Equally important to testing the presence of seals, is to test where you position them on the page.  In most of the examples below, the seal appears below the footer- which is possibly the worst place on the page if you actually want people to see it. These site owners would be smart to try moving the seals around, and in particular- put them near the call to action or checkout buttons.

1. Sitepal Talking Character – http://www.sitepal.com/

What it does:

SitePal is an easy-to-use and affordable speaking avatar solution that enables small businesses to enhance their web presence and improve business results with virtual speaking characters. With its ability to engage site visitors and reinforce a call to action, SitePal has been proven to increase site traffic, conversions, loyalty and sales.

2. McCafee Secure Site Seal – http://www.mcafeesecure.com/

What it does:

The McAfee Secure™ trustmark appears on more than 80,000 websites worldwide. Certified McAfee SECURE sites include some of the largest brands in retail ecommerce and brick and mortar retailing; as well as financial and non-profit institutions, manufacturers, universities, Fortune 500 corporations, and government agencies.

McAfee Secure certification is achieved by passing rigorous daily network security audits. The certification process is completed in six steps. The first three steps are the vulnerability audit itself; comprised of Dynamic Port Scanning, Port-level Network Services Vulnerability Testing, and Web Application Vulnerability Testing. The fourth and fifth steps are alerts whenever vulnerabilities are detected and remediation management using our extensive vulnerability management portal. The result is highly effective, pro-active security.

3. ControlScan Seal – http://www.controlscan.com

What it does:

ControlScan is an PCI compliance and security solutions company dedicated to understanding and meeting the needs of smaller merchants.  Controlscan provide several different security seal products, including their “Verified Secure” and “GeoTrust” seal.

4. BBB Seal – http://www.bbbonline.org

What it does:

BBBOnLine’s mission is to promote trust and confidence on the Internet. BBBOnLine allows businesses with Web sites to display the BBB Accredited Business seal online following confirmation of their adherence to the BBB Code of Business Practices, including its online standard.

5. Verisign Secure Seal – http://www.verisign.com

What it does:

VeriSign is the leading Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) Certificate Authority enabling secure e-commerce, communications, and interactions for Web sites, intranets, and extranets.  The VeriSign Secured Seal is part of the VeriSign® SSL Service. SSL helps you deliver a secure and convenient way for your customers to interact with you over the Internet. When you display the VeriSign Secured Seal, your customers will recognize the most trusted security mark on the Internet and gain the confidence to complete their transactions with you.

6.  Liveperson Chat - http://www.liveperson.com

What it does:

LivePerson humanizes the online experience, increasing sales, customer satisfaction and loyalty. More than 7,000 companies, including some of the largest and most-recognized global brands, use LivePerson’s real-time chat platform to communicate and build relationships with their customers on the Web.

7. Green Certified Site – http://www.co2stats.com/

What it does:

People want websites they visit to be eco-friendly.  CO2Stats helps you attract and retain those visitors.  CO2Stats is the only service that automatically calculates your website’s total energy consumption, helps to make it more energy efficient, and then purchases audited renewable energy from wind and solar farms to neutralize its carbon footprint.  CO2Stats is easy to set up, and works with your existing web host!

8.  Truste – http://www.truste.com

What it does:

Build trust and drive revenue with TRUSTe programs and services. Displaying the TRUSTe seal demonstrates that your site complies with our privacy best practices. Sign up and let consumers know they can trust you more than other businesses when it comes to online privacy and trust.

9.  BillMeLater – http://www.billmelater.com

What it does:

Bill Me Later is a convenient and secure way to pay on the web or over the phone. Bill Me Later lets users pay without using a credit card. At checkout, provide your birthday and the last four digits of your social security number, accept the terms and your purchase is complete. It’s that easy! There are no codes to find or account numbers to remember.

To illustrate my points, I decided to take a quick tour and grab a couple examples from around the web:

Search marketing software company Acquisio uses the following unit to make users aware of different options available to them.  Although they have done a fine job, I can’t help but wonder if asking for a trial first isn’t putting the cart before the horse.  For me, I would probably want to look at the demo and case studies before signing up for the trial.  This is definitely worth testing.

Acquisio.com

Customer Relationship SAAS vendor Salesforce.com uses the following widget to promote three possible actions:

Salesforce.com

Their ordering makes a little more sense- starting with the demo, followed by a contact request.  If you are not ready for either of these things, you can always take the non committing option- to view the resources on the site.

These widgets work well for B2B companies, but can also cross the boundary and appear on B2C websites.  Here is an example from Cruise ship line Carnival:

Carnival.com

It is a little different, instead of focusing on next “steps” the unit simply is giving a couple options to get started.  I think it would be smart for Carnival to also have a “request information” option, where people could sign up to get a booklet in the mail.

It is important to present options for differing levels of interest- from information gatherers, to those on final approach to completing a purchase.  You would be well advised to test what you include, what the thing looks like, and the order different steps are presented.  Here is a mini overview of possible test options for a “next steps” widget:

• Size
• Look and Feel
• Title (ie “Next Steps” or “What to do Next”
• Number of Options
• Ordering of Options
• Colors
• Placement on your pages

One of the challenges of designing multivariate tests is getting everyone in your organization on the same page. Thats where Fleck comes in. This browser extension lets you add “sticky notes” to annotate any web page.

We just started use it to mark up pages and indicate where variables are and even provide guidance on proposed variable options. This vision can be shared around with multiple people in multiple organizations before the test assets are actually built and the optimization is running.

Here is an example of a test design for my ebook site TheConversionLab.com:

http://extension.fleck.com/?sh=788d04e7f5d3dad9de1c4bf0b9315f16f3fad065

Note: Fleck is currently in beta, and appears to choke on the CSS layout of this page slightly. It goes to figure that this is the only site I have ever seen Fleck have an issue with.

Warm Regards,

Scott Miller, CEO

Author of “The ConversionLab.com,” The worlds first “How to” guide to testing and optimization. Visit http://www.conversionlab.com/ for a special offer!

Hence… I decided to write a real new post this morning. Coming up with ideas to test can be difficult, particularly if you have already done quite a bit of optimization work on your pages. But have you ever considered finding a few key phrases in your sales copy, and applying a yellow highlighter like background to them?

This can be a real eye grabber and can really improve response in some circumstances. Most times we’ve tested it, it works well.

The key is to identify the main value propositions in your copy and apply a highlighter type style to them. Use something like this in your external style sheet to create the above effect:

.highlighter {
background-color: yellow;
}

Remember, your mileage may vary, so always test this with either a split test or multivariate test to confirm that it actually helps.

Warm Regards,

Scott Miller, CEO

Author of “The ConversionLab.com,” The worlds first “How to” guide to testing and optimization. Visit http://www.conversionlab.com/ for a special offer!

1. Headline: We normally test different versions of text for the headline, but you could go so far as to include additional modifying variables like: font size, text color, typeface, alignment, horizontal position, vertical position…

2. Bulleted List of Benefits: When most people look at bulleted lists, they see a text list with little tick marks. We see possibilities. Obviously you could test different sets of bullets. You could also test which bullet comes first (since the first is often the only one read,) how many bullets to include, whether including a bold leader helps, bullet style (image, square or circle), plus the normal formatting stuff….

3. Hero Shot (Image): The hero shot is the main image of your product or offer. Its usually quite important. Lots to do here too: testing the subject of the image of course is a biggie, size of the image, horizontal or vertical orientation, left or right (center?) aligned with your text, drop shadow or not, blend background with page or not, link image or not…

So there you have it, in a quickie blog post I have identified 25 different testable things, and this is just a start.

The fact is that AB testing is not disappearing any time soon. Taguchi can show you what things on the page are the most important. Once you know this, using OFAT on them is a smart strategy for “fine tuning” your key elements.

Back to factors… what can you or should you test? Start with the stuff that appears above the fold. Recent research shows that web visitors make a nearly instantaneous decision about your page. Improving your “engagement rate” can have a major impact on overall response. If your page is not engaging visitors, how can it possibly close with a conversion.

Things to consider: Your Logo, Tagline, Headline, Font, Face, Color, Size, Position, Hero Shot, Image Size, Caption, Subheadline, Greeting, First Sentence of Text, Top Bullet Point, First Paragraph, Inclusion of Advertising, Top Navigation Choice, Hackersafe, BBB, search boxes, just to name a few.

“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!

How do you know that picture actually increases your conversion rate? Certainly more and more people realize that your product doesn’t actually exist- and may dismiss you as having a lack of credibility by implying otherwise.

Have you tested it? Or are you just buying into what some marketing expert says? Remember, what works for one doesn’t work for all. Not only should you test whether the image helps, but also where on the page it should be positioned. Incidentally, I have tested this numerous times, but in the interest of not perpetuating myths or providing one size fits all advice, my only suggestion is to test it!

Online, color is arguably more important than in the real world. Online everything is presented in two dimensions, on a small screen. The colors you choose will likely have an even greater effect on the customers mood and actions. Here are a few of the things you can test:

• Background color
• Text color- although black on white or a similar light color is probably best for the sake of readability
• Headline color
• Accent colors
• Bullet colors

There are plenty more ideas, but this will get you started. What is the best color for your site, your product and your offer? Only you can figure that out, and only by testing different ideas.