7 Ways to Improve Your Marketing with LiveBall's No-Code Testing

Introduction

Idea-Driven Marketing

Marketing ideas have historically had to filter through layers of design, production and technology before they become reality. This has robbed marketers of the immediacy and agility fast becoming the hallmarks of successful online campaigns. Testing is bringing marketing ideas and alternatives to their audiences. Agile testing empowers marketers to take their ideas to their audiences quickly and easily — without code and without IT.

LiveBall’s Culture of ‘Yes’

The freedom that marketers gain from ‘going direct’ with their ideas leads to revolutionary changes in how marketing gets developed and delivered. These changes are even more revolutionary than the desktop publishing revolution that turned print upside down in the late eighties. Giving marketers the ability to cut out all middle men and put themselves in a direct feedback loop with their audience finally delivers the two-way conversation that has long been imagined.

Gone are the days of dogmatic defense of abstract ideas. ‘Let’s test it’ replaces ‘that’ll never work’. ‘We can do that today’ supplants ‘let’s look at resources and schedule some time to decide on a go-forward plan’. The new reality of forward-thinking marketing organizations is both fast and free. Fast to execute and free to excel.

LiveBall is optimization software designed to eliminate friction for marketers looking for a way to ‘try it’. Instead of hearing how long it will take or that it simply can’t be done, LiveBall embodies a new culture of ‘yes’. Yes, you can try it. Yes, you can make it happen today. And yes, you’ll know how it worked tomorrow. Testing is simply trying new things. And LiveBall lets non-technical marketers try new things without code, without IT, without a degree in statistics and without friction.

7 Ways to Improve Your Marketing 
with LiveBall’s No-Code Testing

1. Landing Page Testing

Optimizing the first impressions you make on users is a proven step towards improving your online marketing results. Creating and testing sophisticated, high-performance landing pages and matching them to specific streams of traffic makes the most of those critical first impressions.

LiveBall enables landing page conversion rate optimization with both A/B and multivariate testing — without code or IT. Begin by A/B testing different concepts against each other. Run parallel controls and compare those results against your LiveBall pages — in real time. Once you have a champion, refine it using LiveBall’s multivariate testing tools — by varying page content and forms. LiveBall does the heavy lifting so you can focus on what’s being tested and free your mind of how it gets accomplished.

2. Microsite Testing

Creating and testing multipage, navigable user experiences can be daunting and time consuming. Even the most sophisticated content management systems are outside their core competency when multiple independent experiences are required.

Microsites perform well when what’s needed is a deep dive into a narrow topic. Conversion-focused microsites — with lead-gen, add-to-cart or social conversion on every page — are great performers with high-ticket or complex sales.

LiveBall makes complex microsite creation and testing simple. Using a standard web browser, non-technical marketers can create, deploy and test feature-rich navigable microsites without code or specialized resources. A/B test microsites against one another to optimize flow, navigation, messaging and conversion. Refine content and test form variations within pages of your microsites using LiveBall’s code-free MVT features.

3. Conversion Path Testing

Most content management systems (CMS) were designed primarily to edit websites. As websites become less relevant and users demand more specific and more contextually pertinent content, the CMS gets further and further away from its roots.

Conversion paths shine when segmentation into specific groups helps refine messaging and improve visitor engagement. Less specific traffic drivers like paid search engine marketing often benefit from message-matched user experiences that speak very clearly and simply to visitors.

Conversion paths appear very simple to users, but are in fact quite complex to assemble and test — unless you’re using LiveBall. ion’s LiveBall platform makes the creation and testing of complex, multipage, multi-branch conversion paths easy. Market segments can be created as tags within LiveBall that can be applied to any action a user might take. This allows marketers to see and focus on the sources of traffic that convert the best for their most wanted market segments. Conversion path testing is accomplished in three clicks using LiveBall’s A/B testing features and it can be augmented with multivariate content or form testing within pages. All testing is accomplished without code, help from IT or other specialized resources — putting all of the power and control within marketing’s hands.

4. Message Testing

Online marketing — especially search engine marketing — provides an almost instantaneous channel for generating targeted traffic. This is a tremendous opportunity for controlled message testing. Instead of focus groups and usability tests, controlled experiments can be run on real web traffic in real time. How people respond to messaging in real experiences is invaluable data for organizations to carry forward into broader applications.

LiveBall enables targeted message testing — letting marketers float ideas to narrow slices of traffic. This allows for quick learning that can be applied to broader campaigns or across corporate messaging development. Test copy, design, Flash, forms, video and nomenclature with point-and-click simplicity. Insert your ideas into streams of traffic and siphon off as much or as little as you like. Get instant feedback from users and fold that new knowledge into your future creative. LiveBall gives you more knowledge in less time, using fewer resources.

5. E-Commerce Warming Testing

Warming pages can provide significant lift within e-commerce experiences. By inserting a warming page between a paid-search ad and a catalog/product page, a significantly higher percentage of visitors may be inclined to add to cart. What’s more interesting, is that a higher percentage of carts may complete their transactions.

Many shopping cart experiences are sub-par and difficult to improve. Pre-cart warming pages help visitors see more value in the product and the brand behind it. By increasing the value proposition, marketers are providing more fuel to propel people through a likely sub-par cart experience.

LiveBall makes it easy to create and test pre-cart warming pages to find the right ones for the job. The platform provides tracking code that can be inserted during or following the transaction within the cart to track conversion as well as other data like average order value (AOV) — all in real time. By making it fast & easy to increase the value proposition, LiveBall can help improve e-commerce performance.

6. Forms — Data Collection Testing

Forms, like shopping carts, are obstacles to ease of use and visitor satisfaction. The best forms are the ones that make it easy, fast, intuitive and trustworthy for users to share their information. There are many variables involved in finding the ‘best forms’. The number of fields, their labels, their presentation, the number of steps in a wizard, the number of columns, button design and labeling — all impact the usability of forms and hence the ROI of the business behind them. Varying and testing these elements can be time consuming, resource intensive and costly.

LiveBall enables no-code, dynamic form testing using both A/B and multivariate (MVT) methods. The platform separates presentation from data collection to allow for easy, independent testing of alternatives without affecting data integrity or CRM compatibility. Marketers can directly control all aspects of data collection and form presentation without code or help from specialized resources like IT. Form experimentation can have a measurable, immediate and direct impact on conversion rates.

7. Social Engagement Testing

Social marketing can sometimes struggle to show its ROI within the marketing mix. But engagement with a brand is highly valuable and often quantifiable. Social conversion — the idea that there is great inherent value in creating or adding to a brand’s tribe — is an idea whose time has come.

LiveBall supports the use of social widgets as engagement mechanisms to put social on the same level as lead-gen or transactional conversion. Creating and testing user experiences designed to engage is only the beginning. Leveraging and escalating participation within your tribe to shake out the most passionate advocates can lead to business opportunities. LiveBall provides the agile infrastructure needed to create stimulating, flexible user experiences to transform casual engagement into passionate participation. Social-specific user experiences can range from Twitter landing pages, to micro-blogs, to follow-pages and much more. The list is ever expanding and demands flexibility and agility to deliver great brand experiences.

Create a Culture of ‘Yes’

Idea-driven marketing flourishes in a culture of ‘yes’. Agile marketing is unimpeded and free to succeed in a fast-paced world where change is the only constant. Trying out ideas in real time on real people is the foundation of high-speed, high-performance marketing. Testing those ideas in landing pages, microsites, conversion paths, messaging, warming pages, forms and social marketing is the constant that drives innovation, performance, revenue and ROI. It’s the culture of ‘yes, we can try that — right now’. And it’s made possible with LiveBall.

Download this article as a PDF