The Marketing Optimization Blog
Turning More Visitors Into Customers
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Putting Your Conversion Optimization Skills to the Test – Play the Game
As our blog readers know, Conversion Optimization is part Art, part Science and part Smart Marketer.
The Art comes from creating innovative and persuasive landing pages and conversion flows, the Science comes from testing those pages, and the Smart Marketer is the one who knows the importance running landing page tests! Continue Reading
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8 Key Conversion Optimization Strategies to Ensure You (Actually) Test What Matters
From time to time we invite thought leaders to contribute to this blog. This week, we are honored to bring to you Kevin Hillstrom’s insightful – and sometimes controversial – approach to Conversion Optimization testing.
Kevin Hillstrom is President of MineThatData, where he has worked with sixty-five e-commerce, retail, and catalog executives to understand the relationship between customers, advertising, products, brands, and channels. Prior to founding MineThatData, Kevin spent nearly two decades in various leadership roles in the retail industry, including Vice President of Database Marketing at Nordstrom, Director of Circulation at Eddie Bauer, and Manager of Analytical Services at Lands’ End. Kevin has written numerous books about marketing, advertising, and customer behavior, and his MineThatData Blog is one of the most widely read Marketing and Analytics Blogs in the United States. Kevin can be contacted at kevinh@minethatdata.com.
Testing is really important! But, surprisingly, few people execute tests.
And, maybe worse, few people test meaningful activities.
Office politics make a huge difference. We sit in meetings Continue Reading
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29 Conversion Optimization Testing Case Studies – and Counting
Sometimes, one is too close to the trees to see the forest. This morning I awoke to a Tweet from our friends at Unbounce which said: “29 Conversion Rate Optimization case studies – http://bit.ly/qOYxMY – from @widerfunnel #cro <<< Awesome” and quickly realized that, being so busy working with clients and creating the case studies, we had never taken the time to count them.
Since the Tweet went viral, Continue Reading
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3 Lessons From My 1st WiderFunnel Test
Since I joined WiderFunnel in April, I’ve been busy getting to know new colleagues, learning a new conversion rate optimization approach, and working with a new group of enlightened clients on optimization strategy.
With all that busy-ness, I’ve not been sharing my thoughts with the Marketing community as much as I used to. But since my very first WiderFunnel experiment had both interesting and positive results, I feel it’s time to post some learning.
Looking at the 3 lessons I’ll share from this experiment, I would say that 2 are good reminders that don’t surprise me, and 1 is a legitimate surprise…definitely worth testing! Continue Reading
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Wall of Shame Screenshot: Subscribe or Unsubscribe?
A brief and lighthearted post today based on something I saw (and screen-captured) that made me laugh out loud. Like an old boss of mine, I’m a screenshot addict.
But before the screenshot, a little background: Every so often, I go through the emails I get on a regular basis and unsubscribe from a bunch of companies who’ve emailed me too often, offer services no longer relevant to me, or haven’t provided enough value in their communications.
This usually involves clicking on a link in the email and visiting a landing page (Yes, unsubscribe pages are landing pages) to complete my task. If all goes well, there is no ill will towards the marketers who I’m going to hear from less, no loss of brand affinity, etc. If it goes less than ideal, then who knows what kind of trouble there will be in this highly networked world
So, I click the link to unsubscribe, hit the landing page and… Continue Reading
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Should I Optimize for Micro-Conversions?
You want your website to generate more revenue, right?
Of course you do.
If you didn’t, you wouldn’t be reading WiderFunnel’s blog. Generating more revenue is what the Conversion Optimization industry is all about.
That’s why I’m concerned about all the talk I hear about “optimizing for micro-conversions”, especially micro-conversions related to Social Media.
What are Micro-Conversions?
We define a micro-conversion as a visitor action that is either on the path toward a revenue-generating conversion or is not directly related to generating revenue.
In other words, a micro-conversion could indicate interest or intent, but does not directly represent a sales lead or revenue. Continue Reading
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No Need to Make Trade-offs in Ecommerce: Lifting Sales AND Revenue per Visitor is Excellence
Ecommerce retailing is brutally competitive. When you add to it additional challenges such as pressure from overseas producers as well as wrong customer perceptions about the value proposition that seem insurmountable, sometimes retailers give up.
That’s why we are so proud of what our client AllPopArt, a producer of handcrafted pop art portraits and photos on canvas, was able to accomplish: through Conversion Optimization testing, not only did they Continue Reading
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Win a Free Trip to SES San Francisco
Would you like to go to the Search Engine Strategies Conference in style? And, by “in style”, I mean free (as in beer).
Well, you’re in luck, because I’m going to give you a great tip to get a free trip and tickets, and have a little fun in the process.
It will only take you 3-5 minutes. But you have to act fast. The contest ends July 11, 2011.
SES is going to award two lucky people a free trip to San Fran to attend the full three-day conference.
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New Conversion Optimization Case Study Posted: From Freemium to Paid
We recently held one of our best-attended webinars, where we presented Zoomerang’s conversion optimization testing results: on the first Test Round, we generated lift of 81% for Paid Subscriptions and 58% in Revenue.
If you missed the webinar, you can download the slides that Chris Goward presented during the Zoomerang webinar.
And now, we have posted the detailed Conversion Optimization case study here. Continue Reading
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How Conversion Optimization Testing Makes “Eventually” Happen Much Sooner in the Freemium Business Model
Does your business model call for “FREE” as a first step? And then what? How do you maximize Conversions-to-Paid?
The “Freemium” model is a fixture of the Web 2.0 and open source companies. According to the New York Times, Freemium is one of the most popular business models among Web start-ups. As a business model, Freemium works by offering a basic product or service such as software or web services free of charge and then charging a premium for advanced features and functionality.
It all sounds pretty reasonable as the Freemium model gives users time to decide whether or not they want to upgrade. Eventually. Continue Reading
