I often get questions (usually from brand/creative folks) about the effect that landing page testing may have on their precious corporate or product identity. If the visitors are in effect allowed to express their opinions, won’t that destroy the carefully constructed brand?
This question is so common, I have decided to reproduce an email exchange that I recently had on LinkedIn with Arthur Freydin (Director of Online Marketing at Madison Commercial Real Estate Services):
Arthur Freydin:
One of my biggest concerns with Landing Page Optimization is testing too much resulting in diluted brand.
Tim Ash:
What did you mean by “diluted brand”?
Arthur Freydin:
What happens when you have tested everything there is to test? When do you stop and how far do you let your visitors decide your site’s structural elements before they’ve completely stripped your brand to make their experience more streamlined and your conversions higher? I’ve read on multiple occasions about this “testing bug” and how many people will simply not know when to stop as long as they can claim that they’ve increased conversion by another .01%. How do you educate those people?
So the above will probably sound pretty harsh and you would probably expect me picketing outside your office with a “Down With LPO Sign”. On the contrary, I really believe in landing page optimization - as long as it is done in moderation. If everyone took LPO for every penny it’s worth, the web would look very similar across its verticals. I’m a huge proponent of LPO and have seen success in the past with it and intend to do it for the new company I recently started working for.
With that said, I would love to hear directly from the source (that would be you :)) if you have encountered clients that have “overtested” their landing pages to the point of them now being unrecognizable.
Tim Ash:
You bring up several related points so I will try to untangle them and
answer from my perspective - directly from the “source” 
1) I agree that repeated testing of the same page is likely to diminishing improvements. The reason is that your page is getting better (harder to improve), while your ideas are getting worse (you have presumably tested the potentially powerful changes already). So at some point you should just stop and move on. There are probably other landing pages or mission-critical processes that you can apply testing to that will have a larger economic impact. You should always use that as the basis for what (if anything) to test next.
2) I don’t agree with your contention that the web will look the same across each vertical if everyone does a lot of testing. The audiences, value propositions, cost structures, business goals, and brand strengths of different companies will lead to different optimized conversion experiences for each one.
3) I think that what you mean by “brand” below is your logo system, colors, typefaces, and creative brief. It was probably designed at great expense and carefully considered to propagate the corporate identity effectively across different media and applications. If that is so, I think that it is a perfect candidate for testing. It should not be a sacred cow. If your visitors prefer an ugly Frankenstein Monster to your beautiful creation, then your creation should be thrown in the trash. If the brand was so important, it would contribute to the experience and remain part of the winning page. It comes down to expectations. A better converting page by definition meets the expectations of
your visitors better. The rest is ego investment in your own creative work and should be jettisoned. Period - end of story.
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Ideas & Musings, Tips & Tricks | Tagged: landing page optimization | 
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