increasing Homepage Engagement
Here’s a brilliant example. Take a look at the Super Fast Funding website.
This is their original page. There was not a lot of opportunity for visitors to engage upon landing on the home page.
Super Fast Funding’s original website didn’t offer many ways to engage.
The picture on the right hand side doesn’t tell us much. It’s nearly impossible to decipher or read the text on documents at which our friendly smiley faced cartoon is pointing.
There are also several other things going wrong here.
The main headline asks “Are you fundable?” There are two possible answers to that question: yes or no.
Don’t ever ask your visitors a question that could be answered negatively with a “No” response. It creates doubt and in their minds, could immediately disqualify them from further engagement with your site.
Instead, give them hope like in this new version of their home page. Kudos to this new design. Super Fast Funding has added several elements to dramatically increase visitor engagement.
The slider bar invites the visitor to start interacting with the page and this can increase conversion rates.
They’ve preceded their phone number with the verbage “Questions?”. They’ve added a video rather than just an “Our Video” link in the main menu bar since many people opt out of watching a video if there isn’t a propelling thumbnail to get them interested.
A Live Chat link has been added at the very top of the page. A blog has been added. And they’ve also added a “Get Started” button.
Now that’s engagement.
But what I really liked about this page is the slider bar that they’ve added that allows visitors to choose the amount of funding that they’d like to receive.
Not only did they eliminate the possibility of a “No” answer, but they’ve made the experience very interactive for their visitors (while also giving them a sense of control), and by doing so, they’ve dramatically increased visitor engagement.
Do you see now why amping up the opportunities for visitor engagement is important to increasing sales, revenue, customer acquisition and a larger portion of the market share? A website provides far greater opportunity for engagement over other marketing collateral mediums. It’s a shame if you don’t take advantage of that.
Case Study: Screen Sharing for Easier Engagement
LiveLOOK – which was acquired by Oracle last year – has added a bit of brilliance in how they’re tackling online customer service issues: their solution makes it possible for merchants to assist their online shoppers through screen sharing.
Have you ever been in a brick and mortar store where a clerk has had to help you step by step with a transaction? I experienced it recently when a clerk had to help me through a scanning system that I had no clue how to operate. Had he not been there to help me, there would have been no transaction.
Screen sharing, in essence, does the same thing. When your visitors are completely stumped, merchants can get onto the shoppers’ screen and take actions for the visitor to assist them in the transaction.
One of the nation’s leading health insurance organizations utilized LiveLOOK’s co-browse solution to improve upon customer service issues, and it helped guide visitors through a variety of online processes including registering, paying bills online and finding more information. The most immediate result was the drastic reduction in call handling times. Calls that previously took up to an hour were reduced to 7-10 minutes on average.
That 85% reduction in call times created a savings in resources and compensation for those resources. Call center agents have also reported less visitor frustration which helps them to generate loyalty and customer satisfaction.
Tools to Increase User Engagement
Don’t forget, there are other ways to engage visitors and – just as importantly – ways to track that engagement.
HotJar is a company that has made it really easy to track engagement by offering multiple tools in one bundled solution. Not only do they offer the engagement tools, but the solution also offers tools to track visitor engagement.
In a brick and mortar store, clerks are face to face with shoppers, so if they’re smart, they can communicate directly with those shoppers to help them through the buying process.
It’s vital that you do the same with your online store. The HotJar bundled solution includes:
There are other options for click tracking, session recordings, and heat maps that you can read about at MyConversionLab.com.
Surveys
In an effort to find out how knowledgeable users were on tech terms, a survey conducted by Vouchercloud.net revealed that 27% thought a “gigabyte” was an insect found in South America, 23% believed that an “MP3” was a Star Wars robot and 18% thought that a “Blu-ray” was a marine animal. According to the Harvard University’s 2014 Senior Survey, 13.17% of Harvard seniors admitted to cheating during their tenure at the school.
Who would have known unless the questions were asked?
Surveys are another way to obtain valuable feedback from your visitors. You can ask your visitors all of the questions you’d like to ask if you were face to face. When you’re putting together a survey, be sure to ask open ended questions that will provide you with more information rather than yes/no questions.
Exit Polls
Exit polls are boxes that pop up, but this time while your visitors are leaving. They typically ask visitors what issues they experienced that kept them from making a purchase, so it’s a quick and easy way to find out what’s keeping a website’s visitors from converting.
Heat Mapping
If you’re not familiar with the technology, heat mapping is where a small piece of code is inserted into your web page so that a visual representation can be created showing where visitors are clicking. And just as importantly, where they are not.
As you can see from the graph bar in the heat map image below, colors show just how many clicks are being made in a particular area. The color coding gives a visual representation with the color red representing the most clicks.
An incredible number of people click on the About link in the upper right corner. What does this mean?
Visitor Playback Sessions
Visitor playback sessions take this type of tracking to another level. With visitor playback sessions you can actually watch a recorded video of visitors as they move around your site. You can see where they stop, where they scroll and where they click which means you can see where they get stumped and what might keep them from spending money on your site.
User Tester Recruitment
I’ve had some strong debates with companies in regards to my website audit recommendations – that is until the user tests come in and back up my findings. I wait to view user tests last to see if the users agree with what I’ve recommended.
User Testing allows you to look over the shoulders of people while they browse your site. You get a first hand glance as to where they are getting stuck or having issues.
Form and Funnel Analysis
Funnel and form analysis gives you data on where visitors are dropping out of your forms and funnels and lets you fix those issues.
Conclusion
Without tracking and analyzing your visitors engagement, it’s going to be very difficult to figure out how to improve their experiences. You could have a site complete with copywriting, images, and design that are absolutely spectacular, but it’s that interaction and engagement that’s going to provide you with the valuable feedback you need in order to be aware of issues that are frustrating and confusing your visitors, and it’s also going to give you the opportunity to assist them in getting past those frustrations.
About the Author
Marie Dean is the Innovation Director at CoversionLifters and has been an expert in the field of conversion optimization for 12 years. She helps clients improve their website conversions, increase revenue, lower acquisition costs and capture more of the market share through in-depth website analysis.
Feature Image Photo Credit: KayeNicole via Compfight cc and adapted for this post
Landing Page Templates that Maximize Conversions
Conversion-Centered DesignWhat to look for in a high-converting landing page template.
A friend of mine recently offered me an expensive Giant brand road bike that he wasn’t using in exchange for some help on his website.
He runs a local carpet cleaning service in San Marcos, Texas just south of the Conversion Capital of the World. He hadn’t spent much time on his website, and wanted to update it. While we don’t necessarily recommend redesigns, I felt this one needed a face lift.
Sometimes, you just need to start over.
I love the bubbles, but I doubt they are helping conversion rates. I haven’t seen animations like this since the 1990s. The background image slows load time and confuses the eye. The graduated fill on the buttons makes them all but unreadable.
Don’t laugh at my friends design. Here is a WordPress theme I recently reviewed. Check out the stars.
These stars don’t move the value proposition forward. Maybe it works for NASA.
Then there’s this:
Animation for animations sake is not helpful for scanners. Note the slow loading of the background image.
My friend needed a new theme for his WordPress site.
Fortunately, I had been asked to be a judge in the ThemeForest PageWiz template contest. More specifically, my task was to pick the themes that would make the best landing page templates.
I’ll tell you how I ranked these themes based on my experience, based on tests we’ve conducted here at Conversion Sciences, and based on my work as an online marketer who uses WordPress in my business.
47 Landing Page Templates, One Winner
The typical “Banded Sales Page” delivers the value proposition for a page in separate sections, or bands.
I reviewed 47 different PageWiz landing page templates created by designers. I was tasked with picking one I felt embodied the best practices in conversion-centric landing page design.
The goal of a landing page is to:
1) Keep the promise of an ad, email or link.
2) Get the visitor to take some action, to convert.
Most of the themes I reviewed followed a common pattern, one I call a “banded sales page.”
These are designed to unfold like a sales letter: Big promise at the top, and an unfolding story, or value proposition, as you scroll. Key parts of the story are separated into sections, often with bands of color or images to identify them.
The support for the value proposition is like that found in an old-style sales letter: claims, features and proof. Trust builders, such as testimonials and client logos are also an important part of the this style.
Most themes chose big images for background filler. This is an unfortunate choice, because slow load times mean lower conversion rates. It looks cool, but you know what’s cooler? More sales.
This style of page templates doesn’t provide a significant amount of space for copy, and this may be to their detriment. Instead, they provide bite-sized information to build the value proposition, perfect for scanning the page. These bite-sized sections are most commonly presented in bands of different background colors.
For example, the Landing Page Elements Theme wastes a lot of valuable space for a rather irrelevant image.
Large images take a long time to load and often don’t move the value proposition forward.
Some of the themes used parallax scrolling features, which we have not tested, but which may actually add friction to the experience, reducing conversions.
The Theme Should Serve Your Market
The landing page really needs to serve it’s audience. I found the highest scoring templates to be those that were for specific kinds of businesses: fitness, real estate, conferences, travel.
My pick is the Avira Homes template because of its creative calls to action and excellent mobile experience. It suffers from big images and almost fell out of the running.
Mobile Friendly is a Must
I’ll get this out of the way now. No responsive design made my list of top templates. I know it’s an easy way to get a mobile site, but mobile is different than desktop. Design a separate template for mobile.
Look for a landing page template that supports a separate mobile experience.
The Knights Theme offers a mobile theme separate from their desktop implementation.
Mobile Visitors Want Different Content
I made mobile support an important part of the criteria, because it is a growing traffic source for almost any industry. Most themes relied on responsive designs. Others had dedicated mobile templates. Many themes actually break when displayed on phone-sized screens.
We favor designs with dedicated mobile designs, as responsive designs have myriad problems for landing pages. Responsive designs often don’t make sense as desktop content is stacked in non-intuitive ways. These mobile sites also tend to load slower than their dedicated mobile cousins.
Most desktop themes won’t offer a map on their home page or landing pages. For mobile visitors, where we are is important. Maps are a great addition to your mobile experience.
Mobile-oriented content like maps are often lost in responsive designs.
Mobile visitors also want bigger buttons, click-to-call functionality and mobile-focused calls to action. Notice how the Avira site (my winner) offers click to call as the first-screen call to action in their mobile theme. Their desktop site offers a form and the “Contact Me” button.
Avira’s separate mobile app is designed for a uniquely mobile experience.
The Avira Real Estate Theme was my choice for overall winner.
The Page Should Load Fast
I was happy to see that none of these pages had scrolling hero images, called sliders. These slow load times and can distract readers from the information on the page.
The slow load time of the VPropos theme left us with nothing to watch.
The slow load time of this theme left us with nothing to watch.
The Theme Should Make Good Use of the First Screen
It is important that a landing page communicate that the visitor can take action on the page. It should be done early. There is a segment of your visitors that are looking to take action. They don’t want to read, they want to put things in motion.
The FlatVault theme makes good use of the top of the page using calls to action.
In contrast to the landing page templates with large images, I felt that FlatVaulth did a good job of utilizing the top portion of the page, with not one but two calls to action.
The Copy Should Be Easy to Read
I favor designs with dark text on light backgrounds for readability. Knockout text is hard for eyes over 40 to read. Pages that are mostly dark cause our pupils to widen. This larger aperture makes focusing more difficult. That’s why we squint when we are trying to read small text. It makes our aperture smaller.
Light text on a dark background is more difficult for older eyes that have trouble focusing.
The App Cast Theme may be best for young eyes.
A good designer uses color to guide the eye. The use of the same color makes it harder to locate the information that is important. For example, pricing tables job is to help us choose. In this pricing table, it’s clear that the center offering is more important, but the color choices make it hard to compare across offerings.
The poor color choices make it hard to compare options.
The Landing Elements Vol 2 Theme make poor color choices.
Contrast is your friend, especially when your presenting headlines and calls to action.
The headline and call to action are difficult to read here because of a low contrast between background and text.
The green and red backgrounds offer a low contrast background for the headline and form’s call to action in the Brom theme.
Make Good Use of Images and Video
If a theme didn’t explicitly support video, I didn’t hold it against theme. Several did. Video is all over the map in terms of whether it works or not. It is a powerful medium that can work for you or against you.
Images are powerful ways to move the value proposition of the site forward. Unfortunately, designers often punt, using filler stock images instead of well-thought out pictures. Unfortunately, theme builders really can’t offer one image that communicates well for all of the possible sites their theme may ride on.
The Cube Consulting Theme makes good use of image placement here.
This image is in the right place, but is clearly a stock image. The human eye knows when it sees what we call business porn.
The man in this theme is what we call “business porn.” It is a stock image, not someone who works at the company or is a customer. The placement of this image is smart. It anchors the call to action form visually which partly covers the image.
A better image would have been looking down at the form, or to the value proposition at the left. We tend to linger on faces, especially when they are looking right at us. If we’re looking at a face, we’re not reading the offer text or the calls to action.
Be careful of images that work against you.
The dot-matrix background and gratuitous keyboard image only work to make the text hard to read in this image.
The Expo Theme uses a dot-matrix background that messes with the eyes and makes the text harder to read. Why is there a keyboard in the background?
This background image conflicts with the call to action, confusing the eye.
One problem of our winning theme, Avira, is the poor choice of a background image. This image conflicts with the call to action form.
Shapes
The shape of your images can have impact as well. After viewing over 40 different themes with the banded designs, I found these curved images refreshing.
The shape of your images can draw the eye to important page components.
The Dyxalot Theme curved hero image draws the eye to the center where the key messages are.
Avoid Useless Images
If I have to find a large, high-resloution image that’s relevant to my visitor and figure out how to not screen it back, that’s a theme that is too much work.
This design is typical of the designs that waste precious real estate at the top of the page with nothing relevant.
A lot of space was dedicated to red buildings in this theme. What’s the message?
The Mobis Theme wastes a lot of space with a background picture of buildings. Unecessarily large images push your value proposition and calls to action down on the page, where they are less likely to be seen.
Make Images Clickable
Make images clickable, even if there’s a button below. These are not.
Clicking on the buttons works, but the images are not clickable. Don’t get in your visitors’ way.
The MyCourse Theme should make their images clickable.
Calls to Action
Calls to action should be the most visually prominent items on the page.
The use of arrows and button colors that clash with the other colors on the page signal that the call to action should be addressed by the visitor.
High contrast buttons and arrows signal to the visitor that they should address the call to action.
The My Earth Non-profit Theme enhances the visibility of the call to action.
More Calls to Action
For long banded pages, they should be frequent. You never know when your visitor is seeing the content that pushes them to take action in a long-scrolling landing page.
Our winning theme, Avira, offered a variety of calls to action, from the ability to inquire about specific properties to general inquiries. It invited visitors to call and offered lead generation forms at the top and bottom of the page.
You never know when copy or an image is going to incite a visitor to act. Use frequent calls to action.
Your Forms Should Behave
Form behavior should make completion intuitive and natural. When someone hits tab in your form, they should be taken to the next field, not another part of the page.
The form for the Urane Theme looks like this:
Be careful if you use the tab button here (and most of us do).
When I type my name and click Tab, it jumps to a random part of the page.
Surprise behaviors will kill your conversion rates.
Use a Dripping Pan
If someone reads your page to the bottom, this is a pretty good sign that they are interested. Themes should repeate the call to action at the bottom of the page. We call this a dripping pan because it catches the juices to make gravy.
This form appears at the bottom of the page. It’s a dripping pan.
The dripping pan for the MyPro Affiliate Theme offers a complete form and call to action.
App Store Buttons
If you’re doing a theme for an app download, the call to action is to visit an app store. I recommend that you not redesign these buttons. They should be recognizable as clicks to the Google Play store and iTunes app store.
The most recognizable app store button designs are used across the Web.
The Dyxalot Theme makes this call to action almost invisible.
These download calls to action are almost invisible
The App Cast Mobile Theme offers company logos, not app store logos.
Are these company logos or app store download buttons?
The Volax Theme offers more clues that this is an app download, but this is not a fimiliar image for the app stores.
The addition of download counts adds social proof, but what am I downloading exactly?
Plan for Proof and Trust
Presenting proof is very important, and several themes offered interesting ways to present proof. Claims made in your copy must be supported by a benefit and proof.
The Expo theme presents a place for proof points
The Expo theme presents a place for proof points.
Websites can “borrow” trust from other brands by showing logos, seals and badges. Client logos, partner logos, and even the logos of credit cards all conspire to build trust with visitors. Themes that support this were ranked higher in my judging.
Websites can “borrow” trust from clients, partners and media outlets by displaying their logos
Unfortunately, the MyPro Theme made a poor choice for the background of these trust building logos.
Induce Scrolling
One of the concerns with banded pages like those in this competition is that every scroll can look like the bottom of the page. Visitors may never scroll further to see the persuasive content lower on the page.
Themes that induced scrolling were ranked higher on my list.
The Upfold Theme provides several scrolling queues. The v-shaped header image invites visitors to scroll down.
A simple arrow-shaped image can induce scrolling, making your copy more effective.
Connective lines between sections signal visitors that there is more to see. This keeps people scrolling.
Subtle connective lines signal that there is more information to follow as the visitor scrolls.
Consider Introducing Scarcity
If your offer has a deadline, you can use countdown timers to introduce “scarcity.” This communicates that an offer is about to expire and that the visitor should take action immediately.
Countdown timers are effective, and several themes incorporated them into their pages.
Count down timers can introduce scarcity into the visitor’s decision making process.
The Pagewiz Event Conference Meetup Theme places a countdown timer in the body of the page.
Scarcity is a natural fit for events.
Elect! Political Charity Conference Theme places a countdown timer right below the hero image.
Social Distraction
The most common distraction I see on landing pages is social media icons. Traffic is never free. Even search traffic requires you to optimize and develop content. If you’ve paid for a visitor to come to your site, why send them off to Mark Zuckerberg? He’s god enough traffic.
The social icons are muted, but shouldn’t be at the top of the page competing with the call to action.
The social icons are muted here, but save them for the thank you page.
The social icons on the FlatBox Theme are the most visible (and thus the most important) items above the fold.
The social media icons really pop on this dark background. The message is that these are the most important things on the page.
Only use if social media is a great source of visitors for your site. Instead of a dripping pan at the bottom of the page, FlatBox offers a smorgasbord of distractions.
Most businesses aren’t good at turning likes and follows into business. Save these buttons for the thank you page.
The best use of social media I saw was the RealGym Theme, my runner up. This use of social media turns gym trainers into social sales people
Here the social icons support the business model directly by turning trainers into social salespeople.
Help Me Choose a Plan
If you offer multiple levels of service or product tiers, the job of your pricing matrix is to, Help Me Choose. Your landing page template should highlight one price package to help my visitors choose.
The Mobis Multipurpose Landing Page Theme offers three colors, none of which is more prominent than any other.
Which of these is most popular? Which should I choose? It’s hard to tell.
The Urane Theme offers a highlighted choice.
This design says,”I should pay attention to the middle one, and not just choose the cheapest.”
Pricing tables that make it easy to compare features will improve conversion rates.
The Landing Elements Vol 1 Theme offers banding to help guide the eye across features.
Alternating colors help guide the eye and aid in comparing features.
Pricing tables should not attempt to sell features. You should only select a few criteria–three or four–to be placed in the pricing table. Let the copy do the rest of the selling.
Use helpful names as well.
Choose the descriptive names for your feature levels.
The Flat Vault Theme suggests “Basic”, “Pro” and “Elite” levels. These generic names are translated as “Cheap”, “Expensive” and “Only for big companies”. Be more clear in your naming. Choose names that convey relevant value.
No Template is Going to Have It All
This is a lot to consider when picking a theme. None of the landing page templates I reviewed scored perfect on all counts.
Your business may have special needs. If building trust is important, focus on themes that support trust and proof. If you serve mobile visitors, be sure to use a separate theme for your mobile site.
For almost any site, Readability, Calls to action, and Load Time are going to be critical.
Any theme you produce will need to be optimized for your unique visitors. Contact Conversion Sciences for a free consultation on your site.
Now I can ride my new bike and know that I selected the best template for my carpet-cleaning friend.
Here’s the dripping pan.
21 Quick and Easy CRO Copywriting Hacks
Keep these proven copywriting hacks in mind to make your copy convert.
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A Landing Page for the Heart: Your Online Dating Profile [New Series]
Landing Page OptimizationYou can’t get into website optimization without it leaking into the rest of your life. You see the world differently. At Conversion Sciences, we obsess about optimization and the affect on our lives is interesting.
Basically, we are appealing to your base nature to help you make more money in your business.We tally the coffee orders of those in line ahead of us to help with your decision.
We leave the house at the EXACT same time each day when trying alternative commutes. Of course we use the stopwatch for accuracy.
We do a quick evaluation of the speed of the grocery store checkout people before choosing a line.
And we optimize our dating lives.
We see this as an opportunity to introduce landing page concepts to a broader audience. Lots of people get excited about optimizing their dating profile. Landing page optimization makes the accountant smile. Dating profile optimization makes the heart smile.
I would like to invite you into the world of optimization obsession by introducing you to a new series of blog posts coming your way: Optimize My Dating Life.
[dating-series]
We asked Megan – one of our Conversion Scientists – to document an optimization project in which she applies everything she knows about increasing conversion rates to her online dating profile. Ultimately, a dating profile is nothing more than a lead-generating landing page, so it’s just waiting to be optimized.
How is an Online Dating Profile a Lead-Generating Landing Page?
A dating profile certainly serves a specific purpose. You know what that purpose is, but do the people who visit your profile? You’ve undoubtedly heard horror stories at happy hours from your single friends, or maybe you have a few stories of your own. Misunderstandings occurring as a result of a miscommunication on a dating profile.
For a time, my profile listed my favorite book as Batman: the Dark Knight Returns. I came to understand this was an error in judgment on my part. I went on dates with four different people who assumed I would be able to keep up in a conversation discussing the history of the Marvel (or is it DC?) universe. Just to clarify: I couldn’t keep up.
Maybe you’ve created a landing page for an expensive giveaway only to receive a bafflingly low quality and quantity of leads. Were you really communicating what you thought you were?
Previous research has determined that it all comes down to the picture. These studies were only measuring inquiries, the number of people who try to connect. We want to go deeper. We want to judge the quality of the connections.
Look at her, she’s adorbs. Who wouldn’t want to date that face?
Looks aren’t everything, right? Well, the right images are important — on your dating profile and on your landing pages.
We’ll be testing other important components of dating landing pages: trust builders, proof points and offers.
Yes, I said, “offers”. Will the right offer on a dating landing page make the difference? We can’t wait to find out.
Finally, we want to measure the quality of our “leads”. You’ve probably been on dates with people you chose because of their level of attractiveness only to find out they’re as interesting as elevator music. You’ve probably been approached by someone who saw your lovely little mug and that person wanted to ask you on a date without knowing anything about how smart and cool and interesting you are.
And you’ve probably visited a landing page with a design that was absolutely beautiful. A work of art. But for the life of you, couldn’t figure out what you were being asked to do.
What Are We Studying?
We will be attempting to make our little project as scientific as possible so that you will be better able to incorporate our successes (and avoid our failures) in your own landing pages.
Megan will be creating a few different dating profiles, and we will attempt to isolate the actual written content of her profile and her user pictures.
Example of a free-form question where answers could change across profiles and over the course of the project
okcupid tries to match people based on a series of questions, what each person is seeking by using the service, and location, and we will be keeping all of this information the same across all of the profiles so that she has a greater chance of showing up in the same searches for the same people.
Example of information that will be a control across all profiles
Example of information that will be a control across all profiles
Example of a potential okcupid question that will be a control across all profiles
Because lead-generation is the end goal, we will be measuring the quality and quantity of leads received on each of her profiles. Megan’s first task will be to create a quality matrix that will allow her to rate each of her leads and avoid relying on how physically attractive they are. So we’ll be looking at Megan’s own profile and making changes to increase the number of quality leads she receives, but we’ll also be looking at the potential leads’ profiles and rating them.
What’s a lead? Men who message her are her leads; conversions will be securing dates with said leads.
Will Megan rate leads higher when they mention their families? How will musicians fare? Are vegetarians a hard-pass? Be sure to read her next post to find out!
Use Our Love Lessons Learned to Build the Landing Page of Your Dreams
We’ll be writing posts as the project progresses. We really have no idea how things are going to turn out: will Megan find Mr. Right? Who knows, but we might as well make the search interesting.
As for your landing pages, generating leads is a bit more of a science than finding the love of your life, and for that reason, there’s a lot you can learn from dating profiles to help improve your landing page.
So here we go…we’ll keep you posted.
Map Out a 300% Conversion Rate Increase
Conversion Marketing StrategyIn January a large property listing website announced they’d increased conversions by 300%. They’d significantly changed the site’s design and the way they searched for properties, delivering results by travel time rather than miles radius.
In March a second property website announced a boost of 300% but this time no design change whatsoever. They started delivering results by travel time, and that was the only change they made. Timing was everything.
Why does providing travel time boost conversions?
As with any conversion boost, it’s down to optimizing consumer experience. The search results were more relevant, but why?
Personalization: the key to transforming conversion rates
We already know that personalization is key whether you’re composing an email campaign or doing post-sales follow-ups. Where’s the personalization in location? Personalization is nothing without people, which is the downfall of a distance search. A mile “as the crow flies” isn’t relevant if the crow is on a bus or in a car.
Acknowledging infrastructure networks transforms a circle into a polygon. This polygon changes shape depending on the surrounding location’s network. Local search results that use a polygon model will eliminate all the erroneous results that would have been delivered in a miles radius search.
Search result with radius model
Map acknowledging transportation networks
Search result with polygon model
Sorry, I’m running 5 miles late
A mile is not a human metric: we do everything by time. We need to arrive at locations on time, leave on time, spend time at locations or visit several places in an allotted time. The problem is that one mile can take five minutes or one hour depending on congestion, infrastructure and other factors.
Tell a hungry person their favorite restaurant is ten minutes away, and they know exactly what you mean. Tell them it’s a mile away, and they will need to know a lot more. Using time in local searching makes the results relevant and understandable. When the amount of consumer leg-work is reduced, they’re more likely to decide there and then.
Time to personalize
People search for location-specific results because they need to get there. Websites that use minutes instead of miles can ask two simple questions that will personalize each search so that no one will ever need to work out “will this work for me?”
Give it the time of day
This information alters the relevant results for three reasons.
Some locations will always operate at the same time of day. Lunch reservations will always be in the same time window. Property searches may always use 9:00 am because the majority of people commute from home to work at that time.
Other sites may choose to automate the time function so that the visitor sees what is possible at the time of their search. This is useful if the site visitor wants to get there immediately, giving accurate results quickly.
Timely transport
The four polygons show different results for different transportation modes within 30 minutes. You can see that walkers can’t cover as much distance as drivers (obviously!). Adjusting for the exact mode of transportation ensures that every location result is reachable and removes any errors covered in distance searching.
Cycling
Public transportation
Driving
Walking
Case Studies:
Restaurant listing site OpenTable lets customers book tables so that they can reach their restaurant reservation within minutes.
The travel time to a restaurant changes by mode of transportation.
UK national tourism agency VisitBritain lets tourists plan their day based on what’s near their attraction of choice.
Planning your day by travel times.
The UK’s largest real estate agency group Countrywide lets property seekers pick how long they want their commute to be when listing new homes.
Coutrywide lets visitors shop for homes by commute time.
Time is mobile
With four out of five local searches on mobile devices ending with a purchase, marketers need to leverage their apps to ensure that they’re catering to the ever-moving consumer. Consumers can pick their search point or use mobile location searches to search by minutes from their current point.
Travel time search results on mobile device
Whose marketing efforts will benefit most from travel time search results?
It’s about time…I wrapped things up
Searching for locations by time delivers more accurate results. Consumers like it and convert.About the Author
Louisa is head of marketing at iGeolise.com. The company is the creator of the TravelTime Platform, an API that allows websites to search, rank, sort and display location results by minutes rather than miles. She’s cuckoo for conversions – particularly if they have to do with local search. To find out more follow them on Twitter @iGeolise or go to www.gettraveltime.com.
Going Mobile for Mobile Conversions [Hello Chicago]
News & EventsIf you live in Chicago, we’re bringing one of our most important presentations right to you.
If you don’t live in Chicago, may I suggest you get that Ford Fairlane lubed and tuned up for a road trip. You’ll want to be there on June 2.
We’re going mobile to spread the results of our testing on the mobile web. It’s one of the most important presentations we’ve done because the mobile web is changing fast.
Conversion Sciences is Road Tripping to Chicago June 2.
We know a thing or two about your mobile marketing. Your Mobile traffic is probably one of your fastest growing segments. It converts at depressingly low rates. You have probably decided to focus your efforts on the desktop for now.
We were there once, too.
Come see the most interesting and lucrative things we’ve learned about mobile conversions from tests across industries. You’ll learn you how to avoid common conversion-killing “mobile best practices”, write CTAs that get mobile visitors to take action and employ simple UX tricks that will keep those CTAs constant without distracting or irritating visitors.
You’ll also get tips for bridging the 1st screen to 2nd screen gap, maximizing phone leads from mobile visitors and building forms that mobile visitors will actually complete.
You’ll leave this sessions equipped to make smarter decisions about your mobile experience.
We Get a Special Discount
We get a special discount since we’ve got the awesome wheels. Don’t tell our hosts at Unbounce that we’re sharing this code with you.
conversionsciencessentme
You better sign up before they get wise. This code lets you in the door for $149.50. That’s 50% off the already ridiculous price. You can use it here. Yes, it’s a damn long discount code. Copy it to your clipboard.
Did I Mention the Other Seven Awesome Speakers?
No? Well you can’t beat them. You should check them out after you’ve registered to see us.
We’re worth the $149.50 admission, but you also get these bright people.
Come see us in Chicago, or wait to see these great speakers at one of the overblown and expensive conferences in some far away city. Your choice.
See Me at Conversion World and Keep Your Pajamas On
News & EventsThere’s a formula for your landing pages that guide you to to get the reaction you’re aiming for. You’re paying for the traffic: now’s your chance to get the most from it.
The first ever online C
RO conference is fast-approaching, and if you want that critical formula for high-converting landing pages (and of course you do), request an invite to the Conversion World Conference happening April 20-22.You’ll never be able to learn from a more diverse, interesting and knowledgeable group of international conversion experts. Ever.
You don’t even have to change out of your pajamas. It’s all online. Invite some of your geeky friends over. Pop popcorn. Invent a Conversion World drinking game.
For my part, I’ll be sharing my landing page formula. You’ll get actionable tips and best practices to create the result-driven landing pages you need. I’ll also review several of your landing pages live and make suggestions on changes and improvements that will have an immediate impact.
What You’ll Learn
Register for this three day extravaganza of conversion optimization goodness without leaving your computer.