What is conversion optimization?
It’s the procedure of maximizing the percentage of website visitors that take the desired action, such as purchasing an item or signing up for a newsletter.
Conversion optimization blends art with science. The science aspect takes the form of performing experiments to determine if the strategies of the webpage designer are confirmed by actual conversion data. The art aspect demands the website be designed by a talented designer who has the knowledge and skills to significantly improve the conversion rate. Increasing the conversion rate is vital. You don’t want to waste all the time and money that was spent bringing traffic to your website.
Often internet businesses concentrate on convincing Google and the other major search engines to reward them with a first page ranking. They may spend huge sums of money to increase their search engine ranking for specific keywords and to increase their traffic. However, in the end, if the traffic doesn’t convert into paying customers the money was not well spent. High praise and a firm handshake for getting a first page search engine ranking may be flattering but making sales is the ultimate goal. Instead of tossing more money at advertising, Internet businesses can significantly improve their return on investment by increasing their conversion rate.
Can Multivariate Testing Increase Sales?
Multivariate Testing
Multivariate testing has become an important part of the optimization process. Multivariate testing software allows for the concurrent testing of web pages for the maximum combinations and variations of webpage elements that have been chosen for testing. It offers granular results and indicates through statistics the best combination of design elements for webpage configurations. Typically, the tests include changing portions of the copy, using different color schemes, changing some of the elements of navigation and changing the “point of action” (POA). These tactics when properly performed have shown to increase the conversion rate of customers.
Multivariate Testing Increases Conversion Rate
Based on testing, some websites have just changed the wording on the order buttons and have significantly increased their sales. Sometimes just an adjustment to a headline, perhaps a couple of words, can produce a huge increase in customer responses. Headlines typically provide at least 50% of the opportunity to increase the conversion rate. In addition, “the offer” typically provides the second best chance to increase conversion rates.
Testing various versions of text is well worth the time spent. The lead paragraph is another strong opportunity to increase conversions. The first paragraph must grab the reader’s attention and increase their craving for the product. Sure price matters, but emotions are a significant factor in the buying process and websites need to focus on enticing and persuading customers they have the product the visitor should purchase.
Describing the product typically won’t make the sale. The list of benefits helps to entice the visitor into action and increases the conversion rate. Images also have a big impact on conversion rates and various images of the product should be tested. Placing effective slogans and descriptions underneath the images also typically leads to more sales. Background colors and the placement of images and copy should also be tested. In addition, discovering the best combination of elements for the order-check-out procedure has been known to decrease the shopping cart abandonment rate by 25% and higher.
Increase Visibility, a SEO/SEM firm, has shown that multivariate testing can also help you discover where the weak places are in the sales procedure. Now you have an opportunity to run a multivariate test and discover the best solutions. It can also determine which page elements are the most powerful regarding conversion rates. For example, it will indicate if the headline or the product image had more influence with the customer.
Check out the essential webpage elements of the successful competition in order to get some ideas, but please don’t plagiarize. It’s also a good idea to test each element to see if focusing on peoples’ logical thinking or their impulsive or sensitivity factors increases the conversion rate for a particular product or service. Multivariate testing of copy may show different results during economic good times when compared to results from an economic recession. For example, during a recession, the impulse element of shoppers may be less of a factor.
Google Website Optimizer
The Google Website Optimizer is a free tool that provides the opportunity to run multivariate experiments on websites and it can be useful. However, without the expertise the testing can offer poor results. The software is easy to use but creating insightful test scenarios, properly evaluating the results of the tests and designing follow-up tests is vital for success.
Multivariate Testing and Novices
Sometimes website owners create a multivariate test that is badly designed and takes a couple of years to complete. After the test is over, often the results are of little help in increasing the conversion rates. Sometimes the time span for the test was too short and an insufficient amount of data was accumulated. Also, if a webpage receives less than 40 visitors a day the test may not be worth doing. The website owner makes changes based on the data and may actually decrease the conversion rate or doesn’t capture all the increase that was available due to basing decisions on an inadequate amount of data. Carefully designing the multivariate test is essential in order to prevent a test from taking years to complete.
Some Internet business owners put a lot of time in using multivariate software. After they add their test elements to the software and choose the number of options for each element they could end up with several thousand scenarios that will be tested. Also each scenario will typically have to be run over 180 times to ensure the data that has been gathered is statistically accurate. They sometimes end up testing hundreds of thousands of combinations of elements and then have the difficult task of figuring out what to do with all the data. They might be inspired to shout the word “yikes!”
Internet businesses need accurate information in a short amount of time, thus being prudent with multivariate testing is recommended. Internet business owners need to realize that multivariate testing software is just a tool; it won’t design the website. Talented people are still required to help ensure success.
Some companies actually spend two years or more to complete the process and by then a superior product could have entered the marketplace or their product simply has lost its popularity. The expensive, time consuming testing procedure can produce results that are no longer relevant. However, some novices that have spent the necessary amount of time required to become very knowledgeable regarding multivariate testing have been rewarded.
Multivariate Testing Reduces Uncertainty
Multivariate testing can decrease uncertainty. Often website owners have doubts about their choices for their landing pages and wonder if they should have utilized some strategies or specific words in the copy that they earlier rejected. Now they have the opportunity to try a variety of elements and see which versions have the highest conversion rates. Depending on the current conversion rate and the average number of monthly customers just an increase of 8% in the conversion rate could mean thousands of extra dollars in sales each month. Some Internet businesses that use an effective conversion optimization plan have increased their conversion rate by 30% or more.
A website that has been designed with conversion optimization best practices is appealing, attractive, builds trust, easy to use, offers a strong sense of security and includes top-notch copywriting. Also, the headline needs to be an attention grabber. If it’s intriguing, the visitor will most likely continue to read and not click off the website. The text should be compelling, tempting and offer precise promises.
After visitors have taken the POA, effective strategies need to be utilized to improve the conversion rate. Request the minimal amount of information required. Make sure the encryption method and privacy policies are prominent on the webpage. If the check-out process takes too long and requests too much personal information you may end up with too many empty shopping carts.
The staff at Increase Visibility believes conversion optimization is a vital aspect for the short-term and long-term success of internet businesses. Basically, once the visitors arrive at the website, utilizing effective techniques for converting them into paying customers is crucial. Conversion optimization requires a wide variety of skills and a strong understanding of the Internet. Multivariate testing is a very important tool for conversion optimization but it’s a tool that needs to be used wisely. Sure, increase your search engine ranking and your traffic but increasing sales with an effective conversion optimization plan is essential for success.
