'Net Features : conversion optimization

Need Better Leads? Ask a Conversion Optimization Whiz

Administrator — Fri, 09 Nov 2012 17:30:00 GMT

If you're looking for an edge (and who isn't) check out Website Magazine's interview of Jeremy Leonard, the SVP of Strategy and Operations at digital media agency MediaWhiz and a real whiz when it comes to conversion optimization.

Numerous well-known names fill the MediaWhiz client roster including Nielsen, Home Depot, Discover and many others - and Leonard's experience with these brands and their challenges shines through in the interview below, providing Website Magazine readers with compelling insights into high-level lead generation and conversion optimization, some guidance on the debate over form length, and how traffic quality and mobile devices are forcing advertisers to shift their approach quickly.

WM: For those in our audience that aren't familiar with MediaWhiz, discuss the agency’s role in the digital landscape.

JL: MediaWhiz is an integrated digital media agency that works with brands to help them more profitably engage, acquire and retain customers. Clients include a broad range of leading advertisers such as Unilever, Nielsen, CarpetONE, The Lasik Vision Center, Home Depot, Discover and First PREMIER Bank.

Historically an online performance marketing agency we have evolved into a digital customer acquisition agency focused on direct response and lead generation. We have practice areas in affiliate marketing, search, creative display advertising, email, data acquisition and social media.

WM: Why should an agency (or anyone) be concerned with conversion optimization within lead generation specifically?

JL: Great question with several compelling answers:

Everyone should be concerned with conversion optimization for a very simple reason: consumer traffic to your website isn’t free. Even if your site traffic is coming from SEO or Facebook “Likes,” you spend time and money to generate that traffic. Marketers should naturally demand a return on that investment. That ROI should be in the form of consumers completing a specific call-to-action. In the world of lead generation, that call-to-action will be in the form of a qualified lead or sale.

Some advertisers may look at lead generation specifically and think, “Well, I’m only paying a publisher for a lead – why would I need to go to the trouble of making a site optimize properly? I don’t pay for anyone who doesn’t convert.” This couldn’t be further from the truth. Performance-based lead generators have hundreds of advertising offers that they can run to their display inventory, drop to their email lists or make SEM bids. The offer represented by your website is no better than if the publisher can’t generate a fair return on its media investment.

Poorly converting sites will result in a high number of clicks but a low number of leads; this instantly tells the publisher that the problem is not with its traffic but with your site. Your offer will be taken out of rotation, and you will be lucky if anyone sends traffic to your site again.

WM: From a high level, what are some of the most serious mistakes made in conversion optimization for lead generation paths?

JL: First and foremost is having an inconspicuous call-to-action on your site. This is a lead-generation site, not a research site or comparison-shopping site. You want consumers to do something! Tell them exactly what you want them to do and exactly what they will get in return. Don’t be shy.

Second, is a lack of focus. Lead-generation sites expect a direct response from the consumer. Don’t provide the consumer multiple points of leakage on a lead-gen site where they can wander away – that is what homepages are for. Keep the consumer focused with just enough information to convince them to make the decision put forth by your call-to-action.

Finally there is the mistake of asking for too much information upfront. Every marketer wants to know a consumer’s household income or number of cars in the garage, but these requests will result in high bounce rates and general site abandonment. Build a relationship with a consumer over time through re-marketing and additional value adds in your CRM program. Marketers can always use third-party data appending services to tell them things about their consumers that they don’t want to ask.

WM: The decisions digital businesses make regarding whether to use short-form vs. long-form in relation to conversion are important; what guidance can you provide those making this important choice?

JL: The “short-form” vs. “long-form” debate has existed since advertising began. Hammurabi’s code from Babylon was long-form. Moses’ 10 Commandments were short-form. They both served their purpose.

The first guidance I would give anyone making the decision regarding whether to use short-form vs. long-form in relation to conversions is to not make the decision. You will never understand your consumers as well as they know themselves.

My recommendation is to develop two separate buy flows, then put them in Google Optimizer and start testing.

Short-form, of course, requires immediate remarketing through a call center, SMS texting or an auto-responder email to complete the process. Although this does require additional effort on the part of the marketer, you will gain great insights by running these campaigns in parallel. One of the most powerful insights you will gain are the conversion rates at different points in the decision making process. For instance, if you have 30 percent of your consumers completing the short-form, then 80 percent of those same consumer’s being “closed” through immediate remarketing, your conversion rate is 24 percent.

If your long form has a conversion rate of 22 percent it would seem initially that the short form is the way to go. However, due to cost reasons associated with closing the short form, you may well be willing to give up the 2 percent differential to avoid the remarketing costs.

Finally, think about your product – does a consumer “need” it or do they “want” it. The more a consumer “needs” your product (a loan or a job) the more they will be willing to walk through a long form. The more a consumer “wants” your product (an insurance quote, a coupon) the less willing they will be to walk through a long form.

WM: Mobile devices present an interesting challenge for those responsible for lead generation. What options are available to get ahead of the trend today?

JL: From our experience, we see 20 – 30 percent of lead-gen traffic via mobile devices. If you aren’t set up to capture that traffic, you are throwing money away. So how do you go about capturing mobile leads? Here are a few ways:

1. A “warm transfer” program. This involves a short form (name, email, cell phone) and a button that has a call-to-action along the lines of “Call me Now.” When the user presses the button, a third-party vendor, such as RingRevenue, posts the lead form to a call center and initiates a call from the call center operator to the consumer. At that point, the operator will complete the lead-generation script and post the full lead.

2. An SMS or email auto-responder. If using a call center isn’t in the plan, then you can change the call-to-action on the button to something like “Send me more Info Now.” At that point, the advertiser can either send an SMS message with a link directly to the phone or send an email to the user.

3. Personally, I am not a big believer in QR codes unless the payoff for the consumer is significant. QR codes are like a long joke – the longer the joke, the better the punch line needs to be. If, as an advertiser, you can provide a big punch line, then use QR codes. Otherwise, stay away from them.

4. Finally, create mobile content that people want to share. Whether someone posts from their phone to Facebook, tweets it or simply emails it to a group, provide an incentive to the consumer to share.

WM: What impact does the quality of traffic have on lead generation, and further, the methods used for optimizing conversions?

JL: Simply put, good leads don’t come from bad traffic.

While there is certainly plenty of “bad” traffic out there, more frequently there is “inappropriate” traffic. For instance, it wouldn’t make sense to send a lead-gen campaign for a luxury car to sub-prime finance consumers. It is simply a bad match.

The more often an advertiser can tell his media partners something about the demographics and psychographics about his consumers, the better chance that the media partner can find “appropriate” traffic.

Once the right traffic is coming in, an advertiser still needs to focus carefully on affiliate ID numbers or sub-ID numbers, which convert to sales. Traffic that comes from SEM will almost always convert at a higher rate than email traffic because the consumer is in a buying frame of mind. Focus on the high-converting traffic and be willing to pay more for it. Be prepared to simultaneously cut your price for the low-performing traffic. Drive all of your traffic toward a pre-determined cost-per-action – whether that action is a sale, a request for information or a download.

Once you have “appropriate” traffic that is prices right you can begin to optimize a site for conversions; sites are inherently optimized around consumers that have a propensity to convert. Once “appropriate” traffic is coming to the site, only then can a site be optimized through many of the standard steps of A/B testing and multivariate testing.

WM: Are there "universal" KPI's that marketers need to be concerned with? What are some of those and should they be unique to the enterprise?

JL: One of the most difficult (but important) KPI is determining the Life Time Value (LTV) of a client. Knowing this single piece of information is critical in establishing budgets for client-acquisition and client-retention efforts. Acquisition and retention budgets then determine your media spend. LTV is unique to each enterprise and, typically, differs across the enterprise by product or service line.

Within actual lead gen, a marketer must track incoming leads by media vertical (SEM, SEO, email, display, social) and then track the downstream conversions of the leads by media type. Without that information, the marketer won’t know how to properly allocate his budget.

Within each media vertical, if it is possible to track incoming traffic by affiliate ID, the marketer will know who is sending them appropriate, high-converting traffic and who is not. Pricing should be set accordingly.

Finally, keep an eye on your analytics account and continue to test and optimize. This isn’t a KPI, but an ongoing exercise in excellence. Try new things, but don’t be afraid to admit when those new things didn’t work.

Why Conversion Optimization Fails

Administrator — Tue, 06 Sep 2011 20:30:00 GMT

There are many reasons why your attempts at conversion optimization could fail. If you avoid the mistakes listed in this article, then you will be more likely to succeed — it’s as simple as that. To achieve success in conversion optimization, here are the five biggest mistakes to avoid.

1. Getting blinded by your own knowledge and preferences
If your conversion optimization efforts are largely based on what you like and how you behave, then you are more likely to fail. Not everyone is like you; there are at least three other temperaments to consider.

According to renowned psychologist David Keirsey, everyone falls into one of sixteen temperaments. The temperament of the buyer influences what will convince them to buy a specific product, and what will make them buy it specifically from your company or website.

Which temperament are you trying to sell to? To learn about how to sell to people who may be different from you, read the work about temperaments done by Keirsey and the interpretations made by firms like Future Now, Inc.

My own consultancy firm, inUse Insights, has also done similar work, grouping visitors into four types that are illustrated by different birds: owl, penguin, swallow and peacock. The lesson here is that you should learn as much as possible about your audience, and don’t fall into the trap that they are just like you. Besides that, you know a lot more about your company, product or service than your visitors, and you may therefore make the mistake of assuming that your visitors know more than they do. Don’t get blinded by best practices, either; they are not always silver bullets. Your audience and context may differ.

2. Optimizing for the wrong visitors
The assumption that all visitors to your website are there to convert is wrong. When analyzing why visitors are dropping out without converting, you need to know what they came there to do in the first place.

Some visitors end up on your website by chance, some because you cater to their interests or needs, and others because of a mistake. You will rarely convert those who came to visit your site by accident. If you combine a survey (attitudinal data) with your Web analytics tool (behavioral data), you’ll be able to ask for the intention of your visits upon entry and analyze their success rate.

It’s not unusual to find out that the group you have a reasonable chance at converting constitutes 10 percent or less of your visitors. With that new knowledge, you can focus your conversion analysis on the segment that came to your website to convert but never did. Work hard to make that group convert, and forget about the rest — for now.

3. Focusing on only one metric or goal
Testing and conversion optimization is often based around the idea of increasing the rate for a specific metric, a specific goal. Nothing wrong with that, but you may forget to check how your efforts are impacting other goals and metrics.

Maybe you are increasing one goal at the expense of others? Maybe your conversion rate has gone up, but your average order value, margin or return on ad spend has decreased? Always make sure to look at the big picture. If you’re just looking at — and optimizing for — one metric, there’s a risk that you’re fooling yourself.

4. Making testing a goal in itself
I’ve come across organizations that have set goals on how many A/B or multivariate tests they should run in a set period of time. That’s a bad idea.

Think about what incentives do to people, particularly if there is a reward involved. If the goal entitling an employee to a bonus is the number of tests executed, be prepared for lowperforming tests and maybe even ones that decrease rather than increase your conversion rate.

A good goal is not addressed as the number of tests run. Instead, focus on the monetary goal you want to reach, or actions that you want your visitors to take, and run as many tests as you can based on hypotheses and traffic volume. Your goal should be to increase something (purchases, downloads, etc.) or decrease something (visits to the contact page from visitors who have read the FAQ, etc.), not to run a certain number of tests. If you focus on the number of tests, chances are that you will be too eager to test that you forget about building a solid hypothesis, and run tests that don’t have enough traffic to complete within a reasonable amount of time.

5. Coming to the conclusion that nothing works
Have you run tests and not seen any improvement? Rather than conceding that there is no way to make a difference and simply giving up, it is more likely that you overlooked something. There may be something further you could do to collect more relevant data.

Has your Web analytics tool been implemented properly? Have you integrated attitudinal and behavioral data in your analysis? Have you done usability testing? Have you used a tool such as ClickTale that shows behaviors that are not necessarily linked to what you can actually do on the website? One way to quickly get new ideas is to ask your non-tech Web-savvy friends to perform a task on your website without your guidance.

Conversion optimization is for everyone
Keep in mind that conversion optimization is not just for e-commerce. It’s for everyone. It does not matter whether you’re selling a product, a service, information or an idea. We all have specific actions in mind that we want website visitors to take. Conversion optimization is about making a larger share of visitors do those actions. It could be about making a donation, becoming a member, changing an opinion about something, or many other actions.

As long as it’s measurable, it’s a candidate for conversion optimization.

About the Author: Lars Johansson is the co-founder of Ampliofy (Web analytics products based on Google Analytics) and inUse Insights (Web analytics consultancy). inUse Insights is a Google Analytics Certified Partner, Google Website Optimizer Certified Partner and Google for Nonprofits Provider. Lars blogs about conversion optimization and web analytics at www.WebAnalysts.info.

10 Terrific Testing Tips

Administrator — Fri, 03 Sep 2010 20:45:00 GMT

Are you basing copy and design changes on your gut feeling? STOP! There is a better way to optimize your website.

:: By Lars Johansson ::

By using a tool for A/B and multivariate testing, you can see what your visitors prefer and let the numbers speak. This allows you to find out what website tweaks make your visitors take action and increase sales. Don’t have a tool for testing? There are numerous tools from which to choose but I recommend that you first try Google Website Optimizer. It is free (get it here: http://goo.gl/hnid), and with it, you can find out what features you really need and which are just nice to have.

When you get started with testing, you need to keep some important guidelines in mind.

Remember that “best practice” is somebody else’s practice

You can look at what others have been doing successfully, but don’t assume what worked for them will work for you. Depending on your audience and context, results will vary. For example, some experts say that one-step forms are always more efficient, whereas others claim that multi-step forms are superior. So who’s right? Well, they are equally right and equally wrong. Tests have found that sometimes one-step forms work better, and sometimes multi-step forms do. Don’t assume. Test what works best for your audience and context. And if someone says that red buttons are better than purple ones, don’t believe them. There is no universally superior button color but you might want to test contrasting colors.

Be bold and break rules

You might have heard about Google testing 41 shades of blue for the toolbar on Google pages but unless you work for Google, forget about it. Minor changes will typically lead to minor improvements, and to find out if those minor improvements are statistically valid, you will need massive amounts of traffic. If you want results, you will need to make more drastic changes than that. You will often have to bend, if not break company design guidelines in order to achieve substantial improvements. While doing so, it’s important to work closely with brand managers, so you do not step on anyone’s toes. Examples of what to test include images, tone and functionality.

Don’t be greedy (limit your test)

Unfortunately, not everyone has the benefit of large, steady streams of visitors, and traffic volumes may limit you to running an A/B split test. Maybe you think changing the primary headline, main copy text, an image, call-to-action and a button will improve conversions. Do not, however, test all the changes at once in a single A/B test if you want to know what exactly causes the improvement (if any) and to find the best combination (for example, what call to action works best with which image). In the previous example, there are five page sections (elements) with two variations each. They make 32 possible combinations. If you run that as an A/B test, you will have no idea what made the difference.

Calculate estimated time to completion

It is possible to create a test that will take years to end. Say you have six elements and three variations per element, your test page gets 5,000 page views per day, your conversion rate is 4 percent, and you expect an improvement of 10 percent. That multivariate test would take 30 years to complete even if you include all visitors in your test. Use a duration calculator to find out whether the test you’re planning to run is actually reasonable. Google’s calculator can be found at http://goo.gl/g8VQ.

Assess risks

While you might think of testing as gambling, rest assured that the odds are on your side. What you risk is a smaller amount of conversions in the short term, but what you can gain is an overall increase of conversions in the long run. Even when your hypothesis turns out to be wrong, you will learn something — how to avoid making costly mistakes in the future. To minimize risks, you might wish to expose a smaller share of your visitors to the test. But bear in mind that if fewer visitors are included, the test will take longer to complete.

Validate your implementation

Before your test goes live, make sure to test implementation. Factors that could skew results include the prevalence and accuracy of test scripts (for instance, ensure that the goal script is implemented only on the actual goal page) and the loss of referral data. Some tools, Google Website Optimizer included, automatically validate the test for you. Do not blindly trust this because it is possible for your implementation to be flawed regardless of what the automatic validation indicates.

Avoid conflicting tests

If you set up two or more simultaneous tests sharing the same goal, you risk inaccurate results. Say you want to increase conversions by running one test to find out what headline works best, and a second test to find out which image works best. The two tests won’t share data, so you won’t know to which combination of image and headline a converting visitor has been exposed. If running several tests, make sure they won’t add noise and uncertainty to each other.

Look out for side effects

Wanting improvement is good. Being too eager to achieve results can, however, inadvertently lead to making costly mistakes — ones that are difficult to spot, too. While changes might increase conversions for one goal, they could decrease conversions for another. Typically a test is set up for only one goal. If running an A/B test with Google Website Optimizer, use Google Analytics and custom variables to “tag” visitors. Then you will be able to find out how other goals and general visitor behavior are impacted by your test and its different variations. (Read more about the use of custom variables at http://goo.gl/NjLV.) It’s also possible to include the goal script for Google Website Optimizer on multiple goal pages. But if you do that, both goals will be summed up together, and you won’t know the performance of each individual goal.

Try segmented testing

The standard way of running a test assumes that one size fits all. While running any test is better than not testing at all, it is possible that one alternative or combination is better for direct traffic and another is better for traffic from Google AdWords (just an example). Therefore, viewing the results for different segments will give you deeper insights. You can use custom variables to keep track of variations in Google Analytics and advanced segments to see how the different variations performed for different segments. You can also have a look at page 25 in The Techie Guide for Google Website Optimizer (http://goo.gl/oXr7) or find a tool more suitable for segmented testing at www.whichmvt.com.

Challenge the winner

So you’ve reached a statistically valid result of a test and announced the winner. Are you done now? No. Testing is not a one-time practice. Rather, it should be part of your process for continuous improvement. It’s not only possible but likely that a variation will perform even better than the winner. That’s why a winner should be challenged from time to time. At some point, there will always be a new winner.

About the Author: Lars Johansson is the co-founder of Ampliofy (Web analytics products) and inUse Insights (Web analytics consultancy). inUse Insights is a Google Analytics Certified Partner and Google Website Optimizer Certified Partner. Lars blogs about Web analytics and testing at www.WebAnalysts.info.

AJAX Search & Conversion Optimizer at SLI Systems

Pete Prestipino — Mon, 22 Feb 2010 17:25:00 GMT

Site search provider SLI Systems announced two rather impressive enhancements to its solution. The company launched "Learning Search with AJAX" to improve and quicken site search and navigation experiences for users, and introduced "Conversion Optimizer" for multivariate testing of site search and navigation.

Learning Search with AJAX (which increases page load times resulting in higher conversion) requests only the necessary data from SLI’s search servers when a visitor performs a search or selects an option on the search page (for example, narrowing results based on price or color, re-ordering search results, switching between grid and list views, clicking on a related search, or viewing an additional page of results). Because Learning Search with AJAX doesn’t require a reload of the entire webpage, search results appear more quickly – an important must-have for e-commerce websites whose customers expect a site to be fast and efficient.

SLI Systemns also announced the launch of Conversion Optimzier today, a tool for conducting A/B and multivariate testing of search and navigation features. The solution will allow website owners to run tests on variations in site search design and features to determine which options encourage desirable customer behaviors, thereby improving conversions. For instance, site owners can test various positions for the search box, or format and refinement options for search results pages, and view the results of the tests in an easy-to-read console.

“Testing the various options for site search design takes a lot of time, and often doesn’t yield actionable results, leaving you without a clear indication of best practices for your site,” said Shaun Ryan, CEO of SLI Systems. “Our new Conversion Optimizer solves these problems, since we take care of the complex testing configurations for our customers – and they can see test results quickly.”

Optimizing Website Conversion with Vertster

Pete Prestipino — Wed, 08 Apr 2009 21:27:00 GMT

Next to acquiring website visitors, conversion is the most important goal for Internet professionals. While much of the optimizaton in the past has been manual modifications based on best guesses, there are many tools available that aid in improving conversion.

Case in point, Vertster, which just announced the launch of a new version of their website conversion optimization tool. The solution enables webmasters/marketers to test messages, images, page structure, pricing and hundreds of other variables.

What is unique about Vertster is that rather than relying on page tagging like existing solutions, Vertster uses a JavaScript approach for altering the look and feel of web pages, reducing the amount of set-up time and the cost of running a test by several multiples.