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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!

Background

We were engaged to run a test on a landing page for a software maker. While the site offers the ability to buy the software, the client wanted to focus on getting more free trial downloads out of their marketing investments. The software is relatively “niche,” so we were unsure about how much persuasion was necessary to maximize free trial downloads.

An A/B/n experiment was designed to test the ‘boundaries’ of how much content was needed to get this niche audience to take the desired action. Ultimately, the experiment achieved an 17.4% improvement over the Control design! And that impressive improvement will be enjoyed without spending an extra cent on traffic.

Lesson #1: Be Vigilant About Competing CTAs

Our client’s Control page had 3 competing calls to action to account for 3 separate user tasks. You could: 1) watch a video, 2) buy the software, or 3) download the free trial. Since the primary goal of the page (and the experiment) was to increase trial downloads, we downplayed the competing calls to action, and improved the design and copy of the primary call to action, with favorable results.

Lesson #2: Headlines Should Convey Value Proposition

Especially on landing pages, headlines need to be about more than just Search Engine Optimization. It’s fine to drop in a keyword or two, but if your main headline and/or sub-headline doesn’t convey the value proposition at the top of the page, you’re probably missing out on extra conversions. Our winning variation’s headline talked about the value proposition using “loss aversion,” and the sub-headline was more to-the-point about value.

Lesson #3: Surprise! Screenshot Beats Video!

The experiment’s Control page relied on creative imagery to build value, but the imagery lacked specificity about the value that the product brings to the table. Two alternate ways to convey the value of software are screenshots and demo/overview videos.

Since the client had both available, we decided to pit the two types of content against each other as an “isolated variable.” We ran 2 combinations where the only difference was that one had a product screenshot above the fold, while the other had an overview video player above the fold. My gut said that video would win because it is a) interactive and b) can convey so much more information than a static screenshot. Guess what? The screenshot won, performing 35.94% better than the variation with video!

Perhaps prospects were in a hurry and couldn’t be bothered watching a video? Or, the realistic screenshot conveyed more to the target audience than I thought? Or both?? Would you have guessed screenshot, or video? Why? Drop us a comment below and let us know.

No, I will not fall into the trap of trying to predict the future. I just Googled “marketing predictions 2011” and got “about” 1,380,000 results. Of course, most of these search results included the words “social media” in them (OK, that was a joke).

Instead of trying to predict, I want to thank our clients for the exciting projects you have shared with us this past year; for your support and for your friendship. WiderFunnel had a terrific year of growth in 2010 and we are grateful to you for your trust.

I also want to thank the many, many marketers who are not clients but who attend our webinars; read our blog posts and emails; follow us on Twitter (either me; Chris Goward; or WiderFunnel) – we love your RTs!; download tools from our website; read our case studies; are active members of the three LinkedIn groups we manage (“100% Ecommerce” “B2B Conversion Optimization” and “Consumer Marketing Conversion Optimization“; and are our “fans” on Facebook. (Did I miss anything, Chris?)

We know that you want to learn as much as possible about Conversion Optimization and we are delighted to be part of your journey because, in the process, we learn with you. Plus, we know that when the time is right, you will engage us to work with you to help you improve your own conversion rate.

One of my favorite moments this past year happened when a senior eCommerce manager at a Fortune 1000 company phoned me and said: “I have been following what you do for 6 months and I finally got the promotion I needed to hire you.”

Life is good. Thank you for that.

Speaking about downloads… probably one of the most downloaded content on our website is a free White Paper, “Five Steps to Developing a Successful and Scalable Conversion Optimization Strategy“ (if you have not yet downloaded it, it’s now). Of course, it includes a discussion of the WiderFunnel LIFT Model™ for hypothesis development – the core of our intellectual capital.

In the past few months, many of you have told me that you find the LIFT Model tremendously useful when looking at your own web pages and that, when attending a WiderFunnel webinar, you took a screen capture “of that airplane diagram” to refer to it later on.

Well, to make things easier for you, we have created a poster “of that airplane diagram” – the LIFT Model – and you can download the LIFT Model poster here now. Feel free to pass on to colleagues.

Without a doubt, we all work in one of the most exciting and cutting-edge areas of marketing, and each day the WiderFunnel team is in awe of the leadership people like our clients and friends demonstrate in their work. You are truly an inspiration to us!

Here’s to an Optimized 2011 – may it be a great one for you and your loved ones!

I will be speaking at PubCon 2010 in Vegas this week. If you’re there, don’t miss my Post-Click Marketing: Landing Page Optimization session.

If you won’t be there, don’t worry, we’ve got you covered.

To celebrate PubCon 2010, WiderFunnel is offering a FREE landing page evaluation but only until November 19. Sign up here!

Chris Goward and Rob Snell
at Conversion Conference

I was speaking at Conversion Conference East in Arlington, VA last week and during one of my sessions, the very smart Rob Snell jokingly called out, “But I want a silver bullet to boost my conversion rate!” I knew that Rob was being facetious. He and his brother Steve have learned from years of experience as a Hunting Supplies retailer that “secrets to success” are really hard-earned lessons. But many aren’t so tongue-in-cheek when they ask for that.

Marketing Optimization success takes planning

The inconvenient truth of landing page optimization is that it takes a plan to get it right. Planning for a series of tests will give you much better results than testing one-off tips. Most people are still looking for the elusive secret to conversion rate nirvana and Landing Page Optimization is often approached as simply a tactic for testing the latest conversion optimization tips and tricks.

The good news is that the effort is worth it!

We have yet to find a landing page that couldn’t be improved through testing. Often, conversion rate improvement leads to hundreds of thousands and sometimes millions of dollars in incremental revenue.

The benefits don’t end on the single page you’re testing. By testing strategic hypotheses based on research and analysis you can quickly discover which Value Proposition points, persuasive content and conversion funnel options work best.

You can apply these discoveries to your overall marketing strategy

Imagine knowing with quantitatively tested certainty that your message will resonate with your audience. You no longer have to trust “expert opinion” or follow the lead of your creative agency!

For example, in a recent landing page test for Electronic Arts, we helped the Sims 3 game’s team dramatically lift game registrations (by 128%!) and *also* learn that one particular Value Proposition of registration was much more powerful than all the others.

Now Electronic Arts knows for sure that the Sims 3 message resonates with their audience and delivers business results.

Landing Page Optimization, formerly a simple “tactic”, often disregarded as an overzealous Marketing Manager’s or Web Designer’s pet project, is now a strategic asset to a business.

By taking a strategic approach to your landing page testing you too can glean incredible marketing insights to benefit your entire business, and earn your next raise!

But for our clients in lead-generation (and many in eCommerce) who couldn’t care less about advertising awards but who have a healthy regard for their bottom line, designing web pages that maximize the capture email addresses is definitely the sort of thing that keeps them awake at night.

That is why we are delighted to co-present our next interactive conversion optimization case study webinar with Stuart Hochwert, President of Prime Publishing LLC, on Tuesday, September 14th.

In this webinar we will show you how just one A/B Split Test increased the e-mail address capture conversion rate on FaveCrafts.com by 22.3%!

Capturing email addresses is key to the Prime Publishing business model. Prime Publishing is a leading Internet media company that operates community and e-commerce web sites in the crafting, home décor, wellness, diet and cooking categories and offer consumers the ability to share information through extensive online communities, enjoy their passions and make informed purchasing decisions.

Advertisers working with Prime Publishing reach highly engaged motivated female consumers covering a variety of topics from Frugal Living to Crafting, from Diet and Wellness to Lifestyle, Recipes, Home Decor and more.

Since subscriber permission is vitally important to Prime Publishing, Advertiser email is sent only to registered newsletter subscribers who have opted-in and confirmed their desire to receive them, increasing email address capture rate by 22.3% has had a tremendous impact on their business model.

Learn how to make a difference on your website’s email address capture rate on Tuesday, September 14th, 2010 at 11:00 am Pacific / 2 pm Eastern

Click here to register – capacity (as always) is limited.

We worked with ONP to plan, develop and execute a Conversion Rate Optimization strategy. The strategy we recommended and executed included an A/B/n experiment to quickly establish a higher starting point for further optimization.

The results? An amazing 210% conversion rate lift to Order Form entrances.

Want to learn how we did it and get a few take-aways for your own Ecommerce businesses? Great! Here is the info on the February 3, 2010 webinar:

Length: 50 minutes

Cost: Free – But you need to reserve ahead by registering here

Presenter: Chris Goward, CEO, WiderFunnel Marketing Optimization

Bonus: Attend the webinar and win a FREE Custom Landing Page evaluation

Register here: https://www2.gotomeeting.com/register/574166939

So it was with great enjoyment that I read SEOmoz’ “8 Predictions for SEO in 2010” where one of their predictions is “2010 is the Year of Conversion Rate Optimization.”

SEOmoz, best known for their blog of the same name, is a very well-respected Seattle based search engine marketing company which provides SEO, SEM, website design and other consulting services. Last week, Rand Fishkin, their respected CEO & Co-Founder, wrote:

“If I were doing another startup today, it would focus on software for conversion rate optimization. I think this is still the most under-utilized and highest ROI activities in the marketing department, but more awareness is on its way. CRO isn’t just about testing; it’s about building a process for improving conversion over time. Online businesses can generate so much revenue from this, yet few invest. I think 2010 is the year, simply because it’s an inflection point for companies to assess their spend and where they derive value.”

Rand Fishkin then goes on to present a table describing three tiers of marketing channels and their scores for Average ROI, Average Effort and Average Cost. Conversion Optimization appears in the #1 placement for Tier 1.

Great news for our clients, since that is precisely where WiderFunnel Marketing Optimization plays.

We have been in this wonderful business space called Conversion Optimization since June 2007, as one of the very first companies in the world that identified conversion optimization as the emerging field that would deliver significantly high ROI to clients investing in the strategy, and that would prove to be counter-cyclical once marketing budgets stopped growing as they had been until then.

So, with two and a half years’ experience doing just one thing, conversion optimization tests for clients in all areas and delivering conversion rate lift of up to 290% for them, we have seen a lot of changes – and Rand Fishkin’s observations deserve some pondering and feedback.

• “If I were doing another startup today, it would focus on software for conversion rate optimization”

Rand, don’t do that.

Testing software choices available to businesses today are plentiful and the market is very well served. Robust options, ranging in capabilities and pricing (and even “free”), include Google Website Optimizer; Omniture Test & Target; Ion Interactive; Vertster; and others.

We at WiderFunnel work with clients using different tools and, as a technology-agnostic firm, are free and unbiased to recommend the right testing tool to the right client at the right stage of their company’s adoption of conversion optimization as a strategy.

At the end of the day, conversion optimization success is never about the testing tool: there are already many excellent tools available.

• “I think this is still the most under-utilized and highest ROI activities in the marketing department, but more awareness is on its way.”

Rand, on this one you are right.

When we first started WiderFunnel, we would spend a lot of time explaining what testing is all about, trying to cause an “Aha! Moment” where prospects would suddenly (well, after a one hour presentation) “discover” that it was dramatically cheaper and far less risky to run conversion optimization tests than to keep throwing marketing dollars at Search campaigns.

Things have changed.

We now get a steady stream of well-educated prospective clients who contact us knowing what conversion optimization is all about and asking how we work with clients.

Most importantly, we now get a very high percentage of prospective clients who have already dabbled at testing themselves (both with free and with paid testing tools) and have realized that conversion optimization isn’t just “one more thing” their in-house staff can do: they know they need experts to deliver a sustainable and scalable testing strategy for them if they are to optimize the complete site and stay ahead of the competition.

• “CRO isn’t just about testing; it’s about building a process for improving conversion over time.”

Rand, again, this one is bull’s eye!

After two and half years of running tests for clients, we have learned that conversion optimization success is NEVER about the testing tool they choose and ALWAYS about two factors:

1. The right test hypotheses (or “knowing what to test”)

2. The right (and scalable) process (as in “Can you execute properly in the areas of web analytics; conversion optimization strategy; test design; variable content placement; wireframing; graphic design; copy and modifications; layouts and mock-ups; technical installation; HTML; real-time results analysis…?”).

WiderFunnel Marketing Optimization does all that for clients, consistently.

• “Online businesses can generate so much revenue from this, yet few invest.”

Rand, again you are right here.

So many marketers still look for the silver bullet: that shiny new idea that pleases their eye and their ego and which can be done with relatively little work.

However, current economic conditions, where the CFO continues to cut the marketing budget and demands marketing actually increase its productivity and deliver even higher ROI, is changing all this.

And it is changing on a daily basis: we are seeing not only greater investment in conversion optimization but a greater realization on the part of marketers that this is a business-model changer for their companies, here to stay.

• “I think 2010 is the year, simply because it’s an inflection point for companies to assess their spend and where they derive value.”

Amen to that!

If you run a single-product eCommerce site, as opposed to multi-product niche stores, you know you face unique challenges.

Most marketers, even multi-product eCommerce marketers, aren’t aware of the unique complexities you face:
• Market must be created
• Product must be seen to be appreciated
• Prospects are not aware of product capabilities
• No one searches for a product they don’t know about
• Sales tend to be one-shot with the potential for repeat sales
• The chances of a web visitor to purchase on website tend to be low to moderate since, by definition, there is only one product to select from

Plus, and this is huge, all the marketing costs must be carried by single product and cannot be spread over many products.

So when we started to optimize the conversion rate for Sytropin, a product of Speedwinds Nutrition (a Portland, OR-based business focused exclusively on developing top quality nutritional supplements), we knew we had a big challenge in our hands.

As most single-product eCommerce websites, management knew it needed to improve the sales conversion rate and had reworked its Pay-per-Click landing page and conducted extensive testing – both A/B and multivariate. But their visitor-to-buyer conversion improvements had reached a ‘conversion rate plateau’ and now they needed expert help.

By working together with WiderFunnel, management was able to break out of the ‘conversion rate plateau’ and generate a quantum leap conversion rate lift to their AdWords landing page: 50% more sales conversions from the same traffic.

If you manage a single-product eCommerce site you should read the case study and then attend the by-registration only webinar (and take a peek behind the scenes on how the test was designed and executed).

Find the Sytropin Case Study here and register for the in-depth webinar to be presented November 4, 2009 here.

To read more Conversion Optimization case studies, go here.

Born in 1999, BabyAge.com, Inc. is the premiere online retail distributor and manufacturer of pregnancy, infant and juvenile products. BabyAge.com offers the largest assortment of infant and juvenile products on the web, carrying over 25,000 items of both durable and consumable goods.

In May 2009, Pennsylvania -based BabyAge.com was recognized by Internet Retailer Magazine as number 280 of the Top 500 websites in the United States based on annual sales revenues.

Recently, BabyAge.com management recognized that redesigning their product pages without using statistically valid testing methods would not deliver reliable improvement. They needed a way to decide, without relying on ‘gut feeling’, which changes would actually deliver improved and measurable results.

So, instead of ‘gut feeling’ BabyAge.com embarked on a strategy of Conversion Optimization – and immediately attained outstanding results!

Read the case study here.

It’s not too late for you to test your Ecommerce pages and have a very merry optimized Christmas selling season ahead!

We received great feedback on the case study – as well as some excellent questions, including:

• The case study is too short. Can you share more insights?

• How do you decide when to do and MVT and when you do an A/B test?

And (my favourite):

• What on earth *is* a multivariate test anyway!?

So we decided to answer these (and many more) questions, as well as provide an in-depth show-and-tell on the case study, during a live webinar and we are grateful that Peter Novotny, W3i’s Marketing Manager, agreed to join us to present.

On Wednesday, September 23, 2009, Peter, together with Chris Goward, WiderFunnel’s CEO, will present a live webinar so you can get an in-depth look at the intricacies of multivariate testing and learn the mechanics of designing and executing an MVT test.

Here are the details:

- Wednesday, September 23, 2009 at 2:00 pm EDT/11 am PST

- Only 100 seats available on first-come, first- served basis

- Length: 50 minutes

- Cost: Free — But reservations required due to limited space

Register here – and learn how a multivariate test gets put together.