The Conversion Scientist

Value Propositions: If you have to say it, it probably isn’t true.

Brian Massey, The Conversion Scientist — Wed, 19 Jun 2013 10:36:10 +0000

Apple has joined the posers.

“We love our customers!”

“We are the leader!”

“We start by asking, ‘How will it make you feel?’”

Apple was one of those brands that just didn’t have to say how they worked. They created products we didn’t expect and then showed us the products — with the same style that they built them.

This commercial is beautiful, a stylistic way to make an important point.

But it’s all about them. Not me.

I don’t think this bodes well for Apple.

If you can show how you’re different, remarkable or interesting don’t say it. If you have to say it, it probably isn’t true.

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Last Call for ebook Special – Business Video Through The Eyes of Your Prospects

Cathy Benavides — Fri, 14 Jun 2013 10:19:25 +0000

The big brains in the Conversion Sciences lab have been working around the clock to bring you an interactive ebook about the science behind business video. Business Video Through the Eyes of Your Prospects is a must read for any business looking to invest in video.

The guys in the lab coats have taken their pile of data on business video and created an ebook that is not only chock full of information, but stocked with over 30 minutes of video examples. Let’s be honest; when it comes to video, seeing is believing. And the best way to show what works (and what doesn’t) is through actual video.

While we can’t promise that this book will tell your future, make your hair thicker, or cure the common cold, we can promise the following:

* An explanation of how video works in the brain
* Results of our split test to maximize conversion
* Results of a post test to measure comprehension
* Over 30 minutes of video so you can see for yourself
* And so much more!

To make a long story short (too late!), you will absolutely want a copy of this book. Before you invest in business video, read this book, watch the videos, and create a video strategy based on what will really work. Get the most out of your video budget by focusing on the video that’s going to have the best ROI.

And if that isn’t incentive enough, order now to get $100 off. This offer is limited, so order now instead of later.

Conversion Optimization Maturity Model [Infograph]

Brian Massey, The Conversion Scientist — Wed, 12 Jun 2013 22:12:07 +0000

Maturity Models were all the rage at Conversion Conference Chicago 2013, but they can make you feel like you’re living with your marketing parents — immature.

Don’t feel bad. We didn’t get a perfect score and we do this for a living (see below for how we score).

Maturity models aren’t a way to judge you and your inadequacies. Maturity models are ways to identify your strengths and plan to build on them.

Both Tim Ash of Sitetuners and Michael Parizek of avast! put forward maturity models for us, and I was on hand to capture Michael’s presentation using my innovative Instagraph (instant infograph) technique.

The Content Maturity Model presented by Michael Parizek of avast!

So, how does Conversion Sciences score on the model? Parizek identified seven criteria in his maturity model.

People

This is an area that we feel strongly about at Conversion Sciences. We have an experienced Conversion Scientist doing the work for every business that hires us. We like to say, “You’ll be working with ‘The Guys’.” We would benefit from some more formal methods as we grow our lab staff, both in number and in capabilities.

Score: 4 out of 5

Tools

It is a golden age of conversion tools. There are lots of ways to measure sites, complete tests, and even spy on your competitors. We score highly on this because these tools exist for us to build on.

Score: 4 out of 5

Knowledge

How you manage what you learn from your testing is perhaps the biggest challenge. For most of us, means it stays in the heads of our optimization team. But what happens when there is turnover? Maintaining personas as a living representative of what you know about your customers is a great way to preserve knowledge.

Score: 3 out of 5

Activities

What do you do first? We generate a list of hypotheses based on your analytics, chat transcripts, reviews and interviews with customer-facing employees. Then we rank them in a similar way to Parizek’s model, but with more endices. You may like his simple graph of Impact vs. Feasibility for prioritizing ideas.

Score: 5 out of 5

Processes

Our Conversion Catalyst process that works for businesses in almost any industry. It is a thorough front-end evaluation followed by a fast-test process. Our goal is to find winners on your site within 120 days.

However, this process isn’t effective in slower-moving environments and in situations where wins on the website aren’t closely tied to bottom-line revenue.

Score: 4 out of 5

Testing

We use a test cycle approach. If one of our test hypotheses is a winner, we do another set of tests to see if we can get it even better. If a test is a loser, we can test something else.

This cycle gives us the freedom to find promising rabbit holes and follow them all the way to Wonderland.

Score: 4 out of 5

Sponsors

The key to success is always having a strong internal sponsor at our clients with the authority to get things done. We know how to make this individual a hero. We don’t move forward without this commitment from our clients.

Score: It depends

How do you score on each of these?

Which ones are you working on next?

Let us know in the comments.

Get a Free Chapter
I've written a tell-all with juicy details about how to run a high-converting website. Become a friend of the author for free chapters and bonus content from Your Customer Creation Equation: Unexpected Website Formulas of the Conversion Scientist.

New eBook – Business Video Through The Eyes of Your Prospects

Cathy Benavides — Wed, 29 May 2013 11:39:59 +0000

Everyone is excited about “whiteboard” video, in which concepts are drawn at super-high speed on a whiteboard to explain or sell what you offer.

But Whiteboard video is not cheap, and the geek scientists here a Conversion Sciences wanted to learn if whiteboard video was worth the extra price.

First, we used an eye-tracking camera to see how people watch whiteboard video. Watch the incredible video we made that tracks viewers’ eyes as the watch whiteboard video.

But, we didn’t stop there.

We did the same for “talking head” video and for “webinar” or “slide” video. These are the three most common forms of business video.

You’re going to be surprised at what we discovered.

We also did a split test of these kinds of videos to see which would generate the most conversions in a business setting.

Don’t invest in video until you’ve read “Business Video Through the Eyes of Your Prospects.”

This interactive PDF book includes all of the eye-tracking videos and more.

* An explanation of how video works in the brain
* Results of our split test to maximize conversion
* Results of a post test to measure comprehension
* Over 30 minutes of video so you can see for yourself

This extraordinary ebook will save you from investing $5000, $10,000 or more in the wrong video. Watch the whiteboard video and then get instant access to the Business Video Through the Eyes of Your Prospects.

Video can significantly improve your conversion rates and revenue. The wrong video can do the opposite. Avoid expensive video pitfalls with this interactive eBook.

Big Testing is Better Than Big Data – For Further Study

Cathy Benavides — Wed, 22 May 2013 11:30:00 +0000

Big Data is Good—But Big Testing is Better | Chief Marketer

@chiefmartec “out of 12,000 experiments that Google ran in 2009, only about 10% of them resulted in adopted changes.” You are not Google. But you must realize that in every industry, an online leader is going to emerge, and it will be the company that adopts a testing culture.

Intuition is no longer your friend. Your intuition cannot comprehend the variety of ways our visitors are coming at us. Data and testing are your friends, or your online audience will continue to abandon you.

Get excited about testing and taking that leadership role in your marketplace.

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Critiquing a College Break Landing Page with CrazyEgg

Cathy Benavides — Wed, 15 May 2013 11:51:49 +0000

It’s graduation time and you know what that means; summer vacation! This is the perfect time for students to travel before getting back to school next semester or starting their careers. The big, bouncy brains over at CrazyEgg did a search for “best graduation getaway” and came up with this landing page to critique.

What do you think?

Brian is among the four conversion experts that were asked to give their thoughts on the good points of this page as well as the areas that could use improvement. What did he have to say? Well I won’t give it all away, but I will tell you this; college kids are lazy, and hassle-free is an attractive promise.

For Brian’s thoughts on this landing page, as well as the other three experts, check out the entire article on CrazyEgg.

Thanks to CrazyEgg for inviting Brian to be a part of this post!

Who Should Consider Crowdsourced Conversion Optimization?

Megan Swicegood — Thu, 09 May 2013 14:30:44 +0000

This is a guest post by Hagi Erez, Founder/COO Pluralis.

CMOs and CRO professionals all know the challenges and the extensive resources (both financial and human) that are involved in building the ultimate landing page — the one that doesn’t stop converting.

I said, “Why not build a community of professional optimizers, via the power of crowdsourcing, to work on these pages and optimize them? We can then gamify it by pitting the best copies in a contest-type scenario against each other and award a prize for the highest converting copy.”

No matter what type of business, the constant unknown is that you don’t know what will to work until you try it, test, and then retest. The pages you think will convert the highest, in reality, might convert the poorest and vice versa. If you keep hitting this conversion wall, your only option is to test another idea, and there are many creative ideas from different conversion experts to choose from. This is the core idea behind Pluralis.

It is statements like the one below that inspire me to continue building the Pluralis platform, making it as user friendly and intuitive as it can be.

US B2B ECOMMERCE SALES TO REACH $559 BILLION BY THE END OF 2013

- Forrester Research

Pluralis is crowdsourcing the art of conversion optimization through a network of global optimization experts. The platform provides these CRO aficionados with an intuitive and user friendly platform, whereby they can make changes as they see fit and the contest holders can provide feedback on the copies that have been submitted.

Pluralis is all about equal opportunities. For online businesses, it is a sure win because of the low risk and great benefits they receive by realizing higher conversion rates. It is a win for the creative optimizers in the Pluralis community who are granted a cash reward while lifting not only rates but their CRO confidence level.

By using their good eye and knowledge of what it takes to make a landing page convert, the creative optimizers in the Pluralis community can optimize the page as they see fit and be in the running to not only win large cash prizes. They can also use it as their own virtual conversion playground to hone skills and market themselves through hard work.

Small businesses might not have the resources (time or financial) to hire teams of copywriters and designers, go over revisions, approve drafts, make changes, test and then go through the entire process all over again. Sometimes, all it takes is a few small changes to boost conversion rates well above 20%. Upon conclusion of testing, the optimizer with the winning page would win a client-specified reward based on their page’ percentage level of lift over the control page (the baseline).

Testing is another area that can prove quite costly for a company and is based more on what a business thinks might work than what actually does. For companies that have many landing pages to test, this is also a huge cost to consider.

Via crowdsourcing CRO efforts, small and medium-sized businesses can now compete with the larger and richer companies to do professional LPO (Landing Page Optimization), and they can do it without paying tens of thousands of dollars. Moreover – they pay for results and not efforts. If there is no lift, businesses are not obliged to pay and can even relaunch the contest at no extra charge.

The entire crowdsourcing concept for businesses is so attractive as they now have access to the skills of global communities. It creates competition.

Successful companies such as 99designs are the perfect example of this trend. By creating a marketplace of those who need design work and those who can answer their needs, 99designs’ solution promotes competition, where anyone can join and be in the running for a prize.

The power of the crowd has the ability take your business higher whether it is for composing a jingle, building a website or optimizing your landing pages. Welcome to the New and Improved Internet Revolution.

Hagi Erez, Founder/COO Pluralis

Which Test Won Live Event This Week!

Cathy Benavides — Tue, 07 May 2013 16:32:40 +0000

The Conversion Sciences team is packing up the coffee cup beakers and the lab coats and heading to downtown Austin for the Which Test Won Live Event happening this Thursday and Friday. We know you have a few questions, so here’s the rundown.

What is Which Test Won Live?

“WhichTestWon’s The Live Event is the most advanced — and practical — show of 2013 for digital marketers who care about conversion rate optimization (CRO). Be inspired by 17 new Case Studies, create a hands-on testing plan for your site at 11 exclusive workshops, and then network (and party) with your peers.“

Sounds cool! What will the Conversion Sciences Team be doing there?

Our usual mix of mayhem and useful information of course! Come by our booth in the exhibit hall for a first crack at our new ebook Business Video Through the Eyes of Your Prospects. Thursday is the official launch, so stop by for specials and maybe a giveaway or two. We’ll also be doing live site critiques at the top of every hour. Step up for a critique or just watch as the Conversion Scientist gives real live businesses the skinny on what’s working (and what’s not) on their site.

I have to be there! How do I get a ticket?

Head over the Which Test Won Live site to get a ticket. We can promise you will not be disappointed. Remember, it’s this Thursday and Friday May 9th and 10th at the Austin Music Hall. We hope to see you there!

You can still pre-order a copy of Business Video Through the Eyes of Your Prospects for a special discount. Get yours reserved today!

Strategic Use of Ebooks and the Science of Color in Marketing – For Further Study

Cathy Benavides — Mon, 06 May 2013 19:06:14 +0000

How to Use Ebooks Strategically and Reach Your Content Marketing Goals | Copyblogger

This article on ebooks comes at an important time at Conversion Sciences as we put the final touches on a unique ebook of our own (preorder Business Video Through the Eyes of Your Prospects).

Content is the way you charge and release the power stored in your marketing batteries (customer lists, email lists, social media networks).

And don’t forget that ebooks now outsell print books.

Why Facebook is blue: The science of colors in marketing – The Buffer Blog

If color is your concern, here are some guidelines and some dazzling graphics. However, don’t overthink color. The comments offer some sobering thoughts on the effect of color on success.

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UX Design for Form Validation and Visitor Personas – For Further Study

Cathy Benavides — Fri, 26 Apr 2013 11:45:26 +0000

The Ultimate UX Design of Form Validation – Designmodo

Forms are a key component of Landing Pages (in addition to Offer, Image, Trust and Proof). When a visitor considers completing a form — for lead gen, to subscribe or to purchase — it is the moment of truth.

So, it is sad that so many forms work to chase these ready customers and prospects away.

This article will give you some things to consider as you guide development of your website forms in these areas:

Right time of informing about problems/success

Right place for validation messages

Right color

Clear language

Visitor Personas and Video Games | Orbit Media

@crestodina I spoke at the Conversion Conference #convcon this week about flipping your message according to your Web visitor. This can be applied to subject lines, search ads, display ads and landing pages.

One of the most powerful “flips” is between the four kind of visitors outlined by Bryan and Jeffrey Eisenberg in their book Waiting for Your Cat to Bark?.

Here is a creative twist on the four kinds of visitors you’ll encounter on your website: video game characters.

Is the page, post or email you’re working on right now targeting Frogger or Mario or Galaga or PacMan?

It should.

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