Experimenting with different variations of landing pages is an essential practice marketers use to determine what content drives visitors to connect with their brand. Unfortunately, not all marketers incorporate every avenue potential customers use to contact their business. Many experimenters use A/B testing to see which variations drive more from submissions, content downloads, or even app installs, but many marketers do not incorporate phone calls into their tests.
Having worked with a variety of data-driven marketers in industries such as automotive, e-commerce, insurance, financial services, and for-profit education, I wanted to share three essential techniques they’ve used in variant testing to incorporate calls. The result? They can drive more customer calls and determine the role calls and the phone number(s) on their website play in the overall customer journey and interaction with their brand.
Use Case 1: Testing Different CTAs
This first use case is commonly used by organizations unaware of the precise call volume their web content generates. They know that some calls are being made but are unsure how the call volume compares to visitors that fill out a form or convert another way. Companies in this situation often begin experimenting with test pages that drive different call to actions (e.g., Page 1 = web form, Page 2 = phone call, and Page 3 = content download or an application install).
If customer calls hadn’t been included in their test, you could be missing a vital conversion path. No matter which CTA(s) drive the most conversions, the result of the experiment typically raises even more questions such as, “What drives people to connect with my brand?” This brings me to the second use case.
Use Case 2: Testing Different Forms of Content
So let’s say that after the first experiment, the marketer found that the phone call CTA was the most popular method for leads to connect with the brand. Using this information, the experimenter will often try to drive additional call conversions by optimizing the content presented on the landing pages. This begins with optimizing the copy to ensure it truly connects with what the potential customer is searching for. In the past, businesses I’ve worked with will experiment with no more than three versions of a landing page. The result of using more than three typically came up inconclusive as the conversions were spread somewhat evenly amongst the page variants.
Once the content that drives the most conversions has been discovered, marketers will move into the realm of making the call to action more apparent. This is generally done in tandem with optimizing the overall presentation of the page and brings me to the third and final use case.
Use Case 3: Testing CTA Presentation
The presentation of a phone call CTA is not typically the first experiment that comes to mind when one implements a variant testing platform, but it is becoming increasing popular as businesses develop strategies to drive more inbound calls. One industry I have found to be particularly fond of this strategy is B2B e-commerce, especially those organizations associated with information technology.
Using a variant testing platform, such as Optimizely, companies are able to change the physical appearance of the phone number (e.g., color, font, and style), the frequency of its appearance on the page, and how the number is displayed (e.g., as HTML on a page or in a pop-up). By experimenting with the number’s appearance, businesses can make those final small tweaks that make a great, conversion-generating page even better.
To learn more about how businesses are experimenting with driving and tracking customer calls using A/B testing platforms, contact us today for a demo of DialogTech’s call attribution software.
