I would love to see a test of this and find out how much this second option actually reduced list unsubscriptions.

1. The search box itself:

The primary goal of optimizing the search box itself is to make certain visitors on the site can find it and understand what it does. Typical tests would revolve around the placement of the search box, size of the text field, color, and the appearance and text on the button.

2. The search results page:

Once people complete a search, they arrive to a results page which displays matching products or content.  The goal of the results page is for people be able to quickly see the results and then link to the content found.  Certainly, the effectiveness of this page will be highly dependent on the relevance of the results, but on-page factors (which can be optimized) play an important role as well.

We have seen simple changes and optimization increase search result page engagement by over 40%, which is a very big lift for something most people would think has little to do with testing.

The results page offers up many more areas of testing and optimization.  Here are a few to consider:

• How many results do you display?
• Do you use a regular site template or a scaled down page design which makes it easier for the user to focus on results?
• What visual cues do you provide within the results (such as highlighted matching text.)
• Do you allow people to purchase or add to cart directly from the search results?
• Do you show prices in the results?
• Do you show a “related searches” section to help the user refine their search (this has potential to distract them from the main results though.)

When you test these, you should make sure to track both result page engagement (did people click on the search results) as well as revenue per visit.  Subtle changes in the search system can make a big difference in revenue for many e-commerce sites, so never rely on engagment metrics only!

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!

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

When I look at a page for the first time, I examine it under the premise of a simple framework I call the three C’s of conversion. It goes like this:

Does your landing page:

1. Capture the attention of the visitor?
2. Communicate your primary value proposition to the visitor?
3. Close the sale, lead, or other offer you are making?

Each of these steps are essential to boosting conversion. On my snow-delayed flight out of Chicago, I thought I should add one more C to the equation: the Customer!

Obviously, with no customer, there is no sale!

The reason this is important is simple: upon arrival to your site, the customer has some expectation in mind, something he or she was looking for. In order to capture, communicate and close, your site must be as relevant as possible to this customer.

In the coming days I will be sharing more specific recommendations and insight on analyzing and improving your Cs of conversion.

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!

Hmmm… I found the article troubling and really short on data. Several different cases were presented, from retailers such as Overstock.com, Dell, and Apple. What was not presented was any kind of objective data showing that in fact online chat is actually decreasing sales conversion rates at online retailers. Rather, I think the author keyed in on a couple of bad experiences and painted this useful risk reversal technique with a broad negative brush.

What it comes down to is that like most other sales boosting efforts online, this can and should be tested. Always. Had the author commissioned a couple simple split tests, she may have written it differently.

Will this article trigger some business owners to rip down their “Live Person” buttons? I wouldn’t be surprised. My message to you: Test it first to see what the effect really is on your sales.

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.

“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.