How To Test Credibility In A Regulated Industry

Conversion rate optimization is much more complicated in a regulated industry like healthcare.

In ecommerce categories, the conventional wisdom around CRO is that marketers should make the value proposition stronger, remove buyer hesitation, surface the best customer reviews, reinforce product benefits, and reduce any perceived risk of purchasing.

In a regulated health category, those same instincts have to be handled a little bit differently.

In the United States, the Federal Trade Commission requires advertising for health-related products to be truthful, non-misleading, and adequately substantiated. The FTC also makes clear that marketers are responsible not only for the claims they state explicitly, but also for claims that consumers could reasonably take away from the advertisement. Specific health benefit and safety claims require scientific evidence.

For supplements, the FDA creates additional hurdles around the types of claims marketers can make. Structure/function claims, for example, can describe how an ingredient affects the structure or function of the body, but they cannot explicitly or implicitly claim that a supplement diagnoses, treats, cures, or prevents a disease.

That fundamentally changes how marketers in this category must approach CRO.

The question marketers ask themselves shouldn’t be:

How can I make this landing page more persuasive?

It should be:

How can I make this landing page more persuasive without having our marketing say something that goes against regulatory guidelines?

Sometimes the strongest CRO message is one that is both qualified and trustworthy.

In Regulated Health Marketing, The Net Impression Matters

One mistake marketers in this category can easily make is treating compliance as a copywriting exercise.

The FTC’s guidance focuses heavily on the overall impression an ad creates. Under these guidelines, a marketer can be responsible for an implied claim even when that claim isn’t explicitly stated in the copy.

Individual elements may appear defensible when viewed in isolation.

But together, they may inadvertently communicate something stronger.

That means CRO teams working in health categories need to evaluate the combined message of the page, not just the individual components.

A marketer might test a headline and measure whether conversion rates increase. But if that stronger headline also creates an unsupported claim about the expected outcome, then that test isn’t really a win.

For regulated products, the highest-converting version of a page isn’t automatically the best version.

See also: Developing A Content Strategy In Regulated Industries

Why ‘Nothing Works For Everyone’ Can Be A CRO Message

One principle we use in our marketing at our health and wellness brand is straightforward:

Nothing works for everyone.

Acknowledging that a product may not work for every individual introduces uncertainty at the moment most marketers try to eliminate it.

But in healthcare and supplement marketing, that uncertainty already exists as part of the job.

So, the CRO question becomes less about whether that uncertainty exists and more about whether acknowledging that uncertainty makes the rest of the marketing about the product more believable.

The idea is also consistent with the way regulators look at health advertising. The FTC explicitly warns advertisers to qualify claims where appropriate and to explain the limited circumstances in which advertised benefits or results apply.

That doesn’t mean putting a “results may vary” line on a landing page solves a marketing problem.

In fact, the FTC specifically says that when a testimonial depicts results, broad disclaimers such as “results not typical” or “individual results may vary” aren’t enough. Marketers must substantiate that the depicted result is typical or clearly detail what customers can generally expect from the product.

“Nothing works for everyone” shouldn’t function as fine print underneath an aggressive promise.

There is a difference between making a sweeping claim and trying to disclaim your way out of it, and starting with a more honest representation of what customers should expect.

Pairing Uncertainty With Risk Alleviation

That’s why one of the most useful relationships to test in regulated marketing is between qualified claims and reduced purchase risk.

For example, a money-back guarantee can sit alongside a message that “nothing works for everyone.”

“Nothing works for everyone” manages expectations.

The money-back guarantee reduces a customer’s financial risk if their experience with the product doesn’t match what they hoped for.

Instead of testing:

“Will showing the money-back guarantee increase conversions?”

Test:

Does explaining why the money-back guarantee exists increase customer confidence in the product?

It can communicate something more credible and trustworthy:

Experiences vary. If yours isn’t positive, there is a solution.

See also: How AI Detects Customer Hesitation (And Converts It Into Sales)

Testimonials Require Much More Scrutiny Than Most CRO Teams Realize

Customer testimonials are another area where conventional CRO wisdom often creates challenges for marketers.

In a health vertical, that deserves more scrutiny.

The FTC’s Endorsement Guides state that endorsements cannot contain claims that would be deceptive or unsubstantiated if the advertiser made the claims directly. Consumer endorsements themselves also aren’t substantiation for health claims.

In other words: Just because a customer says something doesn’t give an advertiser automatic permission to repeat it.

If one customer describes a dramatic result, that testimonial will probably outperform a vague review saying the customer only “liked” the product.

It may also inadvertently create a stronger implied claim.

The FTC’s guidance specifically addresses this issue. When advertisements show consumer results, advertisers generally need evidence that those results are representative or must clearly communicate what consumers can normally expect.

So, we should stop thinking of the “best review” as automatically the most effective one.

A more useful question for CRO is: Which customer testimonial is both persuasive and insightful to other potential customers?

Customer Questions Are Often Better CRO Inputs Than Another Heatmap

Some of the more useful conversion research in regulated health ecommerce happens outside typical analytics platforms.

It comes directly from customer questions.

In our brand’s case, people regularly want clarification about our ingredients, potential experiences, medication considerations, and product differences.

Those conversations reveal something to us that things like heatmaps can’t: Why the customer might be hesitating before buying.

If the same question gets asked repeatedly in email, chat, or social comments before a purchase, that’s evidence of an information gap somewhere in our funnel.

That makes our customer service conversations a source of CRO elements for us to test.

For example:

Nothing works for everyone. That’s why every purchase is protected by our money-back guarantee.

That’s not just a piece of persuasive sales copy. It’s one perspective on what inspires customer confidence in a product.

The first step is to identify the questions people repeatedly ask before purchasing.

Then, group those questions by theme, efficacy, drug interactions, etc.

Then, test whether answering those questions earlier in the buyer journey improves conversion rate.

Conversion Rate Alone Can Produce The Wrong Winner

Product credibility tests should not always be judged by how many people click or convert on the front end of landing pages.

Suppose Page A has stronger language and a 4.5% conversion rate.

Page B has more careful language and a 4.2% conversion rate.

If you stop there, Page A looks like the better performer.

But if buyers who purchase through Page A have higher refund rates, more customer-service interactions, and lower chances of buying again, then the early performance of Page A seems less definitive.

The goal should not be to get the first purchase at any cost.

It should be to get customers who understand what they are buying and are motivated to buy because of that understanding.

For credibility-focused CRO tests, I would pay close attention to what happens later, such as refund rate, customer service messages, repeat purchase rate, and customer value, along with the initial conversion rate.

As marketers, we should recognize that increasing conversions at the cost of inflating customer expectations can have an opportunity cost that won’t appear in conversion rate alone.

Regulated CRO Requires Precision

Working in a regulated area does not stop conversion optimization.

It makes the job more precise.

The FDA sets limits on how dietary supplements can be described. The FTC requires marketers to think about implied claims, substantiate health-related statements, and consider how consumers are likely to understand the advertisement as a whole.

For me, the main point is that trust is one way to increase conversions in a regulated industry.

In health marketing, credibility is not just a nice feature added after the landing page is made.

It is part of the structure of the page itself.

Sometimes the opportunity to improve isn’t finding a stronger way to say something.

It’s finding a more precise way to say what you can actually prove.

Sometimes a sentence like “Nothing works for everyone” can help build trust more than another promise might.

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