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- Goal:
- Improve sitewide conversion rates for CanvasPrints.com.
- Outcome:
- 8.42% increase in overall conversion rates.
Note: this is the outcome of one test. Over a 90-day project, dozens of tests are run. The total lift of those tests adds up to 20% or more.
- 8.42% increase in overall conversion rates.
The Setup
Typically, we focus our persuasion energy on just one product page. Sometimes, clients don’t have one big seller. They have many products driving overall sales. That was the case with CanvasPrints.com.
They have four product categories with multiple skus within each category. So we couldn’t target just one product page. As a result, our test was designed so people who were part of our experiment (randomly selected of course) would see the test element no matter which product page they ended upon.
The Problem
Over the last decade, digital photography has exploded. With it, so have services in the photo printing space. Itโs a highly competitive market:

With so many choices shoppers enter CanvasPrints.com with four open tabs. They are in a highly promiscuous state.
If we can’t convincingly communicate who we are and how we’re different they will leave.
Control
CanvasPrints.com was doing what most brands doโ nudging shoppers to the product page, and once there asking them to upload their photos and checkout.
The Concept
13 years of A/B testing have made clear that before shoppers are ready to buy they need to be sold on what makes us different. We need to first help new visitors cross the unfamiliarity barrier:

To do this we crafted our “why we exist” pitchโ this is where weโre selling the buyer on how weโre different from all the other canvas photo printing options out there.
Next, we had to place this โwhy we existโ pitch at a high visibility location. We ended up placing the โwhy we existโ CTA on ALL the product pages:

I know some of you prefer reading and others like video content. So we’ve created both.
Video explanation of sales copy
Did the video explanation help? /
Written Explanation of Sales Copy
Click on the annotations (green and blue numbers) to read the explanations for the copy choices we made in the lightbox the visitor sees.

Before we talk about point #15 I’d like to draw your attention to the line above it. It reads:
Many canvas sites use 100% polyester. We totally respect their point of view because polyester is cheaper.
This is a very intentional statement. We call this softening. The buyer expects us to bash the competition. We surprise them by being empathetic. That empathy translates into an appreciation for us.
Okay, now back to point #15.
Here weโre demonstrating expertise.
+ Here also weโre demonstrating expertise. Shoppers donโt know what these terms mean, but they feel good knowing theyโre doing business with a firm that does. + Letting the buyer know that even details that arenโt visible matter to us. Again, this is demonstrating mastery of our craft, something the shopper will appreciate. + Letting the shopper know that their choice today matters. Framing it as a philosophical choice. + Letting them know that weโre just a company that loves doing the work. + We wanted to create a space for the shopper to interact with us. Anytime you have a chance to make the pitch interactive, do it. + Wrapping the pitch by showcasing charitable work. This perfectly fits with the environment created in our sales pitch. Itโs the perfect close.
This copy was constructed using a sales pitch construction kit that’s taken us 12 to develop and fine-tune.
Any questions about the copy choices in our sales pitch? /
Outcome
13.8% of site visitors interacted with our {Do This Before Uploading} button.
The test was exposed to 17,921 visitors and recorded 1,447 orders when the statistical winner was declared.


Confession
We cheatedโwe didnโt test just one sales pitch. We tested 5 different flavors. Each with a distinct point of view. The goal was to find the one with the greatest revenue lift.
Now that we have a winner weโre going to experiment with even more enhancements to the sales pitch.
It’s an ongoing process. We once worked with a client where we tested on just one page for over 2 years. By the end of the project, we had doubled conversion rates.