Testing One, Two, Three

By changing only one button, an online retailer earned an extra $300 million in one year. 

How did they do this, you may ask? 

Simply by replacing the “register” button with a “continue” button and adding a simple message: “You don’t need to create an account to make a purchase on our site. Simply click Continue to proceed to checkout. To make your future purchases even faster, you can create an account during checkout”. 

Little did the retailer know that before implementing the above simple changes, they were losing millions of dollars in revenue by asking users to create an account once they had filled their carts with items and proceeded to checkout. 

By asking users to create an account, it was not only a time-consuming additional step for the customer, but alarm bells began to sound for some customers who believed that their details were being captured for future marketing ‘spam’ rather than for simplifying the checkout process as a returning customer in the future. 

The power of effective marketing lies in testing. If you want to change your Instagram campaign 20 times a day and analyse it, knock yourself out. 

By changing small variables, one by one, and measuring the response each time, you can see what’s working and what’s not in real time, with real people. 

First, identify the result you’re looking for. The number of likes you want on an Instagram post, or the amount of link clicks from Facebook campaign to your website. 

Second, change one variable at a time, such as the image, or the caption text, to see if there is a better response. 

Third, identify what works and amplify it. 

If you’d like to learn more about creating effective social media campaigns, check out our Social Media course in collaboration with Ogilvy.