Filed under: #mktgcloud, A/B Testing, Datarati, Forms, Marketing Automation | Tags: Web Forms
From the team at WiderFunnel.
In case you need some more reasons to get started right now, here are 30 reasons you should start using A/B Testing for Conversion Optimization:
- Conversion Rate Optimization does not exist without controlled, statistically valid testing
- A/B testing finds out how people actually act rather than just the way they think they will, which is all you get from focus groups, user testing and usability testing
- A/B testing confirms or disproves the hypotheses gathered from eyetracking, click heatmaps, surveys and all other qualitative data gathering
- A/B testing is quantitative and the probability of error is known (and when was the last time your other marketing tactics told you that?!)
- A/B testing allows for testing Radical Redesign variations, which can be a great starting-point for most landing pages and site templates
- You can test different layouts of site-wide page templates on dynamic, CMS-driven pages with A/B testing (see example)
- A/B testing usually delivers more dramatic conversion rate improvements than possible with Multivariate testing (MVT)
- A/B/n testing is not limited to just two variations
- A/B testing allows you to isolate individual hypotheses to build your “best practices” Playbook
- You can’t imagine how bad your web pages and site templates really are until you start A/B testing them
- A/B testing allows entirely different messaging approaches that can lead to strategic marketing insights
- Insights from A/B testing can be used to improve your other online and offline marketing messages
- You can track multi-channel conversions with A/B testing including online lead generation, affiliate revenue, e-commerce, and phone call conversion optimization
- A/B testing allows for easier in-depth analytics than MVT so you can develop further test hypotheses for follow-up test rounds
- A/B testing allows alternative conversion funnel tests
- A/B testing allows condensing and expanding multi-step forms
- A/B testing can be used for landing page optimization, website conversion optimization, email testing, and Evolutionary Site Redesign (ESR)
- A/B testing can be used to run a customized MVT test using any test design
- A/B testing allows you to isolate only interesting potential interaction effects without wasting traffic on the inconsequential
- A/B testing will not limit your test design options like MVT does
- A/B testing gets results faster than any other method while MVT is greedy for traffic
- A/B testing does not tempt you to end the test before statistical confidence has been achieved as much as MVT
- You can easily prune under-performing variations in A/B testing without re-starting the Test Round
- A/B testing is easy to spell
- A/B tests can quickly be re-run and confirmed for extra assurance
- A/B testing results make both the CMO and the CFO happy
- The business results from A/B testing look great on your resumé
- A/B testing allows you to test your Marketing Strategy and core Value Proposition
- WiderFunnel guarantees your results from A/B testing (and Multivariate too, of course)
- A/B testing is fun!
Filed under: #mktgcloud, A/B Testing, Datarati, Landing Pages | Tags: Landing Pages, Site Tuners
Filed under: A/B Testing, Actionable Insights, Business Intelligence, Data, Datarati, Testing | Tags: A/B Tesing, Conversion Funnel, Multivariate Testing
RECOMMENDED Watch Now: http://whichtestwon.com/top-7-lead-generation-form-ab-tests
This is a horrific stat… only 26% of digital marketers are testing!
At the recent Conversion Conference in San Jose, the top 5 testing challenges were exposed.
From WhichTestWon.com
#1. Office Politics.
We heard lots of anger and frustration on this point. “We want to test, but it’s getting the hierarchy on board,” one ecommerce marketer told our reporter. “The department heads think they know all the answers. And, you have to go through them to implement anything.”
“It’s hard to convince IT to support testing,” said a marketer from an online lending site. “And they have higher pull in the company (than marketing).”
“My CEO does what he wants,” a travel marketer told our reporter. “And, it’s hard to introduce something new when everybody’s plates are full.”
Even big companies have trouble. “Even though we’re very numbers driven, people (in the company) still don’t understand analytics,” said a marketer from a huge consumer electronics retailer that conducts hundreds of tests per year.
(By the way, if office politics is a problem for you, you might be interested in this WhichTestWon report. Here’s the link: Office Politics & Budgeting Battles on Testing)
#2. Traffic.
Marketers continue to have issues generating enough traffic to the pages they’re testing. Dale Stokdyk, Internet Marketing Manager, Champlain College, told our reporter, “Our challenge is generating enough page traffic to get conclusive results.”
For pages with low traffic, we think reducing the number of test variations can help in reaching conclusiveness. If you’re trying to test a template page though, where each page may have few visitors but a lot of pages on your site use that same template, you may want to get outside help in designing and running a conclusive test.
#3. SEO.
Despite the fact that, in the past, Google has announced testing won’t affect natural search rankings and presenters at the show said it’s pretty much a non-issue, many show attendees expressed concern. In fact, someone at nearly every Q&A asked how not to lose SEO ranking due to testing. We suspect SEO consultants seeking clients could use ‘I know how to make testing safe’ as a great marketing hook. In the meantime, the good news is there are things you can do to prevent testing from damaging your SEO rankings.
#4. Technology.
There are plenty of testing technologies out there, but not all play well with sites that have complex conversion patterns and structures. And people with complex sites are often the ones most eager to be testing. Technology complaints at the conference ranged from difficulty integrating free testing tools with ecommerce platforms to even more complex problems.
“One problem is getting the technology to pre-populate test registration forms with data already entered on previous landing pages,” a marketer from an online dating company told our reporter. “You can’t build application logic into it.”
One ecommerce marketer said he’d like to test multiple shipping offers but can’t find a testing technology that will recalculate shipping costs by offer. Sites that segment everything want technology to slice results data so they can see winners from different types of traffic. “We have to go into discover and slice it ourselves,” said the online dating marketer.
#5. What to Test.
Everyone wanted to know which pages and page elements were most worth testing, and what might not be worth the effort. After all, no one has unlimited testing resources.
Among the laundry list of things people wanted to test were short copy vs. long copy, simple page design vs. complex page design, and “buy now” call-to-action buttons. However, according to the case studies presented at the conference, here’s what’s really worth testing if you can only run a limited number of tests….
(Also, if you’re having trouble deciding what to test, check out WhichTestWon’s report: What’s Worth Testing & What’s Not)
More: www.whichtestwon.com
Filed under: #mktgcloud, A/B Testing, Actionable Insights, Datarati, Marketing Cloud, Web Analytics | Tags: Data-driven email marketing
A great post from Stephanie Miller, the Vice President of strategic services for Return Path…
Moral of this story… For your next conference, fire your keynote speaker and have your data guy present.
Our opening keynote speaker this morning leaned over to me at breakfast and said, “Who puts the database guy as the opener?!” The good news is that we got to listen to Ted Wham, VP, Database Marketing of Orbitz. He’s talented, experienced, fabulously geeky and passionate about using data intelligently to improve the customer experience.
Ted generously walked us through how the Orbitz business works and some of the unique challenges of being an online travel agency, like the fact that they don’t own the inventory and do not control pricing (or know it in advance). Despite the huge database built over an eight-year history, the only customers they email are those that meet the dual requirements of opt-in subscription (permission) and deliverable (non-bounce).
More: http://www.mediapost.com/publications/?fa=Articles.showArticle&art_aid=126501
Filed under: #mktgcloud, A/B Testing, Datarati, Research | Tags: Analytics, CMO Council, Data, Digital Marketing
More marketers are looking to handle more digital marketing work themselves, using their own data and analytics teams to handle integrated online efforts, according to the State of Marketing report from the Chief Marketing Officer Council.
Some 59% of marketing chiefs are training staff on digital and 36% are planning to add employees who can handle digital work.
“Whereas before the agencies had a huge amount of influence, now the companies are going to have the insights about the effectiveness of these campaigns,” CMO Council’s Donovan Neale-May said.
More: www.cmocouncil.org
Filed under: #mktgcloud, A/B Testing, Analytics, Behavioural Targeting, Datarati, Lead Generation, Lead Nurturing, Lead Scoring, Marketing Automation, Web Analytics | Tags: eMetrics, Lead Nurturing, Lead Recycling, Lead Scoring, Marketing Optimisation, Sales-Ready Leads
Acquiring, nurturing and qualifying more, high quality sales leads with less effort is the key to B2B success.
At Sydney’s inaugural eMetrics Optimisation Summit, being held on 22-23 April 2010 in Sydney, I will be presenting on the following:
- How to use lead nurturing and scoring to deliver more and higher quality sales leads
- How to bring together marketing with sales to collaboratively define sales-ready leads
- How to nurture and recycle leads that are not sales-ready based on their online digital behaviour
More: http://www.emetrics.org/sydney/
