Have you ever checked your horoscope in the newspaper and thought it was surprisingly accurate? Or maybe you once went for a Tarot card reading and found the interpretation really relevant? This is the Barnum Effect at work.
The Barnum Effect, also called the Forer Effect, can be described as the psychological phenomenon, “that occurs when individuals believe that personality descriptions apply specifically to them (more so than to other people), despite the fact that the description is actually filled with information that applies to everyone.”[Vohs, Kathleen D. “Barnum Effect,” Encyclopædia Britannica 2016].
Rooted in people’s susceptibility to flattery and tendency to believe seemingly authoritative sources, the Barnum Effect means that, if delivered the right way, people will accept generalities as being directly relevant to them.
Origins of the Barnum Effect
The Barnum Effect got its name from the 19th century American showman Phineas Taylor Barnum, who many think coined the phrase, ‘a sucker is born every minute.’ However, it was perhaps the work of psychology professor Bertram Forer in the late 1940s that best illustrates the phenomenon.
Interested in studying personality, Professor Forer decided to conduct a personality test (in the form of a questionnaire) on his class of Introduction to Psychology students. The survey was written in such a way as to make the students believe that each of their unique set of answers would be analyzed and used to give them an individual personality assessment. However, Professor Forer instead gave each student an identical assessment – a paragraph full of generalities that could be true for nearly anyone, such as, ‘You have a need for other people to like and admire you, and yet you tend to be critical of yourself.’ [Wiseman, Richard, Quirkology: The Curious Science of Everyday Lives (London: Macmillan, 2007), chap. 1, Google books]
Surprisingly, on a scale of 1 to 5, 87% of students rated their personality assessment as being very accurate – giving it a score of 4 or 5. Various explanations exist for why the students were so willing to accept the bogus assessment, including human gullibility regarding positive feedback and perceived authority figures.
The Barnum Effect Applied to Conversion Optimization
Though most applicable for activities like fortune-telling or horoscopes, elements of the Barnum Effect can be useful in online CRO strategies. Personalization campaigns, for example, can use ‘generalities’ (messaging to audience segments) to make individual customers feel like they’re being interacted with on a one-to-one basis. Think about product recommendations made ‘just for you,’ or personalization campaigns that rely on user behavioral triggers or in-depth demographic data.
At AB Tasty, we ran a campaign with our client Sephora that involved displaying a promotional banner personalized for loyalty card holders. Loyalty card programs already play on the attraction of exclusivity, and though the personalized banner was shown to all loyalty card holders, people have a tendency to feel these kinds of messages are being directed specifically to them. Incidentally, this banner lead to a 16% increase in transactions on Sephora’s site.
AB Tasty client Sephora displayed a personalized discount banner just to loyalty card holders,exploiting the Barnum Effect.
In a similar vein, you can also personalize promotional banners, pop-ins, or any other part of your site with personalized promo codes or messages that, although generic in nature, nonetheless make consumers feel as if they’re being considered as individuals.
Similarly, another AB Tasty client, fashion retailer Karen Millen, set up a personalization campaign (seen below) to promote discounted items only to customers who had a history of buying items on sale.
Lastly, using a client’s first name, birth date, or other personal information is another way of using generic information in the spirit of the Barnum Effect, to make browsers feel interacted with on a one-to-one level.
Personalized emailings are a particularly effective way of harnessing the Barnum Effect to make clients feel special.
Cognitive dissonance is the psychological discomfort we experience when our belief clashes with contradictory information. This unsettling state of anguish, in turn, motivates us to reconcile the difference, either by changing our behavior or altering the importance of conflicting/dissonant beliefs.
Let’s take an example.
A smoker enjoys smoking, but also knows it’s detrimental to health. To minimize dissonance, they can give up smoking (change behavior) or rationalize their habit saying everyone has to die one day, or it isn’t as harmful as drinking. The latter sounds bizarre, but shows the extent to which people are willing to go to reclaim their peace of mind!
So what’s it got to do in an ecommerce setup? A lot.
As more and more people are shopping online, they’re also becoming increasingly skeptical. They notice every tiny detail before they hand over their hard-earned money to you! This means there’s even more of a chance that if they come across any conflicting information on your website, they will experience cognitive dissonance.
You, therefore, must identify loopholes and create a plan that solidifies their trust in you.
Wondering what can trigger cognitive dissonance and how to deal with it? Keep reading to find out.
Display Trust Signals On Your Website
As a safety measure, one of the first things online shoppers do to lower the perceived risk of transaction is look for trust signals, some of which are discussed below.
#1: Multiple, Reputable Payment Options
According to a survey published on HubSpot, 59% of buyers abandon a transaction if their preferred payment option isn’t available. Why? Because people have a varying degree of loyalty towards different payment methods. So bear that in mind and tailor your payment process accordingly. You’ll be leaving a lot of money on the table if you don’t!
With fraud cases on the rise, people are wary about sharing their private information, fearing it will be misused. The good news though is that with trust logos (privacy seals, SSLs, or brand association badges) in place you can tell your customers they are in safe hands.
So, which ones are recommended to use on your website? Well, there’s no one straightforward answer. A famous Baymard’s trust study from 2013 states that people don’t have a preference between trust seals and SSL seals, but they definitely show a preference for antivirus companies, possibly because they are familiar with them. This perceived sense of security based on familiarity implies that people simply want to see a trust seal because it makes them feel safe.
To dig a little deeper, CXL Institute conducted a study to expand on the above-stated Baymard Institute’s findings. They found out that familiar brands like Norton, Visa, Mastercard, PayPal, and Google are the most trusted seals when paying online. What they also discovered was gender and generational differences in ‘perceived’ security. Clearly, this means you must optimize for your audience and not randomly choose a trust logo.
Verified by Visa Program and MasterCard Secure Code on the Victoria’s Secret checkout page.
#3: Reviews and Testimonials
By showcasing social proof on the homepage, product or the pricing page, and near the shopping cart, you will:
Reassure your customers of their choice.
Counter any objection/contradictory thought that surfaces in their mind.
Stop them from unnecessarily overthinking the consequences.
LeadQuizzes uses ‘wisdom of the crowd’ on the pricing page to positively influence their website visitors.
If you run a platform like Etsy, it’s a good idea to add seller ratings to put your customers at ease, as shown below.
#4: Money Back Guarantee
Giving a money back guarantee is a surefire way to keep post-purchase dissonance at bay. There’ll be no room for regret because the stakes are low. Customers can return the product if they are even slightly dissatisfied with it!
But simply ensuring a money back guarantee isn’t sufficient. You’ve got to have a simple and transparent return and refunds process explained on your website. There’s every chance these customers will buy from you again. Here’s proof: 95% of shoppers prefer buying again from the same platform if they had a positive and convenient exchange or return experience.
Step-by-step explanation of return procedure on Zappos
Order Confirmation Transaction Emails
If you didn’t know, an order confirmation email has the highest average open rates at 70%! Two reasons why:
First, it casts away a customer’s apprehension and informs them that their order has been received. Second, it gives them a sense of security; these emails function as receipts required at the time of reimbursement and returns.
If you haven’t been sending order confirmation emails, you’re breaching their trust. The only way to right this wrong is to start sending them and make sure they include:
A personalized thank you note to extend the excitement of their purchase.
Purchase details, like the order number, purchased item (with images), payment details, delivery address etc.
Shipment tracking and an estimated delivery time frame.
Customer services’ contact information and a link back to the website.
Amazon’s email containing relevant shipping and order details
Leverage the Choice-Supportive Bias
Have you ever bought something and immediately regretted it, but also defended your decision because you believe you don’t make bad decisions? That’s choice-supportive bias in action.
During this decision-rationalizing process, we tend to ‘ascribe positive attributes’ to our choice and amplify the negative features of the rejected option. Think of it as a way to reduce cognitive dissonance.
When it comes to your customers, you can reinforce the bias by sending positive and reassuring messages during key stages of their journey. They will end up feeling terrific about themselves!
‘Great choice, there’ or ‘Your cart has some of our bestsellers’ is a perfect way to flatter someone adding a product to their cart. It validates their choice and motivates them to keep shopping. You can also recover abandoned carts by featuring testimonials in your emails. It triggers the choice-supportive bias and before you know it, your customer’s back on the purchase path!
In fact, once they checkout, pep them up with a congratulatory, ‘What fine taste’ message!
Another way to activate choice-supportive bias is by pitting free and premium features against each other. The free trial user will immediately be more confident about their choice and might even become a paying customer!
Create a Sense of Closure
Customers love having choices but also find it overwhelming. Even when they do zero down on one and buy it, they agonize over all the other still available options and begin to regret their decision! This is why it’s important you offer some kind of choice closure to your customers and shut their minds off from alternate choices!
An effective choice closure strategy is asking for product reviews. Make sure you time your request and ensure they’ve used your product long enough to write a review that’s closer to their actual experience.
This Sephora email includes a sample review and rating to motivate customers to write their own!
Provide Exceptional Customer Service and Support
There’s nothing more dreadful than dealing with a customer who’s having second thoughts about their purchase! It may seem like all your efforts of building a customer-client relationship have gone to waste. One way you can rectify this situation is by providing an excellent customer service. And it starts with being there for them at every stage of their buyer’s journey.
Speaking of which, here’s how you can follow suit and prioritize customer satisfaction:
Ensure your customer services and support team knows the business inside-out.
Have a contact page easily accessible from anywhere on the website.
Mention how long it takes you to respond to queries. It’s called expectations management.
Do away with canned responses; become more human.
Use a live chat tool for faster customer support and better customer experience. A study revealed that as many as 77% of customers won’t make a purchase on a website if there’s no live chat option available!
Once a customer has a stellar experience with your brand, they will stick with you for longer and become repeat customers. Furthermore, their word-of-mouth marketing will grow your existing customer base!
Send Feedback Surveys to Feel Your Customer’s Pulse
Listening to your customers is the quickest way to learn what causes buyer’s remorse. But getting actionable insights means asking the right questions. Have a look on what to ask:
What made you buy the product?
How is it helping you?
What doubts did you have before buying it?
What was the biggest challenge in finding the right product?
What made you nearly abandon our website?
Was there any particular information you couldn’t find an answer to on the website?
Any other comments or remarks?
Meanwhile, it also helps to follow some of the best practices when creating a survey:
Use simple, jargon-free language.
Throw in a variety of questions, e.g.: multiple choice, likert scale, ranking, rating etc.
Ask neutral questions like ‘How helpful was our customer services team today?’.
Avoid double-barrelled questions, which means address only one topic per question.
Show a progress bar to keep them going.
Ask open-ended questions towards the end.
Test on multiple devices.
Always A/B test.
With that taken care of comes the timing of the survey. Ideally, send it when you’re still fresh in their minds. Their answers will be closer to their actual experience and you’ll be on your way to fixing bad experiences in no time!
Connect With Them Over Your Blog
The more invested a customer is in you, the stronger the chances they will slip into a state of cognitive dissonance. It’s especially true for B2B buyers.
Once you consistently create valuable and relevant content, you’ll be viewed as an expert. Combine that with your interest in interacting with your readers in comments, and you’ll create massive opportunities for your sales team. Prospects will walk straight into your marketing funnel because you seem trustworthy, interested in helping first and clinching a sale later.
You can learn a great deal about getting blogging right from Zapier. They write detailed, informative posts and are able to impress their website visitors.
Wrap Up
By now you know the strategies you can use to reduce the chances of your customers experiencing cognitive dissonance.
Remember that all that your customer expects is a smooth experience from the beginning to end. They should be able to locate trust signals, know you’ve received their order, and that you are there when they need your help. Even returning the product shouldn’t be a hassle.
Also, shut them off from available options to reduce post-choice regret and analyze survey feedback to learn about the source of their buyer’s remorse.
Over to you now: How ready are you to take the bull by the horns?!
Social proof is pivotal in establishing your company’s credibility. Recommendations from current customers cultivates trust in your brand, and prospective clients value the “tried-and-true” insight your testimonials provide.
Here are some quick stats on the positive impact of testimonials:
90% of respondents who read online reviews said positive ones impact their buying decisions.
Trust of online reviews vs. personal recommendations
But just adding a few testimonials to your website isn’t enough. Brands that inspire higher emotional intensity receive 3x as much word-of-mouth as opposed to less emotionally-connected brands.
Unless your customer testimonials tell a convincing story that resonates with people, they will never sell. So, how do you curate testimonials that have a positive impact?
Showcase Reverse Testimonials
A reverse testimonial is a positive review that begins with skepticism. It homes in on the uncertainty your customer had before making a purchase, what swayed them to choose you, and why that was the right decision. (This is something Copyblogger has made popular.)
Reverse testimonials feel more genuine than praise-only pull quotes, which can come across as saccharine and insincere. By acknowledging that your customer initially had doubts about your product, you create an immediate connection with a prospect that’s weighing your brand against your competitors.
Check out the Bony to Beastly review below. Adam begins by talking about how overwhelmed he was searching for a workout program when most of them seemed like shams.
Example of a reverse testimonial
Adam echoes a universal doubt that people feel when evaluating a product: Will I be satisfied with my purchase? Is this the best choice?
Testimonial explains why this brand was unique
Adam then notes what the deciding factor was for selecting Bony to Beastly, and why this workout program is unique compared to all the others (making it the top choice).
Feature Your High-Profile, Influential Customers
People with a strong reputation—whether they be celebrities or esteemed professionals—are often admired for their success, skillset, and expertise. When your company has a high-profile ambassador recommending your product, your perceived value automatically increases.
This, in part, is the result of a cognitive bias called the Halo Effect. According to this theory, an impression someone has of one thing will influence their idea of another, unrelated, thing.
How does the Halo Effect relate to conversions? The logic is, “I admire X, and X recommends this product, so the product must be worth buying.”
Look at how BuzzSumo features the Rolling Stones, HubSpot, and Moz.com.
BuzzSumo features testimonials from high-profile clients
This “influencer” strategy isn’t new—it’s been used by marketers and advertisers for a long time.
Influencer marketing over the years
Check out this article, if you are interested in learning more about the evolution of this tactic.
Create a Case Study Page
A case study allows you to chronicle your success story in detail and demonstrate the true value of your product/service. Here’s how to get started:
Ask the right questions. Show where your customer was before you came into the picture and how things turned out for them.
Include data to legitimize claims.
List your case studies on a dedicated sectionof your website.
At AB Tasty, we named our page “Client Stories.” These stories validate our claims and give readers a sense of security, both in terms of the number of clients we’ve worked with and the quality of our service.
AB Tasty Client Stories
If you’re looking for design inspiration for your page or testimonial, check out Hubspot. You can filter results by industry, location, company size, challenges, and so on. Hootsuite’s archive is also worth a look.
HubSpot case studies
Experiment with the video format
HubSpot research says that 45% of people watch an hour or more of video per day.
Another study noted that 79% of people would rather watch a video about a product than read about it, and roughly 84% of consumers have bought something after watching a video.
The bottom line? Videos are a fantastic way to engage with customers, especially with video testimonials.
Producing these videos can be costly, but the ROI is worth it. Aberdeen Group says that video marketers get 66% more qualified leads per year and achieve a 54% increase in brand awareness.
B2B Content Marketing Tactics
Let’s look at the video testimonial on the Codeacademy website:
The focus is on three former students—not the brand—who talk about their experience before and after the coding course. This is a video testimonial done right. It’s long enough tohold a viewer’s attention and features relatable anecdotes.
Include Quotes That Provide Insight
Quotes are relatively easy to get but tricky to get right. Potential clients usually aren’t impressed by a generic compliment like, “the product is user-friendly!”
So how do you get a quote that’s crisp, substantial, and believable?
For one, ask your clients to be specific. What feature do they love using and why? Do they have any data that highlights their successes?
Featured quote that backs up claims with data
Then, give context. Add a photograph of the person giving the quote, along with their credentials, to humanize the testimonial and give it a greater sense of “truthiness.”
Including photos of customers help make their quotes more relatable
Photos of happy customers help increase conversions
Interview Your Customers
A great example of using an interview for a testimonial is from Squarespace. They conducted an interview with Keanu Reeves (a high-profile ambassador) and interspersed his answers throughout the page, highlighting not-to-be-missed quotes.
Squarespace features Keanu Reeves on their site
The content is informative, interesting, and feels organic—it never comes across like a sales pitch.
Keanu Reeves’ interview serves as a testimonial
Look For Unsolicited Testimonials
…and use them wherever you can.
Deadline Funnel used unsolicited testimonials on their website and plans to use them in their email sequences as well.
Deadline Funnel uses unsolicited testimonials on their site
Unsolicited praise is genuine, unscripted, and without an ulterior motive: it’s just from customers sincerely happy with your brand. These sorts of testimonials cement your company’s credibility and increase your conversions.
So don’t let public praise for your company go to waste! It’s a great way to show the positive impact you’ve had on customers, and the appreciation you have for them in return.
Bizzabo showcased customer tweets on their website
Getting Started
Now that you’ve stockpiled some useful tips on using testimonials to increase conversions, it’s time to start curating! Run an A/B test to see what sort of testimonials work best for you, and don’t limit yourself when it comes to formatting, style, and placement.
And now we turn it to you: How do you make customer testimonials stand out?
We’re in an era of banner blindness. People increasingly ignore irrelevant ads while being more receptive to tailored online experiences that speak to their needs and wants.
A study by Accenture showed that 75% of consumers are more likely to buy from a merchant that has some degree of personalization on their website.
To keep a competitive edge, marketers need to move toward crafting personalized content and user experiences to increase their ad engagement and boost revenue.
Welcome to the world of behavioral targeting
What is behavioral targeting?
Behavioral targeting is a marketing technique that segments audiences based on behaviors rather than just demographic parameters.
It’s used to create very specific user profiles based on behavioral data that has been previously collected.
Modern marketers use behavioral targeting to achieve greater engagement in an era where more and more online shoppers have developed strong avoidance habits toward most ad formats.
What data do you need for behavioral targeting?
Behavioral targeting campaigns are data-driven. Behavioral data is often collected with:
Your company’s web analytics tools
Collected cookies
Customers’ browsing history
Collected IP addresses
The most common metrics collected for behavioral targeting are:
Geographic location
Type of devices used
Visit data
Transactional data
Purchase history
Browsing history
Basically, marketers use any type of data—provided that it delivers actionable insights—that can be used to increase engagement and conversions during a campaign.
Why is behavioral targeting slowly replacing demographic targeting?
Demographic data is limited.
Age, location, income—these are all great factors in helping marketers create targeted messages. However, demographic data is fairly restricted when it comes to understanding the needs, wants, habits, and pain points of your customers.
Demographic data won’t tell you much about your customers’ behavior. Using strictly demographic data is often a hit-or-miss game.
Using behavioral data, marketers can target their own visitors knowing which pages they’ve visited and what they’ve left in their carts. It allows for extremely precise targeting that cannot be achieved using demographic data.
Getting customers’ attention is harder than ever
With more and more people ignoring generic ad formats, marketers worry that traditional PPC advertising and display ads are losing momentum.
A Statista report said 10% of marketers believe display ads provide the highest ROI
Demographic data is used by everyone
Most demographic data can be accessed by anyone, including your competitors.
To keep their edge, marketers should use their own customer’s data to create more personalized online experiences. That way, marketers can achieve greater ROAS and ROI while ensuring their customers are exposed to the right ads, at the right time.
Here’s how to use behavioral targeting tactics to your advantage.
Leverage upselling & cross-selling
Knowing what your customers love and how they interact with your business is a massively powerful tool to suggest additional products to them.
Take Spotify. They track the music we listen to and the frequency at which we do it, and then craft personal ads based on our preferences to sell concert tickets and bring us back to their app.
If your company has any ecommerce activities, then you’re likely already familiar with cross-selling and suggested products: techniques that are also powered by behavioral marketing.
Macy’s uses product recommendations to promote related products based on customers’ data, to increase basket value.
Use behavioral email marketing campaigns
According to Smart Insights, email marketing still delivers impressive conversion rates when it comes to selling products and services.
In fact, email marketing has an average 4.3% conversion rate (compared to 1.8% for social media), according to an analysis of more than $1 billion in sales on Shopify during the 2017 Black Friday/Cyber Monday.
Knowing this, marketers can strengthen their email marketing campaigns by using behavioral targeting tactics.
Basically, behavioral email marketing consists of sending targeted emails to users based on their past actions on a website (cart abandonment, pages visited, newsletter subscription, etc.).
Take this example: Quora’s goal is for you to return to their website as much as possible. (If you’re a Quora reader, you may have received this email.)
Quora uses behavioral email marketing to draw back users
By knowing which pages you’ve read in the past, Quora is able to send personalized emails highlighting similar topics to pique your interest and draw you back to their site.
This is behavioral targeting on an individual scale.
Leverage Facebook, Google, and other retargeting services
Retargeting and remarketing are common tactics used to target potential customers who’ve previously visited your website by showing them ads on other websites (like online publications, social networks, or even game sites).
There are several ad networks that support retargeting.
Among them, Facebook and Google are the most common options because they reach large audiences and provide accurate data and analysis on the generated sales. They also boast a lot of integrations with third-party data analysis tools.
Nowadays, the number of factors that can be tracked is impressive:
Which pages have been visited?
How long were the sessions?
Which products were bought?
What was the average order value?
How many products were purchased?
How long has it been since a visitor’s last session?
Which customers have added a product to the cart and then abandoned it?
Once marketers have gathered enough behavioral data, they can proceed to create user segments based on behavioral traits and show them highly relevant ads.
Here’s an example of retargeting:
Let’s say your ecommerce generates high cart abandonment rates.
You can create a user segment based on people who have abandoned a specific product (say, your best-seller) in their cart and create an ad that will target these users. To increase its efficiency, you can create a sense of urgency by offering them a discount provided that they buy the item now.
If you successfully target the right people, your ad’s audience is now exclusively composed of potential customers who already know your product, thus generating much higher conversion rates.
Although we’ve talked a lot about Facebook and Google’s retargeting features, do not forget that other advertising platforms (like Outbrain or Criteo) can also provide remarketing services.
A retargeted ad appearing on Forbes
Your retargeted ads can appear on many websites, including major online publications such as Forbes or WSJ, depending on your audience’s habits and digital media consumption.
Go granular with precise geographic targeting
Whether you’re selling products or services, knowing the precise geolocation of your visitors (thanks to their IP addresses) can make a huge difference in your campaign’s success.
In fact, a study led by Verve found that geo-targeted mobile ads yield an average 50% higher conversion compared to non-targeted ads.
Let’s pretend that you run a clothing company that sells year-round fashion. Using your data analytics tool, you could create user segments based on their geolocation to advertise for clothes that are relevant to them, given their current browsing location.
Geo-targeted ads can also be served at a city-level, meaning that marketers can tailor ads to reach a restricted but qualified audience. This can be especially useful for companies that rely on their respective offices to carry out their business activities.
Using geo-targeted advertising, marketers are able to create specific, tailored audiences that leverage both behavioral and demographic parameters to ensure their campaign’s success.
Facebook allows marketers to include behavioral parameters above layers of location targeting, meaning that you could be targeting:
People who live in a certain location (radius)
People that have recently been in a certain location
People traveling in a certain location
Everyone in a certain location
Facebook location targeting settingsFacebook settings to target a specific audience
The ad below is an example of ClassPass using Facebook location targeting to reach Minneapolis’ fitness aficionados by using a combination of demographic (=interest) and geographic (=location) parameters.
A geo-targeted ClassPass ad on Facebook
Experiment with personalized coupons, offers, and discounts
Website personalization consists of crafting customized experiences based on consumers’ wants, needs and past actions as opposed to offering a single, generic experience to all consumers regardless of their preferences.
Website personalization isn’t just a marketing trend. It’s here to stay.
A 2016 Accenture study noted that 75% of consumers are more likely to buy from a retailer that offers some level of personalization during the buying process.
Consumers are more likely to purchase from retailers when the experience is personalized
Retail and tech giants like Amazon have long started to implement some level of website personalization (like wishlists and recommended products).
Displaying different content based on a visitor’s personal preferences has become an essential marketing technique.
People don’t hate ads, they hate irrelevant ads.
Knowing this, marketers can create segment-based ads to increase relevancy and boost engagement.
This targeted pop-up ad has an offer enclosed to deter users from leaving the site
By using an all-in-one CRO solution (like AB Tasty) you can implement customized content on any page you want and craft your own display rules based on your consumers’ data.
How to create a personalized experience
Our team at AB Tasty knows how much of an impact customized experiences can make on our clients’ online revenue. So, we implemented a loyalty overlay pop-up for one of our French fashion retailers. This overlay pop-up would only appear for loyal customers and reward them with a limited discount.
Our goal was to increase customer retention while maximizing revenue from returning customers, boosting brand loyalty in the very competitive French fashion environment.
A discount pop-up geared toward loyalty customers to increase conversions
Want to know how it turned out? Check out our client stories for real-life examples of how companies increased conversions and generated more revenue with the help of personalization.
Average basket size – or Average Order Value (AOV) – is a key performance indicator for any e-commerce site. Each time your buyers purchase something on your site, they spend a varying amount. The idea behind calculating AOV is to determine the average amount of an order made on your site.
Average Order Value is one of an e-commerce site’s most important KPIs. It can help determine ad spend, pricing policy and digital graphic design layout.
The AOV Formula
To calculate average order value, you divide revenue by number of orders.
When using this formula to better understand your business, keep in mind that the average basket size reflects revenues generated per order, not per client. This is a key distinction. Online orders don’t take into account all of your client’s habits. For that, we need to refer to Client Lifetime Value.
For example: just calculating average order value wouldn’t help you realize that 20% of your clients make a purchase at least once per month on your site. This kind of information could lead you to set up a campaign dedicated to loyal customers.
Even with these limitations, calculating Average Order Value does help you uncover certain trends in your buyers’ behavior.
Let’s imagine for a moment that you sell scented candles. You have four models that you sell at the following prices: $12, $15, $19, $25. Your revenues amount to $95,000, and you had 5,550 orders over the year.
You calculate your AOV and determine that it amounts to $17. You can then work out a few things:
Your least expensive candles represent the majority of your sales
Your clients don’t buy more than one candle at a time
Assuming that your most expensive candles bring in the most profit, you’ve just found an opportunity that you should act on quickly in order to focus on your most profitable products.
By increasing the average basket size, you increase your ROI and your margin: the higher your average basket size, the more profit you get out of each client.
Is Your AOV Too Low?
This is the nagging question for most e-commerce merchants, and maybe even the question you’ve been asking yourself since you started reading this article. In order to answer it, let’s have a look at the following graph:
Average value of online shopping orders in the United States
from 2nd quarter 2012 to 3rd quarter 2017 (in U.S. dollars) source: https://www.statista.com
The first thing to notice is that, for US e-commerce sites, AOV has been falling year after year. There are a few ways to explain this trend:
Lower shipping costs have encouraged people to make multiple orders
The e-commerce industry has reached maturity, increasing competition
The rise of marketplaces over the last 10 years has pushed prices down
The second thing to notice is that AOV varies greatly according to industry.
These variations in AOV are the result of price differences for goods and services: it’s easy to see the difference in cost between a round trip plane ticket from Paris to New York and a t-shirt. It’s no wonder that this discrepancy is reflected in the average basket size.
How Can I (Easily) Increase My AOV?
There are a few different strategies for increasing Average Order Value.
The overall idea is to invite your website users to buy more, either by increasing the number of items they buy at a time or increasing the price of each item.
Whatever method you choose should fit with your industry and sales funnel.
The goal is to create a buyer journey that’s as natural and full of value as possible, all while encouraging website visitors to spend more.
Concretely, we would advise you to split your client base into three categories based on frequency (frequent or infrequent buyers) and value (big spenders or small spenders).
High level
Mid level
Low level
With your client base organized like this, you can now run campaigns and take appropriate measures that are specific to each segment.
For example, for high-level clients, you could work on a loyalty program that rewards only the most frequent or high-budget buyers.
8 Tips for Increasing Your Average Order Value
Upselling. The goal here is to encourage your visitors to purchase a more expensive but related product before checking out. To achieve this, you need to put in place visual cues to convince the user of the product’s superiority.
Cross-selling. Cross-selling involves visitors adding products to their basket that are complementary with the original item. Once someone has added something to their basket, a good cross-selling strategy will make suggestions for products that go with the first: batteries for a remote control, light bulbs for a lamp…
Packs. Creating packs of goods or services is a good way to boost AOV. Instead of selling multiple products separately, create packs that are appealing to clients: a 3-in-1 pack of candles that highlights 20% savings when compared to the price of one single candle, for example.
Discounts. The idea is similar to creating packs, except the focus is on the same product. For example, you can offer a 30% discount when you buy 4 or more vanilla-scented candles. You’ve got a much better chance of having an AOV that’s higher than the value of a single item.
Free shipping. By putting in place a free shipping policy above a certain amount, there’s a good chance your clients will fill up their basket enough to get the freebie. This is a common tactic among restaurants that deliver.
Return policy. Even though returns are a real pain for e-commerce merchants, a forgiving return policy, at least for the priciest items, is a good way to reassure clients and boost sales. You increase your AOV in return for reassuring your customers.
Coupons. The idea behind coupons is basically: “spend $70 now and save $5 with your next purchase.” The results are twofold: You incite visitors to buy now, and you increase your chances of a future purchase.
Donations. By supporting a charity or non-profit, you can donate part of your profits to a cause close to your customers’ hearts. By setting a minimum order value that sets off the donation, you can also increase your lowest AOVs.
A/B Testing: Make Sure You Increase Your AOV
If there’s one problem always bothering e-commerce merchants, it’s the issue of quantifying changes made to their site.
Let’s imagine this: you change a few things on your website in the hope of increasing your average order value. You modify the ‘Add to Cart’ button and you introduce a new discounted product pack. After a month, you see that your AOV hasn’t changed.
Question: were the two changes ineffective, or did the negative effects of one cancel out the positive effects of the other?
That’s where A/B testing comes in (read our definition of A/B testing). By distinguishing the analysis of these two changes, you can precisely quantify the positive or negative impacts of changes made to your site. In sum: you can test the performance of each new modification you make, and only keep the best ones.
In this post, we set out to give you a clear definition of cognitive biases, why they are important and how to use them. Why are they so essential, you ask? Well, because human psychology is a complex, deep subject that still largely remains a mystery – even with today’s scientific efforts. Although most people picture themselves as rational beings, the truth is otherwise: most people do not act rationally.
Why?
Because human behavior also relies on emotions, feelings, social interactions, and basic instincts to survive, live, and thrive.
Over the course of our lives, we accumulate knowledge, memories, and experiences that help us process information and formulate judgments and decisions. Obviously, our behavior changes as we grow older and evolve in our society – it’s a never-ending story.
We are much more intricate than computers and machines. And that’s OK.
It is human nature to be deeply social: we tend to live with, by and for other people. This is why we tend to have cognitive biases in our decision-making processes.
In this article, you’ll learn that most cognitive biases are either based onperception or cognition – our abilities to experience things and process information.
First things first, let’s start with a quick definition:
What are Cognitive Biases?
Definition: Cognitive biases are psychological deviations from rationality caused by distortions formulated by our brain when it comes to judgment, perception, memory and decision-making processes.
Although their classification remains subject to controversies and discussions, here’s how Wikipedia classifies them:
In order to apply this cognitive bias to real-life scenarios, marketers use various techniques such as slogans, repeated ads and retargeting to create a “loop-effect” in their customers’ mind.
With familiarity comes trust – a repeated marketing message slowly becomes a truth or a universally-recognized statement.
The In-Group Bias
What is it?
The in-group bias (or favoritism) describes the tendency to favor members of one’s group over outsiders.
Deeply rooted in social psychology, this cognitive bias pushes members of a group into giving preferential treatments to others perceived as members of that same group.
Consequently, in-group members can develop behavioral traits that can impact resource allocation, communication, and perception.
How is it applied to marketing?
Belonging to a social group is a social need that answers two main human concerns: our self-esteem and the perception of our social identity.
When used for marketing applications, the in-group bias can be a powerful tool to increase sales, profits, brand awareness, and brand loyalty.
Creating a feeling of belonging to a community is a massively powerful tool for companies that can apply to both B2B and B2C companies.
When done properly, members of your community become more prone to:
Spend more and less consciously – Research has shown that the in-group bias influences resource allocation: people feel better about spending their money on products and services that connect them with other people. They’re also less hesitant about spending for those.
Tell others about your business/product/services – It’s no breaking news – people tend to brag about their positive experiences and group experiences usually bring positive feelings.
See Fortnite’s example of the ingroup bias.
There are various video games that have heavily relied on the in-group bias to increase average-spending-per-user and overall sales.
Epic Games’ Fortnite has achieved an incredible average of $58 spent per user, racking up almost $300M in a single month in April 2018.
Their secret?
A huge community backed up by a tremendous number of YouTube and Twitch streamers that fueled a real passion for the game. This has brought many players to join the game and spend real dollars on in-game purchases that anyone can see, namely the Fortnite community.
The Authority Bias
What is it?
The authority bias – made famous by Stanley Milgram’s 1961 experiment – states that people tend to attribute a greater accuracy to the opinion of an authoritative figure.
Besides, the authority bias has also shown that people tend to be more influenced by information coming from an authority figure, regardless of the actual content of that information.
How is it applied to marketing?
Although politicians also use this bias, marketers use the authority bias as a weapon to convince potential customers.
The most common example of the authority bias can be found in advertising: how many times have you seen a doctor or a dentist trying to convince you that this is the right product for your health?
You guessed it, authority bias strikes again.
This technique is omnipresent in ads and marketing campaigns – think about the numerous “experts” or “celebrities” used in advertising.
If you’re in a B2B business, remember that authority can take many forms: you can target authoritative publications or use case-studies from renowned companies to enhance your brand perception.
The Anchoring Bias
What is it?
The anchoring bias influences decision-making processes and is well-known for its repercussion in price negotiations.
It’s a tendency for individuals to favor the first piece of information received when making decisions – also known as the anchor – over any subsequent information.
An anchor is basically a starting point from which all further discussions, judgments, and negotiations will be formulated. It can be a range, a price, or any type of information. Prices, however, are the most commonly cited example for this bias.
How is it applied to marketing?
When establishing prices or working on new offers and designs, smart marketers can use the anchoring bias to determine whether or not their ideas align with the customers’ expectations.
This technique can yield great results because the vast majority of consumers are exposed to lots of advertisements and “anchors”. It could be time to create your own proper anchor.
Xiaomi’s example of the anchoring bias
In late 2018, Xiaomi came up with the Pocophone F1: a near-flagship, affordable smartphone that redefined price benchmarks for a whole market.
Source: Google
When it came out, reviews and tech-savvy influencers echoed Xiaomi’s new smartphone as the “bargain of the year”. It also became the “new benchmark” for other manufacturers.
Thanks to the Pocophone F1, Xiaomi used the anchoring bias to set a new “anchor” for the mid-tier smartphone market: customers now expect near-flagship specs at an affordable price, even from other manufacturers.
The Hyperbolic Discounting Bias (or Present-Bias)
What is it?
The hyperbolic discounting bias – also known as the present or current moment bias – is a cognitive bias that makes people favor immediate payoffs compared to later payoffs.
When exposed to two positive outcomes, humans develop short-term preferences and are very likely to choose the one that will happen the sooner.
As a consequence, humans tend to make inconsistent choices that their future selves would regret as they have current moment bias at the time of the decision-making process.
How is it applied in marketing?
Marketers have long used the current moment bias to play on the consumers’ wants and desires.
Because we favor the present, smart marketers can promote immediate pleasures and instant gratification so that we buy now.
For instance, borrowing on credit cards is a common consequence of the hyperbolic discounting bias: many people would rather indebt themselves to buy a television now (and pay interests) than wait until they have sufficient funds.
A 24-month financing can be a tempting option to buy that TV now
In order to use the present moment bias effectively, marketers emphasize two main characteristics:
The tangible benefits (what’s in for me now?)
The ease of use (how easy is it and how fast is it?)
BuildFire is an online tool that lets you develop your own mobile application without the usually required hassle: there’s no coding required nor hiring developers.
The entire copy of the website centers around the hyperbolic discounting bias: you can have your app now, without spending too much and without waiting for too long.
Throughout their website, BuildFire’s goal is to demonstrate instant gains and massive savings in order to have you act now.
The Observer-Expectancy Effect
What is it?
The observer-expectancy effect is a cognitive bias defined by the tendency of a researcher to subconsciously influence an experiment because of his own cognitive biases.
The expectancy effect is linked to the confirmation bias – i.e the tendency to seek out and favor information that already falls in line with our beliefs – it causes marketers and researchers to create biases in their own experiments.
How is it applied in marketing?
Marketing (and for that matter, digital marketing) requires research and experiments in order to achieve greater sales and increase conversions.
As marketers, we develop assumptions and hypotheses based on our knowledge and past experiences.
However, many marketers don’t realize that their own assumptions can skew or distort their experiments. We often try to prove a certain point and influence our tests in the process.
By doing so, marketers often run inherently biased experiments: they’re trying to prove themselves right rather than run an actual experiment.
This is where A/B testing comes in.
Using A/B testing properly, marketers can run statistically relevant experiments using randomized samples and fair traffic attribution. Simply put, A/B testing can be a powerful tool to use the observer-expectancy at your advantage. You can statistically prove your assumptions and drastically increase sales – or be proven wrong and move on to your next assumption.
At first, one could think that the variation (=the blue line) would have outperformed the control version (=the green line). As days went by, it appeared that the variation and the control version actually performed the same. Without this 18 days A/B test, one marketer could have easily mistaken the first results for an impressive surge in conversions, although the test has proven him wrong in the long run.
That’s it for our first take on cognitive biases applied to marketing.
Did you like this article? Feel free to share and check out our other in-depth articles on website optimization.
This is a guest post by Michelle Deery. Michelle is a copywriter and editor for Heroic Search, a SEO agency based in Tulsa. Her content has been featured in Entrepreneur magazine. She focuses on growth and is passionate about marketing and technology. You can find her on Twitter.
Downloaded an app last week? Bet you can’t even remember what it was now. It happens to many of us – especially since 80-90% of our time on mobile is spent in apps.
Sure, many of us are total suckers for things that look pretty, but simply being pretty doesn’t keep customers at your side over the long term. The competition is fierce, with over 258.2 billion app downloads projected to occur worldwide in 2022.
This is why you need to start thinking about the in-app experience.
In-app experience is a bit of a broad term, but it refers to every way in which the user interacts with your app. For a user to engage and turn into a loyal customer, they must be able to see the value that your app offers them regularly.
This article will walk you through the challenges of mobile engagement, why the in-app experience is so important – and what you can do to improve it.
The Problem With Mobile Engagement
Houston, we have a problem. Not a download problem, but an engagement and retention one.
The purpose of a mobile app is not simply to raise awareness of our brand. Instead, it’s to promote engagement and retention.
Many small businesses now use mobile apps to turn customers into loyal ones but there’s still a major engagement problem. Less than 1 in 4 of us will return to an app after we first download it.
This is hardly helped by the fact that there are well over 2.2 million mobile apps on the market, with more being created all the time.
The truth is that the market is saturated with apps. So what do we do to stand out?
Why The In-App Experience Is So Important
The user experience needs to be at the forefront of your strategy from now on because aesthetics alone don’t cut it with the 2018 mobile user. In 2018, the mobile user wants a fast, convenient and value-driven experience that actually adds something to their life.
Starbucks led the way with this, and it’s estimated that 1 in 3 of their customers are engaged with their mobile ecosystem, which is the biggest in the world. They also have eight million mobile paying customers worldwide.
Starbucks shifted focus to the in-app experience, adding a forward-thinking conversational ordering system to their app. Called My Starbucks Barista, the feature uses AI to allow customers the chance to use voice command to place an order.
Marriot International Inc is another company that has shifted focus to the in-app experience, adding a feature to their app that lets hotel guests use their mobile device as a room key!
The ultimate point is that, if a customer can’t see that your app adds any value to their daily life, they will disengage with it almost instantly and you won’t achieve your objectives.
How To Improve the In-App Experience
The good news is that you don’t have to go overboard with new features in the same way that Starbucks and Marriot International Inc did.
Of course, not all of us have that kind of budget. Instead, to improve your in-app experience, you can focus on a few little things that you’ve missed so far.
Make your in-app permissions less scary
Our apps need permissions if the user is going to get as much out of it as possible. But how many of us are guilty of making our permissions a bit, well, scary?
Remember that users don’t hand over their personal information lightly, which means that you need to explain all your permission requests. Explain exactly why the app needs specific info. This will increase the likelihood of a user accepting.
It’s also a good idea to reward users for accepting your permission and also build trust during your onboarding process.
Add some personality to your micro-interactions
Micro-interactions are happening all the time. Each time we set an alarm, we’re carrying out a micro-interaction. When we change our settings, we’re executing another micro-interaction.
The problem is that many – if not all – of these micro-interactions are mundane. They hardly make an app interesting!
If you’re not spicing up your micro-interactions, you’re missing a huge trick. Making them more personal and involving is a great way to build a connection between the customer and your brand. This can boost engagement and long-term retention.
Provide in-app assistance
One major thing that customers want us to do better is customer support.
Customer support is so important to your success. According to research, customers are willing to wait up to an hour for a response on desktop. After that, frustration will set in and they might try an alternative business.
78% of mobile users report using apps for customer service reasons. Mobile users are notoriously more impatient than desktop users and they want fast answers.
If you can offer assistance within your app, you’re onto a winner. In-app assistance keeps people engaging with your app, and prevents them from leaving the app to find a solution.
To improve your in-app assistance, all you need to do is add a live chat feature. This allows the customer to chat to your support team and ask questions whenever they need to.
Increase payment options
Customers in 2018 want to be able to buy when they want, where they want. They’ve grown used to an omnichannel shopping experience, and they have no aversion with starting their buying journey on one device before ending it on another.
This is all about ease of use, and it’s something that you need to satisfy with your in-app experience.
For example, perhaps your customer started browsing on your app but wanted to purchase the item in person. You could add a point of sales card reader to your online store to make the payment process super efficient for the customer, allowing them to buy wherever they are.
The card reader also stores each customer’s data so that you understand their buying habits better. This ultimately means that you can use the data to personalize their experience more in the future, which can further boost engagement and retention.
Conclusion
All in all, improving the user experience is about listening to the needs of your customers and giving them what they want. Keep things simple, make things convenient, add value and you can grow your audience.
A business is more than a product. Think of any brand name company or ecommerce website- many offer an array of products and multiple product lines. Apple doesn’t just have the iPhone, they sell all the accessories, plugs, and adapters as well as vertical integrations such as computers and tablets. They even offer television services, and they’re creating their own version of Netflix.
The reason for Apple’s vast array of products is because product diversification is one of the strongest ways for companies to grow and strengthen. Businesses simply cannot last on a single product.
So how exactly do product line expansion and diversification help grow your ecommerce business and increase conversions? We’ve listed 6 key ways below. For more tips, read our complete guide to conversion optimization.
1. Minimizes risk
Almost every product has a shelf life, and that goes for ecommerce businesses too. There are four “stages” of the life cycle of a product: introduction, growth, maturity, and decline.
The launch is exciting and is often followed by a surge of sales, but at some point, the product will wear itself out. This decline could happen for a variety of different reasons – maybe it saturated the market, maybe there’s no longer a need for the product, or perhaps it’s been replaced by upgraded or improved products. When sales start to drop, the chances of your business surviving becomes slim to none.
Even those ecommerce products that don’t have a shelf life, like commodities such as toilet paper or toothpaste, have a “max cap”. People will always need the basics, but that also means there will always be competitors for those products. The next trendy organic toothpaste is just around the corner, and researchers will be figuring out how to make extra-comfort recyclable toilet paper. These trends and innovations will always pose a risk to pushing your basic products out of business
No product is immune to death.
2. Increases market share
With more products, you have the ability to reach a greater audience and purchasing market. This gives you a deeper and greater hold on your current market, while also opening up to a fresh audience as well.
For example, you sell a line of sunglasses on your ecommerce site. You have loyal customers who love your sunglasses, but they only buy one pair per year. Now, let’s say you introduce sunscreen and hats as well. Your customers who have been buying sunglasses from you for years already believe in your brand, so they start to buy your sunscreen and hats as well. Now, not only are you selling more to your current customer base, but you’re also reaching a new market who is looking to switch brands of sunscreen or someone that needs a more protective hat for the beach.
This expansion in product lines on your ecommerce site ultimately allows you to make more sales in the long-term, increasing your conversions and revenue. Before increasing your market share, you must understand your customer and the market itself. Without knowing the demographics of your business’ customer, you won’t be able to assess where you stand in the market and what products your target demographic needs.
3. Improves credibility
The larger and more loyal your audience is, the greater your credibility will be. At that point, you are known for your brand, instead of the products that you sell. Furthermore, the more products you have and the more customers you sell to, the greater your company’s credibility.
The snowball effect takes over at this point. When you gain brand awareness, you get more reviews, and your rank will increase. If your customers are satisfied, your credibility will increase. More visitors and sales will also boost your SEO on Google and Amazon, which can further enhance your visibility.
The more visible your company is, the more people will remember it and think of it as an upstanding brand. The more people that think of you as an upstanding, credible brand, the more likely that those people will enter your sales funnel, leading to a higher conversion rate.
4. Boosts customer loyalty
Customers have greater opportunities to engage with your brand if you offer more products. This increased level of engagement leads to repeat purchases, improved social proof, and enhanced customer loyalty.
Product diversification helps you retain your current customers by offering them new, exciting parts of your brand. This not only increases your revenue, but it also decreases costs. Keep in mind that customer retention is significantly cheaper than customer acquisition.
It also allows you to offer more products that your customers are demanding. You can find out what they want and then offer them those products. For example, your sunglass customers are constantly telling you that they wish they had bathing suits that matched your sunglasses. If you start selling matching bathing suits at this request, you are showing that you are concerned with the wants and needs of your customers while tapping into a pre-existing demand for a demographic you are already established in.
Remember that customer needs are always changing—which means your product line should always be changing as well. What you don’t want to change is your brand, which is what customers are loyal to.
5. Meets customer needs
In some cases, product diversification is as simple as offering product variations. For example, you could offer the same t-shirt in multiple colors. Or you could have a variety of essential oil scents. This gives your customers more options, so you’re more likely to offer the product they’re looking for.
For example, you sell a t-shirt in red and blue. But your customer is looking for a green t-shirt. They’ll go to a competitor to find your t-shirt in green. But if you offer a wider assortment of product variations, your customers are more likely to find what they’re looking for. This means increased conversions and happier customers.
6. Helps SEO ranking
Purchasing patterns are born in routine. Customers are used to Google and Amazon directing them to exactly what they’re looking for. Think about how often you go past page one on their search results pages – not very often, right?
The first page is credible because that’s where customers find what they need, you want to get as high on that first page as possible so that your potential customers can find you more easily. The more products you have, the more search results you will show up in and the more potential customers you can reach. The more potential customers you reach, the greater the chance you can get on that first page.
More products also means more product reviews. More reviews (especially good reviews) make you look more credible to search engine algorithms. Furthermore, product reviews come from trusted sources – unbiased customers. Potential customers trust a review more than they trust an ad or product listing because the reviewer doesn’t profit from writing the review. Learn how to get more positive product reviews here.
Check out G2Crowd and TrustRadius if you are a Software as a Service company for an in-depth look at software-specific reviews that help get to the source of what your customers need.
How to diversify
Here are some of our top tips and tricks to make your product diversification efforts a success:
Do your market research first. Make sure you are making products that your customers actually want or need.
Work with your partnersto see if there are any products that are natural shoot-offs. Your partners might have ideas about what their customers are asking for, opening doors for you to step in to deliver.
Conduct thorough competitive analyses. Focus on markets with low competition and, high potential.
Create a unique value proposition for every product extension. No product is standalone. You still need to run a thorough analysis of the product to make sure it has a unique selling point that will place it competitively in the market.
Compare your products. Make sure that each addition to your product portfolio makes sense with your brand.
Consider the sales and distribution channels that you’ll use for the new products. They may be unique from your other products depending on the target market segments.
Be careful of resource allocation. Make sure that you don’t neglect your current products as you launch new products.
Conclusion
Product diversification is one of the strongest ways to increase conversions and sales on your ecommerce webiste, as it creates new avenues to engage with your current audience while encouraging greater brand visibility and awareness. Increasing conversion largely relies on getting your brand in front of more of the right eyes, not just more eyes.
Product expansion isn’t just for large corporations. You don’t have to own a large corporation to benefit from expansion. If you want to turn your online store into a long-term ecommerce business, it’s time to move from selling products to selling a brand. What kind of products and lifestyle does your brand offer?
AB Tasty makes server-side testing available to our clients thought the Feature platform . This opens up a whole new world of testing possibilities – but it also makes us realize that not everyone is 100% familiar with what server-side testing is, when it’s useful, and how it can be fully exploited.
So, here’s a quick recap for those of you who might still be wondering – just what is server-side testing?
Server-side and client-side testing
Before we dive into server-side, let’s get some terminology straight.
If you’re using a website optimization SaaS solution (AB Tasty or similar), you’re already familiar with server-side testing’s counterpart – client-side testing.
Client-side testing simply means website optimization changes are only happening in the visitor’s browser. You don’t necessarily have to have any coding knowledge – in fact, it’s one of our promises at AB Tasty – though sometimes familiarity with HTML, JS, or CSS can be useful.
This is one of the main things to remember about client-side – the web interface is the control room of your tests, and all of the scripts are running on your visitors’ browsers.
However, the relative ease of use of client-side testing – little to no coding needed – also comes with drawbacks. Namely, the scope of your tests remains largely related to design: changing color, wording, layout, hiding or adding elements, etc.
With client-side testing, the scope of your tests remains largely related to design: changing color, wording, layout, hiding or adding elements, etc.
For some companies, this is just fine – and there are countless test ideas you can run client-side – but after a certain point, many want to do more. This is where server-side comes in.
Client-Side
Server-Side
Marketing + Tech
Tech + Marketing
Agility & Reactivity
Advanced Scenarios & Constraints
WYSIWYG + HTML/CSS/JS
In Code / App Implementation
Content, UI and UX
Features & Business Logics
Web Technologies
Platform & Language Agnostic
More sophisticated tests with server-side
In a certain sense, server-side testing cuts out the middleman – the AB Tasty tag used with client-side tests. Instead, using code, developers can go straight to the source and work on the servers that deliver the website to the end user’s browser. Marketers can still set the parameters of a test up in the AB Tasty interface, but all of the implementation takes place at the level of the web server.
Client-side campaigns are defined in the AB Tasty interface. In the above screenshot, you define your variations, your goals and set the traffic allocation, whether dynamic or not.
Because the kind of implementation involved in server-side is more direct, it allows for much more sophisticated tests and website optimization campaigns.
However, the inescapable fact about server-side testing is that whoever is setting up the tests needs to be fluent in back-end coding languages, like PHP, Node.js or Python. If the marketing, digital or e-commerce team is the one running your CRO program, you may already have the appropriate web developer on staff. Others may look to hire a freelancer. However you go about it, if you want to start out with server-side testing, you’ll need both:
Access to the source code of your website
A skilled developer to set up and manage the server-side campaigns
Advantages and limits
Neither way of testing is inherently ‘better’ than the other – both have their place in a website optimization strategy. Instead, it’s more about choosing which is right for your company based on your resources and goals. Very often, you’ll want to use both techniques at once.
Advantages of client-side testing:
Simple and quick to get started – easy ramp-up
No knowledge of coding necessary (marketers don’t need to get the IT team involved)
All testing data stored in easy-to-read SaaS interface
Limits of client-side testing:
Testing scope is ‘cosmetic’ in nature (shape, color, configuration)
Difficult or impossible to involve multiple channels (desktop, mobile web apps, IoT…)
Advantages of server-side testing:
Complex and sophisticated tests possible, including omnichannel
Limits of server-side testing:
Web developer / significant coding skills necessary
Marketers are less autonomous
With AB Tasty, your server-side tests will also benefit from what we offer, client-side: sophisticated reporting, reliable Bayesian statistics, and a dynamic traffic allocation algorithm that means you can optimize every website visit to the max.
Some examples of server-side tests
So, is server-side worth the investment? It depends on your resources, goals and level of maturity, but some of the following examples illustrate just how powerful server-side tests can be:
Companies that offer a free version of their product know that, at some point, they need to start charging for their services. The question is, at exactly what point?
This is the issue that AlloVoisins, the French online marketplace for exchanging services among neighbors, was asking themselves. With the help of AB Tasty’s server-side solution, they were able to run a one-month test to determine the optimal number of free ads one could post or accept before being required to switch to the paid version. Finding this sweet spot would allow them to continue offering a free service to entice new customers, without losing out on revenues.
Find the ideal limit for free shipping
Deciding at which basket value an e-commerce site should offer free shipping is a big issue for many companies. A server-side testing approach can help you determine the sweet spot that incentivizes purchases without taking too much off of your bottom line.
Test your search algorithms
Any testing having to do with your search engine or searchandizing solution will need to go through a server-side approach: testing that involves the number of products viewed, the rate at which products are added to the cart, transaction rate, average order value…all need a server-side methodology.
Find the ideal paywall form
If you’re an online media outlet, paywalls are probably part of your website.
Though it is possible to put in place a paywall client-side, people can easily get around them by deleting their cookies or browsing history. For a 100% trustworthy solution, the trigger rules should be managed server-side. This way, you can securely test the impact of different kinds of paywall configurations on your subscription rate.
I want to learn more about server-side testing with AB Tasty!
Selling to a business isn’t drastically different from selling to a consumer. They’re both people after all.
The big difference is that businesses may have more than one decision maker, are likely more savvy in regards to how they spend business money, and won’t be sucked into weak offers as easily.
If you’re looking to increase your B2B conversions, here’s a list of things that will help you out. check out our ultimate guide to conversion rate optimization for more best practices.
Rework Your Offer
Take a hard look at your offer. See if there’s anything you can do to sweeten the deal. You can also look at how you position the offer. Are you highlighting the best parts of the deal? Is there anything more you can do? Don’t be afraid to change pricing, incentives or product amounts to achieve better conversion. A small decrease in product price can actually lead to more overall profit.
Talk About Benefits, Not Features
Too often we list the features of a product or service instead of how it will benefit us. The features aren’t the real selling point; it’s how it will benefit the business. A feature is “fast service”. The benefit of the speed is “you’ll have more time to focus on sales”. Use the benefits to gain more traction.
Target High-Quality Leads
Casting a wide net could be costing you more than it actually helps. Whatever methods you’re currently using to attract leads, ensure that it’s targeting the right people. Your conversion rate can jump just by funneling more high quality leads in, and not changing anything else. If you haven’t analyzed your target market in a while, take another look. See if you can be more efficient.
Retarget Your Audience
There’s always the temptation to throw as much money at as many leads as possible, but your best chance at a conversion may be someone who’s already traveled down the sales funnel a bit. Retargeting ads can help keep you top of mind, and give your landing page a second life.
Watch The Competition
See what your competitors are doing. Keeping a close eye on them might give you some insight into changing a couple things to help conversions. Pay close attention to how they walk you down the sales funnel, any pricing, landing page copy, and marketing efforts. Following them on social media and signing up for the newsletter will keep you in the loop.
Have Credibility
Trust is a hard thing to achieve with strangers. Try adding some credibility to your page with testimonials, listing other clients that use your product or service, and consider offering some money back or satisfaction guarantees. A little trust goes a long way.
Use Email and Automation
Put technology to work for you. By using email and automated marketing, you can work leads down the funnel without having to track them yourself. Email out exclusive offers, nudge them to finish the transaction, sweeten the deal, or just remind them you exist. Email is a powerful tool that you don’t have to spend a lot of time on once it’s set up.
Personalize The Content
Dynamic content is easier than ever. If you know where they came from, tailor the content to that audience. You can dynamically change location information, personalize name information or add their business into the landing page. The possibilities are endless. Personalization can go a long way to finalizing the transaction.
Make Your CTA’s Obvious
Far too often the call to action is hidden, too far down, or not clear enough. Try moving your call to action higher up on the page for more clicks. Is it visible? How big is it? It is clear what you want the user to do? You can also try different language in the CTA to increase conversions.
Test Everything
Marketing messages, call to action buttons, emails, landing page copy – test it all. Maybe not all at once, but over time do split testing and try new things. Language, visuals, and offers can make a difference in response. Testing will allow you to find out what works the best in all cases, and bring it together.
Don’t Trick People with Ads
If your ad promises something your landing page doesn’t deliver, you just wasted your time. Getting a click on an ad isn’t not nearly as important as getting a relevant click on an ad. If you want to increase conversions, you need to make sure your advertising isn’t tricking people into visiting your site. Only solicit qualified leads.
Target Pain Points
Every business has pain points. You just need to locate them. Is it cash flow? Staffing? Find the pain points that you’re able to solve, and push those buttons. If you can solve a pain point, you’ll have a sale.
Make Your Offer Easy to Read
Don’t confuse things. Keep them easy to understand and read. If you can’t do it, find someone good at content writing. Your offer needs to be easily understandable. Your landing page should be something the business owner can skim. They don’t need every little detail in order to make a decision, and if you waste their time with a hard to read page, they’ll leave before you even get to your pitch.
Simplify The Experience
What can you cut out of your sales funnel? What can you cut out of your landing page? How much are you asking the potential buyer to do before they count as a conversion? The more forms and fields you ask them to fill out, the more your conversions will drop. Cut out anything you can, and make the process as simple as possible.
Answer All Objections
Try to think up all of the major reasons the business owner could object to making the conversion. Once you have them, crush them. If you can remove all objections, you’ve pushed some pretty big obstacles out of the way. The path to converting them just became a whole lot easier.
The best way to increase conversions is to constantly be trying new ways to attract potential clients, new ways of talking to them, and new ways to close the deal. Try a few of the points above and see if you can increase your B2B conversions. Small changes can make a big difference.
About the author:Kerry Creaswood is a young and ambitious writer from Savannah, GA. She is interested in self-development, design and marketing. To find more about Kerry – check her Twitter
