Harness the value of marketing insights from controlled testing

Are you truly leveraging the potential of your traffic?  I’m going to show you why most companies aren’t and how you can today, with two phases. Editor's note: Chris Goward, the author of this post gave a well received webcast on website conversion on 28th June 2013. If you didn't make it, we hope you find his advice useful. His deck on conversion for mobile sites on Slideshare is also worth checking out. …

An example of using of A/B Testing

Examples of A/B testing often cover landing page conversion, but a common problem, not covered so often, is how to get visitors to engage more with a key page such as a home page, product category page or resources page. In this post I will give an example of how we used A/B testing to increase engagement for a home page.

Engagement can mean different things for different sites. For some it is the pages per visit; for others it can be social shares, number of comments, or any other page activity.

For our customer, Inside Buzz, engagement meant visitors exploring the site further, beyond their homepage. It was probably this need to have active engagement that their previous homepage design provided so many options for visitors to click whichever option they are interested in.

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Chris Goward on building in testing to any type of business

It's simple, if you're not testing to improve results from your site, the leading companies in your sector likely are, which means you're likely to be falling behind. But how do you approach testing in a structured way? Earlier this year, I read Chris Goward's new book You Should Test That and was impressed by the way it blends advice on structured testing techniques with recommendations on how to better communicate the benefits of your products and services. So acting on requests from Smart Insights members to review and feature the latest thinking in book reviews and webcasts from invited experts, we have asked Chris to deliver a webcast on this topic. We hope you can join us this Friday! …

An interview with Matt Lawson of ao.com on their ecommerce strategy

Matt Lawson is Head of Conversion at ao.com.

In this interview he describes how they have  grown their business through keeping the web experience focused on the customer through constant feedback, review and testing. Today ao.com are the UK's largest online kitchen retailer with over 4000 large appliances ready for Next Day Delivery.

Their About page is one of the best we've seen for showcasing the proposition and integrating customer feedback and social networking. Taking such care with the About page may not be essential for established high-street retailers, but is important for online pureplays and startups. We also like the way their masthead below the navigation showcases their proposition.

Not that ao.com can be called a startup…

An example showing how to set up an AB test on Wordpress

What is A/B testing?

You'll probably be aware of the approach, I'm sure. A/B testing, also called split testing, involves your site serving  one of several versions of a page to show to a site visitor. The aim is to usually find a better approach to converting your visitors. [caption id="attachment_344" align="aligncenter" width="300"] What is A/B Testing?[/caption]

Why do you need it?

Put simply, how do you know if the changes you made to a page are working better than the earlier version unless you can compare them side by side? A/B testing allows you to make changes from a position of intelligence - knowing the impact of the changes you make allows you to learn what works and what doesn't, and make sure that you repeat the successes and not the failures.

A/B testing in WordPress

My…

What makes a good ecommerce landing page?

So, what does make an effective landing page for an Ecommerce site? Well, I’m going to give a typical consultant’s answer – "it depends"; on the campaign and your goal for the landing page. That’s not being evasive, it’s the truth; not all landing pages are born equal. For example, some marketers invest in prize draws and competitions as marketing tactics to drive data capture for their eCRM programs, so the landing page needs to focus on making it quick and easy to enter. Typically ecommerce landing pages are used for tactical marketing campaigns (e.g. from AdWords, Display Re-marketing or Email marketing) and are  designed to drive sales making use of existing site page templates. A good ecommerce landing page should satisfy the following criteria: The creative design is consistent with the marketing campaign that generated the visit. The copy and CTA are consistent with the marketing…

9 approaches to increase conversion through increasing visitor engagement

Marketers spend a lot of time and resource in driving their target audience to their website. However this is when the real challenges of keeping the customer engaged, and on your site, long enough to help support a conversion journey to start.

Engagement strategies to support conversion

Here are 9 methods I have found effective which mainly involve engaging more closely with the visitor through feedback or tailoring the design to their device. 1. Behavioural surveys Software such as Qualaroo can be easily integrated on to your website and allows you to ask visitors simple questions in order to help you understand their behaviour better and improve the website experience. 2. Mobile responsive With smartphone usage increasing rapidly across the globe, businesses need to make sure their website is optimised for multiple devices such as smartphones and tablets. If not potential customers will leave promptly. One…

Building your landing pages around the call-to-action

‘Best practice’ learning promotes placing the primary CTA (call-to-action) for your landing page near the top of the page, above the fold. At face value, this seems logical, right? You want visitors to complete the primary goal for the page, which means following your CTA. However, there are several reasons why this basic recommendation isn’t necessarily true or accurate: 1. The ‘fold’ is a myth The mind-numbing variety of devices (it’s estimated there are about 6,500 and counting!) means that the fold is not a fixed entity and depends entirely on the device type accessing your landing page. 2. Your CTA should be placed where an action is most likely to be taken New visitors to your landing page may not know who you are and what you do. These people are less likely to be willing to commit to an action immediately as they need to know that…

Which features do all the best landing pages share?

First impressions are particularly important online - you have only seconds to get your message across. Research from Nature suggested that people form an impression of a site in just 50 milliseconds. There are many practical actions you can take that influence the effectiveness of landing pages which I have summarised before in a previous post giving examples of best practice for landing pages. The relevance of the headline, prominence of call-to-action and points of resolution plus many other factors are all important. But, if you're running a project to drive more leads or sales from landing pages it's worth taking a step back to think about the fundamentals that will drive better results. Otherwise you can be a victim of Meek Tweaking, which is one of the main limiting factors for making large improvements. To think through…

How to use people-focused analytics to change how you measure search marketing effectiveness

Most marketers will know the volume of visitors generated by search, but are you using visitor quality to measure the effectiveness of search traffic (organic or paid)? If you are, conversion rate is a key measure effectiveness. In this post I'll explain how to increase it without spending a penny more. It's not intended to be an unrealistic boast instead it's a technique that makes allocating marketing spend and identifying successful campaigns easier and more effective.

Why your Conversion Rate is lying to you

Most people would measure Conversion Rate for a paid search campaign (or organic search) like this: However, this formula has one major flaw, it assumes that all visitors from this campaign have the potential to convert. The reality is that only a fraction of search traffic is convertible,…