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Learning doesn’t have to be boring. WiderFunnel has just launched a new (free!) online game for marketers to allow you and your colleagues to test your conversion optimization skills. You by guessing on the results of real landing page experiments.

To play the game you view a series of actual website experiments, including the page variations that were tested. For each experiment, you can choose which variation you believe converted the most visitors to leads or customers in each experiment.

Whether your answer is right or wrong, you can download the entire case studies to find out why the winning variations performed better than the others.

Even though conversion rate optimization is serious business and drives huge revenue improvements for our clients, it’s a lot of fun to us, and we hope it is for you too!

Take 4 Minutes to Try It Now

Or maybe you’re one of the smart ones who realize that ticket prices can only go down as the event approaches.

Well, wait no more. Here’s your code to save 30% on your OMS pass: SPEAKER30

But you need to register now to get the discount. I’ll wait here while you do.

Done?

I hope you’ll be able to attend my session on Tuesday, Feb 7 at 11:45am.

Catch the Conversion Optimization Session at OMS

I will be presenting “5-Step Conversion Optimization Testing”, showing how leading conversion optimization companies are using WiderFunnel’s proven continuous improvement process. There will be lots of case studies and take-aways.

Register for a 1:1 Labs Meeting

You can also book a free consultation with me at the event. OMS has set up a table for us to meet to discuss your website conversion challenges. I can give you advice on how to prioritize conversion optimization opportunities, how to get the best results with testing and how to quantify the potential improvement from a conversion optimization strategy. To book a session, email: OMS2012@widerfunnel.com

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However, if you advertise with Google AdWords, bounce rate is important. Since (by definition) you’ve paid for each visitor from paid search, each lost visitor costs you dearly.

In addition to the immediate cost, there’s long term harm caused by a high bounce rate, as we’ll discuss today. A high bounce rate can negatively impact your Quality Score. You should most definitely reduce your bounce rate for paid search traffic sources, especially traffic from Google AdWords!

What Creates Your Quality Score

As you may know, Google uses its Quality Score as one of the factors that influences how high your ads rank in their search results. With a higher Quality Score you get a more prominent ad placement at lower cost.

As with all of Google’s algorithms, the company is constantly adjusting how Quality Score is measured to make it a more accurate gauge of the appeal of your ad & landing page combination. They don’t publicly share everything that they include the the algorithm, but do give enough hints to guide us.

The basic inputs Google is known to consider in Quality Score include:
• The relevance of your ad to your keywords and landing page content
• The amount of useful content on your landing pages
• The historical click-through rate of your ads, display URLs and account
• “Other relevance factors” (according to Google’s own criteria)

Your Bounce Rate is a Quality Indicator

Included in that last point, “Other relevance factors”, Google may be watching your bounce rate. While they may not be able to look directly at the bounce rate for all of your pages, they do have a lot of visitors’ behavioural data available. For example, they can estimate your paid search bounce rate without tapping into your web analytics tool by monitoring your “Return to SERP Rate”.

The Searcher Return to SERP Rate

We know that Google can watch how often searchers click on an ad, then hit their Back button and return to click on a different ad. I call this the Return to SERP Rate. To Google, that can be an indicator that the first landing page was not a high quality experience. If you get too many searchers returning from your landing pages to the search results, Google can assume that your landing pages are not high quality. If they can assume that, your Quality Score is likely to decline.

They couldn’t have weighted that factor very heavily in the past, though, since it was an indirect assumption. That inaccuracy is presumably why they are now gathering direct feedback from users.

New Direct Hit to Your Quality Score: The “Block These Ads” Link

Google now allows your landing page visitors to choose to block your ads. Similar to how you can block ads or news feeds on Facebook, your visitors can now tell Google to block all AdWords ads from your company!

As an example, I did a search for the search term “Nikon Coolpix“. A partial list of the Google ads I saw is below.

After clicking on the Amazon ad, I arrived at Amazon’s landing page, then clicked the back button. That’s when I saw the slightly revised set of ads, below.

Notice that within the Amazon ad, there’s now a link to “Block all amazon.ca ads”.

What does this mean?

Your Visitors Can Block Your Ads and Hurt Your Quality Score

If your landing page experience gives a bad impression to your visitors and doesn’t satisfy their search, they can now block you. This will send a direct signal to Google that your ads aren’t relevant. Google then has a very strong data point to downgrade your Quality Score!

How to Reduce Your Bounce Rate

You need to get serious about reducing your bounce rate to improve your quality score. Here are the top ways to reduce your bounce rate:

1. Optimize your landing page conversion rate – If you optimize to improve sales, leads and revenue, your bounce rate will naturally decrease. The added benefit is that you will get more revenue-producing actions from your marketing spend. We can run landing page optimization tests for you and reduce your bounce rate as we have for many other clients. Here are landing page optimization case studies for examples.
2. Customize your landing pages for your search traffic – By making your landing pages more relevant to the traffic source, your conversion rates will improve and bounce rate will decrease. We include this as part of the landing page testing we can do for you. Contact us for more information and to get a quote for full service landing page optimization.
3. Re-structure your AdWords campaign – Is your AdWords campaign optimized? Are you sure you are spending your AdWords budget in the most efficient way to maximize your results? If you’re not sure, we offer an unbiased AdWords Campaign Audit service. Since we won’t try to sell you on managing your AdWords campaigns (we do the results analysis, not campaign management), you can be sure the advice we give is unbiased. You will be able to sleep better at night and get a reduced bounce rate.

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What are you thankful for?

I am thankful to be living in a country where the people’s rights and freedoms are protected and we are encouraged to be enterprising.

I am thankful for a healthy family with a caring, gorgeous wife and two beautiful and talented daughters.

I am thankful to be on a wonderful journey to learn principles of success and well-being that can work for everyone, not just an elite few.

I’m also thankful for the exciting business that is growing just as I envisioned many years ago.

It was just over four years ago that I left the traditional advertising agency world to pursue my vision for a results-driven online services company. I had been disappointed with ill-conceived digital marketing strategies from many of the large agencies. They tried to re-create the glory days of TV and billboard ads online and it was failing for their clients, the advertisers. I am thankful that the marketplace is now rewarding companies that focus on results more than cleverness or agency awards. Data-driven online marketers are getting a voice in their organizations!

I began WiderFunnel along with my Co-Founder, Raquel Hirsch, in June 2007, just a few months before the real estate bubble came crashing down. Fortunately, we have grown every year since then and continue to see huge growth in demand for our conversion optimization services.

Recently, Raquel decided to leave WiderFunnel to pursue other interests. I am thankful for the tireless effort she contributed to growing the company as we worked together in a shared office for four years. She is a dynamic and enterprising person and I look forward to seeing what she does next.

I am thankful for the new team members that have recently joined WiderFunnel in Business Development, Marketing and Client Service as we continue to grow. I am always thankful for the tremendously talented team at WiderFunnel who shares my vision and continues to amaze me with their brilliant work.

I am very thankful to WiderFunnel’s many friends, fans and followers who have supported and shared in my vision for this continuous learning and improvement process.

And, we are still hiring! I would be very thankful if you would pass the word to all the smart, results-oriented people you know in Vancouver: http://www.widerfunnel.com/about/careers

Stay tuned for more exciting announcements in the coming months!

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Have you heard about Google’s new bid-per-call feature in AdWords? Do you have a strategy for using it?

Google has long understood the value of phone call conversions. As early as 2007 my conversations with Google executives inevitably ended up in discussions of their plans to capture multi-channel conversions, specifically from phone calls.

Google has made many well-known moves in the phone space, including the launch of Google Talk, Google Voice and the most prominent acquisition: Motorola. Of course, we all know about their success with Android (and we’ve heard recently how badly Steve Jobs wanted to kill it).

Bid Per Call Now in AdWords

With Google’s announcement last week of new phone call bidding in AdWords, the company will be adding an important layer to their phone capability and to your lead generation toolset.

The feature will be rolled out in the US and UK over the coming few weeks. Previously, only ads shown on mobile devices had phone call options displayed. Once this feature is added, you will be able to add phone numbers to AdWords ads shown to users on PCs and tablets. Phone numbers will be added to ads regardless of the viewing device.

Many advertisers have resorted to using up some of their scarce ad characters to show a phone number, like in these examples:

Phone Number in AdWords Ad Example #1

Phone Number in AdWords Ad Example #2

With AdWords bid-per-call, phone numbers can be listed in addition to the regular ad text, like this:

New Bid-Per-Call Phone Number in AdWords Ad Example

This is big news! Lead generation advertisers can capture high value phone call leads and Google can capture a new stream of revenue and information.

Google AdWords Bid Per Call Conversion Strategy

Here are two major aspects to consider in crafting an AdWords bid-per-call strategy:

1. How to optimize for the new phone number Quality Score
2. How to optimize your landing pages and conversion funnel for phone calls

How to Optimize for Phone Call Quality Score

Here’s what we know already: Google will be using a merged Quality Score with a combination of landing page quality and phone call quality.

There’s already lots of fact and opinion available about the landing page quality component. What I’m more interested in here is the phone call Quality Score component.

How will phone call quality score be measured?
Google has told us that they will look at your phone call conversion rate as part of the new merged Quality Score. This means that your ad’s Quality Score will be rated higher if it gets more phone calls for each thousand ad impressions. Think of it sort of like your online Click-through rate.

We also know that Google will use other data that they have available to modify their algorithm. But what additional data will they use?

I believe the easiest additional metric for them to include would be call duration. If a caller stays on the line for more than a certain time threshold, say 60 seconds, Google could judge that they’ve been engaged in a relevant conversation. The percentage of conversations that are not relevant (and end early) could be considered your phone call bounce rate.

We also know that Google has developed advanced voice recognition technology and are likely looking for new ways to use it. I anticipate that they will analyze incoming calls across a variety of industries over the next few months for the purpose of identifying buying signals. Once they identify common buying signals, they could develop a predictive analytics algorithm that determines how useful a call is to the caller.

For example, they could analyze call conversations to look for these potential buying or “interest” signals:

• Ratio of speaking time between caller and operator – maybe Google will find that a higher ratio of caller to operator talk time indicates a higher quality conversation.
• Percentage of call that include interest or satisfaction words from the caller like thank you, how much, how many, how long, how fast.
• Affirmative words from the operator: good question, absolutely, yes, you’re welcome, [keyword] mention, etc.
• Can you think of other call indicator words that could signify a high quality, relevant call?

In addition to call analytics, once Google has the prospect’s phone number, (because remember, the call is being routed through Google,) they could also follow up immediately with an automated survey to learn about satisfaction.

Before starting with Google bid-per-call, make sure your phone-handling system is set up effectively. Have helpful, trained staff ready to take calls immediately and provide useful information.

How to Optimize Landing Pages for Phone Call Conversions

As exciting as this announcement is, remember that most of your prospects will need more information than they get from a paid search ad in order to call you. Picking up the phone is a commitment that most won’t make unless they know your company or have already done some research.

Many of the Adwords phone calls will be used by existing customers and most of your good prospects will still need to visit your landing pages.

Landing Page Optimization Dramatically Lifts Phone Call Conversion Rates
We’ve run many Landing Page Optimization tests to optimize phone call conversions for B2B and B2C lead generation sites. For many of our clients, phone call leads are much more valuable than online form fill leads. If we can substantially lift the phone call conversion rate, it can have a huge impact on business results.

Example: B2B Lead Generation Landing Page Optimization for Phone Calls
When Merchant Warehouse needed to improve their landing page performance for phone calls and form fills, WiderFunnel’s multi-channel conversion optimization process worked for them.

We ran the original “Control” page through our standard Funnel Experiment process. We evaluated their Web Analytics data, analyzed the page with our LIFT Analysis, and executed full service experiments (including wireframing, graphic design, copywriting, HTML and results analysis). See below for a portion of the LIFT Analysis output.

The result is a winning page, shown below, that showed a statistically significant improvement of 15% lift in leads generated, which included phone calls and form fills. The result is more high quality leads for the business, without needing to spend more on AdWords! You can read the entire B2B Lead Generation Landing Page Optimization case study here.

Winning Page with 15% Lead Generation Conversion Rate Lift!

What do you think about Google Bid Per Call?

Are you planning on using AdWords phone call bidding when it’s rolled out? How will it affect your business? I’m interested to read your comments below.

Do you have challenges with your website that need expert attention? Will you be at PubCon Vegas on Nov 9 & 10? If so, you’re in luck, but you’ll have to act fast.

I have led the strategy for all of our clients since we founded WiderFunnel in 2007. From the in-house playbook we’ve developed, based on learning from thousands of tests and hundreds of clients, I can tell you what really works. Not just what consultants think might work.

To connect with me at the PubCon Conference and talk about your website conversion challenges, just email “pubcon2011@widerfunnel.com” and ask to schedule a 1:1 session.

If you haven’t been to PubCon Vegas before, it can be an overwhelming experience. The conference includes four days of sessions with 9 separate tracks covering topics like SEO, Paid Search, Local Search, Advertising, Branding and, of course, Conversion Optimization & Landing Page Optimization. Which ones should you choose to see?

Let me help you with at least two selections. I will be presenting twice and I’ve just added two separate “Labs” sessions where you can book a slot to speak face to face.

Landing Page and Conversion Optimization Presentations

Join me and find out how to get true conversion rate lift from tested results, not just gut opinion. You will see Conversion Optimization case studies and results from companies like SAP, Electronic Arts, AllPopArt.com and more. Plus, I’ll give you frameworks and strategies you can use to get results for your sites immediately.

Here are the sessions to mark on your agenda:

• Multivariate Testing and Conversion Optimization
  Wednesday November 9, 4:20pm
• Post Click Marketing: Landing Page Optimization
  Thursday November 10, 3:15pm

Request a 1:1 Meeting – Limited Slots Available!

Here are the 1-on-1 meeting slots that are available to book:

• Conversion Optimization 1-to-1 Lab
  Wednesday November 9, 2-3pm
  3 slots available Update: Only 1 slot left!
• Landing Page Optimization 1-to-1 Lab
  Thursday November 10, 11am-12pm
  3 slots available Update: All slots booked!

To request a booking, send an email to “pubcon2011@widerfunnel.com” now.
One of WiderFunnel’s friendly team members will confirm availability.

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As Conversion Optimization Professionals, our job is to identify components of websites that are hurting the company’s conversion rates and revenue.

In some cases, where the site has already been tested or happens to be well-planned, we have to dig deep in our bag of tricks to develop the test plan.

Other times, the site gives us a gift with components that are common conversion killers. One of the most common of these gifts is the rotating home page offer banner.

We love offer banners! They give us lots of great opportunities to easily beat the Control page with our newly designed test Variations.

Should I use a rotating home page offer banner?

That’s a question I’m often asked when I present at conferences and webinars. Unfortunately for the questioner, they are addressing a common cause of Relevance, Clarity and Distraction problems. (Note: For more information on these and the other three Conversion Rate Factors, read up on the LIFT Framework that we use to analyze landing pages)

I decided to visit an arbitrary sampling of home pages today and found nearly all of them featuring some form of a gallery rotator.

Now, I’ll preface the remarks below by saying that there are some excellent uses for a rotating gallery. For example, to display images of home page rotating banners. See below for examples by the Gap, Adobe, Home Depot, Hilton and more. (How do you like the meta message I used there? This post is like an onion. Layered…)

Home Page Rotating Offer Gallery Examples

(Click above to view full size)

We have tested rotating offers many times and have found it to be a poor way of presenting home page content.

The problem with home page rotating features

Let’s think about your visitor’s experience for a moment.

1. She arrives on your home page and needs to orient herself to your layout in order to decide which information to zero in on. A strong, page-dominant banner with a headline and bold image is where she’s likely going to start her focus.
2. Unfortunately, the message in that banner usually isn’t relevant to what she’s looking for. Why? The marketing department is featuring current events, offers and news that may be important to some department within the organization but not to the majority of the visitors.
3. In the lucky event that your visitor sees an offer that looks interesting to her, she will want to read a little more about it. But, just as she’s gathered the motivation to click through and learn more… the rotator switches to the next offer.
4. What happens now? She’s confronted with a second offer and now has to decide whether to focus on reading it or to go back to the previous. She’s feeling some frustration and disorientation at this point.
5. If she decides that the first offer was what she really wanted to see, how does she get back to it? She has to figure out the usability of this gallery. The Art Director surely would have made it easy to navigate back and forth between the offers, right?
6. Unfortunately, that’s rarely the case. Your beleaguered visitor may have to locate a tiny row of dots or squares hidden among the bold, colorful photos in the offer onslaught.
7. You can, I’m sure, empathize with her likely reaction, which is to bounce off the site in frustration.

The Politics of Home Page Design

The root of the your home page design problem may not lie solely with your Art Director, though.

The problem may be with an organization that is not clear on its business goals, marketing goals and website goals. When organizational politics, inter-departmental jockeying for position and lack of customer-orientation trump Clarity of your Value Proposition, an offer gallery emerges.

Why?

It is the only way your Art Director has found to give all of the competing messages equal priority in the limited home page space.

To avoid this problem:

1. Begin your website evaluation with a strategic website planning exercise to prioritize your website goals and Conversion Optimization opportunities
2. Commit to controlled, statistically valid testing on your most important website pages, templates and marketing landing pages
3. Bring in third party Conversion Optimization experts to help you win the organizational buy-in you need to be a Marketing Optimization Champion

What’s on your home page?

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Someone recently Tweeted that WiderFunnel had the largest collection of Conversion Optimization case studies anywhere on the web (even I didn’t realized that!) and today we added one more: the PluralEyes Software case study.

Our 30^th posted Case Study tells how testing PluralEyes Software increased its Free Trial Download rate by over 17%. This, of course, in and of itself was a major success but the story has an interested wrinkle: we were all surprised with the results.

But before I tell you why, let me back up for a moment.

As readers of this blog know, the WiderFunnel team is passionate about Conversion Optimization testing. And as if the pressure of delivering conversion lift for each and every client wasn’t enough, whenever we launch a new Test Round, we put some “extra skin in the game” by having a small wager of a Starbucks Gift Certificate for the person (on the WiderFunnel or client teams) who can guess which test variation will lead the pack and win.

We do this to have a bit of fun (of course!) but also because, after over 4 years of a pretty perfect track record, we fully expect that at least one of the test variations we create will improve the client’s conversion rate – we just do not know which one will be the overall winner.

And so when the team created the hypotheses for the PluralEyes Software Test Round, it was “obvious” which Variation was going to win.

But was it?  No it wasn’t.  Here is the scoop.

There were three test variations created:

Variation A

The hypothesis was to simplify the page and provide minimal product information. We added a headline and sub-headline that spoke to the value proposition, made it clear what the call to action was and how to interact with the page, and included reference to all the video editing programs that Plural Eyes supports. Since many visits to the page came from Search with branded keywords, we thought that maybe just “getting out of the way” would win.

Variation B

The hypothesis was that “a fair amount of content was needed to persuade prospects.” In addition to the same headlines, copy, and call to action as Variation A, we added a static screenshot of the software, an illustrated summary of how PluralEyes works, and two relevant testimonials.

Variation C

Here, the layout and content were identical to Variation B but we wanted to try using an existing “overview” video in place of a static screenshot. So, the hypothesis was that “rich media would be more effective than a static screenshot.” The video, if watched, conveyed so much more than one static screenshot. Since everything outside the video player area was the same as B, the video content was an isolated variable.

“Gut feel” isn’t so good…

Everyone’s “gut” was of course that Variation C (“rich media more effective than a static screenshot”) would be the winner because the target audience were “video people,” so therefore a professionally-produced overview video would be more persuasive.

In reality, the winner was Variation B – screenshot (not video)!

This page variation increased the Free Trial download conversion rate by more than 17%.

How much better was screenshot than video?

Over 35% better!

And THAT is why we test!

Important take-aways:

The key takeaway here is video should always be tested. While having video on your site may be considered a general best practice, having it on landing pages, or any page where you’re asking for a conversion, is not a sure bet.

You can read the complete case study here and watch the recorded webinar here.

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Readers of this blog will remember that last month we announced the Alpha version of the ConversionSkills.com game — and today I am excited to announce the imminent launch of the Beta, and invite you to sign up to play the Game.

If you are passionate about Conversion Optimization testing, you’ll love this game!

ConversionSkills is a quick and fun online game where you’re presented with two or more test variations of a web page and you get choose the one you think won (plus, you can have each full Case Study auto-emailed to you immediately).

ConversionSkills game

At the end of the Game you’ll get your score and a fun badge you can use to show off your Conversion Optimization knowledge.

Playing ConversionSkills is easy: Sign up on the Priority List now!

By signing up today, you will get first-access to the Beta when we launch early next week (you will receive an e-mail with log in details).

Why are we asking you to sign up? Because we also need your help!

 After you play the Beta of ConversionSkills, we will email you a short survey for you to tell us what you think. Your input will feed directly into the open version of the Game.

Sign up to be on the Priority List now!

(By the way, everyone who has already signed up during the Alpha will receive full access to the Beta early next week, so don’t forget to check your e-mail for log in details).

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A lot has been said in recent years about how using one’s gut/intuition/opinion is not the way to be successful in online marketing. From Avinash Kaushik’s “HiPPO” concept (marketing/design decisions often get made via the Highest income Paid Person’s Opinion), to a weekly quiz that shows us how our gut feeling is wrong at least some of the time, there is a growing understanding that marketing from one’s gut is a losing proposition. Data-driven marketing decision-making is the way to go.

However, there is a time when using gut or intuition makes sense, and that is during a specific phase of conversion rate optimization test design. I know what you’re thinking: Testing is all about data and science. That’s what you’ve been telling us for years! True, and true. But, you still get to exercise your intuition.

Here’s how…

After all the data has been examined, and you’ve cataloged all the things wrong with a page, it’s time to develop your hypotheses. This is the perfect time to use your gut. Once you know what’s wrong, you need a hypothesis on what will fix the problems and increase conversion.

You can certainly use “best practices,” and you can use data from prior testing if you have it, but ultimately I believe your gut can help you guess which levers to pull on to alter the response of your target audience. For example, will a crisp design matter? How about persuasive copy? How about psychological triggers like loss aversion, commitment, or credibility? Would using Personas help?

You can’t realistically test all those things in one experiment, so when it comes down to choosing your approach, your gut may well hold the answers.

So that is why Gut Marketing is bad, but Gut Hypothesizing is good. Oversimplified? Yes. But I needed a snappy title for my post

Speaking of the Gut being right or wrong in testing, have you signed up for Monday’s webinar?

It’s a case study about how one of our clients boosted their free trial download conversion rate by 17.4% through testing. And, we’ll talk about how we used data and intuition to develop hypotheses, with both positive and surprising results. I’m not sure how many of the 100 seats are left, but you’d best register right now »