If I’d had more time I would have written a shorter letter . . .

200px-Seuss-cat-hat

“Dr. Suess wrote The Cat in the Hat with only 236 words, so his editor bet him that he couldn’t write a book with only 50 different words. Dr. Suess won the bet with Green Eggs & Ham, which became one of the best-selling children’s books of all time.”

This is a quote from my favorite chapter of Steal Like an Artist titled “Choose What to Leave Out”, and it applies directly to EVERYTHING in CRO.

Communicating rich thoughts and ideas with minimal waste is called “word economy” when we’re copywriting or designing headline experiments.

This is directly applicable to minimizing page elements, focused messaging, effective elevator pitches, or building your deck.

On the CRO side alone I’ve written out several examples of this concept in motion:

Simple, beautiful and distilled messaging ALWAYS wins in my experience.

Kind of like this: “Full service conversion rate optimization on a performance basis – contact us today!“

Why price elasticity testing is a MUST over the holidays . . .

During the holiday season when retailers are at peak-spends to drive traffic to their websites, squeezing every nickel of profit out of each sale is crucial.

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 . . . Continue reading “Why price elasticity testing is a MUST over the holidays . . .”

Proper placement of your “trust logos” will improve your conversion rate

Proper Trust Logo Placement for Rockin’ Conversions

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.
Continue reading “Proper placement of your “trust logos” will improve your conversion rate”

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. Continue reading “Sexy CRO: Segment your visitors by gender to increase conversion rate . . .”

“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:

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.