SAP uses web analytics in their test lab to optimize their web content. The lab's recommendations are now supported by global leadership mandates. Crispin Sheridan, SAP's Sr. Director of Global Search Marketing shares five discoveries the team has made using Adobe Experience Manager to drive business value.
Learn more about Adobe Experience Manager here: http://www.adobe.com/solutions/web-experience-management.html
This presentation was given at Adobe Digital Marketing Symposium in San Francisco on September 11, 2013.
very analytical company that uses data heavily, tests everything and have seen some huge wins, and will continue to create relevant, personalized content with what you are doing with CQ
This was a multivariate test where in addition to the button in hero, we tested body with images versus no images and we tested a more human-oriented image for the background of the hero – the big win was getting an offer (CTA) into the hero and injecting some clear action in that key area. We found that the more human touch on hero image didn’t help and we also found that whether we had thumbnail images or not in the body content didn’t have meaningful impact on response/conversion.
As SAP started to leverage more pictograms, questions started to pour in about what works best, pictograms or photographic images. Par for the data-driven course, we put the question to test. Photographic images have been driving more response consistently across tests from various geographies.
The ultimate test is one that yields great gains with very little cost. SAP is always searching out quick wins and low hanging fruit. In this example, a simple copy change that leverages the word “download” – which reinforces a “tangible” resource that will always be accessible – helped drive 47% gains in the related lead form submission rate.
CTAs are often the keys to the conversion, so in our testing efforts we sought what the impact would be to make them easier to find – the result was 7% more clicks, which – when factoring in the snowball effect of syndicating out the result across thousands of pages and dozens of country websites, has profound impact on overall business value.
SAP has a mix of content offers that are gated (behind registration) and not gated (freely available). The organization though it would be useful to give site visitors some visual distinction as to what requires registration. We decided to test this and see what the impact was on our lead generation efforts and we found that the visual cues actually suppressed registration rates – the theory in hindsight was that the distinctions fueled more efforts to “seek out” the free stuff.
Anyone can test – BUT when the org is EDUCATED and MOTIVATED to PULL testing throughout vs. Test Lab trying to PUSH testing uphill – the result is success.