Visual Website Optimizer

This is a guest post by Jeremy Reeves, who is a direct response freelance copywriter and conversion rate optimization specialist who helps businesses uncover hidden assets, boost conversions and maximize profits. See how he can help grow your business at www.JeremyReeves.com

Depending on how long you’ve been a subscriber to Visual Website Optimizer blog, you may or may not have seen the article I wrote last year about why long-form salesletters STILL work in most industries… even in today’s market.

(You can read “The Anatomy Of Long Salesletters” here)

That article stirred up a tremendous amount of controversy because, well, many people have biases about what does and doesn’t work.

One of those biases is the “professionalism” (or lack thereof) of using long-form salesletters in today’s marketing environment.

As a hardcore split-tester myself, I really only care about what works. Personally design doesn’t matter much to me unless you can prove to me that a “pretty” design converts higher than a more minimal design. Then I’m all for it.

However, it’s becoming more clear that design is being used as a credibility and professionalism booster, so I’m beginning to put my own preferences aside and join the crowd. That’s why in this article I’d like to show you a few examples of how people are mixing the power of long-form salesletters with the professionalism many of today’s consumers are coming to expect.

Plus, as a little bonus, I’ll even do a quick critique on each of these websites to show where I believe they’re making mistakes and have potentials for increased conversions. This article is very content-packed, so get your pen and paper ready

Example #1: SEOMoz

As you can see in the picture below, SEOmoz is testing a tabbed layout. They split-test their website like crazy (one of the reasons they’re so profitable) so this may or may not be their winning version. However it’s a good example of what can be done.

As you can see, they’ve broken up the main selling points into several tabs.

SEO Platform & SEO Tools – This tab is equivalent to talking about the features and benefits of your product/service, and would make up the bulk of any traditional salesletter. However instead of laying it out in a vertical fashion, they simply split it up into two different tabs. The theory for this is that it shortens the perceived page length and makes it easier to digest.

Resources – This is more features & benefits. However one thing I think they’re missing is talking about why it’s better than their competitors. From what I’ve seen, very few companies offer the level of ongoing training that SEOmoz does… yet they aren’t prominently talking about the extra value you get as a customer. They simply show what you get with no further explanation, no comparison charts, etc.

Who Uses PRO – This is equivalent to the social proof you’d normally have in a traditional long-form salesletter. I think they need to load this page to the gills with as much social proof as possible. That includes who uses it (as they have), success stories, testimonials, case studies, news and media mentions, etc.

A Few Ending Thoughts On This Page – I’d like to pull from the hundreds of split-tests I’ve done for both myself and my clients, plus countless hours of research into what works and what doesn’t and say a few comments that might help them (and you) increase conversions.

First… they’re missing two critical elements. A guarantee, and success stories. I saw two or three success stories but they were hard to find and even harder to read. Remember, people buy because the perceived value of your product/service outweighs the risk of purchasing. Without a guarantee, that’s hard to do. And without a plethora of testimonials, case studies & success stories, it’s hard for them to trust you.

Second… I’ve tested this tabbed layout a few different times with clients and it’s never won. However that’s not to say it won’t work for your business. Remember, as a marketer you know nothing until you test it and get a valid result.

Third… I think they’re making a mistake by having the price at the top of this page. My guess is that people would come to this page in the early stages of their buying cycle, and therefore weren’t ready to hear the price yet because they weren’t fully sold. This is a critical piece in the selling process, and I believe they’re making a mistake. But again, only testing will tell

Example #2: Basecamp

Basecamp.com is one of my favorite websites to continually spy on and look for new ideas. Again, they have an amazing testing philosophy and split-test like crazy. I’ve also used their software and love it.

Click to expand

The problem they have is that their product is so good and has so many unique features/benefits that it’s hard to talk about them all. If they were to use a single long-form salesletter, my guess is that it would be nearly 50 pages long.

Because of that, they talk about some of the features/benefits most important to their customer and then list out all the reasons people should use their product. All 24 reasons.

Here are a few things I would test and/or fix on this page.

Pricing At The Top – I believe they’re making the same mistake as SEOmoz. And again, I may be wrong but people “typically” aren’t ready for the price before reading about what the product/service can do for them.

Proof & Risk-Reversal – I’m very, very surprised to see this page doesn’t place much emphasis on proof or risk-reversal. In this age, those two factors are two of the most important factors you have at your disposal to build trust. They have a little social proof on the page, but it’s near the bottom and, in my mind, almost an afterthought. It’s also hard to read. I’d recommend bringing it up as well as making it much more prominent.

The Copy – They seem to only be hitting on very surface level benefits. Things like being more organized, being able to chat freely, and coordinating schedules.

The problem is, surface level benefits don’t do much in terms of selling. What they need to do is talk more about what those surface level benefits DO for the end user. For example, being more organized means you and your employees save time, become more productive and increase the bottom line through increased production.

And then they should add a strategically placed testimonial of a person who’s done just that.

See how much more powerful that would be than simply saying “you’ll be more organized”?

Video – Some products simply “need” a video to show how powerful they are and how valuable they can be to the end user. This is one of those products. They could either have a video on the page showing people how it works, or even hold webinars showing people the ins and outs of how it could help them. My guess is they’d raise conversions by 30%+, easily.

Copy Doodles – Believe it or not, the handwriting you see on this page has its roots in old-school direct response copywriting when marketers would write out a printed letter, mark it up by hand and rescan it to create the final letter. I’m doing that exact same strategy for an offline client right now.

I LOVE doing these and love how they used them. However one thing I would change is the font they’re using. To me it’s so hard to read that I don’t even attempt it. Instead I glaze over the entire section.

Call To Action – The call to action they have can be fixed in several different ways. First, they should talk about the guarantee. I would even consider having a guarantee on the free trial. After all, even though it’s free, it’s still a time commitment so there’s still risk involved.

Second, I would test having that form in a different color and a different shape. I’d go with a more vertical look instead of horizontal, as it seems cluttered.

Third, the line under “Sign up for a 45-day free trial of Basecamp” is nearly impossible to read.

Closing Thoughts On Using A Long-Form Salesletter In Your Business

Please, don’t be afraid of trying something new. You’ve just seen two industry leaders who took the idea and selling power of long-form salesletters and spun it in their own unique way.

One of the biggest mistakes I see people make is thinking “that doesn’t apply to MY audience”. Do yourself a favor and hide your ego and beliefs about what works and what doesn’t for a few seconds. Be bold and try something new. Trust me, you’ll love what happens.

The vast majority of breakthroughs happen when something is radically changed in a business, not through “safe” tests. If you’re looking for a potential breakthrough in your profits, I highly recommend getting out of your comfort zone and trying something new. It’s the only way it’s going to happen.

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Video always has interesting effects on conversion rate or sales on a website. In a lot of cases, video helps in explaining the service or the product, and hence increases sales. In other cases, it may actually reduce conversions (probably because it is not a good fit for that website, or that video is poorly made or presented). Previously, we had featured several interesting case studies about videos. One of them was about A/B testing a video on a landing page, and how it increased conversions by 46%. The other one was about testing ‘Watch a Video’ v/s ‘Get Instant Access’.

The only real way to know what a video will do for your website (or landing page) is to actually conduct an A/B test. And that’s what one of our customers Device Magic did on their homepage. They tested existing version of their homepage (which had a video) against a new version which had a jQuery based image slider instead.

A/B test (video v/s image slider)

Device Magic Mobile Forms allows organizations to quickly and easily build robust data collection systems. Using their API, developers can build rich integrations featuring push technologies e.g. for work orders, proof of delivery, maintenance reports, retail surveys etc. They wanted to see if a video or series of rotating jQuery slides would work best for driving people to signup, so they conducted a simple A/B test using Visual Website Optimizer.

Existing homepage (with a video)

Actually, they weren’t sure that the video was of sufficient quality and they suspected it was too technical. So, they thought maybe slides would present their offering more concisely.

Homepage variation (with an image slider)

Can you guess which version worked better?

Results and Lessons

They measured two goals: % conversion from home page to sign up page and lastly number of signups completed. Initially their control (with video) was beating variation (with image slider) and they couldn’t understand why. But then they let the test run a while longer until they had a lot more data – much to their surprise, the result inverted to variation outperforming control, which is what they had expected. And this result was statistically significant.

The image slider variation increased conversions from homepage to signup page by 35%, and the total increase in subsequent signups was 31%. So, it was indeed true that for Device Magic, image slider worked much better as compared to the video.

A key learning from this test would be to get enough data that one is absolutely sure of the result, and that one shouldn’t be too hasty because some detail may be skewing the result or leading one in the wrong direction. Patience in A/B testing is the key learning here. (We have an A/B test duration calculator online to tell you how long you should run a test before giving up on it).

If you have had similar (or contrasting) experience testing video v/s image sliders, do let us know in the comments below.

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Following is a guest post by Joanna Wiebe, who is a conversion-focused copywriter and the writer of the copywriting-for-startups ebook series Copy Hackers (CopyHackers.com). Follow her on Twitter @copyhackers.

Okay, so here’s something most web copywriters won’t tell you: copy can only do so much.

Even really amazing copy – like stop-in-your-tracks headlines, clear value propositions, and prominent reasons to believe – won’t squeeze out every possible conversion on your site.

And, of course, conversion rate optimization is all about squeezing more money out of your site.

So let’s say you’ve run a bunch of copy tests, a bunch of design tests, a bunch of flow tests.

You’ve done the research, you’ve crafted the hypotheses, you’ve slaved over test creative, you’ve run tests, you’ve measured results. Great. Good on you.

But what if you could do one test without any research beyond that in this post?

What if you could develop one treatment that uses exactly the same copy as the control?

What if your next test required a couple hours of your designer’s/dev’s time + VWO?

And what if your next test took place on one of the most critical pages in your conversion funnel – your Plans & Pricing or catalog page – and could help you pull in more revenue per customer?

What if you could log into Visual Website Optimizer right after reading this blog post and have a running test with a great hypothesis ASAP?

I Can Hear the Testing Die-Hards Screaming Now

“You can’t just test willy-nilly! You need research.”

“You need to know everything there is to know about your visitors before you run a test!”

Okay, okay – got it. Yes, that’s the ideal way to test. Do surveys, do click-tracking, do user tests. That’s how consultants teach us to test.

(I should know. My hubby and I have been consulting on this stuff for years now.)

But here’s the truth: the average online marketer doesn’t do a lot of research before testing. They should, but they don’t because, in most cases, they’re busy doing the work of 2 people. But they still want to optimize their sites, so they mimic other winning creative treatments in their own tests, or they read books like Cialdini’s “Influence” and develop test creative based on that.

That’s the reality of optimizing websites in most businesses today.

And it’s actually not a terrible approach.

As long as you have a data-driven hypothesis, you have the basis of a quality test.

And if your hypothesis is based on what you’ve learned from smart dudes like Cialdini – whose books are filled with academic research about human decision-making psychology – then your hypothesis is data-driven. So good. Let’s proceed.

The Background on This Test

Chances are good you already know that visitors to your site – like all consumers – use more than just the words and colors on a web page to make a decision about whether to stay or bounce, whether to read or skip, and whether to exit or convert.

People stay on your site, sign up for your newsletter, subscribe to your software, and buy your ebooks based on factors beyond the messages you’re showing them.

Tons of research shows that we use peripheral cues and non-conscious processes on the websites we visit in order to make consumption and purchase decisions. For example:

• We seek out testimonials, Facebook likes and tweets so we don’t feel like we’re the first one to try X
• We seek out logos from the media to validate our interest in X
• We seek out starred reviews to keep us from making a mistake we’ll regret
• We seek out photos of bloggers so we feel a positive human connection
• We seek out security logos so we won’t lose our privacy and have our status quo disrupted

Those are the obvious cues.

More subtle cues tap into our implicit decision-making processes and can help you squeeze more money out of those customers who are uncertain as to which of your products to choose.

Meet “primacy effect” and “extremeness aversion”, two uber-nerdy insights into how consumers buy that will drive this test.

• “Primacy effect” simply means that the order in which multiple items are arranged in a list or catalog influences product selection or purchase behavior. So if the item at the top of a vertical list or to the far left of a horizontal list is really cheap, that sets an expectation of the cost of goods on the rest of the list.
• “Extremeness aversion” is all about avoiding one extreme or the other when making a decision. Extreme options are, by and large, less attractive than moderate options. So when looking at a list, the average person would avoid the really cheap items and the really expensive items. In the absence of certainty about which item to choose, they gravitate toward the middle ground.

(This shizzle’s all supported.*)

The Test: Swap the Order of Your Products

The average startup catalog page looks something like this one, by SalesForce:

As you can see, the products are organized, left to right, from least expensive to most expensive.

When you look at this page with primacy effect in mind, you can confidently assume that the average visitor to this site sees $2 first and thus believes that SalesForce products will be relatively inexpensive.

The first-seen price sets the standard.

So what happens when that same visitor’s eyes dance on over to the end of the row… where the massive, quite intimidating $250 pops out?

Based on primacy effect, s/he should be pretty freakin’ surprised.

We don’t know what SalesForce visitors actually do when they see such variety in pricing, but the primacy effect suggests that they would be less likely to consider the more expensive option(s) simply because their first impression made them believe all SalesForce products would be inexpensive.

Further, when you apply what you know about extremeness aversion, you can hypothesize that most visitors will eliminate the $2 and $250 options as possibilities.

That will leave just the middle three options to choose from: $15, $65, and $125.

So, that understood, what should you do with the treatment you’re going to create?

Start by deciding which product you’d most like to sell – otherwise known as your “lead” product. In this case, the “Most Popular” callout suggests to me that the $125/mo product is their lead product.

K, great. Now reorganize the page to make the $125 option look more reasonable. Like so:

Here’s our hypothesis:

A pricing page that is, by default, organized with the most expensive-priced item to the left of the horizontal list will trigger primacy effect and extremeness aversion, thus increasing average revenue per visitor.

…So test it. Voila.

That’s it.

I’m not guaranteeing that this is a winner! I’m not crazy.

In fact, I have a hunch that SalesForce would still see a lot of $65 signups, not a dramatic spike in $125 signups. The middle-ground options would simply be better explored. I believe that to be true because this test is based on tons of research I’ve pored over* about how people make decisions when presented with options in an ambiguous environment.

How your particular visitors respond to it is the part worth testing. (And that’s also the part where doing your own customer research can help you get a sense for which product to lead with.)

Two things to note:

1. This test isn’t trying to get people into products that aren’t a good fit for them. I hope it goes without saying that you still want to be ethical and good to your customers. This test is simply about helping people narrow their options better – so they don’t make rash decisions based on the first elements they see on a page. The effect tends to be higher average revenue per user (ARPU).
2. I’ve conducted this very sort of test before, for a Canadian software company. In that test, not only did ARPU increase by 5%, but the recipe that used primacy + extremeness aversion also saw a conversion lift of 8.92%.

These aren’t massive increases, but, again, conversion rate optimization is about squeezing out every penny you can… and testing is about learning from your visitors. You’ll do both with a test like this.
Oh, and in case you’re wondering if anyone else is ordering their solutions this way, yes. In fact, 37signals has been for years. This is their previous solution-ordering for Basecamp:

And this is how they order their solutions now:

Both lead with the most expensive product. And with 37signals’s testing culture, you can be pretty sure they’re doing it this way because they’ve tested it.

…So, are you ready to give this simple idea a shot in your next split test?

Editor’s note: If you liked this article, you may also want to explore another article on price testing we had posted earlier: Stop guessing! Use A/B testing to determine ideal price for your product

*Interesting Research:

Chernev, A. (2005). Context Effects without a Context: Attribute Balance as a Reason for Choice. Journal of Consumer Research, 32(2), 213-223. Retrieved from Academic Search Complete database.

Chernev, A. (2004). Extremeness Aversion and Attribute-Balance Effects in Choice. Journal of Consumer Research, 31(2), 249-263. Retrieved from Academic Search Complete database.

Mourali, M., Böckenholt, U., & Laroche, M. (2007). Compromise and Attraction Effects under Prevention and Promotion Motivations. Journal of Consumer Research, 34(2), 234-247. Retrieved from Academic Search Complete database.

Simonson, I. (1989). Choice Based on Reasons: The Case of Attraction and Compromise Effects. Journal of Consumer Research, 16(2), 158-174. Retrieved from Academic Search Complete database.

Valley, I., & Chater, N. (2006). Game Relativity: How Context Influences Strategic Decision Making. Journal of Experimental Psychology / Learning, Memory & Cognition, 32(1), 131-149. doi:10.1037/0278-7393.32.1.131.

Wernerfelt, B. (1995, March). A Rational Reconstruction of the Compromise Effect: Using Market Data to Infer Utilities. Journal of Consumer Research, 21(4), 627-633. Retrieved from Academic Search Complete database.

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We have been working silently and regularly releasing lots of new features. Some Visual Website Optimizer users and customers may have noticed these features already. This post is an official announcement of all the new features which have been released in past few months. What made us wait so long to announce?

Brand new website design!

Yes, we were waiting for an overhaul of our website before announcing the new features. Working with the most excellent Jesse (of 31Three.com), we came up with a new color scheme, jazzed up the logo and gave different pages an uplift (especially, homepage, case studies and features pages). Here’s how our homepage looks now:

Do you like our new design? Any improvement ideas or comments?

New test designer with tons of features

We released this update long back, but haven’t formally announced it. To make creation of variations even easier for marketers, we made test designer much more intuitive and enhanced its functionality.

These are the new features in test designer:

• More options to change elements (move, resize, rearrange, hide, remove, change link, change text, etc.)
• Better image uploader and inbuilt image editor (crop, rotate, resize, color images within VWO)
• Unlimited undo and redo (make mistakes, and then simply undo those mistakes!)
• Save test as draft (you can work on the same test in multiple shifts)
• List of modifications (if you want to remove one of the changes in an A/B test, you can do that from list of modifications)

Our features page has a short video that shows new editor in action. Do take a look to see just how much the editor has improved recently!

Geo-behavioral targeting

This is a feature that has got us most excited! In A/B test, you create two versions of your website and then any incoming visitor will see one of those two versions. Finally, you measure which version produced more sales and conversions. So far, so good. However, what if different types of visitors react differently to different versions? Probably visitors from New York who came to your site via Facebook respond better to version A, but visitors from London respond better to version B? How can you personalize your website and landing pages so different visitors see a version that maximizes conversion rate for them?

This geo-behavioral targeting feature lets you create multiple variations/offers/content and then target specific variations to specific segment of visitors. So, if you have 5 variations, you can target each one of them to be only shown to a particular kind of visitor. Cool, right?

We have multiple targeting options: country, city, browser, mobile device (iPad, iPhone, Android, etc.), referring website, returning or new visitor, cookie value, ad campaign, etc. You can combine these targeting options to create a very complex kind of segment.

Usability testing

So you have decided to A/B test your website, but how do you know what you could be testing? You can either get ideas from A/B testing case studies, or read posts such as 23 A/B testing ideas. But if you need personalized suggestions about what to test on your website, you are on your own (unless you hire a conversion rate optimization agency).

For benefit of our users, we have come up with a usability testing feature called What to Test. What this feature allows you is to ask our panel of users (sourced from Amazon’s Mechanical Turk) what they think about your website or landing page, and thereby get A/B testing and usability improvement ideas. You can ask any question you want (for example “Do you think our headline is simple and effective?”), or you could choose questions from our pre-defined list (we have collated best usability testing questions). Upon starting the process, within a few days, you will get a report with feedback from users. See an example below:

We hope you use this feature and get lots of new A/B testing ideas!

Other improvements in Visual Website Optimizer

This is not all! We have made many other improvements in Visual Website Optimizer:

• Google Analytics integration is codeless now (no need to change any code. Simply select the integration option while making a test, see details here)
• Treat variation as a base for calculations (as a default, control is the base for calculating percentage improvement, chance to beat original and other metrics in report. Now you can select any variation as the base, and see calculations relative to it)
• Asynchronous code (huge page load speed improvements now possible by switching to new asynchronous code snippet, see details here)

Business and team updates!

We have our very own team blog where we keep announcing what Wingify Boys are up to! Here are the salient points on what’s happening in the company:

• We’re a team of 10 people now
• We crossed 1200 paying customers within first 2 years of incorporation
• We moved to a larger and better equipped office
• Yep, we’re still bootstrapped

If you think we’re a fun company and would like to be our part, we’re hiring (all the time!)

Phew! What’s next?

We have already started working on next big set of features. In case you have any specific feature requests, suggestions or comments, you are always welcome to email them to us at info@wingify.com

We’re very excited about the future of testing and optimization, and hope you are too..

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This is a guest post from Jeremy Reeves, who is a freelance copywriter obsessed with split testing everything from emails, to landing pages, salesletters and upsell processes. You can find more information about Jeremy’s split-testing services.

Conversion rates are great. They’re easy to track and can give you a lot of data. If your conversion rates are going up, that’s a good thing. If they’re doing down, that’s a bad thing.

But here’s a conversion secret you’ve probably never heard.

If you’re focusing solely on increasing your conversion rates to grow your business…

… you’re leaving at least 50% of your money on the table.

Let me explain.

Conversion rates are a fantastic number to keep track of. I personally watch mine like a hawk and write down the results of every single test I do (for myself and my clients). The mistake most people make is only keeping tracking of conversion rates though.

So in today’s article, we’re NOT going to focus on conversion rates.

We’re going to talk about the top THREE key metrics you should also be keeping track of.

Now before we jump in, let me say something.

I realize that when it comes to “knowing your numbers”, there are a lot of different metrics you should know.

However, every business is different and should rely on different numbers to help them determine which traffic source is best, which media to enter next, etc…. so this article is only going to talk about the top THREE which I feel will apply to every entrepreneur reading this article.

With that out of the way, let’s jump right in

Metric #1: Value Per Visitor

The first metric is one that very few people ever consider. They take a look at conversion rates, CTR’s and other numbers but don’t ever consider value per visitor.

To figure out how much each visitor is worth to your business, simply divide the number of visitors you had over the past month/year/ or week… by the amount of money you made in that exact same time period.

For example if your site had 20,000 visitors last month and you made $20,000 net profit… that’s an average of $1 per visitor.

You can also break it down into segments such as traffic source, page, gender, age, etc.

This number is important because when you know how much an average visitor is worth to your business, you know EXACTLY how much you can afford to spend on marketing. This is also the best number to track if you’re doing any kind of price testing. Plus… you can also project future growth, which is a very fun exercise to do.

Quick Tip: Use the “revenue tracking” feature in Visual Website Optimizer. It makes this process very easy

Metric #2: Customer Lifetime Value

When it comes to this number, there are TWO very important factors to consider.

First, you want to know how long it takes for the average person to complete his or her buying cycle.

Then you figure out how much they spent during that time period.

The result is your customer lifetime value.

For example, let’s say you’re selling a piece of software for $50 per month and your average customer stays with you for 6 months. That’s a customer lifetime value of $300 over 6 months.

Second, you figure out how to use this information. The point of knowing it is so you know how much you can spend to acquire a new customer.

For example if you have a very long customer life cycle (like a restaurant)… you should look at how long you want to extend your money before you make a profit. This is basically your risk level.

In the restaurant example, let’s say an average customer makes the owner $100 in profit in the first three months… and $500 in profit over two years.

Since the point of most businesses should be to break-even on the first sale, followed by a robust back-end to make up those profits, you’ll want to figure out how long you can afford to break-even on that customer.

(Note: The above paragraph is something VERY few people really “get”, and doesn’t apply to all businesses. But it does apply to 90%+)

If you’re not very risk tolerant, simply CAN’T have a back-end for some reason, or aren’t looking to build a long-term business, you may want to profit immediately. This is good in the short-term but bad in the long-term because it will limit the amount of customers you can buy through paid traffic.

If you’re risk tolerant and looking at your business more long-term… you might be comfortable not breaking for a month… 3 months… or even a full year. This is bad short-term, but will lead to fantastic growth long-term because you can afford to spend more money on advertising. In the example above, 5x more.

(Note that none of these strategies are “bad” or “good”. It all depends on your business and your goals with the business)

To break it down… you have to look at THREE criteria when figuring out your customer lifetime value.

1. How much you can spend for a new customer.
2. How much of a margin you want to have.
3. How quickly you want that investment returned.

This is going to vary from business to business… ranging from 1-2 months to several years.

Metric #3: Cost Per Conversion

This number is crucial because after breaking it down by traffic source, you can tell which traffic channels are profitable, and which aren’t!

For example if you find out that your customer value after 6 months is $100… but you’re spending an average of $95 to acquire that customer… you might want to change something.

Sure, you’re profitable… but hardly. On the other hand, you may have one traffic source giving you a cost per conversion of $20, while another is at $90.

Which would you choose to focus your attention on?

Obviously, you want the traffic source with the lowest cost per conversion. Then you analyze those visitors in-depth, and try to seek out similar traffic sources.

The bottom line is this.

The more you pay attention to these numbers, and not only conversion rates, the more successful your business is going to be. When you know exactly what’s going on in your business at all times… it’s so easy to out-market your competitors it’s almost not fair.

So don’t take this article lightly. Read it a few times if you need to. And then get to work in finding out what these numbers are and putting strategies in place to to dominate your market!

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Visual Website Optimizer is used by all sorts of organizations, from one person team to multiple product departments in a large organization. When multiple people are working on multiple different A/B (or multivariate) tests, managing them properly becomes a requirement. Without proper management of your A/B testing efforts, you may run into following issues:

• Duplication of effort: different members of your team may run similar tests on same page
• Mistakes and errors: a team member may edit, pause or stop a test which shouldn’t have been changed
• No central repository of knowledge: similar to first point, but without proper sharing of knowledge your team may not be able to apply results from one test to generate ideas for future A/B tests

There are ways to overcome these issues and, in this post, I discuss the same.

Best practices to manage A/B testing

An organization may have its own internal procedures and protocols for A/B testing, but at the least we suggest having a shared document or spreadsheet to keep tab on:

• Which pages are currently being tested and which A/B tests are in planning or design phase
• Who all in the team is responsible for these A/B tests
• Which elements are changed in these tests (buttons, headline, etc.)
• Once test is over, what is the conclusion or result from the test (e.g. green button outperformed control by 25%)

This document will help organize your efforts and you will become better and more efficient at A/B testing as your repository of results grows bigger. Of course, there must be an individual who is responsible for maintaining this document and who oversees all testing efforts in a team/organization. We have seen that without an owner and champion of A/B testing in a team, such efforts quickly fizzle out.

Visual Website Optimizer features to help you in management

In addition to this shared document, you can also utilize multiple Visual Website Optimizer features to organize even more efficiently. Sample some of the features available and how they should be used:

Permission based logins – This is a feature wherein you can create multiple logins for different team members. That is, if you have a large team, different team members can have their own login IDs (you don’t have to share common username/password). You can also assign different permission levels (Browse, Design, Publish and Admin) to team members according to their job role. For example, a team member who has design permissions can create a test, but s/he won’t be able to start or stop the test.

Sub accounts – This is a feature wherein you can create different accounts for different teams. Advantage of creating a sub accounts is that they will be unique for individual teams and so team members will only see their own tests (they won’t see tests from other teams). This helps to organize A/B testing efforts of different teams.

Test Name – To state the obvious, your organization can come up with a mutually agreed protocol to name tests. We have seen that organizations usually name their tests with this protocol: PAGE DESCRIPTION + WHAT IS BEING TESTED.

Notes – In Visual Website Optimizer, you can enter notes for the test to record various points about it:

• Your hypothesis for the test (what do you expect will happen)
• Changes made in different variations
• Which team members are involved in this test
• After the test has been stopped, what were the results and lessons

We recommend extensive usage of Notes feature because many a times you check previous tests and forget the lessons / results from the test. Briefly summarizing this information in the Notes section will help preserve this information in the organization for everyone’s advantage.

Labels – Just like Labels or Folders in email programs, in VWO you can create different labels and tag tests with them. Examples of labels: homepage_test, button_test, winning_variation_found, inconclusive_test, surprising_results, etc. You can, of course, apply multiple labels to the same test. When all tests are listed in your account, labels will help you organize and filter your tests. For example, if you want to see all tests that didn’t produce any results, simply click on inconclusive_test label and see all relevant tests.

Notifications – Administrator of an account can enable Notifications for his/her account. This feature will send an instant email to the administrator upon any activity in the account. For example, if a team member starts or stop the test, administrator will get an email. This allows administrator to cross-check whether this action is something that was intended or is a mistake or miscommunication. Thanks to this email, administrator can take necessary swift actions or make necessary enquiries.

I hope you liked this post about managing A/B testing in a team environment. Do let me know if there is a particular practice that you use in your organization which others here can benefit from.

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This case study was first published by VisitNorway.org, which is one of our customers. They have shared their experience of performing A/B tests on their website. The original blog post was in Norwegian and we translated it into English and are reproducing the same below.

We are constantly striving to improve Visitnorway.com, and we have generally used traditional tools for analytics as well as usability tests and surveys to assess needs of our visitors and accordingly customize the content and functionality.

In January, we began using a new A/B testing tool [Visual Website Optimizer] for quickly and effectively measuring the impact of changes in text, design and functionality.

Based on input from users, experts or hypotheses, when we decided to conduct a test, we set up the variations that we wanted to test against the original. Based on the results of tests, this helped us decide whether we want to implement the variation on website permanently or not.

For example, it is very easy to test the title that gives the most clicks in an article. We just need to click on the title and change it, see the screenshot below:

Results from some of the tests we have conducted

1) Click to destination company websites from landing pages

We wanted to find out about simple design change on landing pages to increase the number of clicks to the destination’s websites. At first, we only increased the size of the link text and converted it into bold.

The test was done on VisitOSLO pages of visitnorway.com. We got a positive increase of 70 – 75% in click through rate simply by changing the size and have stronger text, see the screenshot below.

We therefore proceeded with this change on the landing page and increased visits to destination company website.

2) What should be the “Booking” name called in the top menu?

We tested different names for the menu item “Booking” in English, Norwegian and Spanish, hoping to lead even more of those who were interested in booking a holiday into the booking section .

For English, the text “Booking” won with an improvement of 39% against the “Book Online” as it originally stood. “Online booking” had a 14% improvement to the original.

The Norwegian word for “Order” with an improvement of 114% (!) won against the original “Book travel”. See screenshot below for an overview of the other variants.

In the Spanish menu, we wanted to see if it was best to write the “Booking” in Spanish or English. Since the Book Norway does not yet have Spanish version, we were curious about the bounce rate.

With regards to how many people went to booking section, “Booking” had a decrease of 48% in English (Variation 1) in relation to “Reservas” (Control). See screenshot below.

Bounce rate was similar for both of them, so we eventually used the “Reserve” in the Spanish menu.

Based on these results, we changed the text in the menu to the “winners” of these three tests.

3) Moving the “Order” link in the main menu for the Norwegian edition

We wanted to see how much change there was in the number of clicks to the Book Norway when we moved the “Order” from the second position to the second last and last position in the main menu.

We had a decline of 72-73% in the number of clicks, see the screenshot below.

So as the numbers speak, we did not move not the “Order” link.

Conclusion and Lessons

A/B testing is an important method for us to determine whether it is wise to move forward with new concepts or changes, before we spend a lot of time and money on design and development. We will use it actively to get real decision-making data.

Our findings show that one must be careful of what you call “booking” in the various languages ​​- words are tremendously powerful.

Finally, we chose Visual Website Optimizer because it was easy to use and had enough functionality to allow us to carry out the tests that we want.

Happy testing!

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Any (synchronous) external or 3rd party JavaScript code you add on your website has potential to slow down your website. A vendor who says your website won’t slow down is probably lying. And, as every marketer knows today, page load time is pretty important. It affects your conversion rate and search rankings.

We are committed to our customers’ site speeds and therefore proud to announce immediate availability of asynchronous code snippet for Visual Website Optimizer (VWO). This new code snippet has been months into development and refinement, and now we are first A/B testing vendor to come up with an asynchronous code snippet and are very excited about it! If you are a Visual Website Optimizer user, we highly recommend you to update your code snippet to new asynchronous one.

What is Asynchronous loading?

Essentially, instead of loading VWO code and your website sequentially, asynchronous code will load both in parallel, thereby speeding up your website load. See following graphic to understand it fully:

Advantages of Asynchronous code snippet:

• Much faster website loading: asynchronous code snippet loads variations and other data in parallel to your website loading, so unlike earlier synchronous code, your website loading is not stalled until we have loaded variation data and other VWO code. With new code snippet, all JavaScript code and variation data loads parallely.
• Fallback to control in case our servers are unavailable: in a rare and unlikely case our servers are unresponsive or take some time to respond, a timeout will happen and your original page will be shown. As history shows, even though it is rare, due to network unavailability or DDOS attacks, even best networks and servers can become unresponsive. The asynchronous code snippet has a timeout setting (default is 2 seconds, but is configurable — see below), and if our servers or Content Distribution Network (CDN, currently Amazon’s Cloudfront) don’t respond within that time, your normal page will get displayed.

How to get Asynchronous code?

Login to your Visual Website Optimizer account, and go to ‘Get Tracking Code‘ section (under Tools tab).

Settings available in Asynchronous code

In code snippet, you will find two variables that you can adjust (although we recommend keeping default values intact).

• settings_tolerance=2000 this is the maximum time (in milliseconds) for which the code snippet will wait for test settings to arrive from our servers. If no settings arrive within this period, timeout will happen and your original page will get displayed (test won’t run in this case, as fallback has happened).
• library_tolerance=1500 this is the maximum time (in milliseconds) for which the code snippet will wait for our JavaScript library to get downloaded from Content Distribution Network (Amazon Cloudfront). If no file arrives within this period, timeout will happen and your original page will get displayed (test won’t run in this case, as fallback has happened).

Note that in normal circumstances, all the data and files that need to be download will get downloaded in 100-200 milliseconds, so the timeout is an absolutely maximum threshold and can safely be kept as it is.

If you decrease the threshold, one side effect of it would be that some visitors (with slower connections or with have local ISP/network issues) may not be able to become a part of your test (because timeout occurred for them), so you may potentially lose some visitors or conversions registered in your A/B test.

Compatibility of Asynchronous code snippet

The new code snippet is compatible with all browsers. WordPress, Joomla , Magento and Drupal plugins are available. (We are currently working to update Google Analytics and SiteCatalyst  plugins)

Highly recommended: use new Asynchronous code

Because of numerous advantages of new asynchronous code snippet, we highly recommend you to start using it as soon as possible. In case you have any questions or suggestions, please feel free to contact us at support@wingify.com

19 Comments »

WhichTestWon.com is an excellent website that features a new A/B test case study every week. We love the concept, but what we love more is their annual testing awards. Every year, they judge A/B tests done in that year under several categories (like button tests, copywriting tests, checkout page tests, etc.) and award the best ones.

This year A/B tests conducted using Visual Website Optimizer won 9 awards. We won awards in multiple categories and won across all levels (gold and silver). In this post, you can read and explore those award winning A/B tests.

ThePartyWorks

Details: Ecommerce Shopping Cart Redesign Test – Which Version Raised Sales?
Category: Ecommerce Cart Tests
Who conducted the test: FutureNow

Palmers

Details: Did Single-Page or Multi-Page Product Lists Increase Ecommerce Sales 35%?
Category: Ecommerce Category Page Tests
Who conducted the test: E-Dialog

Hyundai

Details: Does Adding Social Proof – Such as Test Drives Requested This Month – Increase Leads?
Category: Automotive Tests
Who conducted the test: Traffic4U

ThunderShirt

Details: Ecommerce Store Page Template Radical Redesign Test
Category: Ecommerce Product Page Tests
Who conducted the test: Brooks Bell

Unive

Details: Does Adding a Form Field to Start the Buying Process Directly from a Homepage Raise Sales?
Category: Finance Tests
Who conducted the test: Online Dialogue

Smiley Cookies

Details: Selling cookies online? Next-day shipping offer may increase sales by 41%
Category: Header/Banner Icon Tests
Who conducted the test: Trinity Insights

Awayfind

Details: How four additional sentences increased signups by 91% for AwayFind
Category: Landing Page Tests
Who conducted the test: Marketing Genius

EZTexting

Details: Live Chat widget increases signups by 31%
Category: Lead Generation Tests
Who conducted the test: In-house

ThePartyWorks

Details: Do ‘Add to Cart’ Buttons Improve Sales From Ecommerce Search Results Pages?
Category: Search Results Tests
Who conducted the test: FutureNow

Hope you liked these award winning A/B tests. For more success stories where Visual Website Optimizer was used, please go to our case studies section.

2 Comments »

Josh Ledgard is the co-founder of KickoffLabs. He knows a thing or two about what it takes to create a successful launch page. In this guest post he shares his thoughts on how you could be A/B testing your launch page.

You haven’t launched and you don’t know anything about your customer. But you have bought into the idea that you need to have a launch page and start learning how to sell..

Your first sales goal is to get as many of the the right set of customers signed up as possible. You can absolutely A/B test your way into a successful launch. A launch with a laser focus, the right price, and a line around the block of people shaking fistfuls of money to give you. Here is how…

Test radically different pitches

Founders get stuck on one particular pitch. Maybe it’s because that’s how they sold themselves on the idea in the first place, but it’s probably not going to be the best sales pitch.

Take SiftSocial for example. That’s the next product from KickoffLabs. We love it because it helped us use our limited time to personally market KickoffLabs to the biggest influencers on twitter. I know the product can save time and generate revenue, but that’s not the pitch that wins most customers over.

We win more people over pitching that it’s a smarter way to engage with higher quality content and people online. People don’t value their time and money like they should, but they do value feeling smarter. Same product, different pitch.

Tips for pitching on a landing page:

• Give it a tweetable tagline. You should be able to hook people in less than 140 characters.
• Teasers only work if you are already famous. The rest of us need to actually explain what the visitor is getting into.
• Keep the signup form above the fold. Sorry, people still don’t scroll.
• Drop all the tech buzzwords, drop the jargon, drop things that make you sound smart. Stay clear, concise, & simple. Focus on a problem and the results of using your solution.
• Tell a great story. For example:

Find the ideal price

Everyone is scared to put a price on their launch page. They are worried it will scare people away from signing up. But if someone was scared away by knowing your product will cost money you’re going to have bigger problems. [Editor's note: read our previously published post Stop guessing! Use A/B testing to determine ideal price for your product]

Tips for testing price:

• Start testing lines like “Plans will start at $10/month” and compare it to other price points.
• There is a line you’ll cross where signups will start going down. Find it… because that’s the line no one will pay for.
• You could also use a survey tool like KISSinsights to poll users on whether or not the price should be more or less.
• Several startups have had success with actually putting up a Paypal button that charges people a price for “immediate access”. You could test different button prices.

Test design elements

Color, background, typography, and general design choices create the mood for conversion and you need to test to discover what works best for your audience.

The design of your landing page shouldn’t get in the way of the primary call to action.  For example:

Tips for creating a great launch page design:

• Test a clean page without a background. I think you’ll be surprised that it matters less than you think.
• Use links sparingly. Anything that takes them off the form before they have completed it distracts from the goal. You probably have a great blog, an awesome Facebook Page, and a lot more information somewhere… but if I start clicking around I’m not going to come back to fill out the form.
• Only collect the information you ABSOLUTELY need. The longer a form users see the LESS likely they are to complete it. If you really think about it you probably don’t need to know their full names, DOB, and mothers maiden name at this point do you?

Test signup incentives

The best launch pages offer two types of incentives. One for getting the customer email address and another for getting them to sign their friends up. Does your market react better to a contest, financial motivations, or simply the desire to be part of your beta?

Tips for creating great viral incentives:

• Reward people. Personally thank them on Twitter and send an auto-response that provides them with more value and information.
• Define clear rules. Tell people what they are. Tell people if they change and why, but try and stick to your promises. If you want 3 signups before you give something away… tell them that’s how they get in… and let them in! No one should be begging.
• Tell them how they are helping. Let them know, without effort on their part… if their marketing is helping you achieve your goals. It’s as simple as saying “Hey – you got 5 people to sign up! Thanks! Here is a free ebook about building a landing page. “
• Keep them engaged. Even if you can’t launch yet keep people informed along the way. Demonstrate progress. Send newsletters with information that helps them achieve their goals anyway… even if it’s without you.

Test now or else

Now is the time to test radical differences. Once you launch you’ll be so bought into a design and your direction that testing bigger changes won’t be as easy. Tests like this can absolutely help you identify the best product market fit possible before you launch. Then you can focus your testing to optimize for the local maximum.

If you’re a fan of this approach you’ll love how easy it is to combine KickoffLabs and Visual Website Optimizer. We even created a handy guide for you.

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