Comments on: Ecommerce Homepage Test: Copy vs. Video

By: elephantmania

elephantmania — Mon, 11 Jan 2010 19:11:00 +0000

Anyone else notice the price difference? 1 year supply of version B was actually $90 more too.

By: Audio Bible

Audio Bible — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 14:25:38 +0000

@ Rebekah, I am using GWO, I have 2 tests running right now.

By: Rebekah Donaldson

Rebekah Donaldson — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 04:51:26 +0000

Hats off to Leading Edge Herbals for A/B testing. Especially in ecommerce, it seems like a no-brainer to marketers; to some clients, it seems like marketing hoo-ha.

Speaking of hoo-ha, how many of us commenters are A/B testing? We talk the talk about conversion optimization at B2B Communications; without A/B testing our own top pages, though, who knows if we’re missing oodles of opportunities.

By: Helen @ Cucumber Marketing Inc.

Helen @ Cucumber Marketing Inc. — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 23:28:08 +0000

One major downfall here – Version A has better potential of ranking higher than Version B in search engines. I guess it’s a constant battle between usability and search engine optimization.

By: Elizabeth Ball

Elizabeth Ball — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 21:30:36 +0000

One other thing – the home page hadn’t been changed since 2004 so repeat visitors would have gotten bored with it and thought the product was stagnant, too. The video footage (if you’re into that sort of thing) might confirm that you were making the right decision.

By: Lars Johansson

Lars Johansson — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 20:14:47 +0000

I think neither of those pages would do well on a different market. Or maybe I’m just in the wrong demographic. Looks like spam to me. Also, it’s not that often I see as much content below the fold.

I’d like to know the difference in response between North America and other parts of the world.

If I’d get my hands on the site I’d test a much more drastic alternative.

Gotta love testing though..

By: Richard

Richard — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 19:34:40 +0000

To add bit more…

It’s hard to imagine anyone just happening upon a site with an autoplay message and then handing over their credit card.

It would also be important to know the actual sales message and delivery in the video.

So many variables not accessible in this example.

By: Richard

Richard — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 19:12:21 +0000

I always want to know where the visitors are coming from. Who are they and and how do they get to the site? Have they already been “pre-sold” or influenced positively somewhere else?

By: Jeremy Brown

Jeremy Brown — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 18:43:59 +0000

The video page looks much more professional. That has to be a concern for people ordering drugs over the internet.

By: Anne Holland

Anne Holland — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 18:40:30 +0000

Often major site or landing page redos start with radically different a/b cells just to get a sense of the overall direction testing should go in. Then, the team can roll out multivariate testing afterwards on each element on the winning page to learn what really made the difference and further optimize it.

The lesson here wasn’t whether video or extra images work or not (that’s *always* going to be different for different brands and demographics). The lesson is that you should be testing radically different pages sometimes — pushing outside the box to see if a completely different take can shake up results. You can optimize the bits and pieces of the winning page for ages after.

There’s a place in your testing strategy for both approaches. There’s just no place for “this always works better period” page design rules.