July « 2009 « Optimize It!

Optimize It!
A Blog about Conversion Improvement

I Don’t Care How Awesome You Are. Can You Increase My Conversions?

By Jason on July 29, 2009

It seems as companies get bigger, their message gets muddier. We affectionately refer to this type of marketing copy as “Corporate Speech” and you may have encountered it in the wild. I don’t know why this happens, but the marketing copy gets really vague and leaves you with a dizzy, lost feeling.

“Did anyone get the license plate of the copywriter who just hit me?”

If you don’t know what I’m talking about, here is an example I created on the fly.

“We are the premier integrated supportability assessment module provider, specializing in custom configurations, enterprise level integrations and pre-configured appliance maintenance. We offer solutions to shorten sales cycles, extend existing applications and deploy a wide range of platforms all within web 2.0 compliant support modules. Fully integrated with standard retention management solutions, we can install our platform into any enterprise release schedule.”

That was pretty bad, but I don’t think I’m too far off from actual “Corporate Speech” found out in the wild.

Speaking in terms of converting, this stuff doesn’t.

I’m sure you are all familiar with KISS and WIIFM. But strangely enough, we forget them so often when writing marketing copy.

KISS (Keep It Simple Stupid!) – This is key. With my experience in consulting people on conversions, simple always wins the day. I know your target audience is smart, but simple copy resonates louder.

“Reduces costs and shortens sales cycles” can be turned into “Saves you money and brings you sales”

WIIFM (What’s In It For Me?) – This may come as a shock to some of you big companies out there, but nobody cares what you do. If your copy includes a lot of “We” then you are probably stuck in the cycle of talking about how awesome you are. Your copy should include a lot of “You” with a lot of benefits.

“You will grow your business, You will get more sales, You will outpace your competition, You will retain more customers.”

Take a hard look at your copy, be honest with yourself and have the courage to change it. The difference might mean that “You will get more conversions!”

Filed under: Conversion, Copywriting, Internet Marketing —

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Usability Begins with a Plan

By Joerg Dennis Krueger on July 28, 2009

Conversion optimisation is, above all, usability. Only if visitors can find their way around a website easily will the conversion rate (leads, purchases etc.) be high.

However, usability – which means conversion optimisation – is not just about testing. Testing is indeed vital and is the fastest way to obtain meaningful information on visitor behaviour. First, however, test variants have to be developed.

So everything starts with the drafting of possible display variants. Drafts can be done on paper or using tools like Visio, Powerpoint or – my favourite – Pidoco (former RapidRabb.it).

During such a prototyping phase, different presentation possibilities can be tried out, although, at least at the beginning, you won’t be able to test all of them. This phase is vital as it creates a good basis for testing: especially at the start, test variants, which first need to be developed, should differ as much as possible.

Example prototype of an alternate start page for an online shop created with pidoco

The creation of such a prototype draft does not require a graphic artist, but knowledge about the website, its visitors and the products. After the elements and different forms of presentation have been planned in this step, they serve the graphic artist as a useful basis for the creation of the web design. This also limits the number of correction runs as many obstacles have been overcome beforehand and many misunderstandings have been prevented.

The realised websites are then ready for testing.

This approach is also very recommendable for the planning of multi-variant tests, as, based on a basic pattern which often has to be found first, different elements can be developed before the work-intensive graphic design process starts.

In this way, good prototyping can also save a lot of time and money in the area of conversion optimisation, allowing for a much more focused testing process.

The author

Jörg Dennis Krüger (Xing/LinkedIn) is the founder and CEO of Optimeister – Conversion Optimization with a guarantee for success. The German online optimisation agency offers a complete optimisation service for landing pages, websites and online shops. Optimeister uses Vertster for its projects and offers support to Vertster users in German-speaking countries.

Filed under: A/B Testing, Conversion — Tags: Pidoco, Plan, Prototyping, Usability —

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When Conversion Tracking is Impossible, Use a Conversion Proxy!

By Scott Miller on July 26, 2009

There are times when tracking a conversion or even getting a revenue figure into your analytics or optimization platform is simply not possible. In these cases, you may consider using a “conversion proxy” to approximate actual conversions. A conversion proxy usually represents the last trackable action the user makes before conversion. Let’s consider some example scenarios, as well as a proxy to use for each:

1. Your conversion action happens on another site, which you have no control over: This is a surprisingly common occurrence in larger companies as well as for affiliate marketers. The best thing to track in this case is any outbound clicks to the remote site which represent a purchase or lead straight to the checkout process.

2. Your IT department refuses to put conversion tracking code on the thank you page: Just as above, the trick here is to track the final event, whether it is a click on the “checkout” button, or a click on the last step of the checkout process. The later in the process, the better. You can also grab revenue for the order at this point, and if you want to be even more accurate, reduce the purchase amount to match the “throughput” of the un-measured steps.

In other words- if you can only track up to the “checkout” point, and you know that 50% of people clicking “checkout” will actually complete the process, reduce the revenue figure for each transaction by 50% to better approximate average order value and revenue per visitor.

3. You are optimizing yield from banner ads or some other outbound link (such as affiliates): In this case, mark clicks on the outbound links. If you have information about the value of each click, you may pass this to the reporting tool along with the click.

4. You are pushing leads to a remote aggregator: In this case, you may be hosting a lead form on your site, which posts to a remote URL of a lead aggregator or marketplace. There are two possibilities here- either attach the conversion event to a click on the “submit” button, or bind to the form submission. Either way will truthfully record the conversion occurrence without requiring a code snippet on the thank you page.

The solution to these scenarios

The only way for this to work is if your conversion tracking system provides for click event tracking. Another way to do it is by adding a “taking you to your destination” page which can then display the normal conversion pixel, but this is not very desirable.

Filed under: A/B Testing, Conversion, Multivariate Testing —

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How A Real Life Test Can Help You Get Your Wallet Back!

By Jason on July 20, 2009

We are testing junkies and we do it for a living on the web. But we always appreciate a good multivariate or split test, whether it’s on the web or not.

This interesting article popped up recently about a test done in Scotland for lost wallets. What variables combine to entice the finder of the wallet to return it?

The variable was a picture and the options were, an elderly couple, a family, a baby and a puppy.

The picture was supposed to elicit an “Ah that’s cute!” moment and “Somebody is going to want that back!” feeling. The desired action? Return the wallet!

Which picture do you think got the most returned wallets? Keep in mind that each wallet was completely void of cash and didn’t contain any credit cards, only typical wallet items. But the picture was prominently displayed.

If you guessed the baby, you guessed right. Here are the return rates.

80% of the baby

53% of the puppy

48% of the family

28% of the elderly couple

A wallet with a charity donation receipt was also tested and had a 20% return rate and wallets with no special items(The Control) had a 15% return rate.

It just goes to show that when you want someone to take a desired action, whether it be on a website or on the street, you need to play to their emotions. Emotions play a huge role in marketing and if you can hit the right triggers, you can elicit big responses from your multivariate tests!

I’d like to try the wallet test again, but this time let’s add some money to the mix!

Filed under: Case Studies, Test Design, Testing Ideas —

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4 Ways to Clear Browser Cookies for Just One Site

By Scott Miller on July 15, 2009

Oftentimes when you are “testing” a test, you should clear your cookies each time through- to make sure you do not have old values stashed away that could prevent you from seeing your test operate correctly. Luckily, there are some great extensions available for the Firefox browser that make this a trivial operation. If you are using one of the other browsers, follow our complete instructions below:

1. Firefox with the Web Developer toolbar: First of all, this is definitely the easiest way to clear cookies for the Firefox browser. If you do not have the Web Developer Toolbar installed, head over to the Firefox Add Ons site and grab it.

To use it, click on the Cookies menu on the left, and select “Delete Domain Cookies”. Pow. All the cookies for the site you are currently on will be removed!

Web Developer Toolbar

2. Clearing a Specific Cookie on Safari: Safari makes you do a little more mousework to get to the listing of cookies in the system, and you have to specify which you want to remove. To get started, go to the preferences menu, and open the “Security” Options. Partway down the page is a button labeled “Show Cookies.” Click this.

picture-4

Once you have clicked the “Show Cookies” button, you will be shown a listing of all of the cookies your browser has stored, along with a handy search box. Type the current domain name into this search to see a listing of cookies set by the current site. From here, you can select and delete the cookies.

Remove Cookies for Safari

3. Clearing a Cookie on IE 8: Internet Explorer before version 8 made it a real hassle to delete cookies for a given domain, but now version 8 includes a component called Developer tools which is modeled after the Firefox Web Developer toolbar. This makes the process dramatically easier. To begin, select to tools menu and choose “Developer Tools.” This can also be opened by pressing F12.

IE 8.0

Once the developer tools window opens, choose the “Cache” menu option on the top and you will the the choice to “Clear Cookies for Domain.” Click this and pow, the cookies will be eliminated for the current domain you are visiting. Super easy!

IE 8 Developer Tools

4. Clearing a Specific Cookie on Chrome: Chrome makes it fairly easy to clear cookies for a single domain, and works similarly to Safari. To start out with, click on the wrench icon on the right side of the address bar. This will drop down a number of choices.

Google Chrome

Choosing “Options” brings up another dialogue and if you scroll down a bit, you will see a button for “Show Cookies.” From here there is a convenient search function for quickly locating cookies you wish to remove. Enter the hostname you are looking for and then select the cookies from the list and choose “Remove.” Simple.

Chrome Cookies

Conclusion: It has gotten easier to delete cookies for a specific domain over the years- and now is a relatively painless process. It used to be that many people would delete all of their cookies at once, which is not ideal given that you may loose autologins, personal choices, and other site functionality.

Chances are you need to test your web applications and sites in each of these four most popular browsers, so refer back to this guide in the future to remember how easy it really is to remove specific cookies.

Filed under: A/B Testing, Developer Resources, Resources, Taguchi Testing, Test Design, Testing 101 —

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