First Impressions
On Amazon search result pages, first impressions matter. There are millions of products for sale, and making yours stand out is crucial. If your advertising cost is too high, you may want to consider the last time you looked at your main image. A/B testing your main photo can make a significant difference in sales and advertising costs.
Testing
Let’s use a soap product for further explanation. The example below shows the beginning of an interesting journey of extensive testing to see how a final image was chosen.
One of the tests run, simply showing the gift box in the shot, resulted in a difference of only 54 – 46. But even what seems like an insignificant eight-point swing could result in a one or two-percent conversion or click-through rate change. What that means is even a subtle win can be mighty.
Layout
The test was taken further with a simple layout change, with one displayed in a plus sign and the other in a square. The square layout won 66 – 34.
What to Avoid
A big mistake, which will result in defunct data, is changing two variables at once. It’s critical to pick one variable at a time during testing. To prove that, in this instance, the labels and the layout were changed, resulting in a 12 point swing.
After re-running this test with only a layout change, the results flipped on their head at 68 – 32, a massive 36 point difference.
Develop Success from Failures
The most significant swing was on two images – one with labels on the soaps and the other without. Labeled soaps won 90 to 10, showing how critical something seemingly mundane affects a potential customer.
Quickly Settle Creative Disputes
If you’re in a partnership or working at a company and reach a stalemate, running an A/B test will quickly shut down any debate by giving you a data point.
“Feedback is the breakfast of champions.”
The shortest word in the English language that contains the letters: a,b,c,d,e,f is “feedback.” One of the fine qualities about running Pikfu tests is that they give you many comments, the benefit of which is observing clear patterns of why people like or don’t like a specific image.
Adding a flower to the image of fruity-scented soaps, for example, resulted in an unmistakable pattern of feedback. Almost all of the adjectives used were about presentation. One comment was, “flowers make me think that’s going to smell very good.” Virtually all of the positive comments that followed were about presentation – “displayed appealingly,” “a bit of color,” “eye-catching,” and “artistic,” to name a few. The word “attractive” appeared over and over again, showing how the flower impacted perception.
The Takeaway
If you’re working on your PPC and concerned that costs are too high, it might be easier and far cheaper to rework the main image. Considering it costs around 50 dollars to run a Pikfu test instead of potentially hundreds or thousands of dollars on advertising, it’s a no-brainer.
Frequently the problem doesn’t lie with the ad or the keyword, but rather the consumer not seeing or feeling like they’re going to get what they were seeking. If they don’t buy the product, it’s a conversion problem, not a traffic issue or a click-through rate issue, and that’s a pretty big game-changer
