Unbounce is a great tool for to create templated landing page tests, but this tool isn’t built to test complex multi-step paths/carts. What’s even better is as I was reviewing the tool I found that the guys and gals behind the tool are super committed and open to feedback. If there’s a feature you’d like to see added, just ask and they’ll do what they can to get it added.
In the latest of our quick guide to online testing and optimization solutions series right here on the blog, we take a look at Unbounce …
Key Benefits
- Unbounce was designed for marketers who need an easy way to get new landing pages developed for ad campaigns
- Can build test variations with a WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) editor – don’t need to know HTML
- Can create a page from a selection of editable templates
- Can split traffic through the Unbounce platform, and in doing so have the option to change the URL to match you site (or could keep the unbounce URL). Keep in mind to change the URL you’ll need IT to update your DNS and need to call Unbounce to request the change.
- Can easily add third-party tracking to test pages
- New feature – Web hook that lets you post form data to any URL you choose (for integration into CRM, email list management, your own system, etc)
But keep in mind…
- It was not intended to be used to test existing pages on a website. Can really only use for simplistic testing. Cannot test beyond a simple landing page. Unbounce even states: “Unbounce was designed for marketers who need an easy way to get new landing pages developed for ad campaigns, not to test existing pages on a website.”
- Can only measure on-page interactions, such as clicks and form submissions – planning to build another feature so that you can measure a conversion at the end of the funnel
- To include your control in the test (which you should unless performing a sequential test), you have to replicate it in the tool using the WYSIWYG editor which can be cumbersome
- Can only set one conversion goal at a time per test
- Can’t track anything beyond conversion goal
- Have to use templates within Unbounce, can’t upload existing design templates
How does it validate?
- Provides the results of a Chi-Square test for significance for each test. It’s up to the user to choose an appropriate level for their test (say, 95% to 99%). For a test with more than two treatments, the Chi-Square test establishes only that there is “at least one” treatment that is sufficiently different from at least one other treatment such that the “null hypothesis” (i.e., that there is NO difference in performance) must be rejected.
Cost
- Ranges from free trial (can try and plan for free for 30 days) to $500/month (it depends on the number of visitors and custom domains that you’d like to include in your test)
- $0 – 200 visits/month (it’s not easy to validate with small sample sizes)
Support
- They provide support for all plans, and response times are typically in minutes or hours
Technology / Development
- Can use the Unbounce URL (in that case, no IT support would be needed)
- Or can point DNS (this would most likely require IT but should only take them a few minutes)
Reporting
- Real-time reporting
- Can only have one conversion metric per page (i.e. if your conversion is a click on a CTA, you’re not able to track other links on the page as well)
- Can integrate with third-party analytics systems
We’d love to hear some customer reviews as well. Use the comments to share your experience with Unbounce. And stay tuned to this blog as we provide quick guides for more online testing solutions to help you choose a platform that is best for your individual situation.
Related Resources
Online Testing and Optimization Solutions: Quick guide to Adobe Test&Target
Online Testing and Optimization Solutions: Quick guide to Google Website Optimizer
Hello Gina, thank you very much for the review of Unbounce. I think this is a very accurate review of the strengths (and limitations) of the current product. We will certainly keep you posted on new improvements as we release them. Thanks again.
Hey Gina,
I have been a listener to MarketingExperiments for years and have just started a test using unbounced on a site that uses a Joomla content management system. We have had a problem developing landing pages for ads., due to the restraints Joomla puts on us, and this seemed like quite a nice easy fix.
Weirdly enough, when we suggested a subdomain to create our own pages., nobody would do it, but to host unbounced pages was not a problem. So strangely enough this solution was more political than actual!
At this very early stages in my work, it seems a great way to run tests quickly if you have minimal time to design/create pages yourself. You have to consider the amount of traffic that goes through a page. Most of the sites you test have very significant traffic, but the one I’m looking at gets around 20 visits per day. It’s still very important to convert, but obviously its harder to justify the cost of developing specific content. In this case unbounced gives a quick and easy way to optimise.
Sadly they don’t have a single column standard template though and tend to use a form on the side. However, you can create these yourself, which I will be doing shortly.
I’ll try and report back my comments as I am using it and let you know how it goes.