Home page examples featuring simple persuasive designs for desktop and mobile experiences

Creating simplified, focused Landing Page is a standard approach for digital campaigns, particularly for engaging a prospect to get ROI their first visit from Google AdWords. But more and more savvy brands are applying the principles of landing page design to their home pages and optimising them by testing to see whether Less is more! An early sign of this trend was from two presentations I listened to way back in May 2010 at theEmetrics Marketing Optimisation summit. Craig Sullivan of Autoglass and Michael Gulmann of Expedia explained how they have boosted conversion through simplifying their home designs as a results of AB and multivariate testing.  Since then, the increase in smartphone usage and popularity of responsive and adaptive web design has given a further reason to simplify home pages. We're not saying this is true in all cases. More complex product offerings may demand a more…

Site relaunch conversion rate disaster recovery

Developing a persuasive and effective e-commerce website for relaunch involves team work and months of planning. But what happens if your new site actually converts at a lower rate than the one it replaces? After being approached by clients in exactly this situation the team at AWA Digital developed a programme to quickly regain the conversion rates of the old website - and start improving it. Called the Conversion Disaster Recovery Plan, it incorporates tools and the systematic application of techniques including research, analysis and split-testing. The step-by-step plan is designed to elicit the underlying reasons why visitors to the new site buy less, uncover where the real problems lie and develop test pages to overcome them. Based on AWA's extensive experience of Conversion Rate Optimisation, the Plan is summarised below as a flowchart and recommended tools to get feedback from customers and assess their behaviour.

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Digging beyond Conversion Rate using primary and secondary conversion metrics and avoiding the common testing mistakes

A/B testing is certainly not new, with the number of people and companies involved in testing is continuing to grow at an impressive rate. Many companies start tentatively with a few sample tests, without investing in expertise or training in how to embed robust testing processes. Drawing conclusions based on half-cooked tests is a sure-fire way to kill internal faith in your testing programme. You’re also potentially missing out on some of the most interesting insights. I’ve written before about the importance of using both qualitative and quantitative research to develop the strongest hypotheses for testing. Also the importance of expertise and experience in developing the strongest concepts and then prioritising your testing schedule. However this post will focus primarily on how you then design experiments…

Making the case for optimising your mobile site with split-testing

Websites that use split-testing regularly will gain an increasing advantage over their competitors. By steadily increasing their conversion rate, they’re able to get higher returns for the same advertising spend and that means they can invest more in advertising and grow their market share.

Today, split-testing is especially relevant for mobile commerce. We’re at a stage where many companies will have a mobile version of their website that they serve to visitors from smartphone or tablets. But a lack either of focus or understanding of the opportunity means that very few websites are split-testing their mobile sites. And as mobile commerce grows, companies that split-test have a huge advantage.

But mobile conversion optimisation is hard. It forces you to focus on priorities. With limited screen real estate, you need to ensure that your content is well structured, persuasive and accessible.

8 Tips for mobile conversion rate optimisation

Here are…

10 hidden factors that could be affecting your Conversion Rate

Many elements come into play when you are seeking to improve the conversion rate of your website as part of a site conversion optimisation strategy. You may already appreciate the importance of testing major changes such as the offer, call-to-action buttons, placement of product pictures and headlines. However there are other technical features of a landing pages, which if not implemented correctly may also damage your conversion rate. In this article I define 10 factors which are less well known but could easily be compromising your success. The examples I will include cover both classic landing pages for lead generation, in B2B for example and also Ecommerce sites.

Ten steps to improving conversion on your website

1. Utilizing a CAPTCHA

Everyone is familiar with these...

A lot of web users hate CAPTCHA codes, which…

Which factors are the main reasons for shopping cart abandonment?

Cart Abandonment specialists, Cloud.IQ have released a new infographic with some fascinating findings regarding how and why our customers are abandoning their purchases and how we can leverage this opportunity to generate more sales. Some stats of interest: 88% of online shoppers who abandon online purchases before completion are open to being emailed by retailers afterwards.. 35% actually say they will actively welcome these emails For every £100 spent on driving customers to the site, only £1 goes into converting them To see all the stats and the full infographic, view it here.  …

5 ideas to help your journey to nirvana

Optimisation, it’s an important and hot topic. Whether SEO, advertising, email or conversion rate. We want more, we have to. Is it possible to reach an ‘optimised’ place, is it ever done, can we ever arrive at an optimised nirvana of continuous optimisation as we suggested in our recent 7 Steps to Digital Nirvana infographic? Whenever I talk to people, and listen to myself talking sometimes, you’d think that we are seeking a destination, a place where it’s all done. We're optimised! We asked about how optimised businesses are in their digital optimisation in our recent research on managing digital marketing - it's good to see a fair proportion in the top 2 categories, but the majority don't optimise continuously.

My experience is that in reality we never arrive. It’s a little…

A tutorial with examples and ideas of what to test

Prominently displaying why users should buy from you rather than a competitor is extremely important for any business look to increases online sales, particularly in retail, but it applies across many other sites. As Bryan Eisenberg, author of Always Be Testing can Call To Action explains in this punchy clip, testing value propositions can have a massive impact on conversion. [youtubevideoembedder id="ps7bB9-ksMY"] Bryan Eisenberg On Unique Value Propositions (1m45s) >> As Bryan says: "If you're not doing this, you're wasting your time" Given this, value propositions are something that I love to test. Smart Insights have covered the importance and examples of value propositions in other posts on their hub page, here I'm going to focus on testing, looking at retail Ecommerce examples.  I will looking at testing and optimisation point of view, starting with a review of…

Five techniques Conversion Optimisation Experts use to get the most value from their CRO efforts

Conversion rate optimisation (CRO) can be frustrating when you have setup a CRO programme and are working hard on it, but not getting the results you expected. This article details five tips we find are important to apply to get your CRO efforts back on track. We have used this approach to deliver double, and sometimes triple-digit, sales increases. Implement this advice into your CRO programme and transform your business.

5 Tips to improve CRO

Tip 1: Avoid ‘best practice’

If you get your ideas for what to test on your website from downloading an expensive report then it’s odds-on you are seeing mixed results. What works on one site isn’tt guaranteed to work on your site and the tactics involved in persuading visitors to purchase varies enormously from site to site. You need to get into the mind-set of your…

A summary of 'add to basket' techniques from 50 retailers

The checkout process is crucial for e-commerce sites and a holistic approach is best to improve retail website conversion rates, for example using abandonment campaigns and analytics to review the online buying journey. At an earlier stage in the customer journey, reviewing design and messaging practices around the 'add to shopping cart' or 'add to basket button' can help move shoppers further down the funnel. We thought this was a useful infographic from Volusion based on reviewing the "Add to Cart" practices of US 50 shopping sites considering its shape, colour, size and design. The infographic is not providing a 'one size fit's all solution' and shows commonalities and tips on what is important to support conversion; it's tailored to the shopper, layout and branding of your website. It's interesting to look at examples…