Welcome, Visitor--Goodbye Profits!
By Bob Greenstone
As direct marketers with experience based in more traditional media continue to embrace online marketing, sometimes the transition is smoother than others. Here's a bit of dialog I've participated in more times than I can count:
WEB MARKETING GUY: Hey, Mr. DRTV Marketing Guy, would you be interested in implementing a new website for your product that could increase sales 25 to 50 percent?
DRTV MARKETING GUY: Oh, no thanks. I already have a website for my product.
WEB MARKETING GUY: Yes, but again, this one could do 25 to 50 percent more business.
DRTV MARKETING GUY: My website already does a lot of business. Everyone coming to my website will buy my product if they really want it. Thanks, but I'll pass.
And so it goes. As the person on the web marketing side of the above conversation, the response from DRTV Marketing Guy always has me scratching my head. Here's a results-driven marketer, constantly and diligently on the lookout for even the most miniscule reductions in cost on his telemarketing, product sourcing, media and fulfillment. But when it comes to an area of potentially gigantic revenue growth just sitting there as low-hanging fruit in the form of web optimization, he chooses to take no action.
MYTHS DEBUNKED
Of course, I sympathize with DRTV Marketing Guy's plight. There's an awful lot of misinformation out there. He's probably heard it all before and maybe he's even gone to the trouble of testing a few of other Web Marketing Guys' claims, perhaps only to learn the hard way that performance seldom matches expectations. That's why I've dedicated this column to examining some of the most compelling web marketing claims out there in order to discover, on behalf of traditional direct marketing professionals everywhere, whether they are truly effective. Along the way, I'm encountering--and de-bunking--a number of interesting and widespread myths.
In my last column, (see "Online Video: An Exclusive Case Study," Online Strategies, Spring 2008) I dispelled the myth that web pages featuring instant-on video are too intrusive, turning people off in such a manner as to negatively affect sales. Our detailed study over a number of high-volume products proved that instant-on video achieves a higher conversion rate than the alternative: click-to-play video that puts the user in control.
Well, I'm about to bust another myth--this one about making landing pages more welcoming. 
The theory goes that if you welcome a visitor who arrives at your site or, more specifically, landing page from a search engine, he or she will get a warm, fuzzy feeling and be more likely to buy. MarketingSherpa, a leading web marketing information service, presented this theory in its landmark work, "Landing Page Handbook: How To Raise Conversions--Data & Design Guidelines." In the book, the authors describe a case study done by a leading testing and metrics firm. The study examined two high-traffic websites that had added a simple line to the top of their landing pages that were arrived at via search: "You searched for (the exact search term used) on (the name of the search engine)." So, for example, if you entered "donuts" into the search box on Google, the page you eventually landed on would say, "You searched for donuts on Google" at the top.
Although they did not discuss the details of their methodology, this highly regarded firm claimed that the technique achieved an eye-catching increase of more than 50 percent in revenue per visitor. I don't know about you, but an increase of 50 percent gets me excited! I immediately set out to test this theory myself in the hopes of verifying this new, potentially industry-changing technique.
So with heady expectations of windfall profits (I planned on buying a red Lamborghini with all the extra dough), we developed and implemented our test. We used four, high-volume DRTV websites. One of the sites we chose for the test was CleverClasp.com. When people searched for the term "Clever Clasp" on Google, our site (which holds the number-one natural and paid positions for that term) would come up. Then, when they clicked on the ad, they'd land on a page that said-- prominently--at the top: "Welcome Google Searcher--You searched on Clever Clasp' on Google. You are in the right place." [Please see the accompanying screenshot.]
Over the course of our test, we amassed a total of 90,341 Google impressions, with 14,441 clicks and 2,131 total orders. However, instead of the big sales boost we were expecting, we actually saw conversions decrease. The conversion rate on the pages with the customized message was 14.12 percent, while the conversion rate on the control pages was 15.42 percent. That's a difference of 9.2 percent. Based on the sample size, that means we can say with 95-percent confidence that this type of customization is a bust. (So much for my shiny new Lamborghini!)
It's hard to believe that such seemingly insignificant variables can have an impact of nearly 10 percent, but I can tell you from experience: they do. In fact, there are dozens of small and large elements that can dramatically affect conversion--even when prospects have only one website from which to choose.
The moral of the story: Don't believe anything you hear or read--including this! Implement a testing procedure for yourself.
Bob Greenstone is CEO of Permission Interactive, Inc. in San Diego. He can be reached at
(619) 708-7456 or via e-mail at bob@permissioninteractive.com.
