How we increased the conversion rate of Voices.com by over 400%
At the start of 2009, Voices.com, one of the leading marketplaces for voice-over talent, began working with Conversion Rate Experts. The result? Their conversion rate increased by over 400%—from less than 5% to 22%.
How we got those improvements
The most important part of any project is the exploratory work that occurs at the beginning; in FORTUNE’s article about us, they described this stage as the “detective work.” (One of our consultants describes it, rather unglamorously, as “dumpster-diving for details.”) Our in-depth analysis of Voices.com included the following:
- We studied Voices.com’s analytics account to understand which components of the sales funnel contained the biggest opportunities for improvement.
- We analyzed 510 visitor surveys to understand the mindset of those who arrived at the Voices.com site but didn’t ultimately subscribe.
- We studied all of Voices.com’s sales literature, and interviewed the company’s CEO in an effort to identify all of the company’s “persuasion assets.” This is a term we use to describe those assets of a company that would be likely to impress the prospect. Persuasion assets can come in many forms, and we’ve discovered valuable overlooked persuasion assets in the businesses of every client we’ve ever worked with.
- We analyzed Voices.com’s competitors’ websites to understand the strategies they were using, and what the opportunities were for positioning Voices.com against them.
Once we understood the prospects’ main objections, and what could be done to overcome them, we created new test pages.
Here are a few things that gave us quick wins
The 400% increase was obtained from a total of eleven experiments, which we carried out at five different stages of the conversion funnel. Some of the changes we made were very specific to Voices.com’s business, but others tend to work for most businesses. Here are the ones that are likely to be applicable to your business, regardless of what type of business you have:
1. Finding and communicating proof
Adding proof to the homepage had a significant effect: Voices.com had some impressive “claims to fame” that could really influence prospective customers, but which weren’t clearly communicated on the website. For example, it transpired that Voices.com’s customers included many household names:
2. Segmenting (by visitor type or by visitor intention)
The site had two distinct types of visitor: (i) voice-over artists, and (ii) companies looking for voice-over artists. There was a great benefit from immediately and clearly segmenting these types of visitor into separate conversion funnels.
3. Demonstration videos
Often, the biggest obstacle facing a prospect is that they don’t understand what they are about to sign up for. Voices.com overcame this obstacle by adding clearly communicated demonstration videos.
4. Hidden opportunities in the sales funnel
Once you’ve increased the conversion rate of one section of your sales funnel, it’s important that you take a “50,000 ft view” of the business, to look for new opportunities that have arisen as a result of the improvement.
Many clients expect us to work only on their landing pages, and are surprised that we analyze the whole customer journey—from the initial ads to the retention of long-term customers—in order to identify opportunities. For one client, we identified an opportunity for offline marketing, and devised a hugely successful direct mail campaign; for another, we identified an opportunity for viral growth, and implemented a tell-a-friend program that became one of their top sources of business.
Once we had increased the conversion rate of Voices.com’s sales funnel, we identified that there was a big opportunity for email marketing. We then designed a hugely successful email marketing campaign for increasing their lifetime customer value.
Handy lessons
- Find out why customers aren’t converting; don’t just guess. If you don’t know what their objections are, your chances of overcoming them are very slim.
- Don’t “hide your light under a bushel.” If your company is the best at something—and if you have proof—make certain the proof is prominently placed on your website.
- Consider segmenting your visitors. How do you know whether to segment visitors? If your most common “visitor intentions” can’t be addressed with the same message, you should segment them. Similarly, if you have more than one type of visitor, and they can’t all be served by the same message, you’ll probably have to segment them. Beware that segmentation can create a lot of extra work, so only do it if you absolutely have to.
- People don’t buy what they don’t understand. Clearly explain your service, so the prospect is more likely to feel in control and take action.
- Sometimes video is the best medium for explaining things—and for providing proof. Web video needn’t cost a lot, as we’ll reveal soon (subscribe to our newsletter to receive details). Screen capture videos can easily be carried out using Camtasia (for PC) or Screenflow (which is our preferred option for Mac).
Some of the tools we used
- For running split tests and multivariate tests, we used Google Website Optimizer.
- To better understand how users interacted with the website, we used Crazy Egg.
- We identified user experience issues by commissioning usability tests from UserTesting.com.
- The videos were hosted with YouTube. (Here’s a great guide for advanced YouTube techniques.)
- We analyzed survey feedback to understand visitor intent and to identify common questions and objections. We use many survey tools, including Survey Monkey and Survey Gizmo (We’d highly recommend Survey Gizmo.)
Have you tested audio yet?
We were customers of Voices.com three years before they became a client of ours. In 2006, we managed to get a double-digit increase in conversion for one of our clients by adding an auto-playing audio message, which was recorded by a voice-over artist we discovered from Voices.com. Good voice-over artists are like good graphic designers—they make your company seem extremely professional. They can be particularly useful for tutorial videos, for auto-playing audio messages, or even for automated telephone systems (IVRs).
If you haven’t already used Voices.com, it’s one of the most pleasant tasks you’ll ever carry out as web marketer. You just paste your text into Voices.com’s window, then, within hours, you’ll receive loads of audition recordings from voice-over artists. You then play the role of Simon Cowell, deciding which of the voice-overs is the best. (To get in character, you might even decide to pull your trousers up to your rib cage.)
You can host the audio easily using Xiosoft Audio.
Learn more
David Ciccarelli, CEO of Voices.com, described the process as being a “fascinating and profitable experience.” Watch this video to learn more…
A video of Voices.com CEO, David Ciccarelli, describing the project.
We’d like to thank David for sharing this case study. If you think you’d benefit from adding nicely-spoken audio to your website, visit Voices.com.
Will these techniques work on your website?
A 400% increase is extreme; not all experiments yield the same spectacular results. However, we’re using these techniques every day, and we’d expect at least some of them to be valuable to your business.
Want more case studies like this?
If you want to see more of our clients’ results, our buzz page contains a big list of them. We’ll be publishing detailed case studies of some of them soon. If you want to be notified when they’re ready, join our mailing list.
If you’d like to hear how we can help your company to increase its conversion rate, get in touch with us.
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Awesome!!!!
Yes this is indeed extreme. Segmentation means that your visitors have to do an extra job – that is of deciding which offer to choose – its not just one more click, its also a decision making process. In most cases this will drive them off. However you were lucky to test it and prove otherwise.
Well a couple of years back I was an employee of a company that did the same thing as yours. You may have seen the site as well – ConversionMultiplier.com. We had our own software that did Multivariate Testing.
Unfortunately for some reason they are no more into this business – but I realized how important improving conversions is. You get more profit for the same expenditure and then you can use this money to expand your business in other areas.
I am following you since the last 2-3 years and must say you guys are doing great job. Keep it up.
Fabulous example of a well-done test. Very inspiring. Thanks for sharing.
Thank you for making this information available. It’s always good to see how you analyse and improve a site’s conversion based on data.
The tip towards voices.com is also appreciated. Always handy to know where to get pro audio services.
Very interesting post – thanks for sharing. I think we could all learn a lot from CRE.
One of the things that keep me passionate about CRO is that this is a mental “game”, and if you learn how to “play” it, man you are in for great results like you guys.
Thanks for sharing the experience.
Excellent article. What I’m waiting for is CRO school or seminars hosted by Conversion Rate Experts, or a book. Anything like that in the works guys?
We’ve learned not to promise things till they’re ready. If you want to see us speaking, check out our speaking page. If you sign up to our newsletter, you’ll be the first to hear when we release new training products or services.
As a mix of former radio presenter, web developer, voice over artist, conversion and seo geek I totally loved that!
Very impressive article and some great takeaways, I simply love the sophisticated way you segment visitors.
It would be really nice if you can post a screenshot of previous homepage design. Comparison is essential!
Frank, visit archive.org to experience previous versions of the website. We didn’t post a before-and-after image because you’ll achieve much more from studying the process than from studying the individual page elements. Success always comes from understanding your website’s visitors and solving the problems that are specific to your website.
Great post. I’ll look into audio… Although I tested it (recorded my own audio) and it lowered conversion a bit. I thought you were right on the money with surveys… It all starts with good market research. Best, CJ
Great validation for us. Persuasion assets are the key to success. Pictures/video/photo gallery with text explanations. Consider all visitors as novices and use landing pages to educate with multiple navigation to the next step to answer their questions and you will convert versus you competitor.
We took our company from a garage to the #1 company of its kind, worldwide, in 6 years using the concepts described. We had to learn it on the fly…and here it is in this article and we did find new things to look at also…thanks for this article. Gave me a lot of new ideas. Gary
You guys again deliver with a great post that even a pro could learn from!
I really point one of adding proof to the homepage, but I was wondering if you guys did a test trying the current static image displayed vs a rotating (or randomized) display of individual testimonials?
Right now my company’s website has a randomized text setup, where every time you go to a new page it displays a new (randomly selected) testimonial. Wondering if anyone else has tested for this, or if there was any conventional wisdom on this?
(I know, I know, I should test this myself, but our site has a relatively low traffic volume, so it will take some time, and just wanted to see if anyone else had already given this a go :)
John, we’re not huge fans of rotating images, because it leaves the marketer with less control over what the visitor sees. We’re not saying they don’t work—it’s just that they’re not high on our list of strategies.
As usual, excellent post. Question on auto-playing media on a web page or landing page:
What have your experiments shown regarding auto-playing an audio or video message vs allowing site visitors to first initiate the play?
Unless the link to the landing page explicitly indicates that an auto-play will occur, I would have expected most visitors to prefer to initiate the play. Although if the client you mentioned in the post was Xiosoft, i can see why in this case the auto-play option could have won out.
Jeff, as usual the answer is “test it yourself”. We’ve had a lot of success with auto-playing. EyeView Digital offer analytics for video.
Excellent article. As a one person business this stuff seems daunting but something that has to be done none the less.
Learning about the voice-over artists was interesting as I never realized these existed. Looks like a great way to put across another profession layer to any website and marketing message though.
This is an awesome article, thanks for sharing your results! Case studies like this are really the driving factor that keeps me going throughout the day, and I appreciate you sharing.
Can you guys post more frequently please :)
What a great tool – thanks so much for sharing. I am so excited to see CRO getting the same attention as SEO! Please keep the case studies coming!
Good work! I like how you tried to understand the customer and used this to inform your tests.
Thanks for sharing this info.
A very impressive conversion rate optimization project indeed! One quick question: What was the time scale for the experiments that resulted in the 400% increase? It seems like a comprehensive CRO program like the one outlined above must have take some time to complete. Nice post!
Josh, in a dynamic company that has little bureaucracy, this process is surprisingly fast (this increase took a matter of months). However, there’s no end to CRO—each test tends to open up new opportunities and ideas for further improvement.
Truly a terrific article! Voices.com has been such a great resource for both voice over talents and clients in need. It’s very encouraging to know that they’re taking the time to market themselves properly. This kind of investment should prove to be beneficial to all parties involved with the website.
A great read…thanks.
WOW… that was an inspiring bunch of tools to share. Thanks so much as I’m new as a web biz and it’s been slow for my site to get up and go but this will surely help ;)
Thank you very much for sharing this article and providing some very informative advice. Just brilliant, 400% is amazing.
The information found here is inline with what I already knew but it expands my understanding greatly. There are many new ideas here and the ways of analyzing data is great.I want to focus on the ideas of monitoring and designing “funnels”.
Very interesting article. With some heatmaps (before/after) it could be a little bit more impressive.
One thing I’ve always been curious about with non-self-hosted video (e.g. hosted on Youtube or elsewhere) is whether this is a traffic leak, and whether the cost of self-hosting is worth the (imagined? real?) avoidance of traffic leak once the video’s done. So they won’t click the ‘related videos’ links at the end…
CREs? Any tips :)?
Thanks for the wonderful article! I find your methods of improving conversion rate are very similar to Six Sigma (go from customer experience.. define.. measure.. analyze.. implement.. control.) and I am glad to see such a tremendous success as 400% increase in conversion rate! Congrats.
One of the takeaways from this articles was that one should not give up after trying one or two ways of improvement. Another one is about putting the best assets/characteristics/practices of the company right upfront, instead of being modest about them.
I have a question for you. If you cannot take a survey, how would you recommend to find out what customers were seeking? Is there anything else but analyzing keywords that brought them to your site that a small business owner can employ?
Great article. Goes to show if you follow 2 simple rules it can mean big results. We tested moving the main headline above the fold and changing the title and it resulted in a 20% drop in bounce rate.
What a lovely article. I spend days on the internet reading blogs, about tons of different subjects. I have to first of all give kudos to whoever created your website and second of all to you for writing what i can only describe as an amazing post. I honestly believe there is a skill to writing articles that only a few posses and frankly you have it. The combination of informative and quality content is definitely extremely rare with the large amount of blogs on the internet.