Market Research Articles

It's easy to fall into a rut with optimization and testing.

Over time, as you discover which tactics and best practices get results, and then apply them to other channels or pages ad infinitum, you can get lulled into a false sense of security.

There's a time to apply best practices and follow the rules. But there's also a time to break with them, take calculated risks, and expand your learning in pursuit of even greater gains.
 

To discover what really works in optimization, our team is constantly running tests and conducting experiments.

After hundreds of these tests, several wins, some losses and surprises, we asked our analysts to identify the most important lessons of 2008.

Then we looked for common themes that appeared in our research with B2B, B2C, lead-generation, ecommerce, and other areas -- and distilled the list. The result?

Our December 3 clinic featured case studies and takeaways linked to three of the top challenges marketers grappled with this year.
 

While our first clinic on value propositions was rooted in challenges and principles, most participants asked for even more hands-on guidance.

In our November 12, 2008 follow-up clinic, we built on the foundations of Part I and reviewed and optimized several examples submitted by clinic participants.

Those examples included strong and weak value propositions rated by our assessment matrix (and our live audience), copy and pages that had been revised following Part I, new landing page submissions, and the winner of our value proposition contest.
 

There has been plenty of gloom, doom, and hand wringing over this financial years holiday shopping.
While your best bet is to keep projections grounded, not all hope is lost. Even in a tight economy, the Web has several advantages for shoppers, and ecommerce sites that capitalize on these will see more opportunities.
Optimizing a few key areas of your site and channels will help you increase traffic, make browsing and buying easier, and win more new and repeat customers even beyond the holidays.

The MarketingExperiments research team has compiled this ecommerce holiday 'playbook' with 13 specific practices to help you maximize your ROI in this difficult holiday season.
 

Do you think your value proposition is powerful? Would your prospects agree?

Most of the time, when we ask companies about their value proposition, we hear a description of their business model. But that’s not what most customers care about.

Customers not only want to know “What’s in it for me?” but “Why buy from you?”

This is an area that even seasoned marketers have trouble with, because there is so much confusion about what makes a value proposition effective - including how to find one in the first place.

Because value propositions are so important to conversion, making a few small but crucial changes can have a big impact across all of your marketing efforts.

During our September 24, 2008 clinic, we examined why value propositions are so vital to results, presented several ways to significantly improve your value proposition, and reviewed three examples from our workshop participants who optimized their pages with a greater emphasis on these areas.
 

Ever wonder if you’re approaching lead generation the wrong way?

You may be right. Research shows roughly 80% of leads are regularly squandered.

Good news: By optimizing a few key aspects of your lead management process, you can achieve major ROI gains in a short time (even in a shaky economy).

In our September 24, 2008 special guest web clinic, lead generation expert Brian Carroll and Dr. Flint McGlaughlin explored strategies to dramatically increase your B2B leads pipeline and conversion rate.

Carroll presented his proven five-step “playbook” for effective lead management, along with a powerful case study from a partner that applied the playbook and achieved gains of up to 375%.
 

Picture the salespeople who get on your nerves. They're too loud. Too pushy. They try to seem so clever, but that usually backfires.

Just like weak headlines.

Trying too hard to sell is one of the biggest mistakes we make with headlines and subject lines. Another mistake is not consistently applying three key qualities of successful headlines: clarity, relevance, and credibility.

In our September 10, 2008 follow–up clinic on headlines, we revisited those key qualities, examined two new case studies (email and landing page), and conducted an interactive live critique of subject lines and landing page headlines submitted by attendees.

Editor's Note: You can find the first part of this two-part clinic here: Optimizing Your Headlines: How changing a few words can help (or hurt) results
 

If you’re looking for ROI gains and you’re not sure what areas to test first, start with headlines or subject lines.

The impact of headlines on conversions is no secret, but the ease of testing (no design, coding, etc.) makes them even more valuable.

Caveat: Creating and testing effective headlines can be deceptively simple. There's much more to them than slapping a catchy subject line on an email blast, or cramming keywords into PPC ads.

The real challenge lies not only in crafting successful headlines, but using them to conduct effective tests.

The research brief below, drawn from our free Web Clinic on August 27, 2008, explores the objective and key qualities of successful headlines, presents case studies and examples of strong and weak headlines, and offers step-by-step methods you can use to test and optimize your own headlines.
 

Our August 13, 2008 follow–up clinic on PPC campaigns included a new case study, a review of the two types of relevance, and a live critique of five new campaigns submitted by clinic participants.

The pay–per–click ads and landing pages reviewed by our optimization team once again included a cross–section of markets: B2B, B2C, eCommerce, lead–gen and social media.

As before, the objective of these live critiques was to help marketers determine what changes to test using real campaigns. The team of Dr. Flint McGlaughlin, Jimmy Ellis, and Aaron Rosenthal demonstrated how the MarketingExperiments Conversion Sequence can be used to identify obstacles to conversion, and optimize campaigns for greater ROI.
 

Increasing competition and bid prices are making conversions harder to achieve with paid search campaigns. To maintain a dominant position in PPC, you need to constantly improve your ads and landing pages.

The challenge: How can you determine what changes to test, what to keep, and what really works when optimizing a paid search campaign?

During our July 30, 2008, web clinic, our optimization team reviewed pay-per-click ads and landing pages from a cross-section of markets: eCommerce, lead-gen, B2B, and B2C. All information was from real campaigns submitted by clinic attendees.

The goal of this clinic was to demonstrate how the MarketingExperiments Conversion Sequence can be used to identify obstacles to conversion, and examine best practices, tests and strategies that would help these and other campaigns improve their ROI.

The clinic also included a case study from a former optimization workshop participant who used these same principles and strategies to improve a PPC campaign's conversions by 300% while reducing cost-per-conversions by 69%.

Editor's Note: You can find the second part of this two-part clinic here: Optimizing PPC Ads: Improving results from your paid search ads and landing pages (Part 2 of 2)
 

Are Internet users becoming indifferent to testimonials? Is “testimonial blindness” becoming the new “banner blindness”?

Skepticism toward this marketing tactic, combined with the spread of Web 2.0 style user ratings, has raised the bar for marketers. As testimonials and other credibility indicators become increasingly prevalent on Web pages, marketers need to know how to use them most effectively to help increase conversions.

In our July 9 clinic on this topic, we looked at tests that showed how testimonials can help — and sometimes hurt — results and examined strategies for making credibility indicators more powerful.

Editor’s Note: As we mentioned in the clinic, the following multivariate tests also included changes to other page elements. Our goal in sharing this research was to show that credibility indicators play a significant role in conversions — both positive and negative — based on the context in which they are applied. These tests did not isolate the specific impact of testimonials; however, the results make a strong case for additional testing and support the best practices we have identified in past experiments, as outlined in more detail below.

 

Our June 25 Web Clinic looked beyond our various formulas and heuristics and focused on one vital principle: clarity trumps persuasion.

While we used case studies from three subscription sites to illustrate this deceptively simple principle, the truth is it applies equally to any type of website, email, or other marketing communication channels.

This brief examines the results of those three tests and explores how applying clarity to your site pages can increase conversion and revenue.

Editor’s Note: The clinic also featured a live optimization session. Pages were submitted in advance for a critical analysis conducted by MarketingExperiments Director, Dr. Flint McGlaughlin; Director of Optimization Research, Jimmy Ellis; and Director of Channels Research, Aaron Rosenthal.
 

Whether your market is B-to-B, B-to-C, or both, testing and optimizing even a few key aspects of your landing pages can provide major gains for your lead-gen efforts.

The principles of the MarketingExperiments Conversion Sequence serve as a guide to optimizing your pages and your sales or lead-gen process to improve conversion and ROI.

This Brief examines three tests we conducted with our research partner to demonstrate how you can use Incentives and Friction to generate more leads.
 

Research has shown a massive difference in conversion and return on investment between companies that test their online communications and those who don’t; so why doesn’t every online business have a regular testing program?

The fact is that many marketers are confused about where to begin, and how. Some that do test don’t do it often enough, or are not sure how to interpret the results.

With so many potential areas to test, including landing pages, pay-per-click ads, and emails, marketers need to know:

• Which tests provide the biggest potential return on investment,
• How to structure tests for consistency and accuracy, and
• How to continue improving test results and duplicate success.

We’ve developed a solid framework for basic online testing that’s enabled us to help many partners realize significant gains in conversion and revenue.

We hope this overview of the process helps marketers who have not yet implemented a formal program as well as those looking for such a framework to guide and improve their efforts.

For extensive training and professional certification in the fundamentals of online testing, we recommend interested marketers consider our Fundamentals of Online Testing course.
 

1. Hunters. They already know what they want and are looking for the quickest, easiest, and safest way to get it and go.
2. Browsers. They may have ideas about a purchase but need more convincing, or they’re simply “window shopping.”

The problem most online retail sites face today? Their homepages have been developed without a clear understanding of the motivations and sequences of thought in the minds of these visitors.

During our May 7, 2008, web clinic, our expert optimization team looked at homepages and Value Propositions from five eCommerce sites and made recommendations to improve those sites’ ability to stop, engage, and effectively communicate with both Hunters and Browsers.
 

Today, ROI is everything – especially in a slumping economy. Are your current metrics giving you the full story?

Probably not.

MarketingExperiments estimates that up to 75% of the data Web marketers collect are either misleading or inaccurate. And expertise with Web analytics is rare, according to our recent poll.

Most marketers remain uncertain about what to measure, whether the results are reliable, and what steps to take based on their data.

This brief covers the key steps to determining your essential metrics, with four critical elements to keep in mind. We’ve also provided a tool you can use right away to improve your marketing ROI.
 

Which specific optimization steps have been shown to increase Conversion by reducing Friction and alleviating Anxiety?

In this clinic we looked at two case studies where Landing Page elements that overcame the value inhibitors of Friction and Anxiety increased Conversion. The increase attributed to these elements in one test was 162%.

Questions our research examined:

• How does providing more or fewer choices affect click-through and Conversion?
• Ensuring a Landing Page is “congruent” sounds like a simple step, but what exactly does that mean?

How do you know when it's better to raise prices to increase revenue or reduce prices and pump up Conversion Rate?

Price is undeniably a strong factor in the conversion decision process, but what will a price change do to your bottom line?

In this brief we will review the results of recent price tests and what they reveal about optimizing offers and increasing total revenue.
 

We're pleased with what we've been able to share with you during 2007: research results that anyone can use to optimize Landing Pages, PPC campaigns, search, emails, and testing itself. We sincerely hope you have benefited.

In this Brief we will look back at a few highlights from 2007 and then forward to 2008 with observations, predictions, and recommendations for growing demand for your products in the coming year.
 

A subjective factor like intuition might alarm those basing new Web site designs on test results that discover what really works when it comes to Internet marketing. It doesn’t seem scientific.

Yet the very nature of the optimization procedure includes an element of intuition. Where does it fit when identifying the most effective Internet marketing strategy?

Previous MarketingExperiments surveys showed intuition was unreliable when it came to predicting the best page performance, the best headline, the best copy in the test cases we studied. Our survey-takers were wrong at least 50% of the time.

In the interest of updating our previous findings on marketer’s intuition, we invited those attending our December 5, 2007, Web clinic to evaluate side-by-side Web site and email optimization choices and vote on which ones they believed performed best in our tests. We then conducted a live poll of the audience, shared the tally, and reviewed the actual test results.
 

Which changes will produce the best Conversion results when optimizing a Call-to-Action? Can distinct approaches be combined to increase both sales and leads?

Previous test results have shown that a single change is typically a trade-off: It may have a negative impact on direct, immediate Conversion but if combined with an effective basket-recovery effort it will increase overall Conversion.

In this brief we’ll look at a case study in which changes to a
Call-to-Action increased direct, step-level Conversion by 150% and Lead Generation by 2,379%.
 

Are customers getting what they expect when they reach your Landing Page, or are they receiving mixed or incomplete messages that disrupt the effective expression of Value Proposition and hurt Conversion?
After our recent clinic on Site Flow Disruption we received many requests for more information on the relationship of Continuity and Congruence and the clear communication of Value Proposition.

This brief reviews two recent case studies where improving Continuity and Congruence significantly improved Conversion for our Partners.
 

In the invitation for the October 10, 2007 MarketingExperiments live Webinar, participants were offered the opportunity to submit their own Landing Pages for real-time assessment by the MarketingExperiments optimization team.

Dr. Flint McGlaughlin and optimization specialists Jimmy Ellis and Aaron Rosenthal reviewed each page, identifying areas where applying research best practices and key concepts of Landing Page Optimization could result in significant improvements in page performance for these Websites.

We asked those who submitted their sites to describe, in one or two sentences, their primary Value Proposition: Why should a customer buy from them rather than from their competitors?
 

In the invitation for the October 10, 2007 MarketingExperiments live Webinar, participants were offered the opportunity to submit their own Landing Pages for real-time assessment by the MarketingExperiments optimization team.

Dr. Flint McGlaughlin and optimization specialists Jimmy Ellis and Aaron Rosenthal reviewed each page, identifying areas where applying research best practices and key concepts of Landing Page Optimization could result in significant improvements in page performance for these Websites.

We asked those who submitted their sites to describe, in one or two sentences, their primary Value Proposition: Why should a customer buy from them rather than from their competitors?
 

Are you missing sales by chasing after Conversions instead of generating leads? Is your website out of sync with your business model?

Getting prospective customers to land on your pages is just the beginning. You may need to capture leads before you develop relationships. Your products and market may benefit more from a lead-generation approach than from a direct sales strategy.

This brief shares what we discovered about Conversion and lead generation during recent optimization testing with three different research partners. The partners were from three distinct industries, but they shared at least one important characteristic.
 

How can you avoid sending conflicting messages about your value proposition and protect your landing pages from flow disruption?

Professional marketers have long known how essential it is to have a unique and compelling value proposition and how critical it is to be able to express it concisely.

Marketers must also understand how to protect landing pages against the #1 threat to conversion: Site flow disruption.

In this clinic we will reveal how two dangerous forms of disruption—Discontinuity and Incongruence—can keep customers from responding to your value proposition.
 

We have all probably designed a test Webpage or offer email that we expected to dramatically outperform the control and been stunned when performance is poor or the results come back inconclusive.

What can you do to get significant improvements or learn in those situations where you actually cannot complete your test or where you have a validity issue—particularly a validity issue connected to the size of your sample?

When the differences in conversion between the control and the experimental treatments are so small that the test results don’t validate, is all that time and energy a total loss?
 

It’s the nightmare scenario for any analyst or executive: Making what seems to be the right decision, only to find out it was based on false data.

Through online optimization testing, we try to discover which webpage or email message will perform best...

But is sample size the only factor that should be considered when assessing the validity of test results?
 

How important is PPC relevance and how can you manipulate it to your advantage while maintaining a positive ROI?

Anyone who has set up or managed a paid search campaign can testify that there is an art form involved in realizing the full potential of every advertising dollar.
 

We are all familiar with the concept of using incentives, such as product discounts, free gifts, or free shipping to boost sales.

However, rarely have we done the kind of research that allows us to think through the true principles and the mathematics of developing highly effective incentives——that is, ones that result in the maximum profit at the end of the day.

In this clinic, we will combine foundational marketing and business principles with recent research findings to explore a simple but effective way to track down your “ideal incentive” using the two key concepts of Perceived Value Differential (PVD) and Return on Incentive (ROIc).
 

When prospective customers arrive at a website, they come with a specific intention or motivation. They may have come simply to browse or out of curiosity or by mistake. However, many come with the intention of making a purchase. For those prospects, it is the efficacy of the website’s purchase funnel——the pages that make up the buying process——that determine whether the visitor becomes a customer or merely a statistic.
 

Over the course of 12 months, our researchers used social media optimization (SMO) and Google paid search to drive traffic.

Find out how we generated over 1400% better ROI using SMO to drive over 90,000 targeted clicks to our websites.
 

Which will perform better, a landing page that has one clear objective or one that has multiple objectives?

As marketers, we are continually faced with the dilemma of determining what to show customer prospects when they arrive at our sites.

Should we present them with just one offer or option, or give them several and let them choose?
 

We examine research findings to discover what factors reduce “bounce” rate and keep visitors continuing through the conversion “funnel.”

We looked at what determines whether people who arrive on a business-oriented landing page will move forward on the site or “bounce” to a competitor’s.

The factors and principles indentified are the collective product of research conducted over many months across a broad spectrum of products and industries.
 

Email has become an extremely powerful marketing tool. In fact, U.S. firms spent $400 million in 2006.

Our research has identified 7 distinct factors of email marketing campaign effectiveness. Not surprisingly, body copy is among the factors with the greatest impact (highest coefficient).
 

Email has become an extremely powerful marketing tool. In fact, U.S. firms spent $400 million in 2006.

Our research has identified 7 distinct factors of email marketing campaign effectiveness. Not surprisingly, body copy is among the factors with the greatest impact (highest coefficient).
 

Content (contextual) advertising has become a staple of paid search advertising. In fact, in 2006 marketers spent an estimated $2.5B on content ads.

But what do we know about how to create the best ads?
 

The architecture we use to manage our business may not be the same structure we should use to market it. Our business is to serve our customers, make it easy for them to get what they want, and create an image of class and competence that elicits goodwill.
 

Many online services offer a free trial as their primary incentive to attract new subscribers.

Generally, a free trial offer works well.

The research for this brief began with the question:

How does customer anxiety impact conversion?
 

1. What are the major retail seasons and how do they affect your marketing?
2. How can you take advantage of seasonal fluctuations? (11 key practices)

Many online services offer a free trial as their primary incentive to attract new subscribers.

Generally, a free trial offer works well.

However, this led us to ask the question, "If free trial offers work well, does their success make us complacent about the effectiveness of the offer pages or pathways we are using right now?"
 

Two years ago we conducted a study of small PPC engines to find out whether they offered online marketers a profitable opportunity to generate more sales.

At that time our research indicated that these smaller engines could indeed generate significant additional revenues.

Today, two years later, ...

... the final results may suprise you.
 

The amateurs publish their video clips for fun and notoriety, and the professionals produce and publish them in order to drive traffic to their web sites and sell more of their products or services.

Tens of millions of people watch these short videos, but how effective are they at driving qualified traffic to web sites?
 

Building and maintaining strong PPC campaigns is becoming increasingly difficult in what has become a very competitive marketplace.

At the same time, many companies report poor performance with their affiliate programs.

The question we asked ourselves is this:...
 

In the world of offline direct mail it has long been understood that creating urgency increases conversion rates. Typically a special offer of some kind will expire on a particular date.

Is the same true of the web?

Do expiry dates or warnings about limited supplies actually work?

And if so, is there a best way to express urgency, and are there pitfalls to avoid?
 

In this brief we cut through the clutter and show you how to:

1. Understand where and how your current metrics could be misleading and result in flawed marketing decisions.
2. Identify and track the metrics which are essential to reducing your costs and increasing your revenues.
3. Use a simple, Essential Metrics Dashboard that will enable you to track the metrics that are most important to achieving your goals.

We applied the Marketing Experiments Variable Cluster Testing Methodology. In this way we were able to test multiple variables with a single factorial "A/B Split Testing" test design.
 

After achieving high conversions from an optimized landing or offer page, after a few weeks or months it is not unusual to see a slow but steady decline in conversion rates.

What causes the performance of optimized pages to decline over time? And what can be done to slow down or halt this erosion?

In the world of direct mail it is well known that a minor change in a headline can have a significant impact on response rates.

But what about the web?

• What kind of impact can a headline have on page conversion rates?
• To get a significant difference in results, do you have to write completely different headlines? Or can a small change to a headline make a disproportionate difference?
• And are there any rules or guidelines to follow when writing different headlines to test?

The need to build campaign-specific landing pages is now widely accepted. However, what is not so widely understood is how to build landing pages that deliver.

In our most recent research we addressed the broad question: Which changes to my landing pages will deliver the greatest increase in conversion rates?
 

Are there ways to combat click fraud when running PPC campaigns? Is it possible to minimize the chances of being targeted? And how can you find out if you have already been paying for fraudulent clicks?

Suspecting we had been a victim of click fraud ourselves, we set out to answer these questions and share our findings.
 

...one of the key indicators of a strong value proposition is that it lends itself to being articulated simply, clearly and very briefly.

• But what is a value proposition?
• Why is it important to your business?
• How can you "find one" for your business?
• And can an existing company find a new value proposition?

Here is the question we asked ourselves: In our focus to maximize increases in conversion rates by completely changing key site pages, are we ignoring the potential of small changes?

What is your conversion rate of visitors to subscribers? Are you leaving money on the table? Our own testing suggests you may well be.

We conducted a number of tests, with one research partner who wanted to increase their newsletter subscriber list, and with two others who wanted to increase sales of their subscription-based publications.

In both cases...
 

• Can your intuition and experience tell you which advertisement headline will result in the most click-throughs?
• Can intuition tell you which email subject line will result in the highest open rates?
• Can intuition tell you which web page design will give you the best ROI?

However, multivariable (or multivariate) testing allows you to test many changes simultaneously – five, ten, or even twenty. You'll still get accurate results, without having to increase your total sample size, and you will be able to identify the impact of each individual change.

But how does multivariate testing work? Is it reliable? How does it stack up next to A/B testing?
 

Does a 5% increase in click-through from a PPC ad sound disappointing?

On its own, that 5% may not amount to much.

But what if you also achieved the same 5% improvement in landing page conversion rates, completed sales, increased lifetime value, and other improvements to your site and marketing efforts?
 

The bottom line? At the end of our test, the calls received resulted in the generation of additional income.

Yes, you can make money by actually ENCOURAGING web site users to pick up the phone and call you.
 

Which will generate the most revenue? A lower price that drives more traffic and buyers? Or a higher price that may attract fewer buyers, but deliver more income per sale?

Our testing tells us that the answer to those questions is: "It depends."
 

This research brief will answer the following questions:

What is click fraud?
How significant is the problem of click fraud?
How do you avoid click fraud?
 

1. How do you determine the best ad copy for your business?
2. What are the most important practices to keep in ...

At MarketingExperiments.com, we have repeatedly stressed this point: The best publishers are good retailers; the best retailers are good publishers. However, many pure retail operations ...