A/B Test Splits and How to use them is a post from: Need Help Marketing?

We have heard so many times that small changes can have a big impact on your bottom line. Well this is also the case with A/B Tests, because you can test different scenarios online and see which tests perform better.

A/B Testing Explained

A/B Testing involves testing two scenarios against each other in it’s most simplest form. In more advanced forms you could use multi-variate testing for more than two tests. So lets provide some examples to understand the power of A/B testing.

Some examples of where you may want to try out A/B testing is in your email, on your website and landing pages.

a) Email A/B testing could involve sending two emails with two different subject lines to half of your newsletter list. Just to see which subject lines performs better and generates more opens and clicks.

b) Website A/B testing could involve displaying one offer on your home page to some of your visitors and another offer to other visitors. Put another way, half of your visitors would see either offer 1 or offer 2.

The key takeaway from A/B Test Splits is making sure you maintain a controlled test to ensure what you are testing is really the two variables. Testing on different days of the week, or different times of the day can have an impact on your end results. And it may have nothing to do with the variables you are testing in the A/B test. Otherwise you could misread the test results and come to the wrong conclusions since the test was changed because of other factors.

What do you try and test?

You really need to decide what you want to test and try to keep it simple at first. Creating two offers or two emails can seem like doing more work at first. But if you don’t test you may not know what you are missing out on. Which could include higher clicks, more orders,  be more work upfront but can also have a big impact even for small changes.

What colors you choose and where you put your call to action buttons makes a difference in getting noticed.

For ideas on where you might get the best improvements look at what others are doing.

Online Resource for learning about A/B results – ABTests.com

ABTests.com is a great place to learn and share what A/B testing has done for others.  ABTests is providing an online directory highlighting success stories using A/B Testing.
A recent such case study highlights a Driving School that was able to achieve a 15% improvement on their home page.

To perform the home page testing they used Google’s Web Optimizer which is a free tool that you can use on your own website.

Big Takeaway

Increasing the visual weight of the primary call-to-action improved conversion.

Read the details

More Resources:

A/B Testing – Wikipedia

ABCs of A/B Testing from Google

Photo Credit: mil8 on Flickr

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Great Call To Action Buttons is a post from: Need Help Marketing?

All of your marketing efforts may be wasted if the call to action is not obvious. On your website, and landing pages call to action buttons are key to your marketing success.

1. Choose your words with care

We are talking about action buttons. So you should use verbs to indicate buttons are actions to take. Examples include “Download”, “Order Now”,”Buy Now”,etc.

What is your user trying to do? If you are used to hearing your customers say “give me a quote”, your call to action would be? “Request Quote”, for that type of request. Using this type of thought pattern will help you to create effective call to action buttons. Use the same words your customers use, and not industry terms or wording that is overkill. Simple is better.

2. Emphasis (color, size and positioning)

Make sure you emphasize the action items. What is it that you want your customer do on your website or order page. It goes without saying but don’t make me think about what I need to do. You want your action buttons to be big, and use high contrast to stand out. Some readers just scan pages and you want them to zero in on the call to action.

All three points should really be separate topics.

a) Which colors you use will have a dramatic effect even if the wording and positioning are the same. Some people have emotional responses to color like red or black. And color can help cut through the clutter.

b) Size will help to stand out too. If you create a large button it will be easy to see. Even if you are not reading the visual queues, and written instructions on the page.

c) Positioning the action button on the bottom left can help. Remember people read from left to right. Of course if you want you can also move the button to the right of the marketing text and keep it surrounded by a white background.

3) Too many Action Buttons

If you have one or two action buttons that is plenty. Keep your landing page simple with as few distractions as possible. You may have noticed when clicking on a search engine ad that you are directed to a landing page and not a company’s website. This is because in order to make sure you get the desired action you need to focus on leading the reader to the next step.

Real Examples:

PBWorks.com

Things

For more information on Landing Page marketing we have an earlier post titled:

Effective Web Persuasion for Landing Page Conversion

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Ways to Generate More Leads from Your Sub-Pages is a post from: Need Help Marketing?

Sometimes on most websites the home page and the creative design get the most attention. And the focus is not always focused on lead generation. However that is your website’s primary purpose.  Usually where to put everything and make it easy to find, or maybe just making sure everything is covered takes precedence.  In a lot of cases even more so where a content management system (CMS) is used to update your website. Because you may even forget to remember about your sub pages (second and third level pages in your navigation).

The convenience of using CMS systems and the speed of publishing updates means you can post new content and have it look like the rest of your website. But at the same time it could also mean that you never take the time to look at the new content pages you are creating and how they fit into the rest of your website. Much less your lead generation program.

Here are a few points to keep in mind when reviewing these sub-pages:

• Is your contact information easily available on all home pages? Home Page, Blog Post, About Us, special promotion pages, etc.

• When trying to generate leads you need to have different click through paths for your different website visitors (Ex. existing customers vs. someone who just read about your company in the newspaper). Everyone digests information differently and in different cycles such as ready to buy or people who are looking for credibility and trust before they consider purchasing. Remember we talked about effective web persuasion in an early post.

• Use keywords on deeper sub-pages, since you never know which pages search engines will favor. This point is important enough to repeat the first tip. Consider if the sub-page is the first page the visitor sees. Do they have an easy way to contact sales or customer service. Using a keyword in the first paragraph will also help search engines weight that page higher.

• Do you have links from other sites? If yes then that will help with your “link authority” and help your search engine rankings which could lead to higher qualified leads that come from relevant industry websites. Or that match keywords that your buyers ask about.

• Keep content fresh and updated. Put another way new content generally shows up higher in the search engine search results. Since recency is a factor in determining a content’s relevancy.

Capturing new leads is an ongoing process to ensure your sales pipeline is filling with new prospects. Sometimes improving existing pages can help too by perhaps looking at keywords that helped find those deeper and in some cases hidden gems. Using your web analytics tools you might realize that the majority of your search engine website visitors are being directed to one landing page or blog post topic. If that is the case, and these keywords are key to your business. You may want to highlight this page content on the home page. Or at the very least mention these same keywords on your home page.

Photo credit: pneumatic_transport

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Effective Web Persuasion for Landing Page Conversion is a post from: Need Help Marketing?

Being aware of the decision process is crucial to persuading consumers and encouraging buying behaviors.

Back in 1898, Elias St. Elmo Lewis developed a new framework for describing consumers interests through four stages called A.I.D.A.

Awareness/Attention
Interested
Desire/Decision
Action
S (Permanent Satisfaction - key to repeat sales)

In his book, Submit Now: Designing Persuasive Web Sites (New Riders Press, 2002), Andrew Chak applies the AIDAS model above to mapping website visitors.
Using this principle he recommends designing web pages and landing pages for four main user types.

Browsers – May not know what they are looking for; what they want; but do have an unmet need

Evaluators – Are aware of their options;knowing comparable options;looking for detailed information

Transactors - Have already decided to buy, and need to quickly go through the ordering process

Customers – Have completed an order. To ensure there is a repeat sale their satisfaction levels need to remain high to order again. (Important Tip: Continue communicating with previous buyers/customers)

Also keep in mind your sales cycle and applicable time frames. An example would be buying a computer, which could take time to final make the order after deciding what to buy and from where. Using the internet websites are also key elements in driving impulse sales that are short in duration or have low dollar value. An example would be buying flowers online for valentines, etc. The difference is you will probably not put a lot of thought into it spanning several weeks of deciding.

Key Questions to ask yourself when designing your  work flow:

1. Do you have what I want?
2. Why should I get it from you?

Remember sometimes your customers will purchase on the first visit. Others may not, they may return later to continue their evaluation stage before pulling the trigger and ordering. Therefore you must provide clear paths for people to follow: “Order Now” vs. “Compare us to our competition”.

How many times have you visited a website and tried to look for credibility such as return, and shipping policies, secure online order pages, 1-800 numbers, live chat, etc. These facilitate both your new customer ordering now and someone just sizing up your company to see if your website looks legitimate.

Remember: Without having a consumers’ attention (Stage 1) and interest (Stage 2) they will not get to desire to act (Stage 3).

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