Paul Cheney says, “I’m here at the MECLABS Landing Page Optimization Certification Course on the last day of the 2017 MarketingSherpa Summit. In the second session today, Flint McGlaughlin, Managing Director, MECLABS, lectured on the value proposition. “A value proposition is an ultimate reason,” he said. “It is the answer to the question posed in the customer’s mind, ‘If I am the ideal customer, why should I purchase from your organization rather than any of your competitors?’” If the answer to that question is not an ultimate reason, your business or product does not... [...]

Daniel Burstein says, “If you’re engaged in landing page optimization, step back from the analytics for a moment and ask yourself a bigger question — why do we have a landing page in the first place? Sure, you’re selling stuff. Getting leads. Achieving a conversion. Blah blah blah. Yes, that is all true. But, all of those objectives have a fundamental similarity. The objective of a landing page is to help a customer make a decision And yes, that objective usually skews towards the get them to buy/donate to/download something. But by taking a customer-first marketing approach to your... [...]

Daniel Burstein says, “Engaging in conversion optimization requires making a modification of some sort to improve conversion. But, what if there are steps in your customers’ buying journey that you can’t control? For example, we often hear from marketers that they don’t really have the time or resources to change their shopping cart in significant ways to improve conversion. Or, if you’re in affiliate marketing, channel marketing, or simply have a go-to-market partner, you might control the beginning of the funnel but have no control over the final conversion. Perhaps you sell a product... [...]

Paul Cheney says, “Yes, yes. 2016 was a bad year. We get it. But it wasn’t all bad. We published some fairly exciting stuff here on MarketingExperiments. It was so exciting that a good portion of our audience found the time to share it with their followers. Just these five pieces from 2016 were shared 1,435 times. Read on to view what our audience felt were the top five most shareworthy pieces in 2016. #1: How Does Page Load Time Affect Conversion Rate? New Research Shows Significant Correlation Most marketers understand that a slow page produces low conversion rates. But how significant... [...]

Courtney Eckerle says, ““Management is doing things right; leadership is doing the right things,” according to Peter Drucker. Flint McGlaughlin, CEO, MECLABS Institute (parent company of MarketingExperiments), quoted this when asked what digital marketers should consider when planning yearly budgets. It’s a fantastic reference because it may just be a good idea to line the walls with Drucker quotes when furiously planning (and re-planning) yearly budgets: “Knowledge has to be improved, challenged, and increased constantly, or it vanishes.” “The best way to predict your future... [...]

Daniel Burstein says, “Websites are more than digital images and copy. Websites are relationships with people. And if we seek to influence behavior, we need to understand and respect that relationship. All sales begin with customer understanding As with any relationship, it begins with an understanding of who the other party in the relationship is, what they want, and what they get out of the relationship. In this case, that is the customer. So before one pixel is even coded on a website, the goal should be to understand what the customer needs and wants, and then the question becomes —... [...]

Paul Cheney says, “Best practices on the internet are often just pooled ignorance. Rotating sliders (or banners) are considered one of these so-called “best practices” by many. It’s one thing if you’re using them for page views, but quite another when using them for a conversion-focused landing page. In this video, Flint McGlaughlin, CEO, MarketingExperiments, discusses how Robert from TransUnion can optimize the first four to six inches of the company’s landing page, including how to use the space currently devoted to a rotating slider”. Do Rotating Sliders Work? Optimizing... [...]

Paul Cheney says, “A clear value proposition is at the heart of any business. But in the ecommerce space, where commodities are much more common, it’s incredibly difficult to compete and also be clear about the value your product brings to the market. In this eight-minute video, Flint McGlaughlin optimizes a page submitted by Ruby of Armstrong Ceiling Solutions and talks mainly about how this page, and pages like it across the industry, can benefit from a clear, compelling value proposition. You might also like: Homepage Optimization: 5 Marketing blind spots that inhibit conversion (and... [...]

Brian Street says, “What can Where’s Waldo, the lovable children’s book series of the ‘90s, teach us about designing better page layouts? A lot, it turns out. In UX, we use different page layouts to help organize information and guide the users’ eye path. The “F” pattern, for instance, is commonly used for article heavy sites to guide the users’ eye path downward while supporting headline scanning. Reddit, Google News and Buzzfeed all use the “F” pattern layout. One of the earliest layout patterns, and the one still most commonly used today, is the Gutenberg diagram. Originally... [...]

Paul Cheney says, “We talk a lot about a/b testing here on MarketingExperiments. What we don’t usually talk about is a/b testing for the mobile web…especially testing within mobile apps. I thought we should change that. As I was scouring the web looking for mobile a/b tests, I found this 2-year old video by Amazon. Apparently, Amazon Web Services (AWS) at one point had an a/b testing feature that is now closed . When they had testing, however, one app developer used it extensively and shared their experiences in a promotional video for the feature on Amazon. The developers were behind... [...]