Convert Blog

I’m not going let you read the whole post: I really like UserTesting.com. So that was the UserTesting.com review. Why I like it?

• UserTesting.com has a fair price (around $120 for 3 videos)
• They deliver the videos fast
• Quality is fair for the price

We have no partnership or deal with them, but it is one of those services that just work. I use it in webinars and client presentations to find opportunities in our platform and site. Below three videos I ordered two days ago. This is uncut 100% real videos on a site from The Orlando Vacation Store, since I seriously considering going to Disney World Orlando. The store agreed to have these videos online for your and their education. Enjoy.

Video 1: User Testing

Video 2: User Testing

Video 3: User Testing

Thanks to everyone who joined us at Convert Academy on December 12th for Yehoshoua Coren’s webinar: Analysis Strategies to Improve Conversions Using Google Analytics.

Here are Yehoshua’s recommended resources for Google Analytics:

1. Custom Report Share
2. Advanced Web Metrics with Google Analytics
3. Google Analytics Integrations: Centralizing Digital Marketing
4. Web Analytics: An Hour a Day
5. Web Analytics 2.0
6. Performance Marketing with Google Analytics: Strategies and Techniques for Optimizing Online ROI

Stay tuned for  recording of the webinar if you haven’t seen it live. Finally, you can always sign up to receive updates from Convert Academy here.

Tim Ash, Landing Page Optimization host, interviews Dennis van der Heijden, founder and CEO of Convert.com.

Living in San Diego, Tim wanted to know how Convert.com got started, and of course, why in Cancun.

“Well, I’m lucky to live there,” said Dennis. “We were a lead generation company that ran into some trouble in 2008 due to the crisis. We built some workplace plug-ins for conversion optimization and became a company. We got funding last year and brought in all of those involved, who were living in different parts of the world into a neutral agreeable place which was Cancun. There are people from Romania, the USA and Holland, and we are all in the office working hard and enjoying this beautiful spot. On Fridays we go to the beach, have a drink there, and not talk about work.”

Tim’s slightly  jealous, and the two move on to discuss the 4 pillars of landing page optimization:

1. The standard bag of tricks: copywriting, headlines, visual design, user experience, getting rid of stumbling blocks.
2. Pending third party data that you know anonymously about your visitors.
3. Changing what you know about the site based on your inner past interactions with them; and
4. Behavioral targeting and seeing what they actually do in the site and then changing the site experience.

Read More »

This is Part 2 of our two-part series about the Secrets of High-Converting Free Trials, presented by Lincoln Murphy at Convert Academy on September 12th 2012. If you missed Part One, you can read it here: http://blog.convert.com/secrets-of-high-converting-free-trials-part-one.html
You can view the recorded webinar here: http://get.convert.com/lincoln-murphy/

A good way to define Conversion Optimization is by looking at it as getting to the highest and best use of something. But just like most other things, it’s easier said than done.

A High-Conversion free trial isn’t successful by chance. It has to be well engineered and designed. Here are some domination strategies to help you create high-converting free trials: Read More »

This blog post is a recap of a webinar presented by Lincoln Murphy at Convert Academy. Watch the full webinar here: http://get.convert.com/lincoln-murphy/

Free trials are a great way of offering your prospects a limited amount of time to try your product before they either buy it or stop using it. In this two-part blog post, we’ll dig deep into the secrets of creating high-converting free trials.
Free trials are an integral but often overlooked part of the sales process. You need to identify all customers who come in through the free trials and have a well defined plan for converting them. If 99% of those who signed up for a free trial did not convert, that’s probably an indication that you are doing something very wrong and there is a problem in your process. People do not sign up for free trials for fun, therefore it is safe to assume that they come in with the intention to convert. Read More »

At convert.com, we’re dedicated to helping you meet your business goals through a smooth and sophisticated testing experience. With that in mind, we’ve taken some of your recent feedback into account and updated our tool with the following enhancements:

1. We enhanced the goals selection with additional explanations of what each goal entails (screenshot below)
2. We added two new ones: tracking forms as well as tracking clicks on link URLs. More goals will be added throughout the week
3. We allowed deactivation of bounce rate and engagement goals as of Friday 11/16/12
4. We identified a bug on Friday around 6:00 pm CST and fixed it on Saturday at 8:00 am CST. This may have caused some tests to loose up to 90% of the traffic in that period of time. Your conversion rates might look odd because of that, but all test data is still valid and the problem was quickly found and fixed. We suspect clients affected the most by this are the ones in Europe and Asia, which might notice the changes in the conversion graphs and reports.

Read More »

 CLIENT BACKGROUND & CHALLENGE

Macdonald Sporrans runs several eCommerce websites including Buyakilt.com, a unique online kilt retailer in the UK. Fergus Macdonald, Founder and CEO of Macdonald Sporrans, wanted to increase conversions on his product page and hypothesized that testing security badges would lead to the desired outcome. The greater success in this case was not the simple test idea, but rather the ease of setting up, implementing and measuring the results.

“We tried several A/B testing tools available on the market but always seemed to run into JavaScript issues that prevented our customers from checking out. We didn’t face that issue with Convert.com”.

-Fergus Macdonald

SOLUTION

Testing Setup

All what was needed to begin the test was Convert Experiments a simple £20/month subscription.

The A/B Badge Tests

There are several locations on an eCommerce website where a security seal would be helpful, the most common being the cart and checkout pages.

  vs.  vs. none

Read More »

[originally posted on Search Engine Watch: http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2216887/An-18-Tip-Checklist-to-Boost-Online-Checkouts]

Retailers, get ready! A big holiday season is upon us and an online shopping experience that’s short of smooth is simply unacceptable.

My previous column, “10 Conversion Boosters for Ecommerce Pages“, focused on creating an exceptional shopping experience on product pages, but ultimately, the goal is to get those shoppers to checkout. Because this is the most crucial aspect of any transactional website, paying attention to the details can help you build a reputable and sustainable business – and earn you a lot of money.

So to get you on the right track, here’s an 18-tip checklist to boost online checkouts. Read More »

[Originally presented by Richard Farr at Convert Academy. Watch the webinar here]

Trading Bad Traffic for Good

Think you know all there is about Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO)? Think again!

This blog post will show you the unknown side of CRO, a different way to look at and analyze conversion that will help you trade bad traffic for good and boost your online conversions.

Which Traffic Brings the Most Conversions?

Convert Academy participants were polled about what traffic source is responsible for the majority of their conversions and revenue?

• Off-line advertising
• Paid search
• Banners
• SEO
• Social Media
• Other

A quick vote revealed that two-thirds of their conversion traffic came from SEO, around one-third from Social Media and a very small portion from Paid Search.

Optimizing Good Sites, Bad Sites or Both?

Conversion Rate Optimization shouldn’t only be done for poor or under performing websites. Sometimes, it’s about taking already profitable websites and making them even more profitable. What it all boils down to is not only getting traffic, but getting the right kind of traffic and converting it. Read More »

Last week, we announced IP blocking as one of the new features we released. What this will do is basically filter the respective IP/IP-Ranges from being counted in any type of reports. The rest will continue to work normally, so that users under the blocked IPs can still preview their tests.

Here are a couple of handy screenshots-

No IPs Blocked

Read More »