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Tuesday, December 15, 2009

Why do marketers who engage external expertise gain more from testing?

Recent research by Forrester shows that marketers who engage external expertise to plan and execute multivariate tests benefit from higher levels of uplift. Our own experience has also shown that those marketers who engage a full service model will tend to receive more uplift than those who do not. The difference can be up to threefold.

"…organizations that leverage a managed service model achieve greater gains. On average these gains are two percentage points higher, which could equate to millions of dollars for conversion-based Web sites."
The Online Testing Vendor Landscape, Forrester Inc. October 2009

Is it simply the case that marketers don’t get as much testing done when they don’t have someone external to proactively drive the project forward?

We looked into it but found there was no significant difference in the actual number of tests completed so it must be something about how the tests are run that makes all the difference. To explore this in a bit more detail and see whether we could pin down a reason for the difference in results from self-managed testing compared to engaging external expertise, we ran an experiment of our own.

Earlier this month, we invited marketers to take part in an experiment. We showed the before and after pages from a multivariate test where the differences were fairly subtle. Marketers were asked to guess which bracket they thought the uplift in conversion rate would sit within.

Only 9% of our sample got it right. It’s not hugely scientific but what is interesting to note is that the remaining 91% of marketers under-estimated the impact that this test would have on the bottom line. 31% of marketers suggested the uplift would be in the region of 0-10% when the actual uplift in clicks to booking page was 30%.

To be effective, a multivariate testing campaign needs to test the right hypotheses and in the right order. Knowing what to test and in what order is key to achieving results and answering questions and fast. 91% of marketers under-estimated the importance of the position of price and call to action buttons on this checkout page. Identifying the subtle changes which will have a large impact on critical pages in the funnel is vital to achieving good results.

We’d suggest therefore that much of the value of engaging external expertise in planning and executing tests arises from being able to take a strategic view of the testing process, identifying the most effective places to test and then testing the changes most likely to make a difference.

Marketers who overlook the process of determining what tests are most effective do so at their peril. By underestimating the impact of apparently subtle changes, a significant amount of benefit is lost. Multivariate testing entered into on an ad-hoc basis simply does not generate the uplift that can be attained by knowing what to test, where and when based on a wealth of expertise and past experience.

Tuesday, December 08, 2009

Can You Spot the (Profit) Difference?

In March we challenged you to guess the winning variant from a multivariate test. Over 500 marketers took part and we were surprised that only 4.6% got it right!

We’ve launched another challenge with a new twist and we’d like to invite you to have a go in order to test some more preconceptions. We will share some anonymous results afterwards so you can see how you did against your peers.

What impact do you think these very subtle changes had on our client’s conversion rate?

Play Spot the (Profit) Difference

This is designed to help you think about your web content and ways in which it can be managed to proactively improve conversion metrics.

Good luck!

Monday, November 02, 2009

Forrester: Online testing is a critical component of an efficient marketing optimization solution

Forrester has published its first overview of the online multivariate testing vendor landscape. Their analysis shows a high level of maturity in the market with testing being a must-have for online marketers.

John Lovett’s paper opens, "Online testing is a critical component of an efficient marketing optimization solution in the burgeoning field of web site optimization"

Forrester surveyed client-side businesses and give a wealth of insight into both the biggest benefits of testing and some of the challenges faced. Of the marketers surveyed, 48% felt that the increase in conversion rate they had achieved was the top benefit of testing. A significant number also cited customer satisfaction as having improved. Reduction in the risk and guesswork associated with making changes online isn’t covered in the report but is a recurring theme in the discussions we have with our clients.

Within the vendor comparisons, Maxymiser is identified by Forrester as one of only two companies offering a full suite of methodologies and service levels. What’s more, we appear as the firm with the most people dedicated to testing worldwide. Some larger firms for whom testing is only a small element of overall business declined to give figures. Our sole focus at Maxymiser is helping our clients to proactively manage conversion rate and we’re proud of that and the results they have achieved.

We were happy to see that managed service offerings, comprising test strategy, implementation support and analysis receive praise. Forrester notes that clients engaging for such services gain greater uplift from their engagements which mirrors our own experience at the coal face.

"While evidence shows that testing can result in improvements regardless of the method employed, organizations that leverage a managed service model achieve greater gains. On average those gains are two percentage points higher, which could equate to millions of dollars for conversion based web sites" Forrester, October 2009

This increased effectiveness as a result of leveraging external expertise in testing is something that is mirrored in our own day to day work with marketers. Our experience is that marketers who combine external expertise and a testing tool to create a conversion management strategy rather than adopting a tool and driving it in-house benefit from 30% more uplift. Marketers we work with also tell us that adding test design, creative and deployment skills to the managed service model for testing to create a full service conversion management offer creates yet more benefit by enabling them to get the right tests live and in a timely manner.

At our recent client seminar, both Chris Dalrymple of ASDA Wal-Mart and Martin Smith of easyCar commented that they benefit from leveraging external expertise. A full service allows them to get more of the right tests done and to conduct testing without placing high demands on busy marketing and technical teams.

If you are yet to include testing in your online marketing strategy, Forrester’s Online Testing Vendor Landscape report gives a great level of insight into how marketers are deploying multivariate testing, their motivations and some of the challenges they face.

Thursday, September 24, 2009

Conversion Management – More than a testing tool

The notion of proactively managing onsite conversion rate has reached a tipping point. Conversion management transforms conversion rate from being a figure that is simply reported to something that can be strategically managed and measurably improved.

“It is vital that we continue to innovate and improve online to stay ahead of our competition and Maxymiser is a very important part of that strategy. The uplift generated by Maxymiser has delivered us millions of pounds in additional revenue.”
Matt Douglas, Senior eMarketing Manager, Alliance & Leicester
See our multivariate testing case studies for this and more examples


To achieve these fantastic results, it is not only the choice of test tool that is critical, but also determining who will support the tool, create testing strategies and execute them. The resources and expertise you are able to leverage in effectively managing conversion rate will be the major determinant of the bottom line benefit to your business.

Effectively leveraging a multivariate testing tool to provide a successful conversion management strategy requires more thought than many anticipate at the outset. Effective conversion management strategies require careful analysis of web analytics data and past performance to identify the most profitable pages to test. Identifying the best variants to test also requires careful consideration and benefits from expertise in what is worth testing and where. This can only be built up by running tests day in and day out. The creative and copy to be tested also takes time and skill to develop.

The question of who will support the tool is one of risk reduction; any situation where your agency or IT department can bill you by the hour whilst they fathom how to deploy a free tool to your site is to be avoided. Our clients benefit from named account managers who have the ear of our R&D team meaning we can go very technical at very short notice to ensure your tests are deployed on time without unexpected cost.

When it comes to conversion management, remember to give these areas a thought. Feel free to get in touch if we can help by providing further details of how we resource our accounts to ensure we provide a full conversion management service, not just a testing tool.

Friday, September 18, 2009

Businesses need to use their websites more effectively

Most businesses are still taking a very hit-and-miss approach to the design and navigation of their websites.

A recession is no time to be taking a stab in the dark with promotional activities of any kind, yet, with the exception of some forward-looking companies, most businesses are still taking a very hit-and-miss approach to their websites – arguably the most powerful shop window they have.

In a bricks-and-mortar store, the layout of the aisles and displays will have been carefully designed to steer customers to buy the most during their shopping experience. The high-street retail experience has been researched in great detail so that, not only does the customer fill up their basket, they will keep coming back for more. This means they need to enjoy the shopping experience, and be able to find what they need easily.

On the web, all of this applies equally. So why is it, then, that websites are still being designed backwards – without any feedback from customers until it’s too late?

A sub-standard shopping experience

E-commerce has been a booming business for a long time now, yet the majority of online store experiences remain dire, and the very opposite of intuitive - from failing to include search facilities, to wiping clean forms if the customer goes back to a previous page, and numerous shambolic omissions in between.

The result is that customers are still being bounced around poorly put-together websites in such a way that they are left dizzy and frustrated by the time they shut down their PC, with their basket still empty.

Given that many people now shop exclusively online, this lack of customer-centricity and quality control is shocking. It doesn’t matter how ‘expert’ the web designer. If they are not monitoring customers and tracking their preferences as they move around a website, they are missing the point.

Test as you go


Bricks-and-mortar stores invest heavily in testing the layouts of their stores to maximise results. One thing that retail store designers can’t do, which web developers can, is test out thousands of slightly different variations in a live environment to see which yields the best results. It is also very easy and affordable to do – and has been shown to represent much greater value for money than search optimisation.

Multivariate testing enables designers to be as creative and innovative as they want to be and then, crucially, see if it works, by gradually feeding out test pages to designated groups of real customers.

Amazon does this all the time, testing every tweak to its page layouts and content on its customers without them being aware of it.

What’s exciting about live, multivariate testing is just how well it works. The smallest and most subtle change can have a surprisingly significant impact on conversions and customer stickiness. One of the most astounding success stories saw a leading news and careers website gain a 1,000% uplift in completed registrations simply by changing the structure and layout of its forms. The content itself remained the same.

Subtle text changes deep in the checkout process for National Express, meanwhile, boosted the flow through that page by 14pc. The subtle changes that can have a massive effect on success are all too often missed by marketers.

Marketers miss the point

No example illustrates this more clearly than that of DIY supplies chain, Wickes. Four different designs of a proposed sign-in page were shown to a sample of around 500 marketers. They were asked which one delivered 11% uplift during live visitor testing. When the responses collated, it was discovered that only 4.6% of the marketing experts had guessed right!

This is the kind of thing that can’t be predicted.

What a risk these companies are taking, with their flashy glorified marketing brochures! The most effective websites are works in progress, which use ongoing, iterative changes to continually hone the customer experience.

Being innovative needn’t mean making radical or costly changes. It’s about paying more attention to the detail of how customers navigate and behave on your web site, and then responding with enhancements that can be delivered quickly – without having to wait for the next development cycle.

Monday, August 24, 2009

Can You Spot a Winning Webpage to Increase Conversion Rate?

User experience is becoming more competitive and analytical. An ever growing number of ecommerce marketers are moving to a process of making informed decisions about their online content based on the response of live visitors.

From the 100s of multivariate tests we have run, one thing strikes us time and time again: dull design elements turn visitors into customers. To prove the point we’re sharing the variants from a very dull test that we did that added the best part of £1m ($1.5m) to our client’s bottom line.

Take the increase conversion rate challenge now!

Not all of our tests are dull; increases in conversion rate arise from testing and improving content on pages from landing pages through to checkout pages and all the steps in-between. Our experience of running 100s of multivariate tests over the past three years gives us a unique advantage in knowing what to test and where on your site to best increase conversion rate.

Once you’ve completed our challenge and have hopefully been surprised by the results, drop us a note or give us a call to hear our take on why the winning page won.

Good luck!

Thursday, July 16, 2009

New Multivariate Testing Case Study

Our client Fragrance Direct has just approved a case study detailing some of our recent success in improving their conversion rate. Just one multivariate test has delivered a 33% uplift in visitor entering the checkout process. That’s one more lead for every three that were entering prior to the test.

The initial multivariate testing focussed on the Fragrance Direct product page template, identified as a good candidate because it suffered a high abandon rate before our engagement. A number of subtle variations were tested with live visitors to determine the winning approach to improve conversion performance:

  1. the position of saving vs. RRP information
  2. the layout of stock level and add to bag button
  3. the page viewed after clicking ‘add to bag’

The winning page, shown to the right, delivered 33% more clicks into the checkout, significantly improving funnel performance and reducing the abandon rate of the product page.

Downstream metrics indicate that this improvement in traffic flow will have a significant effect on conversion to sale, delivering an ROI of multiple times Maxymiser’s fees. By proactively managing conversion rate with Maxymiser, Fragrance Direct was able to take effective action to improve site performance.

Jenny McKenna of Fragrance Direct, who spoke at our recent client seminar concludes that “live visitor testing with Maxymiser’s specialists allows us to continually challenge and beat the status quo, driving a continuous improvement in our online performance”. Fragrance Direct sells branded, discounted perfume, aftershaves, cosmetics,hair care, skincare and beauty products.

To read the full case study and see our complete selection of testimonials and references, please take a look at our multivariate testing case studies page.

Thursday, June 18, 2009

Stemming the Leaks Online

Amazon’s web site didn’t achieve success through guesswork and a two-year re-launch cycle. Live testing and iterative tweaking is the key to high conversion rates.

There’s nothing like a recession to focus marketing spending, as the cost of pay-per-click traffic has soared, other vehicles such as social networking have been exploited to ensure a constant stream of new visitors. Almost every avenue has been exhausted now, making it difficult for marketers to achieve sustainable business growth through traffic acquisition alone.

In one end, out the other

At the same time, businesses have begun to wake up to the appalling leakage that is taking place as visitors move through their web pages. In retail conversion rates average just 3-5%; in the travel industry it’s lower still at 1-3%. This means that, in spite of the investment in acquiring them, a staggering 97% of visitors are still not spending or registering.

With the slowdown threatening budgets, the logical next priority must surely be to maximise the conversion and retention of hard-won visitors to reduce cost of acquisition and increase profitability.

The devil is in the detail

When National Express experimented with its heading, strap-line and call-to-action buttons in the checkout process using multivariate testing, it saw a double-digit uplift in conversion rates at the checkout. And when Jobsite split its single-page registration form into two pages, effectively introducing an extra stage to the registration process, it saw completions soar by 48%.

The need for such subtle modifications and the bottom line measures of their success are unlikely to have been unearthed in the traditional approach to web site redesign, involving closed-door meetings of a company’s key strategists and web designers. They came to light following live multivariate testing with real web site visitors.

Removing the guesswork

In conversion management, the real, live responses of visitors are crucial. Even if visitors are polled for their opinions, this may not reflect the way they actually pass through a site. The only way to know for sure that they will respond as expected is to test different versions of a site in a live environment, so that real customer responses can be measured and capitalised on.

Amazon has known this from the start, and has practised live, iterative site development from the beginning, continually a/b and multivariate testing and refining offers, layout and calls to action. At Amazon, conversion rate improvement is embedded in the company culture.

Most other online businesses, by contrast, continue to rely on blind faith in their web development – following gut-feel, best practice or, at best, reactive feedback from small research samples in lab environments. Alternatively, they may spend large sums of money on retrospective site activity analysis, which is then fed into a protracted and expensive complete redesign.

Chasing 10% more high quality traffic to your site will cost over 10% in additional spending - only for 97% of that traffic to drop out without purchasing. By redirecting the same level of investment into improving conversion performance, organisations stand to see far greater returns from the existing traffic base.

The average uplift in metrics our clients have seen so far in 2009 is 43% which is having a huge impact on the bottom line.

Keep what you’ve sown

These are frugal times when cost-justification reigns. Now is no time to leave the tap running when there are leaks in your bucket. Take care of the leaks, and the bucket will runneth over...

Wednesday, June 17, 2009

Convert More Traffic - Free Best Practice Event

We're pleased to announce that we have the following clients signed up to speak at our customer event "Convert More Traffic" in London on 8th July 2009.

Experian
Patrice Bendon “Securing 15% uplift in surveycompletions with Maxymiser”

Experian
Jenny McKenna “How subtle changes increasedclicks to checkout by 33%”

Experian
Jason Hall “How conversion management techniques allow seatwave to continually improve performance”

Places are strictly limited for this free event, register now to avoid disappointment. If you haven't already recieved our invitation by email then please use this link to register.

Tuesday, May 05, 2009

How can you proactively increase conversion rate?

Maxymiser's MD, Mark Simpson, will be speaking at the forthcoming SMX expo in London. He will show how multivariate testing and segmentation testing strategies can increase landing page performance in support of search marketing and help increase conversion rate and ROI on campaigns.

The session starts at 2.45pm on Monday 18th May, see SMX London for more information.

Learn how multivariate testing and other conversion management techniques discover winning landing pages allowing you to spend higher than your competitors and improve returns.

Leading brands are benefitting from a continuous improvement in web performance by intelligently serving the right content to the right visitor at the right time. We show you how to close the loop on search marketing by automatically discovering winning pages for visitors from different campaigns, keyword groups or keywords.

We will provide a practical success-driven demonstration of how some of our 60+ clients in the UK have benefited from this approach. By drawing on our experience and case study materials from clients such as National Express Coaches, Laura Ashley and Wickes, we will show how these technologies can improve your bottom line.

Tuesday, April 21, 2009

Why Can Only 4.6% of Marketers Identify Winning Content by Eye?

We were surprised by the result of a competition we ran recently. Of 452 marketers who had a go at guessing the best performing content from a multivariate test, only 21 got it right.

This perhaps isn’t the most thorough survey but it has highlighted that just 4.6% of those working in our industry were able to identify the winning content from four options. Some preconceptions of what works well online must be guiding these choices as they’re so far below even what random selection would produce.

We don’t know what those preconceptions are but it would appear that they get in the way of selecting the best content and page layouts online. The client we ran this test with benefitted from an 11% uplift in clickthroughs as a result of implementing the winning content based on the response of live visitors.

We assume that, in practice, those who selected wrongly are using some better means of determining the best content to drive conversions on their own sites than gut feeling. However, the results highlight the value of making content decisions based on live visitor feedback over and above less empirical approaches.

Preconceptions run deep, it was the default page that over 60% of respondents selected as the likely winner, which had a lot of text and looks rather more complex at first sight. We frequently see cases where reducing the amount of text on a page leads to a significant increase in performance.




A proper process of conversion management using live visitor testing including techniques such as multivariate testing really is the only process that marketers should be putting their faith in for content decisions that are going to have a huge implication for conversion rate.

How does your company choose the copy, images, calls to action and product offers presented online?

Please contact us if you’d like us to help you make the right choices and increase conversion rate.

Tuesday, March 24, 2009

Your Visitors are Unique, Give Them Your Best Content

Why present the same content to all visitors when you already know a lot about what they want?

In a given day, your site will be browsed by thousands of visitors, all looking for different things. Targeting these visitors with the content most relevant to their needs will allow you to more effectively drive them to purchase and manage your cost of acquisition.

Segmentation should not be a process of simple categorisation, filtering your analytics reporting on visitors depending on their actions. To gain real benefit, visitor segmentation must be conducted as part of a closed loop process. Once segments are defined, winning content should be identified for each through a process of live testing.

With winning content being targeted to each segment, your site will be in much better shape to exploit visitors, taking into account their differing needs at a given point in time.

The segmentation criteria can range from time or day of visit through SEO / PPC entry keyword right up to day of week or any combination therein.

Maxymiser Content Delta is an on-demand solution allowing marketers to build sophisticated and measurable conversion uplift by targeting visitor segments. By harnessing readily available information about your visitors such as the intent given in search terms, their purchase history or referring campaign, you can proactively target visitors with the content and offers proven to be most likely to result in a conversion.

Can you serve the content that is most likely to convert first time vs. returning visitors or target an offer to those who have previously purchased a related product?

Read more about Maxymiser Content Delta and start showing each visitor your winning content. Multivariate testing is only the start.

Thursday, March 05, 2009

Another Client Success - 22% Increase in Life Insurance Searches


Maxymiser engaged the financial information website Moneynet with the goal of increasing the number of highly qualified leads delivered to partners.

Visitors arrive at the Life Insurance quote page after following a link from one of Moneynet’s highly targeted marketing emails. With such well qualified inbound traffic, it was felt that the conversion rate could be improved by optimising the form’s layout and design.

Elements tested using multivariate testing with live visitors included numerous layouts of the form fields and different styles of ‘proceed’ button.

The winning layout increased the number of visitors completing the form by 22%, significantly increasing the number of monetised clicks out to insurance partners.

Maxymiser’s results allowed Moneynet to make an informed decision on the best form layout to drive conversions. The client benefitted from a significant increase in bottom line revenue thanks to the increase in highly qualified leads passed to partners.

How do you ensure that your site effectively exploits all inbound traffic and drives it to your conversion goals?

Monday, February 02, 2009

Multivariate Testing Delivers a 44% Increase in Conversion Rate for Freedom Finance

Freedom Finance, one of the UK's leading finance brokers in personal loans to homeowners recently benefitted from a 44% increase in completed quote applications.

After using Maxymiser Content MVT (multivariate testing) to discover landing page content that drove a 45% increase in the number of visitors starting an application, Freedom Finance was eager to ensure that the pages within the process were effectively exploiting that traffic.

A number of different approaches to areas of content on the application form pages were developed and Maxymiser multivariate testing (multivariable testing) was used to optimise the response of live visitors.

The winning layout, shown on the right, increased the number of visitors completing the quote process by 44 per cent, delivering significantly more qualified leads to the Freedom Finance call centre team.

Commenting on the results, John Pickering of Freedom Finance added “By putting numbers to the performance of page content, Maxymiser enabled us to make the most of our traffic, to the benefit of our bottom line.”

By constantly discovering better performing web content, Maxymiser allows onsite marketers to continually improve sales in a measurable and low-risk way. Download the full Freedom Finance multivariate testing case study from the Maxymiser website to read more.

Freedom Finance were able to make an informed decision on the content best suited to driving more completed quotes from existing traffic, increasing sales and driving down cost per acquisition in the process. Would you like to do the same for your site? Contact us to learn more.

Saturday, January 03, 2009

Search Brings Footfall, Landing Pages Sell Product

Pre-click is only half the search marketing story, effective management of onsite content will give real returns in testing times.

In the current economic climate, marketers and business owners need to take a close look at how they can improve the effectiveness of their websites, and how they can be proactive in the management of conversion and click-through rates in order to maintain the profitability of acquisition campaigns.

Clever use of media spend is only one half of the online marketing story. It brings footfall and can be optimised to bring visitors who are most likely to purchase. However, in most cases, when that high quality traffic arrives onsite, conversions are monitored rather than managed.

Can you tell whether your site as effective as it could be at engaging and converting visitors?

By using conversion management technology, marketers can obtain clear statistical proof of the combinations of web content and design work most successfully in converting sales and delivering customers, and which do not.

Conversion management draws upon existing best practice in the offline world. Direct mail marketers were honing their copywriting skills in just this way through most of the 20th century, keeping the copy that worked and binning that which didn’t. Conversion management closes the loop on this process and allows on-site marketers to learn exactly what drives increased sales.

Wickes recently benefitted from a 9% increase in online sales by making relatively subtle changes to their sign in / registration page and testing these with live visitors against default content.

During these testing times, it is the ability to make significant changes to online content and design without incurring significant business risk that provides online marketers with a fantastic platform to improve website performance.

By taking this action now, online marketers will be able to ride out the current economic storm and more importantly, they will be well positioned to build market share when conditions improve. Over 60 brands are currently benefitting from our conversion management services, all seeing increases in performance that buck current market trends.

Contact us to learn more about how we can help you benefit from proactive conversion management in your online business.