To gather insights for our next free Internet marketing Web clinic, I recently conducted a short poll of MarketingExperiments analysts and managers involved in our science and research activities. I got an excellent response rate (63%).

I asked what they thought the most significant research finding of MarketingExperiments testing was in 2007; what the most important Web clinic and brief produced was; and what the most significant changes in marketing technology or tactics were from a year ago.

I also asked them to rank marketing tactics for businesses in 2008, and asked which ones we should monitor and test in 2008.

We’ll cover their answers at our January 9th clinic, as well as what you should be evaluating and what steps you should be taking right now to get ahead in 2008.

We also want to hear more from you.

Which MarketingExperiments research brief helped you the most in 2007? What made the biggest difference to your business? What are you planning to do in 2008? What will be your next optimization challenge?

We’ll post your answers at the January 9th clinic.

Please have a happy and safe New Year's celebration, and we'll see you in 2008!

It’s amazing just how much data, just how many test findings we’ve packaged for our subscribers over the past year: 19 free Web clinics were produced, chock full of news everyone can use for Internet marketing —Web page optimization, PPC, search engine optimization, emails, and testing itself. The associated briefs we mail and archive on our site reflect thousands and thousands of hours of research work; all free, ready and at your service, 24/7.

I know of no other Internet marketing resource with so much tactical and strategic value offered to online businesses, so I would love to get your feedback on what you think was the most significant MarketingExperiments Web clinic you attended or briefing you read in the past year.

What helped you most in 2007?

What made the biggest difference to your business? How did it help you reach your goals for capturing leads, increasing conversion, increasing revenue per transaction, making your Web site more effective? We love numbers, so if you have some figures you can share, please do!

Please also tell us what you’re planning to do in 2008.

What will be your next challenge? Will you start a social network page? Create widgets? Expand into a mobile presence? Further refine your present site?

We also want to hear how we can help. This company is all about learning and improving. Let us know what you think we should do differently in 2008.

Our January 9th, 2008 Web clinic will incorporate your answers and share the thoughts of our own analysts and managers, so I hope you’ll join us again in the new year.

It seems value propositions are the most misunderstood aspects of Landing Page Optimization. Usually, when we here at MarketingExperiments ask a company to provide a value proposition for a webpage that we are trying to help them optimize, the responses are all over the place. Some companies will give us a couple bulleted points; others submit a couple paragraphs.

So which is it?

This led me to my third question in this blogging series on Value Propositions

Question 3: Exactly how long should a good value proposition be?

The answer: One short, to the point, sentence.
I think some people here would say 10 words or less, but the main point is just to keep value propositions short and clear.

Remember, a value proposition is not a mission statement or a historical account of your company. A value proposition states WHY your prospective costumer should buy from you instead of your competitors. So keep it short, specific, and simple and make sure you answer the right question.

Easy?

What if you are a company that has multiple products with multiple uniquely valuable aspects to them? How can a company with many reasons that a specific consumer should purchase from them state a value proposition in one short and specific sentence?

This seems to be the issue that a lot of companies face when forming value propositions. They have too much to say (albeit legitimately) about their company’s value, and instead of a short, clear, and instantly viable value proposition, you get an unending tiresome list of products and offers.

So where is the misunderstanding here?

Companies are not constrained to one value proposition.
For some reason, I had been under the impression (along with what seems to be many others) that a company needed to have only one value proposition. But this is not the case. Really, in Internet marketing, it seems less likely that you would need to have one value proposition for your entire company more than you would need multiple value propositions to suite multiple marketing campaigns.

A company with a good Internet marketing strategy should formulate specific value propositions for each of its landing pages. Factors like the specific offer of a page, the particular audience being targeted, or even in something like the season could be equated into a value proposition. If you think about it, one product could have multiple value propositions depending on the specific audience or the specific timing of the offer.

Doesn’t this change the way you look at value propositions?

Once again, remember, you are answering the question WHY should your target costumer buy from you instead of your competitors.

So, with all that said, value propositions should still be expressed in one short, to-the-point sentence. Whether you are talking about a company or an offer on a landing page, keep the value proposition short and sweet.

I hope that helps. I appreciate all the value propositions sent to me via email. And I plan on responding to them all. As my delayed blog posting might suggest, I have busier than normal the past few weeks working on the upcoming Multivariable Testing Certification Course from MarketingExperiments, but I am still engaged in this topic. Two more questions remain unconquered.

The latest data are in and it appears to confirm our previous finding: Marketers just don’t do well at all when using intuition to pick what works best when it comes to Web optimization.

Yet the very nature of Web site and email optimization work undoubtedly includes an element of intuition. Where does it fit when identifying the most effective Internet marketing strategy, and how can a business best mitigate the risks that using intuition creates?

MarketingExperiments’ leader, Dr. Flint McGlaughlin, led the December 5th Web clinic audience on a fascinating journey through the marketer’s intuition conundrum.

The bottom line? No matter how much a design seems to “make sense” or appeal at a logical or even unconscious level to your intuition, you cannot be sure it will actually perform better under real-world Internet conditions until you test it, and test it, and test it again. And that’s what we’re here for: to discover what really works ℠ when it comes to effective Internet marketing and to help you learn to discover it, too.

If you’re not already a subscriber to MarketingExperiments, the detailed brief of Marketer’s Intuition Revisited containing the complete results will be emailed to you by signing up here. It’s free, and you will automatically get an invitation to participate in all future clinics on Internet marketing testing as well as get the latest MarketingExperiments briefs.

One of our students recently asked that great question.

Given that different business models can expect different bounce rates (visitors decided to hit the back button or otherwise ignored your Call to Action), what are some of the top reasons visitors abandon landing pages?

Our research has revealed several major causes for high bounce rates, but first I want to share what a recent article by Nikhil Swaminathan on the Scientific American Web site said about how quickly we decide if something—or someone—looks like a winner or not.

Subjects in a Princeton University study were asked to look at images of two politicians. One of the politicians was literally a “winner,” having been duly elected to office. The other was the loser. Without knowing who had actually won the election, the test subjects were asked who appeared more competent.

They were given 250 milliseconds—a quarter of a second—to make their choice. The group as a whole picked who had won the election an average of 64% of the time. In predicting the winner of yet-to-be-held elections, the test group was right 68.6 percent of the time.

“All of the action goes on in the first 250 milliseconds of exposure, and then there’s not much going on,” said one of the co-authors of the study.

I don’t think it’s a great leap to apply the same theory to landing pages: Visitors may decide whether the Value Proposition of your business, your product, your offer, looks competent within a second. And if that study is right, they will be right most of the time.

The causes of site abandonment are inherently site-specific; the result of failure in one or more of the elements—from Motivation to Anxiety—of the MarketingExperiments Web site "Conversion Probability" formula.

If your landing page is Incongruent with what a visitor expects when he or she arrives—if it’s irrelevant to their Motivation—if they say to themselves consciously or even unconsciously, “This isn’t at all what I was looking for,” your bounce rate is probably sky-high.

Lack of Continuity with the source of visitor traffic, such as through a paid search ad, also causes Anxiety in visitors, causing them to bail out. Closely matching search terms with your Landing Page headline and your copy is a great way to mitigate that.

An ineffective Value Proposition, whether the result of poor planning (remember: optimize your product first, then your presentation, then your channels), or poor expression, is the first place to look when trying to determine the reasons your visitors aren’t staying.

Relevance is key. Congruence is critical. First impressions are everything.

If you've signed up for our free Web clinic today, you're in for a good one. If you haven't yet, I encourage you to tune in. Dr. Flint McGlaughlin is going to cover a lot of marketing ground, including subscription incentives, retail, ad copy, services, long vs. short copy, email subject lines and "tone," etc.

The challenge? Prove your marketer's intuition. Make the right call on which page versions, headlines, etc. performed better and worse in our studies. We'll take a live poll of our audience, share the voting results, and analyze the actual test results.

Previous MarketingExperiments surveys showed intuition was unreliable when it came to predicting the best page performance, the best headline, the best copy in the test cases we studied: Our survey- takers were wrong at least 50% of the time.

But the very nature of optimization includes an element of intuition. How can it be honed to its maximum reliability? Should we ever trust it?

The free Webinar starts at 4:00 P.M. Eastern. Please click here for a secure sign-up: https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/456945309