Visual Website Optimizer

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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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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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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A/B testing is fundamentally a very simple concept. You have a webpage (landing page, homepage or product page) which you call version A. Now you make certain changes to it (changing headlines, buttons, colors, style or layout) and call the changed page as version B. Once you have version A and version B ready, any visitor that arrives on your webpage gets to either see version A or version B. In other words, your website traffic is split between these two versions. In A/B testing reports, you can then see which version (A or B) produced more number of sales or conversions (or leads or downloads, etc.)

So far, so simple.

However, there are a few misconceptions that can arise while doing A/B testing. In this post, I will discuss 5 of those common misconceptions. Note that the following misconceptions are not specific to Visual Website Optimizer, but are rather applicable for most A/B testing tools.

1. Split of traffic not occurring as exactly 50/50

Whenever a visitor arrives on a page, how do we decide whether to show version A or version B? Answer is simple: we flip a coin. (Not literally, of course). We generate a random number between 0 and 1. If the random number is less than 0.5, we show version A, otherwise we show version B.

But just like while flipping coin you are never guaranteed exact same number of heads and tails, in A/B test you are never be guaranteed of getting an exact 50/50 split between version A and version B. However, as you test more traffic, the split ratio should get closer to 50/50, but it would rarely be exact 50/50.

2. In A/A test, you may get a winning or losing variation

First, what is an A/A test? This is a type of test where variation is exactly same as control. People generally setup this kind of test to determine validity of a tool. Ideally (and this is what most users expect), performance of both variations should be similar (because both variations are in fact same). So, if one of the variations starts out-performing or under-performing control, users think that tracking in tool is not correct because variation and control are actually same.

It may indeed be the case that tracking of tool isn’t accurate and that it is not accurately recording visitors and conversions. But there is another reason why A/A test can produce winning or losing variations. Because split of traffic is random in A/B testing, just due to random chance it may happen that traffic mix which goes to version A may be better (or worse) converting as compared to traffic mix going to version B. So, although it is highly unlikely (but not impossible), just due to random chance you may get a winning or losing variation in an A/A test.

3. Getting a winning variation even with less number of conversions/traffic

We declare a variation as winning variation when the difference in conversion rate (as compared to control) is statistically significant. You can read about mathematics of it in previous blog posts: how we calculate statistical significance and how to estimate number of visitors needed for a test. A common misconception is that a winning variation cannot arise early in the test when less number of visitors have been tested. Actually, it can. Broadly speaking, there are two components that determine statistical significance: a) number of visitors that have been tested; b) difference in conversion rate between variation A and variation B.

It is true that a minimum number of visitors must be tested before you deduce anything. But after that minimum number of visitors have been tested (it is 25 visitors per variation by default in VWO, but can be changed), if conversion rate difference between two variations is huge, statistical significance can still arise. (E.g. in variation A, 24 conversions from 25 visits and in variation B, 2 conversion from 25 visits). So, number of visitors tested isn’t the only criteria. Difference in conversion rate is also a criteria.

If you are concerned, we always recommend to test longer just to be sure of results. Ideally, you may want to run a test for a full week to accomodate variation and effects of daily traffic. But don’t blame the tool if you get results bit too early.

4. Impact on test if a certain variation or control is disabled while the test is running

Sometimes, our users run a test with 5-6 variations. After one week, they may decide to disable a few existing variations and maybe add a couple of new variations. Now, after a few more days of testing they complain that performance (percentage improvement or decrease in conversion rate) of the variations that they disabled changed. Users wonder how can performance of a disabled variation possibly change.

Actually, it is not the conversion rate of disabled variations that changes (it remains same once you disable it) but rather the conversion rate of variations that are still enabled is what changes. So, the performance of those disabled variations change (when you compare to variations/control that are still enabled). So, even if you get a winning variation and you disable it, you may find that after a few days it may not remain as a winner variation because conversion rate of control changed (and hence percentage change in conversion rate is now different). And the reason why conversion rate constantly changes is because your traffic mix changes from day to day. Estimating conversion rate of control and variation is always an ongoing task and it may change constantly.

5. Google Analytics visits v/s Visual Website Optimizer visitors

We have a Google Analytics plugin for Visual Website Optimizer. Numbers that are shown in Google Analytics may sometimes differ from Visual Website Optimizer reports. Why is that?

Actually, different analytics/testing tools may have different definitions of visitors. Particularly, Google Analytics considers a visit by setting a 30 minute cookie. If a visitor arrives after 30 minutes (or after session expires), s/he is counted as another visit. On the other hand, Visual Website Optimizer sets a long term cookie and counts a visitor only once even on repeat visits.

So, while comparing two different tools, always make sure you have correct definitions of visits/visitors figured out and you are actually comparing apples to apples.

Hope these misconceptions clarify some of the issues or questions that you may have in your A/B or split tests! If there are some more questions, please leave a comment.

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This is a guest post by Jeremy Reeves. He is a veteran blogger here and an online conversion and profit strategist. Through his little-known unique and innovative profit-boosting techniques, he’s added tens of millions of dollars to his clients bottom-line in EXTRA revenue. You can grab his FREE report, “The 3×3 Formula For Doubling Your Profits In 60 Days Or Less” at www.3x3Formula.com

When most people think of increasing their conversions, they think of cool little tricks they can do… slight word changes to various parts of the page… or changing the colors.

And if this is you, you’re missing out on an enormous opportunity to not only increase your conversions, but increase the long-term results of your business… including getting the most profit possible.

Let me explain.

YES, testing your CTA buttons is good. It can work. And changing colors can increase conversions. And testing the layout of your pages can increase conversions.

But there’s something BENEATH all of that “surface level” stuff that is the driving force to making your customers buy your products and services.

It makes up what I consider to be the ultimate conversion formula. Get this right, and your conversions go through the roof. Get it wrong, and it doesn’t matter what your CTA says… or where your buttons are… or any of that.

So what is this formula?

I call it…

PV – PR = PD

Which means…

Perceived Value – Perceived Risk = Purchasing Decision

Depending on your level of persuasion knowledge, this may or may look a little complicated to you. In reality, it’s very simple. And very powerful.

Either way, let me explain.

People first look at the perceived value of your product.

That includes what they think (remember, it’s all perception) it can do for them. It also includes packaging, positioning, and many other factors.

They then look at the perceived risk involved. The risk of the product being a dud… of you never sending it to them… of you not honoring your guarantee… and many other factors.

When they subtract the risk from the perceived value, they come out with either a negative or positive number.

If it’s positive, you get the sale. If it’s negative, you don’t.

Here’s an example.

You’re a middle aged guy with 3 kids and a wife. Your wife has given you the opportunity to start researching a new car to buy. She’s busy watching the kids and is limited with time, so she wants you to pick out your top three, and then come back to her. That way you can both come up with an agreement on which is best for your family.

So you walk into a car dealership. You hobble around and spot a nice little sports car for $50,000. Your budget is $40,000… but this car is so magnificently sleek and sexy, it grabs your eye like a supermodel sunbathing on the beach.

At this point, the formula comes in

Remember… Perceived Value – Perceived Risk = Purchasing Decision

Perceived Value: You’ll be able to show off to your friends. Feel the exhilaration and thrill as you stomp on the pedal and tear up the streets. Get an ego-stroke every time you pass by another guy with a “lesser” car as you silently think to yourself “haha… I’m more manly than you buddy!”.

Etc. etc. etc.

Perceived Risk: It’s over budget. Your wife will most likely laugh at you for even considering it. Or, you may get a “lecture”. It’s not safe as safe as something like a Volvo if you get in crash. It’s more dangerous because you’re more likely to drive faster. You probably wouldn’t be able to fit all your kids in it.

Etc. etc. etc.

See the dilemma here?

It doesn’t matter HOW good of a salesman the guy selling that car is. You had a certain criteria you needed to meet (let’s just say it had to be safe and be able to fit the kids)… and the car didn’t meet the criteria.

Even if he dropped it another $20,000 and it was under your budget, it still doesn’t give you a positive number in the equation above because the two main criteria outweigh all of the ego-boosting qualities the car had.

And that’s exactly how your customers are looking at your website.

There are a certain number of positive criteria, and negative criteria, they have hidden away in their minds. Most of it they’re not even conscious of. If the good outweighs the bad, you win. If not, you don’t get the sale.

So my last bit of advice…

If You Want To Make More Sales… Increase Your Perceived Value And Decrease Perceived Risk!

It’s REALLY that simple.

There are literally dozens of different ways to do each.

Let me give you 5 actionable steps you can take to increase your perceived value and decrease your perceived risk.

5 Ways To Increase Your Perceived Value

• Add a product image
• Discover the #1 benefit of your product and make sure you explain it thoroughly. And hit their emotional hot buttons.
• Add a specific value to each specific item in your product/course/service
• Make it easier/faster for people to consume (people are too busy and want straight to the point advice. I do this for my products and get compliments on it ALL the time.)
• Increase your price – I know this is counter-intuitive… but try it. 95%+ of people right now can raise their prices without seeing any drops in conversion. Try adding extra value when you do this and I can “almost” guarantee you can increase your price at least 10% with no drop in conversions.

5 Ways To Decrease Perceived Risk

• Offer your product for FREE before they pay for it
• Add a risk-free guarantee (the longer, the better)
• Show credibility and security symbols near your call to action
• Position your product/service as close to “done for you” as possible
• Show compelling testimonials and case studies

Go to your main product or service page and see if you can use any of those 10 conversion-boosting strategies. And always keep in the back of your mind…

… “How can I increase the perceived value of this product while decreasing the perceived risk?”

Do that and watch your conversions, and profits, SOAR

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Numerous times our clients and customers ask: how many visitors do I need to test in order to get statistically significant results in an A/B test? Unfortunately, there is no straightforward answer to this question as it depends on a number of factors. In the past, we have provided you with an A/B test duration calculator in Excel and also provided with an online tool to calculate the same. However, how it is calculated is sort of a black magic.

In following presentation, I describe just what exactly happens when we calculate number of visitors needed for an A/B test. As the presentation aims to be a high level overview, I won’t be delving into mathematics of it.

Hope you like the presentation! Please let me know if you have any questions or need clarifications.

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Editor’s note: this is a guest post by Jeremy Reeves, who is a freelance copywriter and marketing consultant who has produced millions of dollars in excess profits for his clients. To learn more about Jeremy and how he can grow your business, head over to www.JeremyReeves.com or download his FREE special report “The 3×3 Formula For Doubling Your Profits In 60 Days Or Less” at www.3x3Formula.com

The world of Internet marketing and conversions is changing as we know it. Consumers are getting more savvy. Places like Google are putting a stranglehold on how you can market your products. Competitors are popping up in every nook and cranny.

In short, conversions are plummeting and it’s getting increasingly harder to grow your business online.

Because of this, it’s more important than ever to take a stroll through your business and remove any weaknesses in your marketing funnel.

This article will show you how to do just that.

Mistake #1: Not Showing Your Core Value Proposition

The first marketing mistake you’re making is that you aren’t displaying your core value proposition to customers both immediately and throughout your entire sales process.

Your value proposition is what makes you stand out from your competitors and what gives your customers and prospects a reason they should buy from YOU instead of your competitors.

(It can also be called a USP)

When I look at most websites, I don’t see the #1 reason WHY I should be on that website. Instead, the big mistake people make is saying things like…

…“we’re the best at X”.
We’ve been in business for 10 years.
Our product is more reliable than our competitors.

Uhhh… yea – SO WHAT?

Those things don’t matter to your customers. They’re SURFACE level benefits. They don’t make you stand out. They don’t immediately give value to the person looking at your website.

If you get it right – your customer should be able to walk away from the computer… go on vacation to the Bahamas and remember your value proposition while sitting on the beach sipping rum n coke’s.

That may sound a little far-fetched… but it’s the truth.

Here’s an example.

My value proposition can be stated like this.

“I help businesses maximize their sales funnels and increase profits by 20% – 100% or more without increasing expenses.

On the other hand – a weaker version would be something like “I help small businesses increase profits”.

That’s what MOST people say.

But it’s not specific.

HOW do I help increase their profits? I do it by maximizing their sales funnel… and I also do so without increasing their expenses.

Let me give you one of my favorite USP’s of all time.

Fresh, hot pizza delivered to your door in 30 minutes or less – or it’s free.

This is what Domino’s Pizza used to jumpstart the business into what it is today. Unfortunately they can’t use it anymore because of legal issues (too many people were getting in car accidents) but the value proposition was so strong that they’re still a very successful business today… even though I personally hate their pizza.

Now here’s what I love about value propositions.

You really DON’T have to rack your brain for months trying to create the “perfect” value proposition.

What you do instead is come up with 3-5 of them and TEST them. Usually in PPC ads.

Mistake #2: Letting Your Own Ego And Biases Get In The Way

This might seem insignificant but you need to trust me on this… every single website has assumptions of what works and what doesn’t. I’ve worked with dozens and dozens and dozens of different clients over the years and every single one of them had conversion-killing assumptions on their website that they didn’t even know about.

For example… the vast majority of people these days still don’t think that long-form salesletters work.

But here’s the truth.

They DO.

Awhile back I wrote a guest post on this blog called Anatomy Of A Long Salesletter.

Because of that blog post, SOME of the readers kept an open mind and got in touch with me to create long-form letters for their websites. And lo and behold… I gave them big increases in their conversions and profits. One client right now is already looking at a 200%+ increase in leads.

Those who didn’t? They’re still losing thousands of dollars each month because they’re assuming longform letters don’t work.

Another assumption people have is with videos. Some people think they work for EVERY audience. Some people hate them. Some people think only autoplay works, while others can’t stand autoplay.

One of my clients thought that a video wasn’t going to work for his audience and that we’d create both a video and a text salesletter. The plan was to show the video to cold visitors, and the text to his warm prospects that were on his list.

We did this because in previous tests, text won over video. So we assumed text was going to work again for this particular product.

The funny thing is… the VIDEO actually won. And it won by about 30%. So if we assumed that the text would win – this client would have lost about 30% of his revenue.

The point is this.

TEST EVERYTHING. (And use Visual Website Optimizer!)

Here are a few things you can test that most people have assumptions about.

• The length of the copy
• Video or text
• The type of language (corporate vs. personal sounding)
• Colors
• Aggressiveness in the copy (soft with “easy” calls to action vs. a little more direct)
• Layout of the page
• Price points

That’s enough to get you started.

Marketing Mistake #3: Not Understanding Your Prospects

Remember… your prospect is the one who is putting money in your pocket. Not you. When you do ANYTHING on your site – you have to mentally be transporting yourself into the mind of your prospect and adding what THEY want you to have.

This means that your language has to be congruent with them… your pricing has to be congruent with them… your bonuses… and your product. The funny thing is, most people develop products that THEY want to have out in the marketplace.

But if you really want to not only boost your conversions but really gain traction in your marketplace, the products you create should come out of a want and NEED… not what you “think” they “might” want.

So the question you’re probably asking yourself is… how do I figure out what my audience wants?

Let me tell you a personal story which describes this personally.

When I first started my career… I was only a copywriter. These days I do a lot more than just copywriting because I realized everything in marketing is linked together, but back then I only wrote copy.

In probably my third month, I had a client who asked me if I knew how to create html. I said no. He was upset because now he had to find someone else who could take the copy I wrote in a word document and transfer it online.

The next client came to me… and the SAME thing happened.

At that point, the lightbulb went off in my head. So what did I do?

First – I learned html and basic CSS so that I could create salesletters for my clients and hand it back to them in “ready to test” shape.

Second – I started LISTENING to my clients more. These days I actually create new services based on what my clients NEED… not what I want to have out there.

For example I have a service where I create automated webinars for my clients and they have to do nothing but read the script I give them. Normally creating automated webinars takes weeks or even MONTHS of their time… but now I can save them probably close to a hundred hours of time because I do it all for them.

Now… that’s how I do it in my own business. But if you’re selling products and not services, here are a few more options you can use.

First is surveys.

This is a GREAT way to do it. There are dozens of survey companies you can choose so just pick which one you think is best for you.

When you’re setting up your survey you have to make sure to give them some kind of gift for filling out the survey. It doesn’t have to be much. Maybe a $10 gift certificate for your website… or a free report… whatever.

Another thing you can do is simply CALL your customers personally.

First of all it’s going to make a huge impression on them because nobody ever just calls clients or customers anymore and simply asks how they’re doing, how you can help, etc.

But more importantly… people LOVE to talk. They’re going to spill the beans – especially if they know you’re genuinely trying to help them.

And a third way to do this is to have a contest on your blog.

First what you do is put a contest on your blog (as well as send them emails)… and ask them what they need. Whoever gives the best response and comes up with a product you come out with… gets it free.

Now I just want to stop for a second and make sure you realize JUST how important and valuable this is. This is what separates “good” companies from companies who blow past their competition year after year and dominate the market place.

When you understand your customer better you can start getting to know their wants and desires on a DEEP level. And when that happens, you can start to fill in your marketing back-end – if you haven’t already. And if you already have then of course you can make it even bigger and more profitable.

But the real value from having a well thought out back-end is that you can then start optimizing sales funnels, instead of just pages.

Marketing Mistake #4: Optimizing Pages Instead Of Sales Funnels

Let’s first get a clear look at what I’m talking about when I say “sales funnel” instead of a single page.

There are various different sales funnels you can have, but one typical one we would see online is something like this.

Landing Page > Salesletter > Upsell > Downsell > Thank You Page

Now let’s add in some numbers to each of these pages. Again, I want to make it crystal clear that YOUR numbers are going to be very much different than the numbers I’m about to show.

I just want to show you how powerful this can be.

Let’s start with conversions numbers.

For this example, I’m going to leave out your landing page for simplicity… since for many people reading this, you may not have a step before your salespage.

So in terms of your “conversions”… we’ll assume your salesletter is converting at 2%. Your upsell is converting at 20%. And your downsell is converting at 20%.

Now let’s look at traffic.

We’ll say that you’re getting 5,000 visitors per month to your salesletter. That’s a little under 200 people per day, which is definitely possible.

Ok, next, let’s look at prices.

Let’s assume your front-end offer is priced at $97… your upsell is at $197… and your downsell is at $67.

Now that we have all the “base” numbers – let’s add that up to get your “before-testing” number. Then we’ll give just a 30% increase to each of these numbers and see what it turns out to be.

Salesletter – 5,000 visitors X 2% = 100 sales x $97 = $9,700
Upsell – 100 visitors X 20% = 20 sales x $197 = $3,940
Downsell – 20 visitors x 20% = 4 sales x $67 = $268

Ok… so now we have our base numbers. That means right now you’re making $13,908 per month.

Now let’s look at what happens when you increase EACH of those funnels by just 30%… which is absolutely possible and really not that hard at all.

Salesletter – 5,000 visitors X 2.66% = 133 sales x $97 = $12,901
Upsell – 100 visitors X 26.66% = 26.6 sales x $197 = $5,252
Downsell – 20 visitors x 26.66% = 5.3 sales x $67 = $355

That gives you a total of $18,508 in monthly gross profit… which is an increase of $4,600 per month.

That $4,600 increase per month could EASILY buy you a new employee who can get you more traffic… become your affiliate manager to dramatically increase your affiliate base… or any number of things.

And remember, this is for a SINGLE product. Plus it’s not including customer lifetime value. And I’m not including what happens when you increase the TRAFFIC you get to these pages when you start split-testing landing pages, emails, banners, PPC ads and everything that actually funnels traffic to the money pages. That’s when it REALLY gets exciting and the numbers start compounding.

Now… we’ve been talking a lot about numbers. Your number may be bigger or smaller than what I just went through, but either way it’s exciting.

Marketing Mistake #5: Not Knowing Your Numbers

Knowing your numbers is CRUCIAL to any online or offline business. The reason is because if you don’t know your key metrics, you have no idea how healthy your business is. You might think it’s doing well – just to find out something unexpected happens and all of a sudden the floor falls out beneath your business.

Now, I don’t know your business so I’m not really sure what numbers you need to know. However there are a few very common numbers which EVERY business – online or offline – needs to know.

So let me give you them and give you a brief description of each of them. Then I’ll tell you how to USE this information to grow your business.

My question is… do you even KNOW what your numbers are?

Value Per Visitor – This is pretty basic. You want to know how much each VISITOR is worth to your website. The cool part about this is it’s incredibly easy to figure out. Just divide the number of visitors you had over the past month/year/ or week… by the amount of money you made.

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

Figuring out that metric is important, but even more valuable is when you break it down into segments such as traffic source, page, and possibly even further like gender, age, and other variables if you can figure that out for your business.

Lifetime Customer Value – This is one of THE most important metrics you can ever figure out. By understanding this metric, you can then determine how much money you can spend on advertising… employees… inventory… and everything else that makes a business tick.

But here’s the little caveat to this metric. Actually, there are 2.

First, you want to know how long it takes for the average person to complete his or her buying cycle. For example if you have a continuity program and are tracking the lifetime value of a person entering that program – you have to determine the average length that person stays in the continuity program… and if they buy other products while they’re in there.

So if your membership program is $50 per month and your average customer stays for 4 months… you have a customer lifetime value of $200 over a 4 month period. Then, of course, add in any extra back-end products they bought during that time.

And remember… you’re going for the AVERAGE of all your customers. So don’t calculate this for one customer… do it for about 100 or so. Or even more if you can. The more customers you average into this, the more accurate the number will be.

Now, the second caveat is that you want to determine a COMFORTABLE timeline in which to calculate this number. For example – some businesses have customers who stay with them for many years… or even decades.

However the reason you’re determining this number is to figure out how much you can spend to acquire a new customer, so you might not want to spend $500 to get a new customer if you won’t make that money back for 5 years.

Or maybe you will… it all depends on your business model and how short or long-term you are in your thinking.

Cost Per Conversion (or Cost Per New Customer Acquisition) – This one ties heavily into the 1st metric which was value per visitor. The reason is because if your value per visitor is $1 and your cost per conversion is $1.50 – you’ve just discovered that you’re losing money.


Here’s an example.

Let’s say you’re doing SEO, PPC and affiliate marketing. For examples sake, let’s say each is bringing in $10,000 per month. That means you’re making $30,000 per month GROSS profit.

And let’s say that OVERALL, you’re spending $20,000 per month which means you have a net profit of $10,000 at the end of each month.

Now – what if you broke that down?

When you break it down, you might realize that you’re spending $2,000 on SEO per month and making $5,000 per month gross. That’s $3,000 net profit.

And your affiliate system is bringing you in $15,000 per month gross – and you’re giving away 50% commissions so your net profit is $7,500. now you’re up to $10,500 NET profit.

But whoops – wait – didn’t I say you were only making $10,000 net profit between all 3 channels? Yep… I did.

Because what you didn’t realize is that you’re making $10,000 gross profit per month on PPC, however you’re SPENDING $10,500 – which means you’re actually losing $500 per month on your PPC campaign.

Now that you have that information – you know EXACTLY where to focus your efforts. In this case you’d probably want to optimize your PPC campaign to get it profitable. Or, ditch it and focus on what’s making you the most money… which is your affiliate program.

This, of course, is a very simplified example. You’ll have to run your own numbers to figure out where you stand.

I hope you’ll take this information and apply it in your business. If you’ve read this far, you obviously care about your business. And that’s great! I suggest going back through this article and creating a “to-do” list based on what you think will have the biggest impact on your bottom-line.

Get ‘er done!

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This is a guest post by Jeremy Reeves, who is an email copywriter and split-testing freak. To find out how Jeremy can help dramatically increase your email marketing profits, head on over to http://www.JeremyReeves.com/email-copywriter.html

Due to the nature of my business, I’m exposed to more email campaigns than you could ever imagine.

And I have to admit…

… not ONE of them is fully maximizing their email marketing potential.

Every single email campaign I’ve ever looked at has holes in it which are leaking profits on a daily basis.

It’s a sad, but very true, fact.

So in this post, I’d like to show YOU how to maximize your email marketing by giving you 5 “holes” you can fill, starting today.

Tip #1: You Should Split-Test

It makes sense to make this the first reason, because as a reader of Visual Website Optimizer, you should be a split-testing freak like I am!

Now, I’ll admit that for whatever reason – most email marketing software makes it hard to split-test campaigns.

But does that mean it’s impossible? Not at all.

Here’s what you do.

Before you send out a new campaign/broadcast, split your list into 2-5 portions (depending on the size of your list). Then, start testing things that give you insights into what your market wants and responds to.

For example…

• Do they like short “teaser” emails, or longer emails with more information?
• Do they respond to negative subject lines, or positive subject lines?
• Does an html email or text email give you better CTR’s?
• … and so on and so forth.

With each test you do, try to test something that will give you insights as to what you can use in the future. Over time you’ll seem to develop a 6th sense – the ability to “predict” what your market will respond to, which leads to higher profits!

Tip #2: You Should Email Frequently

Many marketers are afraid of making their list “mad” by emailing them too often.

But think about it.

One of the most essential aspects of creating a profitable business is getting your prospects and customers to TRUST you, is it not? To develop an airtight bond and rapport with them, just like you slowly build up rapport with a new person you meet who eventually becomes your trusted friend.

Keeping that in mind, who would you trust more when they recommend something to you…

A) A friend you talk to once a month?
B) A friend you talk to 3…5… 7 times a week?

I’ve seen amazing things happen when a client starts emailing their list more often. In every single case, the more often they emailed their list – the more sales they made (and yes, over the long term).

But there’s one caveat.

Be SMART about it.

Don’t blast your list offers everyday because they’ll drop off your list faster than you can blink an eye. Treat them like you would a friend, by sending relevant information mixed in with soft pitches to buy your product.

And every once in awhile… create a marketing campaign, which we’ll talk about next.

Tip #3: You Should Create Newsworthy Marketing Campaigns

For some reason, newsworthy marketing campaigns are as rare as a hen’s tooth these days. I’m not sure if marketers are getting lazy, or just forgetting tried-and-true ways to promote their business and generate good buzz at the same time.

Here’s what I mean.

Think about the various ways you can tie a promotion for YOUR business into either something that’s on the minds of your prospects… or even something that happened in your life personally. Here are a few ideas to get your mind juices flowing.

• Back to school in August
• Labor Day in September
• You’ve just moved your office/house, etc.
• You just had a new baby
• Your business just hit a major goal and now it’s “customer appreciate week”
• The list goes on and on…

I personally ran a birthday promotion for my own services a few months back – and booked myself solid for about 4 months. (Thanks to the VWO subscribers who took me up on that offer!) It took me about 45 minutes to setup the promotion.

Here’s the cool part.

You can come up with special promotions for almost ANYTHING. One marketer I know created a promotion based around his wife putting him in the “doghouse” for having too much inventory in their garage!

If you spend just 30 minutes brainstorming – I guarantee you can come up with at least 5 ideas, one of which will be good enough to use. Use the one you like best, create an email campaign out of it which sends them to a custom landing page made specifically for that event, and you have yourself one heck of a profitable promotion.

Oh, and one more thing.

DON’T make the mistake and think your prospects are too “sophisticated” for these types of promotions. It’s one of the biggest mistakes you can ever make in your business, which is why I’ve included it as…

Tip #4: Don’t Write Stuffy, Boring Emails Because You Think Your Audience Is “Sophisticated”

If you think your audience is too sophisticated for fun promotions like that, here’s a little secret.

YOU. ARE. LOSING. A. BOATLOAD. OF. MONEY.

Clear enough?

The fact is, I don’t care if you’re selling to drunk, zit-faced teenagers or to CEO’s of Fortune 500 companies.

They’re both PEOPLE.

And what do PEOPLE want?

They want to have fun. They want to be entertained. They want to be engaged. They want drama (even though most don’t realize it). In fact, most people are psychologically addicted to drama. Why do you think soap opera’s and reality TV shows are so popular?

Whatever way you slice it, you need to add more personality in your marketing. Can you feel my personality oozing out from my fingers and onto your screen?

I bet you can – and that’s why this blog post is easy to read and understand (at least it should be!). If I got all fancy pants and started talking in technical jibble-jabble and hardcore psychology… you’d have no idea what I was talking about.

The point is this.

People like dealing with people, not companies.

Remember that the next time you click “send”.

Tip #5: You Should Segment Your List

One of THE easiest ways to increase your email marketing profits is to segment your list.

So what types of segmentation should you be doing?

I don’t know your business, of course, but here are a few you can start with.

Buyers – Every business in the world should have a separate buyers email list. There is NO excuse for not having a buyers email list. Previous buyers, on average, are roughly 7x more likely to buy in the future as compared to first-time buyers. They also make up your back-end which, when fully developed, can triple or more your profits. If you’re not segmenting your buyers – I’m sorry to say but in my mind – you’re simply insane!

Demographic/Psychographic/Geographic – This can be done in many ways. For example you can separate men from women, by age group, by political association, by religion, by type of dog they own (for dog training sites of course), or even by country. The possibilities are endless, depending on your business.

How Active – Here’s a quick promotion you can do to both clean your email list and make oodles of money in the process. It’s called a “reactivation campaign” and it’s something direct marketers have used in the offline world for ages.

Here’s what you do…

1) Do a search to find prospects who haven’t opened an email in 3 months, 6 months, etc.

2) Send them something for free, while also asking them why they haven’t been active lately and seeing if you can help them in any way.

3) After the promotion is over, do a search for those who didn’t open/click the email and flush them from your list. Yes, actually delete them. They’re the non-responders and are clogging up your list. And for the people that did respond and/or download the gift you sent them – they’re now “reactivated” and should start opening more emails!

That last promotion I said is a little more robust than that if you want to do it right (it would take a blog post to explain it in detail), but something is better than nothing right?

Either way… I hope you’re the kind of person who TAKES ACTION and won’t simply read this post and do nothing. I just gave you enough information to add literally tens/hundreds of thousands of dollars into your business, if you take action and implement.

So start fixing the holes in your email campaign… or hire someone like me to do it for you if you don’t know how or don’t want to put in the effort.

As Nike would say… “Just DO it”.

No more excuses.

You can easily add 20% – 100% more profits to your bottom-line by maximizing your email marketing… so what are you waiting for?

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Previously on this blog, we talked about impact of A/B testing on SEO. Now, in this post we talk about how to calculate ROI for your SEO efforts. This is a guest post by Prashant Puri, who is co-founder of AdLift.com – a niche SEO firm in the SF bay area. Previously he was Head of Global Search for Shopping.com (an eBay Inc Company). You can follow/reach out to him on Twitter – @puriprashant

“Measurement is the first step that leads to control and eventually to improvement. If you can’t measure something, you can’t understand it. If you can’t understand it, you can’t control it. If you can’t control it, you can’t improve it.”

- Anonymous

The sentences above basically sum up the importance of measuring your SEO initiatives – only if you can measure SEO ROI can you improve it. Here’s how you get started with it:

Keyword Segmentation

You must exclude your own branded keywords from analysis before calculating ROI. This needs to be done because many users will search your brand on search engines instead of typing in your URL directly. But those searches aren’t due to your SEO efforts, hence they need to be excluded. Use your analytics tool to segment keywords into 2 buckets:

• Branded
• Non-Branded

Here’s how you can do this (using Google analytics as an example) –

Once you exclude your brand terms – plot the traffic graph for your non-brand terms.

Calculating ROI

It’s easy to export this data and calculate the % increase in traffic or revenue (if you have ecommerce tracking in place – highly recommended). Once you have the revenue number you can calculate the ROI from your SEO efforts –

It’s relatively easy for ecommerce websites to calculate this once you have the tracking in place; however, the tricky part is for non-ecommerce websites to estimate ROI on SEO. This is where tracking conversions and setting goals becomes crucial – a conversion might be a sign-up, email opt-in, of just pageviews which drive up your advertising revenue.

Once you’ve identified your conversions and set this up the next step is to attribute a revenue number with each conversion. Let’s say you make $5 RPC (revenue per conversion) – so if you drive 50,000 incremental visits at an average conversion rate of 5% and a RPC of $5 – your revenue generated is 50,000 x 5% x $5 = $12,500. Now that you have the revenue number you can calculate your SEO ROI.

SEO helps in increasing the incremental visits as you continuously invest in content and link development strategies. Another lever that you can pull to maximize revenue is the conversion rate on your website. Visual Website Optimizer is a great tool that can help you A/B test landing pages to improve overall conversion rate.

Other interesting analysis on your SEO efforts

Other SEO key performing metrics that help you analyze the performance of your SEO efforts are –

1) Number of Keywords driving traffic: This is a great metric to track your overall on-page optimization efforts. This tells you the number of keywords driving traffic to your site. In Google analytics go to Traffic Sources -> Search Engines -> “non-paid” -> under source chooses “keywords”.

2) Number of Landing Pages: Another great metric to track, this tells you the number of unique landing pages that are driving traffic to your site. As your SEO traffic start to grow you should start to see this number increase.

Search Engine Optimization has evolved in to being a highly effective marketing channel – and its exciting to be able to track this very closely!

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This is a guest post written by Felipe Wesbonk who is a consultant with Traffic Builders, one of the Visual Website Optimizer certified agencies. They extensively use integration of Visual Website Optimizer with Google Analytics and in this article, Felipe talks about how this integration provides them with many additional insights.

Google Analytics provides many more insights into the performance of your website and online marketing campaigns when using plugins of various useful tools, like Visual Website Optimizer (VWO) and BTBuckets. Also by using the Google API it’s possible to make custom dashboards, in which external data can be integrated. During the GAUC (Google Analytics User Convention) in Amsterdam last month, I gave a presentation about these plugins. In this article I explain the integration from VWO in Google Analytics and the way you can use this plugin in making custom reports.

Plugin for Google Analytics

It is very easy to get the most out of Visual Website Optimizer within Google Analytics. Simply select the integration option while creating the test, and you are done. No code to install, no hassles!

Visual Website Optimizer in Google Analytics

With the special Google Analytics plugin of the Visual Website Optimizer you are able to integrate the data from VWO with Google Analytics and the e-commerce module. The plugin puts the data of the various variations on custom variables back into Google Analytics. As default, you will see the VWO data in slot 4 of the custom variable.

Create custom reports

When the data is here, all kinds of customized reports can be created. This way you can add some metrics, which you do not see in the standard reports in Visual Website Optimizer. You are able to make custom reports and the analysis in order to decide if the variations give the conversions which are satisfying in terms of reach and engagement. This will get you one step closer to an integrated optimization strategy.

As you can see in the screenshot above, it is quite easy to make a custom report with the metrics you find useful. In the filter you can use a regular expression to make sure you get the right data from the custom variable slot 4.

Get valuable insights with custom reports

Using custom reports you are able to see which channels drive traffic to the different variations. Choose the most valuable goals as the metrics. In the Dimension Drilldowns you select ‘custom variable (Value 4)’ as first dimension and ‘medium’ as second dimension. Now let’s take a look at the winning variation, which you put into the filter of the report. You can use the custom report to see which channel is still behind in conversions.

The example below shows that the medium ‘referral’ and ‘affiliate’ don’t convert well. Besides, they also have a very high bouncerate (46% and 80%). In this case I would recommend to take a close look to see which sites (sources) from ‘referral’ and ‘affiliate’ give the most traffic. On these sites, you should change the banners and links to make sure it will fit better with the best performing variation in order to achieve a higher CTR and more conversions from those sites.

This is one of the custom reports you could create to get more valuable insights for the best performing variation, in order to make a more informed decision. If you have any suggestions for custom reports which you can make with the data of the VWO tests, please let us know in the comments!

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