A/B Testing

I don’t know about you, but I sure do love a beautiful landing page. I instantly bookmark or screen-shot that page for future viewing and inspiration on how to improve my own landing pages. A landing page can be seen almost as a first interview. When you show up to an interview, you are wearing your nicest professional attire, probably just got a haircut (or put some extra time into making it look perfect), shaved your face, maybe even splashed a little bit of cologne or perfume on. You are most likely wearing what the people in that building are wearing (sometimes even a little nicer). By doing all of this, you are showing them that you belong there, that you deserve to work there. You can think of a landing page in the same way. Except the landing page is the person interviewing for the job, and the visitor is the person hiring. When that visitor shows up to your site, they want to feel like they can relate to it, feel like they can connect and bond with it. They want to feel engulfed in an experience that is different from every other site. In the end they want to hire you, or in e-commerce language, purchase your products or services.

Before I explain how to create an effective landing page, I want you to know the difference between a landing page and a home page. The people who are viewing your home page are most likely people who have already known about your website, they might have Bing/ Google searched you, or were refereed to by a friend. The people who are viewing your landing page, don’t know you. They found something online that linked you back to your page. According to Hubspot, the believe the perfect definition is: a website page specifically designed to convert visitors into leads. This person needs to be convinced that your product or service is beneficial to them. Now that we have that cleared up… let’s learn about creating an effective landing page.

So how do you create an effective landing page? Well, according to Mashable, they have generated some good ideas on how to do this.

Make it clean, and simple-to-use
Offer a clear call to action and robust incentives
Design attractive, click-ready creative

According to Renee Warren, co-founder of Onboardly, stated that, “If you do something as simple as including a demo video on the landing page of your website, it can increase conversions by 10-20%.” For instance, Stussy had the below video on their home page of their website quite some time ago and would be great on a landing page if they were ever trying to increase their leads or even get potential buyers email addresses. This video was created for the collaboration between Bape x Stussy and incorporates a sense of eeriness and mystery while the hard-hitting deep bass instrumental from A$AP Ferg is playing in the background. When people view this video they feel like they will essentially become a bad-ass when they are wearing this clothing. They will be the type of person who rides dirt bikes and quads around the city and feel above the law. This video really spoke to the target audience that they were aiming at and the collection was a HUGE hit. This video gave the visitor of the home page an extra incentive to purchase the clothing (or possibly not). If they were able to incorporate this into a landing page, I believe that it would really speak to their target audience and generate a lot of leads.

It is also extremely important to know your target audience, and what they would like to see. This video might not do so well for a Dove commercial promoting its newest line of soap that has a small percentage of lotion in it. Figure out your audience, and then create a landing page that they will love.

CopyBlogger created a nifty 49-page eBook that talks about landing pages. Everything from the do’s and don’ts, to tips and tricks on how to increase conversion success. I decided that I would be a nice guy, and point out some of important things that CopyBlogger mentioned, and save you some time. You’re welcome.

5 landing page mistakes that crush conversion rates

Creating a headline that sucks: The headline is a HUGE part of the landing page. It is your chance to really capture your target audience. A great headline will mask the mistakes that you made down the page (if there are any, of course).
Using your regular site design: When you really want to boost your traffic and conversion rates, you want to create a landing page that draws in the eyes, and doesn’t cause your prospective buyer to become distracted by all the other distractions. Lose the clutter.
Asking for more than one thing: When people are given lots of choices they become uncertain on what they actually want. Psychologists have done studies on people who are given choices vs. just given something. For instance, someone will be more happy if they are just given a piece of candy, then if they were given a choice to pick between two different flavors of candy. An effective landing page asks for one specific action. Make sure to be clear about what you are asking for too. If you don’t, then you will kill your conversion rates.
Ignoring the basic aesthetics: Bad fonts, ugly colors, weird highlighting, and terrible graphics. That my friend, are the ingredients for a terrible landing page. A great landing page utilizes all these ingredients and creates a delicious landing page.
Being lazy: The average web user actually spends 80% of their time above the fold. This is extremely important when figuring out what should be at the top of the page. You want to put your most valuable content above the fold because there is a high probability that your target audience will not see it if it’s not. Don’t be lazy about grabbing and holding attention!

Are you still with me fellow smarketer?

10 Tips for Writing the Ultimate Landing page

Make sure your headline refers directly to the place from which your visitor came or the ad copy that drove the click: Match the language as close as possible. You want to keep this consistent, because if you don’t, then you will lose that visitor.
Provide a clear CTA (Call to action): Tell your visitors what to do, and be creative. You want them to see this CTA! CopyBlogger recommends that you do a minimum of 2 calls to action in a short landing page, and 3-5 in a long landing page.
Write in the second person – you and your: the prospective buyer doesn’t give a damn about your company, product, or the service, if it doesn’t benefit them in some way. If you are a clothing company, emphasize that when they are wearing your clothing, you look beautiful. If you are a technology company, emphasize that your customer’s life will be a lot simpler when they are using your new device. Show them the benefits.
Write to deliver a clear, persuasive message, don’t try to show off your creative side by coming up with a creative phrase: CopyBlogger said something that I thought was quite interesting, “This is business, not a personal expression of your art”. You want your customer to feel persuaded, not simply think that you came up with a catchy phrase.
You can write long copy as long as it’s tight: Your reader will keep on reading your long copy as long as it is capturing. You want to build up to it and keep them wanting to figure out why they want to use your product. One of my favorite quotes is from Mark Twain, which is, “If I have more time, I would have written a shorter letter”. Keep this in mind when you are writing copy.
Be clear on your goals: Keep your body copy on point and consistent. You don’t want you reader to be distracted by offerings that you bring up and ultimately leave your webpage. Know your goals as a company.
Keep your most important points at the beginning of paragraphs and bullets: this ties back to rule #5 in that you want to capture your audience and make them HAVE to read your copy in its entirety. A lot of the time your readers are just skimming through the text. Make sure they are able to know what you are offering, and why it is beneficial to them without having them slow down.
People read beginnings and ends before they read middles: With this in mind, keep your strongest points and arguments in these positions.
Make your first paragraph short: Keep it 1-2 lines (lines, not sentence). Remember the Mark Twain quote. Less is better.
Write to the screen: simply take a piece of paper to the screen and position the buttons where you would like them. Figure out what you want to have “above the fold”.

Soon you will be laughing at your competition because you have so many leads, but not just any type of leads, you have qualified leads.

As a young smarketer, I felt inclined to do a little more research on landing pages and went over to Hubspot Academy and watched a 45 minute video on the anatomy of a landing page. Hubspot brought up some interesting points, one thing in particular was that they referred to a landing page as your digital sales reps. These digital sales reps are up 24/7, 365 days a year. They generate the leads, so that the human beings that work for your company can spend their time forging relationships with those leads.

Hubspot’s Landing pages best practices:

Write clear, concise, compelling headlines
Explain the value and importance of the offer to your persona
Use bullet points to make information more digestible.
Select the appropriate number of form fields for your offer.
Remove navigation and all links.
Include a relevant image, gif or short video.
Add social media share icons.
Add testimonials when relevant.
Use industry awards and recognition.

This is a great start to creating an effective landing page. The landing page is arguably one of the most important parts of a website. It’s the first impression that you leave on an individual. Make that first impression count, and show them why their life will benefit immensely after purchasing your product or service. Make sure to collect data and figure out if the landing page is actually boosting your conversion rates. You can also try A/B testing to figure out which landing page is the most effective. If you want to learn more about landing pages, check out the eBook CopyBlogger created. Until next time fellow smarketer…

Here we are once again discussing what is going on in the marketing world. Not only what’s going on, but what is actually helping businesses succeed when it comes to conversion rates. The topic that I am going to discuss is A/B testing.

First and foremost, A/B testing is pretty cool stuff. In short, A/B testing is basically figuring out which web design will create the most conversions. You might be thinking, “But how does one measure the metrics for such a complex situation that originally requires one to say, ‘we think’, instead of, ‘we know’?”. Well fellow unique visitor, a fantastic company by the name of Optimizely, created a A/B testing system, so that you don’t have to guess anymore. What a great group of people.

A/B testing allows you to figure out whether or not the new additions to your website are going to increase conversions. In the olden days, you had to play the guessing game. You would sit around with your co-workers and say things like, “I think that if we change the background color to something that eluded to happiness then the customer will purchase the item because they are in a good mood, and want to keep that good mood going, because the more you buy the happier you get, right???”. Now you can actually test the waters for the new “happy” design and see if it is worth changing the site code. A/B testing measures customer sign-ups, downloads, purchases, or whatever your goals as a business are. A/B testing takes the guessing game out of the optimization equation and backs up your decisions with data. I once had a wise-marketing professor tell me, “Marketing is all about data now”. He couldn’t have been more correct.

So how is A/B testing performed? A/B testing involves testing the original website version against the updated website version. An A/B tester basically splits down the middle of the visitors that go to your website and interact with it. Half go to the original version, and half go to the updated version. Then once they have sufficient data to say that one version is better than the other, they let you know. If you are still a little confused on the subject, take a look at the diagram below that Optimizely created.

I myself have a clothing company called, SomeFire. During its lifetime as a business I have sold four different articles of clothing. My first collection was released in 2012 which was a Givenchy-inspired tee shirt. My next collection was tank-tops, which was dropped in 2013. My past collection was long-sleeve t-shirts and hoodies, which was released in 2014. This year is going to be a big year for SomeFire, because I am cooking up a special surprise for the consumers. When I release my next clothing collection, I am going to use A/B testing in the checkout funnel. I am first going to try something simple, like changing the color of the “purchase” button. Usually I have a black “purchase” button but I am going to try something small, like a green “purchase” button. Once I have collected data on the most effective “purchase” button, I will move on to bigger things i.e. website layout.

Below is from the last collection of long-sleeve t-shirts.

I like to think of myself as an aspiring soon-to-be marketing master. Which means that I go the extra mile to really learn about marketing topics. For instance, I read an article called, Practical Guide to Controlled Experiments on the Web: Listen to Your Customers not to the HiPPO. When the title mentions HiPPO, it is not talking about the ever-so ugly Hippopotamus amphibius. HiPPO stands for Highest Paid Person’s Opinion. In this article they discuss lots of different ways to make sure that the controlled experiments that you are running, are being done right, and evaluated correctly.

In the article they really get down to the nitty-gritty when it comes to the data portion of A/B testing. They evaluated two different check out processes, one had a coupon option, and then one had no coupon option. When they tested the coupon option they lost 90% of their revenue. The reason this happened was because the customers would reevaluate their order and think about if they are paying too much for this product, or possibly go browse the internet hopping that they would find a coupon. This is a valuable lesson when operation an eCommerce site. You want to make sure that the design choices that you make don’t prevent sales.

While reading this article, they used an example of A/B testing that made me really want to think of my own, so guess what? I did. A good way to think of A/B testing is through parenthood. When parents have their first born child (controlled group) they feed that child certain foods, give him/ her certain responsibilities, give them certain freedoms, and so forth. They then mentally measure the toll that it took on that child whether it was good, or bad. So now when the second child (the treatment group) is born they can try different things on that child. Maybe its less freedom, or more responsibilities, and etc. They then can compare the two and figure out which one seems “all there”. So now when the third child comes along they know exactly what to do and what not to do.

A now famous analystics mastermind by the name of Amelia Showalter opened up a new way to do A/B testing for political campaigns. Showalter was behind the “Hey There” emails from President Obama. During the 2012 election, Showalter and colleagues of her’s tested different ways to create an effective email campaign to raise money. They were very surprised to find that people liked the “ugly” e-mail format. Traditionally one might think that a potential donator wants to see the most professional email from their president, which is in fact the opposite. After extensive A/B testing they found out that the headline of, “I will be outspent” would generate the most donations bringing in $2,540,866.

Businesses can learn a lot from Showalter when it comes to A/B testing. You need to try the most unorthodox things to try and see what the outcome would be. Showalter did not think that the headline of “I will be outspent” would be a hit, until they tried it. Showalter did not think that bright yellow portions of the email to attract the eyes of the potential donator would be a hit, until they tried it out. Showalter did not think that having HTML style “donate here” button’s would be a hit, until they tried it out. Businesses need to realize that they can reach more of an audience if they implement A/B testing into their business, and try out different options. But businesses need to realize that their email list doesn’t want to be bombarded with emails 10 times a day. I myself recently had to unsubscribe to the Nordstrom email list because I was getting blasted with emails 10 times a day. In return, it made me want to do the opposite of press on them.

I hope that you learned some valuable information about A/B testing, and that you use it when you feel that it will be effective, and a great way to get more from you customers. Until next time fellow unique visitor.

Cody Hulsey Blogs

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Figuring Out The Best Configuration.