If you have attended any of our monthly webinars, you have experienced the power of the GoToWebinar tool:

• We are able to deliver webinars of any length for up to 1,000 attendees
• You are able to interact with the speakers, not only by asking questions in real time but by “guessing which test variation won” via the polling and survey capabilities during our interactive Testing Game

Citrix Online wants to help its customers do a better job in marketing, including improving their own conversion rate

This Thursday, May 12, 2011 at 11:00 am PST/2 pm EST Citrix is sponsoring the newest webinar: “Learn from the Pros: The Top–5 Secrets of Landing Page Optimization”

The guest speaker will be Brenda Dentinger, Senior Customer Programs Manager, Citrix Online and she will lead the interactive presentation, including content on how to run successful webinar programs and GoToWebinar’s best practices for marketing professionals.

As Bernardo de Albergaria, vice president and general manager of collaboration, Citrix Online, put it: “Marketing professionals love GoToWebinar because it is incredibly easy to use and provides the tools needed to increase market reach, generate more leads and expand their business,” said Bernardo. “With insight from WiderFunnel and the power of GoToWebinar, they can improve their online conversion rate with skills they can use every day on their own website landing pages.”

To register, visit http://learn.gotowebinar.com/content/11029360

FaveCrafts, a free content website aimed at crafters and part of Prime Publishing Group (a leading Internet media company that operates community and e-commerce web sites in the crafting, home décor, wellness, diet and cooking categories) worked with WiderFunnel to increase their e-mail address capture.

Testing, using an A/B/n strategy, increased the conversion rate on their AdWords landing page form by 22.3%!

Click here to read the FaveCraft case study.

Interested in more case studies on capturing email addresses?

Then, click here to learn how Tourism BC increased their permission-to-contact opt-in conversion rate by 12% with a few small (but oh-so-crucial) changes.

How does an organization like Disney create such a remarkable reputation? What can we learn from it?

On a recent family visit to Disneyland, I aimed to gather clues to their success. As with each visit (this being the fourth in as many years) I was again impressed by the organization’s quality of execution.

What can Disneyland teach us about experience optimization?

“Walt Disney made it clear we could never rest on our laurels, so continuous improvement has been an integral part of our culture”
- Julie Hodges, Vice President, Organization and Professional Development, Walt Disney Parks and Resorts. (source)

Here are a few observations that were good reminders for me.

Systematize for contingencies
It rained for the first hour of our three-day visit to the Park. While we grabbed breakfast at a Disney bakery, I watched as the rain-contingency plans were executed.

During a rain spell, souvenir shops are instantly transformed into rain-preparation shops with ponchos, umbrella hats and stroller covers appearing at the front of the stores.

As soon as the clouds passed, a “Cast Member” with a squeegee the size of an industrial broom pushed the water off the deck in an efficient pattern beginning with the highest traffic areas.

It wasn’t until then that I noticed that the pavement texture throughout the Park was selected to provide texture for wet grip and yet be smooth enough for an effortless squeegee.

The secret here is that no discussion is needed when rain happens. Everyone knows the plan and it is executed quickly.

• Does everyone on your team know exactly what to do when the inevitable challenges happen?
• Do you have written and rehearsed contingency plans?

Communicate with personality (always be in character)

Communicate with
personality

Disney uses each interaction to reinforce the brand. For example, imagine the traumatic experience of parents being separated from their child in the Park. The “lost parents” area at Disneyland reminds us that: a. the kids are in charge, b. everyone is safe, c. even a terrifying event can be turned into fun.

• What is your communication personality? Fun, precise, innovative, empathetic, trustworthy, formal, knowledgeable, refined, aggressive, personable? Pick 2-3 and set the tone for the organization.

Manage expectations

Manage expectations

In the high season, wait times for popular rides are notoriously long. Disneyland manages expectations by posting wait times at the front of the line that are a little more than the actual wait times.

• Are you setting expectations that you can’t meet or not setting expectations at all?
• If you promise a 24 hour response time, why not have a real response time of 2 hours?
• If you have shipping costs, why not tell your visitors before they get to the shopping cart?

Turn downsides around
You would be surprised if you calculated the ratio of ride to waiting ratio at Disneyland. One of their greatest innovations has been making lineups nearly enjoyable with themed audio & video surroundings. The themed waiting experience adds to a sense to anticipation rather than boredom.

• Do you know what the biggest pain points are for your customers’ experience with you? How can you turn them into a benefit?
• Can longer delivery times equal better quality, like a fine restaurant?

Segment your audience
For the “professional riders” that aren’t interested in the lineup experience, they’ve added the “Fast Pass” system. You have the option of taking a Fast Pass from each ride, which gives you a time of the day to return and move to the front of the line. If you’re an adrenaline enthusiast, you can play the system and minimize your wait times.

The more relaxed visitors can still enjoy the themed lineups at their leisure.

• Can you segment your experience to appeal to major visitor segments or personas?

Provide a consistent experience every time

Consistent experience

Disneyland doesn’t have “bad days”. They make every day feel special with parades, special characters and full ride service. Have you noticed the street litter at Disneyland? There is none!

If you have a services business, you know that consistency of service is one of the biggest challenges. Nobody is “on” every day, right?

Disneyland has found the most reliable way to increase consistency: acting. Their staff are called “Cast Members” and they are trained to perform every moment that they are in the park. This isn’t just a job; it’s a performance. When you perform, you can ignore how you’re feeling and put on a different persona.

Frame your value proposition
Disneyland doesn’t just provide rides and attractions; they provide an interactive theatre experience. It is an escape into an fairy-tale world. Their ride planners are called “Imagineers” and their staff are “Cast Members”.

With this perspective they consequently need to pay attention to the details. To provide an escapist experience, there can be no holes in the canvas, and that is what makes Disneyland so spectacular.

• What need are you actually filling for your customers?
• Do you provide rides, or an escape from reality?
• 2″ drill bits or 2″ holes?
• Retail clothing or “looking great”?
• Business software or “looking indispensable”?

Be extraordinary
When Disneyland creates a fireworks show, it’s like nothing you’ve seen before. They don’t just light some off-the-shelf fireworks timed to some music. They invent new ways of using fireworks to tell their story. They mix, lasers, surround fireworks to colour the sky, actors suspended from high wires, projections onto buildings, flame torches and custom- designed fireworks. There’s a standard of excellence that they won’t compromise.

Commit to Continuous Improvement

Continuous Improvement

Imagine if you had created a “Magic Kingdom” that was the pioneer and envy of all worldwide theme parks. Would you feel motivated to tear up a ride and build a new one?

Much like the WiderFunnel Kaizen Method for Website Optimization, Disneyland is continuously improving and updating the experience. They survey visitors year-round to learn which rides are attracting visitors to the Park, and they continuously “Imagineer” new ones. There’s even a building that shows their development plans and sketches for the next three years.

• Are you too comfortable with your current level of success?
• How can you foster new ideas that could shake up the status quo for your website experience?

Have fun!
You can’t leave Disneyland without being inspired to have fun.

Life is too inexplicable, random and short to take too seriously. A scientific approach to continuous improvement should not remove the wonder and excitement of life’s discoveries. Disneyland shows that discipline and fun can live under the same roof.

Then, as part of that time waste, I came across MarketingSherpa and my life changed (well, at least my attitude did). I realized, after reading just one issue of this amazing online publication that everything I knew about direct marketing, database marketing, CRM and so on, could directly relate to marketing on the internet. Everything I knew about making marketing measurable and accountable could now be taken the next level on the internet – and I was hooked.

Anne Holland founded MarketingSherpa and was its president until last year when she sold the company and decided to do some gardening. Sensing a kindred soul, I had been in touch with Anne over the years, and I figured that her gardening days could not last long (I mean, the weather in New England isn’t that conducive to year-round gardening so I figured she’d get bored soon enough). So we got talking about collaborating and, I have to admit that from a career perspective, the day she agreed to sit on our Board of Advisors was one of the happiest days for me.

Anne is a passionate advocate of online marketing testing. She currently publishes the authority website Which Test Won? and I encourage you to check it out, as it’s all about A/B split testing and multivariate testing. Every week she’ll be featuring a new real-life testing example you can vote on, and then see how your gut stacks up against the actual test results. Plus, it’s got a 125-term testing glossary and heaps of “know-how” information.

Chris Goward and I, as well as our growing WiderFunnel team of testing experts, are thrilled with our association with Anne Holland, truly a leader in our industry, and look forward to continuing to learn together and grow the exciting field of conversion optimization!

Rudder management worked with us because the conversion rate on their website was below their expectations and, in order to meet business objectives, they needed to quickly improve the conversion rate of the sales funnel.

So, rather than tweak the website and make “opinion-based” changes, management chose to make data-driven decisions by running statistically valid experiments (smart!).

MarketingSherpa (my favourite online publication, hands down!) published an excellent write up of the Rudder case study here. Rudder’s is the fourth WiderFunnel case study they selected to publish (others include Tourism BC; SAP BusinessObjects; and Safe Software).

(In case you don’t know, MarketingSherpa is a research firm specializing in tracking what works in all aspects of marketing – and what does not. They have hundreds of thousands of subscribers… I have been reading their publications for about 10 years… so I am pretty sure I must be “subscriber number 3”)

obama online
marketing article

Today, the local business publication, Business in Vancouver (BIV), picked up on my blog posts about Obama’s use of conversion optimization testing, which you can find below:

• Obama Used Conversion Rate Optimization to Win
• Obama’s Home Page Image Test

If you have a BIV subscription, you can read the article here. If not, we’ve republished it with permission here: Obamasphere’s online lessons for marketers here, or on the author, Alan Zisman’s, website.

But wait! eCommerce sales were not down by as much as overall retail sales.

ComScore’s end-of-season online sales figures put the tally at $25.5 billion, down “only” 3% from a year ago. And MasterCard Advisors’ report says overall ecommerce sales ended the season with a decline of “only” 2.3% (the emphasis is mine).

But wait! Unique visitors to eCommerce sites were actually up.

According to ComScore, while e-commerce sales were down, unique visitors to retail websites during the holiday shopping season were actually up 5%

Yes, more people than in past years were actually shopping online; it’s just that they were not generating as many transactions or spending as much.

It occurs to me that there is an opportunity here:

The hardest and most expensive part is getting web visitors to come to your site. Once they are there, the opportunity to test different merchandising (ie. web page design) options; different checkout procedures; different offers; etc is there just like it is in stores, where retailers routinely test different merchandising options as well as signage to determine how to move more merchandise.

So you need to be ready.

Analysts agree the outlook for early 2009 is worse. Piper Jaffray & Co. analysts estimated that online sales will drop 10% next year as consumers “significantly rein in discretionary spending and save more of their income to rebuild wealth and savings in the coming quarters.”

On a more positive note, S&P analysts predict that sharp cutbacks in retail inventory in 2009 may strengthen retailers’ margins, even amid weak sales.

In this environment, eCommerce retailers must push all the buttons and pull all the levers available to them, and testing the way their web pages convert ranks high in terms of ease of execution and low in terms of cost. Worth a try, I’d say.

This morning, AdAge reports a ComScore finding that consumer web spending dropped 4% so far in November versus the same period last year — the first time e-commerce figures have shown a year-to-year drop. “Despite the recent reprieve that plummeting gas prices have given American consumers, the depressed and volatile stock market, declining housing prices, inflation and the weak job market all represent dark clouds hanging over their heads this holiday shopping season,” said comScore chairman Gian Fulgoni.

But there are positive forecasts too:

ComScore is predicting that spending will come later, and that holiday e-commerce sales “will ultimately match the $29.2 billion spent during November and December of last year.”

So what are brave eCommerce retailers doing?

Right now, they are testing different web page designs and offers to optimize their conversion rates – to make sure they get each and every possible sale from that expensive traffic coming to their site.

In the past (meaning ‘throughout the history of eCommerce’), the “IT Lockdown”, that is, the notion that whatever web site you’ve got on November 1 (or October 1, if you’re an early bird) is the one you’re going to live and do business with through to mid-January was pervasive.

This freeze was instituted for two reasons primarily:

1. Merchants think that testing will be too complicated at a busy sales period, or might entail more risk and more potential for lost sales

2. A lockdown makes the IT department’s life easier. (To be fair, getting all the e-commerce systems working is complex and unstable, so when the load goes up multiple times over Christmas, IT folks believe that whatever benefit they might get from changing the site does not overwhelm the risk of taking the site down.

That rationalization worked well when eCommerce rates were growing by leaps and bounds. But no longer.

Today’s economy calls for brave moves.

As a result, running conversion optimization experiments aimed at improving the eCommerce sales conversion rate is an absolute must. Smart eCommerce retailers (including all our clients who are right now knee-deep in conversion rate optimization experiments!) have figured out the opportunity cost of delaying tests is overwhelming.)

Let’s do the math (you can replace the figures for your company):

Say that at the current run rate, a company expects to get 400,000 visitors to the site in December and get a 1% sales conversion rate, for an average order value of $60 and revenues of $240,000.

Postponing a conversion rate optimization experiment by just one month that would end up lifting the conversion rate from 1% to 1.5% (a 50% increase), that one month push-back will cost $120,000 in sales.

Testing technology has changed and eCommerce merchants no longer have to fear that making changes in a site, testing them and then measuring the results will put any real restriction on their daily traffic or run the risk of a system-wide failure.

Can you afford to wait? Let’s go!

“Website optimization is about persuasion.” says King, “Well optimized sites persuade people to email, call, and ultimately to buy. Optimized sites are fast, engage users, and are easy to find and navigate. Using proven methods of design, copywriting, and visibility, website optimization transforms prospects into customers.”

Where this book really shines is in the Web Performance Optimization section, which comprises the last half of the book. This is clearly where King has the most in-depth knowledge. There are tips for speeding up your CSS, videos, Flash, Javascript, Ajax and more. And that’s before we get to the ‘Advanced Web Performance Optimization’ chapter. We are in the midst of a website redesign and I’ll be sure to pass this on to our developers to make sure we’re optimizing our load times.

There are some caveats to be aware of, however.

The case study methods do not follow our own recommended practices for minimizing external influence factors so the conversion rate increases are not statistically sound.

One case study, for example, compared two page designs one after the other during the Christmas shopping season and found (not surprisingly) that the page tested later in the season had a dramatically improved conversion rate. This sequential testing method is full of flaws. We have done extensive testing of the Urgency factor on landing pages and believe, in this case, that Urgency would account for a greater portion of the conversion rate improvement than the content changes being tested. In other words, as shoppers get closer to the Christmas deadline, they’ll overcome poor design and content because they’re highly motivated! At WiderFunnel we recommend concurrent split testing, either A/B/n or MVT as the reliable method.

Having said that, the Conversion Optimization tips in the book are good starting points, even if the implementation and testing methods aren’t.

It’s a wide-ranging book covering a range of topics that any one person couldn’t hope to be an expert in, which makes it a perfect introduction for optimizing your management of multiple expertise suppliers.

For more information on the book and to buy a copy, see their companion site for the Website Optimization book.

What do you think?
Have you read this book? Any other comments you would add?

What not to do

We recently met with a prospect company that kindly shared a report on the success of their recent advertising campaign’s pay-per-click activity. The ad agency that handled the PPC (along with the rest of the ad campaign) reported that the campaign was a raging success.

Unfortunately, the only measure of success the agency was using was the proportion of the given PPC budget spent. They had managed to spend 100% of the PPC budget for the campaign and therefore concluded that they had been incredibly successful.

It turns out that they were using PPC as a branding activity which, as Stefan Tournquist of Marketing Sherpa confirms, is a bad idea.

What to measure

When deciding with our clients how to measure success, we always look first at how to get as close as possible to revenue. Otherwise we would be in danger of optimizing marketing efforts for low value clicks. A common example are companies that run ad banners promoting free prize contests that are unrelated to their product. They’ll get a ton of contest entry visitors and a terribly low sales conversion rate.

In our Kaizen planning process for conversion optimization projects, the discussion of objectives and measurement process is a critical component. The measurement of success must be irrefutably (or at least as closely as possible) tied to revenue, and decided upon at the outset.

If you plan this right, you’ve already made progress toward a successful Conversion Optimization experiment.