Is pricing information more important than pricing page design? Does design on pricing page influence conversions at all? These are some of the questions that Basekit.com, world’s most flexible website builder, wanted to answer through their latest A/B test. BaseKit allows you to quickly and simply create, host and manage your own website in 100% W3C-compliant HTML. It’s an awesome tool and we are lucky to have them as one of our customers.
This case study is about A/B testing of BaseKit’s pricing page and how a redesign of it increased conversions by 25%. They wanted to increase the number of people who visit ‘Buy Now‘ page after visiting their ‘Plans and Pricing‘ page so that was the conversion goal measured in the test. (For their follow up tests, we recommend Basekit to use Visual Website Optimizer’s revenue tracking feature to make sure that not just conversions but total sales is also measured for different variations. This will get a better idea of performance of variation). The traffic that arrived on pricing page (which was tested) is primarily paid, so it is already focused and targeted. Here is how the pricing page originally looked like:
Original pricing page
In their own words, the variation had “Bolder, brighter, clearer pricing, nicer design, testimonial, more obvious currency selection.” Here’s how the variation looked like:
Redesigned pricing page (25% increase in conversions)
The new design reached a 95% statistical significance within 24 hours. It was a consistent 25% improvement for the entire duration of the test. They weren’t surprised, but were reassured to see that our improvements had the desired effect. As a follow up test, they are creating yet another redesign of this new pricing page and then do another A/B test. (Continuous A/B testing is key to increasing conversions. Sometimes you get results, sometimes you don’t but if you do lots of A/B tests, you are bound to see some improvements).
Regarding usefulness of Visual Website Optimizer, here’s what Chris Gilfoy, Head of Search at Basekit had to say:
Hugely valuable. I’ve been a fan of VWO for a long time and it was great to take it to a new brand and show how powerful, yet easy to use it is.
This excellent A/B test shows that not just actual pricing details but design of the pricing page is very important. So, when are you going to test your pricing page? (By the way, we are planning to test our pricing page too! Let us know in the comments if you have any ideas for improvement.)
Starting with a new series on this blog called Revisiting the Classics, I will re-look at our A/B testing case studies and throw some new light on it (with additional commentary). The case study that I picked for this post relates to human photos on landing pages and whether they increase conversion rate. Before reading rest of the post, make a guess: do human photos (male/female) online really have any subconscious effect on visitors?
There has been significant scientific research on this topic particularly for eCommerce websites. When you are considering a purchase decision, the main issue online is of trust. How do you know if a particular website is trust worthy? Taking lessons from TV advertising and general marketing principles, people running eCommerce websites think that associating photos of people with products engenders trust. Of course, human photos = increased trust is just a hypothesis. But is it really true?
To answer this, I analyzed several research papers (which are published in peer-reviewed scientific journals). Following are some of the main ones (along with excerpts):
Not just scientific research, real world A/B tests that I have seen also corroborate the hypothesis of human photos may increase conversion rate. Two of our customers used our A/B testing tool (Visual Website Optimizer) to test presence of human photos and its impact on conversions. Following sections detail what they did and what they found out.
Medalia Art sells Brazilian and Caribbean art online. Since they are an online art shop, they showcase paintings from famous artists on their homepage. They decided to test what happens if paintings are replaced by the artists’ photos.
The goal for this A/B test was to increase visitor engagement (defined as a click on any link on the homepage; it is the inverse of the bounce rate). They didn’t use sales as a conversion rate as many of their sales happen after interaction on the telephone with the customer.
Here are the screenshots of the control (paintings) and the winning version (photos).
- Original (with paintings)-
- Variation (with photos)-
Results?: Medalia found out that with paintings the conversion rate was 8.8% but if paintings are replaced with artist photos, the conversion rate increases to whopping 17.2%. That’s an increase in conversion rate of more than 95%! (results were statistically significant) How cool is that for doing a slight change?
Another user, Jason Thompson, conducted an A/B test on his blog to see if replacing contact icon with his own photo would lead to more people contacting him. Following is screenshot of original and variation:
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Original (with icon) |
Variation (with photo) |
 |
 |
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3.7% conversion rate |
5.5% conversion rate |
Results clearly show that the version with Jason’s photo had 48% more conversions as compared to generic icon. (Again, results are statistically significant).
Jason commented on the test results:
People want to connect with other people emotionally, the photo makes that emotional connection so much easier and as the test is proving, drives people to the contact form more than a nondescript icon.
There are hundreds of more research studies and probably more A/B test results that you can read but from what I have read and observed, here are some salient points about human photos on websites:
Hope you found this article useful. If you have any comments or suggestions, please let me know.
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).
We (at Visual Website Optimizer) are starting a series on the blog where the experts in A/B testing, landing pages, conversion rate optimization will share everything they know about how to increase sales and conversions online. If you know someone whom I can interview or want to contribute a guest post yourself, please shoot me an email at paras@wingify.com.
The first interview in this series is by Oli Gardner (@unbounce on Twitter), who is a Co-founder of Unbounce.com – the DIY Landing Page Platform. He created the Unbounce conversion blog to discuss a variety of marketing subjects such as landing pages, conversion centered design, social media conversion and ethical lead capture for business.
Editor’s Note: this interview is all about landing page best practices. Previously on this blog, I had analyzed 50+ landing pages and came up with some practical landing page optimization tips. After reading the interview, you may want to check out the post too.
How important are landing pages for paid marketing? Why can’t a company simply redirect traffic to its homepage? What is the actual purpose of landing pages?
Landing pages are critical for any promotion specific marketing – but in particular for paid marketing where a measured ROI is essential to your success (and your ability to gain budgetary approval). The reason why you want to direct your paid traffic to a landing page vs. your homepage is that your homepage is often designed to be a generic entry point to your brand and business. It may contain references to many products or services – rendering the ability for a potential customer to find your intended conversion path amidst 40-70 links unlikely at best – impossible at worst. Which leads nicely into the third part of your question. The purpose of a landing page is to provide a hyper-focused experience that is designed to accomplish the singular conversion goal of your marketing campaign.
Usually landing pages look separate from main website (due to different design, userflow). Do you recommend this distinction between landing pages and main website?
I wouldn’t recommend making a stylistic or brand change to the design of your landing page. It’s important to keep it consistent with what your main website represents and what people have experienced in the past (brand memory).
The most elemental conversion principal is what’s known as message match. This is a two-way concept that applies to the information scent passing from ad to landing page (your Google AdWords ad talks about green apples, and so does your landing page), but it also applies to the next step in the conversion funnel, which is the visual brand connection from landing page to website. I’ll explain both of these a bit more.
If you are doing an ecommerce based “click through” landing page – designed to warm up the prospect’s interest in your offer before passing them on to your website/cart/registration page then you need to maintain “design match” where the visual and tonal brand guidelines are perpetuated on the destination site. If you don’t do this you risk a trust interruption which can cause people to bail.
For a lead gen landing page (often called a squeeze page – although I don’t really like the term or the negative segment of the industry typically associated with it) – the experience often ends on the landing page – which means the follow up experience isn’t quite as critical – but in the case of a big company – there will be a certain amount of brand memory where people expect a connection to their preconceived idea of how you present yourself. Again, without this design/brand match you can lose people.
What are the most important characteristics of highly converting landing pages?
Focus. Simple and obvious writing. Clean design with an eye for contrast, whitespace and clarity. A clear call to action that describes what will happen when it’s clicked. Stick to those and you’re half way there.
If I had to distill it down to two points, I’d say a headline that you can read in 5 seconds and know what the page and offer is about and a brutally obvious cal to action (CTA). For some inspiration when designing your page to convert – read Designing for Conversion – 8 Visual Design Techniques to Focus Attention on Your Landing Pages.
If you are asked to fix only one thing in a badly performing landing page, what would it be?
That’s easy. The thing that was causing it to perform badly! Sadly, it’s not really that simple.
The thing to fix will most often be “message match” – this is the part that most people get wrong. You sell someone on a promise with your ad, then when they get to the page, the first thing they read/see represents a different story. So in a generic sense I’d say fix your message match and you’ll fix 80% of your problems.
But this is a bit of a trick question. What you need to do is spend some time walking in your customer’s shoes to understand what they are experiencing when they arrive at your page. Perhaps by trying a 5-second test.
Long vs. short controversy! How do you prevent making a landing page too sparse that users don’t get motivated or too long so users get distracted?
Long vs. short is a classic debate and one that can only be proven through A/B testing so I won’t harp on about any specific hypothesis here. Some higher priced items require more detail – but they also require more research – in which case a landing page may not suffice anyway. It depends on the page goal. If it’s lead gen – then you *must* provide enough incentive to complete the form – whether that’s a big long story or a sufficiently appropriate prize in exchange for the personal data.
What are your favorite landing pages on the web? (What about worst landing pages on the web?)
My favorite page (other than my own of course) tend to come from Webtrends. They just seem to nail it every time. #1 on this compilation and another great example here. Aside from them, Full Sail University does a consistently great job, particularly for lead gen.
Whatever is offered on a landing page (demo, trial, whitepaper, etc.), do you recommend putting it behind a small lead-gen form or should you give a direct link?
Yes and no. I personally think it’s something you need to mix up from time to time.
Make it Free. Sometimes it’s great to give away your expertise (particularly an ebook) without any barrier to entry. The goodwill marketing momentum you receive can be worth a lot more than a few leads. If you do this, just make sure you brand your ebook very well (every page should contain your logo and website URL) and a footer that states that you happily encourage the free sharing of your content. Many people don’t know if they should be sharing it without feeling guilty, and a lot of people suffer from guilt issues – so don’t let this prevent you from benefiting from your generosity. Also, there are a lot of old-school marketers out there who are STILL afraid to give content away (thtoopid, thtoopid) – thinking it should be copyrighted and protected and locked in a vault.
Ask for Data. If you are doing classic lead gen, then you are going to be giving something to your visitors in exchange for their personal information. The key here is to balance the size of the barrier (how much personal data you are asking for) with the size of the prize (what you are offering in return). A/B testing the length of your forms may point to an ideal form size to suit your needs. There are two kinds of barrier with forms – privacy and effort. Awkward or overly personal questions can put people off, or make them enter fake data (which helps no one), while super long forms just serve to make people sigh and hit the back button. If you must ask for a lot of information, make it worthwhile with a really valuable giveaway.
Editor’s note: That’s it for the interview! If you know someone whom I can interview or want to contribute a guest post yourself, please shoot me an email at paras@wingify.com. Also, as mentioned at the top of post, previously I had analyzed 50+ landing pages and came up with some practical landing page optimization tips. So, you may want to check out that post.
Last week I offered free conversion rate optimization advice on a popular forum (known as Hacker News). Within a single day I got 50+ requests for help. It was definitely an enriching experience analyzing and dissecting all those websites and landing pages. As I was replying and providing my feedback to those 50+ sites, I started sensing a few common issues that affected conversion rates of all those pages. Without naming any specific URL or site, in this post I will detail where those sites lacked and what you can learn from my analysis to fix your homepage or landing page.
According to my analysis, one of these four issues (if not all) were the most common causes of poor conversion rates. As you go through the list of issues below, try to relate them to your landing page (or homepage). Here are the four most common issues that affect conversion rate and sales:
Let’s analyze the issues one by one.
Example of a homepage with too much text
I won’t be surprised about lack of sales and conversions if your page announces “Welcome to..” followed by a bunch of three paragraphs describing what the site is about. Nobody on the web has patience to read paragraphs after paragraphs about you are offering.
On the web, people scan for elements that catch their eye. And you get only first few seconds to answer two most important questions: a) what you are offering; b) why they may need it.
Example of a balanced webpage (text + images)
So, what you need is a proper balance between graphics and text. Some examples of how you can improve your landing page (by replacing some text):
Hiring a professional web designer will certainly help if you lack design skills. On a similar note, “visually appealing” pages are always seen as more credible than “crudely designed” pages. So, an investment in a good design will go a long way helping your sales and conversions.
Example of confusing headline: “Changing how the world works”
As I hinted in the section above, visitors on your page are impatient. Within first 5 seconds, they want to know what your service does or you have lost a chance with him/her. As someone wise said: “Browser back button is your biggest enemy” (if you find the source of this quotation, please leave a comment). Never think that a visitor is going to spend minutes reading through all text on your page and then make his best guess of what you are offering. Instead, you should make the job easy for him. Have a big, bold descriptive headline as the first thing he should see.
Example of good headline: “Hire Online Workers to get the Job Done”
A descriptive headline also serves another important job: it *sticks* in the visitor’s brain as long as he stays on your website. Contrast this to the scenario where there is no helpful headline which a visitor can fall back on if your page gets too confusing (usually happens because we want to write about EVERY feature our site offers). Moreover, your visitor is usually distracted. Imagine a “busy-beaver” visitor chatting with friends on IM, doing a status update on Facebook/Twitter and on a call with his boss, all at once. Now imagine he stumbles on your website. Do you expect him to really understand what your site does without having a descriptive headline?
My advice is to avoid following kinds of headlines:
In a nutshell, headlines should be short, concise and descriptive.
Paradox of choice on a landing page. Out of three call-to-action buttons. which option to choose?
Call-to-action is a button or link that asks visitor to take a specific action. It may be a link to your signup form, plans and pricing page or the feature tour page. There are two specific issues related to call-to-action: a) either some sites don’t have any call to action button or b) some sites have too many call-to-action buttons. Once the visitor arrives on your page, thinks that you are credible (from your design), reads the descriptive headline and is finally convinced to spend some time on your site, what’s the next page you want him to see? That decision should not be left on visitor because only you know (and not him) which is the most relevant page that the visitor should be viewing next.
Example of single, prominent call-to-action: “Download Wordpress”
If you don’t have a single call-to-action or have far too many call-to-action, visitor is likely to get confused what to next (since all links from your landing page/homepage seem to be of equal importance). Even if you have two prominent buttons (e.g. one of Learn More and other for the signup), try reducing it to one button. There is even a book titled: “Don’t make me think!” and that’s precisely the point I’m trying to make here. Don’t force your visitor to make a choice. By placing relevant call-to-action buttons on different pages of your site, you should gently guide him to the final goal (be it a signup, purchase, download, etc.)
Example of no social proof. Why should I bother about Twhirl?
So you make bold claims on your site. Of course, you think you are the “Best Twitter client ever”. But, unfortunately, making claims is easy. Any site can claim to be the “best” or “revolutionary” because those words are abstract. You may think your product is the best but if you are the only one in this world with that viewpoint, you are not going to convince anyone to try it out.
Humans crave for social proof. They want to know whole else is using this thing and how beneficial was it for them. Even if you design the most beautiful landing page but fail to include any social proof, your sales and conversions are going to suffer. Social proof can be shown in terms of testimonials, company logos, customer photos or case studies.
Example of social proof: we know Facebook, LA Times, etc. use Hootsuite. So it must be good, no?
It is understandable that if your site is just getting started, it may be hard to get any social proof because you may not have any customers. In that case, you need to have a convincing return-on-investment proof on your site. I’m not just talking about justifying investment of money but you also need to convince a visitor to invest time trying out your service or product. People crave for statistics and validation. So, you can perhaps do a small study or research on Internet to come up with metric of some kind highlighting usefulness of your service. (Example if you have a new social media monitoring service: 95% of business are talked about on the Internet, use MyShinyNewTool to talk to those invisible customers).
Another key point with regards to social proof is human emotions. People respond to concrete representations (say a customer video testimonial) in a much engaging way as compared to an abstract fact (say, 50+ companies from Life Sciences and Biotechnology industry use our software). This is not to say that facts in your social proof don’t work. They do. But you can always augment them with stories of individual customers and what your service did to them. (Case studies are a great way about doing that).
To re-iterate, if you want to increase sales and conversions on your landing page or homepage, you need to concentrate on fixing following issues:
We also have a FREE automated diagnostic tool, called Landing Page Analyzer, which will point these (and many more) deficiencies on your page. Click here to start analyzing your landing pages.
A picture is worth a thousand words. And a video is worth laboring through hundreds of documentation pages and forum threads. The following video shows how to create a multivariate test using Visual Website Optimizer in well under 4 minutes. The short tutorial is a must watch if you have heard about multivariate testing in articles/blogs; and always wondered what exactly is it. Even if you haven’t heard about multivariate testing, don’t worry – this tutorial with demystify that. Basically, multivariate testing is a technique where you vary several elements on your page to see which version results in maximum conversions (that is, form submissions in this case). A successful multivariate test can often result in 50-100% increase in conversions (case study to come out soon).
Without any further blabbering, here is your video tutorial on multivariate testing (click Play to start the video):
