October 2009

Honest to god, when I first heard about this week’s test, I thought it was incredibly stupid. It’s one thing to try out-of-the-box ideas, another to try tests that are bound to fail because they are dumber than dumb. Judge for yourself and see the results data.

One thing I did like about this ecommerce product page test, though, was the fact that winning page was chosen based on paid orders, not just add-to-cart clicks. Typical ecommerce cart abandonment rates hover around 60% — so I don’t care what moved the “add to cart” needle as much as I care about changes that propel more customers all the way through checkout.

Anyway, here’s the link again: http://whichtestwon.com/archives/2208/

P.S. Thanks to everyone who hotlinked to us this past week, especially Linda Bustos, Jeff Doan, Sharon Crost, Phillip Vargas, Roberta Rosenberg, Scott Miller, RK Johnston, Mixx, Zeynep Basaran, Pratt, Melita Shelley, Alan O’Rourke, Hank Stroll, No Life Head, Käufer Portal @ESPs, and Striped Plaid.

In case you weren’t able to make it Wednesday, I’ve posted a free recorded version of my ‘Best Ecommerce Tests’ webinar with Linda Bustos, plus a copy of the Powerpoint deck for you here.

Includes a new Case Study of what I thought was “The Stupidest” page test ever (turns out, I was wrong), loads of real-life site tweaks from Linda, our evaluation of the 80sTees.com home page, and some pretty interesting Q&A.

That link again: Best Ecommerce Tests

Thanks — and enjoy!

When a visitor bails on you and clicks away from your offer page, is it cool to chase after them with a live chat offer? Will they reconsider, or will they quit your site in disgust? Vote here & see the real-life results.

Bonus data — in our results write-up, we also include data from a separate text-link test (that I personally found fascinating) which is well worth trying out even if you don’t want to test pushing chat.

By the way, both tests were conducted for a monthly membership offer, so if you’re running a SaaS or subscription site, you absolutely must review this test with your marketing team. The link again: http://whichtestwon.com/archives/2116

P.S. Thanks to everyone who hotlinked to us this past week, especially Ben Yoskovitz, Rob Schwartz, Daniel Parry, Test & Optimize, P. Gregoire, Scott Miller, Vertster.com, Klara Hyper Island, Francesca ReDavid, Phillip Vargas, Tom O’Leary, Jay Eskenazi, Netkutatasok, Email Marketing, Pardot’s Blog, and the SMART Ecommerce Blog.