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%.
In first split test, he tested two variations of the “call to action” on his sales page.
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%.
In second split test, Carl tested one variation of the 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%.
Third split test was a follow-up test. In it, Carl tested:
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.
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?
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!
Last week we ran an A/B test contest where you had to guess which button increased newsletter signups by 28%. Was it ‘watch a video’ or was it ‘get instant access‘? We got a total of 51 submissions (tweets + blog comments) and would you believe it: 51% said ‘Get Instant Access‘ would win while 49% said ‘Watch a video‘ will win. This is incredible and clearly demonstrates how hard is it to guess what is going to work on your website!
Before announcing the correct answer, we’d like to announce the winner of $3000 worth Visual Website Optimizer subscription. Please join me for the drum roll… and the winner of this contest is: Stephan Schubert and here is the winning tweet. Congratulations, Stephan!
I recently interviewed The Social Man (one of the Visual Website Optimizer customers) on their successful split test. As you will read, this test is typical example of how a single change (in call-to-action) can result in significant increase in conversions. Almost all our case studies make the same point about A/B testing which is worth repeating twice: (seemingly) small changes can increase conversions on a landing page. So, you should always be testing.
Here is the full interview:
1. What was the conversion goal of the split test?
To convert visitors to email newsletter subscribers, and to get them to see a video about how a guy can learn to “talk like a ten”.
2. On which page did you run the test?
http://www.becomeunbreakable.com/1/talk-like-a-ten/indexVWO.php
(Please note – this is a different page than the original, but keeps all the same content. We track lead sources and use different landing pages for traffic from different sources)
3. What is the traffic source? Organic, direct, PPC, etc.?
Cold traffic from a dating website – CPM. We tested a lot of different bids and were very surprised about the most profitable bid price.
4. Which part of page did you select for the test and what variations did you test?
We initially ran a test with three different variations each of headline and sub-head. Once we found the best combination for those, we split the “Submit” button on a whim. One said “Free Instant Access” and one said “Watch The Video”. See images below:
Version A: Get Instant Access (11.9% conversion rate)
Version B: Watch the Video (15.3% conversion rate)
Editor’s note: so now you know that ‘Watch the video‘ increased conversions from 11.9% to 15.3%. A total increase of 28%!
5. Why did you think that the variations you created had better chances to beat the original? What were you actually testing in this test?
Pushing for the action of “Watch The Video”. The subhead that won (“Get The Free ‘Talk Like A Ten’ Video Now!!!”) also mentioned that they could “get” the “video”.
6. What results did you get? Were you surprised by the results?
15% opt-ins for cold traffic off this particular site is amazing – We’re running ads/offers into a few very nichey demographics on that site that generate huge CTR’s (.300-.400; in comparison, the CTR on this campaign is .086 for our best creative) and haven’t beaten this conversion for any other squeeze page.
7. Any lessons which can be derived from your test?
I’m reminded of the parable where an old friend of Henry Ford’s said “Henry, why don’t you ever buy any bolts from me?” to which Mr. Ford replied “Heck Joe, you’ve never asked!” It’s always worth including action verbs like “get”, “watch”, “download”, “enter” etc. in tests.
8. How valuable was Visual Website Optimizer for this test?
It’s so much easier – and more powerful – than Google’s website optimizer. We’re finding it to be an indispensable tool that made me excited about running tests again.
9. Short background information about your business.
The Social Man is in business is to make men awesome. We have a variety of products and coaching packages that cover everything from flirting over text messaging, to how to be sexier, to overcoming social anxiety. I previously ran an enterprise software company, and feel very blessed to be doing something I love that’s employs passionate people and has helped so many men. My business, Turnseven, Inc., manage a few other niche brands in addition to The Social Man.
Many people seem to get confused about the terms A/B testing, split testing and multivariate testing. Essentially, A/B testing and split testing are the same concepts but multivariate testing is different. So for all practical concepts, consider A/B Testing = Split Testing. The following table will illustrate difference between A/B testing (or split testing) and Multivariate Testing:
| A/B Testing | Multivariate Testing | |
| What is it? |
In A/B testing you split traffic amongst two or more completely different versions of a webpage (landing page, home page, etc.) The variations of your original page can differ in any manner. You can either just change the headline; or you can even change entire design, layout, offer and what not in the variations. What you change in A/B test is only limited by your creativity. For example, if you are A/B testing on your landing page you may want to create one version with 15% discount, the other with free shipping and one with the same offer but different page design. |
In multivariate test, you identify a few key areas/sections of a page and then create variations for those sections specifically (as opposed to creating variations of whole page in an A/B split test). So for example, in multivariate test you can choose to create different variations for 2 different sections: headline and image. A multivariate testing software will combine all these section specific variations to generate unique versions of page to be tested and then simply split traffic amongst those versions. That is, you will get these variations of the page: Headline1_Image1, Headline1_Image2, Headline2_Image1, Headline2_Image2. |
| How it works? |  |
 |
| Traffic Required |
Relatively Less |
Huge |
| Best used for |
Testing radically different ideas for conversion rate optimization |
Optimizing and refining an existing landing page or homepage without doing significant investment in redesign |
| Example Case Study |
Signups increased by 60% after actually removing the signup form |
I hope that was a good comparison between A/B testing and multivariate testing. If you think I left any point, please let me know. I will update the comparison table accordingly.
ReplaceDirect, a Visual Website Optimizer customer, is a successful Dutch e-commerce site. It’s one of the biggest retailers in the Netherlands in the field of parts and accessories for notebooks and other mobile equipment. The main focus is on energy products like batteries and power supplies, but the product range is quite extensive.
They recently did an A/B test using Visual Website Optimizer where the winning variation reduced cart abandonment by 25%. For e-commerce sites, cart abandonment is one of the most frustrating aspects of business. After all, there’s no company that likes a potential customer to abandon the purchase after spending tons of time on site research and selecting the right products. Fortunately, cart abandonment can be fixed using A/B testing and this case study demonstrates how ReplaceDirect did it.
A recent study by Forrester found out that shipping costs rank as the number one reason for shopping cart abandonment. Combined with other reasons found out in the research, it can be concluded that visitors abandon their shopping cart because they are unsure about additional costs or surprised to find out (only after entering the payment process) that they are actually charged more than they expected. In order to prevent such surprises, ReplaceDirect already tells the customer in an early stage that no shipping costs will be added. So the customer is clearly informed right from the start. This is exactly what ReplaceDirect wanted to test: will it help reduce cart abandonment when a clear order overview is provided during the initial steps of checkout?
Another cart abandonment study by Paypal
They tested their second step of the checkout procedure. It’s the page where customers are asked to fill out their personal information and shipping address. ReplaceDirect made several changes to the page. Probably the most important change was the insertion of an order overview, comprising the product(s), total costs and delivery date. ReplaceDirect also mentions several benefits at this page; these were changed to more relevant benefits specifically matching this step in the order process. Finally the layouts of the page and the form were changed to yield a cleaner look. Several fields, which were not absolutely necessary, were removed. Following are the screenshots:
Control page
Variation page: 25% reduction in cart abandonment
Their new version performed significantly better, reducing cart abandonments by 25%. As a direct result of this reduction, they saw a 12% increase in sales (14% by the time of pushing all new traffic to the new page). ReplaceDirect says they expected the new version to perform better, but an increase that high turned out to be a pleasant surprise. Well, it is always nice to have a 14% increase in sales without releasing any new products or without spending money on ways to get more traffic to the website. 
When we asked them if they had any lessons for other e-commerce sites; here is what they had to say:
Try to give the customers exactly the information they need at that particular page or section and leave out the redundant. Always put yourself in the customer’s shoes. This may not be easy so: test it!
ReplaceDirect also had some praise for Visual Website Optimizer:
VWO was very valuable. The ease to set up a test and real-time results made it great to work with.
We are very happy that ReplaceDirect reported these great results by doing an A/B test using our tool.
If you manage an e-commerce site without doing any A/B split testing, you are certainly leaving a lot of money on the table.
