Visual Website Optimizer

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.

Split testing sucks!

Let’s face it.

Testing kind of sucks. For most people anyway.

It’s hard to learn… takes a lot of time… and typically requires you to hire a split-testing service provider like me to get the job done right (unless you’re a testing-obsessed fanatic like I am and love doing it!).

But – you also know the financial rewards of it or you wouldn’t be reading this blog

And you know that testing can be the single most profitable investment you can make in your business.

But in order to make that happen… you or the person doing split-testing for your business must be aware of the BIGGEST mistakes I see people making when split-testing.

So in this post I’m going to reveal top 7 split-testing blunders your MUST avoid if you want maximum results in your business.

This is a long and information-packed post… so grab a cup of coffee… sit back… and let’s get started.

Testing Blunder #1 – Testing Whispers Instead Of Screams

What are “whispers” and what are “screams”?

Whispers – These are tests such as changing the font, changing the background color, changing the color of a button, testing something in the footer or very low on the page… and basically anything that has no (or very little) chance of getting you a BIG boost in conversions.

(And yes, I realize that “sometimes” some of these things can give decent boosts – but it’s very rare)

Screams – These are tests that are likely to either completely BOMB… or hit a grand-slam home run. They’re the ones that make you anxious to test, but can produce mid double-digit…sometimes triple-digit improvements. Screams are things like getting your copy completely rewritten, testing out a radically different design, testing radically different price points (e.g. $47 vs. $97 instead of $49 vs. $49.95), or coming up with an unheard of and radical guarantee.

Do screams take longer? Yes. Do they require more energy and resources from you? Yes. But is it worth putting money into hiring someone to test radically new copy or a design? Absolutely!

Testing Blunder #2 – Assuming Something Will Work

This is one that 99% of marketers (especially online) are guilty of. They “assume” something will work, so they don’t test it.

Here’s a hint.

Don’t assume anything!

I personally conduct split-tests every single day for my clients, and I’m STILL amazed at just how “weird” some of the tests come out to be.

Think your headline sounds “perfect” and nothing can beat it? I guarantee you – some other headline out there floating around in the ethers of your mind (or your copywriters mind) CAN beat it.

Think your pricing matches your market perfectly? I bet not. You don’t know until you test.

In love with your product name? I bet if you split-tested it using Adwords (which is a neat little trick, and easy to do) – you could find one that converts better. After all, when it comes to testing it’s about money, not ego. Go with whatever gets you the highest conversions.

Split-Testing Blunder #3 – Not Performing A “True” A/B Test

I’m assuming you already have Visual Website Optimizer (if you don’t, you’re nuts)… so I won’t pound this one in too much as you’re probably more familiar with testing than most marketers.

Here’s the mistake most people make.

They think “testing” goes like this.

Step 1 – You watch the conversions of “X” page for 1 week… or for 100 conversions (or whatever other metric).

Step 2 – You then switch that page and replace it with the new test you’re doing… and watch those conversions for 1 week, 100 conversions, etc.

Step 3 – You compare the data, see which had a higher conversion, and you now have a winner!

{Insert obnoxiously loud “eerrrrr” sound}

That’s NOT how you should be testing.

For a test to be accurate, you MUST have all variations running at the exact same time frame, to the same audience.

It’s that simple.

Split-Testing Blunder #4 – Not Running Your Test Long Enough

Here’s another one I see TONS of people make. Mostly, it’s an “ego thing” because they want to brag about the huge increase they got.

Here’s what I mean.

I’ve ran plenty of tests where one variation was the control, hitting 95% confidence, after just a handful of conversions (let’s just say 10, for example). Let’s also assume the losing variation only had 4 conversions.

Does that mean the winner actually beat the control by 250%?

Absolutely not!

I’ve seen tests like this where the losing version came back to beat the one that was winning in the beginning.

Why?

Because you need to run your tests long enough to get accurate results! You need to get past what I call “random coin syndrome”.

What I mean is this.

A regular coin should flip 50/50 over time. But I want you to test this yourself. Go get a coin and flip it 20 times. In most cases, you’ll get very uneven results. Something like 15 heads and only 5 tails. Or 12 tails and 8 heads.

And the SAME thing happens with testing. In the beginning, with under 50 conversions or so (this is a rough number and depends on the conversion number), a lot of the results happen by chance.

My advice is this.

If you’re looking to be accurate by making sure your tests are valid – try to get at least 50 conversions or so before making any decisions – EVEN if you have a winner after 20 conversions.

Split-Testing Blunder #5 – Running Your Test Too Long

Oh yes, there’s a flip side to what I was just talking about!

Running your test for too LONG is a killer of momentum (and sales)

Here’s an example.

Let’s say you’re testing a “whisper” as I mentioned earlier. In this example we’ll say you’re testing your background color.

5 weeks after you launch the test… the variations have only a 2% difference in conversion.

What do you do?

Here’s my advice.

Depending on how much income that product is bringing in, 2% may or may not make a big difference to your bottom line. If it’s NOT, I highly suggest going with whatever is winning at the moment (even if it’s not at 95%+ confidence) and setting up a new test that is likely to give you a bigger bump.

Bottom line: Don’t get addicted to testing results. If a test goes on for longer than normal without a nice increase in conversions, scrap that test and move on.

(The same is also true for lousy products, by the way. Get your emotions out of the equation!)

Split-Testing Blunder #6 – Not Learning From Your Test Results

Learning your market from your tests is CRITICAL to long-term testing success. It will help you dive into the mind of your prospect and give you a “knack” for knowing what they want.

Let me explain.

When I write copy or do split-testing for my clients… the first step I do is RESEARCH. In this phase I basically submerge myself into the middle of the market and try to understand their wants, needs and desires.

I then use what I discovered in my research to write about in the copy, or to create split-tests with.

And while that’s great and works like gangbusters… it works even BETTER when you can do your research based off what people are actually doing with their wallets.

Here are just a few examples of what you can learn about your customers.

Video: If you have several products, consider testing video against text. Test several variations of video/text together (AKA a “hybrid”). If you notice that video wins… you can then roll that test out and test it on all your other products. In “most” cases, you’ll have a winner each time.

Guarantees: Test several guarantees for one of your products. Let’s say you have 5 products and all of them have 30 guarantees. Change the guarantee to 90 days for one of them, and see if you get an increase in conversions (you will). Let’s just say you get a 10% bump. Well… if you then roll that out into the other 5 products, you can count on a 10% bump on each of those as well… giving you a total of 50% in total increased conversions spread out throughout your site.

Copy Styles : You have several options when it comes to copy. Hypey versus soft. Long form versus short form. Professional versus personal. And while you may “think” you know what type of copy works the best, it’s impossible to know until you test it. But here’s a tip to get started. In MOST cases, a mix of hype versus soft… long form… and personal… works the best. However this all depends on your business, product, market and offer… so test it. Once you figure out the perfect formula – use that for the rest of your site!

Note: If you don’t think long form copy works anymore, read this post I wrote about the anatomy of a salesletter after you’re done with this article.

Split-Testing Blunder #7 – Letting Your Ego Get In The Way

Want to know if your ego is getting in the way of your testing results?

Take this litmus test.

Has anyone ever suggested running a test and you said “no, that won’t work”… or “no, my customers won’t like that”… or “no, that will make us look bad”…?

If so, your ego is getting in the way.

Sometimes, that’s fine.

If you aren’t trying to maximize profits and would rather secure a specific mental image in the mind of your prospect (such as a certain design style, etc.), that’s your decision.

A perfect example of this is using “doodles” in your copy. These range anywhere from handwritten notes in the margins… to using a crayon on a piece of direct mail.

MOST people would think they wouldn’t work. That “their customer is too ‘sophisticated’ for that”. Yet a company I know tested several variations of a letter they were sending out… and then tested one that was in the voice of the owners young son… written in crayon.

Keep in mind, this letter was going to a clientele that were “sophisticated”.

So how did it do?

Well, let’s just say… it was the single most profitable letter they EVER sent out in the lifetime of their business

Sometimes it’s hard letting go over your ego, I get that. But it’s necessary.

Hopefully this article has helped you ramp up your testing efforts. Or, if you’re hiring someone and having them do it… make sure they understand all of these blunders as well. It can literally make the difference between grand-slams and bankruptcy.

6 Comments »

Usually you have a pretty good idea of what to A/B test on your landing page (We have 25+ A/B testing case studies in case you need to read those). But once you exhaust all those testing opportunities, you are back to square one. The most logical step is do a proper planning of next phase of A/B testing. Meanwhile if you want to do quick testing, what do you test? In this post, I intend to compile list of 23 quick A/B testing ideas. Here you go:

Headline testing ideas

• Smaller, crisper headline v/s longer headline
• No headline v/s having headline
• Different styling of headline
• Font size (larger, smaller) of headline
• Position of headline (left v/s right; top v/s bottom)

Call to action button testing ideas

• Text in button (“Buy now” v/s “Purchase item”)
• Action in button (“Watch video” v/s “Free Trial” or “Buy Now” v/s “Add to Cart”)
• Shape, size and color of button
• Moving button to the left, right, top or bottom (changing button position)
• Having multiple call to action buttons v/s having one

Layout and styling testing ideas

• Different color scheme (dark v/s light)
• Navigation bar (left v/s right; top v/s down)
• Default font sizes, typography and colors

Text block testing ideas

• Long v/s short text
• Bullets v/s normal text
• SEO optimized v/s human readable text
• Removing text v/s having text

Form testing ideas

• Long v/s short
• Same page v/s multi-page
• Text labels on top v/s left

Miscellaneous testing ideas

• Social proof: case studies v/s text testimonials v/s video testimonials
• Images: small v/s large; from different angles
• Pricing: $49 v/s $50 v/s $49.99

If you have any more ideas, please leave a comment below. I have tried to include as many ideas as I could think of, but of course, there is no limit to what all you can test!

10 Comments »

Red Gate software runs an annual challenge where they buy a small software company for a million dollars. They list a number of requirements that the software company must fulfill. One of the requirements that stood out was about conversion rate. They said:

If you’re selling your product then it must have at least a 10% conversion rate.

This requirement actually made me say “Wow, that’s insane”. Let me elaborate why.

What’s wrong with worrying about conversion rate?

Conversion rate is percentage of visitors who actually bought something on your website. Let’s imagine there are two websites: one sells product X with 5% conversion rate and the other one sells product Y with 10% conversion rate. Now, here is a million dollar question:

Is 10% conversion rate of product Y better than 5% conversion rate of product X?

It’s foolish to even begin answering above question without considering following factors:

• How much do these products sell for? If product X sells for 10 times the price of product Y, clearly average sales price of product X is much better in spite of having 5% conversion rate.
• What is the total traffic on the websites? If product X gets 10,000 visitors a day while product Y only gets 100 visitors, guess which one is minting more money?
• What is the lifetime value of customers? This factor is the biggest reason why comparing conversion rate of different websites/products is a useless exercise. Let’s imagine that product X and Y sell for similar price and get similar amount of traffic. Does that make product Y more valuable (since it has higher conversion rate)? Not necessarily. What if company that makes product X has expert salesman that up-sell and cross-sell tremendously and hence derive much more money from a customer in his lifetime.

In nutshell, conversion rate by itself doesn’t tell much (unless you have extra information like traffic, sales price, lifetime value, traffic mix, etc.) So a website with 1% conversion rate may not necessarily be worse as compared to a website with 10% conversion rate. Conversion rate in isolation is a useless metric.

Increase (or decrease) in conversion rate: that’s what should keep you worried

Conversion rates are not entirely useless. In fact, they are very useful when seen on a temporal scale. In other words:

If your conversion rate is 5% today, aim should be to increase it to 7% (using A/B testing, etc,) or at least not let it fall to 3%.

So, comparing conversion rate over time makes a lot of sense (but for the same website). Unless you have a lot of other information about your competitors, you should NOT obsess over comparing your conversion rate to their conversion rate and whether it is lower/higher. Instead, you should obsess on how you can increase your conversion rate (since that’s one of the easiest things to make your bank balance fatter).

Note: if you go through our library of A/B testing case studies, you will note that we always talk about increase in conversion rate and not conversion rate per se.

5 Comments »

In a previous post, I provided a downloadable A/B testing significance calculator (in excel). In this post, I will provide a calculator which lets you estimate how many days should you run a test in order to obtain statistically significant results. But, first, a disclaimer.

There is no guarantee of results for an A/B test

When someone asks how long should s/he run an A/B test, the ideal answer would be until eternity or till the time you get results (whichever is sooner). In an A/B test, you can never say with full confidence that you will get statistically significant results after running the test X number of days. Instead, what you can say is that there is 80% (or 95%, whatever you choose) probability of getting statistically significant result (if it indeed exists) after X number of days. But, of course, it may be the case that there is in fact no difference in performance of control and variation so no matter how long you wait, you will never get a statistically significant result.

So, how long should you run your A/B test?

Download and use the calculator below to find out how many visitors you need to include in the test. There are 4 pieces of information that you need to enter:

• Conversion Rate of original page
• What % difference in conversion rate do you want to detect (if you want to detect even the slightest improvement, it will take much longer)
• Number of variations to test (more variations you test, more traffic you need)
• Average daily traffic on your site (not really needed, optional)

Once you enter these 4 parameters, the calculator below will find out how many visitors you need to test (for 80% and 95% probability of finding the result). You can stop the test after you test those many visitors, but you should never stop earlier than that. You may end up concluding wrong results.

A/B test duration calculator (Excel spreadsheet)

Click below to download the calculator:

Download A/B testing duration calculator.

Please feel free to share the file with your friends and colleagues or post it on your blog / twitter.

PS: By the way, if you want to do quick calculations, we have a version of this calculator hosted on Google Docs (please make a copy of the Google Doc sheet into your own account before you make any changes to it).

How does the calculator work?

Ah! The million dollar calculator. Explaining how it works is beyond the scope of this post as it is too technical (maybe a separate post). But, if you have got stomach for it, below is gist of how we calculate number of visitors needed to get significant results.

The graph above is taken from an excellent book called Statistical Rules of Thumb. Luckily, the chapter on estimating sample size is available to download freely [PDF]. Another excellent source to get more information on sample size estimation for A/B testing is Microsoft’s paper: Controlled Experiments on the Web: Survey and Practical Guide [PDF].

Hope you like the calculator and related resources. Excited to know your feedback and comments!

28 Comments »

We already have powerful behavioral targeting and segmentation options in Visual Website Optimizer. Today, we’re proud to announce a brand new feature that will take your website to the next level. We just released a feature that is Holy Grail of targeting and personalization: knowing what a visitor is thinking while browsing your website (and then displaying relevant content to him/her to boost conversion rate and sales).

Yes, yes, yes, we are as excited about this new feature as you are. Once you install Visual Website Optimizer on your website, the mind reading feature uses subtle differences in how a visitor is moving his/her mouse to gauge what s/he is thinking right now. Essentially, you get a report on following four attributes (note that this is an initial list, it will expand as our research progresses):

• Happiness Factor: What % of visitors are feeling happy, lousy or simply pathetic and if your site design is doing a good job lifting that mood (our research indicated that 92% of websites were so hilariously designed that visitors were indeed amused)
• Fun Factor: What % of visitors are in no mood to do any serious work (we have a feature whereby you can popup flash games to such visitors – we believe this kind of targeting increases conversion rate)
• Raininess Factor: What % of visitors think it is going to rain today (for websites that sell umbrellas this factor is a serious indicator of a sale. This attribute was hard to model but we considered it so important that we spent 85% of our budget on making sure it works flawlessly)
• Trust Factor: What % of visitors think you will take their money, close your shop and run away (ironically mistrust increases if you provide a phone number on your site)

Proof that this feature works

We’re an A/B testing company and to prove this new feature works, we conducted an A/B test. Our hypothesis was that by changing a webpage we can affect visitor mood and if Visual Website Optimizer’s new feature detects that change, it definitely works. We did this test on our homepage. Here’s original homepage:

- Original Homepage –

In variation, we tried replacing text with an image that was definitely going to affect visitor’s mood in some way. Here’s the variation:

- Variation of Homepage –

We did this test for a little over a week and here are the results:

As expected, happiness and fun factor increased tremendously when visitors saw that poor boy’s image on our homepage. Moreover, people started subconsciously associating rain drops in the picture with likelihood that it is going to rain today.

Most surprisingly, there was a sharp drop in trust and total signup rate because of that poor boy on our homepage (Glad we have stopped the test. It affected us financially!) Why did that drop happen? We cannot tell! There are always somethings that remain a mystery after an A/B test is completed.

How does this feature work?

In a word: mathematics! We use various inputs to determine what a visitor is thinking. The most significant input is visitor mouse movements. The way people move their mouse tells a lot about what they are thinking. Strange but true!

Details of implementation only for nerds and geeks: we used artificial neural networks to train a predictive model whose input is vector comprising of mouse movements in past 30 seconds and whose outputs are various factors like happiness, raininess, etc. The data for training this model came from 6 month long research where we recruited a team of 10 normal people from 4Chan.org and asked them to visit various websites and tell us what they were thinking while they were browsing. Without their knowledge we recorded mouse movements and then simply used our expertise in machine learning to map mouse movements to behavior! Genius, isn’t it?

Try out the (literally) mind blowing feature

According to our knowledge, no other company in the world provides such amazing technology. So, why don’t you signup for a free 30 day trial of Visual Website Optimizer and try the new feature without any obligations? We can assure you that you are going to have a lot of fun spooking your visitors

3 Comments »

In the past, you must have come across one of those long sales page that never seem to end. Most designers hate long sales letters because they contain heaps of text but apparently lack on aesthetics front. Some people go extreme and even call such sales pages as evil forms of internet marketing. Truth be told: long sales letter pages are based on learnings from direct marketing and catalog industry, so there is nothing inherently evil about them. In fact, many marketers still use long form of sales pages because they convert visitors like crazy!

This is the 3rd article in the series of interviews and guest posts we are running on this blog regarding A/B testing and conversion rate optimization. In 1st article, we interviewed Oli from Unbounce on Landing Pages Best Practices. In 2nd article, Noah Kagan of Appsumo shared his A/B testing tips.

In this post, we interview Freelance copywriter Jeremy Reeves, who is a direct response copywriter and marketing consultant. He specializes in long sales letter copywriting. His unique and powerful marketing strategies, combined with results-getting copy have earned his clients millions of dollars. To learn more about Jeremy and see how he can grow your business, head over to www.JeremyReeves.com/freelance-copywriter.html Following is the interview with him.

Common elements of long sales letter

Question: What are the most common elements of a long sales-letter type webpage? Can you break them down from top-to-bottom?

Step 1 is the main headline area. This includes the pre-head, main headline and subhead. This is the point where you want to instantly grab their attention and basically – tell them WHY they’re about to read the page. Tell them what’s in it for them, and do so in an exciting way.

- Click the image above for full screenshot -

This is also known as the “Deck” copy”.

Next is the opening words, also knows as the “lead” or “introduction”. This is where I like to get in touch with them emotionally. Depending on the market, product and hook I found when doing my research, this could be any of the major emotions such as anger, guilt, fear, pride, etc…

Next comes the body copy…

The body copy would include areas such as setting them up for the sale, revealing the solution (e.g. why it’s special, how it works, how it’s better than others, etc.)… why they should be listening to you… the benefits of the product… social proof, etc.

(This is the largest section of the copy)

Next, you make your offer. You tell them exactly what they’ll be getting, what the price is, the unique value proposition of whatever it is that you’re selling (e.g. why it’s worth more than what they’re spending on it)… the guarantee… and all that good stuff.

Basically – you’re giving them “X” in exchange for “X” dollars.

At the end of the offer section of the copy, I like to put in an order box containing a summary of everything you just said. That way, skimmers can see the “whole package” at a glance. You show them every single item they’re getting, how much everything is worth… and why they’re paying X% less than what it’s worth.

After this, comes the “close” where you can do many things including injecting scarcity into the offer (but PLEASE don’t inject false scarcity)… having them think about the consequences of NOT taking action, reminding them of the benefits/value/guarantee/scarcity, etc.

The close would basically be everything after the order form on the page – including the P.S.

And that’s basically it! I can break it down into even more chunks, but it depends on MANY factors so it would only confuse people who don’t already understand it.

Psychology tricks used in long sales pages

Question: What makes such pages so effective? Which psychology tricks do these pages adopt to hook the reader?

What makes them so effective is that, if setup the RIGHT way… you can hook into the personality styles of all types of readers.

There are basically 3 types of readers.

• Skimmers – These people will skim a page up and down quickly, just to get a quick overview of what you’re selling. They’re typically pretty quick to act and already have their minds made up before they even get to the page.
• Jumpers – These people spend more time on the page than skimmers, but less than readers. They will skim the page, but then if something catches their attention – they’ll dive into the copy and read it thoroughly.
• Book Worms – These people read the whole damn thing, top to bottom…. every single word. They’re typically slower decision makers and tend to think things over and want every single ounce of detail before making a decision. Or sometimes – they just like to read

If you check out the image I talked about above… you’ll see how I break up the pages into “subheads”, which I’m sure you’re familiar with. What you want to do for long-form sales-letters is make is so that someone can literally read the headline, and the subheads… and have the minimum information they need to make a buying decision.

But that’s a whole other issue in it’s own

The best thing a person can do is turn skimmers, into jumpers… and jumpers… into book worms. That’s why it’s important to have fun, exciting, engaging copy. Just because it’s long, doesn’t mean it’s necessary – or even good.

That’s one thing most long-form copywriters don’t understand.

As for psychology tricks, there are a million of them. To be honest, I personally don’t worry about psychology tricks all that much. I use them, but sparingly because if you use them too much – people start to notice.

Psychology tricks are great for selling books, but simply getting to know and get a deep understanding of your customer is what sells in real life. And, of course… adding the “essentials” like proof, credibility, a great offer, bonding with your prospect, engaging copy, etc.

Lessons from Direct Marketing and Infomercials

Question: I have heard that these pages draw inspiration from direct mail campaigns and infomercials. Is that true? What lessons can we learn from those two mediums and apply on the web?

Yep, absolutely!

One of the biggest things I’ve ever learned from infomercials is that it’s ALL about the product. If you’ve ever seen Billy Mays commercials – those products sell you in a split-second. They use something called “demonstrability” which is basically – showing the product in use.

For example in one of Billys infomercials they were selling a small saw, and to demonstrate it – they literally cut a car in half. If you’re not sold after that – I don’t know what will sell you!

Demonstrability is amazingly powerful, and something very few Internet Marketers do these days.

As for direct mail, the biggest lesson is that no matter what you think, or what anybody tells you… PEOPLE READ WHAT THEY’RE INTERESTED IN.

I’ll get into this more in the next question.

Another awesome example is Schlitz beer. A few decades ago, they were having a hard time getting noticed. I think they were ranked #6 (this was when there were only a few dozen breweries). One of the most famous copywriters who ever lived… wrote a longer-form ad about the process of making their own beer… and they not only hit #1… they got so busy they couldn’t keep up with the demand!

Long sales letter v/s short sales letter

Question: Is longer sales-page page always the better? Or is there an ideal length?

Ok, here’s a biggie.

It’s kind of funny that many long-form copywriters think longer copy will win in every single case… and on the flip side… a lot of “Ecommerce” guys think that short copy will always win.

… and they’re BOTH wrong.

Here’s the “secret” formula if you will.

Tell them everything that you think will push them one step closer to buying your product… and not a single word more. And do so in a fun, engaging way that will connect with YOUR audience.

Also, in general – the lower of a price the product is, the less you have to say (because it’s a more “impulsive” buy).

Trust me – if people are interested in your product, they’ll read for a LONG time before making a decision if they need to. I know guys who have written 60 (yes, 60) page letters to sell expensive coaching and seminar packages.

Some of the biggest financial and health companies in the world use 32 page magalogs to sell their prospects.

… so don’t tell me people don’t read anymore, because they do – and always will.

Here’s the key.

If you find that people aren’t reading your copy and feel it’s because it’s “too long”… try hiring a great copywriter and look at the difference. The difference isn’t that it’s “too long”… it’s that it’s not engaging enough.

I have a salesletter right now for a client selling a $300 product where his “per visitor” value is $10.25. (So basically… for each person that hits his page, he makes $10.25). And that page is probably 12-15 pages long or so… maybe even longer.

… and no, it’s not an information product. It’s a physical product that gets shipped to your house and weighs like 10 pounds.

Examples of great sales letters

Question: Are there any examples of best sales-letter pages on the web and what you like about them?

Well instead of just pointing out some letters I like, let me show you another one of mine simply because I also have statistical data to back up that it beat the shorter version (by just a hair under 50% with a 99% confidence interval).
http://www.losethebackpain.com/inversion3.html

And as you can tell this page is pretty long. I’m not sure exactly how long but it’s definitely a “long-form” salesletter.
We tested this version against a control this client had which was much shorter (it just had a video, a few bullets, summary of the offer, etc.)

Copywriting is not as important as..

Question: How important is copywriting on a sales page?

The funny thing is… even though I’m a copywriter – I’m willing to admit that copywriting is NOT the most important thing on a sales-page.

What’s the most important?

The OFFER.

The offer consists of the product you’re giving them, any bonuses, the price, returns/shipping policy, guarantee… and anything else included. In simple terms…

… they’re giving you “X” dollars and in return they are receiving “X”.

If you look at this example selling an “inversion table” you’ll see that I layout the entire offer right inside the order box. This is for the people who want to get straight to the offer to see what it is. Instead of simply saying “you get an inversion table for $299”… I list out ALL the features, the benefits, an image, as well as everything else in the offer.

The best copy in the world can’t sell a crappy product, but mediocre copy can sell a fantastic product. The REAL magic happens when you combine top-notch copy… with a top-notch offer. That’s why whenever I get a new client I always talk about the offer with them and help them improve it – before I write a single word of copy.

… and my version that you see is beating his original version by just a hair under 50%. I don’t know about you… but a 50% increase on a $300 product typically means a pretty big jump in profit

The best part is – I haven’t even gotten a chance to test this page yet. By the time I’m done testing out 4-5 different “themes” (the overall “big idea” of the page)… I’ll likely bump it up another 50%.

Best copywriting tips and techniques

Question: What are your favorite copywriting tips and techniques?

The best technique you can ever use in copy is simply understanding the dominant emotions going on inside your prospects mind at the exact moment he/she is reading your copy. If you can understand that… it paves the way for every single word on the page and the copy flows like water.

It helps you understand how to phrase things, what kind of offer to give them, what to price your products at, what benefits to hit on, how aggressive or subtle the copy should be… and literally everything else you need to know.

Why designers hate long sales letters?

Question: I have talked to couple of UX and web designers and they absolutely hate these long sales-letter pages. They find it scammy and cheating naive web surfers. What are your thoughts about this?

My thought is… they’ve never tested it.

I don’t understand how people can find it “scammy” or “cheating”. You’re giving the customer ALL the information they need to know, as well as giving them the choice to either skim the page to get the gist, and then make a buying decision… or read it word for word.

Also… if they think this – it’s also a sign that the copywriter sucked. Great copy is engaging and entertaining as I mentioned earlier… but it should also be EDUCATIONAL. The goal is to get people to read it word for word.

If you don’t think people read it word for word… again you’ve never tested it (or your copy sucks). Just this morning, a prospect for a piece of copy I wrote noticed a TINY spelling mistake buried on about my 10th page of copy.
… which made me glad because it shows that people are truly interested in the content and reading it thoroughly.

Why designers are at a loss if they ignore long sales letter format

Question: Do you think “sophisticated” web designers lose a lot because they are not ready to embrace techniques employed by long sales letter pages?

Absolutely. In fact, I’d be willing to bet that if they started testing long-form salesletters… they’d very soon be able to buy themselves a new house.

(Depending on how big the business is already, of course. Maybe they could only get a new car

The HUGE majority of sites on the Internet today are what I call “OED” (owner-ego-driven). Let’s just put it this way to make it simple. If you look at your site and the first thing you think is “wow – that’s great looking!”

… you’re probably losing a TON of money (in most cases, not all).

Take my example earlier. I took my client from a short letter to a long letter… and gave him just about a 50% increase in profits for that product.

I’m still working with that client to re-do every salesletter on his site… but what if each new letter I write increases the profits to that product by 50%? Well… he then not only has 50% more profit for that product, but can then dump those profits into more advertising, more affiliates, R&D, new products, etc. etc.

Another client I just finished a project for ended up getting a $3 EPC for a $47 digital/$77 physical product.

(Comparable products that I didn’t write were about $1 EPC)

I’m not touting my horn here – my point is – they were ALL long-form salesletters.

So that about wraps it up. To whoever is reading this – I really hope it helped you. If I offended you… I apologize, but I hate to see people losing thousands of dollars per month (or even day) simply because they’re not A/B testing things they should be testing. (Editor’s note: Jeremy uses our product Visual Website Optimizer or A/B split testing his copy)

Hopefully this will change your mind about long-form copy and show you that in the VAST majority of cases (in particular information products and high priced products/services)… it outperforms short copy.

This does depend on the website, and the market, and the individual page… but either way – it’s absolutely 100% something to test.

About Jeremy Reeves

Freelance copywriter Jeremy Reeves is a marketing consultant whose unique and powerful marketing strategies, combined with results-getting copy have earned his clients millions of dollars. To learn more about Jeremy and see how he can grow your business, head over to www.JeremyReeves.com/freelance-copywriter.html

Editor’s note: Hope you liked the interview. For next articles in this series, if you know someone whom we can interview or want to contribute a guest post yourself, please get in touch (paras@wingify.com).

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We had an awesome webinar on landing page optimization yesterday where the team from Conversion Voodoo and GazeHawk analyzed 3 landing pages (chosen at random from a pool of 200+ submitted landing pages). Then I gave a quick demo of creating an A/B test on one of the chosen landing pages using Visual Website Optimizer.

Take a cup of coffee and bask in 30 minutes of pure conversion-rate-optimization awesomeness!

Hope you like the recorded webinar. Feel free to ask any questions on any of the points raised in webinar (simply leave a comment below).

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Oh, the question thou fear the most:

What price should I offer my new product X at?

Determining right price for your product is perhaps one of the most difficult tasks when you are launching a new product or service. Pricing for physical goods is simple. For example, if you are manufacturing staplers, all you need to do is to calculate cost of production and distribution, slam 20% margin on it and there you have the price you can sell your shiny stapler machines for.

Economics 101 (price elasticity of demand)

But for digital goods with no cost of production, it is not that simple. This zero cost of production complicates pricing decisions because then you need to price the product according to how much the market values your product. At the core, idea is quite simple: higher you price, lower the demand is. However, if your price it too low, you won’t make a lot of money even though you might sell a lot. Similarly, if you price it too high, you won’t make a lot of money even though each unit sold brings you greater amount of money. This is the basic principle of price elasticity of demand.

So, as you can see in the graph above, increasing price by 10% reduced quantity bought by 15% which reduced total revenues. Every product has a price point in the graph at which revenues become maximum. Price more than it, revenues will fall. Price less than it, revenues will fall. Of course, you can’t sit over coffee one evening and draw this price-demand curve for your product. It has to be discovered. Your market determines this curve and A/B testing is an excellent way to find out which price-point maximizes the total revenue.

How to set a price range for A/B testing

Theoretically, the price-demand curve is infinitely long. Price runs from zero to infinity (Y axis) and so does demand (X-axis). But, of course, practically you need to have a price range in mind which you think is suitable for your product. For example, if you are selling an eBook you need to see if $15 gets you more revenue than $9. And you would probably be wise enough to avoid testing selling it for $100. The key question here is: how to set initial price range for price testing?

The answer is: don’t just roll the dice. I’m pointing to an excellent, short guide on pricing software [PDF]. Even though it says on the cover that it is about software pricing, I have found it applies to many types of digital products. The basic gist is this: look for other similar products in the market and also look at the value your product is delivering. Set a price range accordingly. Once you have a price range in mind (say $50-$150), next step is to use A/B split testing to determine the exact price which maximizes revenues.

The Dark Art of Price Testing

Price testing is definitely one of the most difficult projects you can undertake. There are so many things that can go wrong. Consider this worst-case scenario: an influential blogger (say Mike from TechCrunch) is trying out your product and somehow gets to see that you are doing price testing. He writes about it on the blog (because, hey, it is fun to write about something controversial). Your customers read the post and get angry at you. Worst-of-the worst, one of the customers turns out to be idle lawyer and sues your company. It is a worst case scenario but quite plausible.

To avoid OMG, we got sued due to price testing, you should be doing price testing according to following rules (which I classify as the good, the bad and the ugly — in reverse order).

The Ugly: never offer exactly same product / service at different price points

Yes, you read it right. This is perhaps the way many companies do price testing but you should NEVER show different prices to the visitors for exactly the same product or service.

It’s illegal and can lead to huge potential lawsuit.

The Bad: have slightly different offering for different price points

This is a less nefarious version of plain-old price testing. Instead of showing different price points for the same product, you show different price points for slightly different product offerings. You can vary product offerings tested at different price points by adding or removing some trivial features. I will give you an example, if you are selling a backup service you can create one version where you offer 5 GB storage for $20, in another version you offer 5 GB storage + SSL (trivial feature) for $30. So, practically both offerings are similar but technically there is a difference and if anyone ever questions you, you have grounds for justifying the difference in price. After all, you are offering different products (no matter how trivial the difference is).

But I consider it immoral. Yes, you can evade potential lawsuits but anyone will know that you are fooling people.

The Good: offer different products (or plans or solutions) at different price points

This is the most ethical way to do price testing. Ideally, you should offer completely different product plans at different price points. Taking backup service as an example again, if on your pricing page lowest tier offers 5 GB for $20, test a version where you offer 10 GB for $40 and 2 GB for $8. You are trying to gauge sensitivity to price here. If your conversion rate 10 GB is same as that for 2 GB, this means your service is so compelling that people want don’t care if it is $8 or $40. So, in the next update you ramp up price as $40 for 5 GB (while still grand-fathering old customers). This way you would know what is the best price point for your service.

Of course, not all digital products have luxury of offering pricing plans. What if you are selling an eBook? In that case, you need to add some extra value (e.g. 15 minute consultation with author) if you are trying to test a higher price and remove some value if you are trying to test a lower price (e.g. shorter version of ebook).

The key lesson for using A/B testing to determe ideal price is this: offer different value at different price points to gauge price sensitivity of target market. Then whatever price offers maximum revenue, start offering your main product at that price point (while grand-fathering old customers).

Final Gospel: measure revenue, not conversion rate

I have suggested it earlier in the article but will make it clearer here. During price testing, you should measure revenue (not conversion rate). Because even though you may end up selling less (hence lower conversion rate) at higher price points, your total revenues may actually be higher.

Visual Website Optimizer lets you measure revenue by integrating with Google Analytics and Omniture SiteCatalyst. So, if you are measuring revenue in one of these analytics tools, you can easily see which price variation resulted in maximum revenue. (Even if you measure revenue in internal dashboard or excel, it should be quite simple to measure it for different variations)

So, ready to do some price testing?

Let me know your comments and feedback on the strategies I guess. If you need help setting up a price testing using Visual Website Optimizer, will be happy to discuss it with you. Just leave a comment below or email me at paras@wingify.com

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Through his website SixPackAbsExercises.com, personal trainer Carl Juneau teaches men the best ab exercises for getting six pack abs. Carl heard his top competitor doubled his sales after he started to use video to market and demonstrate his products so he decided to use Visual Website Optimizer to test video on this website. Carl carried out three split tests which conclusively proved that videos increased conversions on his website by as much as 46%.

A/B Test #1 (call-to-action test)

In first split test, he tested two variations of the “call to action” on his sales page.

• The control was: “Next Page Read Sample of Book”
• Variation 1 was: “Watch Video Preview”
• Variation 2 was: “Watch my #1 Abs Exercise On Video”

Variation 1 of Carl’s sales page. Call to action: “Next Page Watch Video Preview.”

Here are the results for this test (goal being click on call-to-action and go to next step in funnel). Both calls to action that hinted at a video significantly increased the number of visitors who clicked to the sales page (step 3). The best-performing variation (variation 1) increased conversion by 14.18%.

A/B Test #2 (salesletter test)

In second split test, Carl tested one variation of the sales page:

• The control was a long-form salesletter, which had been tweaked extensively over two years
• Variation 1 was a one-minute professionally produced video where Carl demonstrated his best abdominal exercise. At the end of the video, the “call to action” said that more exercises could be found in the manual and the workouts

Variation 1 of Carl’s second sales page

Here are the results for test #2 (goal was to go to next step of funnel). The video sales page significantly increased the number of visitors who clicked to the price/guarantee page by 46.15%.

A/B Test #3 (follow up test)

Third split test was a follow-up test. In it, Carl tested:

• The winning video only
• The winning video at the top of the page plus his longstanding control salesletter below

To his surprise, the video-only page won. Here are the results. Adding the long salesletter below the winning sales video significantly reduced the number of visitors who clicked to the price/guarantee page by 35%.

Carl couldn’t explain these results. He shared his best guess:

I’m guessing visitors were intrigued by the sales video and clicked through to the price/guarantee page to get more info. They may have been turned off by the long salesletter when I added it to the video and lost the excitement created by the short, punchy video.

Lessons

Video converts! It did so when mentioned in a “call to action” (a 14.18% increase) and also when used to sell (35% and 46.15% increases in two different tests).

As more and more surfers have broadband Internet and powerful computers, video seems to be slowly taking over the web. Carl increased his conversions with video… why not test it and see if it increases yours?

Feedback on Visual Website Optimizer

Carl also submitted feedback on his experience with Visual Website Optimizer:

I carried out these test using Visual Website Optimizer. Before switching to Visual Website Optimizer, I had one solid year of testing under my belt (63 tests) with Google Website Optimizer.

Between the two, Visual Website Optimizer wins hands down. It’s easier to use, faster, and more user-friendly.

When you signup for a 30 day free trial (or purchase a subscription), you install a piece of code on each of your test page. Once the code is installed, you can perform as many tests as you want. You don’t need to re-install a new piece of code for every new test. This was the case in Google Website Optimizer, and it made testing cumbersome.

Visual Website Optimizer’s website itself is faster. It loads in a flash.

Creating tests is intuitive, quick, and easy. It’s done through a “visual” interface. In short, Visual Website Optimizer loads the page you want to test. You then select the sections on your page you want to test. For each section, you specify different versions using the what-you-see-is-what-you-get editor (FrontPage style). You also have the option to edit the HTML directly. When you’re done, you can preview each version before you start the test. It’s that easy, and results are available right away!

One last word on customer support: in two months, I’ve emailed the team 26 times. On average, I’ve gotten a response the same day. VWO team is smart and dedicated. This level of customer support is unheard of.

As you might guess, I strongly endorse this service.

Full disclosure: I’m in no way linked to Visual Website Optimizer, except that I use the software. I’m not being paid for this review.

Carl Juneau

http://www.sixpackabsexercises.com/

Editor’s note: we had a similar case study last week where the call to action ‘Watch the video’ increased conversions by 28%. These two case studies make a strong case for testing a video on your website. It may probably do wonders to your conversions!

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We’re big fans of BigCommerce, a hosted shopping store solution that makes creating and running online stores a really simple job. In fact, just like our motto “World’s easiest A/B testing tool“, their motto is “Easiest way to sell online“. That is why we decided to produce a step by step tutorial on how to integrate Visual Website Optimizer with BigCommerce.

Bigcommerce is also one of our customers and they love Visual Website Optimizer and recommend it to their users!

How to use Visual Website Optimizer on your BigCommerce Store

First, the obvious steps. If you haven’t signed up for Visual Website Optimizer or BigCommerce yet, please do so. Both services offer free trial (without requiring a credit card) so all you need is to fill a short signup form in order to get going.

Once you have your BigCommerce store ready, next step is to create A/B split test using Visual Website Optimizer. Our A/B test designer offers WYSIWYG editor and drag-drop resizing & moving features. Additionally, you can always create a multivariate test too. See screenshot below on how test designer looks like (with BigCommerce store loaded):

After creating the test, you get a simple code snippet such as below:

Now, all you need to do is to copy-paste this code to HTMLhead.html file of your BigCommerce template. See an example below:

That’s it. You are all set to run the best A/B testing tool on your shopping store!

Following are some of the salient benefits of using Visual Website Optimizer on your eCommerce site:

• You only need to add code in your templates once. (After that you can create an A/B test on any page of your store without requiring to upload any code again)
• You get integrated heatmaps and clickmaps.
• Easy to use A/B test designer (no need to know HTML!)

I hope you like this new integration of Visual Website Optimizer with BigCommerce. In case you are looking for ideas to kickstart your A/B testing, have a look at our eCommerce case studies (in some cases sales have been increased by as much as 20%).

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