Unbounce http://unbounce.com Self Service Landing Pages with Simple A/B Testing, Reporting and Optimization Thu, 11 Mar 2010 03:48:26 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.9.1 en hourly 1 BRAINSTORM: The Effects of Social Media on Landing Page Conversion http://unbounce.com/conversion-rate-optimization/brainstorm-the-effects-of-social-media-on-landing-page-conversion/ http://unbounce.com/conversion-rate-optimization/brainstorm-the-effects-of-social-media-on-landing-page-conversion/#comments Thu, 18 Feb 2010 07:06:19 +0000 Oli Gardner http://unbounce.com/?p=3042

I want to try something different for this post by making it more of an informal online brainstorm. I’ll pose a topic and a few primary questions, then open it up to comments.

The more people that interact with their opinions, the better the post will become and I’ll re-incorporate them into the post as we go.

Strap on your clever-hats for a quick brainstorm on social media and landing pages
Strap on your clever-hats for a quick brainstorm on social media and landing pages.

How Does/Will Social Media Affect Landing Page Conversion rates?

Social media is no longer the next big thing, it’s just simply an interaction medium that proliferates all aspects of online life. As such, it will naturally begin to infiltrate the discipline of internet marketing. How this happens is yet to be determined. There seem to be a few toes being dipped in the water, but it’s a little early to get a clear picture of where it’s headed and what’s been successful thus far.

And so, I have some questions:

Brainstorm Questions

If you have any opinions/answers, please comment below.

In what ways can you incorporate social media into a landing page?

There are a whole bunch of social media widgets that can be inserted into a landing page:

  • Twitter streams
  • Facebook updates
  • Flickr photostreams
  • Blog RSS
  • YouTube Video?
  • Etc.

What other examples are there?
What are the uses of each type?

Is there an exception to be made re: the single goal of a landing page?

Typically a landing page should be highly focused on a single goal. However, I believe there is value in using a secondary “Safety Net” call to action (CTA) that captures the people who are not quite ready to convert. An example of this would be “Follow me on Twitter”. This allows you to maintain a post-bounce connection with the visitor, and lets them commit to something less intimidating than the Buy Now button.

What do you think about this concept?
What other examples are there when applied to different social media interactions?

What benefits are there to be gained from social media integration?

What strikes me initially is that social media integration can improve your landing pages in the following ways:

  1. Increased trust: social proof factors (e.g. a large following) can make you more credible
  2. A modern mindset: depending on your demographic and campaign topic it could enhance the appeal of your landing page
  3. The primary goal: If your primary goal is to grow your social network then inclusion of social interaction points is clearly relevant

What other benefits are there?

Please share your thoughts and experiences below.

Cheers

– Oli Gardner

]]> http://unbounce.com/conversion-rate-optimization/brainstorm-the-effects-of-social-media-on-landing-page-conversion/feed/ 15 Spanish Landing Pages – An Under Utilized Conversion Strategy http://unbounce.com/conversion-rate-optimization/spanish-landing-pages/ http://unbounce.com/conversion-rate-optimization/spanish-landing-pages/#comments Thu, 18 Feb 2010 01:15:07 +0000 Angelica Maria http://unbounce.com/?p=3077

Today we have another new guest post on the Unbounce blog! The topic surrounds a huge market potential that lies in engaging the large online Hispanic community – by offering landing pages correctly translated into marketing Spanish. The author is Angelica Maria, President of Marketing Translation at Traducción4you.com.

spanish-flag

I have been working with optimizing landing pages for a while and have discovered through my work that many people have forgotten to think about the Hispanic demographic. As a Spanish-American myself, when I view a landing page or even a website, the first think I look for is the Spanish option. I know I am not the only one that does this.

Engaging the online Hispanic community is an increasingly smart business strategy. With over 47 million Hispanics now living in the United States, they have a powerful influence on the American consumer economy. Those companies that have opened up their eyes to this ethnic group are benefiting financially for it.

Reason #1 – CATERING to the Demographic

Even though many Hispanic Internet users speak English, they want advertising and online content that speaks to them in their own language. This gives them a feeling that your company has thought about them and is offering them the same opportunity as the English consumer.

Reason #2 – Show them YOU care

Many Hispanics who can read English go to the Spanish option to validate what they read in English to make sure they understood the offer. They base their purchase decision when they feel they have received and understood what they are purchasing. English has many idioms, colloquialisms, slang and other expressions that do not mean the same to a Hispanic customer when they read it. When the page has been properly translated the sentences and ideas will flow with the same coherence as the English version. This is an important fact that cannot be ignored.

Reason #3 – Getting that LOYAL customer

Hispanics are one of the most loyal customers once you have gained their trust. Scarborough’s report,” The Power of the Hispanic Consumer Online” states that “The online advertising marketplace appears to be under-represented when it comes to Hispanic promotions, so first-movers with Hispanic-targeting online marketing activity could lay the groundwork for creating greater opportunities for lifetime brand loyalty,” said the report. To read the entire report go to: http://traduccion4you.com/facts.html

It’s not just translation… it’s Marketing Translation

It’s not uncommon for companies who have websites to simply translate their existing English pages to Spanish. Many believe that just translating word per word will be understood by the Hispanic reader but it’s a mistake I see everyday. Here are some examples I saw the other day that made me laugh. But to the Hispanic customer, they would have shaken their head and moved on.

“Includes everything but the kitchen sink.”

When they say this slogan the English consumer thinks they are getting a good deal. But to the Hispanic customer, they stop and say “WHAT?” and then they bounced off your site.

When Parker Pen marketed a ballpoint pen in Mexico, its ads were supposed to say:
“It won’t leak in your pocket and embarrass you.”

However, the company mistakenly thought the Spanish word “embarazar” meant embarrass. Instead the ads said:
“It won’t leak in your pocket and make you pregnant.”

When General Motors introduced the Chevy Nova in South America, it was apparently unaware that “no va” means “it won’t go.”

After the company figured out why it wasn’t selling any cars, it renamed the car in its Spanish markets to the Caribe.

Bad marketing translations happen in other languages as well….

In Taiwan, the translation of the Pepsi slogan “Come alive with the Pepsi Generation” came out as “Pepsi will bring your ancestors back from the dead.”

Also in Chinese, the Kentucky Fried Chicken slogan “finger-lickin’ good” came out as “eat your fingers off.”

Your conversion will depend on a good Marketing Translation Company

What I recommend that you look for in a marketing translation company is one who understands Spanish language optimization for landing pages and even websites. They need to understand that creating a cultural context and provide language adaption, accuracy, cultural rapport is vital for you to be able to get that Hispanic customer.

The translation must read as though it originated in the target language. A good marketing translator will bear in mind any cultural references that may need to be explained to the intended audience. Some subjects may be more difficult than others to translate because words or passages may have multiple meanings that make several translations possible. Not surprisingly, translated work often goes through multiple revisions before the final text is submitted.

Are you ready to benefit from this market?

If you are dealing with an English speaking Hispanic, and they don’t understand your marketing message then you have lost them and they bounce off to another site.

Nearly 1 in 3 Hispanic households have Internet and you begin to see why this rapidly growing demographic group, already larger than the entire population of Canada, represents a major economic force with amazing opportunities for forward thinking businesses. Statistical data on true conversion is extremely limited because companies with websites and landing pages are just now targeting this demographic. Did you know even with this huge Hispanic market, less than 1% of all U.S. websites offer text in Spanish.

Knowing that, the question is, “Are you ready to benefit from this market?”

Written by Angelica Maria of Traducción4you.

About the Author

Angelica Maria, a native Chilean from Chile, South America is a dynamic forward thinking Hispanic who has been in the direct response marketing business for several years. She started Traduccion4you out of the demand for her services. Her company is unique in that she specializes in Spanish landing page optimization.

]]> http://unbounce.com/conversion-rate-optimization/spanish-landing-pages/feed/ 7 Increasing Lead Capture by 27% – A Conversion Optimization Case Study http://unbounce.com/conversion-rate-optimization/increasing-lead-capture-by-27-a-conversion-optimization-case-study/ http://unbounce.com/conversion-rate-optimization/increasing-lead-capture-by-27-a-conversion-optimization-case-study/#comments Tue, 16 Feb 2010 21:08:09 +0000 Kevin Kaiser http://unbounce.com/?p=3053

Today’s guest post is a conversion optimization case study by Kevin Kaiser from Surety Bonds. In my last post I referenced their lead capture form as a good example of how to keep your CTA above the fold on a lead gen landing page. Kevin discusses how he optimized a primary conversion goal – to have more customers complete a lead capture form to receive a quote.

Over to you Kevin.

Many people approach their web marketing strategy mainly as getting people to their site. They take for granted that once a visitor gets there, the visitor will do exactly what they want them to do.

Unfortunately, this is rarely the case. A complete web marketer realizes that you need to tell people what to do when they get to your site.  The rest of this post will explain some of the things I performed on SuretyBonds.com to help increase conversions by 27%.

A Little Background

The site performs well drawing in visitors. But we couldn’t get them to fill out the form at a rate we thought was appropriate and decided to make and test some changes. For each of our tests, we ran an A/B split test for 2-3 weeks until we were able to gather a statistically significant amount of traffic. We had decided to work with A/B testing as it is simpler that Multivariate and went with a 50% split of traffic to each page.

Location, Location, Location: Where to put the form?

When people are searching for a product, they have an idea in mind of what they are looking for. It is up to you to make sure they can find it as fast as possible. This is the basis of our first change. When someone reached our site, it was incredibly hard for them to find the form to fill out to receive a quote. Internally, we had no problem locating the form due to our familiarity with the site, but after watching a test participant struggle to perform this task it was clear that we needed to place the form in a more prominent location on the site.

Note the form placement on the right-hand side of the homepage.

Note the form placement on the right-hand side of the homepage.

From a link to a button

Initially, we only had a link to the form in the side column on our homepage which did nothing to stand out from with the other links on the page. So the first step was to change the link to a more prominent button with a stronger call-to-action. This gave us a conversion improvement of 10% – a promising start.

Adding the form to the homepage

Something that conversion optimization practitioners suggest to do is to keep testing. So I decided to take things a step further and introduce a short form on the homepage. Using the same A/B testing, I was able to find that this version worked even better. And, being a devout tester, I decided to try another layout that included both the call-to-action button and the short form on the same page. This is the best layout I’ve found so far (and the one we’re currently using) and goes to show that testing different layouts (not even worrying about the content) can greatly affect conversion rate.

Ask Nicely

Another discovery I made in my quest for increasing conversions was what kind of information is really needed to qualify it as a good lead. Obviously you don’t want to waste all your time by having your lead form bring in poor quality leads, but do you have to ask every single question available online to qualify it as good? A big thing with surety bonds is credit score, but I decided that we really didn’t need to ask people for their credit score online. This is one example of how you can work this into your own plan.

Another thing I found is that just asking a question in a different way can increase leads. Surety bonds vary by state, so we were asking for their business address. By changing this and just asking for the state though, people seemed more apt to fill out the form. We’re able to get the rest of the info. we need when we call them back on the follow-up.

These are just a few examples of things that we changed in our form that could give you some ideas of what you could try changing on your site.

The Result

Running through this series of A/B tests helped increase the lead generation from our website by 27% compared to the original version. However, it didn’t end there. I had noticed that although we were pulling in more leads, we weren’t closing them at an increasing rate. The final step was to see how we could capitalize on these extra leads.

The Follow-Up Call

With all these leads coming in, I wanted to test and see how smoothly our whole lead process was working. So I filled out our form and waited to get a call back about it. And waited, and waited. I think the first time I tried this I didn’t get a call back until around 4pm, about 7 hours after I filled out the form. Way to long for me to wait for a follow-up and apparently it was too long for the people filling out the form online. So, teaming up with our underwriting team, I had them call back as soon as we possibly could. Noticing that our volume started increasing, I decided that we should get someone to call back almost immediately after they filled out the form online and now our offline conversion rate was almost as high as our online conversion rate. The only difference between this technique and the two above is that it takes place offline, which something people leave out of the picture when thinking about conversion rate optimization. While there was no real tool I used to track this, the before and after comparison was great enough that we continue to do this today.

Never Stop

The biggest advice I would give fellow marketers is to never stop testing. We are continually tweaking our layout and copy to get as high of a conversion rate as we can possibly achieve. If you’re a busy person and think you don’t have the time for this, think about hiring a consultant to improve your conversion rate. And remember, conversion rates don’t just jump immediately to high levels. It often takes place over a period of time with lots of little changes and maybe a few big changes as well. Often the return will be much greater than the investment, so figure out if it’s worth it in your industry/niche to outsource and start improving your conversion rate today.

– Kevin Kaiser

]]> http://unbounce.com/conversion-rate-optimization/increasing-lead-capture-by-27-a-conversion-optimization-case-study/feed/ 5 HOW TO: Keep Your CTA Above the Fold on a Lead Gen Landing Page http://unbounce.com/lead-generation/how-to-keep-your-cta-above-the-fold-on-a-lead-gen-landing-page/ http://unbounce.com/lead-generation/how-to-keep-your-cta-above-the-fold-on-a-lead-gen-landing-page/#comments Wed, 10 Feb 2010 22:49:22 +0000 Oli Gardner http://unbounce.com/?p=3029

A fundamental rule of landing page design is to try and keep your Call To Action (CTA) above the fold. This enables your visitors to quickly see where they need to interact with your page to be successful. This is easy with a standard “Click-Through” style landing page that just offers a big shiny button for the user to click. You simply ensure that you place it in the top portion of the page.

What About Lead Gen Landing Pages?

On a lead gen form, the CTA is at the bottom of the form (the submission button). So it’s quite common (especially if you have a relatively long form) to have the CTA fall below the fold.

The solution to this problem is to implement 2 design rules that focus user attention on the lead capture form area.

Step 1 – Give the Form Area a Big Bold Header

Your form button may be below the fold, but the top of it shouldn’t be. So make this stand out as much as the CTA would if it were visible.

Step 2 – Use a Directional Cue to Let Visitors Know where the CTA is

Now that you’ve got their attention, you want to direct them downward. The purpose of this is to make them aware that the important stuff is directly below – and to instruct them to go take a look.

Here’s a great example from a site called Surety Bonds:

Click on the thumbnail for a full-size view.

Note the bold graphical form area header – coupled with a direction cue (arrow) to direct you to the CTA.

Click on the thumbnail for a full-size view.

And here’s a look at the complete lead generation form area. Notice how the header connects both stylistically with the form CTA, while directing your attention to it.

A simple and effective way to help your lead gen landing pages perform better.

– Oli Gardner

]]> http://unbounce.com/lead-generation/how-to-keep-your-cta-above-the-fold-on-a-lead-gen-landing-page/feed/ 2 Twitter Weekly Updates for 2010-01-31 http://unbounce.com/twitter/twitter-weekly-updates-for-2010-01-31/ http://unbounce.com/twitter/twitter-weekly-updates-for-2010-01-31/#comments Sun, 31 Jan 2010 04:45:00 +0000 admin http://unbounce.com/twitter/twitter-weekly-updates-for-2010-01-31/

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]]> http://unbounce.com/twitter/twitter-weekly-updates-for-2010-01-17/feed/ 0 Join Us For The Unbounce Private Beta http://unbounce.com/product-launch/join-us-for-the-unbounce-private-beta/ http://unbounce.com/product-launch/join-us-for-the-unbounce-private-beta/#comments Wed, 13 Jan 2010 08:23:58 +0000 Oli Gardner http://unbounce.com/?p=2200

The Final Countdown by Europe is ringing in my ears as I write this post. It’s officially “down to the wire” time for the Unbounce team and as anyone from a start-up can attest, there just ain’t enough hours in the day.

Get in on the landing page action before we open it up to the public.

Beta Launch Date Countdown

We’ve opened the doors to a select few companies for a very private Alpha period right now, shortly to be followed by our Beta launch in a week or so.

Sign up here for the Private Beta

What to Expect

For those that have received invites to the private Beta (there are still a few spots remaining) – you can expect to see a whole bunch of landing page awesomeness.

Highlights include:

  • Create a page: Our soon-to-be-legendary editor to construct your landing page.
  • A/B split testing with a single click. This is VERY cool. You can duplicate a page with the speed of a lightning bolt, then modify some page elements and publish a fully functioning A/B test before the IT department can say “umm, well, we can probably push this live next week”.
  • Stats to show how your ideas are performing. Come up with something crazy, test it, then watch the clicks and conversions and adjust the weighting of your A/B test.
  • And a whole bunch of bugs… it comes with the territory :)

Register For the Unbounce Beta Launch

If you’d like to participate in the private beta, and get your hands on the Unbounce landing page service before we release it to the public, then you can sign up here for the beta.

Looking forward to your feedback, insight and participation.

Cheers
– Oli Gardner

]]> http://unbounce.com/product-launch/join-us-for-the-unbounce-private-beta/feed/ 0 2010 New Year's Marketing Resolutions – You Know Your Landing Page is Fat When… http://unbounce.com/landing-page-optimization/2010-new-years-marketing-resolutions-you-know-your-landing-page-is-fat-when/ http://unbounce.com/landing-page-optimization/2010-new-years-marketing-resolutions-you-know-your-landing-page-is-fat-when/#comments Tue, 12 Jan 2010 00:30:58 +0000 Oli Gardner http://unbounce.com/?p=2965

In the spirit of failed New Year’s resolutions, I’m writing this post 11 days after the fact. We all do a miserable job of living up to our personal commitments, so I figured a few new business goals might be in order to get your marketing campaigns off the proverbial couch and into the gym.

It's time to whip that 2009 marketing stomach into fighting shape!

It's time to whip that 2009 marketing stomach into fighting shape!

A Totally Bogus Opt-in Checkbox That Says You Commit to the Following Resolutions

As an added incentive, I’ve decided to get you to sign a completely non-binding contract with yourself.


1. Spend more time with my CTA’s

Just like you should be spending more time hugging the kids and showering them with love and affection – your landing page Call To Action needs to be looked after. Here are a few things you can do to improve your CTA relations:

  1. Test some different copy on your buttons: try funny, outrageous, seductive etc.
  2. Try a different typographic treatment for your button design
  3. Try a few different colors (depending on your palette): black & white (for contrast), red (seduction), green (for go), blue (for clickable) or orange (eye catching and positive)
  4. Make it bigger and give it a rotation to produce a weird shape

2. Never send a PPC campaign to my homepage again

Tsk, tsk, tsk. If you’re sending people to your website’s homepage you’re diluting your marketing message to a dangerous level. Create a landing page and send all PPC traffic there first. It will help focus your messaging and keep your visitors on track.

3. Trim the fat from my landing page content

Be honest, you sometimes talk too much right? And it appears on your landing pages as bloated copy with long rambling sentences that seem to go on and on for ever without much consideration for punctuation or rhythm because you need to get every feature and benefit and quality of your product on the page but in the process all you’re really doing is making your potential customers glaze over and fall asleep so stop doing that and try cutting a big chunk of text out of your landing page and remember to do an A/B test to see if it helps your conversion rate you never know it might make a big difference alternatively it might be worse so test test test and find out what your customers like and please for the sake of all things literary insert some bloody punctuation! But not too many exclamation points!!!!!!!!

4. Spend the price of a coffee per day on conversion optimization

Baby steps are important with any new regime, whether it’s going to the gym or maximizing the return on your marketing spend. So instead of filling your belly with caffeine, see if you can commit to putting the price of one of your daily cups of Joe into a jar. Then at the end of each month, you’ll have some extra money to test a PPC campaign on some landing page variants. Even if this only lets you do 4 conversion tests per year, that’s 4 more than 2009 right?

5. Remove 1 field from my lead gen forms

Your lead gen form is fat. Deal with it.

Try removing a not-quite-so-essential field from a form and test the results (also test which particular fields you remove). If you see an increase in leads then continue to remove form fields until you reach the optimal balance of lead quantity vs. information gathering quality.

6. Stop confusing my visitors with bad message match

Here’s the thing, if I have to repeat this warning in 2011 I will be opening a serious can of whoop ass. The message on your ad (display banner, AdWords, email etc.) needs to maintain momentum right through your acquisition funnel. That means repeating and reinforcing the message on your landing page, in the product you giveaway on your form (if you do) and any subsequent pages you send them to afterwards.

7. Feed my landing pages some A.D.D. pills to keep them focused and on topic

There’s little point in spending the time and effort on designing a landing page if all you do is make it as cluttered as your homepage. This is where you must adhere closely to the concept of congruence – ensuring that every element of your landing page supports your core value proposition. No wandering off gossiping about other products or company events. One page, one topic, in harmony. Koombyah.

8. Stop any videos on my landing pages from auto-playing

This is one to be tested. In usability circles it’s considered bad medicine to have a video start playing as soon as the page loads. However, the psychographics of the convertible customer are slightly different so I’d recommend running an A/B test to see if your customers react better to this type of interruption or find it annoying.

9. Learn a new skill – Landing Page SEO

If your landing pages will be living in the internet tubes for any substantial period of time, you may want them to be SEO friendly to generate organic search traffic. So commit to learning some of the basics of good SEO from the code level right up to how to write good SEO copy. It will give your evergreen campaigns (one’s that run all year round) a bit more traffic without much effort.

10. Critique my last landing page and commit to testing some improvements

The fact that you’re making New Year’s resolutions again means that you’re not perfect – and neither was your last landing page. So dust off the cobwebs and take a fresh look at it in the new light of 2010. It’s important to be critical and not be offended if the intern points out the most basic of faults in your design.

If you need some help critiquing your landing pages – try using the Unbounce Conversion Marketing Scorecard to produce a checklist of fresh TO-DO items.

That’s it for now – see how many of those 10 promises you can keep and you’ll be a much leaner, meaner marketing machine’r come 2011.

Good luck…

– Oli Gardner

]]> http://unbounce.com/landing-page-optimization/2010-new-years-marketing-resolutions-you-know-your-landing-page-is-fat-when/feed/ 4 Twitter Weekly Updates for 2010-01-10 http://unbounce.com/twitter/twitter-weekly-updates-for-2010-01-10/ http://unbounce.com/twitter/twitter-weekly-updates-for-2010-01-10/#comments Sun, 10 Jan 2010 04:45:00 +0000 admin http://unbounce.com/twitter/twitter-weekly-updates-for-2010-01-10/

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