

Our Reddit Ad By The Numbers - Whiteyboard  - jasonwilk
http://tinycomb.com/2010/07/19/our-reddit-ad-by-the-numbers-whiteyboard/

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patio11
_With TechCrunch, LifeHacker, New York Times, etc (and any other blog), we
usual generate about $1 per unique visitor_

Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's conversion rates... but _darn_.

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AlexBlom
Darn is right. I'd love to see an article comparing your stats across each
channel.

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alextgordon
You should remove the option of a 2x3 foot board completely while it's out of
stock, instead of disabling it and writing "Out of Stock". Better yet, A/B
test it.

My bet is that people are seeing the option they want, saying they'll wait
until it's in stock, and then promptly forgetting you ever existed.

If there's no better option to wait for, more people will buy one of the other
options.

~~~
joshu
Better yet, an "Alert me" button instead, collect an email address and notify
them later when it's back.

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adamhowell
Jason, mind if I ask what's going on with the footer of
<http://whiteyboard.com>?

It looks, uh, a little sloppy.

~~~
jasonwilk
Ask Alexis Ohanian, he designed it. I like the MS Paint look

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kn0thing
It's true, I mocked up basically the site you see there in a few minutes in
Photoshop, sent the png to Jason and he asked for the PSD... I didn't know
he'd actually use the draft as the final version - hehe. It's got a certain
charm to it, I suppose...

~~~
redorb
even though there is a charm; perhaps it's time to up the ante; looks like
part of it is scribbles covering something else up :/

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kn0thing
But you're intrigued enough to see what it is... was that my plan all along?!
(it wasn't).

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ianbishop
I think that the length of the campaign had a lot to do with the substantial
difference in numbers.

Even though the actual amount of money spent may be the same, I saw the
DuckDuckGo advertisements countless number of times. In addition, it also had
strong upvotes and positive feedback in the actual comments of the ads.

On the other hand, despite browsing reddit for likely a few hours over those
dates, I never saw the Whiteyboard ad once.

~~~
jasonwilk
Yes, I was hoping that with a high bid like that, it would have received
awesome priority placement. Alternatively, I found out that Reddit accepts
whatever bid above $20 per day that you commit and however well the ad does,
is up to the readers. At the end of the day, I agree I should have prolonged
the campaign, but I wanted to see if a limited deal would have appealed to the
readers.

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izak30
Whiteyboard looks cool. I might have even bought one if it was very apparent
that it could stick and re-stick easily. By the time I found that, I was off
of the purchase page, and I had decided I didn't actually _need_ it.

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ekanes
Thanks for posting the numbers.

Online commerce is interesting in part because it's so darn _fickle_. I saw
your product awhile ago on HN and shrugged. Then just saw it again today, and
bought the largest size. I couldn't really tell you a good reason why.

If I had to guess, I'd say that "Free shipping" is probably part of it, along
with "limited time" but just a couple weeks after seeing your original ad, I
have different ideas for office layout, and suddenly your product fit that
void nicely.

Good luck with it!

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aresant
I personally had no idea what Whiteyboard was . . .

So from fresh eyes - the landing page doesn't do a good job explaining what it
is and why it's awesome before hitting me up for $$$.

I bet your bounce traffic left in a hurry (sub 2 seconds) yah?

I'm sure the reddit ad explained partially, but on that landing page I'd have
suggested a really bold headline, summary, picture of use then buy buttons
below. . .

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jasonwilk
Actually, our bounce rate is awesome. I agree though, we don't do a stellar
job of explaining the product and we are working on a way better commercial.
Should we keep the same girl?

~~~
ars
If you do, please have her practice applying it without bubbles. And get rid
of the nails. It looked quite amateurish, and her not really being able to
hold it didn't help.

~~~
BRadmin
Re: the bubbles, that was my first thought too. But actually I liked the way
she just threw it on there WITH the bubbles, and how they were easily patted
away. Shows how easy perfect installation is - but this should be highlighted
as a feature instead of potentially giving viewers a bad perception.

~~~
mikeyur
"Got some air bubbles? Not a problem, just quickly wipe your hand over the
whiteyboard and push the bubbles out. Easy as that."

It should definitely be shown off as a feature - everyone has had that
frustration when trying to put a screen protector on some device.

Also, they say it can be re-applied. So maybe demo putting it on one way and
then moving it to another wall or flipping it the other way. And demo on a
non-white surface. It looks kinda transparent in the video because it's being
stuck on a white background.

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robryan
I would put the video above the buy, as well as a static section with an
little explanation. As well as something like step 1 - stick, step 2 - write,
step 3 remove/restick type thing. Emphasising that it can be easily removed
front and centre is a must, that would be my first question once I got what it
was.

Also being able to get the product at a glance without a video would help.
With the right images and writing I could get what the product does and decide
if I would be interested in probably 10 seconds as opposed to having to watch
a much longer video.

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bennysaurus
Hi Jason, quite a few of the comments here are pretty constructive. What
struck me about the landing page though is the first things I see on the
screen are the logo, then an ordering form. What would probably work better
for me at least is some more information and some pictures of different
examples where it could be really cool (I can imagine using this on my fridge
for example). The video is OK, however youtube is banned at many workplaces as
well, just a thought - some images wouldn't go astray!

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rudasn
(unrelated to this discussion) I think if you added some sort of (painted)
border around the sticker/whiteboard it would be a better product - people
wouldn't have to worry of writing on their walls by accident. You could also
have different kind of "borders", resembling a web browser, a computer screen,
a notepad or something like that so that its not just a "large overpriced
white sticker on the wall".

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minalecs
good writeup.

Concerning Facebook, you just have to be a frequent user of reddit to know
about the general dislike of Facebook.

In general I find that redditors are more than willing to open their wallets,
examples: recently they asked for donations, reddit soap, divvy, and a game
developer ( can't think of it now)... just your product wasn't a right fit for
the reddit crowd.

~~~
Vindexus
There was a lot of grumbling about the $40 shipping charge to Canada too. I
probably would've bought one if the shipping charge didn't more than double my
total.

~~~
mgw
Same here. $40 shipping charge on a $30 purchase really puts me off.
Especially on something that is as light as your product.

What shipper are you using? Maybe you should give people an option of choosing
a slower delivery time for less cost.

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pierrefar
What about conversions that take some time to happen? The post didn't explain
their typical/average time between first contact and sale. Assuming it's more
than the 48 hours they ran this for, this experiment might still get better
ROI numbers.

Are they tracking this metric? It's an important one!

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jasonwilk
I'm not actually. How do I track this?

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pierrefar
A really long-life cookie, say a 6 months or more.

The concept: on the first visit, give the user a long-life cookie that stores
the timestamp of the visit. When a sale happens, check the value of this
cookie and store in a database.

You can make it more elaborate by storing and analysing referral information,
geolocation of the IP address, exact time of day and other things you think
might be relevant.

Also, if you're doing an A/B test on new visitors, this cookie should also
store which version they were shown. This is a more complicated situation as
to how you tie it into the A/B testing framework, but it's not hard with a bit
of thought based on how you implement it and how you test.

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dotBen
On your blog post you mention that you are keeping the free shipping option up
for another day. Given that you will be getting a lot of traffic traffic from
HN, I'm wondering what your conversion is from HN traffic alone?

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togasystems
Did you see an upswing in your invoice requests? I have a e-commerce site and
currently do not offer this service. What luck have you found with this?

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artichokeheart
Wait. What? You thought that based on the ROI on an ad to get traffic to a
website you'd get the same for an ad trying to sell a physical product?

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viggity
I've had an overall positive experience with reddit ads. I'd really recommend
trying a campaign that is longer than 2 days - say a week or longer but you
don't need to spend as much each day and you'll get a lot more unique
visitors.

