AA Ireland Car Insurance homepage – Nice, clear design with strong headline, hero shot, bulleted benefits and nice CTAs

Let’s get a quote. Nice strong CTA. Cant miss it. But:

Oops, I forgot to accept a T&Cs challenge, which rather oddly appears after rather than before the main CTA flow

Not a big deal, but I’d hazard quite a few people get that challenge as the checkbox appears after the flow from headline to bullets to main CTA. I should also mention that whenever I see a challenge like this the site I’m visiting always loses a little bit of my “visitor equity”. I’ve written before about a very similar type of negative assurance – negative point of action assurances – which coincidentally was also based on an Irish insurance website.

Anyhow, back on track to get my AA car insurance quote. Step 1:

This is just Step 1? And I don’t even get my quote until Step 4.

What strikes you when you look at the form? What strikes me very quickly is that the AA expects me to invest a lot of time, and a whole lot of commitment, without indicating my benefit from this transaction. The progress indicator tells me I wont see a quote until Step 4, and I’m getting very cold feet at step 1.

Here’s where the negative point of action assurance really kills the deal. My mind turns back to that challenge – Please accept the data protection & privacy policy before getting a quote – which invokes negative apprehensions about my privacy. I’m no longer even considering whether the quote will be good or not. My thoughts have moved from “what if I dont get a good quote?” to “will they spam me for all eternity?“. This increased apprehension is only further aggravated when I go back and actually make the effort to read those T&Cs:

The incredible T&Cs that you must accept before the AA asks you to commit God-knows how much time and energy to see a potentially crap quote.

Smothering Your Prospects Before They Become Leads

When confronted with the AA’s long (unnecessary?) form I managed just 2 fields before bailing. Yep it took just 2 fields to decide that the perceived benefits of this interaction fell massively short of the commitment required. The AA doesn’t need all this data to price the premium, and my “visitor’s mind” now wonders how trustworthy this transaction actually is. Do you trust a company that insists on capturing everything about you without explicitly offering something in return? Will you commit to a transaction before you know what benefit you’ll derive from the transaction? Probably not.

The final nail in the coffin is the onerous legal T&Cs that users must accept before they can even view Step 1. This is what I “hear” – this transaction is all about us, about our terms and conditions, about our lead system, and about us pushing a sale on you later.

That perception might be misplaced, but since there’s no way in hell I’m going to read those T&Cs my next interaction will likely be with a competitor who thinks about me the customer. After all he’s only a click away.

Or Maybe 2 Clicks…

Quinn Direct wont get me either, even though they have 2 steps less than AA:

Quinn Direct are also a little too hot on commitment, and are likely to be spurned

So How Do You Nurture Your Insurance Leads?

In my opinion FBD do a great job of showing the quote without a large upfront commitment from users. They only collect the data required to generate the premium quote, without a requirement that you tell your life story. This one really hit the sweet spot for me:

FBD hit the sweet spot with low commitment, high return

Will FBD get my custom? Maybe, but one thing is for sure – The AA smothered me long before I came close to becoming a lead.

Have thoughts on this post? Head over and leave a comment on the blog: How To Smother Your Prospects and Kill Your Leads

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Virgin Atlantic No Cookies Warning

Online Privacy Is A Growing Concern

There’s no doubting that people have become far more conscious of their privacy online. It seems not a day goes by without some news story about how technology often infringes on privacy, and most people take more action these days to protect themselves.

I’ve changed my cookie settings in Google Chrome. I explicitly restrict how third part cookies can be used. I did so after reading Google’s own guidelines on how to opt out of Doubleclick’s tracking cookie:

Third Party Cookie Options In Google Chrome

Virgin Atlantic Sniffing The Wrong Cookie

I assume Virgin Atlantic are sniffing out the Doubleclick Cookie, and because I’ve restricted 3rd party cookies, they seem to think I cant use their website. Of course this would be a reasonable response if I didn’t accept any cookies, but my browser should have no problems using their site to purchase my flight (I doubt the DoubleClick cookie is a show-stopper).

If virgin-atlantic.com checked their own cookies they’d see them alive and well, but right now they’re potential turning customers away, and I imagine losing valuable sales, all because of Doubleclick.

For reference here’s what I get in FF (where Doubleclick still follows me around):

Virgin Atlantic homepage with 3rd party cookies

No better way to kill sales and conversions than by blocking users from accessing your site. Hopefully Virgin-Atlantic.com will fix this ASAP.

Have thoughts on this post? Head over and leave a comment on the blog: Can Third Party Cookies Kill Your Sales?

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Google testing breadcrumbs beneath title

And here’s another variation where the breadcrumb is placed beneath the snippet:

Google testing breadcrumbs beneath snippet

Some other reports of this test, with screenshots, over here. Interesting test, and I wonder how where the breadcrumbs are coming from?

Have thoughts on this post? Head over and leave a comment on the blog: Google Testing Breadcrumb Navigation Within SERP Results

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Some really great thoughts in there, although I’d never underestimate the value of cleaning up forms and funnels to improve conversion rates.

Have thoughts on this post? Head over and leave a comment on the blog: Designing For Sign-up

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Irish Insurance Niche

The Irish insurance niche is no where near as competitive as the UK. That said, there obviously is value to the competitors in that niche, and I was recently doing some competitive research for a project. Here are the top 10 sites ranked for [insurance] on Google.ie:

Top 10 sites on Google.ie for [insurance]

PageRank Sculpting

In the above table figures in brackets (“(NF)”) represent the nofollow links a page. Both fbd.ei and quinn-direct.com are NoFollowing internal links, but a quick browse shows that FBD are far more aggressive. I believe FBD do their SEO in-house, and I have to say that their online marketing activities seem to be very impressive (check out their use of SM, twitter and responses to bloggers etc.). But this post isn’t about SEO, or about NoFollow.

Negative Point of Action Assurances

I work a lot now with conversion measurement and optimisation. I’m seriously fascinated by what people do and why they do it, and in an online context this area is truly mesmerising. (Should I worry about myself?)

Here’s a page that is an excellent example of what is likely a highly negative Point of Action reassurance:

Axa.ie Homepage

Now I quite like this page. It’s strong and instantly draws my attention to the main promo area (although I’m not convinced the hero should look directly at the viewer):

Axa Main Promo Area

There’s a good headline and strap:

Axa Promo Headline and Strap

The main CTA is a bit weak in my opinion, and likely a great candidate for testing:

Axa Promo Call To Action (CTA)

But here’s where it really falls down:

Axa Conditions Error

In order to get to the quote page you have to accept the Terms and Conditions:

Axa Negative Point Of Action Assurance

Point of Action Assurances

POA assurances are usually published in order to assure users and induce desired behaviour. Good examples would be customer testimonials, satisfaction guarantees or free shipping details placed close to order or action buttons. In the Axa case I think the T&Cs are a negative POA assurance – they make me want to bail rather than go further.

A Question of Commitment

This really boils down to commitment. Right after I’ve landed on the Axa site I have limited commitment to this funnel. I have not spent any time filling forms or entering details. Think about it – if you’ve filled in all your car details you’ve committed time and energy. So why would Axa require me to agree to the following (which opens in the same window BTW):

Axa Terms & Conditions

I’ve shrunk that down to fit better on the page, and I’ve also cheated somewhat – the actual T&C text is hidden behind a show/hide JS function. But aside from this consider the following:

1. T&Cs page opens in same window
2. There is no obvious scent returning me to the homepage promo
3. There’s no obvious path to continue along the funnel (this is part of the funnel IMO)

After viewing the T&Cs I’m honestly afraid. I think most people do not read terms and conditions, but I also understand that companies have legal obligations to ensure that customers agree to terms. So, as with most things in life, the solution is to find a good balance.

Possible Solutions?

I think this would make an excellent test. There are quite obvious page elements to test in the main promo. One element that could have a very large impact on conversions in my opinion is the T&Cs checkbox. Site analytics will give good insight to allow proper analysis of my hypothesis: Obligation to accept T&Cs with little or no commitment yet made will have a large negative impact on overall conversion rate of this promo.

To test this I’d consider a multi-page A/B test:

1. Control Homepage (with T&C) and Control Form leading to Conversion Goal
2. Test Homepage (no T&C) and Test Form (with T&C) leading to Conversion Goal

Then users can tell which version works best for them, and is therefore worth more to Axa. Quite an easy test to set up and run, and given this is likely the highest value online promo run by Axa quite likely to have high value to their lead pipeline.

If you agree or disagree with my hypothesis I’d be very interested to hear why in the comments.

Have thoughts on this post? Head over and leave a comment on the blog: Negative Point Of Action Assurances

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What is Conversion Rate Optimisation?

Well at its most literal Conversion Rate Optimisation is the action of improving conversion rates – purchases, sign-ups, clicks, page-views, you name it. If it’s an action it can be optimised to improve the rate at which people perform that action.

Conversion Rate Optimisation is not a new activity. Copy writers and Direct Marketers have been applying CRO for many many years, but in the realm of the Internet CRO has met technology to offer new techniques to test just about every element of the web experience. Now we can test designs, layouts, imagery, copy, buttons, Calls To Action and the inter-relationships web collateral creates to find improved ways to turn web visitors into conversions. And as I mentioned, conversions could be anything that you consider to be positive for your business (I’ve yet to be asked to help hurt a business via testing ).

How Does It Work?

Well there are two distinct elements:

Deciding what to test – this is where human ingenuity comes into play, and a good test consultant can help you identify, through various hypotheses, the elements that might drive higher conversion; and
1. How to test – this is where technology comes into play, and the beauty of the Internet is that the technology is available. After the test is set up the technology takes over and identifies what tested elements have the greatest impact on conversion.

Are there any caveats?

The beauty of the technology available today is that it takes care of serving different content to different visitors, and of measuring the responses to that content. Everything is automated, so you can sit back and watch the results literally in real-time. It does take some time to set up and QA the tests, and the collection of data can take a number of weeks. But when the data is collected the software can tell you what changes had the highest positive outcome on your conversions, and does so with a confidence level of statistical significance.

There is one caveat – testing requires traffic. If your site has low traffic levels, and in particular if the page being tested has less than 100-150 views per day than testing will become exceedingly slow.

How can I learn more about testing?

Here are some handy videos from Google about testing:

I likely wont be using the Google Website Optimizer with the free tests, and instead will use a professional paid tool that returns results in a faster more scalable way.

If you are interested in the free CRO testing please get in touch with me for further information. If you have any questions please leave them below and I’ll try to answer as soon as possible.

Have thoughts on this post? Head over and leave a comment on the blog: Conversion Rate Optimisation Testing Introduction

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• 5 websites will each receive a free Conversion Rate Optimisation campaign worth €3,000;
• Red Cardinal will work with each site owner to plan, install, implement and report all tests;
• Red Cardinal will cover the costs of design and development, and pay all fees for a professional MVT software suite;
• In return all I ask is that each campaign can be used as a case-study for a new venture Red Cardinal is launching;
• The offer is open to all Irish websites.

I’ve spoken to a good few people privately about this, and have already received some good interest. Now I’d like to go wider to reach people/sites I don’t know about but might benefit from this offer. I’ll be supplying 2 of my own developers for this, and working with Jason Roe and James Larkin for design inspiration.

If you’d like your site to be considered for this please get in touch with me. If you think this would be useful to others please help spread the message if you can.

UPDATE – I’ve posted some more info on conversion rate testing in a new post: Introduction to conversion rate testing

UPDATE 2 – Closing date for applications is Friday April 17.

Have thoughts on this post? Head over and leave a comment on the blog: €15k Conversion Rate Optimisation, Free, No Questions Asked

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1. Google ignores all the low-hanging fruit, and easy-to-get links are rendered useless
2. Directories et. al. (low-hanging-fruit) hear final death knell
3. Content REALLY becomes King, as valuable links will only point at valuable content
4. Google goes on to dominate even more of the search space
5. Personalised search still doesn’t gain traction
6. SERP ranking shuffles dynamically between searches – chasing ranking becomes even more futile
7. Social Media – links gained from social media users become more powerful as the “low-hanging-fruit” crap gets filtered out
8. The people who really get this social stuff \glances here\ will be in even more demand
9. Good creative folk – copy writers etc. – will see an increase in demand when the penny drops
10. More small businesses turn to SEO as chronic costs of PPC sets in
11. More businesses of all sizes get burnt by ‘SEO’s, you know… the ones who haven’t got a clue, but promise you the Earth… for a few hundred €
12. SEO goes into mortal decline as search engines (all called Google…) make it more and more difficult to game the results
13. The survivors online will have a deep understanding of multi-channel marketing, and beating customer expectations at every turn – it’s all about the marketing mix…
14. Irish businesses, especially in lead-gen, turn more and more to conversion optimisation and testing
15. An Irish web agency starts offering testing as a core product/service (and not like every web designer now offers ‘SEO’)
16. One or more Irish web startups will come up with something that gains serious traction in ’09
17. RedCardinal.ie releases some interesting tools [unfair insider knowledge ;)]
18. RedCardinal.ie turns off the server for good [more unfair insider knowledge...]

2008 Was a Weird Year

2008 was a weird year – I’ve seen/learnt more than in any previous year, yet I’ve not been blogging much about it. I could probably write as book about what I’ve observed/done in 2008 – some really fantastic things.

And I’ve been speaking to a few people about that point recently. So my New Year’s resolution is to try blogging a lot more in 2009.

At least until I flip the switch that is :O

Have thoughts on this post? Head over and leave a comment on the blog: My New Year’s Predictions :)

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Reading the SBP yesterday I saw this ad:

Spread Betting Ad

The ad didn’t rotate or animate. The above image was all there was. Would you rush over to their site?

Have thoughts on this post? Head over and leave a comment on the blog: People Buy Benefits

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Leverage Your Site Network

If you own more than one website it often makes sense to interlink your sites. You can share some traffic. You can also share some link juice and pass some relevance and/or theming signals. And with this in mind I’m going to take a (belated) look at Conor O’Neal’s site. [I'm a bit ashamed to say there are still a few sites I haven't gotten around to from my Blog Award review offer.]

But not his Argolon.com blog. Instead, and I hope he doesn’t mind, I’m going to write up a review of his LouderVoice site.

The Review Enabler

Conor is the creator of LouderVoice a Web2.0 Review platform that let’s users quickly and easily create and find user reviews.

I’ve really left this far too long, and given that we’re now on the verge of a new year in which I’m hoping to move into the split testing and multivariate testing world I’m going to split this post into two sections:

1. SEO Considerations, and
2. Messaging/Marketing Considerations.

1. SEO considerations

Loudervoice is a great example of building an application on WordPress. But WordPress generally needs a lot of tweaking to get things working smoothly from an SEO perspective.

Update: Conor let me know that Loudervoice is built on Turbogears. My bad. But the advice below still holds.

The main areas of concern I see are Duplicate Content and Pagerank Distribution.

Duplicate Content

If your site contains a large number of generic objects – in Conor’s case reviews – and you offer functionality which requires login, then very often you’re going to end up with vast amounts of duplicate content and Pagerank leakage.

Here’s the test review I created many moons ago:

Loudervoice review of Red Cardinal

On each Loudervoice review page there are a number of functions available:

Review functions – and major duplicate content

Like many membership sites, you must be logged in to use many functions. So you’re redirected to a login page when you click any of those links. The rating function actually contains 5 different unique URLs, so all in all there are 7 different URLs there that all land you on a login page. Why does this matter? Well, Google cant login, so for every review you end up 7 duplicate login pages all with unique URLs. Multiply that by each review… you get where I’m going.

Possible solutions are to block these URLs using robots.txt and/or NOFOLLOW the links. I’d do both personally, but due to the Pagerank distribution (more later) I’d definitely go for the NOFOLLOW in this instance.

Other things to watch for are URLs that sort/order different lists. For instance, when you look at a tag page you have the option to sort reviews by rating and date. These too can lead to dupe content issues, and you have to carefully consider how to address such issues.

IA and Site Architecture

I haven’t spoken to Conor about the goal of the site. I’m not sure if the priority is to get traffic to the Loudervoice site, but given the prominence of the search box I assume so. This is where architecture and Pagerank distribution can be so important in order to squeeze as much Search Engine traffic as possible.

In my view sites like this have to push as much link juice down to the primary pages – in this case either the review pages themselves, or the tag page those reviews belong to.

The more I look around the more I like the architecture. Actually, more correctly, the more I like the potential for a really good architecture. It’s just perfect for an internal linking strategy based on a slightly modified ‘Third Level Push’ (for a great run-down on this topic see Halfdeck’s post). The basic premise of third level push is that you push Pagerank down to your post pages and out on that tier, but not back up to either the adjacent category pages or the homepage. You do this by funnelling Pagerank.

Here’s what I’d do to spread the link love:

• On all tag pages I’d NOFOLLOW the tags in the right-hand column.
• I’d also NOFOLLOW the louderminis tags IF the tweets carry a link back to the tag page. I’d have to do a lot more investigation before doing this however.
• I’d do the same with the tags on the people pages.
• I’d NOFOLLOW all utility links (homepage, terms, about us etc.) and the login link on tag and people pages.
• I’d muck about with the links that are published on people’s blogs for rating each review. Could I get targeted anchor text into those links?
• Some cursory investigation shows that people tend to search for ‘[item] review’ or ‘[item] reviews’ rather than ‘review [item]‘. I’d think about that when it comes to page titles and some internal text.
• I’d also try to give some subtle hints to reviewers to use just the product name in the review title. Then automatically append ‘review’ to that.
• The homepage may need some serious surgery. Apart from the messaging (more in a minute) I think it’s important to have a well defined permanent path for spiders to take.

This last point might need some elaboration. I think that a good trick here might be to list the top tags rather than all tags up to ‘kitchen’. Then the related tags on each of the top tags pages will funnel Pagerank out. And adding the NOFOLLOWs as per above should mean that Pagerank channels directly to the review pages. Again some thought will hav to be put into this to ensure you don’t end up filling the less popular tags.

I have another wee suggestion regarding tags – give reviewers an auto-suggest as they type tags. Reason being that the more people use the same tags the more links will point at those tag pages, and from benefits will cascade down to the related review pages. (I’ve only used the system once many moons ago and cant remember how things work, so this might not be feasible.)

Final idea from the SEO perspective – add a robots.txt and exclude all that dupe content I mentioned earlier. You also need to NOFOLLOW many of those links, because as we recently found out even pages excluded via robotos.txt can accumulate Pagerank. Robots.txt is also a great way to funnel bots – the addition of a HTML sitemap might also help in this regard.

Messaging and Marketing Considerations

Okay, first off I think Loudervoice has to lose the Adsense. I know there is no other source of direct revenue, but nothing puts me off than such in your face Adsense blocks.

Second thing that strikes me is that I haven’t really a clue what the product is. The homepage needs to spell this out to me in about 2-5 seconds or I’m gone. Currently it’s just far too busy in my view. Content goes below the fold, and most worryingly the primary call-to-action is located below the fold. (I’d be interested to see the bounce rate on the homepage.)

Analysis of Loudervoice homepage

Now since I’m moving into conversion optimisation in just a few days it makes perfect sense to suggest that Conor redesigns his homepage completely and runs some split testing to see what difference this could make.

Personally I’d look at removing at least 60-70% of the copy and replacing with strong imagery. I’d pay a lot of attention to the call button. Also the header and sub heads. And I’d remove/relegate the post-it image and the tags from the right hand column.

But I wouldn’t rely too much on gut feelings here – I’d put everything to the test and let your visitors decide what works best. Afterall, they’re the reason the site is there.

Final Thoughts

I think Loudervoice is a great idea. I’d like to see the architecture come along and perhaps see more community features (which I didn’t discuss, but alerts and subscriptions come to mind). But perhaps most importantly I think the messaging could be greatly improved. Maybe the homepage shouldn’t try to explain in detail what Loudervoice is – get people to sign up and find out for themselves. Just an idea.

As a final parting gift, and to apologise for the loo..ong delay in getting to your site Conor, I’d be happy to help you set up the tests if you get someone to redesign a few homepage variations for you.

If anyone actually reads down to here I’d love to hear your views – leave a comment below.

Have thoughts on this post? Head over and leave a comment on the blog: The Importance Of Architecture and Messaging – Argolon.com

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