Tl;dr

• In A/B tests Campaign microsites beat Product pages by 49%, homepage by 300%, and a custom gift guide by 50%.
• Halo effects: Strong Halo effects were observed where the item advertised was not the most purchased item, especially with higher ticket items.
• Conversion from cart-to-order was up to 400% higher with campaign microsites.
• The data suggests it’s time for a radical rethink how to land traffic from paid social advertising campaigns

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Holiday campaign A/B test results

As with any new technology, client results are key. We worked with clients to set-up a variety of A/B tests to see how their SimplicityDX campaign microsites performed compared to their normal landing destinations from paid social advertising. More merchants send traffic from social advertising campaigns to Product Detail Pages (PDP), so we tested these. Some merchants tested against elaborately designed landing pages, and one even tested against the homepage.

Here are two examples I want to share:

1. Beating out the PDP & Interesting AOV Data

More revenue per click

In a three-way test between the PDP, homepage, and a SimplicityDX Campaign Microsite, merchant A saw dramatic lift with Campaign Microsites. Just in case you didn’t already know it the home page is a really bad place to land social ad traffic. The campaign microsite out-performed the homepage by 303% in revenue per click, while the PDP generated 169% more revenue per click than the home page.

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Comparing campaign microsite performance with the PDP, the campaign microsite generated 50% more revenue per click in this test. Since Simplicity makes it easy to buy the focus item and explore the brand and product catalog, shoppers can more easily find something that appeals to them.

Higher AOV

The really interesting piece of data is the average order value (AOV).  While the campaign microsite has a 50.4% higher AOV than the PDP, both AOVs are lower than the price of the item advertised in the paid social ad. Why?

Think about walking down 5th Ave in NYC and seeing all the beautiful window displays. You are drawn into a store by the window display. Are you going in to buy the exact item in the window? Unlikely. More reasonable is that you got an instant feel for the brand and thought it was worth exploring. The same concept applies to prospecting ads on social. We coach clients how to encourage new customers to explore the brand, for example by showcasing the products people usually buy first.

2.  Are custom landing pages the answer?

In another test over the holiday period, merchant B tested a SimplicityDX Campaign Microsite against a beautifully designed Gift Guide for the holidays. This gift guide was essentially a set of custom landing pages, designed to convert holiday shoppers.

The SimplicityDX campaign microsite generated a 49.7% lift in Return on Ad Spend (ROAS) over the Gift Guide (again, that eerily close to 50% number we are seeing across many clients).

Another data point that stood out was the percentage of people who added items to their cart and then purchased. With the gift guide, 4.83% of shoppers that added to cart when on to purchase. Contrast that to the SimplicityDX microsite where 19.44% purchased! Since SimplicityDX uses the exact same checkout flow, it’s a stark difference.

So what’s happening? What is a SimplicityDX campaign microsite doing so differently that a larger proportion of ad clickers go on to purchase?

What’s happening is that SimplicityDX is targeting more of the traffic, not just the ‘ready to buy shoppers at the bottom of the funnel. These represent only 1% of those that click on a social media advertisement. By engaging all of the traffic, SimplicityDX is converting more new customers, resulting in higher revenues, ROAS and in many cases dramatically lower Customer Acquisition Costs.  

This data tells an important story: it’s time to reset what we all think we know about how to make social advertising perform. It should also make every head of ecommerce think about the potential here: we’re not talking about small increases in performance.