ConversionCast Ep. 1.9: Need Higher Conversions? Try using a Split Test

Tim: Previously on the all new ConversionCast.

Josh: If you’re running a lot of low value ill-informed test, you’re never going to produce a win and the time you’re spending testing isn’t going to produce any wins for your business. So I think filling your cue with really solid hypothesis is the first start because then that way every test you do has a better chance of having an impact. It’s important to have good tests going into cue.

Tim: This is the conversion journey in 13 parts as told by the LeadPages team. In this all new series, you’ll hear what we do each day at LeadPages to find, convert and keep our customers. I’m Tim Paige and this is the all new ConversionCast.

Last time we got a chance to talk a little bit about market level sophistication and finding out how sophisticated your market is, where your customers are in their journey, whether they’re looking for a vague solution or a specific problem to a specific solution and the clear products that they’re looking for to solve that problem.

Today though, we’re going to go deep into specific tactic to find out what is going to work with your pricing on your sales pages and to do that on episode 9, we’ve brought back Josh Braaten, our director of customer acquisition and so Josh we’re going to be talking about one specific thing on the pricing page today. Can you tell us first what were the results from the case study we’ll be talking about?

Josh: Yeah, absolutely so the results were 5% increase in average order value with the 6% increase in overall conversion rates.

Tim: Nice, okay perfect and I think without going too deep into it because we got a chance to talk about that last episode. What does that mean that you are the director of customer acquisition?

Josh: Sure, so I just helped to support all of our various marking channels and help execute the vision of that product and Clay set for the company.

Tim: Awesome. If you want to found out more about who Josh is in case you’re not sure what the director of customer acquisition does, go back and listen to episode 8 which is the previous episode where he shares more about who he is.

So can you just kind of talk with us a little bit about first your philosophy when it comes to split testing things on a pricing page because I know and I don’t mean to answer the question but I know we have a big philosophy. I’m focusing first on doing no harm when we’re doing testing. But can you talk a little bit about what kind of goes through your mind as you’re preparing for a split test?

Josh: Sure, so I think first of all having a solid hypothesis I think one of the most important resources on the website is the test cue itself and so if you’re running a lot of low value ill-informed tests you’re never going to produce a win and the time you’re spending testing isn’t going to produce any wins for your business. So I think filling your cue with really solid hypothesis is the first start because then that way every test you do has a better chance of having an impact and while a test is running, you can’t do anything else so it’s important to have good tests going into the cue and starting with a solid assumption or question or hypothesis about how the change you’re making is going to affect the consumer decision in one way or another.

Tim: Right and it really speaks to not just running a test because somebody said you should be testing things. It comes down to what can you learn about your audience and how they respond to things and you cannot only know that through the test but also take that knowledge forward when you’re making decisions about other marketing…other aspects of your marketing because you’ve learned that thing about your customer through the testing you did. Is that right?

Josh: Yeah, absolutely. I think testing should be…should inform all your marketing channels and so even though you’re looking for quantitative wins on a test-by-test basis you should be getting all sorts of other types of wins across your marketing because you’re going to leverage those insights across those challenges as well.

Tim: So tell us about this particular test that you did on our pricing page?

Josh: Sure so we have a pricing page that has been tested probably more than 98% of all pricing pages on the internet and yeah so there’s such a thing as getting to a point where a page has been polished to a level where you’re being very persuasive, you’re showing things like scarcity, you’re being as clear as possible, you’re…you’ve got a great value product and at a certain point you’re starting to think what else is there, right?

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So I started to think that way with our pricing page one day because I was somewhat new at that time and I was thinking how am I going to stand with the shoulders of giants here and produce a win on this pricing page. So we put a little survey pop-up box on the pricing page and we said if there’s one thing holding you back from buying LeadPages today, what would it be? That question drove I think maybe like 75 to 100 different written responses over the course of the week.

I don’t typically like to clutter up the pricing page because I don’t like any distractions on my pricing page but it was kind of unnecessary you go for about a week to get about 100 responses of what was that in the very exact moment that people were thinking about buying us. What was the thing that was holding them back and the results were pretty interesting for me because the biggest thing was people had all the information about the different price interiors. We said that this was for small businesses. This is for professional marketers. We try to make it as clear as possible about which plan a person should select based on their business and they just wanted a little bit more validation that all of the checkboxes, all of the copy just kind of coalesce into what they really needed.

So we added a video to the page that had traditionally not gotten a lot of clicks but we put it in a place where we had a lot more prominence so we knew we can get some volume to it and lo and behold, we started to see people convert at a high rates. We also took some of the most popular questions that we got from those 100 writings and we created a small pricing FAQ at the bottom of the page with kind of 9 little copy chunks that answered the most frequently kind of the frequent reservations that people has.

So the idea was if you’re at the top of the page and you have no questions, reservations, all the information is there. It’s very clear. If you’re like so what does this mean then we got the video and the testimonials and then if you’re still like…but this one question that I have that would be at the bottom of the page with the frequently asked questions kind of clustered.

Tim: Awesome. Now before we go any further I have to mention that all throughout this episode and in the all new season of ConversionCast, you’re hearing what we do at LeadPages to automatically grow our email list and boost our sales every single day.

Well in my next webinar I’ll show you exactly how they do this for your business. In this free training I’ll give you a live step by step walkthrough of the top three tactics we use at LeadPages to automatically grow our own list week after week. This is going to be everything you need to know to implement this in your business so make sure you check it out. To reserve your spot on the webinar text LeadPagesLive to 3344. That’s all one word. LeadPagesLive to 3344 or had the leadpageswebinar.com.

All right let’s get back to it so what was it about the video that drove conversions? Was it that it answered those things that people were telling us that head stop them from buying?

Josh: It was basically telling the story of our pricing columns in a more kind of user friendly way. It was more of a kind of contiguous kind of a story like if you’re a small business then you’re going to enjoy these x, y features because of this, right? In the features grid you don’t really get that context. It’s more of just stay here’s a feature, here’s a feature. Here’s a feature and didn’t get it. But then so what is often missing on the pricing page so this was just a little nonce that we needed to push people over the edge that said, “Here’s the validation you needed at. Yes this plan that you’re looking right here, that’s right for you. Go ahead and let’s sign up today.”

Josh: I love the validation aspect. It’s so…something I hear all the time on our webinar as people will say, “Well, I just don’t know which plan is right for me” and when we’ve tested this specifically with webinars in the past, the cool thing is that we do so many webinars that we can actually test things like this. We found that there is almost doubling of conversions when I just simply direct people to the plan that’s right for them. When we give them [0:09:10] [Indiscernible] carplounge and just say like, go here’s the pricing page, pick the plan that’s right for you.

Even though our page is so great, there’s the anxiety like I need to make a decision now because I want to get the bonuses and I know this is right for me but I just don’t known which plan is right for me. There seems to be such a decrease in sales but if I say, “You’re on this webinar because of x,y,z” so you most likely will want this plan because that is the right plan for you. Eliminating that anxiety really does result an increase in conversion rate and through our pricing page you did that with the video. You did that with the FAQ. You did that with the check boxes that just makes it clear. Then also we’ve got some copy. You mentioned it where under or above each plan. It says kind of the typical people that buy that plan, right?

Josh: Yup, it helps. People self-select themselves into the right plan and then in the video it’s just a confirmation of that same self-selection that people are already kind of going down that path.

Tim: That’s great so for folks who are considering these things for their pricing page, it would be valuable to have that knowledge of your market and you can do that survey. If you don’t have a lot of traffic to your pricing page you can find other ways to survey people but I think that that one of the reasons why the data was so valuable was because it was at that point where they’re ready to make that buying decision. So it’s something worth considering is what’s stopping people right that in there as their thing you bought at. What’s top of mind and get that knowledge and use that to validate their decisions so thanks Josh I appreciate it

Josh: My pleasure Tim.

Tim: Next time on the all new ConversionCast.

Josh: You know we have ideas and then we see what happens and then we work from there and when this test finish, we actually call it earlier than what we normally will because we saw the damage that we’re doing and we decided that we’ll never going to do this again.