A/B testing your newsletters

a:b testing your newslettersEarlier this year, I’ve written a few posts on email marketing. In those posts I’ve also mentioned that doing A/B testing for your newsletters (or other forms of email marketing) are a must. However, there are a lot of things you can test, so what should you be focussing on?

In this post I’ll try to answer that question by explaining what you can test. I won’t go into detail of testing examples, but I will tell you what you should pay attention to when testing.

Subject line

With most email campaign tools, you’ll have the possibility to test the subject line. This means you’ll be able to give your newsletter a number of different subject lines. If you have 2 different subject lines, ordinarily 50% of your newsletter list gets the first variation, and the other 50% gets the other variation.

Testing your subject lines is really only good for testing your open rate and not your click rate. The subject line won’t affect your click rate, since it doesn’t affect anything within the body of the email you’re sending. That being said, testing your subject lines is still very important, as you actually want as much people as possible to read what you’ve sent them, right?

One set of rules that our friend Jordie van Rijn (a great email marketer) taught us and has helped us since is C.U.R.V.E:

  • Curiosity: try to pique the readers’ interest by asking them a question.
  • Urgency: create urgency by having limited time offers or offering things that need to be done now.
  • Relevance: Make sure you’re putting the content that’s most relevant to your audience in your subject.
  • Value: Convey the value of the newsletter by offering something exclusive (this can be an exclusive product offer, but also exclusive content).
  • Emotion: Use punctuation, such as exclamation marks, to elicit emotional responses from your readers.

From name

Another thing you can almost always test, is your from name. This is exactly what it says: the name that shows from whom the emails are coming:

Inbox – thijs yoast com


This is, again, something that will only have an effect on your open rate. However, this is one that people tend to forget about, because it’s such a small thing to change. However, the from name can actually be pretty important. This will be the first thing people will see when your email arrives, so it had better be good. Testing this will make sure it is.

Send time

I’m not sure whether all email campaign tools offer this A/B testing option, but MailChimp does. You can test what send time (MailChimp calls this “delivery time”) works best for your audience. You need to do some work here beforehand though, because you’ll be setting the time the variations go out yourself.

So try to find out when most of your emails are opened or at least when most of your audience is awake. Especially if your emails go to an international group of people, like ours, this might be a good thing to test. Sending your emails at the right time can actually make sure more people see it and pay attention to it.


This is the big one. This is where you can go all-out and test basically anything you like. Everything within the content section of your email can be tested, and that’s a lot. You have to really think about what you want to test and treat these A/B tests as you would any other. I’ve written a post which will explain this: Hypothesize first, then test.

I always prefer to begin with this one, because this one is as late in the readers process as possible. This is my personal preference, because I just don’t like the idea of optimizing a part of the process (say, the subject) when what they see next (such as your email’s content) will undo all the optimization you did before.

Just a few ideas of what you could think about when wanting to test your email’s content:

  • Your email’s header;
  • An index summarizing your email;
  • More (or less) images;
  • Different tone of voice;
  • More buttons instead of text links;
  • More ideas on Jordie’s blog.

Before testing

When you start testing, most email campaign tools will offer you two options:

  • send your variations to your complete list, or
  • send your variations to a percentage of that list, declare a winner and then send the winner to the remaining people who haven’t received a newsletter yet.

I’d strongly urge you to use the first option. Let me tell you why. First of all, sending multiple variations to just a sample of your list means that you’re cutting down on “respondents”. You’ll have less data than when you send it to the complete list.

However, if your list is big enough, this probably won’t matter much. The reason I’d still choose the first option is that the winning variation gets sent out hours (or days) later. Especially for newsletters this can be quite crucial, because, well, then it’s not really “news” anymore. This also means you have less control over at what time the mail gets sent out. And as I’ve already said: send time can be quite important.

If timing is of less importance to the emails you’re sending out, then you could probably go for the second option, because then the remaining people in your list will always get the winner.


So you’ve thought up some brilliant variations of your newsletter, its subject, from name or send time. Time to send out that newsletter. Once you’ve sent it out, there’s nothing you can do, you just have to wait until the first results come trickling (or flooding) in. Make sure you take notice of the differences in results. Which version got the highest open rate? Which version had the highest click rate?

In this, click rate always has my preference, because then they’ll probably end up on your site, where you have a lot more opportunities for selling, for example. However, we also always use custom campaigns on all the links in our newsletter. And since we’ve set up eCommerce tracking in Google Analytics, we can see which version of our newsletter actually got the most revenue. And if you have a business to run, that’s probably the metric that you want to see increasing.

And unless you’ve set up some kind of eCommerce tracking within your email campaign tool, this metric won’t be available in their results. So don’t value the results of these tools too much. Make sure you focus on what’s important for your business and check those metrics.

Also: don’t be too quick to judge. I usually wait for a few days up to a week before I draw my conclusions, because a lot of people will still be opening and engaging your email after a few days.

Happy testing!

What do you think of the steps and rules we’ve set for ourselves? Do you have similar ideas that you follow? Or maybe something completely different? Let us know in the comments!

This post first appeared as A/B testing your newsletters on Yoast. Whoopity Doo!

Multivariate testing: what it is and when to use it

Multivariate testingWe’ve written quite some posts on Conversion Rate Optimization and A/B testing on yoast.com in the last few years. However, we’ve never really touched the subject of multivariate testing. In this post I’ll explain what multivariate testing is, its pros and cons and when you should (and should not) be using it.

What is multivariate testing?





  1. Headline A + Image A + Textblock A
  2. Headline A + Image A + Textblock B
  3. Headline A + Image B + Textblock A
  4. Headline A + Image B + Textblock B
  5. Headline B + Image A + Textblock A
  6. Headline B + Image A + Textblock B
  7. Headline B + Image B + Textblock A
  8. Headline B + Image B + Textblock B








When to use multivariate testing



What’s next?






Multivariate or A/B?



What do you think?



Interpreting your A/B test results

Interpreting your A/B test resultsWe’ve written a few posts on how to set up your A/B tests. However, the setup of your A/B tests is only the first step, obviously. Once you’ve set up a test and you’re getting some results, what should you do then?

In this post I’ll be explaining how you can interpret your A/B test results and what you should look out for.

Test duration

Before you can actually start interpreting your A/B test results, you need to be sure that your test has been running for at least 7 days. This means that you’ll have corrected for the fact that some days get you more traffic, sales or anything else than others.

There are some guides out there telling you to run until your test is at least 95% significant. Marieke has explained to great detail why this is oftentimes not a smart thing to do. Please be aware that this is not a hard requirement to our minds.

Interpreting your results

Sometimes it can be hard to actually know what’s going on when looking at the results of your A/B test. So let me walk you through what I always look at in the results:

Interpreting your A/B test results - graph

We’re using Convert for our A/B tests, and when a test is done, it will us a chart that looks something like this one. There’s a lot going on here, which can be quite daunting. First of all, it shows quite clearly that Variation 1 is the winner. However, I’m always very careful when it comes to this. Let me show you why:

Interpreting your A/B test results - chart

This chart shows you that there’s a pretty big jump in the conversion rate, the improvement is 150% and a nice confidence level. However, it also shows us that all this has been calculated over just 18 conversions. Over 10,000 visits, and just 18 conversions. I prefer to have at least 100 conversions on each variation, so this is pretty slim. Now we know that while this result is pretty awesome, we have to be careful in using this data to support any future action.

So, what’s next?

The next thing I’ll check is the graph:

Interpreting your A/B test results - graph 2

I always take a look at the trend of the test. This graph shows the conversion rate of the original version, the variation, the total visitors and the average conversion rate. The original version (blue line in this case) and the variation (purple line) should not be too close during the duration of the test. If there’s just a spike at the end that made the test variation the winner, you know the results aren’t trustworthy. In this case, it looks pretty good, as the variation outperformed the original pretty soon. But don’t get too ecstatic and stay aware of the low number of actual conversions, in this case.

Be sure you also look at the Y-axis (the vertical one) to make sure the differences aren’t really small. The Y-axis tends to change with results, so small differences can look like big ones.

Other statistics

Convert will give you quite some other statistics that could be interesting and important to look at:


The conversion rate and amount of conversions are obvious ones, but I’m mostly interested in the revenue stats. Which version got you the most total revenue and revenue per visitor? But maybe you’re looking for a higher adoption rate of your product (more people using your product) instead of more revenue. In this case you should look at the bottom one: average products sold per visitor.

These statistics will be available per variation and will give you some detailed information on what the difference between the variations actually was. So be sure to look at these and use them for your interpretation!

Implementing the winning variation

In this case, we have chosen to implement the test variation, but we’ve also kept a close eye on the amount of sales and the revenue. We have checked the amount of sales and revenue against the weeks before, to be sure it wasn’t a fluke during the tests. And I implore you to do the same. It will probably not go wrong a lot, but when it does, you’ll be sorry for it. So stay aware of the fact that these tests are not perfect.

Over to you

Have you ever run a test without knowing what to do with the results? Did you ever make the wrong choice? Or you simply have something to mention about this post? Let me know in the comments!

This post first appeared as Interpreting your A/B test results on Yoast. Whoopity Doo!

About headlines and taglines



What are headlines and taglines?




And Wikipedia explains the tagline as follows:



Why use headlines and taglines?



Don’t assume people know you





Headlines that work


Action oriented headlines


Combine your headline with a tagline


Have a clear headline


Be clear!




Your website needs (better) forms

Your website needs better formsOne of the things we notice are hardly ever optimized on most websites are forms. Forms are an integral part of just about every website. However, for some reason, people don’t (want to) spend much time thinking about these.

There’s a lot of different forms your website can have. However, I think most of them boil down to this: a contact form, a ‘request a quote’ form or a checkout form. These three all have different ways of how to optimize them, as the goal for them is different.

In this post I’ll share my views on how you should optimize each variety and how to optimize forms in general.

You need to have a form

This might sound silly, but the amount of websites we encounter during our Website Reviews that don’t have a contact form or any other kind of form where they should definitely have one, is worrisome. Some websites don’t even have a contact page.

Oh and just so we understand each other; a mailto link on a page is not the same as a contact form.

Focus your form

Just as with everything else on your website, you need to focus your forms. No matter what kind of form it is, make sure you break it down to the bare necessities. If you don’t need personal information, don’t ask for it. The fewer the fields, the shorter the form and the higher the response rate on that form.

These fields do need to be clearly visible. Don’t be tempted to use ‘slick’ form design that will basically make the fields transparent. It must be clear where people should enter the details.

And, of course, make sure your call-to-action (the send button, in this case) is visible and clear. We can’t stress this enough. If people can’t find that button, then all the form optimization in the world won’t help you.

Decent erroring and validation

One of the other things that can be implemented for any kind of form are inline erroring and validation. People don’t want to be told they’ve made a mistake filling out your form after they already hit the send button. Make sure these errors and validations appear right when the user is done filling out the field.

Not only can you be too late with your messages, you can also be too vague, or just completely wrong. For instance: don’t tell people a certain field is not filled out correctly, but rather tell them what’s wrong with how they filled it out, so they don’t unwittingly repeat the mistake (multiple times in a row…). Or, another great one: do not tell people their password for a login is wrong, when in fact they’re entering the wrong email address. I can go all day with this; my annoyances are many.

It’s so simple: make sure people understand how to fill out your form and, in the rare event of a mistake, make the errors so ridiculously clear, they won’t ever be able to reproduce it.

Contact forms

Contact forms are probably the most common kinds of forms you’ll find on the web. However, we see a lot of contact forms that look like no one ever thought about them.


I always look at the contact form as the equivalent of someone coming up to a salesperson in a physical shop. In an actual store, you’d expect the salesperson to be open, friendly and helpful. Now consider what you’d think about that salesperson if he/she was telling you “Tell me your name, date of birth and occupation before you ask me any questions!”. That would probably result in you walking out the door, right? So why should your website be any different?

Of course, I’m exaggerating a bit (although I have seen contact forms asking this and more), but the point remains clear. When it’s possible to walk up to someone and ask a question right off the bat in a physical store, this should be possible on websites as well.

Tone of voice

The tone of voice is very important for people to feel safe enough to ask a question. And tone of voice is just as much determined by what’s said as by what’s not said. So not having any text near your contact form will not absolve you from needing a decent tone of voice. You need to invite visitors to ask you a question and explain the process of how you’ll handle their question. The last thing you want to do is confuse or piss off a customer right before they wanted to ask you a question. They’ll either leave your site or they’ll be angry while contacting you.

‘Request a quote’ form

I wanted to make a separate section of this kind of form, because it can definitely be helpful to ask for more information in a ‘request a quote’ form. It all depends on the setup of your business, your website and your form. The same premise still holds though: if you don’t really need certain information, don’t ask for it.

Pricing information

Half the time I see a ‘request a quote’ button or form, I feel kind of cheated. These kinds of forms really make me feel the website owner just doesn’t want to share their usual pricing, because they can see if they can make more money off of you. So you should be clear about the reason you’re not communicating your prices. Preferably even show people a price range they can expect. This will not only filter out people that aren’t interested in that price range, but it’ll also give people like me a better idea of what they can expect. And that alone can help increase your response rate and conversion rate.

Checkout form

I’ve done a post on how we optimized our checkout page in November 2013, and most of that design still holds. There are some things you should definitely implement though:

Progress bar

This actually goes for every form you have on your website. You should implement a progress bar that shows people how far along in your form they are. This gives them a lot of insight in the whole process and will most likely increase your form’s completion rate.


Try to make it as clear as possible what all the options and details of the transaction are. What is the price, the product they’re buying, the payment options, etc. All of this should be very clear and quickly visible. The use of logos, product images, etc. can really help in this process.

How are you doing?

Are your website’s forms up to par? Or do they need some more optimization? If you’re not sure or want to have us take a look at them (and the rest of your site), take a look at our Website Reviews!

This post first appeared as Your website needs (better) forms on Yoast. Whoopity Doo!

The perfect progress bar

the perfect progress barWe’ve done quite some posts on conversion rate optimization and nearly always named progress bars in them. People value progress bars, and if they don’t function according to what they’re used to, they’ll get worried. That makes you wonder, right? Apparently progress bars work, but what makes them work?

In this post I’ll be diving in deep into what seems to be quite a small subject. I’ll explain how you can make the perfect progress bar. Of course, perfection is arguable and what works on your site might not work on another, so let me start by saying that I’m talking about a general perfection. These are things that, in general, work best.

What’s a progress bar?

For those of you left completely in the dark as to what a progress bar actually is, let me explain. A progress bar is a bar that, surprisingly, shows your progress of a certain task. This can be, for instance, the completing of a survey or completing a purchase. I’ll mainly be focusing on the latter; completing purchases.

Let me show you what a progress bar can look like. Here’s ours, which you’ll find in our checkout:

Progress bar YoastSo as you can see, this progress bar just shows you where you are in the entire purchase process and what steps you’ve already completed.

What makes a perfect progress bar?

There are a few things that make a progress bar “perfect”. Obviously, this is a perfection and you should always test whether this setup is actually the best way to go for your site. I’ve constituted two things that make a progress bar perfect. These things are Usability and Psychological Triggers.


No breadcrumb
This might seem silly, but I’ve actually come across quite some websites that make their progress bars look like a breadcrumb. If the placing and look of your progress bar looks like a breadcrumb, it simply won’t work. Even worse is actually using your breadcrumbs to simultaneously be your progress bar:

Progress bar 1800PetMedsThis is totally unclear, and will not give you any benefit at all. This does not work.

Highlight the current step
A big part of the idea of the progress bar is that it’s visible for people where they are. Highlighting the step where your visitors currently are is very important. This is something the progress bar above doesn’t do very well, if at all.

Explain the steps
This is usually done right, but it’s still important enough to mention. You have to explain the steps in the progress bar, just as we’ve done. “Select payment method” is pretty clear as to what that step’s for. Next to this explanation it’s also smart to show the number of the steps, because that makes it that much more visible to the visitors how much more they have to go.

Here’s a screenshot of the progress bar on Zalando:

Progress bar ZalandoWhile these explain the steps pretty nicely, it begins and highlights a step that’s nothing to do with your progress. I’d always encourage you to show your visitors the connection on your website is secure, but this is simply not the place.

It looks like the first step, but it isn’t, as the next arrow starts with 1. So why is it in the same bar? On the current page they’re actually asking me to login, which to the most users doesn’t have anything to do with a “secure connection”. So this really isn’t explanatory at all.

The location of the progress bar is obviously really important. If people can’t see it, the value of having one is naught. People will have to be able to continually view it, to also be able to continually view their progress.

Psychological triggers

Sense of movement
I’ve actually written a complete post about visual direction and attention. This will work just as well with your progress bars. The sense of movement is, among other things, triggered by arrow shaped forms. This will give the visitor the feeling they’re actually moving along.

Point of entry
At our own progress bar, people get in at the second step when they’ve added a product to their cart. And with good cause, as they’ve already taken the biggest step: deciding to buy something! However, this does give the users a boost as they’re already a quarter of the way there!

Validating completed steps
If people have completed a step, don’t just move them on to the next step. Use your progress bar to show them they’ve successfully completed the previous step(s). We do that by showing the green check mark after every step. This increases a person’s self-efficacy, which basically increases our motivation to complete a task.

Size of steps
This is a small thing which we’re not actually doing ourselves, but still one I wanted to mention. The steps of the progress bar could actually indicate the time it would usually take to complete a step. This can be done by making the more time consuming steps a bigger portion of the progress bar than the less time consuming steps. In fact, studies show that a slow start with a quick finish is highly preferred by people. So the longer parts of the progress bar can be placed at the start, and the shorter ones at the end.

However, this is the complete opposite of what Villar, Callegaro & Yang have found in their study. This shows that you’ll need to find out what works best for your site, if there’s any difference to be found. But it does keep you thinking, which is never a bad thing, when optimizing your website.


So there are eight things that you should or should not do to make your progress bar perfect:

  1. Do not make it look like a breadcrumb;
  2. Highlight the current step;
  3. Explain every step;
  4. Place it within view;
  5. Add visual triggers that imply movement;
  6. Skip the first step;
  7. Validate completed steps;
  8. Think about the time spent on each step.

I feel these are the things that every progress bar should have, as they’ll make the whole process the most clear. It simply makes it easier and more transparent for your users. And that’s exactly what you want. And this is just one little part of all the things we’ll point out during a Diamond Review, so do check those out as well!

I’m curious to hear whether you think I’m right, or completely wrong. Let me know in the comments!

This post first appeared on Yoast. Whoopity Doo!

Things to consider for your online shop








What’s the main eye catcher on the homepage?




Did you write great content for your product pages?










Does your internal search work like it should?


  • See an image of the product,
  • have these results ordered by relevance.


Gives you something to think about, right?



This post first appeared on Yoast. Whoopity Doo!

Visually direct and captivate your visitors



Visual attention



Visual cueing


On wheelofpersuasion.com you can find a great explanation on this. Especially this picture makes it very clear:

Van der Valk visual cueing


Facial distraction


baby front

Visual heatmap from Usable World


So I shouldn’t use pictures of people?



baby sideways

Visual heatmap from Usable World




Perceptual incongruence





Over to you


This post first appeared on Yoast. Whoopity Doo!

Why are people (not) buying my products online?

Google Analytics provides us with lots of information about our visitors. However, we are in complete ignorance about the motivations of our visitors to buy our products.  Why do people shop online?  And how can we influence their motives and make them buy (more of) our products?

Thijs already gave lots of useful insights in how to optimize the conversion of your website in several of his recent posts about conversion rate optimization. Thijs and I are currently working on an extensive study about online purchasing behavior and conversion optimization. For our research we are reading a lot of scientific articles about what makes people buy products online. In this post, I’ll make an overview of some of the most valuable insights about peoples motives to purchase online. And: what you could do with these insights to increase your sales!

Utilitarian & hedonic motives


In most studies investigating the motives people have to shop online, researchers distinguish hedonic motives from utilitarian motives (e.g. To, Liao & Lin, 2007). Utilitarian motives are rational, critical and goal oriented. These people shop to find the right product for the right price.

Next to utilitarian motives, there are hedonic motives. The reason that hedonic consumers love to shop is simply because they enjoy the shopping process. They search for happiness, fantasy, sensuality or enjoyment and they find that in shopping.

While visitors with utilitarian motives should be convinced by rational arguments, the hedonic shoppers will be converted by emotions. Of course, anticipating on utilitarian or on hedonic motives will have totally different consequences for the design and the layout of your website. I will discuss both utilitarian motives (cognitions and trust) as well as hedonic motives (emotions) in more detail below.

Rational motives (utilitarian)

Utilitarian motives are rational. Utilitarian buyers shop to gather information or simply to immediately purchase a product. Utilitarian buyers have a shopping plan and know what they want. These buyers shop online because it saves them money or because they want to find the cheapest product. They also shop online because it is convenient, it saves them time or because they have more products to choose from.

As long as the benefits outgrow the costs, you can easily persuade a utilitarian buyer to buy your product. Wanting to persuade utilitarian buyers means you have to offer good products for a good price, with good information and with a good and swift service.

Some products especially appeal to an utilitarian audience. If you would try to sell WordPress-plugins for instance, chances are big that your audience will have rational motives to buy your products. Few of our clients will be in search of fantasy or sensuality when they consider buying one of our products.

Trust (utilitarian)

Important for the utilitarian buyer is trust. Is this webshop genuine? Will I get my purchases in time? Toufaily, Souiden & Ladhari (2013) claim that online shopping is more prone to uncertainty and risks than traditional shopping. Technological advances have improved security levels, but the lack of psychical contact with both product and vendor make it hard for consumers to trust online shops. This makes the costs for an online transaction higher.

As utilitarian buyers are more convinced that the payment is secure on a website, they are more likely to buy. Thus, making sure your payment is secure will increase the likelihood people buy online. But you should also make an effort to show your visitors who you are. How can they contact you when they are not satisfied? Make sure names (and possibly pictures) of (customer service) employees appear on your website.

Emotions (Hedonic)

Hedonic motives are not rational, but emotional. In an article in Electronic Commerce Research and Applications, Lopez and Ruiz (2011) investigate (among other things) the influence of emotions on online purchasing behavior. They state that several studies have shown that positive emotions, such as enjoyment, predict whether people in fact return to your website.  Research of Bosnjak, Galesic and Tuten (2007) even shows that emotions are more important than cognitions in online shopping.

Lopez and Ruiz recommend companies dealing with hedonic products such as perfumes, jewellery or vacations to evoke emotional responses when communicating their products through the website. The reason for this, Lopez and Ruiz claim, is that “most of its consumers may not be interested in the specific composition of the fragrance or the way the jewel has been cut, but in the sensations the consumer would feel in case of purchasing.” If you try to sell luxury goods you could do your advantage with this marketing technique. The design of your website plays a big role in evoking positive emotions like fun, happiness and relaxation.

Bear in mind that hedonic shopping can influence unplanned shopping behavior. Evoking an emotion could well lead to impulsive shopping behaviour. If you want to increase your sales, you should anticipate on this by offering products in a way that people experience as enjoyable and fun.

How do I know what the motives of my visitors are?

Maybe (a part of) your audience has hedonic motives. But how do you find out? And how do you know whether your audience finds your webshop trustworthy? Google Analytics does not give you that kind of information.

For most websites, you do not have to be a rocket scientist to figure out what motives most of your visitors will have. Simply looking at your product will give you a good idea. If you are offering a luxurious item, chances are big you are dealing with a hedonic audience. But still, if you really want to anticipate on the motives of your visitors, you should measure their motives.

Measuring the motives of your audiences is hard but not at all impossible. You can use packages such as PollDaddy to make an online survey and simply ask your audience what their motives are.  Making the questionnaire is the hardest part of measuring the motives of your audience. Simply asking whether their motives are hedonic or utilitarian doesn’t cut it ;-). If you would want to measure shopping motives, I would advice you to read some studies on motives and learn from the questionnaires these studies used.


Website visitors can have different motives to visit your website. They could be rational, goal-oriented buyers with a clear plan and idea of what they want. In that case, providing quality information and offering a fair price while making the appearance of your website trustworthy would be important to increase conversion. But if you appeal to a hedonic audience, your website should evoke positive emotions in order to persuade your audience to buy your products.

You should keep the motives and the way to appeal to your audience solidly in mind while shaping and altering your website.


Bosnjak, M., Galesic, M., & Tuten, T. (2007). Personality determinants of online shopping: Explaining online purchase intentions using a hierarchical approach. Journal of Business Research.

López, I., & Ruiz, S. (2011). Explaining website effectiveness: The hedonic–utilitarian dual mediation hypothesis. Electronic Commerce Research and Applications.

To, P.-L., Liao, C., & Lin, T.-H. (2007). Shopping motivations on Internet: A study based on utilitarian and hedonic value. Technovation.

Toufaily, E., Souiden, N., & Ladhari, R. (2013). Consumer trust toward retail websites: Comparison between pure click and click-and-brick retailers. Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services20(6), 538-548. Retrieved from http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0969698913000581

This post first appeared on Yoast. Whoopity Doo!

Conversion Review Giveaway: The Outcome

Two weeks ago, we did a Facebook free giveaway for a Conversion Review. The lucky winner was the webshop Indigobox Jewels. In this post, I’ll highlight a few of the most important things we’ve come across during the review.

I’ll first go through the website as if I were a visitor who wants to buy something. After that, I’ll dive in a bit deeper by going into some interesting data from Google Analytics. You will be shown a screenshot of every step, which I will comment on with what could be improved. That way, you’ll be able to see everything I’m talking about.


If I were to come onto the website at the homepage, this would be my first view:

The design isn’t bad, but there are definitely a few things that could be improved on this homepage:

  1. The menu doesn’t look like the menu of a webshop. Sure, it has the menu-item shop. But is that what you’d expect from a webshop? No, you’d expect categories in the menu. Everything in this menu should be in a top menu or even a footer. The menu bar you’re seeing there should show categories: Rings, Watches, Earrings, etc.
  2. The slider takes up a lot of space, and doesn’t really do anything useful. There are no buttons or calls-to-action in there that could convince me to click through to that item. And even if it did: research has shown that just 1% will actually click the first slide. No one will click any other slide.
  3. There’s a HUGE free shipping call-to-action in the middle there, but I can’t click it! And even if I could click it, should this really be the focus of this homepage? No. The focus should be on getting people to click products, or going to one of the category pages.
  4. The other calls-to-action are way too boring. They’re black ‘Add to cart’ buttons, that don’t really make me want to click them at all. Testing with a different color, but especially shape and size could give some good results.
  5. Lastly, who are you? Why should I buy my products with you? Try to gain some trust from your visitors. Don’t just throw on a few products on a website and think people will start buying it. People will want to know their money is safe.

Category page

I’m not fully sold on any of the products on the homepage, so I’ll click the ‘Shop’ menu item. Here’s what I’m seeing next:

Here are the things I’d do differently on this page:

  1. This is exactly why the categories should be in the menu. If I’m not interested in necklaces, or that one bracelet I’m seeing, I need to click again, choosing one of the categories on the left.
  2. There’s way too much emphasis on the filtering option. There’s a black button there, that at the moment seems just as important as the ‘Add to cart’ buttons.
  3. I’m surprised by the fact that there’s suddenly a “sale” section! Why didn’t I get to see that on the homepage? I’m always interested in getting something cheaper! And these seem like some good discounts, so why isn’t there more emphasis on this?
  4. I’m missing a lot more filter options here, actually. Why can’t I filter on what material the products are made of, for instance?

Product page

So lets say I was interested in the top left necklace, and wanted to learn a bit more about it. I’d click the ‘View more…’ link and get to this page:

This is quite a disappointing page to me. Here’s why:

  1. I clicked the ‘View more…’ button! Why isn’t there actually more to view? I’m getting the same picture! Granted, I can now click on the image to enlarge it, but it’s still the same image. I’d love a 3D picture of the item.
  2. There’s no product description! This just makes that heading ‘Product Description’ even more painful, because it’s just the name of the item there. Try to give as much detail about the product as you can, including material used, size, weight, etc.
  3. There are no reviews. This doesn’t really spark my trust. Did no one like this product? It’s really important that you get some reviews on your products. And if you don’t have any on your products, include reviews on your webshop! Don’t just leave it empty.

It all comes down to creating an experience that comes as close to ‘the real thing’ as possible. What I mean by this is that people want to get the information they’d also get by holding the product in their hands and looking at it.

Shopping cart page

Now, if I were interested in buying, I’d click the ‘Add to cart’ button. This is the page I get to see then:

Now there are two obvious problems with this:

  1. If I just wanted the one product, why can’t I go to the cart immediately? This should at least be an option next to the ‘Add to cart’ button.
  2. The blue bar at the top there is to guide you to the cart. That’s just not enough emphasis for someone who’s just added something to the cart. This should pop out a lot more.

I’ll click on the ‘View Cart’ text link next:

There’s a lot going on here, especially for a cart:

  1. I put something of $15.95 in my cart, but now the order total shows me $22.18?Unexpected costs are the #1 reason for people to abandon their shopping cart. Sure, I could’ve guessed that I’d have to pay some shipping, because I’m not over the $25 limit, but the tax, at least, should be included.
  2. There’s absolutely no focus on this page. There’s three calls-to-action fighting for attention. The only distinction is that the ‘Proceed to Checkout’ button is slightly bigger. That’s too small a distinction. The ‘Apply Coupon’ and ‘Update Cart’ buttons should simply be text links.
  3. Why is that Calculate Shipping text link there? The shipping fee is already there, isn’t it? This makes it all confusing and very uncertain for someone who wants to purchase something. In conjunction with that note text there (“Note: Shipping and taxes are estimated (taxes estimated for the United States) and will be updated during checkout based on your billing and shipping information.”), this doesn’t really make me trust this is the end price.
  4. Why is there no message telling me “order for just $9.05 more, and get free shipping!”? The shipping is at least $4.95, so a quick little sum tells me that would actually just cost me $4.10 more. So this is definitely something any webshop owner should be pushing!
  5. Lastly: I’m missing a progress bar. Let me know how far ahead I am in the process of ordering your product. This will lead to gamification, which means more people will finish the whole process, and more quickly.

Checkout page

I don’t want to apply any coupon, update the cart or calculate any shipping, so I’ll click ‘Proceed to Checkout’:

There are a few things here that meet my eye:

  1. I just went to the checkout page, and I’m confronted with these ‘error’ type messages. These should really be a lot less intrusive, because now it looks like I’ve done something wrong.
  2. See that small text next to Shipping Address? That says ‘Ship to some other address’. This is really hard to read, so that should definitely be a lot bigger.
  3. I’m missing my order here. That’s all the way at the bottom of the page. I don’t want to fill in all my details before I can make sure the order is alright. So the details about what I ordered should actually be on top.
  4. There’s only one payment option on this page: PayPal (can’t be seen on the screenshot). If people see your website has (multiple) trustworthy credit card logos, they’ll feel safer on your website! Maybe even more important: 59% will simply abandon their transaction if the preferred payment option isn’t available.
  5. You should really use inline validation, which I’ve already written about in a previous post about our own checkout page. Giving people direct feedback will gamify the process of filling in your form fields. This will make it more likely they fill in the entire form!

Google Analytics

Of course the front end part of the purchase process is very important for conversion rate optimization, but when it comes down to it, the base of it all is data. And that’s why you need Google Analytics. However, in order to get useful data out of Google Analytics, there are a few things you need to do. Especially if you have a webshop.


The setup of the Google Analytics of Indigobox Jewels was missing goals. Goals are a very important measurement for any kind of website really. No matter what kind of website you have, there’s always something you want your visitors to do. And that’s why you set up goals, to see how many of your visitors are actually doing what you want them to.

Goals allow you to see how many people start in your so called ‘funnel’, and how many proceed to the next step in this funnel. This allows you to see the conversion rate of every step. Obviously this tells you a lot about where you have the most room for improvement, which is invaluable data in itself.

Ecommerce tracking

Ecommerce tracking is the tracking of your revenue. This is a must for anyone selling anything through their website. Unfortunately, Indigobox Jewels were missing a setup for ecommerce tracking as well.

With ecommerce tracking, not only can you keep track of what your revenue has been for any given period of time, but it also shows you which pages are worth the most. Google Analytics calculates this by measuring which pages eventually led to a sale 1 or 2 steps down the road. In knowing this, you know which pages to put more focus on, and which pages can use some improvement.

Mobile traffic

When going through the Google Analytics of Indigobox Jewels, I noticed the site had a very high percentage of mobile visitors:

And the orange piece of the pie there is the percentage of visitors on a tablet. This is nearly 60% on mobile devices! With numbers like these, you need to make sure your mobile website is up to par. And if you’re selling things on your website, your purchase process should be working flawlessly on mobile devices as well.

Indigobox Jewels had a pretty nicely responsive website, but there was room for a few improvements on their cart page:

As you can see, the menu and header take up a lot of space on a smartphone. Half of the screen is taken by it, in fact. The call-to-action to go to the checkout page was a long way down. You always have to make sure your most important call-to-action of every page is easily accessible, even on mobile devices. And apart from that, make sure everything fits and doesn’t “fall off” the page on a mobile device. Having your total not completely visible, as in the screenshot above, will definitely not help your conversion rate.

Optimizing for mobile devices

Optimizing for mobile devices can be quite bothersome. There are always hard choices to make, but some choices you can’t go without. With Indigobox Jewels this was the amount of visitors accessing their website using iDevices:

Of their mobile traffic, 52.7% came from an iPhone, and 21.2% came from an iPad. So if there’s any place to start the optimization for mobile devices, it’s with iDevices, in Indigobox Jewels’ case. Always check your statistics to make sure you’re making the right choices.

That’s it!

As said, this is only a small part of what we’re looking into during our Conversion Reviews. Do you have any questions or remarks? Let me know in the comments!

This post first appeared on Yoast. Whoopity Doo!