Author Archive
Personalizing your email subject lines can drop your conversion rate . . .
Building on our last post about optimizing your email conversion rate, the 10th eMail Marketing Metrics Report came out and contains many points that you can use to help increase your conversion rate and optimize your email campaigns.
But beware, there are some traps in their data that can lead your conversion rate astray – let’s start by looking at a few of their key points:
Personalization can work against your conversion rate . . . Read the rest of this entry »
Optimize your email conversion rate with 3 quick tips . . .
We’re known for our website optimization services, but we regularly optimize our clients’ permission email campaigns as well.
We recently doubled the conversion rate of a campaign for a large automotive insurance company, and I thought we’d share a few tips that we learned along the way. Read the rest of this entry »
Why aren’t Apple’s error messages written by marketers?
This morning as I was updating my iPhone, I received the following error message in iTunes:
User Interface design, like website optimization, is all about removing friction for your end users, and I was offended by a number of Apple’s choices on this screen: Read the rest of this entry »
A glaring conversion error that Amazon needs to fix . . .
“Up-selling” is a sales tactic borne out of telemarketing rooms and used car-lots whereby a salesperson induces the customer to purchase more expensive items or upgrades.
Online, this tactic is common, and Amazon.com has one of the most refined “Up-Sell” software engines in the world - but do they really want to broadcast this fact to their visitors?
If there’s one thing that we’ve learned in our years of conversion rate testing it’s that users are subject to the smallest subconscious cues.
In the image above Amazon.com has titled their up-sell engine as “view-upsell.html” - clearly letting me know that their software is hard at work to take more of my money.
That made me feel lousy, and I bet others notice it too, and respond in a similar fashion.
In fact I would be willing to wager $1000.00 cash to the Amazon.com testing team that if you changed “view-upsell.html” to something more customer-centric like “special-offer.html”, or “valued-customer-offer.html” you would see a meaningful increase in your actual “up-sell” conversion rate.
So there it is Amazon, the gauntlet is thrown - if you’d like some help contact us today to help with your website conversion rate 
!
One simple secret from an 1890 economist nearly doubles website profits . . .
Back in the early days of web marketing (2002 to be exact) we managed website conversion testing for a site called Wholesaler’s Handbook.
The product was aimed at EBAY sellers to provide access to wholesale product sources, and was priced at $49.95.
Around this time we’d begun experimenting with “Price Elasticity Testing”, which was originated by an economist in 1890.
By applying this methodology, we nearly doubled the site’s profit margin in about 2 weeks . . . Read the rest of this entry »
Free website optimization tools from Conversion Voodoo
Today we’re releasing three free website optimization tools that you can start using right now – check them out below:
What grade level is your website written for?
Our Readability Analysis Tool will examine a URL and report statistics about how readable the page is. This can help you figure out what grade level your page is written for, since we’ve learned that you can increase your conversions by writing for an 8th grade reading level.
Is your website designed to match visitors’ reading patterns?
Our Horizontal Overlay Tool will superimpose a guide showing you where on your page users focus most of their time. The horizontal layout overlay graphic from our blog post regarding layouts can now be used on any URL you choose.
Are you making the right first impression?
Our Site Flasher Tool simulates the first impression you give your visitors. Input your URL and your site will be flashed only for a few seconds – learn why this is important in our accompanying blog post.
Free tool shows why your site has such a high bounce rate . . .
You never get a second chance to make a first impression, and this statement is particularly applicable to the world of website optimization.
First impressions are crucial because:
- Users decide in less than 10 seconds whether to stay or leave(1).
- The longer it takes for them to decide, the worse your conversion rate.
In other words – the faster a user makes a decision to keep browsing, the higher your overall conversion rate. Read the rest of this entry »
Increase conversion rate by making your site ugly. . .
Over the years many have contemplated the counter-intuitive ability of “ugly” sites to win huge market share – think eBay.com, Amazon.com, DrudgeReport.com, PlentyofFish.com, CraigsList.org, MySpace.com, or usability expert Jakob Nielsen’s Useit.com.
In our adventures in website optimization we’ve developed our own grand unified theory of why ugly web design works: Read the rest of this entry »
Test your horizontal layout to maximize conversion rate (with our free tool):
User-interface guru Jackob Nielsen’s concludes that “Web users spend 69% of their time viewing the left half of the page and 30% viewing the right half. A conventional layout is thus more likely [to improve website conversion rate].”
On the FutureNow blog, Brendan Regan suggests developing an infographic to let you lay Nielsen’s findings over your own website.
We’ve taken this one step further and created a tool that you can download today to do your own tests,
Unsub links at the TOP of your emails will lead to higher conversions . . .
This morning there’s an interesting article at the retailemailblog.com illustrating how major retailers have begun adding an unsubscribe link to the top of their email communications, rather than in the traditional position at the end of an email message. Read the rest of this entry »