Author Archive
Expedia deletes one field from their registration process, increases profit $12m
The following test from Expedia shows how understanding how your users interact with your forms leads to conversion rate gains.
Here is (our mockup) of Expedia’s experiment – see the field deletion in Variant B?
At a glance, they simply dropped the “Company name:” field and that increased their site PROFIT by $12 million a year according to Silicon.com.
Why was changing this field so critical? Read the rest of this entry »
Sexy CRO: Segment your visitors by gender to increase conversion rate . . .
In person, salespeople sell differently to men and women – here’s why that works and how to duplicate it online.
Last week I overheard a conversation about how “stylists” are trained to sell hair coloring, premium hair products, and massages to men and women differently. Read the rest of this entry »
“Merry Christmas” vs. “Happy Holidays” showdown – nearly double the conversion rate!
The Wall Street journal suggests that “Merry Christmas” still reigns in popularity as a season’s greeting over “Happy Holidays”
So how does emailing customers with one or the other impact conversion rates?
We selected a 100,000 customer list for a client who tested these subject lines:
A few additional notes on the test:
- The client is a large retailer, their customers mirror a general sample of the USA.
- The email mirrored the subject line’s message; all other elements were the same.
- We sent the email on the 21st of December.
The results show a HUGE difference . . .
As you can see the “Merry Christmas” subject line drove nearly double the click through rate of the other subject lines.
While we haven’t included the “buy rate” in the chart above due to client confidentiality, the results were similarly impressive.
Nearly doubling the number of transactions by changing an email subject line fairly well illustrates why if you’re not rigorously testing every facet of your online business (or letting us do it for you!), you’re throwing money away.
More fun with email testing:
- Personalizing your subject line can drop conversion rates . . .
- Optimize your email conversion rate with three quick tips . . .
- Unsubscribe links at the top of your emails will improve conversion rates . . .
P.S. – Contact us today to increase your conversion rate . . .
We work on a performance basis and charge nothing up front.
If you want to drastically improve your conversion rate contact us today.
Security issue in Website Optimizer
This morning we woke up to an alert from the Google Website Optimizer Team titled “Security issue in Website Optimizer” that has since been verified as legitimate by Search Engine Land amongst others.
The full text of the email & instructions to remedy your experiments is below: Read the rest of this entry »
Do different web browsers bring different demographics?
There’s an interesting story (via HN) about Capital One segmenting visitors - users were shown different loan rates based on which web browser they used.
Are there really differences in user demographics between browsers? Read the rest of this entry »
Find friction points in your conversion process. Profit wildly. Rinse and repeat.
What if changing one small field could increase your conversion rate to the tune of millions of dollars a year - do such things exist?
According to Expedia, the answer is a resounding yes – by adjusting on simple field on their checkout form they were able to increase their site PROFIT by $12 million a year.
How did they do it?
“We had an optional field on the site under ‘Name’, which was ‘Company’ . . . After we realized that we just went onto the site and deleted that field – overnight there was a step function [change], resulting in $12m of profit a year, simply by deleting a field.”
Why was changing this field so critical?
“It confused some customers who filled out the ‘Company’ field with their bank name. After putting in their bank name, these customers then went on to enter the address of their bank, rather than their home address, in the address field.”
This example illustrates that at LEAST half the battle in website optimization is understanding the points of friction that your users are experiencing.
From our recent interview, our favorite tools to understanding points of friction are:
1) UserTesting.com – For less than $100 you can have three complete strangers go through your website, attempt to perform a task, and listen to their annotation and observe them through a screen capture. Watching users flounder through your meticulously designed website is a humbling process, but invaluable to understand where your friction points are. A similar service that’s newer to us is userlytics.com which provides all of the above, but also includes video of the facial response of users on your site.
2) UserFly.com– UserFly is the more macro-version of UserTesting – this system allows you to watch as live user sessions play out on your site, and dig into the data.
3) ClickTale.com– Incredible set of tools, the “attention heatmaps” in particular have provided us with double digit conversion insights on a regular basis, well worth the price of admission.
Finally, worth a mention is a newer tool that has disruptive potential – GazeHawk.com provides eye-tracking studies for less than $50.00.
Online solutions like CrazyEgg.com mimic the functionality without being as exacting, and most traditional eye-tracking vendors rely on expensive hardware solutions and charge 10 – 20x that fee.
Definitely a service we’re experimenting with, and worth a test.
If you think $12 million is a big number, make sure not to miss the story of the button that increased sales by $300,000,000.
Check out more Conversion Voodoo content . . .
- Bank an 11% conversion rate increase with a “Commitment Checkbox”
- Proper placement of “trust logos” can make a huge difference in conversion rate.
- 3 Landing Page Teardowns for Inspiration
Contact us today to increase your Conversion Rate . . .
We put our money where our mouth is – click here to contact us today and learn how we can drastically increase your website conversion rate for no money up front, and backed by our $10,000 guarantee!
How to segment traffic by gender to increase your website conversion rate.
In person, salespeople sell differently to men and women – here’s why that works and how to duplicate it online.
Last week I overheard a conversation about how “stylists” are trained to sell hair coloring, premium hair products, and massages to men and women differently. Read the rest of this entry »
How customer review formatting impacts conversion rate. . .
Incorporating reviews & testimonials into your website can instantly increase your conversion rate. This tactic works because it increases user trust – in fact a recent study explains:
“70% of website visitors trust opinions of unknown users [when making a product buying decision].” – Nielsen Consumer Survey
Because conversion rate testing is always tied to the small details, we recently designed an experiment to test two seperate directions for customer review formatting . . . Read the rest of this entry »
3 font tips to increase your conversion rate
We’ve experimented with a variety of strategies for maximizing website conversion rates with font selections, and below we’ve shared a few ideas in these categories:
- Font color
- Font type
- Font size
Read the rest of this entry »
Proper placement of “trust logos” can make a huge difference in conversion rate.
Verisign recently published a study demonstrating that the “trust index” of your average web visitor is at a paltry 61.5 points out of a possible 100.
In other words, your average web visitor is extremely wary and rates the overall trust worthiness of unfamiliar websites just above an “F”.
It’s for this reason that many security & trust logos exist – they’re designed to bring outside credibility and reinforce that a new user can trust your website.
Most of the big players in the trust logo space offer a litany of studies demonstrating how simply adding their logo will improve your website conversion rate.
We’ve found, however, that proper placement of your trust logo can make a significant difference in how much the conversion rate will improve. Read the rest of this entry »