Our SEOmoz is one of the world’s largest providers of tools for search engine optimization (SEO). The company was already highly successful, having a list of Fortune 500 clients as long as your arm. It had also conducted many split tests on its site. In fact, previous SEOmoz split tests were the subject of 14 pages in an industry “best practices” guide for landing page optimization.
Nevertheless, in the first split test that Conversion Rate Experts conducted for SEOmoz, we generated a 52% improvement in sales. (It’s important to note that “we” refers to a team effort between Conversion Rate Experts with our proven system and SEOmoz with their solid products and a bias toward action.)
Within the first four months of work, we increased annual revenues by $1 million.
How we got those improvements
We’ve all heard the business principle of “listen to your customer”. In analyzing the SEOmoz business, we took that principle much further: We not only listened to paying customers, but also to free-trial customers who hadn’t yet decided to subscribe to the paid service, and to customers who had canceled their subscriptions.
After all, it takes time, effort, and money to bring visitors to a website. It’s worth the effort to determine just what is going through the heads of buyers, non-buyers, and former buyers. We knew what actions people took—now we had to discover why they took them.
Here are some of the methods we used to analyze SEOmoz’s visitors:
- We asked paying members what they liked most about the SEOmoz service, what ultimately convinced them to sign up, and how they would describe the service to a friend (among many other questions).
- Next we asked non-paying (free trial) members many questions, including what would make them sign up for the service, which tools they liked the most and least, and what were their most time-consuming SEO tasks.
- Then we talked with paying members who had canceled, asking them the obvious question: “Why did you cancel?” We also wanted to know what was the one thing that would bring them back.
- We learned from face-to-face selling. Rand Fishkin, the founder of SEOmoz, could easily sell the service face-to-face at conferences, but commented that he wished his website could be as effective. We therefore asked Rand to pretend we were the prospect while we recorded his approach. We then compared what was on the current website with the details Rand used to sell SEOmoz face-to-face. That enabled us to identify what was missing from the website.
- We became the customer, which is a great way to see first-hand the good and not-so-good aspects of the actual customer experience.
- Next, we incorporated our findings into revised “wireframe” pages. A wireframe is a quick rendering of a proposed page, which allows you to prototype quickly without bogging down programmers or designers. We then recruited people from the SEOmoz Twitter feed to participate in usability tests of those wireframes. We wanted to know what they liked and didn’t like on a big-picture basis.
A wireframe of the page. To get a free annotated PDF of the winning SEOmoz page, subscribe to our free newsletter.
Through an iterative process of usability testing, modifying the page, and repeating, we eventually arrived at a version that we were confident would outperform the current one. We ran a split test to see how visitors would react to it. Using a statistically significant sample of more than 5,000 visitors, we achieved a 52% increase in sales of SEOmoz’s PRO membership.
The results of the split test. The new page generated 52% more sales.
Some of the proven techniques we used
1. We created a web page long enough to tell the story
There’s a popular myth among web marketers that “long web pages don’t sell”. These people believe that it’s much better to have short pages that don’t require scrolling.
What we’ve discovered from many client consultations around the world is this: What counts is not how long your page is, but how engaging it is.
In our analysis of Rand’s effective face-to-face presentation we noticed that he needed at least five minutes to make the case for SEOmoz PRO. Yet the existing web page was more like a one-minute summary. Once we added the key elements of Rand’s presentation, the page became much longer:
Who says long pages don’t work? Our page was six times longer than the control. To get a free annotated PDF of the winning SEOmoz page, subscribe to our free newsletter.
It’s interesting to note that Amazon.com, which is known for its relentless testing, tends to have extremely long product pages. Just see the page for its Kindle reader. (None of the links on this page are affiliate links, by the way.) Amazon realizes that buyers are engaged and want to know what they’re getting into. (If you want to know how far people scroll down your own web pages, one good tool is ClickTale.)
2. We infused the headline with curiosity rather than overt “buy me” language
Too many marketers rush into a sale right in the headline, before they’ve generated sufficient interest on the part of readers.
The original SEOmoz headline wasn’t bad:
The old headline.
We designed our new headline not to sell anything, but to make visitors stop and pay attention. Here’s the new one:
The new headline.
This headline not only utilizes the social proof of how some of the biggest companies on the planet rely on SEOmoz, but it also incites curiosity by indicating that the readers will gain value just from reading the page.
3. We explained precisely what customers would get at each level
Our analysis of customer emails and surveys made us realize that some customers weren’t aware of the impressive array of tools they’d get with a paid membership. In addition, they seemed to be confused about which tool was available at which membership level.
One handy chart solved both of those problems at a glance. Plus, visitors could hover over any element of the chart to reveal more details.
The table we created to show what you get at each level of membership.
We also recognized that paid customers loved the “Q&A” feature but the existing site did not mention it. It’s where members could ask detailed questions and get customized, personalized answers from the SEOmoz team of experts. We made the Q&A service prominent in the new chart, and we also created a separate section for it.
We added some examples of the Q&A service, to illustrate the depth of expertise in the answers.
4. We showcased things customers cared about but SEOmoz had taken for granted
Almost every company takes some of its most impressive “persuasion assets” for granted. SEOmoz was no exception; for example, they were so accustomed to dealing with major firms as clients that they were somewhat “ho hum” about that fact.
We greatly increased the logo display of SEOmoz’s well-known clients because it included so many world-famous brands.
We also added a long section of testimonials from professional SEO specialists. Sometimes comments from one’s peers—other professional SEOs—can be more influential than even endorsements from brand-name clients.
5. We augmented the message with video
Some people are most influenced by text while others find audio or video to be more helpful.
Because we had videotaped Rand’s live presentation earlier, it was a simple matter to add highlights of his points to a short video on the page.
The video of SEOmoz's CEO, Rand Fishkin, which we embedded in the page.
So that’s how we achieved the 52% improvement with the landing page. Next, we turned our attention to the offer.
Phase II—testing the offer
Our improved page did indeed tell the SEOmoz story more completely, so it was now time to be brave with a call-to-action that could not be ignored.
6. We lowered the “risk bar”, to make it easier for customers to try the service
We knew from customer research that people were impressed with the tools but sometimes were just not sure if they would work in their own situations.
To overcome this objection, we made a special offer to SEOmoz’s free subscribers: we offered them a 30-day full-featured membership for just $1.
7. We asked non-subscribers to tell us why they didn’t even want a $1 membership
We could hardly lower the risk bar any further, so we really wanted to know what was on the minds of those visitors who refused even the $1 offer. And how do you read people’s minds? By asking them questions! In the first promotional email, we asked, “IF YOU DECIDE YOU DON’T WANT TO CLAIM THIS SPECIAL $1 OFFER … then please send a reply to this email with a brief explanation of why you aren’t interested.”
It turned out that about 500 of them had the same concern—did our $1 trial contain a hidden catch that committed them to a long-term contract?
The answer was no, and this bit of feedback prompted us to send a follow-up email explaining that nothing was hidden—and that they could use the entire site for 30 days and cancel even on the last day with no commitment and no hard feelings.
Once we had identified the main objection, we created an email that overcame it.
That email resulted in another subscription boost.
Phases I and II succeeded in getting people comfortable with SEOmoz and persuading them to try out the PRO service. We had one remaining task:
Phase III—strategies for improving lifetime customer value (LCV) and retention
We of course knew that a $1 offer would boost subscriptions but the real goal was to keep these users active beyond the trial period. There are many retention strategies available in a marketer’s toolbox, and we used several with SEOmoz.
One of the most widely applicable types of strategy is “involvement devices”. Involvement devices are mechanisms that help your customer or prospect to derive value from your service quickly and easily. Here’s how we used this strategy with SEOmoz:
8. We created a quick-start guide so customers could get quick wins
We had 30 days to impress our new subscribers. The key was to get them to use the service and experience some quick wins with all the SEOmoz tools.
We therefore stayed close to our subscribers with a series of 10 quick and easy things they could do to boost their search engine rankings within the first 30 days.
One of the emails we sent to new subscribers to make it easy for them to get started using the service (to make them more likely to continue using the service beyond the trial period).
These three phases helped SEOmoz to not only achieve a conversion increase of around 170% over four months, but to generate more than $1 million in additional revenue.
Handy lessons
- Lots of businesses assume they know what their customers think and want, but very few businesses ever take the time to find out for sure. Put your own ideas aside and get as much customer feedback about your website and products as you can. You simply cannot overdo this activity.
- Compile a list of objections and, for each one, create a counter-objection. When visitors don’t buy, it’s for a reason—perhaps the price is too high, the product description is too vague, the site contains insufficient proof to back up the claims, or any of a hundred other objections. Take the most-common objections and methodically address each one through testimonials, case histories, examples, screen shots, and any other proof you can muster.
- Be bold in your tests but conservative in your exposure. We ran a $1 offer but did not advertise it to the world. Only existing subscribers saw it, and we carefully monitored the volume of signups. You can afford to go for big, bold tests when you manage your downside.
- Use as much text as you need to fully explain your product or service and back up your claims with proof. There’s no such thing as a too-long web page—only a too-boring one.
- Remember that when you sell face-to-face you only need to answer one person’s objections. When you sell on the web, you must anticipate and address all the major objections, so don’t handicap yourself for the sake of some old myth about page length.
- Separate yourself from your competitors by offering something of value right away. Perhaps offer a truly valuable special report, or a full-featured trial membership. When you “give before you get”, you put visitors at ease by proving your value and avoiding the hype.
Some of the tools we used
- Omniture Test&Target was used to carry out split tests.
- IndexTools (now known as Yahoo! Site Analytics) was used to understand the types of visitors coming to the website and how they behaved once there.
- Adobe Illustrator was used to create the wireframes. These days, we’re fairly smitten with Balsamiq, which takes about three milliseconds to learn to use.
- Twitter was used to recruit usability testers.
- Survey Monkey was used to conduct surveys of buyers, non-buyers, and former buyers—though we’d highly recommend SurveyGizmo too.
- The video was hosted with Vimeo.
The importance of having a great product
We were impressed by SEOmoz from the very beginning. Though many companies build tools in order to sell them, SEOmoz took a different approach: It built SEO tools for the express purpose of using them internally in its consulting practice with Fortune 500 companies and other major clients. These tools were not built to sell—they were built to work.
Later SEOmoz realized that other businesses could benefit from the same tools and thus its membership site was born.
SEOmoz’s thoughts on the CRO process
Here’s a short video from SEOmoz’s CEO:
A video of SEOmoz's CEO, Rand Fishkin, describing the project.
Will these techniques work on your website?
The results we achieved for SEOmoz were extreme; not all projects yield the same spectacular results. (To get an idea of the results we get, go here.)
Of course your business is unique. It’s for that reason that you should avoid adopting recommendations from web “gurus” who suggest you can install a magic button or other website gimmick and enjoy tremendous results.
Conversion rate optimization is not about gimmicks; it’s not even about tools. It’s about getting inside the heads of your visitors, understanding them, and then aligning your offerings with their interests.
If you do that—no matter what your business is—we think you’ll be amazed at the results.
Our gift to you: a free annotated PDF of the winning SEOmoz page
If you’d like a screenshot of SEOmoz’s winning page, with loads of “tooltips” explaining, in detail, the persuasion techniques behind each page element, just sign up to our free newsletter. We’ll send you a copy of the PDF straight away. We reckon it’s going to be an eye-opener for you, revealing persuasive techniques you might otherwise have overlooked. Our newsletter goes out fairly infrequently, it contains truly valuable information, and you can easily unsubscribe whenever you wish (though few people ever do). You can get it here.
To get a free annotated PDF of the winning SEOmoz page, subscribe to our Want more case studies like this?
If you would like to see more of our clients’ results, you can find a long list here.
We plan to publish detailed case studies on several of them soon. If you’d like to be notified as they become available, join our free newsletter.
If you would rather find out right away how we might help your company to increase its conversion rate and profits, just get in touch with us for a friendly chat with one of our consultants, during which we’ll identify the biggest opportunities for you to grow your business using conversion rate optimization.
Thanks to SEOmoz
We’d like to thank Rand for allowing us to discuss the details of this project. We’d also like to thank the great SEOmoz staff who worked with us on this project: Scott Willoughby, Sarah Bird, Jeff Pollard, Matt Heilman, Sam Niccolls and Adam Feldstein. SEOmoz is highly successful for several reasons: They’re committed to creating a great product, they have a close relationship with their customers, they’re brave, and are willing to take action through experiments to improve not only their products but also their website.
If you think you could benefit from SEOmoz’s industrial-strength suite of SEO tools—visit SEOmoz.
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Great article guys! Thanks for breaking this down and sharing how you made it happen. Very nice work!!
Agreed, this was an amazing piece on effective conversion.
Much appreciated!
Agreed.
Agreed! even a year later in this fast paced ever evolving digital world the information is vital.
Thank you.
Very interested to see your comments on the page design. I have been studying the new SEOmoz pages for a while and wondered how successful they were. Amazing work and thanks for sharing!
That’s a pretty impressive result on a business that was presumably already doing a lot of the right things (well you would hope so, being industry pros).
It’s enough to make me sit up and listen today, and thanks for another great resource, I’ll be taking a good look through the annotated version.
Very good article. I will pass this around and tell my social media network about it because it ROCKS!
Can’t wait to read over the annotated PDF. Keep up the good work!
Great article as always. SEOmoz must have been very pleased
Great post. looking forward to receiving the pdf.
This is an AWESOME summary. As a business focused on email marketing, there were MANY strategies in here that I want to put into practice. We find that surveys are an effective way to get usable data. Thanks for the share.
Great case study here guys. Feedback from your target market is so critical to achieving success. I came away with a lot of great ideas to boost landing page conversion rates. Thanks!
What an eye opener guys! I,m a big fan of the SEOMoz website and to see how the improvements were thought out, designed and tested is quite exhilarating. Thanks for sharing!
Outstanding summary of your actions and love the emphasis placed on understanding the customer.
The information you guys give out for FREE is way more valuable than any paid product out there (except a case-specific analysis and optimization, of course). Great job and please do keep up the great work!
Excellent article! I’ve actually watched as the SEOmoz pages have changed and it’s great to know the effect those changes have had. I simply love how you put this information out there so we can take a look at your work and critically think about how to apply it to our own business.
Eye opener! Especially the longer page could be very interesting for complex sales pitches.
This is a very thorough article about one of my favorite websites, SEOmoz. I am a paying member of SEOmoz and I often wonder how effective was their super-long copy. Now I know, thanks to you guys ! I am looking forward to receiving those PDF in my email on April 14.
I really enjoyed this article, I find it useful not only for websites, but in general, knowing our customer, listening to him is vital. Easy to read and with all the necessary references. Congratulations!
Excellent Overview! Thank you for all the insights. I am looking forward to the annotated PDF. Keep up the great work. So, when will you publish a book on the subject?
I value everything that you folks write so when I saw above that you used twitter for recruiting testers, I immediately wanted to become one of your twitter followers. Unfortunately, I don’t see the twitter bug with link anywhere on your site. Is there a reason you’ve chosen not to display a direct link to your twitter page in your site layout? (or, perhaps i am overlooking it.). Thank you for all the great info you share.
Great article, I have been a big fan of SEOmoz for awhile and their dedication to customers and their experience is top-notch.
This is a really excellent article. There’s so much out there that’s not that helpful, or based on conventional wisdom, you guys provide real evidence to back-up your conclusions. Well done!
What an amazing case study. Will definitely help me build my business. CJ
As a SEOmoz fan, this article was very interesting. My biggest question, or curiosity is about long landing pages. You see them in a lot of the multi-level marketing (MLM) products. I have friends who are involved with MLM and they swear that they convert. This is very much the direct mail/infomercial approach to marketing.
Their call to action is repeated 8 times. I’m curious which one was clicked on the most.
Great article, wonder what it is about the long pages that sell so well? It seems everyone uses them. Glad to see it obviously worked so well for SEOmoz.
Thanks for sharing. I’ve been a member of SEOmoz for several years and it’s great to see they are doing so well.
I’m guessing the more technical the product the longer the sales copy ends up?
Very impressive. I particularly like how you’ve avoided a hard sell, the comparison table and covering all bases in terms of having text, video etc. The follow up email to those who didn’t sign up is gold, excellent analysis
Looking forward to the PDF!
CRO – you people rock. I was one of the people who converted into an SEOmoz subscriber! I feel so ‘used!’
Speaking of landing pages – am very impressed with Unbounce.com – landing page development with in-built A/B split and Multivariate testing (using the Google Website Optimiser API I believe). Worth a look. BTW I have no affiliation! Just thought it might be useful.
We have a business that requires our overseas customers to place a great deal of trust in us. I picked up a lot of great tips that will help us more effectively communicate and market through our website.
Thanks very much publishing and sharing this content.
Superb work. And proof, the way design is changing especially when it comes to the importance of conversions.
Cool. Just wondering, which software do you use to create wireframes? Are there any free tools out there you’d recommend for this purpose? Thanks!
Isn’t it strange how often people try to guess why their customers are acting in a certain way without ever asking them?
The part where you actually listened to your customers, and potential customers is what started this great journey of improvement. I often repeat this again and again and try to remind everyone in my blog posts that we should never forget to actually listen to the customer, and never forget to KEEP listening to the changing customer.
I think your write up is great and I look forward to the PDF as I’m sure I will learn something from your success. This also is very clever marketing, well done.
Thank you for sharing this. Actually this is the first time I read that having a long page with a scroll can be much better than having a short page. this is something new that I learned today and eager to test it out with our clients.
This is a great post, very informative and broken down nicely. I will certainly be trying out some of your suggestions.
I was interested in the page length as I have found some “sales” pages so engaging I’ve forgotten I’m scrolling 5 minutes later. I was beginning to think maybe I had a scrolling addiction
Terrific article — really great to have such a thorough walk-through of a major CRO initiative.
If you were telling me about the long page before I would be very hesitant. After that, I will definitely give it a try to one of my customer’s websites.
Excellent article. I had read that long pages can work for B2B campaigns. It’s good to see proof that it worked well for SEOMoz.
SEOmoz, a company who specializes in SEO and conversion enlists another company who specializes in conversion to help with conversion – awesome. Also, completely agree with having longer pages and using the Kindle example proves this point. However long it takes to answer the question: “this is what we offer and here are the reasons why you need it”
Am I right in thinking those 2 huge initial boosts were due to ‘month for 1 dollar’ promotion? I know what’s sucked me in to pro membership
Stunning work as per usual chaps
Excellent article. I had read somewhere that long landing pages can work for B2B campaigns. It’s good to see that it worked so well for SEOMoz.
Brilliant case study.
Of course being the “long copy” advocate that I am, I appreciated…
“What counts is not how long your page is, but how engaging it is.”
Keep up the great work.
Lawrence
Nice article, thanks for being so free and clear with your information.
Excellent Article, and excellent insight.
Amazing results and a really good case study. Will certainly get more SEOs thinking about conversion rate optimizaton options. You must know this already, but you’re definitely onto a winner
Best of luck
And yes, I did scroll to the bottom of your page
Great insight, thanks for sharing! It confirms my own thoughts but now I can refer to someone else’s ideas. Sometimes that makes it easier to promote projects internally…
Congratulations on a great job with awesome results. I especially like that your upgrade of the SEOMoz site was based on 1-to-1 conversations with customers AND ex-customers. People always seem ready to share more than you’d expect — and their input is SO valuable if you’re willing to listen to it.
I see lots of preaching about the importance of listening to one’s customers, but I rarely see companies go out of their way to truly do it. Bravo for you! Can’t wait to see the annotated page with all the details of what you did.
Such a big achievement requires a big write up. It’s a real nod of the hat to you and your profession – to really show how difficult it can be to make a definitive change to a page, and that knowing thy customer is always going to hep you get there more easily.
Love the final video with Rand – great testimonials.
Oh and thanks to Chris above for the nod to Unbounce.com. We don’t do MVT just yet, but we do have the simplest A/B testing out there. (sorry for the mini plug – just setting the record straight).
Congratulations…great job! Thank you for sharing these information. Regards from Germany!
I have never ever read such an insightful article on SEO. You guys rock. You’ll deserve a salute. I admire your team and your approach to the problem.
Absolutely brilliant article. It is a must-read for every web designer, SEO expert and entrepreneur as well. Thanks for this invaluable piece of information.
Great advice.
I always thought that long pages were not the way to go as they can sometimes look spammy, however it seems to work really well looking around at other examples.
Great post. This helps to unravel the mystery of multi-variant testing.
Great case study guys. It is amazing that you were able to find so many areas that needed improvement in a company that was already doing so well. Good stuff.
Great article with useful and applicable insights….
But does anyone else see the irony of SEOMoz having to get outside consultants to help with conversion? Surely SEO (=traffic) and conversion (=turning that traffic into economic benefit) should all be part and parcel of the same operation? Traffic without conversion is an expensive way to waste server bandwidth, and conversion without traffic is …. impossible as you cannot convert someone who does not exist.
Perhaps the biggest benefit for both parties and their customers would be a JV offering packages which cover both improved traffic AND improved conversions?
Thanks for sharing so much detail about your success with SEOmoz. I find it funny that people still think a no-scroll page is the only way to go.
You can see many successful internet marketers using the engaging, long scrolling pages with great results (but of course there are many who don’t get the results because they are long, but not at all engaging or credible).
If someone gets to the end too quickly, there isn’t enough time to really get their brain working on it and considering it.
Another reason long scrolling pages work so well is that there is room/time to do just what you said–address EVERY concern or barrier that might come up for any reader, not just the main one.
Thanks! Good stuff to think with as I go into my next meeting with biznik.com to rethink their site.
To me it depends on the product you are selling. For what you are talking about – you are selling a service – not a physical item..
Your service requires people to read articles – so they will most likely read long landing pages.
What happens when you are selling a hammer? or a light bulb? Sure you can have volumes of text on what the hammer does – but most people just need a hammer. Unless the hammer can bring about world peace – I don’t see how super long volumes of information is going to sway anyone. It would come down to – how long is this hammer going to last – and the price.
Using the Amazon kindle as an example is not as good for people that sell more low brow items.
The Kindle is for – people that like to read – so I would think that naturally they will want to read what their device that helps them read more – will do for them.
If you are dealing with people that sell building products – a large percentage of people don’t want to go to school on how a privacy fence is installed – that is why people hire contractors.
There is a dish network landing page out there that is short – flashy, and concise – and they have sold huge numbers with that page. I have seen first hand their results.
So it comes down to what you are trying to sell – and who the customer you are focusing on is.
Any opinions on this?
As someone in the services industry and who works with marketers everyday I am really impressed with how well you laid this out.
Achievable is a word that comes to mind. This will be a handy use case that I will share with my clients when they push back on asking questions of customers and prospects through the customer life cycle.
Unfortunately there is still a stigma around opening pandora’s box and letting customers in to help make a brand, product, or service better for everyone. Good customers have an investment in a brand when it brings value to their lives and are open to pitching in to make sure it sticks around.
Thanks for sharing and congrats on your success.
All I can say is WOW – this was an excellent article. Full of detailed, valuable information that we can use. Thanks.
Ironically, this page is too long. That and the slippery use of the word ‘we’ at the top made me not bother to read it.
I was privileged enough to see Ben Jesson present this information at SEOmoz Seminar in 2009, and I am SO happy to be able now to distribute the message throughout my company (The Active Network, $200+ million company).
Now if only I can convince the C-level guys here to actually HIRE you guys rather than just being wow’ed by your work.
This post reinforces the benefit of user participation in different stages of the process.
I personally find these super long pages really overwhelming and difficult, but it’s not about our personal feelings or responses. Testing takes it out of that realm and puts the focus where it should be… on the users.
I am most impressed with you sharing of powerful tools for us to use. Also, the focus on usability and testing, testing, testing. Thanks so much and continued success.
Great article – going to get the PDF now!
Amazing update today guys, one of the best conversion technique documents I’ve ever seen… all in one page yet… that screenshot alone is worth more than all of the books I’ve purchased in the past.
Just want to say Thank You!
That is some incredibly detailed information on how you achieved those results. I am very impressed. Thank you for sharing this with everyone. Powerful stuff indeed!
Thank you guys for sharing such powerful conversion tactics and tips, I’m more impressed with how you laid your content out and presented it in a much more professional manner.
What I’m even more impressed with is that you guys made tests to boost your conversions and at the same time provided even more value to your clients and made everything more clear, easy and understandable to them.
Thank you, thank you, thank you… This is by far one of the best illustrated case studies that is backed up with results and optimized through testing. Thanks Rand (and SEOmoz) for sharing along with the team at CRE for putting this together and sharing the amazing results. Cheers to you guys on a job well done – these are excellent results.
I just got the PDF, thanks guys. I was really surprised to see so little discussion of the video especially given the above-the-fold real estate dedicated to playing it.
When I visited the landing page, I noticed that the video autoplayed, but you didn’t mention the impact this had. I would love to know more about user engagement with the page as a whole and with the video specifically. How many of the nine minutes did users watch and what was the correlation between time spent watching the video and the likelihood of a successful conversion.
It’s a fascinating case study, but there are still whole areas left unexplained.
Inspiring story!
I have a question: given that so many of the corporate users are well-known brands, how did you get their consent to use their logo? I can understand using the press from Newsweek and bloggers, and having smaller clients provide testimonials.
However, in my experience, most big companies are reluctant to do free marketing for their vendors. Can you share your secrets?
As always – you ROCKED!
Thanks for sharing this. I learn more from you guys than I do from any other internet marketing “guru” or whoever. I’m also a conversion freak like you guys and I simply enjoy what you share with us, so thanks again!
Awesome looking wireframe, what program did you guys use to produce it?
This is truly some good information you have shared, so much so that I plan on reading through it probably a couple more times just because there was so much information to absorb. Thanks for sharing.
It’s really great that you shared all of your results like this. Can’t wait to use some of my direct marketing experience on my website.
Congratulations and thanks for sharing this. Really very useful
Great write-up. I’m curious to know approximately how many hours this entire process took…
First, it’s a great article, really impressed.
But it seems that you broke the rules on web content writing (i.e. headline length), what was your approach for doing this?
Excellent work guys, your information and tips are red hot! Thanks for an awesome post, so much to think about.
Great article! These insights on website look and feel are exactly what I have been looking for. My own website is in dire need on reconstruction!
excellent breakdown, really very detailed and thorough, thanks you for sharing.
What’s great to see about the whole process is that customers were listened to and brought into the fold. Also the big buzz for 2010 is “conversion optimisation” and it looks like you are doing a fantastic job guys – keep it up
Fascinating reading. I just stumbled across this post while looking for an seomoz post actually. I then double checked and yep, I signed up on 15th April 2010 so you converted me!
Excellent article guys. thanks for sharing
Awesome! Thanks for the post, you don’t keep any option to share the post in social networks, may be an UGC liker, take care.
Wow, I think that’s really proactive. Not only did you just work on their site, but you went even further by talking to both their current customers and customers who canceled. Way to dive in!
And the rest is just fascinating. Thanks so much for sharing the details.
Absolutely staggering. It’s amazing to see what listening to current customers can do for a company and conversions moving forward. I think all CEO’s need to remember that and not lose sight once they taste of success.
When I visited the landing page, I noticed that the video autoplayed, but you didn’t mention the impact this had. I would love to know more about user engagement with the page as a whole and with the video specifically. How many of the nine minutes did users watch and what was the correlation between time spent watching the video and the likelihood of a successful conversion.
This case study is a real eye opener. My background is a technical one and I have therefore always struggled to write ‘compelling’ sales copy – this has held me back in the past. However because testing tools make the whole process much easier I’m now able to test many many ‘attempts at writing good copy’ in my quest to build highly converting pages. In effect, split testing products should be seen as tools to help you become better copy writers!
Really good info there. Thank you for sharing such valuable information. Normally working success strategies are hidden from others fearing competitors taking advantage of it. Thanks a ton.
I wish I’d read this before spending £40k+ on Maxymiser, a major UK-based conversion rate optimisation provider.
If you are thinking about using an external provider, you may find my review of Maxymiser interesting. They are rather expensive and you might not receive what you were looking for!
This is imperative for any marketing minded individual out there. There is something to be gleaned from both SEO and non-SEO alike.
Fascinating case study here.
Even more compelling though: why did they change their sales page so dramatically since this obviously huge win? (The refinements your company made.)
I can only draw the conclusion that they’ve somehow built upon the knowledge imparted by yourselves to make even bigger gains in revenue with this latest version (which is much shorter btw).
Inquiring minds ‘n all that
I love how you guys always change the mysterious voodoo into common sense tests. Thanks SEOmoz for letting CRE tell your story so we could learn how to think like human beings instead of bots.
Great article, I have been a big fan of SEOmoz for awhile and their dedication to customers and their experience is top-notch.
I think too, that talking to your customers is the best way. You could learn there many things, much more like a tool could do it. Great article.
Awesome Job. I’m an SEOmoz user and felt a great different in their web site after these changes. Didn’t know they had consultation.
Great job.
I noticed recently that SEOmoz has changed that long “Million Dollar” sales page into a short version built by a web 2.5 design team. I can’t imagine that page converting as well, but you guys advertise this big win, and Moz has changed that page for some time now.
We’ve had several people ask us about that. Since the publication of this SEOmoz case study we’ve continued to work with them on improving their conversion rate and the usability of their site overall. We’ll be looking to release an update on the additional testing as soon as we can to answer that exact question and show how ongoing, iterative testing is so effective.
You may have convinced me to join.. been looking for a reason to validate the semi-steep price tag of their pro plan, but I see their 30 day trial is on, so why not?
Great article, lots of great info, thanks
I’m huge fan of SEOmoz and how they promote transparency, it’s good to see actual figures to back up CRO testing.
I wonder why/how/when they changed their website as well as their pricing and what the impact was. I wonder whom advised them of these changes.
Way to hang it out there! This is great stuff. Very open and transparent. I like the how-to portions of this post as well.
Agree – Conversion is usually a major issue.
I love SEOmoz they have been so helpful getting started on my SEO work as well as helping to develop and refine it. Thanks Guys!
Good info and case study. We love their SEO tools and are in fact finding stage of signing up for a plan to utilize more of their SEO tools.
Wow, first of all congratulations on increasing conversion by 52%. That is amazing.
I particularly liked your point about “We became the customer”. I have always thought this is a vital skill that can help you view things the way the people that are buying your item see it. It’s not an easy thing to do always though because you can tend to be slightly biased (whether its consciously or sub consciously) and it can be difficult to see things with a fresh pair of eyes the same way they would. If you’re struggling with this, I guess asking people’s opinions like you did also helps.
I think if you can master this step though you can increase conversions by at least 30%. Great article though.
Fantastic job you did for SEOmoz. You really have me thinking about long sales copy and the power of surveys. We use the SEO tools at SEOmoz and now it looks like we have another resource for improving conversions.
Thanks for sharing!
This is an astoundingly good article, I’ve read it twice! There are just so many useful ideas I can apply to my own website, and it’s certainly got me thinking about how I can increase my conversion rate. I particularly liked the idea about not jumping straight in with the “hard sell” language but instead generate curiosity with an attention-grabbing title.
Very interesting article. I guess the moral to the story is to test, test, test and see what works best, and just listen to the consumer. I need to re-evaluate some things now…
It just can’t be said enough. The lesson is to listen to your customers, re-evaluate often and ask for feedback. Even though It’s not human nature to listen but to spend time trying to further our own agenda. Sometimes you have to shut up and listen in order to meet the evolving needs of customers. Thank you for the useful ideas!
Some great points here, but I think the one I like the most is “We became the customer”. My rule of thumb is to try and become the customer of any product I promote or sell myself. Buying the product first allows me to check it out, and see the same things that a buyer would see. I can then tell if this is something I should promote on my site, and if it is something my visitors would like.
Thanks for the great read.
Great article, I had no idea that a business could get such insane success with split testing.
I better get working on split testing my own site soon!
Thank you for the wonderful insight into a technique that is proven to be working successfully.
Long pages have been used by so called “internet marketing gurus” for years. Only problem has been that some of the so called gurus have less than stellar reputations, thus one was uncertain as to whether or not to follow their example.
It’s refreshing to get competent advice from reputable companies such as CRE and SEOmoz. You’ve validated a technique I’ve considered using and now will for certain place into action.
Although this was an obviously beautiful piece of work, IT IS NOT A TESTAMENT TO LONG PAGES, which seems to be the conclusion some readers arrived to. Anyone with minuscule understanding of research methods would know that causality cannot be inferred when so many factors are manipulated (content based on extensive user research, $1 subscriptions, retention mechanisms etc).
If anything, I think this is an excellent article to demonstrate the importance of user research. It’s a shame to be “reduced” to the takeaway “long pages are better”.
Thank your very much for this excellent read ! You have covered all the plan to the result factors here.
Now i can make some serious plans
Best regards
I love how you guys always change the mysterious voodoo into common sense tests. Thanks SEOMoz for letting CRE tell your story so we could learn how to think like human beings instead of bots.
Wow. What’s a great article on optimisation based on one of my favorite SEO expert sites.
I agree with you about “there are no long webpages but boring ones”
Great work!
Very interesting article. I guess the moral to the story is to test, test, test and see what works best, and just listen to the consumer. I need to re-evaluate some things now…
I’m definitely going to do things differently now, unless things have changed, now that it’s 2011 and this article is getting somewhat old. I see video landing pages more effective then the long long long landing page like show cased here.
You guys are blessed! Great article! Very informative. Thank you for sharing this to the world. More blessings to come!
If it is good enough for SEOmoz……conversion goes hans in hand with getting that traffic. Once you have traffic it needs to convert
This is a great post. I really like SEOMoz, though I am not a customer. My website desperately needs such engine optimization. I’m currently doing some research on the best SEO Companies. Thank you for the post, I somehow believe that SEOMoz is a good and reputable company.