What a turtle can teach us about landing page testing

You probably think this post is going to be about slowing down your landing page tests. Nope—I’ll save that one for another day. This is actually about a cute little turtle with a rocket strapped to his back. If you spend enough time at ion you’ll overhear some inside jokes about “the turtle”. The turtle was an image we (well, actually Karen) tested on a landing page, and it was just one of those images you wanted to win because it was a fun test and it was a great visual to represent the concept of the page.

I asked Karen to tell us about her turtle test and what it meant to her. Here’s what she had to say: 

Q: Tell me about the turtle:

A: One of my first projects when I started working at ion was to bring all our landing pages into our newest templates in our landing page software (LiveBall), and while doing that, further optimize the pages by launching some new tests. I decided my first tactic was going to be to change outdated images and A/B test the new ones against the existing.  One of the landing pages was called “Software” and had this headline:

“Speed to market. Speed to ROI. 
Cloud-based landing page software.”

With this in mind, I went into our resources looking for an image that would resonate. I found it! A wonderful, eye-catching turtle with a rocket strapped to its back. What better analogy to go with this headline? The slow turtle (the old way of doing landing pages with code, IT and complications) gets a rocket (our software) to speed it up! In my mind it was perfect. So in it went into the new page, and I launched the test.

Q: Then what happened?

A: The turtle page lost. Really lost. The bounce rate was high, the conversion rate was low. It just tanked. 

Q: How did you feel when the turtle lost?

A: Oh my… Well, I was surprised at first, and increasingly sad later. It was my first stab at engaging our audience and I had failed, and I couldn’t fathom how this image didn’t get the point across—I loved the turtle and thought he was a perfect image for this landing page! It was such a simple and clear visual, and it was fun, which doesn’t hurt either.

Of course, the more time I spent talking to our audience the more I learn of what makes them respond and who it really is that I was trying to talk to… and the more I think about it now, a year later, it makes total sense. The turtle was a cute image, and it did make the speed analogy easy to understand, but I had completely forgotten to think about WHO I was speaking to, have that persona in my head and really think about what appeals to them and how to engage them best.

So I think the turtle in that sense was a very good lesson for me, in that it taught me that it’s not only about communicating your point but making it appropriate and appealing to who your trying to capture.

Q: Did the turtle ever make a comeback?

A: The little turtle never made a landing page comeback… Who knows, maybe someday it’ll have its moment of glory… I have hopes after watching your 10 Landing Page Lessons Learned from Howard Stern where you indicate that just because one strategy doesn’t work at one stage of your testing, times are a changing, and it doesn’t mean it won’t work at some point in the future.

Q: And whatever happened to that little turtle?

A: The turtle has been an active part of my life here at ion, it’s never left me for sure. It’s a constant reminder that you can never be 100% sure of what the results of a test will be, and to always keep your audience in mind when you’re building a message for them. 

At the moment it’s taking a long hiatus and resting on our office wall, where I can be sure to check on it constantly… 

Yes, Karen keeps a picture of the tutle on her wall as a reminder that things you think will win don’t always win, and keep your audience in mind—they will tell you what works. The moral to the story is that we can’t get too attached to the things we test—from the time we spend, to the expectations we have for the test, to even the way we feel about a test. Like life, in landing page testing, we have to go with the flow.