Unique Value Proposition (or Unique Campaign Proposition), is a brief, concise statement about what makes your website/business unique, and why customers should buy from you and not your competitors.  It’s been a central part of our Persuasion Architecture methodology from day one.

At our recommendation, our friends over at Accepted.com ran a UVP test on their website.  We worked together to draft a few versions of their UVP, worked with the designer to make it look professional, and ran an A/B/C/D test with three versions of their UVP against the control.  The UVPs expressed the length of time Accepted.com has been helping customers, how much success they’ve had, and the problem that customers are looking to solve.  The control was a stock photo graphic without a UVP statement.

The result?  Sure, you might expect some sort of lift.  How about an over 30% increase in conversion, resulting in tens of thousands of dollars in extra sales?

So if you haven’t sat down and brainstormed your Unique Value Proposition, maybe take 30% of a day and work it out.  Then test it and let us know what happens.  If the test seems daunting, try crafting a Unique Campaign Proposition and testing it in campaign messaging, assets, and landing pages.

While this type of increase is common with our clients, the interesting part of the story comes from a different metric.  During the duration of the test, the client’s Average Order Value dropped 28.05%.  A frightening metric, but no surprise given all the reports we’ve been seeing about lower budgets for online Holiday shopping.

The silver lining, directly attributed to the client’s optimization efforts, was that their increase in funnel conversion rate more than offset the drop in their Average Order Value.  So despite people spending less, the website is getting more people to successfully checkout and spend.  And this was just their first test!

The moral: Optimization is a highly effective way to make the best of the bad economic situation we’re in.  You can’t control how much less people are going to spend for the Holidays this year, but you can control improving your site to be more efficient–to squeeze more out of your opportunities.

• Established his own (very successful) ad agency
• Launched the Dodge and Chrysler brands
• Hired and mentored Leo Burnett, creator of the Marlboro Man, Tony the Tiger, Pillsbury Doughboy, and many other advertising icons that made his clients rich
• Turned positioning into a fine art form half a century before Ries and Trout even coined the term.
• Helped establish Cadillac’s pre-eminence among early automotive marks
• Wrote “The greatest ad of all time,” as voted in 1949 – an ad still listed in the top 50 of Ad Ages Top 100 Advertising Campaigns.

Interesting, but why should you care?  Because MacManus’s – and by extension Burnett’s – approach was the yin to Hopkins’ yang, and because MacManus’s approach still works today.

And what was that approach?

In a word, it was to position the client while dethroning competitors in the minds’ of the audience. He wanted to create, in the mind of the public, a deep-seated prejudice towards his client’s brand.

If, in the words of the legendary Gary Halbert, the biggest key to success is to sell to a starving crowd, then MacManus aimed to persuade the consumer that only his client’s product would fully cure their hunger, and then wait for the more-cheaply-persuaded and much larger mass audience to get hungry as their individual circumstances dictated.  This would be in contrast to targeting only hungry people and then selling to them via direct mail.

And so the two poles of advertising continue on to this day, as is clearly seen in the following comments by an extraordinarily successful brand builder, Chris Maddock.  Chris was responding to my request for his opinion on Google’s recent attempt to track the effect of offline advertising upon online sales/conversions.   Here’s what he had to say:

Jeff,

I think Google’s traditional ad analytics are interesting, sexy, and certainly useful on some level.  But I think the program could also be dangerous, in that it could give some folks faulty impressions of what is actually happening – or what is right – because it assumes advertisers know things they probably don’t.

Let’s say a local hardware store runs some print ads, and compares the online response to another time they’ve run radio ads.  If the print ads were for a short term offer, and the radio ad of a more institutional bent, the print ad could drive more traffic to the website and have the hardware store owner thinking that print’s the ticket.  The reality in such a situation is that the print advertising is impressing and motivating a tiny, albeit palpable, percentage of the market to respond and go the the website, while the time-sensitive nature of the offer makes the advertising all but invisible to the bulk of the market.  On the other hand the radio advertising is likely creating greater long-term top of mind awareness, yet probably not motivating as many to go the website.  Mr. Hardware likely thinks that the radio campaign was less effective, when in fact most category dominant businesses are those that eschew short-term sales, offers, promotions and the advertising tools that make them work, while leaning on intrusive media such as radio and television to push long-term awareness.  Over time, radio could likely drive many more visitors to the website – visitors who will likely buy.

So my worry is admittedly Hamiltonian.  Years of interaction with average business owners and traditional ad people has revealed a startling blindness to things like buying cycles, differences in long and short-term strategy, and proper media selection.

So these new Google analytics are cool.  I just hope the good people using them understand what they’re trying to make happen, and what the numbers returned really mean.

-    Chris

Do you see how Chris picks up the standard of Theodore McManus, Leo Burnett, and Roy Williams?  Although I think it is possible to intelligently and rigorously compare media, I can’t help but agree with Chris’s larger point.  Creating a prejudice in the mind of the customer before they’re hungry is often a more effective strategy than trying to only target hungry customers.*   But it requires a longer time horizon.  So if you are only measuring on the short term, you’ll likely come to the opposite conclusion and then deem your position to be “scientific.”  It’s a perfect example of one of the deadly sins of Web Analytics.

So what’s your time horizon?  And have you implemented a measuring/analytics system that will enable you to measure accordingly?

* To be fair, there are certainly also times when it pays to directly target hungry customers, rather than engage in a lengthier branding campaign.  I’m not necessarily advocating one over the other; I’m arguing that you shouldn’t base your decision on skewed metrics.

If you’re hoping to download Firefox 3, it looks like it’s now safe to do so. But for nearly two hours yesterday, when the latest version of the popular Web browser first launched, so many people rushed the Firefox landing page that Mozilla’s servers crashed from the volume.

A round of applause for the marketing team at Mozilla. The pent up demand for their product combined with a brilliant “Firefox 3 Download Day” campaign to produce a perfect storm of online marketing genius. As of 7am PDT today, over seven million people have downloaded Firefox 3. They even made it into the Guinness Book of World Records for the most software downloads in a day. As CNet reports, “The download rate, which peaked at 14,000 per minute Tuesday, was about 6,600 per minute Wednesday morning.”

Mozilla’s secret: An effective landing page and a commitment to website optimization testing.

Follow the Call to Action

In February of last year, we explained how Call to Action buttons make a difference on each of the landing pages for the major web browsers (including Firefox 2). Back then, FutureNow Conversion Analyst Joshua Hay noticed that…

“The non-standard shape stands out from the background of the page and has been given a persuasive color that draws the eyes to it [and] reinforces their brand. Within the Call to Action, Firefox lists the benefit and tells the visitor exactly what he is getting. Directly below the Call to Action, Firefox provides links that answer visitors’ questions if they aren’t quite ready to take action…”

Clearly, the download button for Firefox 2 was effective. It had been downloaded hundreds of millions of times; an impressive feat for software that, as Seth points out, “…wasn’t the default when you first turned on your computer.”

But Mozilla didn’t stop there. With version 3, they kept the same basic design, but they changed a few subtleties with the design, to bring us this:

Now is when I imagine some of you rolling your eyes, thinking, “How can something so make a difference? They barely changed it!” Believe me, I understand your doubt, but making small improvements is why Amazon has one of the best conversion rates online.

Do you see everything Mozilla changed? I count five “small” tweaks that helped them convert seven million and counting. (I’ll explain why it worked to the first person who can correctly list all three five changes in the comments.)

Maybe your landing pages aren’t giving away free software. Maybe you don’t need to break world records to meet your goals. Maybe you don’t expect to go from zero to 5% market share in 24 hours. But don’t think it’s impossible to, say, double your landing page conversion rate.

It’s possible.

. .

Want to test your way to a better conversion rate? Do it strategically. FutureNow can help.

Ah, yes, the four buying modes; Spontaneous, Competitive, Methodical and Humanistic.

Since I was stuck in Competitive (fast + logical) buying mode, I ended up blogging about how Mint’s site addressed my trust concerns by using trigger words — “does not store your account numbers”; “bank-level data security”; “anonymous” — that appealed to me. Meanwhile, our former client, Patrick from JigsawHealth.com (see small picture above), was looking at the big picture.

Patrick even did a screencast to show how understanding the four buying modes is essential to creating a website that converts by speaking to many types of visitors at the same time.

If you’re interested, you can read the Inc. Magazine case study on how Patrick worked with FutureNow to double his landing page conversion rate from 10% to 20% making just a few copy and design adjustments in order to speak to these different buying modes.

There’s no doubt that Patrick’s a smart guy, but this is hardly the first time one of our clients has outwitted me with our own methodology. To be perfectly honest, it happens every day. Brian Bond, our VP of Marketing and Product, the guy who markets the marketers, is a former client.

I’d like to think the reason our clients consistently get strong results is because everyone who works here is a genius, but that’s not true. Could it be that only smart clients hire us? (As much as I’d like to say that and mean it, past experience suggests otherwise.) No, it’s much simpler than that. The reason FutureNow’s clients get results is because, once you optimize your website from the visitor’s perspective, you’ll never look at websites — any website — the same way.

The presentation is 63 minutes, and the sound on the YouTube version isn’t the best. If you prefer, you can watch it full-screen and with better sound via WebEx.

The webinar starts with an introduction to Website Optimizer by Google’s Tom Leung. Then I share some of what we have learned at FutureNow over the the past decade of optimizing websites, in order to show some of the most important things you should test. We then go into Q & A, but since there were additional questions that weren’t answered on the call, we will gladly answer them for you in the comments below.

As always, if you need help figuring out the specifics of what to test on your site, we can help.

Those attitudes are changing. This month’s Internet Retailer magazine shows how companies like Future Now are using personas to bridge the gap between business and customer*; not by targeting specific people, but by attracting them according to their needs and buying preferences. By speaking their language. By anticipating their questions ahead of time in order to answer them at the right time. By reducing friction in buying process. And it works.

Just ask Steve Franzman, founder of Detoxologie.com, a client who used personas to boost conversion by 400%, and get a 2 to 1 return on a floundering Pay-Per-Click campaign. Steve didn’t even go for the full-on, from-the-ground-up implementation (see also: Howard Kaplan’s “six-figure” quote in the article). Instead, the company did a low five-figure analysis of its current site and used just four simple personas to get enough perspective to rework the entire website.

When it comes to personas, the return you get depends on how much you’re able to implement. It’s why we encourage clients like Steve to think big by starting small. As with any marketing spend, the focus should be on spending the least amount of money to generate the best possible return on investment. Time and time again, personas have proven to be the most effective tool to plan multi-channel campaigns. But not all personas are equal.

An entrepreneur struggling with a lot of other tough decisions, Steve spent a month pouring over whether he should invest in personas. His competition was marketing themselves in ways that made Steve uncomfortable. They seemed successful, but he didn’t want to be like them. He felt he understood his customers better and had serious empathy for their needs — his website just wasn’t showing that, and he didn’t know where to start. Before personas, he says, “Our customers were everybody and we didn’t know how to deal with them.”

If you feel the same way, you’re not alone. To find out how the use of personas can boost your marketing potential, don’t be shy. Reach out and ask us anything and everything about personas. But remember, with personas, you are what you implement. It’s like having your own customers as a personal trainer. Personas can tell what to improve and what to avoid, but it’s up to you to take the first step.

[*Pay attention, B2B's. You have customers, too.]

All of this makes for a case study. Persuasion isn’t a problem for this particular brand; they have legions of fans around the world and have tens of millions of records in the past 15 years. Still, e-commerce is new territory for them, so it’s time for a crash course in conversion rate marketing. I’m going to show you how, despite selling a reported 1.2 million downloads before the album was even released, Radiohead left £’s (tons, actually) on the table — most of which could have been recovered with better planning, minimal web copy, and a simpler checkout process.

Web Copy in its Right Place = No Alarms + No Surprises

A couple weeks ago, when the band announced they would release their new album online — through their own shopping cart, letting people pay whatever they like — Radiohead was widely praised by media and fans alike. The move was hugely disruptive (especially coming from such popular act) and record executives at the major record labels were left shaking in their boots as the likes of Madonna, Oasis and Nine Inch Nails dropped their recording contracts in favor of (non-iTunes) online distribution. Although they’re said to have changed the record industry with the move online, the impact would have been far more substantial had Radiohead anticipated fan’s customer’s questions in advance and addressed them with proper web copy.

Of the four dominant personality types, the slower-paced Methodical and Humanistic fans were the worst hit. Methodicals were upset because, since past Radiohead albums had been available at 320 kilobits per second (kbps) — a superior bitrate, twice that of the 160 kbps version they received — they assumed they’d be getting the best possible bitrate. Methodicals, and people in methodical mode, don’t like being duped over technical specs. Humanistics, meanwhile, were upset because once their Methodical friends (the detail-focused mavens they are) informed them they were given a second-rate product, and they’re likely thinking this is very “un-Radiohead” of them. This video clip from MTV illustrates the variety of reactions among personality types:

Here’s Radiohead’s In Rainbows website. Although “keeping it minimal” seems to have been a considered design choice, some basic copy at each stage to let people know something, anything about the album would have kept word-of-mouth focused on the you-choose-what-to-pay conversation — or even, say, the album — instead of what they didn’t do. The good news for the band, though, is that if they really did want to start a conversation about what music’s worth (as their guitarist mentioned to Rolling Stone), they’d done an amazing job of it. For instance, PureButtons.com paid $1,000 for the album — but the difference between them and Radiohead is that the button company has its online marketing in order (evidence).

A Fitter, Happier, More Productive Checkout

Before purchasing the album, I wanted to see what my friends in the music biz had to say. For instance, URB Magazine editor Joshua Glazer offered this anecdote:

“Funny thing, I couldn’t be bothered to figure out the shopping cart on Radiohead’s site. I tried to enter something in the ‘amount’ space (or what I think was the amount space) and it stayed blank. It was just too vague, so I still had a friend IM me the MP3s. “

As promised, I bought the album at the full, would-be iTunes price of $9.99 (or £4.90). Josh was right, though. They didn’t exactly make this easy.

Unfortunately, this is all too common. There’s no good reason to ask people to register before checkout. In this situation, all they really need is a name, credit card number, address (to verify credit card), and check-box to agree to terms and conditions, and a button that says something like “Place My Order.” If there’s any registration you’d like to lure people into, they need to know why they should do it. It’s like proposing marriage on the first date. Still, it’s the next step that makes the least sense.

Of course, there were two additional steps. I had to enter my credit card info on the following page, with a confirmation page after that. But all of this could have been handled in two steps had they offered registration as an option on the confirmation page instead of hitting me with this hurdle. Also, it would have been nice to know how many steps there would be. A simple breadcrumb indicator at the top to illustrate the steps (e.g., “Step 2 of 4″ or “Register”) would have been nice, as well. People — especially fast-moving Competitive and Spontaneous types — like to know how long things will take. Nothing bleeds the joy out of music like signing a web form. They could have also made this easier for Competitive and Spontaneous types by adding Google Checkout or PayPal as one-step options.

I did finally receive my digital copy of the album. After a couple of listens, it’s pretty good. Not exactly a departure from what they’ve done over the past five years, but they’ve definitely still got it. I’m not quite sure why people are complaining, either. The sound quality is good enough for me, as was the price.

P.S. — If your b(r)and wants to convert multi-channel to multi-platinum, we can help.

[Hat tip to the Wizard of Ads Group's Tim Miles for linking me to the MTV News story, and reminding us that "you can't outrun word-of-mouth." And, in case you're interested in how the music business shot itself in the foot, leaving room for bands to go it alone online, Don Dodge can tell you all about it.]

People often ask us, “What’s the average Conversion Rate in my industry?” Fair enough, but does it matter? If you’re converting less than 1/10th of your traffic, you should be concerned. If you’re converting more than that, you can do better. We all can. It’s even possible to double your conversion rate, if you ask bigger questions.

When JigsawHealth.com contacted us, they were converting three times better than the average. But they the didn’t just ask bigger questions, they put them to the test. Now, after testing some new verbiage and some design tweaks, they convert 1/5th of browsers into buyers.

Inc. Magazine explains…

If you’re ready to put big questions to the test, or if your business already demands big answers — and quickly — don’t assume the prognosis can’t improve just because you’ve “already tried everything” else.

Want to boost online conversions on landing pages and beyond? FutureNow can help.