Ten Tips for Holiday Testing

I offered some thoughts on ways to boost holiday spending on your site in a recent newsletter, and was surprised at just how many people read the article. Seems as though as marketers, we're beginning to embrace testing and optimization, even during such an inconvenient time as the hectic holidays.

My point in the article was that as the holiday season draws near, we can't afford to give in to the fear that testing might somehow jeopardize the wonderfully increased numbers of the season.

In fact, giving in to fear and avoiding such a smash-hit tactic as testing can be far more risky during the holidays than continuing to test. After all, the testing of promotions and content during off-peak times results in significant increases in ROI. Imagine, then, now much more you can bring in by testing during the busiest time of year.

Testing technology, too, has changed in recent years, so that web operators no longer need to fear that making changes, testing those changes and optimizing for the best results will put any real restriction on their daily traffic or run the risk of a system-wide failure.

Rather than avoiding testing because of fear, I suggested that marketers take control of our sites and our traffic by running some simple tests.

Here's a shortened version of some of the things you might try testing. Or, go here to read the article in its entirety:

1. Landing page merchandising

 

Nothing is more important on a retail landing page than the way merchandise is displayed. What products you show, how many items are displayed, whether photographs are large or small, the quality and quantity of copy all benefit from aggressive testing and optimization.

Consider how products are grouped: Try listing best-selling items versus most popular items versus most-often-recommended.

2. Percentage off versus dollar savings, and other promotions

Customers often respond differently to promotions, depending upon how it is framed, even when the ultimate price is the same (e.g., 10% off a $100 purchase versus $10 off a $100 purchase).

You can also test free shipping and with the threshold for free shipping, to see if the resulting boost in sales makes up for the loss in shipping fees. And don't forget to testhow long you offer free shipping. The promotion matters a lot in, say, early December, but it ceases to matter later in the month.

3. Encouraging customers to “act now”

You can often improve conversions by generating a sense of urgency among visitors. Test different scarcity messaging like “Limited Time Only” vs. “While Supplies Last” vs. “Offer expires November 31st.”

4. Reflecting paid search content

Create customized landing pages for your 5 top-performing keywords. Then, make sure that the landing page content obviously relates to the search terms. You might repeat the search phrase verbatim, or reorganize your content to narrow the focus of the page.

5. Reinforcing your affiliates

Reminding customers where they came from can also increase conversion, especially if a visitor stands to gain by spending money with you (e.g. Upromise).

Try showing the logo of the affiliate to those who arrive from affiliate sites. Test size and placement of logo, as well as reinforcement copy.

6. Promotions in email marketing campaigns

You don’t have to limit yourself to testing a promotion within the email itself. You can also carry the promotion forward onto the website, customizing it so that only the people who received the offer will see the offer, and so that they will see only the specific offer that they received in the email.

7. Call-to-action

On paid search and email campaigns, test “Learn More” or “Start Now” versus “Buy.” When writing your call-to-action copy, finish the “I would like to...” sentence.

8. Gift suggestions

Test whether gift suggestions affect sales in your particular environment. If so, you might begin testing what you yourself think will be a great gift idea. Is it really something people want to give? Keep back-up ideas on hand in the event that what you think they want to give turns out to be wrong.

9. Increasing trust during checkout

Test placing confidence information (return policy, privacy policy, customer service number, recent awards, etc.) and security trustmarks (TrustE, VeriSign, HackerSafe, etc.) above the fold and in combination with each other to see if you can reduce abandonment rates.

10. Radical simplification

Yes, cross-sells and other content may increase your visitors’ average order value, but in some cases, superfluous content distracts customers from completing their purchase.

Lost revenue from abandoned shopping carts may exceed revenue gained from cross-selling. Test it and find out!