Today in Digital Marketing - This Tiny Tweak Can Boost Conversions 12%

Starting point is 00:00:00 It's Friday, September 16th. I'm Todd Maffin. Today, this one change to your online store can have a huge impact. YouTube's ad department comes out swinging. Meta is set to introduce a custom audience option for its Advantage products. How you can get millions of Amazon Echoes to play your ads. And the horrifying surgery that software engineers from Google, Amazon, and Meta are lining up to get. Here's what you missed today in digital marketing. So many tiny decisions go into the design of a product page.

Starting point is 00:00:33 The color of the call to action button, where the reviews are placed, how big the product photo should be. Among those decisions is one factor that most marketers have not given a lot of thought to. The way the quantity field is displayed. By default, most e-commerce platforms either make it a field the consumer has to type, or a slider, or maybe it's not even on the product page at all, and quantities are only presented at checkout. But that tiny decision could be the difference between making a sale and missing one. Some new marketing science has found there is a right way and a wrong

Starting point is 00:01:05 way to do this. Kristen Duke is an assistant professor of marketing and a research fellow at Behavioral Economics in Action. Dr. Duke teaches at the Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto. I spoke with her earlier. Tell me about what you tested. It was a design I don't think I've actually ever seen in the wild. A number of add to cart buttons, but each with a quantity in the button text? Yeah, exactly. So what we've been finding over a series of lab studies was essentially that when you have the quantity information really changes how people think about their decisions. So in particular, what we found is that if you put quantities right into that button,

Starting point is 00:01:43 like you mentioned, so having buttons that say add one to cart, add two to cart, add three to cart, that ends up leading to higher conversions than if you have those separated into two decisions. So for example, as you mentioned, if you have plus and minus arrows to adjust the quantities and then a separate add button, or if you do a common practice of just having a single add to cart button that then subsequently prompts people to choose a quantity. I think the way most of us marketers see the quantities deal is that by putting that decision on the cart page, it keeps consumers from, I don't know what you call it, decision overload. You know, like pick your product first,

Starting point is 00:02:19 and then we'll talk about the details later. Is that theory just wrong? So I think that was our intuition going in as well. We thought that it would be better to essentially make each decision as simple as you can. First, just let people decide if they want to make a purchase and then let them deal with the different potential quantities. But what we found is that instead, if you allow people to do this, when they're in that initial stage of deciding whether or not they want to make a purchase, they often hesitate. They get a little bit stuck. So they start thinking about, well, in general, how much do I need something in this product category? Or could I go without having something like this? But when you put those quantities in the choice set, it essentially grounds their thinking. It sort of focuses them on this particular offer that's right in front of

Starting point is 00:03:04 them. So this specific chocolate bar, is this an appealing chocolate bar? Is this something that I want to eat later? Or is this something that I could do without? So essentially, when you have those quantities there, it sort of narrows people in and focuses them. So if you have something that's a relatively appealing product or service that's on offer, that can yield higher conversions. All right, so it's better, but let's quantify what better means and talk like raw numbers.

Starting point is 00:03:28 How much did changing to this, and I guess we'll call it an integrated approach, right? Where, where it's not sort of a sequential offer or sequential process or workflow. It's, it's all sort of the quantities are integrated into the product page. So how much did changing to that integrated approach affect purchase likelihood and how much of a potential sales lift are we talking? Yeah, that's a great question. So I think we were surprised by how big of an effect this can have. It's a really small change. And yet we found in a very large scale field study that this led to a 12% relative increase in conversion. And that's a really conservative estimate

Starting point is 00:04:05 because of the specific design features of that study. When we ran several follow-up experiments, we found actually a larger relative effect size where changing to the quantity format led to about a 28% relative increase in conversion. So overall, these are huge effects on purchase likelihood. Our full conversation covered many other important findings that everyone who runs an e-commerce business should know about, including what impact this has on the design of a store,

Starting point is 00:04:31 whether implementing this on a product that most people only buy one product at a time of like shoes, for instance, would it backfire in that case? Whether cheaper products or more expensive products are most affected and a whole lot more. The full deep dive interview is coming tomorrow exclusively to the Premium Podcast. You can sign up and get this interview plus more than 20 others and get ad-free episodes of this daily podcast by subscribing to the Premium Podcast at todayindigital.com slash premium or tapping the link in the show notes. YouTube is coming for TikTok.

Starting point is 00:05:06 The video platform is reportedly getting ready to announce aggressive monetization for Shorts. The Verge is reporting today that starting next year, Shorts will be part of YouTube's partner program, meaning those who qualify can start receiving ad revenue from their short-form video content. YouTube also brings ads to Shorts, and creators will only receive 45% of those earnings, which is less than the 55% creators currently receive from regular YouTube ads. YouTube's VP of Creator Products said that part of that extra money will go to paying for music licensing.

Starting point is 00:05:39 The company is also trying to make it more accessible for brands and creators to get into its Shorts partner program. To qualify, you will need 1,000 subscribers and either 10 million Shorts views over the last 90 days or 4,000 watch hours overall. Quoting The Verge, the goal is to offer more and better monetization options than TikTok and potentially win over and win back many of the creators flocking to the rival platform, unquote. In another move to push short-form video content, YouTube announced yesterday that it has added a new option to reply to video comments with a short. From the watch page of your video, you tap reply on a comment. This will transfer the comment to a sticker with the short's camera,

Starting point is 00:06:23 which is basically TikTok's video reply option. Nonetheless, still it's a welcome update since it is an easy way to engage with your customers and answer questions. Meanwhile, as YouTube ramps up new ad strategies, some users are actually complaining about excessive ads. The platform is showing as many as 10 unskippable ads during a single break. This is according to 9to5google.com. According to multiple Reddit threads, ad breaks are also occurring every few minutes during longer videos. Quoting 9to5google, this doesn't appear to be happening with all videos or even all viewers. But these longer breaks appear to be more and more common lately.

Starting point is 00:07:04 More frequent than 10 ads is seeing users with around five ads per break. The good news? These ads aren't super long from what we've been able to see from user reports. These ads are largely only five or six seconds each, meaning that even an ad break with 10 unskippable ads would only be around 60 seconds, unquote. In response to a user's complaint on Twitter, YouTube said these are bumper ads, which appear at the beginning of videos and show more since they're only six seconds long. No deliberate increase in ads

Starting point is 00:07:34 was acknowledged by the company. An update of Facebook's marketing API was released yesterday, highlighted by the addition of custom audiences for its Advantage ad products. Those are the ad options which are driven by machine learning and generally provide a hands-off approach for media buyers. Meta says it will begin rolling out Advantage custom audiences on Monday. According to the company, Advantage custom audience uses an advertiser's custom audience to guide delivery and help find more people whodriven approach to that checkbox that used to say,

Starting point is 00:08:18 expand audience if it looks like we can get better results. You know, the one you usually uncheck. Meta confirmed that the new option will be automatically turned on when new campaigns are created. Advertisers can opt out by unchecking the Advantage Custom Audiences box in the Custom Audience section of its ad creation tool. A couple of new ad placements to report on. With the first, you could be right in consumers' homes, directing them to your product or service. Amazon announced a new feature today which lets brands answer consumers' questions with audio ads that play through Echo devices. The feature is called Customers Ask Alexa.

Starting point is 00:08:56 It lets brands submit their answers to questions and link the inquirer to their Amazon storefront. Before selecting the most appropriate answer, all answers will go through the company's content moderation and quality check process. Initially, the feature will be available to a select group of brands in Seller Central beginning next month, with plans to expand to all eligible brands in 2023. The Verge, in its coverage of this, noted that placing ads in top search results is nothing new, of course. It's a huge part of Google's business. And Apple has become even more aggressive with advertising within the App Store, which brings us to our next placement. Apple is planning to release new search placements in its app marketplace.

Starting point is 00:09:38 The company sent a message to developers that said, quote, With new opportunities coming to Apple search ads, you can promote your apps across the App Store to engage even more customers this holiday season. Apple didn't give any specifics. However, in July, the company announced it was planning to expand ads to the App Store's front page and another sponsored unit on app product pages under the banner, You Might Also Like. also like. Your brand can probably now accept payments via DM. Instagram recently announced that eligible sellers with professional accounts can receive payments with direct messages and at no additional cost as well. Here's how it works. You visit your professional dashboard. This is inside the Instagram app and tap on a link that says Get Paid in Chat. You open up a message with a customer, look in the message composition field at the bottom that usually says Message, you will see a new dollar sign icon.

Starting point is 00:10:33 Once you tap that, it will prompt the customer to enter their personal information and their bank account details. Instagram noted that purchases are safe and protected, and you can use MetaPay to let customers pay with debit, credit, or even PayPal. You will get paid once the item is sent to the customer. And best of all, Instagram says it will not take a cut. Do you have business insurance? If not, how would you pay to recover from a cyber attack, fire damage, theft, or a lawsuit? No business or profession is risk-free. Without insurance, your assets are at risk from major financial losses, data breaches, and natural disasters. Get customized coverage today starting at $19 per month at zensurance.com.

Starting point is 00:11:20 Be protected. Be Zen. As the cookiepocalypse nears, analytics teams have become an essential part in many marketing departments. But a new survey from Gartner has found that despite an increased emphasis on data marketing, analytics are only responsible for influencing a little over half of marketing decisions. And by next year, the consulting firm predicts 60% of CMOs will cut the size of their analytics departments in half due to failed promised improvements. Meanwhile, the survey found that barriers to using analytics in decision making aren't always caused by data, but rather by employees. A third of respondents said decision

Starting point is 00:11:57 makers cherry-picked data that supports their opinions. Cognitive biases were cited as a major barrier to marketing analytics influence. Also, when information was provided, it wasn't always used. Roughly a quarter of respondents said decision makers either don't review the information provided, reject recommendations, or rely on gut instincts to ultimately make their choice. The data comes from Gartner's survey of more than 350 marketing professionals. Which brings us to the lightning round. We knew this would come eventually. TikTok's growth is starting to level off. Some new numbers from SensorTower found that last month's watch time was up 9% from the previous year,

Starting point is 00:12:38 but that is a big drop compared to the 45% year-over-year growth rates the app showed before. YouTube's watch time in August increased 5% year-over-year growth rates the app showed before. YouTube's watch time in August increased 5% year-over-year, Facebook and Instagram both in negative numbers. Facebook's new product experimentation team has new marching orders, stop experimenting with new products, and instead all hands-on, defeating TikTok. Platformer News is reporting Meta's chief product officer has directed the team to focus entirely on innovation in short form video. Adobe is acquiring the popular design platform Figma for around $20 billion in cash and stock.

Starting point is 00:13:12 Figma was a big competitor of Adobe's XD products. Both companies claim not much will change, but expect this to be piled into Adobe's creative suite at some point. Planning new business has become more difficult for agencies this year. A survey of more than 150 American agency executives found that 43% of agencies reported it was more difficult to obtain new business than the previous year. That number was just 28% in 2021. GQ reports that the hottest trend among software engineers is getting a painful leg lengthening surgery that can extend people's height by three to six inches. In the procedure, the doctor literally breaks the patient's femurs or thigh bones and inserts metal nails into them. Then every day for three months, those nails are extended a tiny bit using a remote control

Starting point is 00:14:05 made of the power of magnets. It's said to be terribly painful. One software engineer told GQ he spent the first three months after his surgery alone in his apartment eating only delivery food. But hey, went from a 5'6 to a 5'9". Three years ago today, I was poking around the podcast directories looking for some kind

Starting point is 00:14:36 of newscast for the digital marketing world. There were millions of marketing podcasts, there still are, but they were all long, rambling interview shows with the same guests pitching all the same mastermind. I couldn't find something just short and topical, so I had a bit of free time and I made one. Episode one of this podcast came out three years ago today. It was such a simpler time back then, wasn't it? Pre-pandemic, pre-Ukraine, pre-supply chain, pre-inflation. But structure-wise, I have to say, other than much better theme music these days, it was pretty much the same back then. Since then, we've put out 712 daily episodes, about 50 weekend editions.

Starting point is 00:15:20 We've added an ad rep, a production coordinator, an associate producer, which is why I am pleased to announce that we have been acquired by Meta. No, I'm kidding. No, this will continue to be a labor of love, kind of our side project of the agency, which, by the way, if you're looking for an agency to handle your social media engagement and moderation, that's what we do. Our website is engageq.com. Mostly, though, I want to thank you for listening. Special thanks to our premium members for supporting the work that we do. Our website is engageq.com. Mostly, though, I want to thank you for listening. Special thanks to our premium members for supporting the work that we do. And we will keep plugging away for you because we know your time is valuable. And all you want to know is what happened today in digital marketing.

Starting point is 00:15:59 Today in digital marketing is produced by EngageQ Digital on the traditional territories of the Tsunamic First Nation on Vancouver Island. Our associate producer is Steph Gunn. Production coordinator, Sarah Gill. Podcast music licensing, Source Audio. Ad coordination by Red Circle. And not many people know this, but our theme composer, Mark Blevis, who's also been reveling in our three-year anniversary. In fact, his work on the theme has made him an internationally recognized podcast-themed composer. We were texting just this morning, and he told me,

Starting point is 00:16:31 look at what's happened to me. I can't believe it myself. Suddenly, I'm on top of the world. It should have been somebody else. I'm Todd Maffin. Monday is a stat holiday here in Canada, a federal day of mourning for the Queen. So have a restful weekend, and I'll talk to you on Tuesday.

Starting point is 00:17:03 By the way, as a bit of a bonus for those of you who actually stick around to the end of the theme music, I'm now going to play in its entirety our very first episode three years ago today. It's Monday, September 16th, 2019. I'm Todd Maffin. Today, Facebook may be shutting down an important part of link ads. LinkedIn finally joins the live video party. And expect another placement in your Facebook ads manager. Good news, especially for hyper-local brands. Here's what you missed today in Digital Marketing.

Starting point is 00:17:34 No, it wasn't just you. A huge bug on Instagram hit the platform early this morning. Nobody could use third-party tools to post any image that was in PNG format. This led some platforms like Sprout Social to tell its clients to consider changing all their scheduled post images to JPEG. Ouch. Looks like Facebook is going to add yet another restriction into the ad manager. This time, our ability to change the headlines on links. Until now, of course, you could have made the headline, said whatever you wanted. Well, the CBC discovered this, thought,

Starting point is 00:18:10 hey, someone might do something bad with this, and called Facebook on it. Facebook told them, quote, we have a system that gives publishers control over how their links appear on Facebook. We're putting additional safeguards in place by the end of this year to make sure advertisers don't misuse this tool, unquote. And that previous control they're talking about there was for organic posts. A few years back, anyone could change the headline and metadata of any link they posted, which, of course, led to the usual manipulation and fake news stuff. So Facebook clamped down on that, preventing people from changing the headlines on links unless they verify they own the domain they're linking to. Then it's all good. Well, that did not apply to advertising until perhaps now. We'll just have to wait to see what Facebook does here, but I expect they'll extend the same restriction they have on organic. Over to the ad side.

Starting point is 00:19:11 Facebook is expanding its Today In section from six U.S. cities to more than 6,000 cities and towns. The section is a kind of catch-all for hyper-local information, everything from community news to upcoming events, school updates, and so on. Plus, the section will now contain local page posts, which are getting high engagement. The opportunity for us marketers is obvious. It's another place where your top performing organic posts might show up. But more importantly for Facebook, it gives them one more placement in the ads manager. And if your brand is trying to showcase its local roots, this might be a good place to test. First there was YouTube Live videos, then Facebook Live, Twitter Live, then Instagram Live, and now guess who?

Starting point is 00:19:54 LinkedIn Live. Better late than never, I suppose. Not much to say here other than it exists now. Sort of. Don't worry if you can't find it on your company's page console. It's only available for select brands during this rollout phase. And it won't be easy to set up at start. You'll need to use a streaming tool like OBS or Wirecast to make it work. It's a weird decision, frankly, as these tools are not really meant for the average worker bee. They're pretty complicated.

Starting point is 00:20:21 And LinkedIn says you'll need at least 10 megabits per second upload speed. That's about three times what Facebook needs to do a Facebook Live. Oh, and one more thing. You're not allowed to promote anything. Oh, and it has to be longer than 10 to 15 minutes. Okay. All right, LinkedIn. As a result, I expect you won't see a ton of adoption until they let brands go live using a smartphone.

Starting point is 00:20:43 Like, you know, pretty much everyone else. Spotify continues its acquisition streak, hot on the heels of buying podcast producers Gimlet Media and podcast platform Anchor. Now Spotify has bought Sound Better, a music collaboration marketplace. I think the real question now is, who's going to buy Spotify? My money's on Apple. And finally, it looks like it's not coming back. Brands using third-party tools used to be able to use reactions on people's Facebook posts and comments, you know, love, wow, sad, angry, and so on. A while back, Facebook put it into their API and those third-party platforms

Starting point is 00:21:25 rushed to add the functionality on their end. Then a couple of months ago, it just stopped working. Turns out Facebook pulled it from their API. Now comes word from Sprout Social, don't hold your breath. Facebook giveth, Facebook taketh away. That's what you missed today in digital marketing brought to you by EngageQ. See you tomorrow.

Today in Digital Marketing - This Tiny Tweak Can Boost Conversions 12%

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