Oftentimes the hardest part of testing is deciding what needs optimizing and where to get started. As a matter of a fact, 63% of marketers optimize websites based on intuition (MarketingSherpa). There are many ways and techniques to locating the leaks in a funnel, finding the pitfalls and then testing them. Fortunately we have a few experts who are happy to share their insights and AB testing tips for deciding what to test, and where to start.

To get us started, Jeffrey Eisenberg dives into a 3 step process which will help you locate your customer’s pain points and prioritizes tests according to impact and resources.

 Jeffrey Eisenberg

The CEO of BuyerLegends co-authored “Waiting For Your Cat to Bark?” and “Call To Action” both Wall Street Journal and New York Times bestselling books. He has trained and advised companies like HP, Google and NBC Universal to implement digital marketing strategies emphasizing optimization of revenue conversion rates for engagements, leads, subscriptions, and sales.

“We have a 3-step process we use as part of our Buyer Legends process.

1. Pre-mortem
2. Eisenberg’s Hierarchy of Optimization
3. Scoring Priorities

Of course, you cannot start the 3-step process without first creating actionable personas based on qualitative and quantitative data. Buyer Legends employ storytelling to optimize customer experiences.

Why do we focus on customer experience? We wrote in 2001 that conversion rates are a measure of your ability to persuade visitors to take the action you want them to take. They’re a reflection of your effectiveness at satisfying customers. For you to achieve your goals, visitors must first achieve theirs.

“For you to achieve your goals, visitors must first achieve theirs.”

Pre-mortem

The reality is that most companies lose more sales every day than they make. If you are converting less than 15% you need to evaluate what is broken in your customer experience.

Get to the bottom of what is going wrong, and plan to get it right. That is why, hands down, the pre-mortem step is the most impactful step of our Buyer Legends process. In fact, rarely does this exercise fail to produce at least one a-ha moment for our clients.  When you imagine the sale is already dead it frees up all the mental energy that you used to try and get the sale and points it at all the potential pitfalls and problems in your experience.

Eisenberg’s Hierarchy of Optimization

After you perform your pre-mortem you will likely end up with a long list of potential proof of Murphy’s law, but not everything on your list is equal.  Some thing are worth your effort some are not.  In my work with clients we often use Eisenberg’s Hierarchy of Optimization to separate the more pressing issues from the tinier ones.

First sort the list of problems into the follow categories:

• Functional. Does this product/service do what the prospect needs? How easy is it for a prospect to determine this?
• Accessible. Can she access it? What are the barriers to her ability to realize the need? Is it affordable, reasonable, and findable?
• Usable. Is it user-friendly? Are there obstacles?
• Intuitive. Does the sales process/Web site feel intuitive and natural based on her buying preferences? Is she forced to endure unnatural buying modalities to realize her need?
• Persuasive. Does she want it? Does she truly understand if it fills her need or solves her problem? Is her expectation reasonable? Will she be delighted?

Once they are sorted simply work your way up the pyramid.  Again, remember not every problem is in search of a solution, and you should focus on the problems that are likely to impact the most customers, and problems that you can actually fix. Be practical, don’t get caught up in the problems you can’t fix.

Scoring Priorities

Let’s consider another simple system to enable your organization to prioritize more effectively when planning tests. The system is based on prioritizing all your planned efforts by three factors with  a score from 1 to 5, with 5 being the best and 1 being the worse:

1. Time – How long will it take to execute a project (a change, a test, or full scale roll-out) until its completion? This includes staff hours/days to execute and the number of calendar days until the project’s impact would be recognized. A score of 5 would be given to a project that takes the minimal amount of time to execute and to realize the impact.
2. Impact – The amount of revenue potential (or reduced costs) from the execution of your project. Will the project impact all of your customers or only certain segments? Will it increase conversion rates by 1 percent or by 20 percent? A score of 5 is for projects that have the greatest lift or cost reduction potential.
3. Resources – The associated costs (people, tools, space, etc.) needed to execute a project. Keep in mind: No matter how good a project is, it will not succeed if you do not have resources to execute an initiative. A score of 5 is given when resources needed are few and are available for the project.

Next, take each factor and multiply them (don’t add them because these factors are orthogonal) for each project. The best possible score is 125 (5x5x5). Tackle and complete the highest-ranking projects first. Meet weekly with a cross-functional group to evaluate the status of each project. Be prepared to re-prioritize regularly; once a month or at least once a quarter.”

Tiffany daSilva dives deeper into buyer personalities and how she uses them to find the important leaks in the funnel and address them:

Tiffany daSilva

is a full stack marketer who has spent the last 10 years working on over 350 websites. Her past includes Geosign, Achievers, & Shopify and is currently the Director of Strategy at Powered by Search. Tiffany was named one of the Techwomen Canada of 2012 and can be seen speaking about marketing at events such as Unbounce’s CTA Conference, PPC Hero London, and 500Startups growth conference.

“I like to first look at data to understand what’s happening behind the scenes, the first metrics I look at are:

1. Time on site
2. Frequency
3. Mobile devices
4. and the usual paths users follow.

From there I go to user testing where I try to find people with different buyer personalities:

• Competitive: Logical and Fast Thinkers who tend to move through the site quickly because they know what they want.
• Methodical: Logical and Slow Thinkers who tend to read all the fine print (even privacy policies) to ensure that they know all the details before making a choice.
• Humanistic: Emotional & Slow Thinkers who take the time to read reviews, testimonials and ask their friends. They want to know what others think about the product before they make their decision.
• Spontaneous: Emotional & Fast Thinkers, they think with their gut but also love to play with things so finding things that might “distract” them in the right direction like check marks, lists, tours of the site, and quizzes will help them convert easier.

These personalities help me see how they move around the site, what areas they focus on more and what they think is missing from the site.

When it’s time to start my test I make sure that I have a hypothesis. Knowing what you’re going to test is very different than hypothesizing what your outcome is. By creating your hypothesis you’re essentially saying,

“I believe version X will beat version Y by __%.”

A few things happen when you do this:

1. You learn what works and what doesn’t because you’re invested in the outcome.
2. You’ve created your requirements. If you decide that version X will beat version y by 15% and it only beats it by 2%, than it’s not enough of a difference and you can go back and redo the test. Deciding what your goals are before hand will keep you honest, and make your tests bigger and better over time.
3. By setting out what you want your test to look like, you can ensure that your testing tool or analytics is set up in such a way that you will be able to measure the test. For example: If you say that version X will beat version Y’s conversion rate by 15%. You can run through your testing software, Adwords account or Analytics to ensure that this information is readily available to you.

Joanna Wiebe

is a conversion copywriter and the co-creator of Copy Hackers and Airstory, she is also one of my favorite writers and I strongly recommend you take her copy writing course.

“I work with a lot of tech businesses, and they tend to follow Dave McClure’s pirate metrics (AARRR) for growth:

1. Acquisition (sign-up)
2. Activation (use product)
3. Retention (keep using product)
4. Referral (tell others to use)
5. Revenue (pay for it)

We start by identifying the metric that is most off-target or most in need of optimization. Perhaps we see in our reporting that Acquisition, Activation and Retention are on track against goals right now but Referral and Revenue are flat or trending down. We work with the business to identify which of the two – Referral or Revenue – make the most sense to focus on optimizing, based largely on their business strategy and goals.

Let’s say they select Referral. Okay, now we need to find out what might be broken, not built, poorly executed, etc that’s potentially suppressing referrals. So we:

• Identify and document the tactics in play to generate referrals
• Analyze those tactics to find lower-hanging fruit; this is where analytics for web, email and the app come in especially handy
• Brainstorm overlooked referral opportunities (e.g., new and proven ways other businesses are getting referrals)
• Interview existing users to learn what’s keeping them from referring

Out of this exercise, we get not just split-testing ideas and food for hypotheses but also other growth hacks to boost referrals – like contests to run, businesses to partner with, content to create and repurpose, and apps and widgets to build.

To prioritize the lower-hanging fruit, we create a roadmap divided by channel: test these things in this order for user emails, test these things in this order for in-app prompts, test these things in this order in remarketing ads. Importantly, the roadmap has checkpoints at the end of each experiment so we can learn and apply what we learn to hypotheses for the next test on the map.

Peep Laja

is the founder of ConversionXL, and is one of the leading conversion optimization experts in the world. He helps companies grow via his conversion optimization agency, courses and coaching program. Take his free CRO course here.

“Figuring out what to AB test is the most difficult part of CRO – it’s what separates the pros from wannabes. If the site is terrible, it’s not very hard to come up with fixes, but if it’s decent or already well optimized, you have to have a data-driven process. I use ResearchXL framework to gather 6 types of data input to identify the problems the website has:

1. Technical analysis
2. Heuristic analysis
3. Digital analytics
4. Qualitative surveys
5. User testing
6. Mouse tracking

Where is it leaking money the most? What is the problem? What’s the discrepancy between what users want and how the website is? Once you know what the problems are, and are able to prioritize the issues (from major issues that affect a large number of users to minor usability issues), coming up with test hypotheses to address them becomes so much easier.

Next step: I figure out how many variations I can test against the control (depends on the transaction volume), and come up with as many different treatment alternatives as I can. Depending on the scope of changes, I might do a wireframe of the treatment, or just add annotations onto the screenshot of the Control – and then send it off to my front-end developer. If the changes are more radical, we might need a designer to be involved before coding up the test. One thing is for sure – speed of implementation (getting the test ready to go) is super important. We can not waste a day.

As Peep points out, the most difficult part of CRO is figuring out what to test. Which is why a huge part of our work at Conversioner is spent on understanding the data, the customer’s emotional needs and finding the point in which we can have the most impact.

Talia Wolf

As Founder and CEO of Conversioner, I help businesses build and execute their conversion optimization strategies, using emotional targeting, consumer psychology and behavioral data to generate more revenues, leads, engagement and sales.

For us, figuring out what to test is a two-step process. First, running an in-depth analysis of the funnel and understanding key behavior of customers. Using heatmaps, Google Analytics, surveys and any other analytical tool that can help discover the crucial pain points within a funnel that need optimizing and if optimized, can have a large impact on bottom line results. Next, once we’ve found the pain points within the funnel, is time to identify what the problem is and come up with hypotheses of how to fix it.

This is when a second step comes in: emotional targeting research. We dive into customer profiling,building personas, mapping out the customer journey and the emotional needs of the potential customers. Understanding the sate of mind a customer is in throughout each step of the funnel, running competitor research, SWOT analysis, market and trends research all help us identify the customer’s emotional triggers, their story and come up with a few hypotheses to test.

Once we have built these hypotheses the next step is presenting them to the team, getting everyone on board to ensure we’re all on the same page, creating the test (usually a more strategic test) and launching as soon as possible. For us, the first test for us is just part of the initial research, giving us indication if we’re on the right track and if we’re testing the right stuff.

Using Peep Laja’s process, Tommy’s ultimate goal is to build a plan that starts with low investment/high-reward and to prioritize tests from there.

Tommy Walker

is the Editor-in-Chief of the Shopify Plus blog. It is his goal to provide high-volume ecommerce stores with deeply researched, honest advice for growing their customer base, revenues and profits.

“For example, if a page with high-traffic & relatively high conversions has a slower load time, why do a radical redesign of the page, when you could look for ways to increase the page’s load speed or time to interaction? Once you’ve taken the time to put together a list of these insights, the question of “what to test first” is really a question of “what can I get away with without having to ask permission?” “

Within most organizations, people like the ​_idea_​ of being data driven to run tests (as long as they’re not the ones collecting the data), but when it actually comes time to test execution, everyone suddenly has an opinion, whether they’ve paid attention to the data or not. Most tests get shot down because of internal politics, not for impact potential, so just be aware.

So, “what to test first” really comes down to being able to gradually build up to the pages that have more stakeholders and require more resources. Essentially, you’re just trying to build a case that says “My research identified X,Y & Z problems on these pages, we had these hypotheses which turned out to be correct, made this much more revenue, and now I’d like to test these hypotheses on these higher priority pages, based on X,Y,Z things I’ve found here.”

CRO is as much (if not more) a game of politics as it is a game of statistics and insights. More tests die because someone internally shut it down, than from actual ability to drive revenue or change. So you need to do what you can early on to build trust in the process and ability to drive change.

Sujan Patel has his own methods and tools to formulating testing ideas and executing them.

Sujan Patel

has 12 years of experience in digital marketing and co-founded Content Marketer &  Narrow.io, tools to help marketers scale their content marketing & social media efforts. He is also an avid blogger and writes for Forbes, Inc, WSJ and Entrepreneur.

“1. I always start by formulating a hypothesis around the weaknesses of the site. I validate the hypothesis by surveying visitors using tools like Qualaroo and talking to potential and existing customers. This process usually gives me 5-10 different tests to run, typically around messaging and copy.
2. I prioritize the test based on impact or urgency and start a/b testing. I typically start with top of the funnel a/b test and move down the funnel but its different for every company and depends on where their biggest weakness are.”

Angie also uses a framework to determine what to test and to prioritize:

Angie Schottmuller

Helping organizations exceed goals and better understand customers using data-driven technology and persuasive marketing psychology.

“To decide what to test I map out and inventory issues and ideas we have for optimization, then I score them using the PIER framework. The PIE comes from the WiderFunnel model:

1. Potential – How much improvement can be made on the pages?

2. Importance – How valuable is the traffic to the pages?

3. Ease – How complicated will the test be to implement on the page or template?

4. Reusability – I added the “R” to score reusability of the insight learned

Once I’ve mapped out the highest scoring testing plan, the next step for me is getting the team aligned on what to test. You can work extremely hard on your end but you have to have your team members on the same page or you’ll be wasting a lot of time and energy.

1. Draft a test plan

2. Perform discovery for controlling the test environment — PPC ad management constraints, outside variables, potential pollutants, etc.

3. Regroup as a larger team to commit to the plan.

4. Execute”

Before looking at the numbers and finding the leak, Nichole first puts her customer to work on answering some tough questions and dedicates most of her time to defining the language a company should be using:

Nichole Elizabeth DeMeré

is a SaaS Consultant & Customer Success Evangelist. Chief Strategy Officer at @Inturact. Moderator at @ProductHunt & @GrowthHackers. Co-Founder at @GetTheCraft & @SaaSCommunity. Previously: Growth at @Inboundorg. INFJ.

״Before starting out, I have the website owner fill out the Ideal Customer Profile Framework and the Value Proposition Canvas, then I look at the data. It’s a lot of work filling out both forms, however language is the most important aspect of converting/acquiring the right customers.

These frameworks and AB testing tips the CRO experts shared are simply our best practices and our tested methodologies . Now it’s up to you to take these processes and try them out for yourselves to figure out where to start testing on your site, and what to test in order to increase your conversions.

Which expert’s methodology best fits with your style? do you have a different way you go about finding what to test and where to start?

Email marketing is an essential part for every conversion optimization strategy. It has long been used to reduce cart abandonment, increase returning customers and of course build and maintain a relationship with customers.  Email marketing also has a large return of investment and over 86% of subscribers say they find them useful. In fact, the percentage of people deleting email before reading them has gone done from 60% to 40% in the last 4 years (statista).

Clearly there is much in it for brands to collect email subscribers and grow their lists, but what’s in it for the subscribers? In late 2014, research showed that 80% of consumers signup to email lists to receive discounts. Others said they signup to receive exclusive offers and updates.

However, 53% of marketers planned to increase their email marketing budget in 2015 which means there is a lot of competition for your customer’s attention. Many brands are trying to convert your customers and sign them up for their list which is why before asking people to subscribe to your newsletter list, you must have a clear strategy that shows customers exactly what’s in it for them and why they should choose you over others.

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There are many reasons for brands to grow their email lists, but what’s in it for the subscribers?
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Strategies for Growing Your Email List

1. What you gain – One of the most common and well known strategies by showing customers the reason for signing up, basically letting customers know what’s in it for them. Effective examples include, offering a coupon, 50% off a product or exclusive information for subscribers only. Unbounce offers exclusive content and valuable tips for signing up to their newsletter:

A beautiful mess’ (my favorite DIY blog) uses this strategy by offering a free gift to every signee and adds a few personalized features such as kisses and personal signatures:

2. What you lose – This strategy capitalizes on the emotional trigger  -  “Loss Aversion” which focuses on the fact that the pain of losing something is stronger the happiness of gaining something. Basically – people don’t want to miss out so by telling potential subscribers what they could be losing you can increase signups dramatically. Examples include:  “Don’t lose the last minute sale” or “Just 5 items left in stock!” and “For 24 hours only” – all these examples affect customers in a way that increases conversion rates.

The examples below uses the “what you lose” strategy to collect emails and promote campaigns:

5 Techniques for growing an email list

One of the most common ways of attracting email subscribers is by using pop ups and in this post we’ll discuss the types of pop ups you can use and how to optimize them.

As I’ve said before, when it comes to optimization, opinions do not matter. Though most people agree with me, when it comes to popups, people need an occasional reminder, like it or not, they work. Countless businesses have successfully used pop ups to reduce bounce rate, cart abandonment and increase engagement and yet people still dislike them.

Similar to any other tool or method, popups can be done very well or very poorly. The reason most people dislike pop ups is because many websites abuse them and execute them in a very poor way. For example, many companies use automatic system popups that disrupt the user journey and force visitors to react.

Not what we’re going for here.

Doing pop ups the right way

Planned, designed and executed well, pop ups can be a great and easy way to get your visitors to sign up without disrupting their flow. Lets take a look at the most common and effective pop ups out there:

1. Exit intent pop-ups – these pop ups show up when a visitor moves their cursor outside of the browser window and intends on leaving the site. There’s no need for them to hit the “x” to see it, simply moving their mouse will trigger it. At Conversioner we use an exit intent pop up to offer actionable tips on emotional conversion optimization and invite customers to join our community (check out its results here). Since we started using an exit intent pop up we’ve seen an increase of 76% in newsletter registrations.

2. Scroll-based pop ups -These pop ups are configured to show up once a visitor has scrolled a certain percentage of the page.  These pop ups are designed for minimum intrusion and better targeting. For instance, for The Next Web we designed a pop up that is shown to visitors who have scrolled 30% of an article. This way we know these readers are more relevant, interested in our content and more likely to sign up.

3. Time based pop ups: these type of pop ups are timed to appear after a certain amount of time a visitor has spent on a site. Many E-commerce sites use this technique to target customers who are more likely to buy since they spend more time on the site. Timed based pop ups are commonly used on checkout pages and blog pages to target the more interested visitors and are usually segmented according to behavior, for example first time visitors, or returning.

4. Entry pop ups

- Probably the most common pop up used for collecting emails, an entry pop immediately shows up once a visitor lands on a site and invites people to sign up to a newsletter. Skreened does a great job with their strategy (Here’s what you get – 15% off) and its design which is tailor-made to the audience and product.

Other great examples include James Allen and WPMU:

5. Welcome Mats: Welcome mats are a new way businesses have been collecting emails. It works in a way that once a visitor lands on a site, the welcome mat takes over the entire page and dominates it. On one hand the welcome mat is great for grabbing attention and you have to manually close it in order to skip it. On the other hand, people aren’t expecting it and it’s intrusive which means you have to be very clear and quick with a message that convinces them to sign up before they’ve seen anything. To me, it somewhat resembles the system exit pop we discussed earlier but easier on the eye.

Using the first strategy, Sujan Patel highlights the benefits of signing up to his mailing list: Learning the secret behind his success. The welcome mat and strategy increased his mailing list by 3.3%.

By combining a Welcome Mat  with  a Hellobar (offering 25 chapters of his ebook for free) and a custom designed pop-up, Sujan Patel increased conversions by – 5.5%.

Two Mobile Pro tips:

• Banana Splash – To grow your mailing list on mobile, checkout Banana Splash which is a cool product which will help increase mobile subscribers. During a 2 minute setup process mobile visitors will get a tailor-made, goal oriented layer asking them for their email address. Here’s what we used for TheNextWeb using Banana Splash:

 

• GetResponse – The majority of emails these days are opened on mobile. Which is why it’s important to send newsletters and email campaigns that are mobile first. Get Response offers a cool and easy product for making mobile first emails and as a results increasing conversion rates. Though many competitors offer a mobile preview of a newsletter, each device sees the email differently. By designing your newsletter mobile first, you’re ensuring a better user experience for your subscribers.

One more thing

To increase your email list one of the most important parts is understanding what you have to offer in return, meaning – what’s in it for your customer. Our crowded inbox is hard to navigate through and 40% of subscribers still delete emails before even reading them. It is vital to show our customer the value the get and then keep create that value.

But, even more important to remember is that signing people up to your mailing list is just the first step of many, the next is proving your worth and delivering content that customers care for and want, promises don’t mean much if you don’t deliver.

What are some techniques you use to grow your mailing list?

 

When people venture into AB testing they have a set agenda, like increasing registrations or downloads for example. All efforts are dedicated to increasing that one KPI and running different AB tests to improve it.

For me, conversion optimization has always been about more than just optimizing that one KPI. It’s about running meaningful tests that can teach us more about our customers and using those insights to change entire processes within the business leading to higher profits and revenues across the board. In essence, imagine being able to truly understand your customer on an emotional level and translate that knowledge into relevant, optimized interactions.

Done correctly, conversion optimization can help us optimize customer service processes, sales methodologies, user journeys and entire products. All these changes can lead to higher revenues by simply running meaningful tests and following a strategy.

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CRO is about being able to truly understand customers and translate that knowledge into revenue
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The Gap

So how do you do conversion optimization the right way? how do you run meaningful tests you can learn from? To start off lets take a look at what people are doing today and define the key points that need optimizing.

The #1 Issue:

Not knowing what to test leads to meaningless tests which lead to insignificant results

• In 2014, 42% of marketers said the hardest part of CRO is analyzing the results.

• In Q1, 2015, 63% of marketers said they optimize their site based on intuition.

These two numbers are a direct result of the fact that the vast majority of tests ran these days by all marketers are solely behavioral targeting tests. Behavioral targeting means that the type of browser, geographical location, time on page and other behavioral metrics decide which type of variation of a landing page the visitor gets to see.

Image source: VWO

Then to optimize this process, AB tests are run on various elements of a landing page such as the color of a call to action button, a title of a page or an image. In the example below you can see what these sort of tests look like:

Basically marketers do not know what to test, so they look at the numbers, see patterns and guess what needs to be tested, then once the results come in, they’re not sure what they mean or what to optimize next. The reason for this is that behavioral targeting is a good start, but it isn’t enough.
Let’s take a look at the missing part.

The Missing Link

In order to test correctly and reach meaningful results, you need to have a strategy, and combine emotional targeting with behavioral to your testing methodology.

Emotional targeting is the missing link in most online marketing strategies and notably in conversion optimization. If behavioral elements such as time on page and type of device are what lead the behavioral targeting methodology, it is the emotional gain that leads the emotional targeting methodology.

The emotional targeting methodology derives from one of the most basic foundations of marketing and psychology: People are irrational beings and our decision making process is almost entirely emotional. Which is why, in order to sell you have to appeal to the emotional side of your customers.

Throughout the history of marketing, offline advertisers have always used emotion to derive sales and revenue. The offline advertising world focuses on the emotional value and not the features or pricing of a product like in the online world.

Take Sprite for example, their ads are meant to make us feel excited, alive and energized. There’s no text telling us that drinking Sprite will energize us or that it’s better than any other drink, by simply using colors, images and movement Sprite make us feel it.

When it comes to the online world the average person sees hundreds of messages and ads a day and has to somehow navigate through them all and make a decision. We tend to think that by highlighting our features or cost customers will choose our product when in fact, no matter what you are selling, what resonates with with your customer isn’t your product but the emotional gain.

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No matter what you’re selling, what customers care about isn’t the product but the emotional gain
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Good marketing leaves an impact which is focused on helping customers become better versions of themselves. Showing them the person they can be (who they dream to be) and how the product can help them become that person.

The online advertising world is almost completely behavioral, technical and product focused. It’s all about the features or the pricing of a product, using a lot of text to explain why it is better than another. For example: Skype.

Skype uses its headline to tell you what it does and a preloaded video showing you people using Skype. The most highlighted information on the page is the features such as “Call, message and Share” and so is the price (free).  

But what would an offline Skype ad look like? Would they promote themselves the same way? Apparently not.

While in the online world Skype is all about their product, their billboard is clearly appeals to the emotion of their customers and the people they want to hire – “Embrace your true calling”.
To me this makes no sense, though we know emotions sell, the offline world which cannot track its results solely uses emotion while the online world which allows for seamless tracking and analysis focuses on behavior only.

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Show customers how your product can turn them into the person they dream of becoming
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Putting Theory Into Practice

Let’s have a look at how applying emotional targeting can increase conversions dramatically and have an impact on entire business.

Working with WallMonkeys (a super cool print on demand service for decals and murals), our goal is to increase revenues and find a way to stand out from competitors.

Starting out we dug deep into the analytical data using heatmaps, Google Analytics and other tools to determine user behavior and the key points that needed optimizing within the funnel. We then ran our emotional triggers research and identified the triggers we wanted to start testing.

Two things became clear from the research, on the strategic side the target audience (mainly parents) needed to see how Wallmonkeys changes their entire home for the better. On the user behavior side we realized that the majority of customers started their purchase using the search bar.

The changes we made to the homepage were in structure, color, image and usability. Wallmonkeys is a fun, cool and exciting experience which had to stand out.

Using color psychology, we highlighted the fun, fresh and cool service that is WallMonkeys. The image was changed to reflect the target audience and the end result (brightening your home). In terms of usability, we enlarged the search bar and centered it. These changes lead to a 550% increase in revenue. By catering to the emotional needs of our visitors and emphasising the search bar in our test we increased the amount of searches on the site and also discovered that ‘search’ wasn’t producing relevant results at all times. This discovery allowed WallMonkeys to optimize search and as a result produce an even higher increase in revenues. By testing a strategy and making meaningful changes we were able to increase revenues and change important processes within the business.

Getting Started with Emotional Targeting

To get started with emotional targeting here are a few tips and steps you should follow:

#1 Getting to know your users

How well do you know your customers? Can you answer questions about their life, dreams and hobbies? There’s more to our customers than browser type and geographical location. Checkout this step-by-step guide to creating a marketing persona and dive deeper into successful emotional targeting.

#2 Show it don’t tell it

Show don’t tell is the art of conveying a message in a way that consumers can quickly comprehend and see what’s in it for them. Instead of telling visitors how amazing your product can be for them, show it to them by using images, colors and the right headlines.

A few facts about text vs. images and color:

• Almost 50% of our brain is involved in visual processing. (Human anatomy and psychology)

• It takes us only 150ms to process a symbol and only 100ms to attach a meaning to it

• On average users only read 28% of words per visit (more likely to read 20%). (Nielsen)

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On average users read just 28% of words per visit
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We suffer from an overload of information and the best way to convey a message quickly is by using visual and colorful aids. Which means: Show it, don’t tell it.

People do not read long texts or have time for them, make the most of the first 3 seconds a visitor lands on your page and show them without effort what’s in it for them.

Manpacks for instance could write on their landing page that they have an endless supply of condoms, underwear and socks. Then they could also explain about their fast delivery, the wide selections and how cool they are. Instead they use an image, well-known logos and one powerful headline to portray all of these values within seconds.

Which brings me to my next point:

#3 Value Over Features & Benefits

In Experian’s latest Digital Marketer Survey 49% of marketers said their top challenge is standing out against competitors.

When it comes to standing out against competitors, most online companies showcase their product, features and pricing when in fact using emotional targeting you could stand out in a crowd of features and bullet points.

Car insurance for example is an extremely competitive industry and you have to really stand out in order to succeed. In the insurance industry one of the most important elements people check is pricing; people want cheap car insurance and every company promises to do so. Let’s take a look at two companies saying the same, but very differently:

InsuanceStep has a landing page that says it: “Save up to 70%”.

While Quotelab, makes you feel it:

Note how their funnel is exactly the same, yet the use of the right colors (blue for trust and stability), a strong image and trust icons make all the difference.

#4 Using Color Psychology

Color plays an important role in emotional targeting. In fact it has long been proven by psychological experiments that different colors have an effect on specific parts of our brain and can change our feelings. For years artists, designers and advertisers have used color to affect us emotionally and change our feelings towards specific brands, logos and pieces of art. A recent study showed that the color of a logo affects consumer emotion towards its brand. The following article will show you how to increase conversions using color psychology.

#5 AB Test your Concepts

Last but not least, start AB testing your concepts and strategies. Once you’ve profiled your users, created a strategy and designed your landing page (or any other part of the funnel), it’s time to test it and gain insights about your customers. This is how you run meaningful tests that lead to higher conversions and important insights. Don’t forget to checkout this AB test checklist before you launch.

I recently got back from speaking at Optimizely’s event Opticon in San Francisco which had some really interesting and valuable content going on and some really cool speakers (not referring to myself!). One thing that kept coming up on all sessions and appeared to be on everyone’s agenda was how to get ideas for tests. It seems that many companies now have great techniques for prioritizing their tests and for launching them, but not many know what to actually test. Once you’ve done all the research and found the right pain point to attack, you need to start planning what you’re actually going to change in the funnel and how will you measure its success.

Running another call to action button test is pointless as you’ve probably realized by now the results aren’t that interesting and hard to analyze. So what should you test?

Below is a list of 4 meaningful ab test ideas you can run on your landing pages and actually learn from.

1. Test image strategies: As 60% of our brain is geared towards visual context, the first thing we see on a landing page is the visual and according to the picture superiority effect, images are better remembered than words. The visual you use on your landing page will have a major impact on your visitor’s decision to stay or leave. One interesting test to run is visual strategy – test an “end result” image versus a “this is the product image”. While the majority of business have an image of their product on the landing page, the end result image will demonstrate the emotion and status a customer will feel once they’ve purchased your solution.

For instance on the latest webinar I did with Unbounce I compared landing pages of dating sites, on one hand you have Zoosk, showing their product on their landing page:

On the other, you have this dating site showing you the end result of using their product – a happy couple on the beach (why we designed the page this way).

To run an image strategy test, start by asking yourself – what do people want to feel once they’ve purchased our solution? how do we make their life better? then, project that with your image.

2. Test an exit pop – Your personal feelings about them don’t matter – exit pops (done the right way) work.

A while ago we added a newsletter signup pop up to the Conversioner site.

It was actually doing well, but our marketing team came up with the idea to put my picture on one of the pop ups and a video of me inviting readers to join our community. Needless to say, I was completely against it. I was not interested in having my face all over the website. But once the AB test card was pulled, I couldn’t continue arguing… To my dismay, the pop up tripled our newsletter registrations and we were now getting almost three times as much signups a day. I still dislike that pop up, but it still works better than anything else. Proving once again, that opinions don’t matter and what matters are the results.

A clean, intuitive and simple pop up can work magic, go test it.

3. Test Headline Strategies – I’ve probably said this countless times before; customers do not care about your achievements or your success, we care about what’s in it for us. This is where you take a step back and consider the value your customer receives by purchasing your solution. Most companies highlight their features: the characteristic of your solution that remain the same whether your customer buys it or not. Rather than the value, which is the outcome perceived and defined by your customer that will make a change in their life if they purchase your product or not.

To highlight the value focus on the emotional gain for the customer- a better version of themselves. Essentially this means highlighting how your customer’s life will change by purchasing your solution. Test one variation that highlights that value.

Hike’s strategy is highlighting their size and capacity. Focusing on themselves as the largest chat application. To optimize this, they could explain why they’re the largest – showing the value customers see in using their app.

And here are a couple of landing pages that highlight your value as a customer:

Do promises better more productive meetings that will make you smile.

Wunderlist highlights the change you’ll see in your life.

Consider testing these different strategies- about the product vs. the outcome for your customer.

4. Test dedicated mobile landing pages – Mobile isn’t the next big thing, it already is. As you know, responsive design is better than having to pinch & zoom, but it takes a lot more than that to convert people on mobile. Test a dedicated mobile landing page and make sure you treat your mobile visitors properly:

• Short messages
• Large call to action button
• Utilize mobile capabilities like the “click to call” button and navigation or location based offers.

Mobile visitors have different expectations (60% of web users expect a site to load on their mobile phone in 3 secs or less), don’t let them down because they won’t return.

Let’s see what Wrike’s responsive design looks like (the desktop version):

 The mobile responsive version (compressing all desktop data to a mobile screen):

On the over hand this company has a desktop version for their landing page and a different mobile version for it:

Do you have any recommendations for quick meaningful test people could run?

Earlier this year we discussed the importance of creating a mobile optimization strategy rather than just going responsive. Though responsive design is better than having your visitors pinch and zoom, assuming that consumers use desktop devices the same way they use mobile devices is fundamentally wrong. Consumers use their mobile devices for connectivity and quick content. In fact, 60% of local searches now originate from smartphones (Bizreport).

The bottom line: People use devices differently which means we HAVE to build different user journeys.

People need a better way to consume and experience mobile content, but many mobile experiences are still lagging far behind. Check out these 42 mobile landing page optimization tips to create better landing pages for your mobile visitors and continue reading this article to create better checkout flows for your mobile shoppers.

Mobile Checkout Metrics to Follow

To optimize your mobile checkout flow first identify your mobile visitor’s behavior.

• How much mobile traffic do you actually have? Start by identifying the amount of traffic you have on each device. How much percentage does mobile account for?

• What devices do they use?

• Which pages to they visit? Another important element is identifying the most viewed pages. This will help in both identifying the path mobile visitors take and most importantly saving you money. Instead of optimizing the entire funnel and spending a lot of money, you can optimize specific pages within the funnel that require your attention.

• Where is the biggest drop in the funnel? Many times you’ll find that mobile visitors actually dropout much earlier in the process than the checkout. Once you’ve identified those tricky pages you’ll be able to optimize those before you reach the checkout funnel.

• How many visitors complete a purchase on mobile? The most important number – what percentage of mobile visitors actually complete a purchase? This number will help us define goals and monitor our success.

 

12 Mobile Checkout Elements you Should Optimize

The most important elements of the mobile checkout optimization process aren’t just about the look and feel, but also the development and the emotional triggers. Below is a list of 14 mobile checkout optimization tips you can follow to optimize your mobile revenues:

1. Pinch & Zoom – More than 73% of consumers won’t return to a website if it doesn’t load properly on their mobile devices. Pinch and zoom is obviously off the table. Make sure your visitors do not see this type of checkout.

** Pro tip: Creating a mobile site from scratch can be expensive, and a responsive design probably won’t increase conversions. Use Banana-Splash to trigger personalized messages for mobile visitors and convert them in one touch.

2. Simplicity – Though 60% of local searches now originate from smartphones and tablets, this is not the case for checkouts (bizreport). People still fear mobile checkouts and do not feel safe using them which is why creating a simple, easy to use mobile checkout is crucial for higher conversion rates:

• Remove distractions
• Make your call to action buttons stand out
• Create a shorter checkout flow

3. Speed – Another crucial part of conversion optimization in general and definitely in mobile. Here are few numbers to give you an idea of the importance in reducing page load time and increasing site speed:

• In 2006 Amazon was already reporting a 1% loss in revenue per 100ms site load delay.
• 1 second delay in page load time leads to: 11% fewer page views, 16% decrease in customer satisfaction, 7% loss in conversions (aberdeen)
• 60% of web users say they expect a site to load on their mobile phone in 3 seconds or less. (Compuware)

Paste your website link in here and get some valuable tips on how to speed up your desktop and mobile site.

4. Registration – Probably the most debated question on desktop and mobile, requiring registration before a purchase, has it’s advantages and disadvantages. On one hand, by capturing your customer’s information you’ll be able to retarget them, create a better shopping experience and increase revenues in the long run (if you’re good at retention). On the other hand, registration creates a longer funnel that slows your customers down on the way to payment. Though you really want to register people before they checkout it could cause a large drop in your conversion rates. So, give users the opportunity to checkout without creating an account. If you simply cannot go without, try registering people with their facebook or Google accounts (Etsy example below), allowing them to click on one button and swiftly continue with their purchase.

5. Form fields and registration- During your checkout and registration process make sure you add vital fields only. As opposed to desktop in which most websites have both vital and non-vital fields showing, on mobile have only the most imperative fields to reduce noise and clutter. Don’t forget to disable autocorrect on certain fields (like addresses) and make sure your keyboards are field sensitive, for example when visitors are required to fill in their number they should get a numeric keyboard. The less information people need to fill in on mobile the more likely they are to convert. You can also break the process into a few short steps allowing it feel cleaner and easier. Essentially, it’s this:

vs. this:

6. Trust – Unfortunately most shoppers do not feel safe shopping on mobile web yet which is why your checkout page should include some social proof. The most common social proof techniques use trust icons, testimonials or reviews. In the example below the company made use of trust icons to ensure shoppers they can safely checkout on this site.

Dribble

1800Flowers also uses the Norton Secured and Secure Checkout trust icons on the top of the checkout page:

 

7. Showing Progress – Similar to the web experience, people like to feel their progress and know their journey upfront. Most visitors do not have the patience to complete a long checkout process and need an indication within the funnel showing them how far they have to go. Zalando uses a progress bar to show the user there are 4 steps within the checkout funnel.

 

8. Remove distractions – Online shoppers have a low attention span and get distracted easily. To reduce distractions and keep our customers shopping you must reduce the amount of links, banners and any other data that isn’t relevant in the shopping experience. All links such as help, shipping information and sales should open in a new window, and all information should be easily displayed above the fold so shoppers do not need to scroll in order to complete an action.

9. Checkout Access – Make sure people can enter their shopping bag and the checkout area easily from any page to complete their purchase quickly. While visitors browse items and add them to their cart, a good way to help them complete their purchase is by triggering a pop up that directs them to immediate checkout or ask them if they want to continue shopping.

10. Auto detect data – 62% of US online adults expect a mobile-friendly website and 23% expect their mobile experience to change based on location, according to Forrester’s US Mobile Mind Shift Online Survey. Prepopulate data into your forms and reduce the amount of action visitors must take to convert. Information such as the visitor’s state and city can be populated by simply getting visitors to fill in the zipcode field first.

 

11. Payment options – Giving customers the option to checkout in a few different ways will increase your conversion rates and social proof. By displaying logos such as checkout with Paypal or Amazon you increase trust as you are partnering with these well known brands and also allow your customers to checkout in their preferred way.

12. Quick Contact – During the mobile purchase customer may have questions or uncertainties. Fortunately one of the best features you can make use of within mobile is “Click to call” – allowing customers to instantly call you and ask their questions. If you have someone who can answer the phones and help your customers out, don’t miss out on this feature. If you do not have a person who can stand by the phones, a simple chat plugin can go a long way. In fact, 44% of respondents said that having a live person answer their questions while they were in the middle of an online purchase was one of the most important features a website could offer. Apple also offers a chat solution for its shoppers:

Taking the next step

There are many quick and simple tips for mobile checkout optimization. The most important element of mobile optimization is to constantly measure and test your results. As mobile traffic and search continues to grow, it is imperative to have a conversion optimization strategy that will allow you to grow and expand your mobile revenues.

 

More on mobile optimization:

• The mobile conversion optimization guide.

• 42 mobile landing page optimization tips