Test, test, test...

[Dietriffic]

Right, just to give back to this section of the forum a little, here's a personal case study about the importance of testing.

This won't be new to the more experienced here, but it might help some.

We've struggled in the past to get decent conversions to our lightbox opt-in on my site.

My husband has written literally hundreds and hundreds (if not over a thousand) different short pitches to our visitors (pre-dominantly busy professional females and mothers).

Here's some interesting findings:

• He discovered that the slight delay of using an image gave them time to close the box without being captivated.
  
• He discovered that capitalising each word in the heading caused conversions to drop.
  
• He discovered that anything REMOTELY pushy, pitchy, or sales, caused conversions to drop.
  
• He discovered that being brief was absolutely critical, and that even a list of 3 bullet point benefits didn't seem to work.
  
• He discovered that different coloured headlines (like red) lowered conversions.

We even hired a copywriter and his pitch didn't pull any higher than some of my husbands.

It seemed like we couldn't get much higher than 2%.

Yup, that was all hubby, or the copywriter could get.

Now, it's never going to be like a squeeze page. It's a lightbox intruding people visiting a blog where people come from Google from all sorts of different keywords, so it's hard to target them all to keep their attention and get them to convert.

One of our better ones which we ran for a long time went like this:

One moment...

Just because this is your first visit, as a gift, I'd like to send you my book, "Secrets of the Naturally Thin" (valued $27) today...FREE!

There's no catch.
However, you'll NOT see this message again.

Just fill in the form below and I'll send it immediately.

Helping you succeed,
Melanie (Registered Dietitian)

But my husband started playing with the opt in again about a week ago. Testing, testing, and testing different approaches.

He went back to bullets, but no avail. And after a few different things, managed to get it to a solid 2.5% with an alternate version of the above.

Not much, but when you get 3,000 daily uniques, 0.5% is an extra 15 people/day.

However, he put a new one up this morning, changing the heading from 16px to 14px, and the body from 14px to 13px:

Hello Guest!

Just because you're new here, as a gift, I'd like to send you my book 'Secrets of the Naturally Thin' absolutely FREE for today only!

There's no catch.
However, you'll NOT see this message again.

Just fill in the form below now and you'll also get a few other surprises thrown in.

Helping you succeed,
Melanie (Registered Dietitian)

And... it's currently converting at 5.9%

Now, it's early days yet. There's only been 250 displays, so it may drop.

But, even if the worse comes to the worse and it goes down to 2% for some reason, there's a lesson here...

Keep testing. Don't copy others. Don't make the headline red because others do. Don't capitalise each word of your headline because others do.

It might not work like it does for them with your market.

[Ansar Pasha]

Melanie, for some reason your pop up isn't showing up when I visit your site... however, I do think you could make it more obvious for people to opt in.

For example, maybe test having a form in the footer and having a form above the fold (before or alongside the images).

I'm just going off intuition with the footer one, but common DR wisdom says people skip to the bottom and go back up. Might even be worth testing your bounce rates with "popular topics" or something in the footer too to keep visitors on the site longer, rather than the tweets for example.

As a sidenote, I like the site!

Ansar

[Dietriffic]

Originally Posted by Ansar Pasha

Melanie, for some reason your pop up isn't showing up when I visit your site... however, I do think you could make it more obvious for people to opt in.

For example, maybe test having a form in the footer and having a form above the fold (before or alongside the images).

I'm just going off intuition with the footer one, but common DR wisdom says people skip to the bottom and go back up. Might even be worth testing your bounce rates with "popular topics" or something in the footer too to keep visitors on the site longer, rather than the tweets for example.

As a sidenote, I like the site!

Ansar

Thanks for the feedback, Ansar.

Not sure why it's not showing. I use the Aweber lightbox and I've had more submissions since I posted this thread.

My husband has been doing what you're saying. E.g. he added a form at the end of each post beside the ad block and before the comments.

The footer is another place he was planning on experimenting with.

I like the idea of pointing out popular posts down there, too.

Not sure about having it at the top. The lightbox is intrusive enough, and I'd rather visitors were only able to see one invitation to opt in at a time.

We've also got rid of a few things, like Wibiya and HelloBar as these things clutter and increase the bounce rate.

[Steve The Copywriter]

Melanie,

I saw the pop up and I usually hate them.

So many times - before I even get a chance to start reading a pitch, a blasted pop up jumps out screaming and bawling at me - distracting my attention, darkening the screen, and just stops me wanting to bother or care about the content of the site.

Click and I'm gone.

Even if they bump the response into double figures - I still loathe them...(lol)

I can just about live with exit popups...(which is the only thing I recommend to clients).

But I do like yours - the copy is brilliant - it takes away all the antagonism that me and probably many others feel about them.

Fantastic - well done. I am now a converted pop up fan.

I never, ever thought that would happen.

Steve

[Dietriffic]

@Steve
"The copy is brilliant".

Wow! What a glowing commendation!

I've said before, my husband isn't a copywriter.

But I can say that he's a determined character. He's just bought "Yes" and "Influence" to learn more about social psychology and persuasion. I'll be interesting to see if it gives him any ideas how to improve further.

After 1,500 displays, the 5.9% has dropped to 3.4%.

That's a 1% increase, which is a difference of 11,000 subscribers annually at current traffic levels.

Although I don't like them either, I can't turn down that many subscribers. But, it's important to both of us to try and minimise the feeling of hitting the back button when they see the lightbox. That's why it's such a delicate 'sell'.

He says he's going to work on it again.

[ChrisKahler]

And extremely good point and example. Testing is what gives the best overall results... No matter what kind of quality copy may seem at first, it really is a mystery until you can see the numbers put up by it. Then you can determine what to do from there.

To me, testing is fun and not really viewed as strenuous. I see it as a battle between words really, and I'm always searching for champion outcomes from what I put up.

Great bit of advice here and very interesting story!

[ewenmack]

Hi Melanie,

I see you continuing to have low opt in's because your visitors
come for a wide variety of reasons.

On your page headings you have...

Exercise
Food Groups
Health Conditions
Healthy Eating
Lifestyle

and your freebie offer is info on being slim.

Since you have such a large variety of interest groups,
you'll please a few, not the many.

Even if you changed the freebie offer to match the interests
of another group, it will miss the mark for the others.

A no win situation.

Nothing more to say unfortunately.

Best,
Ewen

[Ansar Pasha]

Nice insight Ewen (Kia ora, btw )

Melanie, is it possible to change the pop up depending on which page loads? For example, if you have dieting tips, you could have a pop up that would appeal specifically to everyone interested in dieting tips.

If however someone lands on a page about exercise routines, you could offer a giveaway for some exercise routine report...

At the moment you're just doing a shotgun approach... by targeting different interests, you'll build sublists that will be far, far more effective than just getting the small % that want the giveaway you have right now. You can also customize the follow up sequence to suit what the browser was initially interested in.

You could then also customize the offer you send them to, which I believe you posted on another thread.

I think there was a solution by Robert Plank that could do this, but a little research might be in order

Ansar

[ewenmack]

Originally Posted by Ansar Pasha

Nice insight Ewen (Kia ora, btw )

Melanie, is it possible to change the pop up depending on which page loads? For example, if you have dieting tips, you could have a pop up that would appeal specifically to everyone interested in dieting tips.

Well done Ansar!

Looks like I sparked the solution...and my goodness we have a winner here,
if the technology lets you make it possible.

Just a matter of having the right coding in the right place on your website.

I'm far from being close at being good at tech stuff,
but surely a tech person can get it sorted for you.

Of course you will have to have new reports.

The beauty about this, is you'll have much better targeted lists
to give more useful tips and offers to.

In other words, better message match.

Which means you are being more relevant
and they become more loyal and buy more.

Best,
Ewen

[Dietriffic]

Useful information guys.

We've been analysing the site and asking ourselves what the primary goal is.

I used to think it was about helping people to be more healthy, etc. But, it isn't really anymore.

It's to get people on the list. Then help people to be more healthy, etc.

I think a whole new redesign will be coming, with a more focused call-to-action to drive people to a squeeze page and get them on the list.

Thereafter we'll look at different opt-ins for different pages and driving traffic on certain pages to particular squeeze pages.

[Saluki Guy]

Mel, if you haven't read this already. I suggest downloading John Chow's famous ebook "Learn How I Went From Zero To $40,000 a Month By Blogging and How You Can Too with my free eBook! Get your FREE copy of my eBook by signing up.".

It covers opt in form testing quite a bit.

Go to johnchow.com