How Betfair used Persuasion Principles to increase conversions by 7%

The limited-choice days of consumers are long gone. Just a few clicks and you can have retailers lined up at your doorstep to deliver the product or offer the service you want. Such intense competition is probably the reason phrases like, 'persuasion tactics' are reiterated by people all around. But those who know how to put these theoretical 'tactics' into practice the right way are the real winners of the game. Our current case study also talks about one such winner. Betfair claims to be the world’s leading online betting exchange platform. Their business model is to allow bettors to set odds among themselves, which eliminates the need to have a traditional bookie. The site also offers a range of sports betting products, like poker and casino games, and much more. Business need? Attract traffic through various paid channels, like…

Some examples of alternative strategies from retailers

It’s a bit of a ‘chicken or egg’ question, but when it comes to mobile commerce, what should come first – a responsive site or mobile optimised marketing? Or both together?

The answer to that question really lies in weighing up the quick wins from mobile optimised campaigns, offsetting poor user experience by driving mobile users to a non-responsive site, and mitigating lost potential revenue by waiting to launch both together.

Q1 of this year saw tablet sites achieving higher conversion rates than traditional desktop sites, and the prediction that by 2014, the mobile Internet is expected to overtake desktop internet usage. Despite this however, lots of big brands still don’t seem to be following a best practice approach.

An integrated mobile strategy - Sainsbury's

Although not perfect, supermarkets seem to be leading the way with end-to-end mobile strategy. …

What is holding digital marketers back?

Did you know that Facebook got a massive 40% increase in ad sales worldwide with just a small change in wording. Instead of a call to action button 'advertise' they simply changed it to 'create an ad'. This was discovered by accident.

In France Facebook’s Translators had translated 'advertise' as 'créer un ad' or 'create an ad'. Sadly too much online testing is accidental rather than the result of rigorous testing.

Improving marketing with off-line and on-line testing

Offline and online testing is the best way to improve marketing results. And what marketer does not want to improve results?

Well, I would suggest that many online organisations are not taking testing seriously enough. For example, a recent survey of Digital Marketers by Adobe found that 49% of respondents said testing was not a priority and most companies spend less than 5% of their marketing budgets on testing…

How e-retailers can avoid Buyer's Remorse by considering where coupon codes are introduced in the checkout process

In previous posts I have mentioned something that in the offline retail world that is known as buyer’s remorse. But having recently seen so many instances of this simple concept being evident on so many retailers sites I felt that it warranted a post all of its own. Buyer’s Remorse, in the retail trade is what happens when customers have a sudden regret or recognition of a perceived barrier which introduces doubt into their mind forcing reassessment of their purchase before the purchase has even been made. Think about it. How many times have you been stood in a queue waiting to get to a till point to make a purchase. This added time at the checkout allows you the extra head space to re-consider what you have placed in your basket or trolley and suddenly…

Harness the value of marketing insights from controlled testing

Are you truly leveraging the potential of your traffic?  I’m going to show you why most companies aren’t and how you can today, with two phases. Editor's note: Chris Goward, the author of this post gave a well received webcast on website conversion on 28th June 2013. If you didn't make it, we hope you find his advice useful. His deck on conversion for mobile sites on Slideshare is also worth checking out. …

Chris Goward on building in testing to any type of business

It's simple, if you're not testing to improve results from your site, the leading companies in your sector likely are, which means you're likely to be falling behind. But how do you approach testing in a structured way? Earlier this year, I read Chris Goward's new book You Should Test That and was impressed by the way it blends advice on structured testing techniques with recommendations on how to better communicate the benefits of your products and services. So acting on requests from Smart Insights members to review and feature the latest thinking in book reviews and webcasts from invited experts, we have asked Chris to deliver a webcast on this topic. We hope you can join us this Friday! …

A presentation explaining how to plan and optimise automated emails

Created for the International Email Marketing Summit, this free webcast explained the options for creating more relevant automated emails - one of the biggest missed opportunities in Email marketing. I covered: How Automated, Event-triggered or Behavioural emails are surprisingly rare. The 10 options for automated email campaigns. Recommendations to optimise these emails using the CRITICAL framework we use in the Smart Insights 7 Step Guide to Email Marketing. Here is the Slideshare which gives a lot of examples across the different types, but especially Welcome Emails. You can view the talk via the link. Creating more relevant, more responsive more value Event-triggered Emails from Dave Chaffey …

Increase conversion through 5 psychology principles

Pardot have released a useful whitepaper on 'Using Psychology to Increase Conversions', and this associated Infographic to summarise the key findings of their research.

As the marketing landscape is evolving they remind us that the way buyers think remains constant. Consumers interact with our products / services and this is determined by a 'pattern of behaviours which are derived from a set of psychological principles.'  Marketers can embrace within their creative and messaging within their sites and communications.

The report delves into 5 psychological principles, some you may recognise from the key principles of influence of American Pychologist Dr. Robert B. Cialdini. In brief, these are:

1. Social Proof: behaviours of others to influence our decisions.2. Loss Aversion: strong motivator is to 'avoid loss'3. Anchoring: individuals  use the first piece of information to judge choices.4. Foot-in-the-door:  obtaining 'opt-in' to something small then it's hard for consumers to say…

Using Adobe Edge Reflow for RWD

In a recent blog post we wrote an article on the importance of taking a content-centric approach to responsive web design (RWD) in order to future proof your site from the endless stream of new devices of various shapes, sizes and resolutions. In this follow-up MMT Digital’s CTO, James Cannings, talks about new tools to help in this process. James spoke about this approach passionately at Internet World earlier this year. Everybody we speak to (or has responded to our blog posts) agrees with the responsive approach in principle, but there are problems with many implementations... The reality is that many responsive websites are still built with the key breakpoints set at device specific resolutions (e.g. the pixel width of an iPad in landscape mode) rather than setting the breakpoints where your content 'breaks' (or just doesn’t look great on…

Using mobile micro-targeted in-store content to improve the shopping experience and boost sales

This is an interesting new mobile technology being trialled within American stores, to help retailers engage with their shoppers in-store, turn browsers into buyers, with opted-in micro-targeted digital real-time content. Since Swirl was released last month, stores Alex and Ani, Timberland, and Kenneth Cole in New York and Boston are already taking advantage of this. This Vine clip gives you an idea of how it works. Demand is evident as Swirl's survey and recent Shopper Infographic has shown that 76% of women surveyed prefer to shop instore for clothes, 53% have 1 - 5 apps on their phone and women are happy to share personal information if there is value for them!.

How does Swirl…