Haynes has been selling printed manuals since 1960, so offering online versions was a big change for them. In doing so, making sure the online manual product was understood and well received was a priority for them, as Natalie Bragg, Haynes’ Data Operations Executive, explained: “We collected feedback from customers and realised that many people didn’t really understand what an online manual was.”
To overcome this issue, Haynes needed a solution that would allow them to engage with their visitors at specific stages of their journey. With it, they’d be able to show a proof of concept for the online manuals to newcomers, as well as convert their traffic into leads once they were further in their journey.
Haynes integrated Sleeknote in their online strategy to do just that. They used campaigns to inform visitors about the nature of their online manuals and collect leads for their newsletter. To ensure their approach was effective, Haynes used A/B split testing to find the best performing options.
An example with interesting results was testing two different calls-to-action (CTAs). One SleekBox featured two possible manual previews and had a conversion rate of 10.4%.
While the other featured a single CTA and converted at 51.3%.
“We saw an impressive improvement of 437% in conversion rates between the campaigns we tested. The best performer converted at over 50%. This was incredible for us and way above what we initially anticipated.”
Before using Sleeknote to showcase their online manuals, Haynes used it to collect leads for their newsletter by offering a 10% discount code to visitors who signed up.
With this SleekBox, they collected over 9,000 leads, and even though this campaign ended over a year ago, the discount code they offered is still used by customers to this day.
According to Natalie, Sleeknote’s stand-out feature was its ease of use. “I already had some ideas when I started using Sleeknote, and I was able to get them out quickly, with a helping hand from your experts.” She added that “The great thing about Sleeknote is its simplicity. It has straight-forward steps to follow, so you can quickly implement anything.”
When discussing the split tests, Natalie also told me that “It’s really important to ensure any changes implemented on our websites have reliable data to support the decisions we make, which is something Sleeknote can deliver. You cannot rely on what you think is right, you need to know what is right.”
Using Sleeknote, Haynes has shown their online manual previews to over 30,000 website visitors in the UK and over 53,000 in the USA. Their best performing campaign reached a conversion rate of 51.6%, while their overall on-page conversion was 11.2%. On top of this, they also generated over 9,000 leads for their newsletter.
Whenever someone decides to try Sleeknote, it’s likely they have ideas about the messages they want to show and the campaigns they want to run. But it’s difficult to predict how visitors will react to that vision and what elements have the greatest impact on your ability to convert.
A/B split testing removes the guesswork and makes sure the option that stays up is the most effective one. Haynes’ case is a great example of split testing done right: where something seemingly as minor as simplifying the CTA had a massive impact on the user experience, as reflected by their conversion rate.
“If you’re on the fence about trying Sleeknote, I would definitely recommend you give it a go, as you may be pleasantly surprised by the big impact small changes can have.”
HAYNES’ CAMPAIGNS
Watch the video below to see how you can start using split tests to improve your campaigns.
