Increasing Conversion Rates Online – Test #1: 31.% Improvement On A Squeeze Page

Okay, so increasing conversion rates online can be tedious… but can be fun as heck too… one of the things that I really like about marketing is just how darn analytical you can get with things.

You can track things down into so much detail that literally… marketing should become an ongoing scientific experiment where you’re always on the quest to improve the results from the leads you’re ALREADY getting.

Let me emphasize there…

… LEADS YOU’RE ALREADY GETTING

Too many people are focusing all of their efforts on just getting more traffic, more leads, more new bodies… which is HUGE and one of the most important things you can do.

But, what if you could get 31.1% of those same people to act on the offer you worked hard to put in front of them?

Well, that would mean…

• You can spend more on advertising to get more clients because you’re making more per lead
• You can work less and make more money with the same traffic you’re already getting

Essentially… it’s like you’re a world class athlete who has trained and honed your body… then to shave those extra 2 tenths of a second off of your 100m dash… you slightly tweak the position of your right hand on your backstroke… you get results… you’re not working harder but you’re yielding better results from the same efforts you were already doing.

So, if you agree that it’s a cool thing to make a small tweak that’ll give you 31.1% better results… lets dive into this months split test report.

Increasing The Conversion Rate Of An Online Squeeze (Lead Generation) Page by 31%

Test Question: Will adding bullet points below a video on an opt in page increase or decrease conversions?

More Info: We emulated an effective squeeze page that other people were using in other markets that was the simple video with arrow and opt in box design you’ll see below as the “control”.  We wanted to see if by adding bullet points clarifying the offer if we would see a bump in the conversion rate of the squeeze page.

Original Version Of The Squeeze: The One without bullets (that others said was the best)

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Squeeze Page Variation Version: The One w/ the Bullet Points Below The Video

(click to enlarge)

As you can see, those two pages are exactly the same… the only difference is that short set of bullet points below the video that give some information about what they’ll get after they enter in their name and email.

Tools Used: (for this specific test)

• Google Website Optimizer (free)
• Dreamweaver for the html editing (not free)
• Aweber for our email autoresponder (best I’ve ever used)
• Hostgator for our web hosting (again, best hosting out there)

Now, The Split Test Results – 31.1% Improvement

So, we actually started this test way back in 2009 as you can see… and this page currently isn’t our main lead generation page (I’ll share those with you later)… but we’re still using these test results on our other pages and seeing similar results.

On the screenshot from our Google Analytics account below you’ll notice a few things:

1. The pages converted upwards of 51% at their peak the month we rolled that page out (why? I’ll tell you why in a later post on why freshness matters) but steadily declined since then.
2. The variation we tested against the original always outperformed the original (without bullet points) from the start… which was cool
3. This test has been run on over 20,000 visitors… and resulted in just under 4,000 opt ins to this specific page… and from all of that the page with the bullet points outperformed the one without the bullets below the video every step of the way for a 31.1% improvement on opt ins.

So, if people say that split testing doesn’t matter… with numbers like this… if we would have stuck with the original version of the page that everyone said was the best converting for their offers… we would have missed out on 450 opt ins… and if each opt in is worth $20 to us over their life… that is $9,000 in lost revenue that we would have just flushed down the drain.

That’s not a huge amount of money… but enough to spend the 30 minutes it took to hop into Google Analytics Website Optimizer to whip up that test.

Why Adding Bullets Increased Opt In Results 31%

I can write a ton of guesses and conjecture on why I think bullet points for this specific page upped the opt in rate by 31%… but in the end… people are curious by nature… but even more… people like to walk up to glass doors more than they like to walk up to solid steel doors.

What I mean is, we like to get a glimpse of whats behind the door before we knock on it and walk in… we don’t like the unknown.

So, by adding the 4 bullet points walking visitors of the page through what they were about to get… people felt more comfortable… and took that next step.

Question: If you were heading to lunch and there were two identical burger joints next to eachother… you didn’t know a thing about either one.  One burger joint had glass windows and a glass door… you could see inside and got a glimpse of what was inside.  You could see people… you could see the menu.. the whole shibang.

Then, next door… they had a brick wall and solid wood door. How would you feel?  You’d run straight to the glass door burger joint and never look back.

So, find ways in your marketing, on your lead generation pages, your sales pages, etc… to give your visitors a preview with bullet points, pictures, etc. of what they’re about to get. It’ll surely start increasing your online conversion rates a TON.

Just give ‘er a try and report back 🙂

To Sum It Up

This test was one of the simpler ones… but got great results and has likely resulted in over 5,000 extra opt ins for our company in the past year on other pages as well.

So, what you should to this week is write down 1 page that you currently have traffic going to (whether its 2 visitors a day or 200) and test 1 element on that page.  If its a squeeze page… try changing the copy up a bit or adding some bullet points to give the visitor a better glimpse of what they’re about to get.  If you have a video that doesn’t have bullet points below it… try throwing 3 or 4 bullet points below the video that talk about the specific benefits they’ll get when they opt in.

This is the first of many Online Conversion Rate Booster write ups I’ll do based on the tests we’re currently running in our online publishing companies.

So, what tests have you tried recently that worked awesome or just plain failed epicly?  Lemme know in the comments box below!

– Trevor