New Forum for better conversion rates launches

We are excited to launch the new Landing Page Optimization forum on our site at http://www.vertster.com/forum. The forum will cover topics ranging from test designs and methodologies to the best way to design pages for conversion. The forum will be frequented by a some of the top experts in the industry, so if you have questions or comments, please direct them there!

New Article on Landing Pages

Came across a new article posted in GlobalSpec's "Marketing Maven" newsletter. The article titled: "Landing Pages: Three Ways to Improve" was referenced by the B2B Blog, which is how I found it. The article makes another good case for Landing Page use, and offers up some solid tips on improving yours! Its pretty short and I definetly recommend reading it!

The Worst Thing About Best Practices

MarketingProfs published a scathing attack on best practices written by Michael McLaughlin in todays issue. His article describes the use of best practices in sales presentations. I thoroughly enjoyed it and think most of what he has written definetly applies to Landing Pages and online optimization.

Here are Michaels top 4 reasons for why best practices suck:

1. They rarely work
2. It's a followers strategy
3. Change comes from within
4. They don't come with a manual

One of the fascinating things we learn through testing sites is how wrong the "best practices" are in many cases. Every site, sale, or offer is unique, and the only way to know what really works is to test it and find out!

June Newsletter is now online

Our June edition Vertster Optimizer is launched this morning and is now online here. This month, we are testing out a different email service provider named Vertical Response out of San Francisco.

I have always questioned the deliverability of our other provider StreamSend. So this is a test, and we'll find out which works better or if it is a wash. Streamsend has prettier graphs, and their interface is quite a bit different from Vertical Response's. Our list is squeaky clean double opt in, but I have seen lots of people subscribe several times in a row on Streamsend, apparently unable to get the confirmation email.

I will let you know my results in a few days.

Tuned up the Resource Center

Last week it came to my attention that some of the articles in the Conversion Rate Marketing resource center were not formatted very well. Believe me, this was not done on purpose, but rather through some bug in our content management system.

At any rate, this has now been fixed. Additionally, a couple of old out of date articles have been removed, and a couple new gems added. Check these guest articles out when you have a moment:

3 Tips For Writing Better Headlinesy by Bruce Carlson
Are You in for a Safe Landing? - PPC Landing Pages by Shawn Campbell
Conversion Counts: Improving Web Conversion Rates by: Barry Harrison

You'll see more new content in our resource center in the coming days, especially some well overdue articles about Taguchi multivariate testing.

Renamed the blog

I decided that "Optimize It!" was a more descriptive name for what we are doing these days. Optimizing marketing response. Rather than focus on just split testing... "Optimize it!" describes the whole mentality, not a specific technique. You can look forward to an increased emphasis on things you can do to your site that will really make a difference, and more discussion of advanced techniques like Multivariate or Taguchi testing.

3 Things that will improve your conversion rate

Today I am going to give you three simple tactics that can greatly improve your conversion rates. Nothing too new here, but taking a quick look around the web, I see many people fail to follow them:

1. Self Interest rules on the web: People want to know whats in it for THEM, and them alone. If your headline does not accurately predict what the visitor is interested in, AND convey it in a short compelling manner, you are losing visitors and money. Instead of: "This enterprise class system features 16 key functionalities," try "Your organization can enjoy increased productivity and peace of mind." Including the word YOU can make or break a headline, and an entire ad. We've seen it in numerous tests.

2. Be specific: Nothing sounds like canned boilerplate copy worse that general, non specific descriptions. Adding real numbers makes your copy much more beleivable. Instead of "Our system has many valuable features," use "Our system has 97 great features that will save you at least 9 hours and 16 minutes each week."

3. Use "How to": There are few words which are as powerful as these in copywriting. The reason this works so well is that using "How to" to start off a headline puts you right into a self interest style of writing. People online are seeking information, or in other words... how to do something.

Lose the navigation... or not?

If you start doing some research on landing page design, sooner or later you will come across "The Rules of Thumb." I am not sure whose thumbs were used to create TRT, but believe me they exist.

"TRT sayeth thou shalt remove all navigation from thy landing page."

Okay good idea- in fact I decided to follow it when I first read it. I built landing page after landing page, sans navigation. I mean, it made sense... until I tested it. What I found was that my landing page with my navigation bar intact outperformed the TRT version by 30%!

Now don't think for a second I am trying to refute the rule of thumb or create a new one. Chances are most landing pages do perform better without extraneous navigation. But my point is, how will you know if your page works better with or without it?

This is where testing comes in. Without split testing your landing page head to head, there is no way to know. So go on... give it a try!