Comments on: The Biggest Little Change I Ever Made – A 160% Revenue Increase with 1 Word Change

By: Carisa

Carisa — Thu, 29 Dec 2011 14:18:26 +0000

It’s yoga pants wiki appropriate time to make some plans for the future and it is time to be happy. I’ve read this post and if I could I wish to suggest you some interesting things or tips. Maybe you could write next articles referring to this article. I want to read even more things about it!

By: Rich Norton

Rich Norton — Wed, 31 Aug 2011 11:39:33 +0000

@Kris, that’s true, but if offering money back instead of a satisfaction guarantee will drive traffic, increase sales and thus profit, then surely highlighting this fact to a client can’t be bad thing?

By: Mariana

Mariana — Mon, 03 Jan 2011 14:09:11 +0000

I literally devoured your post. It’s really soo interesting! It’s really incredible the impact that changin a single word can have. I especially agree with you on the change you’ve made. A money-back promise is much stronger than satisfaction guaranteed.

By: Kris

Kris — Tue, 14 Dec 2010 16:47:16 +0000

Well, guaranteeing satisfaction or money back are 2 significantly different things. It is not up to SEO consultant to decide what the client will sell or guarantee :-)

By: caseyhibbard

caseyhibbard — Wed, 23 Jun 2010 22:22:56 +0000

Hi Keith,

Excellent post about the power of a single word. It's a great reminder to think carefully about the words we choose, and being as specific as possible. I'll be using this tip for a new program.

Thanks!
Casey

By: Keith Hagen

Keith Hagen — Mon, 11 Jan 2010 20:39:30 +0000

No worries Jason, I think that is a good question.

The result improvement was seen month over month and week over week were a bit less, but in the ball park of awesome. The site does receive enough traffic to arrive at decisions pretty fast. As far as I know, there were no significant seasonal factors, except the start of Hockey Season :)

By: Jason Billingsley

Jason Billingsley — Mon, 11 Jan 2010 19:45:11 +0000

As expected. Don’t get me wrong, I too forgo testing to implement improvements. BUT, when reporting on the results I am VERY careful to communicate they were not causal.

I’m curious what your frame of reference for time period was for your before/after observation, particularly because of the stated redesign?

I’m only poking further for the benefit of the readers and would be happy to take this offline if you were more comfortable.

I too share your enthusiasm for results like this – we all do!

By: Oli Gardner

Oli Gardner — Mon, 11 Jan 2010 19:34:40 +0000

Thanks for all the great dialogue guys.

And thank you Keith for the in depth discussion regarding your process – people can learn a lot about behaviour by understanding how to observe their client’s issues.

I think it’s also important to remember that as an editorial piece, the intent here was to share a story and an observed result. While potentially not 100% scientific, it’s still a compelling story that can hopefully help people to understand the importance of trying something different.

Doing this by way of digging deep into an understanding of your client and customers is an important methodology for instigating change.

I also don’t think this piece is trying to say – “it’s this easy and everyone can get results like this by doing the same” – because clearly this wasn’t an easy process and every situation is different.

At the end of the day – the message is that we should all be trying ways to improve our conversion performance and ideally it should be done using sound testing practices whenever possible – and that sometimes “if it works, it works”.

Thanks again.

By: Chris Goward

Chris Goward — Mon, 11 Jan 2010 19:12:08 +0000

Keep the excitement alive, Keith! :)

By: Keith

Keith — Mon, 11 Jan 2010 19:01:47 +0000

Hello Chris,
I agree with everything you said. I’m tempted to run a test on this and share, but at the end of the day, the client’s business would suffer, and ethically I would not feel right about it.

I will in the future keep my posts quantitatively sound. I was excited to share, and while still confident in the change, do not wish to be lumped in with the “all hype” crowd out there. Its a good lesson for a new blogger.

To be honest, I do play it a bit “fast & loose” to achieve results faster. That is my style I guess (I do test, but not as much as I could, especially when I feel confident in the change being positive – 2 parts “sales guy”, 1 part analyst). I’m sure I could learn a lot from someone like yourself who is more focused on testing.