Would you like to quadruple the conversions from your PPC campaigns? What if you could also cut your cost per conversion by 69% at the same time? Find out how one of our recent workshop participants did just that.

Join us for our free webinar on PPC ads and see what this firm did to revive a moribund AdWords campaign.

You'll also have the chance to have your own pay-per-click campaigns critiqued in real-time by our optimization team: Dr. Flint McGlaughlin, Director, MarketingExperiments; Jimmy Ellis, Director of Optimization Research; and Aaron Rosenthal, Director of Channels Research.

If you're new to our live optimization clinics, here's what you need to know:

• This one-hour webinar will provide you with specific tactics and strategies you can apply immediately to improve your PPC ad clicks and landing page conversions.
• You can submit your PPC ads and landing page for consideration when you sign up for the clinic (optional).
• Even if your page is not selected, you'll come away with powerful ideas that can boost your campaigns. Some submitted pages may also be critiqued and posted here on the blog.
• Attendance is limited to the first 1,000 who join the call, so please dial in promptly at 4:00 to secure your spot.

Please join us on Wednesday, July 30, 2008 at 4:00 p.m. EDT and put our methods to the test with your own campaigns. Reserve a spot now.

Posted by Hunter Boyle on July 24, 2008 | Permalink | Comments (2)

We received a lot of questions about testing and using video at our recent Web clinic on testimonials. Some examples:

• How do I use video to help my landing page increase sales or subscriptions?
• Which kind of videos work best? Short or long? Autoplay or Userplay?
• Should I edit my videos or just leave them raw?
• Are there specific bandwidth or file format issues that might hurt my conversion?

Before we answer, it's worth noting where we are today with video as compared to just a year or two ago. Much like the ramping-up period for RSS feeds and corporate blogging, the examples have been around for a while but bottom-line numbers remained elusive.

For the past few years of testing here at MarketingExperiments, the results we'd seen from video had usually been underwhelming, mainly due to bandwidth. So our response to questions about video was often that "they generally hurt conversion."

More recent test results are hinting that online video has grown up. Fast.

For example, SiteSell.com recently shared that adding video to their landing page increased conversion to around 20%. What's interesting here, besides the increase, is that the video was used as core content stating the company's value proposition, not just tucked away in a sidebar.

Another example is a recent Sherpa case study where a UK Entertainment Brand site embedded a 1MB video into an email and achieved a 50% increase in conversion. They also split tested the subject lines: the email that mentioned the video had a 14.6% higher open rate than the one that did not.

And in our own research, a redesigned page that featured a video testimonial yielded three times the click rate of the control (discussed in the testimonials clinic).

So while we've seen video reshaping the Web in terms of content for a while, we're now seeing more numbers on the marketing side. And now that test results are justifying further exploration with video, and the audience is much larger than early adopters, our analysts are working to answer many of the same questions as you -- including those four queries above.

However, like other aspects of marketing, there are few if any easy answers. The real answer is you have to test and retest.

Much like long copy vs. short copy, call-to-action button styles and colors, or form length, the answers will change with the context in which these elements are used. To find out if a longer video will outperform a short clip, you've got to test it and break down the variables involved: the content of the clips, the audience and its expectations from the page, the goals for the page and video, and so on. The same applies to bandwidth, editing, autoplay, etc.

Before you can answer the broader types of questions, consider the context of your videos and look at friction and usability; for instance:

• What are you asking/expecting visitors to do with your video?
• Do they need to watch all of it to get through your conversion process, or is it an add-on to complement a registration process?
• Is it a testimonial, a how-to or a product demo?
• What need is the video trying to fill, and is it in the proper place in the conversion process?
• Does the video create friction with longer page load times, or by interrupting the site flow or eyepath?

The most reliable answers are specific to the usage and take the context into account. You'll get those answers from tests that are set up and measured with the right research questions (see our recent clinic on testing).

Let us know if you'd like us to cover this topic in more detail in an upcoming clinic. And if you're getting results from your own video tests, feel free to post about those here, too.

Austin McCraw, audio/video producer for MECLABS, contributed mightily to this blog post.

Posted by Hunter Boyle on July 21, 2008 | Permalink | Comments (9)

Probably not. Our research indicates that most sites don't use credibility indicators to their full advantage. You've probably noticed the same thing when your marketing cap is off and you're visiting sites as a hunter or browser (or howser?) in your free time.

When you're the customer, do you trust that long list of rosy, anonymous quotes over in the sidebar, or filling a whole page of its own? Does that type of testimonial influence you positively, or make you more skeptical? How do text quotes compare to video and audio clips or a customer rating system? What kind of lift can your conversion rate get from a review or award from a known brand, like PC Magazine?

Those are among the questions we're working to answer in our optimization experiments. And we discussed recent research results and best practices in our July 9 clinic: Using Testimonials Effectively: How credibility indicators can help (or hurt) your conversions.

As we noted in the clinic, the multivariate tests we examined also included changes to other page elements. However, our goal in sharing this research was to show that credibility indicators can indeed play a significant role in conversions -- both positive and negative -- based on how they are applied. While these tests didn't isolate the specific impact of testimonials, the results make a strong case for additional testing and support the best practices we've identified in previous experiments.

So, science aside, what are some real-world keys to applying credibility indicators and making them more powerful?

• No matter what the format (text, video, audio), testimonials should be placed strategically on your pages to alleviate anxiety; focus on order forms and sign-up pages first and foremost.
• Standalone testimonial pages need to have clear, direct links and calls-to-action to transaction pages. Relying on the navbar tab = missed opportunities.
• Lead with the highest authority testimonials, but first ensure that the application fits your target audience. Example: If you're appealing to SOHO or small-biz buyers, recognize that using quotes and logos from corporate Goliaths like IBM, GE, or Bank of America may send the wrong signal.
• Less is more with content: Keep the blocks of praise compact and easy to scan, with bold highlights for relevant phrases or terms like quality. Same goes for video clips: shorter ones will load quicker and convey the message faster; use a timestamp that lets prospects know it's only a 30-second clip before they click.
• More is more with attribution: Quotes with a full name, title, company, and photo, are more believable than just initials and a city.

Those are just a few takeaway ideas. To find out more about the underlying principles, case studies and examples, plus a live page critique, please check out the full clinic and post your thoughts or questions here in the comments section.

Posted by Hunter Boyle on July 15, 2008 | Permalink | Comments (6)

Today's topic -- Using Testimonials Effectively -- has inspired a lot of great questions from our audience.

I can already tell we won't be able to get to them all, so we'll try to pick some of the best and get our analysts to provide answers here on the blog over the next few days.

Be sure to check back if your question wasn't answered live by our team ...

Also, interesting note from our poll on which types of testimonials our audience of marketers is currently using:

• 72% -- text
• 23% -- none
• 14% -- customer ratings
• 13% -- video
• 6% -- audio

More to come. Thanks to all of our attendees for joining us today!

Posted by Hunter Boyle on July 9, 2008 | Permalink | Comments (2)