#Oh when I said there's no such thing I meant like accounts are wildly varied and so there are a bazillion versions and not One True Angel

[die-tenebris]

Tell me what tumblr site wide fixation you don't understand or find annoying, mine is the whole biblically correct angel thing

[ot7always]

In the Dead of Night

banner courtesy of the wonderfully talented @dee-ehn​ !

Word Count: 14.5k

Pairing: Vampire!Jin x Reader

Genre: Vampire!AU, friends to lovers, smut, fluff

Warnings: dom!Jin, sub!Reader, non-gory blood and knife injury (it’s there, but mostly humorous and/or with very little specific description), biting (like actual biting), vampire compulsion (nothing concerning consent-wise), marking, hair pulling, grinding, size kink, spanking (hand), fingering, praise, oral (f receiving), unprotected sex, creampie, aftercare

Rating: 18+

Summary: Courtesy of my roommate, who summarized my story much better than I ever could:

A/N: It’s finally here! I meant for this to be about half the length and be released more than a week or 2 ago, but as you very well know, things don’t exactly go as planned in 2020. Regardless, I enjoyed writing this fic a lot, so please let me know what you think!

--

Saturdays at 3 am were supposed to be peaceful.

Well – at your apartment, that is. You couldn’t account for whoever elected to roam the streets of downtown at night.

But what was definitely not supposed to be happening was being awoken from your deep slumber by furious pounding on your front door.

Oh, for fuck’s sake.

When you glanced groggily over at your alarm clock and saw the time, you could have screamed.

Just as you reached for your phone to call the cops on whatever psychopath was probably waking up your entire floor, your screen lit up with a text.

Suckjin [03:19]: plz open ur door

Oh, for fuck’s sake.

Sliding out of bed, you hissed as your bare feet hit the cold hardwood.

This had better be fucking worth it.

Plodding out of your bedroom on tiptoes to avoid as much contact with the floor as possible, you made your way to the front door without even bothering to throw on shorts under your oversized t-shirt.

Whatever. You were sure that brat has seen thighs before.

While the knocks had thankfully quieted for a moment, he started up again just as you reached the door.

Before he could even dare bang his fist against the wood again, you were turning the deadbolt and whipping the door open, readying your fiercest glare for the broad man standing before you.

Right as you opened your mouth to start cussing him out, he sprung towards you, hands pushing you further inside your apartment and shutting the door before you could even blink.

When he turned to face you again, hands on his stomach, you prepared for the verbal onslaught you were about to send his way.

“Just what in the absolute hell do you think you’re-”

When your eyes naturally followed the path of his arms down to his stomach, what you saw there shut you up immediately.

Wide-eyed, you took a step back, eyes never leaving the sight before you. He-

As your breath quickened, a (miraculously clean) hand shot out to cover your mouth gently, though you were sure he was ready to clamp down at a moment’s notice.

“Please don’t scream.”

When you were finally able to break your gaze from his abdomen and look at his face instead, pleading eyes locked with yours, his skin paler than usual.

As frightened as you were, you calmed some when you processed the fact that he seemed to be standing before you just fine, albeit the fact that his eyes appeared somewhat unfocused.

You nodded, reaching a shaky hand up to remove his from your face, shivering at how cold and clammy he felt.

When you could speak again, you spent a few moments collecting your thoughts before you opened your mouth again.

“You - you have a knife in you!” you hissed, stepping closer to move his jacket aside to get a better look.

It wasn’t that gruesome a sight, especially not when he was wearing a black t-shirt, but it was no less jarring to have your friend show up in the middle of the night after seemingly being stabbed.

“I know that!” he hissed back, slightly exasperated, muffling a groan when you tried to inch his shirt up to glance at the skin beneath.

“Why the hell do you have a knife in you?” you whispered furiously, pulling him by the arm to settle down onto your couch.

He plopped down with a sigh of relief, his head lolling back momentarily. You hoped he knew that he was paying your cleaning bills if he bled all over your loveseat.

“Now, now, didn’t anyone ever tell you not to remove the knife if you get stabbed?” he said with a pained chuckle, sucking in a breath at the movement it caused.

“Seokjin, now is not the time to joke around,” you said, panic rising in you because you had absolutely no clue what you were supposed to do with a vampire who had a knife embedded in him. “Why did you come here?”

“Well you were the only person I could think of who would answer their door at 3 am-”

“Seokjin!”

“Sorry, sorry.” You didn’t tend to call him that unless you were genuinely annoyed, and he seemed to drop the humorous demeanor immediately.

“Why didn’t you go to a hospital?”

“I can’t go to a hospital.”

“What?! Why not?”

“Okay, correction – I didn’t want to go to a hospital.”

You let out a groan of frustration, fingers rubbing circles into your temples. This man was going to be the death of you. You had no idea why vampires seemed to have such an aversion to hospitals, but you supposed you could never understand. Despite their existence being generally accepted in society so long as they didn’t leave trails of bodies in their wake, there must have been some other reason nobody had ever shared with you.

“Seokjin, I really don’t know what to do here,” you whispered, an ounce of desperation and unease making its way into your tone. His expression softened at the sound, reaching for your hand. As much as he might have been trying to comfort you, the feeling of his hand unusually icy against yours only scared you more.

“I...” he trailed off, trying to figure out a good way to phrase this before settling on being straightforward. “...need blood.”

“Huh?” You furrowed your brow. “You literally have blood at home.”

“No, I, uhh...” he paused. “I need fresh blood to heal something like this.”

You froze. He needed fresh blood? He showed up here because he wanted... your blood?

“Aren’t there places you can go for blood?” you asked, tensing up at the notion of being bitten. It wasn’t that you were so totally opposed – it was no secret that people said it felt good. But you had never been bitten before, and you didn’t know what to think about Seokjin showing up here for that reason.

“I came here because I trust you the most,” he said, squeezing your hand. “Please. I promise I would never do this unless I had to. But please – you can say no, but tell me right now, because this hurts so much.”

Seeing his pained expression and feeling the way his fingers gripped yours like a lifeline, there was absolutely no way you were letting him back outside to roam the streets. You had no idea how this really happened to him, but despite their general acceptance, vampire hunters still existed. Like hell you were going to let easy bait walk right into their hands.

Especially not Seokjin.

“I – okay, I just – I don’t know why I’m nervous.” Biting was a pretty private, intimate thing. Most vampires drank bagged blood, with live donors only in carefully-controlled emergency clinics or heavily guarded clubs.

There was, of course, the cases of vampire-human relationships or hookups, but most people didn’t tend to share the ultra-specific details of their sex life.

Not that you had never attempted research on your own, but anecdotes you found on the internet varied so wildly that you had to wonder whether they were even telling the truth.

“I promise I can control myself. I would never put you in danger.”

“No, I know, it’s not that,” you mumbled. “Just... will it hurt?”

“Oh. No, it shouldn’t.”

“It shouldn’t? I don’t know how reassuring that is,” you chuckled nervously. You weren’t about to back out now, but you had at least hoped that he would have a straight answer for you.

He took a shaky breath, and a pang of guilt went through you for asking so many questions.

“The more attracted a vampire and donor are to each other, emotionally and physically, the better it’ll feel for you.”

“And you?”

He smirked, and curse him for making it look good despite his unfortunate... situation. “Me? I’m a vampire, it always feels good.”

Right. You might have facepalmed at the stupid question that left your own lips, but his voice momentarily distracted you from doing so.

“Anyway, I know my face isn’t a problem, so unless you secretly hate me or something, you’ll be okay,” he grinned.

“I’m so glad you can joke around right now,” you snorted derisively. “If I secretly hated you, you wouldn’t be here, would you?”

“Fair.”

“Anyway, I’ll do it, just,” you winced. “Don’t call me a donor. It feels weird.”

“Deal,” he said quickly, pulling you closer to him. “Thank you for this. Really, I owe you.”

You sighed. “I can’t just let you bleed out somewhere in the world, can I?” You allowed him to pull you close enough that you were hovering over him with your legs touching his, and you stood awkwardly in silence. “Uhh, what should I do?”

He patted his lap in invitation and your face warmed at the notion, but you straddled his legs before your brain had time to dwell on it.

He raised a hand to nudge the collar of your shirt away from your neck, his icy fingers and the sensation of his nails on your skin sending a shiver down your spine. When his thumb rubbed gently against the warmth of your neck, you had to suppress a gasp at the surprisingly intimate touch.

When you focused your gaze on his face, his eyes were not fixed on your own, but rather on the movements of his own hand, his pupils obscenely dilated. You’d never seen him look so lustful, so hungry.

Heat undeniably flared in your core (much without your consent), and it was wishful thinking to hope that Seokjin didn’t pick up on your quickening breath or rapid heartbeat.

“I...” he whispered, trailing off before he’d even begun.

“Hm?” you answered, already feeling dazed before his fangs had even touched you.

“I need you to pull the knife out.”

Well, that certainly broke you free of your trance.

“What!? Me? You – I – me?” you stuttered in a very flattering display of eloquence.

“I’m... not sure I have the strength right now,” he admitted ruefully, and you could tell that if it were really up to him, he would be doing it himself.

Just what have you gotten yourself into?

“Fine,” you murmured, raising both hands to grip firmly at the handle of the blade. “Just – don’t bite me until I put this knife down, okay? We don’t need any more... accidents.”

He failed to hold back a laugh at that, and you managed to crack a grin in response. “Okay, okay.”

To think he had you so utterly flustered and at his whim only moments ago.

“On the count of three,” you breathed, bracing yourself for something you certainly never expected anyone to ask of you. “One... two... three.”

When you reached three, you flinched your eyes shut, pulling as hard as you could in one quick burst, desperate to have this all over before it started.

The sensation was something odd and unspeakable, and you turned to toss the knife on the table behind you before you could register the uncomfortable warmth on your hands.

But the exact moment the sound of metal clattering on glass reached your ears, your head was being wrenched back by large hands, plump lips and hot breath coming into contact with your neck before you realized he’d moved.

You could barely suck in a gasp before a hand moved to grip tightly at your waist, and fangs sunk into your skin.

White-hot pain lanced through your body like electricity, and for a moment you were thinking you were done for. Seokjin was wrong, maybe he lied, and you definitely lacked the strength to push off a dying vampire determined to drink.

But just as you opened your mouth, whether to scream or cry or whatever else, you were immediately silenced, a breathy groan soon pulled from your throat.

The sudden onslaught of pleasure flowing through your limbs had you weak, your body falling limp into sensation immediately.

Clearly prepared for this outcome, Seokjin only pulled you closer to him, the hand on your waist supporting your body, a hand fisted near your scalp keeping your head back. The casual display of strength pulled a whimper from you, your body feeling hot all over.

Your eyelids fluttered closed, and you had to wonder when you had opened them at all, because you couldn’t recall processing a single thing visually since his fangs touched you.

You thought that would be as good as it gets, but the pleasure only kept building and building. It rendered you almost completely immobile, your world reduced to Seokjin at your neck, the broad planes of his body below yours, and the myriad of bliss flooding your veins. Heat was throbbing in your cunt, your nipples hard and almost pained as they rubbed against the roughness of your t-shirt.

You raised your hands that were sitting idle at your sides to fist into Seokjin’s shirt, giving no thought to the fact that he was gravely injured in that spot only minutes ago, fingers feeling almost numb and not registering the wetness that was there either.

“Ah - Jin,” you cried loudly as the bliss only built, tossing your head back to bare more of your neck.

He growled ferally into your skin, the sound going straight to your core. He pulled you closer still, enough that your breasts pressed harshly into his chest, your hips slotted together.

Sighing happily at the pressure right where you needed it most, you ground desperately against whatever you could feel against you. When you felt the undeniable hardness of Seokjin’s cock against your cunt and its delicious friction against your soaked-through panties, you moaned obscenely.

You felt rather than heard his gasp in response, his grip around you tightening even further, enough that you felt out of breath.

You whimpered at the restriction, his strength keeping you from grinding against him no matter how hard you tried.

You cursed him internally, but there was no way you were going to formulate words at this point, your mind completely lost to euphoric delirium.

It felt as though you were floating, head thrown back as sparks flew up your spine relentlessly.

Despite the lack of proper friction against your cunt, you could feel pressure building in your abdomen. You were close, so close, so undeniably close-

Fangs retracted from your neck, and the sudden loss was like ice water being thrown over your head. You shivered.

The tight grip on you loosened, Seokjin leaning into the back of the couch and groaning.

When you opened your eyes you almost fell over at the way the world spun, dizziness and blurry vision almost distracting you from the orgasm that seemed only moments away.

Almost.

Blinking furiously until you managed to fix your gaze onto Seokjin’s face, you sucked in a harsh breath at the sight before you.

Irises swimming with crimson, pupils blown out, chest heaving, dark hair mussed, lips painted red, fangs still visible past his parted lips – he looked the very picture of sin.

Fuck.

Though if you had a mirror, you would see that you looked just as ruined – eyes wanton and desperate, teeth gnawing into your bottom lip, dark bruises colouring your neck. If temptation were a person, it would be you, sitting in Seokjin’s lap with your soaked panties still pressed against the bulge in his pants.

As you stared at each other, it was as though time froze. Neither of you moved an inch, seemingly content to remain in some kind of intense, sensual staredown for the rest of time.

But you’d never claimed to be a patient person, and when you finally felt confident that your body was yours again, you acted.

If he wanted to push you away, he could have. His reflexes always seemed to almost predict the future, and you were positive that if he didn’t want this, he would have stopped you. He was never one to avoid voicing his discontent, even if it was masked as a self-deprecating joke. Some part of you deep down expected him to end this before it had even begun.

He didn’t.

Your lips met his in a depraved frenzy, too far gone to make any attempt at starting slow. It was rough, and it was messy, and it was desperate, and you loved it. His fangs scraped at your bottom lip and you gasped, fisting your hands into his hair as your body remembered how it felt the last time those fangs breached your skin. But as you ground your clit into the sizeable bulge in his pants again, he froze.

Just as you were about to pull away to see what caught his attention, he pushed you away first, hands firmly on your shoulders.

“Wait, wait, wait,” he gasped, and it very much looked like it took all of his willpower to break away.

“What’s wrong?” you asked weakly, your head still spinning, body absolutely overcome by lust. In fact, he was looking a bit blurry again with how fast he moved you, and it took several moments of rapid blinking before you met his very concerned gaze. Nothing ever escaped him, and you were sure that your semi-weak state was very obvious to him right now.

Not that it affected how much you wanted his touch, his cock.

“You don’t know what you’re doing.”

Your brow furrowed. “I do know what I’m doing,” you said firmly – or at least, you tried, but it took far too much effort to wrap your tongue around the syllables, almost as if you were drunk.

“Y/N-”

“Why don’t you believe me?” you whined, this time sounding a bit more coherent. You tried to push toward him, but his hold was too strong. “You want it too, look at your face.”

He sighed, looking to the ceiling as though it held some answer on how to make this easier. “It’s not about whether I want it or not. You’re not thinking straight.”

“Jinnie,” you whimpered needily, reaching your hands toward the waistband of his pants. If he didn’t touch you soon, you swore that you would scream. “Please. I want it. I want you. I promise-”

He moved to snatch your hands before you could touch him, and your mouth clamped shut at the grip. His expression was almost pained for a moment before his eyes glazed over with a look that would have had you on your knees immediately.

His hand shot up to grip your chin firmly, ensuring that you couldn’t look away. Though, you didn’t think you could look away if you tried, drawn to the unspeakable darkness you found there, crimson still invading the rich brown.

“Why don’t you be a good girl and sleep for me?”

“Wh-what?” you choked out, but it was as though you’d lost control of your body, feeling as though you’d been awake for days without sleep. Your eyelids fluttered shut, but you forced them back open, groaning weakly when your vision fell upon Seokjin, his expression still dark and hungry.

You were about to open your mouth again, but something about his eyes was so captivating. Something about the red pulled you in, left you unable to think. Were his eyes always this beautiful? You wracked your brain, but came up blank. You wanted to open your mouth and ask him, but you couldn’t move a muscle. Even still, your face drew closer to his as though pulled in by a magnet.

His eyes roved over your face before meeting your gaze once more, and you missed the flash of sympathy that was present for only a moment. You were relieved when he looked at you again, fingers twitching with the urge to cup his face. You were content to look at him for the rest of time – if there was anything Seokjin had, it was time, right?

Attention focused on each other, he parted his lips, and you could have sworn your ears buzzed, desperate to hold on to every word.

“Sleep.”

Your vision went black.

--

You awoke to a hand scratching gently at your scalp, a great contrast to the relentless hammering of your head. You groaned, shoving your face further into your pillow, blocking out the light that was already worsening the ache of your skull, even with your eyes closed.

You were so comfy, so relaxed at the touch that you almost drifted right back to sleep.

Wait.

You lived alone.

Sitting up all in a rush, you gasped as the world spun. It only got worse when you forced your eyes open, a pained whine leaving your lips as even the limited light in the room only introduced more pain behind your eyes.

“Woah! It’s just me, it’s just me.” Seokjin’s voice came out in a rush, sturdy arms lowering you back to your pillow as he pulled the sheets up to shadow your face.

Right. Seokjin.

Your heartbeat calmed, recalling his arrival late last night. Though, what came next was all a blur you couldn’t bother trying to remember right now.

You heard him step away quickly, the sound of your curtains drawing completely closed having you let out a sigh of relief. His footsteps neared you again, his cool touch returning to stroke gently at your face, before moving to massage at the base of your skull.

His touch was so delicate it almost baffled you. You didn’t think he’d touch anyone like this, his displays of affection more inclined to loud compliments and playful roughhousing.

But you couldn’t deny that it felt incredible, your neck arching almost imperceptively as you leaned into his touch. The chill of his skin against yours sent a shiver through you, and you tried to ignore the fluttering in your chest.

“Are you cold?”

Blood rushed to your face at the observation, though you only gave a noncommittal noise in return. He didn’t need to know what was going on in your mind.

“My head hurts,” you mumbled quietly, a pout overtaking your lips. Seokjin had to force himself not to laugh at how cute you looked then.

“I know, I’m sorry,” he replied softly, lulling you back into a half-asleep state with the gentle motions of his hand on you.

You couldn’t tell how long it was before you opened your eyes again – it could have been 2 minutes or it could have been two hours. You couldn’t even tell whether you’d drifted off or not.

It was fortunately much darker than the first time you opened your eyes, much to the relief of your headache that had faded some, but was still thudding away.

What you didn’t expect, however, was to be greeted by the golden skin of Seokjin’s chest, the shadows of the room only making it look more unreal.

You blearily blinked several times before determining that yes, that was Seokjin half-naked and perched on a kitchen chair. You tried to get words out and failed, clearing your throat before trying again.

“Where are your clothes?”

He grinned. “A bit ruined, if you recall.”

Right.

At least his pants were still on. That was best for your sanity.

“Why does my head hurt so much?” you asked, luckily able to keep your eyes open now to look at him without the pain multiplying tenfold.

He winced, his chest aching at the pained expression on your face. “I’m sorry. That’s my fault.”

“What do you mean? Because you bit me?”

“No, not that.” He raised his free hand to scratch awkwardly at his ear.

“Huh? Why then?” All of this was so confusing. Maybe you should have done more research on vampires in your life, though you never expected to be in this sort of situation.

“I, uhh... compelled you.” He gnawed nervously at his lip, but rather than the lashing out he might have expected, you only looked at him in confusion.

“You what? Why?”

“What do you remember from last night?” he posed to you instead.

As much as you tried to recall, you couldn’t focus on anything with the state your head was in. You remembered him arriving at your house, a bit of stupid banter, getting on the couch, sitting in his lap. Then, he bit you.

Then what?

You honestly didn’t know, and you couldn’t help the fear that crept its way through you at that realization.

“You bit me...” you trailed off, looking away from his face and instead staring into the sheets near where your hands laid.

He hummed in affirmation, clearly urging you to continue.

“And then, I don’t really know,” you whispered, an edge of panic in your voice.

He sighed. “That’s what I thought. Don’t worry, it’ll come back.”

“Did something bad happen?” You tried to wrack your brain for possible scenarios where he would have had to compel you to do something, and you came up blank every time. What could you have done? Attacked him? Or did he go crazy at the taste of your blood and attack you? No, that didn’t make any sense – you were lying in bed feeling perfectly normal besides the headache.

What the hell happened?

“Nothing bad happened. I just... made you sleep before we did something stupid.”

It felt like the more he told you, the less you knew. Before you did something stupid? As in, did something stupid together?

There was something about the way he was choosing his words that led you to only one conclusion – in fact, he sounded an awful lot like Taehyung bemoaning his drunken hookups.

There was no way you almost fucked... right?

You’d have to know, right? There was no way you would have gone along with that... right?

It wasn’t as though you’d never had a spur of the moment one-night stand, but with Seokjin? There was absolutely no way you would’ve let that happen. A person had to protect their heart, after all.

“Stop overthinking right now, you’ll just make the pain worse.”

“I’m not,” you protested, though you didn’t know why you even tried lying. It was a bit hard to trick someone who was both a vampire and your friend.

“I can literally hear you freaking out. Please just try to rest, you’ll remember when the headache goes away.”

You sighed, trying to ease the tension in your body you didn’t even realize you had. “Are you sure?”

“Positive,” he said confidently, his hand trailing away to rub firm circles into your shoulder instead.

“Mm.” You might have said something, but proper words evaded you at his touch. You tried focusing on him rather than the thrum of your skull, and you had to force yourself to keep your eyes open.

The expression on Seokjin’s face was one you hadn’t seen before. His eyes looked into yours with a softness that felt unfamiliar, a soft smile overtaking his lips when he saw how exhausted you looked.

“Sleep if you’re tired, princess,” he murmured, pulling the sheets up higher to cover you more. “Do you want another blanket?”

You could feel your heart speed up in your chest at the pet name and his tenderness, and you cursed the fact that there was no way to hide anything from him. At least he was polite enough not to tease you like he did your other friends.

You were so momentarily flustered that you almost forgot to respond, only nodding in response as you curled further into yourself. If you were any braver, maybe you would have asked him to join you instead.

It was only moments before he was tossing the throw from your living room over you, and it almost startled you. Sometimes you forgot how eerily fast he could move, considering he usually slowed himself to your pace whenever you were together.

You let out a contented sigh as you snuggled into the additional warmth, already feeling only half-conscious. You had just enough energy to let out a mumbled ‘thanks’ before you were drifting off again.

--

When you awoke this time, it felt as though you were an entirely new person. For starters, your head felt blissfully quiet. You were sure you would have cried if you woke up to just as much pain. There was only so much you could take in one 24-hour period. Seokjin had really done a number on your weekend, hadn’t he?

Speaking of Seokjin, he was nowhere to be seen in your bedroom. Though you were sure he was still somewhere. It wasn’t quite his style to disappear without saying goodbye, and you were even more doubtful that he would just leave after biting you.

Biting you.

At the thought, images flooded your mind faster than you could process them.

His fangs at your neck.

The relentless pleasure that invaded every fibre of your being.

Your lips on his.

Your brazen grinding against him.

And, your refusal to stop despite his words.

Holy fuck.

Was it possible to go back to when you didn’t remember and you could ignorantly lay in bed with Seokjin stroking your head?

You sat up only to bury your head in your hands, letting out a loud, embarrassed, frustrated groan while you were at it. If Seokjin didn’t know you were awake before, he surely did now. But merciful as ever, he allowed you to wallow in your mortification alone.

Was there anything worse than trying to mindlessly and basically drunkenly make your way into your friend’s pants and get denied? Your friend who you maybe found a little bit (extremely) attractive in every way, shape, and form?

Well, of course there were worse things, but to you in this moment, it certainly felt like a new low.

It took you a moment to find your footing once you’d hopped out of bed, but luckily you felt good as new otherwise. If you stayed in here alone too much longer you would certainly lose the minimal nerve you had and never leave.

In your rush to make use of your bravery, you remembered at the last moment that you were still in just your panties and shirt with no bra.

When you made it to your dresser, you paused at your reflection.

It was almost... startling how normal you looked. Though, what should you have looked like?

Baring your neck and squinting at the image in front of you, you had to scratch at your neck yourself to verify whether you were imagining it.

Aside from bruises that already seemed to be fading, there were no marks on your neck. Did it really heal that fast?

Maybe you should have been a bit embarrassed that you were so clueless on the whole subject. But in your defense, information on the internet didn’t seem to be very reliable, and vampires, for some reason, seemed to love their air of mystery. Based on the few you knew well, you were pretty sure they got a fair amount of amusement out of the misconceptions flying around.

Finally fully dressed for the first time since Seokjin showed up unannounced, you flung your door open with all the confidence you could muster.

Which is to say, you cracked your door open just enough for you to stick your head out. Much to your dismay, your eyes met Seokjin’s on the couch almost immediately, your face ducked toward the floor as you slinked your way over to the living room.

You stopped on the opposite side of the table, the sight of the stained knife there definitely not helping in your hope to distract yourself from what a fool you’d made of yourself the night before.

Out of curiosity, your gaze shot up to examine his abdomen.

You didn’t know why the perfectly smooth and unblemished muscle you found there was of any surprise to you after the night you’ve had, but it was. There wasn’t a single trace of any injury or blood on him – in fact, he looked much cleaner than when he got here. Did he use your shower?

A throat clearing had your eyes instinctively locking with his, an amused smile playing over his features that shot embarrassment through your veins. Of course the one time your ogling was purely scientific, he had to catch you and make fun of you.

You couldn’t stop your sight from drifting back down, the concept of there being absolutely no trace of anything happening to him boggling your mind.

“You really...” you trailed off, eyes darting back and forth across his bare skin one last time just to be sure. “You really healed, just like that?”

He only nodded, tapping the unbroken skin for emphasis. “You can heal me, I can heal you. Convenient, isn’t it?”

You nodded back in response, silence taking over the room quickly. You didn’t know what you were supposed to do to fill it. You’ve never experienced an awkward silence with Seokjin before, his charming nature always keeping everyone around him comfortable. This sort of energy in the room with him... it was unsettling.

“Y/N,” Seokjin called out once the silence went on a moment too long for his liking. “Can you come sit with me?”

He scooted over to make plenty of room for you, but you felt almost frozen in place. Did he really want your company after you’d pretty much jumped him? Was he sitting you down so he could let you down easy, tell you that this has been real, but he refused to associate with someone with so little self-control?

You must have stood there staring for longer than you thought, because an unreadable expression crossed his face before he spoke up again.

“Are you scared of me?”

Huh?

“No!” you blurted out, your volume clearly surprising him. “Well, a little?”

“Oh.” If you weren’t paying such close attention to him, you would have missed the hurt that flashed in his eyes. But you didn’t.

“Wait, that’s not what I meant,” you said hurriedly. You wanted to smack yourself for being such a blatant mess. “I’m just... scared,” you finished weakly.

His gaze softened immediately, and he had to restrain himself from hopping over the table between you to pull you into his arms. You looked like you were trying to shrink into yourself, your shoulders pulled towards your chest, hands wringing nervously in front of you.

“Did you think I would be upset?” he asked softly. He leaned forward, earnest expression on his face.

That was an understatement. You could live with “drunkenly” coming onto someone, but you didn’t know what you would do if it ended up costing you your friendship. Maybe you were being overly dramatic, but you never claimed to be the most rational person.

You nodded slowly, your vision dropping to stare at the floor, hands wrapped around your middle, squeezing as you struggled to maintain composure. You didn’t know why your heart was beating a mile a minute, your palms uncomfortably sweaty. You usually didn’t feel this level of fear when confronting a mistake that, to a normal person, shouldn’t be such an obscenely big deal as you were making it. But Seokjin was certainly not a normal person to you, and any situation that lowered his opinion of you was one you would do anything to avoid.

“Hey.” The sudden gentle hand on your chin made you squeak, and you would have stumbled in your rush to step backward if not for the steadying hand on your shoulder.

You always seemed to forget that he could move so quickly and silently. Your heart might stop at this rate if he wasn’t careful.

His thumb stroked at your jaw as if he hadn’t just seen you nearly fall flat on your ass, softly tapping under your chin until you met his gaze.

“I promise I’m the furthest thing from mad right now. Nothing is even your fault, okay?”

“But-”

“No buts. Let’s talk, but I’m not upset. Okay?” he urged, eyes not leaving yours until you nodded. The smile he gave in return made you feel warm, the tenderness in his gaze doing things to your heart, the hint of a smile ghosting your lips.

The hand on your shoulder nudged you toward him, the other opening wide to welcome you into a hug.

You went easily, your arms wrapping around his bare waist as you tucked your face into his chest. The relief you felt at his reassurance was immense, and you melted into his touch. It was almost strange how well you fit together.

“Let’s sit,” he said, kind yet firm. He led you over to the couch, settling himself down into the spot where he seemed to have spent much of the past day in.

You didn’t know what possessed you to straddle his lap in the way you did last night. Maybe it was the way he looked at you warmly without judgment, or the way your body craved his nearness after getting a taste of his touch. But whatever it was, he didn’t push you away – rather, he reached for your hands, interlacing his fingers with your own.

This position wasn’t the most “innocent” to begin with, but with the memories of last night rushing through your head, of his teeth at your neck and the pleasure you felt, your breath sped up.

With the expression on Seokjin’s face, you were sure he must have been thinking the same thing, hungry eyes flickering from your lips back up to your waiting gaze. Unlike you, however, he didn’t seem at all embarrassed.

“Are you confused?” he asked suddenly.

Caught off guard by the sudden question, your brows furrowed. Though you didn’t know just exactly what he was referring to, what will all that happened, but your answer was still the same regardless.

You nodded hesitantly, but he didn’t speak, your puzzled expression telling him that you were still working things out in your head. The silence stretched on until you finally spoke up again.

“You didn’t tell me it would be like... that.” Euphoric. Dreamlike. Intense. No matter what word you used, it still didn’t feel enough to encompass what you experienced the night before. You’d never experienced white-hot physical and even emotional pleasure like that, not in all your years of life.

You dropped your gaze down to your joined hands, watching the way he fiddled with your fingers as he pondered his next words. It felt unusual to have a conversation with him in this way – you both tended to be people who said what they thought without thinking on it too much, with friends at least. But it was reassuring to see him so serious, to see that he really did care.

“I didn’t tell you because I didn’t think it was a possibility,” he finally said. He sounded confident in his words, but you found it odd that he was fidgeting so much. He hadn’t stopped moving his hands since taking hold of yours, and even his legs were starting to shift beneath yours. Why did he seem so nervous?

“What does that mean?”

“Is there anything you want to tell me?” he responded instead, leaving you staring at him, baffled.

“Huh?” you replied, immediately defensive.

You didn’t have the smallest idea of what that question meant, but he fixed his gaze on you inquisitively. Did he think you had some big secret or something? Sure, he didn’t know everything about your life, but there was nothing so exceptional about you that not mentioning it would be some sort of betrayal.

“Uhh, never mind.”

“What do you mean, never mind? You can’t just ask me something like then and then say that,” you huffed, lips forming a thin line.

“Sorry I just thought – do you remember what I told you when you asked if it would hurt?”

You swore he was going to give you whiplash with his questions, but at least this one was easy to answer.

“Sure, you said the closer two people are the better it feels. Something like that, right?”

“Right, so, uhh, it wouldn’t normally feel that intense, you know?”

The fact that he definitely seemed to know exactly what was going on and kept beating around the bush was more than a little bit frustrating. Considering he was normally as straightforward as a person could get, though, you opted to simple stare expectantly at him. But if he didn’t cut to the point in approximately 20 seconds, your annoyance would just about outweigh your concern.

“It shouldn’t feel that way unless you liked me back,” he finally said, all in one breath.

You could only blink blankly as you processed his words, but when it clicked, you went from mildly annoyed to incredibly flustered all in the same second.

“HUH?! Wait, back?” You could almost feel your headache coming back with how many directions this conversation has taken in less than 15 minutes. Your hands were starting to feel disgustingly clammy in his, but neither of you moved to separate them.

“I know this is so sudden, and I didn’t expect to be outed like this either and it doesn’t have to mean anything, like I know I like you a lot, like a lot a lot, but I don’t really know how much you feel about me or if it’s even that significant or just a passing attraction because either is possible and I’m really sorry if this made everything awkward-”

His ridiculously fast words were cut off by your newly-free hand clamping down over his mouth, plump lips tickling your skin as he stared at you, wide-eyed. You were sure if you tried this any other time he would (playfully) smack you, but he only stared.

“Really?” you whispered. To be completely honest, you never realistically considered a relationship, or even just a hook-up with Seokjin. You found him wholly and insanely attractive, but didn’t everyone? And it wasn’t that he was a vampire and you were a human – it was laughable to believe that you’d think that long-term anyway.

No, you just never saw him being that into you. He was almost ethereally beautiful, got along well with everyone, and had one of the most charming personalities you’d ever seen. His physique wasn’t even something that needed to be mentioned. With all that considered, all you ever cared to do was admire him from afar, content to have him as a close friend. It wasn’t as though he’d ever sent you hints that he wanted otherwise, either.

So to hear that your stupid little harmless crush could actually amount to anything?

You thought things couldn’t get any more unexpected.

When he nodded his confirmation, you couldn’t keep the grin from overtaking your face.

The giddiness clear on your face and the adorable sparkle in your eye sent unquantifiable relief through him, and the second you removed your hand, he opened his mouth to speak.

But somehow you were quicker than him, your lips meeting his before a single syllable could be uttered.

Unlike last night, you didn’t kiss him like you wanted to devour him, or like your body would light on fire if you couldn’t get as close as possible. This was calmer, slower, but it didn’t take long for that to change.

His fangs weren’t out this time, but that didn’t change the fact that you gasped as soon as his teeth dug into your bottom lip. Sparks shot up your spine at the sensation, your mind unable to stop thinking about what you felt the last time you were in this same position. How good it felt to be helpless to the pleasure battering down on you, held in place by strong hands and strong arms.

He’d probably ruined teeth for you for the rest of your life.

You let him do whatever he wanted, and he groaned into your mouth when you tangled your hands in his hair. Hands gripped your ass tightly and squeezed, pulling you in closer to him.

His hands didn’t even wander much further than that, but heat flared in your core regardless. When he raised his hips to brush the bulge in his pants against your aching centre, you could only moan and grind down onto him.

The pressure against your clit through the thin material of your shorts cut off every possible train of thought, and you were pretty sure that after all this, these panties would never recover.

You felt goosebumps raise on your flesh when a hand rose, nails scraping against your scalp. You arched your neck back ever-so-slightly, and Seokjin didn’t miss a beat in detaching from your lips to mouth at the skin above your collarbone instead.

He wasn’t gentle in the way he sucked bruises into your skin, a firm hand holding your head in place while the other held your thigh, his confined length rubbing languidly into your core. You whined and tightened your grip in his hair at the brush of teeth against skin, but much to your displeasure, he pulled away from you before clothes even started coming off.

“Wait.”

“Whyyyy?” you whined petulantly. Was he really going to do this to you again? You knew he was definitely in the right to stop things last night, but there was only so much you could take.

He bit back a smirk at your neediness, thumbing gently at your protruding bottom lip as he resisted the urge to tease you for your cuteness. This soft and pouty side of you was new to him, and he swore something fluttered in his chest.

“You should eat something, princess.”

“Huh?” you blinked, confused. You were about to protest when he spoke up again.

“When’s the last time you ate?”

“Uhh... dinner last night? Maybe 7? 8?”

He leaned in toward you, but rather than kiss you again, he reached for the table behind you. You craned your neck to see what he was doing, and frowned when he grabbed for his phone. Your bewilderment at what he was doing didn’t last long, however, his phone screen displaying the time for you in large, white font.

5:32 pm.

“Holy shit, I slept for that long?” You stared at him wide-eyed. No wonder he took a shower and everything. You were surprised he was sat there waiting for you for all those hours without complaint.

He looked a bit sheepish, tossing his phone to the side and leaning back into the couch, tugging you with him comfortably. At this point the fire you felt had been dimmed, but that didn’t mean you weren’t still a bit irritated at being denied twice in a row.

“Ah, that would be my fault... the compulsion really gave you hell,” he winced, stroking gently at your cheek with the back of his fingers.

“It’s fine, I feel okay. Wasn’t that my fault anyway?” Your face felt hot thinking back to your behaviour and the lack of restraint you showed, hand rubbing nervously at the back of your neck.

“Of course not,” he assured quickly. “It’s not exactly something easy to resist. But if you regret it, I’m really sor-”

“I don’t regret it!” you cut him off, immediately wanting to pinch yourself for being so loud. And hasty. And embarrassing. And horny. “I’m... I’m happy right now.” Your volume seemed to die as confidence left you, but Seokjin only beamed.

“I’m happy too,” he said simply, tone laced with sincerity. “But you need to eat, I can practically hear your intestines screaming from here.”

“What?!” Strange tension successfully killed, your hands covered your abdomen instinctively as though you could shield yourself from his vampire ears. “Can you actually?”

He let you stare at him in alarm for only a few seconds before he couldn’t hold his giggles back anymore.

“Not really, but you should have seen your face. Why are you so worried about it?”

You huffed, shoulders deflating at his teasing. “I don’t know! That has to be a breach of privacy or something. Who gave you the right to listen to my intestines?”

“I can already hear your heart just fine, would it really matter so much?”

The smile dropped from his lips within a second, and the sudden intensity in his gaze had you frozen. The energy in the room shifted in an instant, and you were at a complete loss for words.

You thought he was going in for a kiss when he leaned closer, but instead his nose went to nuzzle at your neck, trailing up into your hairline. The warm air he exhaled into your ear made you shiver, pressing yourself ever so closer to his bare chest. You didn’t know how he managed to work you up within seconds, but you felt so hot despite his cool touch, baring your neck for him.

“I can hear the way your heart speeds up when I get close...” he whispered, mouthing lazily at your soft skin before sucking harshly. Unsure of what to do with yourself, your nails dug into his biceps, breath unsteady.

“I can hear the way the blood rushes through your veins, the sweetest thing I’ve ever tasted.” A hand rose to palm at your breast, bare beneath the worn cotton of your shirt. You arched your back as he harshly rolled a hard nipple between his fingers.

“I can hear the way you lose your breath, your tiny little gasps...” You couldn’t hide the way you twitched when sharp fangs scraped against your skin, a whimper nearly making its way from your throat. “Just like that.”

“And just so you know...” His voice was like honey, warm and smooth and sweet, and you hung onto his every word. “I can hear the way your stomach is growling right now too.”

The noise you let out that moment was inhumane, somewhere between a squeak and a scream of disbelief.

He broke away from you with a blaring laugh, shoulders bouncing beneath your grip.

You moved to slap at his chest, but your hand was caught easily, and his laughter only continued. God, you were going to kill this man. Again.

Your face felt obscenely hot, and you could feel a pout overtaking your lips at the sight of him still giggling away in front of you.

“Jinnie,” you whined, choosing to display your discontent by breaking free of his grip and hopping up out of his lap.

Which was definitely not the correct choice, because you swore you could feel the rush of blood through your ears before a strong sense of vertigo washed over you, groan escaping your lips. You were sure you would have fallen face first into the floor if not for Seokjin’s steadying.

“Woah, do you feel okay? This is why I told you to eat,” he sighed, maneuvering you to lay down comfortably on the couch, sticking pillows under your head. “Just stay here and I’ll make food, okay?”

“No, wait, I can make it-”

As you attempted to push back up off the couch, he only gently pushed down with a quiet ‘tsk’ and shake of his head. As you opened your mouth to further protest, he leaned in close, the softness of his lips brushing against the shell of your ear.

“Be a good girl and let me take care of you, hm?”

Your breath hitched at his sudden words, only able to stare wide-eyed when he pulled away from you enough to take in your face. The look in his eyes could only be described as devious – amused yet hardened, and you didn’t know if you were imagining the crimson bleeding into the brown of his irises.

“There goes that heartbeat again,” he murmured as though sharing a secret, the tender motion of his hand on your cheek in stark contrast to the want etched into his expression. “You’re going to be so much fun to ruin.”

--

For someone who didn’t really need to eat food to survive (though you’d been told time and time again that eating was fun), Seokjin made one hell of a good cook. Granted, egg fried rice wasn’t the most difficult nor time-consuming dish to make, but that didn’t make it any less tasty. In fact, you were grateful for such a simple and light dish, because you learned quite quickly that after an entire day without food, rushing to eat only brought nausea and discomfort.

Leaning against the armrest of the couch, the inside of your bowl was all you could see with how close you were holding it to your face. In your defence, though, you were greatly disinterested in the possibility of needing to clean a stain from your cushions.

As you took your time eating, Seokjin opted to tidy up a bit, dishes clanging in the kitchen before you heard him rearranging his shoes at the front door.

Thankfully, his efforts included removing the knife from your table and putting it god-knows-where, but you were just glad it was out of your line of sight. Maybe he thought that it was better for your appetite to remove the thing you’d literally pulled out of him.

You tried not to let your mind linger on just how... strange that felt.

He somehow managed to clean up before you’d even finished eating, the couch dipping beside you as he settled into his spot. Vampire speed truly was startling.

If you didn’t have your entire field of vision blocked, you might have noticed Seokjin’s fond look as you ate your meal at what could only be described as a forced snail’s pace. He had to suppress a chuckle at how antsy you seemed to be, clearly wanting to just shovel food into your mouth, but knowing you would only suffer for it. How did one person manage to be so cute and yet so seductive?

When you were done, you set the bowl down on the table with a satisfied sigh, jumping in surprise when a glass of water was placed into your newly-emptied hands almost immediately.

“Thanks,” you smiled shyly, face feeling hot at his attentiveness. You didn’t know how to react at having a man like Kim Seokjin doting on you. It was almost – no, it was – unbelievable, and your poor heart didn’t know how to act. It was one thing to have him kiss you like he was going to devour you, and another to be this sweet and this caring and this soft.

Setting the empty glass next to your empty bowl, you leaned back, unsure of what to do with yourself now that you were entirely unoccupied. Seokjin’s presence beside you made you increasingly aware of the awkward shifting of your hands and your uneasy breathing. He wasn’t that close to you and yet you could smell him – you didn’t know how he managed to make your floral scented shampoo smell sexy.

“Why are you so nervous?” he said lowly, nudging you into his side and tossing an arm around your shoulders. It was a simple move, and yet all you could think was how big he was, how easily he completely enveloped you in his hold.

“I-I’m not nervous,” you stuttered, and you could feel the blood rush to your face. You wondered if he could hear that, too.

A hand lifted your face in his direction, and you were met with an expression that very clearly read ‘are you really going to try lying to a vampire?’

“I don’t know why I’m nervous,” you amended, biting into your lower lip. His gaze followed the motion, eyes clouding over.

“Can I kiss you?” he asked softly, his thumb raising to release your lip from your teeth, the movement intimate enough to set your stomach aflutter.

“Are we asking that now?” you responded smartly, grinning when Seokjin only huffed a laugh.

“Let me be clearer then,” he said lowly, the abrupt commanding tone having you sit up straighter. “Can I kiss you, strip you, take you to bed, taste that sweet pussy on my tongue, and then fuck you?”

Heat flared in you at the words, your fingernails scratching against his chest before remembering he wasn’t wearing a shirt for you to yank him closer. You settled for making a beeline for his mouth, but a quick movement to grip your hair at the scalp kept you from getting close enough.

“Ah, ah,” he tutted, holding you still as he nuzzled his nose against your neck, humming in content when he brushed right against the spot he bit you yesterday. “Tell me yes or no, princess.”

You nodded with what freedom you had left – not much, with how tight his hold on you was, tiny pricks of pain sending sparks up and down your spine. His other hand pulled you closer to him, your hips halfway straddling him as he mouthed at your neck, acting as though he hadn’t noticed your response. It was clear that he was waiting for you to say something.

“Yes,” you said quietly, nearly forgetting what the question was from the way he was sucking softly at your neck. At the scrape of fangs against your skin, you only pushed back against the hand in your hair, exposing more of your neck with a soft sigh.

“You can’t stop thinking about it, can you?” he taunted, pulling you fully on top of him, his hard cock right against your core, and you wished that clothing wasn’t separating you.

He pressed those fangs against the soft skin below your ear, hard enough that the pain had you wincing, but not enough to break skin.

He was teasing you, and you were putty in his hands.

“I can’t stop thinking about it either,” he breathed, tonguing lazily over the stinging marks he left behind. You could only whimper and squirm in his hold, hands tangling in his silken hair. You didn’t know whether you wanted to pull him away or push him closer.

“To have you moaning in rapture right in my lap, so desperate for my cock, the taste of you on my lips...” His voice was so low you could barely hear it, barely process it, but the absolutely lust in his voice only spurred new waves of arousal in you. “Hearing you beg like that, fuck-”

He cut himself off with a sinful moan as he shifted his hips to rub himself right against your cunt, and you shuddered in response.

“I don’t think I’ve ever wanted anyone so bad,” he sighed, breathing unsteady as he used his grip on you to rock you in time to his movements. “I’ve never had such a test of self-control. Maybe I should punish you.”

This voice was teasing, but your reaction was real, and there was no way to hide the way a moan escaped or the way your nails dug crescents into Seokjin’s smooth skin.

“Oh, you like that, do you?” he chuckled darkly as he leaned his head back into the couch, the grip in your hair tightening even more. A helpless whine left your lips, and you became uncomfortably aware of the way your panties were sticking to your folds.

“Tell me, do you think I should punish you?” he asked, his honeyed voice lulling you into a state you couldn’t even begin to explain with words.

You tried nodding again, hissing at the flash of pain when you tried move your head from his grip.

“Princess, haven’t you learned to use your words? I think I’ll bend you over my knee right here. What do you think about that?”

“Please,” you gasped without hesitation, freezing when you fluttered your eyelids open to meet his gaze.

If you weren’t sure whether his eyes were laced with red before, it was evident now. It only made him all the more enticing, and your vision fell down to his mouth instinctively when he ran his tongue over his teeth. A pang of heat went through you when his fangs bit into his lip, and before you were thinking about it, a hand rose to brush against his mouth.

Your thumb grazed a fang almost reverently, and Seokjin only watched on fondly at the wonderment on your face. You supposed it might have been strange to touch your friend’s – boyfriend’s? – teeth like this, but you had always been curious. Hell, you hadn’t even seen fangs in person before last night. As far as you knew, they only extended when feeding or when feeling strong emotions, and neither tended to be something you could casually see on the street.

You bit at your lip when sharpness pushed into the pad of your finger, but his next words broke you free of your reverie.

“Bend over then.”

He released you from his grip dizzyingly fast, leaning back to watch you.

You were surprised at yourself with how quickly you situated your ass over his lap, the self-consciousness you would’ve expected to be feeling wholly absent. Seokjin was just that captivating.

You wiggled your way into a comfortable position, sticking a cushion under your head. Now that your ass was sticking out right into his view, you felt more vulnerable than ever, knowing that his eyes and ears were trained on your every movement and reaction.

Hands pushed your long shirt up over your hips, fingers trailing lightly over the globes of your ass, separated only by the thin fabric of your shorts. But not for long.

Fingers reached under your waistband and tugged down before you could react, yanking your shorts and panties down in one go.

With air suddenly hitting your sodden pussy, you could feel heat rise to your face at how exposed you found yourself. But any thought of shifting and hiding was erased when you heard Seokjin’s loud groan.

“Shit, you’re soaked, smell so fucking good,” he hissed, fingers reaching to push messily through your folds.

You couldn’t see him putting his fingers in his mouth, but the depraved moan he let out afterward had you squirming in his lap.

After your shorts and panties were pushed onto the floor, a large hand ran tenderly over the skin of your ass, fingers digging in slightly.

“Is ten on each side too much for you?” he asked. There was no hint of teasing in his tone, his voice firm. He continued his soft stroking as he waiting for an answer.

“Uhh... I don’t really know?” you responded meekly. Sure, you had been spanked before, but it was never this... structured? To be honest, you didn’t really know what “a lot” would be in terms of numbers.

“It’s okay,” he soothed. “We’ll work our way up and see how it feels. Is that okay?”

You nodded at first, but quickly let out an ‘okay’ when you remembered how firm he was on a proper response.

“This means I’m trusting you to be honest and tell me to stop if it’s too much. I want you to feel good.”

“Okay.”

You released tension you didn’t realize you’d had at his reassurances, allowing your limbs to loosen as you adjusted to lay more comfortably. The sensation of his hands on you made you feel safe and secure, and you knew for a fact that for all his hard words and cold stares, he was still always searching for your approval.

You twitched in surprise as a few light swats came down on each cheek, almost as though he was testing the motion. But after being briefly taken off guard, you relaxed under his hands, body already warming up at each light blow. You barely felt anything aside from a faint sting, but you could already feel your cunt throbbing, anticipation having you dig your nails into the cushion beneath you.

But even despite his preparation, the first real blow had you gasping. Not because it was overly painful – in fact, those pinpricks of pain were laced with pleasure, radiating outward from where his palm had firmly struck you. No, it was more that with the control and precision he showed, another realization struck you at that moment.

He really knew what he was doing.

This wasn’t just a college boyfriend who wanted to experiment with things he saw in porn, or a random bar hookup who thought he was more than he was.

No, Seokjin was the epitome of calculated control, had you eating out of the palm of his hand with one simple word. One look and you were his.

And fuck, if that didn’t make you melt.

You sighed happily as a hit came down on your other asscheek, another wave of arousal soaking your cunt.

“Do you want it harder?” he asked, voice low. The tone felt almost like a personal attack, honeyed words piercing your eardrums.

“Okay,” you whispered.

“Yes or no. Don’t just agree to do things because I suggest it,” he scolded, punishing you with a swat to your upper thigh that stung sharper than his previous blows.

“Yes, I want it.”

“Hm,” he hummed, nails scratching over your skin, just barely missing the heat of your core. “I think I would be more convinced if you begged.”

As much as most of your embarrassment had already faded, what with being bent over Seokjin’s lap, it took so much more to put your desires verbally out into the world. But the throbbing in your cunt was fierce, and the warmth from his previous strikes was already fading. And you wanted more.

“Please,” you whined weakly before taking a deep breath to amp yourself up. “Please, Jinnie, I want it harder.”

You barely had time to process the tiny chuckle he let out before his palm came down on you again, the additional force behind it making you shiver despite the warmth that spread through you.

You didn’t know exactly how many more times his hand struck your ass, but your quiet moans were interrupted by his voice once again.

“Harder?”

As much as you felt good, it still wasn’t enough. The sting wasn’t enough, the heat wasn’t enough. You wanted more, needed more.

“Yes, please.”

“Mm, there you go. Maybe I should do this more often if you’re going to be such a good girl for me after.”

He punctuated his statement with a harsh blow to your ass, the strength of it forcing a moan from your lungs. A hand stroked tenderly over where it had struck, before doing the same to the other cheek. You whimpered as you felt another gush of wetness spill from your cunt, squirming as another strike rained down.

Yes, this is what you wanted.

The feeling was heady, your mouth open and allowing all the sounds to spill from your lips. Every cell in your body felt hot, from your fingertips down to your toes. You were certain you must have been making a mess of his lap with how wet you were.

You didn’t realize how heavily you were breathing until the smacks stopped, fingers gently kneading at the raw skin instead. Your skin felt almost burned, but more than anything, you needed those hands to slip between your legs. Now that there was nothing else to distract you, your neglected pussy was desperate for something, anything.

“How are you?” he asked several moments later.

His continued soothing touch dampened the fire of your skin before long, but that only furthered your arousal, shifting in his lap in search of some relief. You itched for some pressure on your clit, but it wasn’t possible in the position he had you in.

“Good,” you breathed, pressing back into his touch.

“Good.” He let his fingers creep ever-so-closer to where you needed him most, rubbing against where your wetness had spread, just beside your outer folds. “I think you deserve a reward. What do you think?”

“Please,” you whined immediately, but luckily, he didn’t seem interested in making you wait any longer. Maybe it was the fact that he had been waiting just as long, or that he was just tired of your constant fidgeting in his lap.

A finger slid in without resistant – unsurprisingly, what with the way you could feel the air hitting your slick skin. Your walls clamped down on the intrusion immediately, and another finger slid down to rub tiny circles onto your clit.

You whined in relief, but Seokjin unfortunately held you down to keep you from thrusting back onto his hand.

“So fucking wet,” he murmured, slipping another finger in when he felt how easily you took the first.

As much as one didn’t feel like enough, two of his fingers was so much bigger than your own. The stretch had you gasping, the friction against your walls and clit making you moan out.

As he scissored his fingers inside of you, the slight burn had you hissing, though the constant ministrations on your clit made sure the pain never became your focus.

“Mm, are you sure you can take my cock?” he mused, smirking at the way you were already whimpering, increasing the pace of his thrusts as your moans got more frequent.

“I can!” you blurted out, sounding almost offended. He had to stifle a laugh. You had always been fun to rile up, and sex was no exception.

“Hm, okay,” he hummed, amusement colouring his tone. You almost called him out on it before his fingers pulled out of you abruptly.

“Jin-”

Before you could question him, beg him to come back, hold him against you – three fingers started easing their way inside of you.

You tensed up almost immediately at the harsher burn at your entrance, the stiffness of your body not doing you much of a favour. He paused all movement at your struggle.

“Relax. I’ll take care of you, okay?”

His words had you feeling more at ease, a reminder that he was here, he wanted you to feel good, and he only kept on making that fact clear.

You made a noise of agreement, forcing your muscles to relax despite how much they wanted to clamp down. You wanted his cock, after all. You could take his fingers.

He took his time with you, slowly easing his fingers in and scissoring them apart, all the while his other hand resting beneath your abdomen, rubbing into your clit. You keened under his continuous murmured praise, moaning as he began to thrust his fingers.

“That’s it,” he whispered, his own breaths beginning to get heavy as he watched you twitch and whine at his hand.

Once the discomfort passed, your pleasure crested ridiculously fast with how long you’ve been waiting to be touched, filled. He stretched you open so wide, and you clenched around his digits at the thought of those fingers being his cock instead.

You were easily giving yourself away with how your walls were clamping down more and more, heavier gasps leaving you. The stroking at your clit wasn’t getting any slower, and soon enough you felt like you were going to snap.

“Gonna come all over my fingers, princess?” he asked roughly, his voice showing an uncharacteristic lack of control as he spread his fingers wide again.

“Please,” you said feebly, all other words having left your available vocabulary long ago. “Please.”

“Don’t worry, I’ll give it to you, baby.” The crook of his fingers took you by surprise, and with one, two, strokes against that spongy spot within you, you were gone.

Your orgasm stole the breath from your lungs, your legs going weak as waves of bliss hit you everywhere at once. His hands on you didn’t stop their motions, only sending new waves up your spine, shivers wracking your body as you grasped the closest object tightly – your nails digging into the cushion beneath you.

He only stopped when you started to squirm away as pain took over the pleasure, a whimper escaping as his fingers were removed.

If you thought you were getting a moment to breathe, you were wrong.

“Fuck, you’re going to be the death of me,” he growled.

Before you could blink, you were on your back, his lips attacking yours in a frenzy.

The grip he had on your thigh was sure to bruise, his still-clothed cock rocking into your sensitive pussy as he consumed your every thought, every desire.

You could taste yourself on his tongue, the realization only building the fire that had already been relit within you.

You allowed him to pull the shirt from your body, your skin left completely bare beneath his.

His gaze was somewhere between reverent and demonic, and he looked almost ready to pounce back on you before he paused.

“Bed?” His voice sounded strained, and you thought briefly back to what he said about how much self-control the past day has required from him. You glanced down at the bulge in his pants, and you had to keep yourself from grabbing at it, eager to give him his pleasure the same way he’d done for you.

“Okay.”

You didn’t think your lips formed the second syllable before you were being scooped up, your arms looping around his neck to steady yourself from the abrupt movement.

The walk to the bedroom was somewhat of a blur, your stomach lurching at the speed with which he moved. You’d known the man was quick, but experiencing it firsthand was partly unsettling, and partly... strangely sexy.

Your back hit the sheets with unexpected force, your body bouncing back up from the impact. You’d never considered strength to be such a significant turn-on, but combined with everything else about him, it seemed to make Seokjin the most dangerously attractive man you’ve ever encountered.

You thought you were about to get fucked into the mattress – the hunger in Seokjin’s stare only cementing the thought – but it seemed that he had other ideas.

“Jin-”

You were about to beg him to touch you, fuck you, do literally anything – when his hands wrapped around your ankles, spreading your legs apart enough that you could begin to feel the strain in your thighs.

The way he was gazing at your fully exposed core almost made you self-conscious before you took in the way his breathing was heavier than you’d ever seen it, the crimson completely having taken over the brown of his irises.

“I have – I have to taste you,” he groaned.

He sprung on you in an instant, plush lips wrapping around your clit and sucking before his tongue moved down to lap at your arousal.

While you were still a bit sensitive from your last orgasm, the discomfort was nothing in comparison to the bliss lighting up your nerves. You were a slave to pleasure under his tongue, hands holding you down as you attempted to buck up into him instinctively.

His tongue attacked you like a man starved, his unabashed moans into your heat leaving you gasping.

But as much as he was successfully making you lose your mind, you didn’t want to cum like this.

“Jin, fuck-” you whimpered, body aching to grind up into his face despite your next words.

He only hummed into your pussy at your noises, motions not pausing whatsoever.

“Fuck me, please,” you begged, a hand winding into his hair in an attempt to pull him off you.

You almost thought he was pretending not to hear you when he didn’t react straightaway, but not long after, he pulled off of you.

He didn’t even say a word in response, only shucking off his pants and boxers with a heaving chest.

You swore your pussy throbbed when you saw his cock, only moreso when he fisted it with a hiss, lips that were glistening with your arousal widening to reveal sharp white fangs.

“I have to be inside you right fucking now,” he snarled, dragging your body down by the thighs to meet him where he knelt.

You felt almost feverish, your hands reaching to yank Seokjin by the shoulders, the need to be closer taking over your every thought.

He kissed you frantically as the head of his cock rubbed against your clit, your back arching up into him, his closeness still not close enough for you.

You were so close to pleading with him not to draw this out, but he settled himself against your entrance, his other arm supporting himself by your head. When he started to push in, you could only whimper.

You knew he was big when he grasped himself in his hand only moments before, but for all his preparation, it felt like you were being split open.

You clung onto his biceps as he rocked himself forward at a snail’s pace, nails digging into his skin as you clamped down on him reflexively. It burned, but you wanted it so bad. As much as the discomfort was intense, you could feel yourself getting wetter by the second, unable to stop panting into Seokjin’s mouth.

You whined as he nibbled at your bottom lip, one of his hands rubbing soothing circles into your thigh, the other in your hair. But when you felt fangs puncture your lip ever-so-slightly before he sucked it into his mouth, all breath was stolen from you.

It was only the smallest fraction of the pleasure you felt the night before, but that was enough to have your head thrown back, hips raising to meet Seokjin’s.

It almost seemed that he wasn’t expecting you to thrust upward onto him, a strangled groan leaving his throat as you shoved more of him inside you.

The stretch remained overwhelming, but the pain felt like a distant memory, new arousal making the glide smoother.

“Good?” he gasped against your collarbone, hot breaths hitting your skin as his hair brushed against your face. The arm holding him up was trembling at your side, the fingers on your thigh tightening their hold as if to physically hold himself together.

Part of you just wanted him to lose control.

“So good,” you moaned, shoving your hips up again, volume increasing exponentially when he allowed you to push him in to the hilt.

“Fuck,” he growled, arm moving to form a bruising grip on your other thigh, his chest moving away from yours. “Are you that desperate for it?”

The question was accompanied by a sharp snap of his hips that sent you reeling, too breathless for any sound to escape.

He spread your thighs apart even further, a hand beneath your left knee lifting your leg towards his chest.

The next quick thrust hit you even harder at that angle, a choked-out whine escaping you. Your fingers dug into the sheets as he ground himself into you, your pussy feeling split so overwhelmingly wide.

You were wound up so tight, you thought you were going to go crazy. It was impossible to think straight when he only did quick snaps of his hips at random intervals. You didn’t think you’d ever been hornier than this moment, and you swore you could feel the arousal leaking from your cunt.

You could see sparks of light behind your eyelids with how tightly you had them shut. You bit down hard on your bottom lip, the flesh still tender from Seokjin’s bite.

His thrusts became slow and deep, tiny gasps leaving your open mouth.

“Look at me,” he snarled suddenly, the sheer command in his voice sending shivers up your spine, gaze snapping onto him immediately. It took a moment for your vision to focus properly, still drowning in the sensation of his cock still moving within you.

If you thought he looked fierce, hungry, dangerous – you were his polar opposite.

To put it simply, you were a mess.

You were too lost in it all to notice the stutter in his hips when he locked eyes with you, but he almost stopped breathing entirely.

Your eyes were glazed over in pleasure, the tears just beginning to gather there only making their colour all the more enticing. Your expression was slack, and it looked like you couldn’t decide between clamping down on your bottom lip or leaving your mouth wide-open. You looked so vulnerable, so willing to put all of your trust in him to take care of you, make you feel good.

And fuck, if it wasn’t the most beautiful sight he’d ever seen.

His movements after that caught you off guard, his abrupt rough thrusting engulfing your body in flames of bliss, loud moan leaving you. As much as holding his gaze made everything feel so much more intense, you just couldn’t. Your head fell back onto the pillow, back arching as much as he would allow you to move in his tight hold.

“You feel so fucking good,” he groaned, his voice sounding almost helpless and he continued his movements, his arms the only thing keeping you from shifting up the mattress. As his gasps transitioned to groans and then loud moaning, you could feel yourself nearing your peak again.

He slowed his movements, the heavy panting reaching your eardrums and having you clench around him instinctively. The choked-out groan in response told you he was close, too.

“Jin,” you called out, the word so breathy that you almost didn’t recognize it despite it coming from your own lips.

You raised an arm to weakly grab at his body, hoping he got the message himself. You wanted him close, but highly doubted that you could manage to form the words right now.

Luckily, he seemed to know exactly what you wanted, dropping your leg and moving to hover over you, your breasts brushing his chest. He started thrusting slowly again, his head dropping to your collarbone as a hand wound into the hair at your scalp.

With him right on top of you, his pubic bone was brushing against your clit, the added stimulation having you whine loudly and dig your nails harshly into the skin of his back.

He didn’t seem to mind, a loud groan leaving him as he started mouthing at your neck, sucking bruises into the flesh.

But when you felt fangs briefly scrape over your skin, only one thought came to mind and refused to leave.

You wanted it, wanted his fangs to sink into you, wanted to feel that again. Now.

“Bite me,” you whimpered, pushing your head into the pillow and arching your back, eager to give him free reign as your orgasm inched closer and closer.

You expected him to protest, expected him to deny you, expected him to pull away.

But he did none of those things.

Instead, fangs sunk deeply into your neck with a feral growl, almost as soon as he heard the words leave your lips.

That same immense burst of pain rendered you motionless for a split second before that all-consuming euphoria descended on you.

You vaguely registered Seokjin moaning loudly above you as his hips stuttered, his lips locked on your neck. But you felt almost disconnected from the world, as though every nerve in your body was firing, your cunt pulsating around him as you reached the strongest high you’d ever felt.

It felt almost instinctual to grip at his back tightly, pulling him close, as if he’d ever want to leave. You didn’t even realize how loud you were being, your peak only going higher and higher, to the point of being overwhelming.

Tears streamed from where your eyes were clamped shut, moans turning into sobs as Seokjin ground against your overstimulated clit, your pussy clenched around him tightly.

You were so far gone you didn’t even notice the warmth spilling into you as he groaned loudly into your skin, his movements slowing before he pulled his mouth from you.

The crash was almost immediate, exhaustion and soreness taking over your limbs as you gasped for breath, the hands on Seokjin’s back falling limp. It felt like all the strength was sapped from your body, your consciousness half-absent.

You thought you heard Seokjin fussing over you, his hands wiping tears from your face, but to be honest, it was all a blur. He disconnected with you easily despite your mumbled protests, dropping a kiss on your forehead with a soft command not to move. You didn’t think you were capable of such a thing anyway.

You hardly registered his absence before he was back with a wet cloth. You didn’t know if that was because of his speed or because you were too tired to pay attention.

The next thing you knew, he had rolled you to lay on top of him, your face tucked into his neck as he stroked at your back. Normally, you might have complained about how much colder he was than you, but your skin was still so heated that the coolness was a relief.

You could tell that he was saying something quietly, unsure whether he was asking you something or not. His voice only brought you warm comfort, your arm moving to wrap around his waist.

You honestly weren’t too sure how long you laid there until your senses started coming back to you, but the hand on your back never stopped its soothing motions. The realization made you strangely embarrassed, wondering how long you’ve been out of it.

“Did I fall asleep?” you mumbled, nuzzling into the softness of Seokjin’s neck.

“Not really, it hasn’t been too long,” he responded, though the way he paused made it seem that he had more to say. It took a few moments before he got the words out. “Did I go too hard? Was it too much?”

Despite the low volume of his voice, he sounded almost frantic, and your brows furrowed. Why was he so worried?

“Of course not. I asked you for it, I knew exactly what I was getting into.”

He sighed heavily, his hands on you pausing. “I know, I just – I got worried when you were barely responding to me. I guess I was just afraid that you would be scared of me after.”

You felt a tinge of guilt at his concern, but logically it was nobody’s fault. As much as you wanted to take his face in your hands and tell him that you don’t regret anything and there wasn’t a world where you could ever be scared of him, you doubted your ability to do so right now. Instead, you hoped that simple reassurance could be enough.

“I loved it,” you said plainly, sleepiness clear in your voice. You were fighting past the fog in your brain to talk to him, wanting to make sure he knew where you stood.

“I loved it too,” he whispered before bringing up the blanket to cover both of you. “You sound tired. Why don’t we sleep?”

“Wait.”

“Hm?” he hummed in response, his confused expression hid from your view.

“Are you my boyfriend?” Your words sounded almost slurred with how close you were to unconsciousness, but his chest bouncing as he chuckled told you that he heard you just fine.

You were dangerously close to dreamland, but you caught his answer right before you fell asleep in his arms.

“Yeah, I’m your boyfriend.”

[elixir448]

Beth x Rio and OTP questions -- What’s the first thing that changes when they realise they have feelings for each other? and -- who says I love you first?

I am pretty sure that I am answering this wrong and maybe I’m supposed to create a written piece for the two characters but honestly the thought of writing for these two makes me cringe. I’m sure I’d be terrible at it!! So, I’m just going to answer the questions literally and hope that’s what you wanted!

Right, so. The first question is so painful because I am convinced that Beth and Rio were a little in love with each other. I know it is controversial but the more I think about season 2, the more it makes sense. In order to unpack your first  question, I guess we need to have a think about when they started to have feelings for one another and then when they realised that this was the case.

Honestly, I think that these two caught feels for each other as early as season 1. Certainly, those feelings were mainly comprised of intense curiosity, desire and the fact that they both seemed aware of the electric connection between them, something that neither of them anticipated.

I mean I’m sure if you asked the collective fandom when Beth and Rio developed feelings for one another, the answers would wildly vary.

It’s evident that Rio had been thinking about Beth prior to their conversation in her van (1x05), as indicated by “what are you doing with someone like me?”. Even before then, as soon as Beth and Rio were in the same space as one another, it was like they couldn’t quite remove their focus from the other person, like they were orbiting one another. At this point, after seeing the scale of Rio’s operations, it’s clear to me that he never had to deal with the girls directly after 1x02; initially, it was about using the girls to get his product from Canada and seeing what these suburban mamas could contribute but eventually it was like he couldn’t help himself. I mean, we’ve seen how many times Rio redirects his attention back to Beth whenever Annie or Ruby say something. It seems as though he doesn’t want to look away and it really makes me wonder if, of the two, Rio was actually the first one to catch feelings? Something more than just an awareness of their charged connection.

One of the other reasons I think Rio developed feelings for Beth first is that he’s been making exceptions for Beth for a long ass time, since almost the beginning of their professional relationship. That doesn’t mean he’s not hard on her but it could have, and probably should have, been way worse. It’s not smart for a person like Rio to make exceptions; he never made any for Eddie and I think he knows that he never should have for Beth either. I think it was intrigue that drove him to listen to her and give her some leeway and then I think he was too impressed not to hear her out. Eventually though, I believe he just liked it. He liked seeing her and talking to her in cars and cafes, he enjoyed their loaded conversations and eye-fucking and I think he genuinely wanted her. Like really wanted her. To the point that he let her get away with things that no one else could, like turning him in. Honestly, I oscillate between thinking that he first became aware of his feelings for her at the end of 2x02 or maybe he was full on punched in the face by them in 2x09, after she kissed him and he just stared at her. Or maybe he knew he was f***ed when he retrieved the Dubby for her and stuffed it into her mailbox, instead of leaving it when he confirmed that Jane hadn’t been kidnapped. We saw how soft and open he was with her in 2x08 on her picnic bench. So basically, I don’t know when he realised and I love that it probably snuck up on him, past all the eye-fucks and amusement and exasperation.

So now that I’ve got that out of the way, let’s address your first question, considering Rio’s POV first. I think the first thing that changed was that he suddenly became aware of how dangerous she is to him. In season 2 and probably in the latter half of season 1, I don’t think he could have killed Beth even if he wanted to. There was no way he was going to kill her after he said “Elizabeth. Go home” in 1x09. Also, I’ve said it before but I really do think that throughout 2x02, Rio didn’t know what to do with Beth, who by all accounts was his rotten egg at that point. A rotten egg he couldn’t deal with, despite berating her for being unable to handle her own. I believe that Rio is very self-aware and knew how many exceptions he had made for her but perhaps had convinced himself that it would be worth it, because she was useful. And the thing is she was. But in the business, I think she’d also be considered more trouble than she’s worth.

Realising that he had feelings for her would force him to reckon with the fact that, even though there is a clear imbalance of power in their professional relationship, she actually wields far more power over him that even she is aware of in their undefined personal relationship. And I think as soon as he became aware of that, he was forced to regroup and evaluate what he was doing. This was pretty quickly followed by the realisation that she hadn’t killed Boomer, that she had been lying to him throughout the season despite her insistence that they were partners. I believe that was the driving force behind the “That’s what I am? Work?” scene in 2x12.

Regarding Beth’s feelings, well, she was certainly thinking about Rio early in season 1 as well, “Rio. His name’s Rio.” Annie and Ruby’s responses to that were absolutely perfect and reflective of the audience’s reactions. And come on, with the way that Rio looked at her, called her out and challenged her. There’s no way she wasn’t thinking about him. Sure, she enjoyed it when he blatantly looked her up and down but I think something inside her unravelled when he looked at her with admiration and curiosity in 1x02 (“we’re normal people”) and at the end of 1x04 (“we’re not here to try, we’re here to win bitch!”).

I think Beth has felt undervalued by a lot of the men in her life, including Dean and probably her father (the lack of any mention of him was pretty conspicuous in the 2x08 flashbacks). I think she spent most of her adult life comfortable but not happy. Not unhappy either though. That uncomfortable in-between. Initially, I think she viewed Rio as an opening into the thrill of what she had just done in 1x03, a way to make some money, but part of the thrill was him; I mean, her lies to Agent Turner’s face revolved around both of them having sex. So she definitely thought about that, probably daydreamed about it too. However, I think she also liked what she saw in herself when he looked at her. Her capabilities. And, look, I’m not saying that Beth’s self-worth is tied to Rio. It certainly is not and that would be extremely unhealthy. We’ve seen how much she disregards him lol. What I’m saying is maybe she needed that acknowledgement. Everyone does.

None of this stopped her from turning on him towards the end of season 1, when he “broke up” with her. I am convinced that she was driven by fear of what he would do yes, but mainly by anger and vindictiveness. A bit of a screw you, I don’t need you to do this (and gosh, the irony of that considering the fact that Rio says that to her in 2x06) and how can you just walk away?

We all know that Beth represses a lot, so if she had just sat down and unpacked what she was feeling, she would’ve known pretty quickly what Rio represented to her, a thrill but also a genuine connection. Then, after the bathroom scene in 2x04, her blatant avoidance of discussing it definitely says to me that it meant more to her than she was willing to acknowledge at that point. Then along comes the green-eyed monster when she saw him with Dylan. Come on Beth. Even Annie and Ruby knew that you were jealous but she couldn’t acknowledge it. Instead, she repressed and threw herself into uncovering what his new hustle was. When he returned the Dubby to her and that exhale when she pulled it out of the envelope; Gosh, I think she was confused and decided to avoid what she was feeling even more but maybe it was leaking out without her permission when she and Rio were being so gentle and light-hearted, ribbing each other on the picnic bench.

Interestingly, I’m way more certain of when Beth realised that she had feelings for Rio and that’s probably because we, as the audience, are poised to view Rio from Beth’s point of view. Any insight we get into his character is usually through her, other than his scenes with Turner in 1x01 and Gretchen in 2x03. And we follow her not just in her scenes with him but also through the other aspects of her life, whereas we usually only see Rio in scenes with her. I believe that Beth became aware of and couldn’t repress her feelings anymore when Dean presented her with a choice. Their family or Rio. When she was presented with a time stamp on their relationship, it jolted her. I think by that point, Rio and her had been through a lot and yet always ended up in the same story anyway. Like none of it mattered. Their connection wasn’t erased by any of it. So, she must have stopped thinking that anything could permanently rip them apart. Like, she turned him in and yet there they were, doing what they always do and so what if it means something more? In those moments where Beth’s sitting at the bar, knowing what she had to do, she must have been dreading it. Maybe a little of that was fear of how he might retaliate but Beth knew by that point, in her bones, that Rio would not harm her. No, that dread was because she knew how she felt now and she knew that what she was about to do was going to hurt. Strangely, acknowledging her own feelings was what spurred her to act and seek out that “one last time” with him.

On to your second question, who says I love you first? Oh lord, honestly, I can’t imagine these two every fully exposing themselves like this, not verbally anyway. The Dubby was a pretty obvious declaration of Rio’s feelings (come on, the episode was called “The Dubby”), even if he was probably pissed off while stuffing it into her mailbox. I think, in his own twisted way, presenting her with Agent Turner in 2x13 was another, more f***ed up declaration of something. I’ve thought about this a lot but I can’t even imagine Beth and Rio hugging. Like, it blows my mind to even think about it. Part of the reason is that they are not there yet. They didn’t trust each other, not even before Beth shot him. Telling the other person they love them would expose them in ways that I don’t think either of them can stomach yet. I think it would make itself known in other ways and, hell, it already kind of has with the way they looked at each other in 2x09 before going to Beth’s house. Also, I think the music (Love and War by Fleurie) was an excellent choice for the final scene of the season 2 finale and it was also very telling of what these two represent to one another.

I low-key think that in season 3 or 4, Beth may end up making a declaration of her own, through her actions, of how she feels about Rio. Like saving his life or refusing to flip on him or protecting him in her own way. Her equivalent of the Dubby. And honestly, I will be living!

What I’m trying to say is that Beth and Rio are definitely those two that everyone would eventually know are in love but they would struggle to say it to each other, even if they knew it. If it did happen, I kind of think Beth would be the one to say it. The show is called Good Girls and it’s about our three gals. Beth left her pearls for Rio, lifted up her dress for him and crossed the distance between them to kiss him first. So, in keeping with that theme, it makes sense that she would be the one to say it.  

That being said, I can vaguely see both of them saying it. But in a resigned way. This is killing me. You could kill me. I know. I’m tired. I love you.

Like, all those thoughts and emotions swirling together, until it it just came out, leaden with exhaustion.

Anyway, that’s that. I am so sorry that it took me so long to answer this ask but I got ridiculously insecure with my answer and then realised that I had actually written that everyone will have different opinions, so I thought screw it. I’d really love to hear other peoples’ thoughts! Also, feel free to send in asks (they’ll defos be as rambly as this one, sorry)!

Btw, this is pretty irrelevant but can you imagine if we get to see scenes of Rio in the next season, thinking about her when she’s not there (maybe with the pearls)? Followed by Beth thinking about him? Probs won’t happen but I can dream.

[nezzfiction]

ENMY Chapter 79 - Cloak and Dagger (Part Two)

Chapter Synopsis: As Yang and Emerald discover the truth behind Remnant, the shadow of Salem’s Grimm army looms close to Vacuo. The Kingdom that has remained passive, now enters the stage of the Second Great War.

Series Synopsis: Team RWBY is disbanded, and Yang must find herself new allies. For her, that might very well be yesterday’s enemies. Joining up with the likes of Emerald, Mercury, and Neo, the four will comprise Team Enemy(ENMY).

Links to read the series: Ao3 or FF.net

Or hit the jump below

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Cloak and Dagger (Part Two)

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“Why?”

That’s what they asked me.

It’s what I asked, too.

But when I posed myself that question, I got an answer I didn’t expect.

It’s amazing how easily it came.

I could only think:

“How could it have been anyone else?”

My only regret is that we didn’t realize our feelings sooner.

.

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Yang closed Summer’s diary with a breathless sigh.

She just finished reading the recount of how her two mothers came to be. They were teammates, best friends… then after a time, enemies.

After Raven changed sides, there was no end to the reasons why Summer should have severed ties with her.

Even so…

“How could it have been anyone else?”

Yang echoed the words Summer spoke so long ago.

It touched on something, a crack in her heart that had been widening for months. Her mother’s words set something free. Her mind was made. Her doubts dispelled and her fate was decided. Yang wanted to return to Vacuo as soon as possible.

“We have to get back to Vacuo as soon as possible!” Emerald yelled, as she and Professor Oobleck ran into the private reading room.

“What’s up?” Yang asked.

“Mercury just sent me an encrypted text. Salem’s made her move on Vacuo.”

“Crap!”

The three made their way to the upper floors of the Tower. They ran past several piles of books, knocking them over without a second thought. It was imperative they find Papyrus.

“How bad is it?” Yang asked.

“Don’t know. Merc didn’t exactly send me pics. But apparently, it’s a gigantic army of Grimm.”

“Like, Battle of Dracul?”

“Probably bigger, MUCH bigger.”

“And Vacuo still has their Cuckoo problem.”

“Yup! Which is why, we need to haul our ass back, like, yesterday!”

“But that’ll take days!!!”

“You think I don’t know that?!”

They stopped at the top floor and spotted the record keeper furiously writing at a study table. Oobleck picked up the latest page freshly written and read it aloud.

“’Ferocious beasts bore hungry maws at what they thought was dinner! But lo’! They were caught unawares by what they thought was easy prey, was in fact an esteemed Huntsman!’”

“Is that… Professor Port?” Yang pointed curiously at the document.

“Yes, it appears Papyrus is recording the current events via Peter’s diary entries!”

“Oh! I get it! So, you guys arranged this beforehand so you could keep tabs on current events!”

“No, not at all. Peter just likes to write in his diary constantly.”

“In the middle of battle?!”

“Yes. He’s very good at keeping accounts of his exploits. I often wish I had his ability to put pen to paper, irregardless of the harrowing situation!”

“Uh…huh.”

The three started pouring over the notes Papyrus previously wrote. In it, they found bits and details between Professor Port’s grandeur embellishments, that painted a picture of the situation.

After Temujin threw the first “gauntlet”, the forces of Grimm and Vacuo clashed. Although the Kingdom’s military had never faced such a sizable host of monsters, the battle seemed to be go in their favor. Vacuo’s warriors were well-versed in dealing with the varied species of Grimm. They also demonstrated an organization that rivaled the most disciplined armies.

“Hm…” Emerald glared at the most recently recorded books. “The librarian doesn’t just record Vacuo’s side either. Take a peek,” she shoved a blank covered tome in Yang’s hands. “Inna and Bean are here, too.”

Yang skimmed through the information like a starved bibliophile.

“Bean’s commanding the armies… He wants to hunt me down… Adam’s here too… Someone named Jupiter Black? Isn’t that—”

“Mercury’s cousin and president of the douchebag assassin society.”

“This is… This is Blake’s diary.”

“Yup!” Emerald shouted, while picking up another book. “With any luck, we can figure out what the other side is planning. Meanwhile, the Professor can keep a pulse on how the battle is going.”

“But we need to get back there now!”

“One problem at a time, Yang! You said it yourself, it’ll take days to get back! We need to play the smart game here. If we find something crucial, our messages might do more help than us actually being there.”

Yang heard the reason in Emerald’s argument and agreed. But somewhere deep down, all she could worry about was Neo. She knew her partner could handle herself, but it wasn’t enough to abate her fears. The fact that they were separated by such a distance, in such a dangerous time, drove her mind to conjure things she never wanted to see.

Yang watched Emerald shuffle through another mound of papers in frustration. Her leader wasn’t as composed as her words let on. No doubt, Emerald was just as concerned about Mercury.

“As soon as we find what Salem’s planning, we’re out of here!” Emerald shouted without looking at her.

“Yeah. Yeah, alright!”

Yang dove back into the haystack of information with gusto.

Just be alright, Neo.

Please, be alright.

.

X  X X  X  X

.

Neo threw her parasol into a row of Grimm, corkscrewing them all through the chest cavity. With a wave of her hand, her weapon swooped into a u-turn and flew safely back to her hands. She opened the umbrella to let out a small spray of black blood, causing her to lick her lips with a depraved look.

She gave a small inward thank you to Ruby, who made a few upgrades to her weapon.

Mercury soared above her with a number of Vacuo’s airborne fighters trailing behind. After activating his Semblance, he kicked up a sandstorm in the middle of Salem’s army. Rough debris and jagged rock wore away at the more durable species of Grimm, while lighter ones were caught up in the tornado.

Throughout the battlefield, soldiers exercised their specialized roles. If they fulfilled a long-distance position, they fought safely from the backlines. The more hands-on of the fighters took to the vanguard to face the brunt of their opposition. Some fought together, some separate. And then, there were berserkers, who traversed wildly into the chaos of being surrounded by enemies.

Chain Nai’s blue ringed skin glowed with a dark sea hue, as he clamped a Jester’s hyena mouth between his elbow and knee. The force caused the front half of the skull to cave, but it was the warrior’s poisonous Semblance that put the creature to death.

Not too far away, a shining warrior faced a unit of Moredread knights five v. one. The monsters boasted a heavily reinforced armor composed of dense bone. Their medieval style appearance added with the giant buster blade they hefted overhead, made for daunting figures. Yet the lone fighter stood, unfazed by the challenge.

When their swords fell like a waterfall of guillotines, the man bat them away like they were sheets of cardboard. The last one, he caught in a single, gold and black gloved hand.

“Compared to Qrow and Athos, you might as well be using toy swords,” Taiyang taunted.

With a flick of his wrist, the Moredread he caught the sword of, was twisted into the air. With his free hand, he loosed a soft palm strike on the Grimm’s bony helm. The Aura infused into the technique transposed through the armor and exploded within the knight’s vulnerable brain matter. Before the corpse fell and the other four Moredread could react, Taiyang was on them.

His fingers became pointed to align with his forearm. An upward thrust sent a spear-like hand under one of the Grimm’s armpits, where the armor was weakest. The ligaments connecting the Moredread’s limb tore like tissue paper.

With Taiyang’s hands still formed in a straight edge, he sent a chopping fist through the neck of two others.

The sword knight Grimm were classified as A-Class Grimm individually. But against a fighter of their complete counter and high caliber, five had fallen within mere moments.

Bean saw through the eyes of the dying Grimm and decided to take a different approach. His army was never meant to fight on even ground. They were meant to abuse their numbers andabuse their numbers he did.

The young boy directed a pack of fast moving Jesters Taiyang’s way and a Deathstalker towards his back. He didn’t expect them to win, but sap away at the martial artist’s stamina.

Just when they reached combat distance, a rain of icy shards fell on the area, including on the man himself. Though, the attack only seemed to shatter against Taiyang’s now tattooed skin.

“Huh. Will Tai take no offense to that?” Minerva asked from a fair distance.

“He’s used to it,” Glynda answered, before casting another icy hailstorm over a different area. “Is it me, or is this battle faring a little too easily?”

“I am of the same mind. Salem has yet to play any of her proverbial trump cards.”

“Our casualties are also low, not that I’m complaining.” Glynda pushed up her glasses before manipulating a small herd of stampeding Goliaths and diverting their charge into its allies. “The longer this battle goes on, the more disadvantageous our position.”

“Agreed. What do you suggest?”

“I’ve been trying to discern where the commander of this army is located.”

Another group of Grimm rushed their position, but Glynda levitated them into the air, while Minerva waved her wand to cause an explosion, incinerating them into pieces.

“Going by the way the Grimm are directed, I can only assume whoever is in control, is commanding them from there!” Glynda pointed her riding crop.

Minerva paid attention to the direction and saw a number of Grimm waiting on standby. Some would now and then, breakaway for a maneuver, but were swiftly replaced. The behavior was almost unnoticeable in all the chaos.

“So, we will have our troops advance there.”

“No,” Glynda shook her head. “There’s too much ground to cover and they’ll see us approaching almost immediately. If we can take them by surprise, we stand a chance at ending this battle prematurely.”

“…I’m not fond of the tone your suggestion is taking…”

“My Magic has a wide area of effect. If I can get close enough, I can trap them in the middle of it.”

“That is a fool’s gambit, Glynda.”

“Yes, but it’s better than waiting until Salem is ready to activate the Cuckoos.”

“…”

“There’s no other way!”

“Wait!”

Without another second, Glynda bolted for the enemy commander. She ducked and rolled between her enemies as well as her allies. Short-ranged Magic darts repelled any hostile Grimm out of her way. The Huntress made rapid progress towards her destination, but eventually, the beasts around her took notice.

They swarmed from the land and sky. Flying Preyer Mantis Grimm swept low with their scythe-like forelegs. Some of the Moredread lumbered in her direction in a joust. Glynda cast a shield around her, but it was quickly being whittled away.

If she could only make it a few more meters, she knew she could invoke a storm large enough to encompass the commander’s surroundings. She didn’t even need to live to maintain the spell to its end. Just starting the incantation would be enough. Just emptying her Aura for all its worth would be enough.

Then, she heard her barrier break and her riding crop shorted like a bad fuse. Glynda didn’t know where it broke from, there were too many possible angles. She could recast it, but by that time, it would be too late.

As a Jester pounced from behind her back, a pair of fingers thrust into its eye sockets. The hand gripped the top of its cranium and swung it into another pack of hyenas, knocking them over like bowling pins.

The man body-blocked Glynda from the attacks coming from outside her peripheries. His diamond hard skin deflected any harm and reflected the impact of others. Claws and fangs shattered on contact with the hard surface.

“This is a bit reckless for you, don’t you think?!” Taiyang shouted.

“I knew you would be there,” Glynda replied.

“Yeah, well, you know I can’t keep this up forever!”

“I know, Tai. But I also know you can keep it up for long enough.”

“It’s tough being reliable,” he said, with a smugness trying to hide the strain on his body.

“Hmhmhm!” Glynda chuckled in a slightly flirtatious way.

She refocused on the task at hand and saw the assumed Grimm commander and its escorts retreating back. But by now, it was already too late. She was well within the optimum range.

Glynda stabbed her riding crop to the sky like a divine sword. Clouds formed to her summons. A large violet insignia pulsated as the weather became shaded with a low rumble. Bright veins of light flashed within the swirling veil like outlining blood vessels.

Not another second passed before pillars of pure, electric destruction descended on Salem’s army. They traced the ground, gorging through the earth like a scroll saw. All the Grimm the light touched were instantly burned into a crisp.

Glynda was elated at the success, but stopped herself from getting too carried away. She dealt a heavy blow by conjuring the thunderstorm so deep into enemy lines, but that was not the main purpose of her stratagem. She watched the other Grimm outside the storm to see if her gamble paid off.

There was no change at first and it made her heart freeze up. But sure enough, the creatures gradually lost a sense of focus. A few breaths later and they began to scatter in retreat. Countless legs trampled and stumbled over each other, while Vacuo warriors pressed forward to slay any stragglers.

Glynda’s knees gave out, and she sat in a manner that betrayed her usual stringent demeanor.

“Wow…”

She turned a sly eye to the awestruck Taiyang.

“What are you so surprised about?” Glynda asked.

“I sometimes forget how scary you can be.”

“Really?”

“It doesn’t happen a lot, cause you know, you’re constantly reminding everyone. But times like this really drive it home.”

“I’m flattered.”

“No, you’re not.”

“You’re right. I’m not.”

“Issss this a bad time to say, I think I’m in lo—”

“Don’t finish that sentence, Tai.”

Glynda got to her feet and started making her way back to Minerva.

“Or else I’m liable to cast a second thunderstorm.”

.

X  X X  X  X

.

At the top floor of the Tower, Professor Oobleck set down the latest copy of Professor Port’s diary entry with a serious look.

“It appears, thanks to some brave heroics on Glynda’s part, the battle of Vacuo has reached premature conclusions.”

Emerald breathed a groaning sigh of relief before falling on top a nearby pile of books. She even thought about taking a nap, before noticing Oobleck’s tenseness unchanged.

“…? Okay, did I miss something, or did you just say the battle was over?”

“I did,” he replied.

“So, are you one of those people with resting angry face or…”

“Salem did not appear on the battlefield, nor did any of her named associates, save the individual Glynda forced to withdraw. The majority of the opposition Vacuo waged battle with were Grimm, and not the Nightmare Class we know to have joined her fold.”

“Probably conserving them. This was only the first fight.”

“A plausible theory.”

“Yeah! So, no time to waste, Prof. We need to blow this joint, not that I don’t love the smell of old books and ancient-lost-forgotten-knowledge.”

“You don’t have to be sarcastic.”

“Who’s being sarcastic? I’d spend my whole life here if I could. Think I might ask Masa to build me one of these. But we’re on a time crunch and we’ve got a long ass drive ahead of us. Hey, punchy! That means you, too!”

Emerald strode over to Yang sitting cross-legged, and kicked her boot. Though, the kick registered, the girl seemed completely immersed in what she was reading.

“What? Find something new in your mom’s diary?”

“No… Something’s off,” Yang shook her head. “Blake, or well, Salem, keeps talking about this ‘Cloak and Dagger’ plan. She has to know we’re at this Tower, right? I mean, she didn’t see us at the battle, she’s gotta have some idea.”

“Yeah, that tracks. What are you getting at?”

“She’s probably keeping watch of whatever everyone’s putting on message, but I’ve been piecing together the clues we do have. Some texts between Bean and Jupiter Black, along with some other assassins the guy brought along.”

“And?”

“They don’t line up. The timing for their plan sounded like it was set for the battle. They kept sending updates to each other. ‘Are you in position?’, ‘Yes’, that kind of thing.”

“It could be nothing…” Emerald felt paranoia creep in. “But when is it ever nothing with Salem?”

The girl paced the room a bit. Professor Oobleck also had his own doubts prior to Yang’s. Emerald started biting her thumbnail as she walked in circles. Now, she was sure something was wrong.

Salem’s associates.

The first battle lost.

A battle lost prematurely?

Did they throw the fight on purpose?

‘Cloak and Dagger’.

Emerald stopped in her step.

“Shit…”

“What? Did you figure it out?” Yang jumped.

“It’s in the stupid name! Salem’s such a pompous asshole! But, shit. We’re the only ones who know about it, and we’re too far away to make a difference!!!” Emerald shouted, while pulling out her scroll and typing as fast as she could.

“What is it, Em?!”

“Cloak and Dagger, Yang! If that whole fight was the cloak…”

Yang’s eyes widened with realization.

“Where’s the dagger?”

.

X  X X  X  X

.

As Temujin made her way back into the throne room with tired steps, she was helped by Mouse and Knives Rakis into her seat.

“Hoh hoh,” she planted herself with a shamble. “I really am getting old. Hardly lifted a finger and all these bones start creaking like thin leaf plywood.”

“I wouldn’t really call firing a couple airships and spears the size of most people ‘hardly lifting a finger’,” Mouse smirked.

“Oh, then you should have seen me back in the day. Riding my motorcycle into battle with hell’s fury at my beck and call. It would’ve made today’s display look shameful in comparison.”

“You’re still plenty strong.”

“Peh!” Temujin brushed it off. “No, most definitely not strong. But perhaps a tad shrewder in my age. I mostly get you youngsters to fight my battles for me now—to my regret.”

At that moment, Knives brought a freshly steaming cup of tea and set it on Temujin’s arm rest. The elder was about to drink it, before she pulled back.

“Knives, this is much too hot. Can’t you bring me a cooler cup?”

The two siblings gave a momentary pause.

“A gentle reminder for you to slow down and take your time,” Knives replied smoothly.

“Take any more time and I might right die of old age.”

“Enough of that. For now, Mouse and I will handle the logistics of the aftermath. We’ll report when everything is summarized.”

“We suffered very little casualties…”

“Yes, we did.”

“…That doesn’t sit well. Victory never comes so easily.”

She stared into the sibling’s pairs of silver eyes and saw they reflected something far-off in the distance. Not just the distance, but also maybe the future.

“Be vigilant, children. And Knives, thank you for attending to the other matter.”

“Of course. Please, take this time to enjoy your tea.”

With Knives’ parting words, the siblings left the room. Temujin was left to stare at her tea cup with her lower lip sticking out in a sort of pout.

“How am I supposed to enjoy it if I can’t drink it?”

The drink still had a thick haze of steam swirling from its surface…

—until the steam suddenly wavered.

…

“Ah… I really am getting old.” Temujin gripped her cane tighter. “To think I didn’t notice an assassin until they came this close.”

From an open window, Vulcan Black leapt in with his giant maul in hand. The head of his hammer torched with the flame and lava of a volcanic eruption. A heavy cloud of billowing smolder trailed from his downward swing.

“Cheeky brat.”

Temujin tapped her cane once against the stone floor and activated her “territory”. Vulcan was less than five paces away from letting his hammer fall, when his body faltered in midair. The assassin’s large stature then, crumbled as if under its own weight. He immediately started choking for air as his vision blurred. It was as if the atmosphere itself was trying to kill him, rejecting him like a bacterial infection.

Temujin stood from her seat and bade her teacup one last glance.

She thought about how the Rakis twins were acting, and how unusual Knives was about bringing her a drink much hotter than her usual brew. It was a subtle ploy to warn her.

They must have used their Semblance to foresee this.

No wonder she gave me an especially steaming cup.

How nice it is to have such thoughtful children…

Temujin made her slow way to Vulcan, who was nearing unconsciousness.

“Huh. Never met an assassin as bulky as you. In my prime days, I have no doubt we would have enjoyed a grand battle. Alas, I can’t really act that way anymore. My days of fighting head on, facing my foe blow for blow!” she pumped her fists, then went into a tired lament. “Long past, I’m afraid. I’ve had to resort to much shrewder methods with my seniority.”

Vulcan concentrated all his focus into moving his arm. It reached for his trusty maul that fell just a few millimeters from his outstretched fingers. He could almost touch it, when Temujin’s foot rested on his knuckles.

“Still haven’t given up on killing me! My respects!”

Vulcan was practically frothing at the mouth. Nothing but his rage and anguish kept him alive.

“It was sore luck you were contracted to kill me. I doubt there’s ever a worst target in all of Remnant for assassinations than myself.”

The giant assassin was now shaking uncontrollably.

“Well, may you have peaceful passage into the afterlife knowing you were defeated by the strongest Aura Skill practitioner to ever exist.”

At some point, Vulcan stopped resisting. Something of a quiet acceptance started to seep into his soul.

“My apologies, young pup. But this is death.”

Temujin honed her cane to a sharpness with Aura Skill, before plunging it swiftly through Vulcan’s back. The blow came quick and merciful and painless.

A heavy silence filled the chamber.

“The greatest shame for an assassin having failed their mission, is a corpse left behind. I shall endeavor to preserve your dignity as much as possible. An unmarked grave in the middle of the dunes, where no one will disturb you or uncover you. I suppose I owe you that much for my disgraceful methods.”

Temujin tore down one of the large tapestries hanging from the walls and threw it over Vulcan’s corpse.

“Now, that I think of it, I never asked your name.”

“I suppose that too is a preservation of dignity for an assassin.”

.

X  X X  X  X

.

 A far distance away, three figures laid on their bellies, peeking just barely over the crest of a tall sand dune.

“Curious…Very curious…” one of them muttered behind his intricately silver designed magnifying glass.

Bean and Inna, who watched the same scene play out turned to him with expectation.

“You’ve discovered the method Temujin employed against Vulcan?” Bean asked.

“You didn’t?” the man asked back.

“Reason unclear. Vulcan… collapsed without any point of contact or visible action. Your theory is required, Professor Moriarty.”

“Elementary, young man. But I must say, her Semblance is more flexible than I would have guessed. But these eyes see, this brain knows,” the man tapped his temple. “My Semblance learns all secrets.”

“Explanation required,” Bean repeated.

Moriarty gave a dark chuckle

“The old bat used her Warsmith’s Semblance to ‘weaponize’ her surroundings. Atmospheric pressure, temperature, I’d even include the gravity—all of it came under her control. She can make her environment literally a weapon. How fascinating.”

The young boy went into silent shock before speaking again.

“Conclusion drawn: close combat deemed impossible. Only viable avenue is long-range methods.”

“It’ll be tough to catch an Aura Skill user like Temujin from long-range,” Inna added her input. “But if anyone can do it, I can.”

The girl nodded her consent, but Moriarty gave them both a dismissive look. He stroked his thick broom mustache in thought.

“Not necessarily. There appears to be a weakness… For now, we should regroup and report to Salem. Our other cohorts should be carrying with Dagger Phase as we speak.”

“…Agreed,” Bean answered. “The second wave must be prepared.”

The three left their hiding spot and made for the mountain ridge they made headquarters.

On the way back, Bean glanced to the Haven Professor seemingly doing a multitude of calculations in his head.

“Probability of Dagger Team’s success?” the boy asked.

“85% by my observation” Moriarty replied easily.

“…And success of eliminating the main targets?”

“Hmmm. Four of the six objectives should be met, if we are to include Vulcan’s failed mission, though, that was within expectation.”

“And the other failed target?”

“Chain Nai will likely survive. He is an exceptionally formidable one. The rest of the targets will not.”

Bean went silent. He felt a pinch at the edge of his heart.

He didn’t know them well, or particularly liked them. But there were two individuals targeted for elimination in Dagger Phase he felt some bitterness towards.

Bean muttered quietly under his breath,

“Sorry, Yang.”

.

X  X  X X  X

.

In the aftermath of the battle, the Black Iron Road had all its furnaces fired immediately.

They didn’t know when the next battle would break out and many of those who took part in the fight, needed repairs to their arms as soon as possible. This also held true for those with prosthetics.

As a result, a long line of patrons in queue were lined up outside Brigid’s workshop. All her apprentices were working around the clock, dashing back and forth between stations. They ran out to exchange parts they were low on with other shops. And among the chaos, Brigid received her next patron with a certain grin.

“Mercury!” she bellowed. “Take care of this one here!”

Mercury quickly put the finishing touches to a Faunus’ ear in time to clear a seat.

A boy, a bit pockmarked in the face and some bloody scrapes, sat down on the stool in front of him. The young boy looked a little worse for wear, but he didn’t act like it. Instead, he beamed with a pride only the young and boastful could have.

“Can’t believe your old man let you join the aerial unit at the last minute,” Mercury shook his head, and began disassembling the damaged parts to Icarus’s wing.

“I only worked support mostly,” he replied shyly.

“Uh huh. And you get these scrapes only working support.”

“Well, when the main units were busy somewhere else, they needed us to hold the lines on another front. We couldn’t let any Grimm pass the wall, after all.”

“How many did you get?”

“About… five.”

“So, two. Pretty good for a kid with a new prosthetic.”

“I said, five!”

“I saw two.”

Icarus blushed with embarrassment.

“You were watching me?”

“Yeah. Only cause you were watching me.”

“That was cause you were so cool! How did you make a storm by yourself?! Can you teach me to do that?!”

“Maybe. Probably should check with your dad first. Where is the hard ass, anyway?”

“He’s right here, cousin.”

Mercury heard the poison in that voice and turned with an indescribable feeling of dread.

Not too far behind Icarus was Daed. But behind the father was a cloaked figure wearing a steel mask. The assassin had a knife tucked just barely visibly under his hostage’s throat.

“Jupiter…!” Mercury growled.

“So, glad you remembered me. I’d thought you’d all but forgotten your debt unpaid.”

“Let him go!”

“Tsk tsk tsk. Well, that would entirely defeat the purpose of a hostage now, wouldn’t it?”

“Goddamn it! Goddamn you, Jupiter!!!”

“Temper, dear cousin. If anyone should be angry, it should be me. You killed Apollo and Diana.”

“They got themselves killed!”

“And now, I have two less assassins under my management. You and your precious little friends are going to suffer for that. No hard feelings, mind you. Simply professional. I have a reputation to uphold.”

Mercury was about to leap at him, when Jupiter twisted the knife, causing some blood to drip from Dead. The threat made Mercury freeze instantly.

“See, that is the difference between you and I, little cousin. We are assassins, but you lack the actual principle required by our kind.”

Mercury was practically burning with anger, doing everything to check his impulse.

“Life is fleeting. It giveth and it is taketh.”

“You want me?! Then come and get me! Leave them out of this!!!”

“Attachment to it in any shape or form, even your own—”

“JUPITER!”

“—Is weakness.”

.

X  X X  X  X

.

In the dark alleyway, Adam’s slash caught nothing but air. His target had ducked at the last second and slipped close in the next.

Neo twisted her body with a quick torque and a snap to unleash a vicious uppercut kick that connected with Adam’s jaw. Once her opponent was floating midair, she readied to transition into the follow up. She didn’t want to allow him even a single chance to touch the ground again.

Just then, a violet light drew from the shadows and sliced at her midsection. Neo had no choice but to back off and teleport away.

During her retreat, something odd happened. Her Semblance didn’t grant her the smooth passage it usually did. Instead, her body was flung upside down through a nearby store window.

Neo didn’t understand. She scanned her surroundings, but it was nowhere near resembling the location she wanted to warp to. Something interfered with her Semblance. When she finally looked down at the wound she received, Neo knew the cause.

In addition to the blood draining out, a cursed black mist billowed from the opened flesh. Neo then, heard the snapping of glass as her two enemies caught up to her.

Blake and Adam approached like a pack of hunters cornering their prey.

Neo could only curse silently as she took up her fighting stance once more.

“Tonight, the monster finally dies,” Blake gloated. “And once you’re gone, Yang will be mine once again.”

“…!”

“Face it, Neo. It never would’ve worked out. Yang and I were made for each other. She knows it, I know it, everybody does. Hahaha!”

Neo growled mutely.

“Even you! You just don���t have the courage to admit it.”

Neo summoned an army of shimmering glass weapons, but they were blown away by the simultaneous wind slashes of Blake and Adam.

“You never had any hope. No salvation.”

I’ll kill you!

“See? How could Yang ever love such a monster, like you? A murderer and a psychopath? She’s a good girl. Too good for you.”

I’LL KILL YOU!

“I mean, I suppose there are a few fans of the deranged kind, who love to see the brave heroine corrupted by a lunatic’s cruel whims. But I was never fond of it myself.”

I’LL KILL YOU UNTIL THERE’S NOTHING LEFT!!!

“Very unhealthy, I think. No, I much prefer the romance between the kind-hearted, well-meaning, but tragic beauty and her brave, fiercely, sexy warrior. Now, that—”

SHUT UP!!!

“That is a ship I can get behind.”

[scriptshrink]

What would therapy be like for a man (he's 25, not sure if that matters) on suicide watch in a psych ward/hospital? He lives in England, but I'm not sure if that matters either... He attempted to overdose but was found by his boyfriend and brought to hospital by ambulance.

It actually does matter, a lot! The British healthcare system is WILDLY different from the American one, and I’m not very familiar with how it works. Luckily, some of the Scriptshrink consultants have had experience with it! Their answers are after the jump.

CW: mentions of a suicide attempt, overdose, & medications

nothowiplanned

I mean my first response is that those circumstances absolutely do not guarantee hospital admission.

No NHS psych beds means they’d most likely give him physical treatment at hospital and then send him home after an assessment with the crisis team.

Crisis teams - at least in my part of the country - don’t like to be regularly involved in care for more than a few weeks so he would probably be discharged from them quite soon.

They might make a referral to adult mental health services but more likely they would refer him to IAPT - improving access to psychological therapies - who would put him on a waiting list for CBT*

*Is my bitterness showing :/

I honestly think the only way that character would end up in a psych ward in those circumstances is if he could pay for private treatment and I have zero knowledge about how that works.

Charlie

Alright, so first things first - it is difficult to be admitted inpatient in the UK. An overdose is not likely to result in an admission. Usually ODs are seen as “less serious” attempts, once you’re medically cleared you see the liaison psych team. Liaison will then decide the next steps, whether a person needs to be hospitalised or can be sent home.So for realism, I’d change the overdose to something else. BUT I said difficult, not impossible, so it’s not really necessary.

Then it would depend on whether the character was a voluntary admission or detained under the Mental Health Act - being detained in the UK is commonly referred to as being “sectioned” after sections 2, 3, 4, and 5 of the act, which outlines the legislation allowing a person to be detained.

https://www.rethink.org/living-with-mental-illness/mental-health-laws/mental-health-act-1983

As for the actual inpatient care, it depends. We don’t really call it “suicide watch” but instead “observations”. You have different levels depending on your need: 2:1, 1:1 arms length, 1:1 eyesight, 10 minute, 15, 20. 2:1 means two members of staff (usually psych nurses or healthcare assistants) are by the individual at all times. 1:1 means there’s one staff member with them, either within arms reach or in their field of vision, and 15-20 is minutes. Again, the amount of observation will depend on whether the character is there voluntarily or not. A risk assessment will be carried out the night of arrival and they will decide from there what level of supervision the character needs.

If the character is very high risk they may transfer them to an intensive psychiatric care unit, but this is unusual and is only if it’s believed they can’t even be kept safe with 1:1 or 2:1 constant observations. In IPCU, you don’t get much in the way of therapy - it’s all about managing risk and stabilisation first of all.

And again, you’re unlikely to get much therapy if you’re on constant observations, even if you can be in an open ward (aka not an IPCU).The actual schedule and therapy varies from unit to unit, but usually there will be group therapy, art therapy, occupational therapy and individual therapy. Each day starts with breakfast and medication, you have a morning snack, lunch, afternoon snack then dinner and an afternoon snack, then night meds.

There’s a ward round once a week where your allocated psychiatrist comes around and tells you how you’re doing and updates you on your situation. Here’s a pretty good example of an inpatient schedule:

http://www.fourwindshospital.com/about_four_winds/westchester/pdf_schedules/lodge_core.pdf

Snail

When I was 25 I was admitted into a psychiatric hospital in England following an overdose. I was admitted as an inpatient because I was already under the care of the crisis team, but still kept making suicide attempts (the other ones were a type that is perceived as “more violent”, although the last was an OD) so it became clear that I wasn’t safe without being admitted. 

As Charlie said, the therapy that your character would receive in hospital varies a lot. 

For “suicide watch” (observations), I was under 15 minute obs. The way this worked during the daytime was that as the nurses did their rounds they made a note on their charts when they saw me, and they would go looking for any patients who weren’t accounted for. At night, they shone a torch through the window in the bedroom door, waited until they saw me breathing/moving, and then would move on. I sometimes like to sleep with my sheet over my head, so that meant that the nurses would come in, pull the sheet off my face and shine the torch on me to check. 

In terms of therapy, there was not much available. We didn’t have any group therapy or individual sessions, but there was occupational therapy - this consisted of the art room being open for an hour and a half in the mornings Mon-Fri, when patients could go in and do drawing, painting, or colouring. There was also a programme of activities in the afternoons or evenings - max one activity per weekday, lasting approximately half an hour - of things like bingo, a crossword puzzle, a quiz. These occupational health activities were all completely voluntary, and took very little time. Most of the time people were either in their rooms, or sat in the common room with the telly. I was determined to be a Good Patient™, so I did every single activity that was offered, but I was an outlier in that respect, and there were plenty of patients that one would only ever see at meal times - the rest of the time they sat alone in their rooms.

Being in hospital was a case of being under obs while they waited for meds to kick in - they were looking to stabilise patients rather than trying to heal them (inpatients are expensive). 

“Review meetings” were the main point of focus for the patients I spoke to - at these meetings, led by the consultant psychiatrist, your case was discussed with you and bunch of other people (like representatives from other agencies), and decisions would be made about your medications, the status of your section, discussions about day release, etc. People basically spent their time waiting for these meetings, because these were the only times when we could find anything out about going home. One thing that was difficult was not knowing when the review meetings would be. I was lucky - I had one a week, but other patients had gone 2-3 weeks without one and without knowing when they could expect to be seen again (I expect that the nurses’ and OHs’ reports were part of the process for deciding if it was appropriate to schedule a review meeting - financially, it doesn’t make sense to gather all those people only to say “yeah, nothing needs changing, we’ll leave everything the same”). 

Although I may sound like I am being negative in this reply, I know that I am extremely fortunate to have access to free healthcare, and to have access to interventions for mental health at all! 

Disclaimer

[samanthasmeyers]

[Experiment] How AI is Changing the Way We Optimize at Unbounce

When I first encountered A/B testing, I immediately wanted to become the type of marketer who tested everything. The idea sounded fun to me. Like being a mad scientist running experiments to prove when my work was actually “working.”

Turns out though, there’s always a long list of other things to do first… blog posts to write, campaigns to launch, and don’t get me started on the meetings! I’m not alone in this, either. A lot of marketers are just too darned busy to follow up and optimize the stuff they’ve already shipped. According to HubSpot, only 17% of marketers use landing page A/B tests to improve conversion rates.

A small glimpse of my ever-growing to-do list. Ain’t nobody got time for A/B tests.

Sure, running a split test with one or two variants always sounds easy enough. But once you take a closer look at the process, you realize just how complex it can actually be. You need to make sure you have… 

The right duration and sample size.

Taken into account any external factors or validity threats.

Learned how to interpret the results correctly, too.

But—while there will always be a time and place for A/B testing—there’s also now an easier and faster way for marketers to optimize. Smart Traffic is a new Unbounce tool that uses the power of AI and machine learning to get you more conversions. Every day, more marketers are using Smart Traffic to “automagically” optimize their landing pages. But whenever we launch anything new, we like to test it out for ourselves to learn alongside you (and keep you up to speed on what to try next).

Here’s what I learned after taking Smart Traffic for a test drive myself…

Shifting Your Mindset to Optimize with AI

I know many marketers are (perhaps) skeptical when it comes to promises of machine learning, artificial intelligence, or magical “easy” buttons that get them better results. But AI is all around us and it’s already changing the way we do marketing. Landing page optimization is just one more area of the job where you no longer need to do everything yourself manually.

Smart Traffic augments your marketing skills and automatically sends visitors to the landing page variant where they’re most likely to convert (based on how similar page visitors have converted before). It makes routing decisions faster than any human ever could (thank you, AI magic), and “learns” which page variant is a perfect match for each different visitor. This ultimately means no more “champion” variants. Instead, you’re free to create multiple different pages to appeal to different groups of visitors and run ‘em all at once.

This is very different from A/B testing and honestly—it can feel kinda weird at first. You’ve got to trust in the machine learning to figure out what works best and what doesn’t. Data scientists call this the “black box” problem: data goes in, decisions come out, but you never really get the full understanding of what happened in between. 

Smart Traffic is fundamentally different from A/B Testing. You can learn more about how it works here.

For marketers using Smart Traffic, this means shifting your mindset and starting to think about optimization differently. Unlike A/B testing, you’re not looking for those “aha” moments to apply to your next campaign, or a one-size-fits-all “winning” variant. Instead, you’re looking to discover what works best for different subsets of your audience. This gives you unlimited creativity to try out new marketing ideas, makes it easier and less risky for you to optimize, and gives you an average conversion lift of 30% compared to splitting the traffic evenly across multiple variants. (Woah.)

My Experiment with Smart Traffic

I know all this because I recently experimented with variant creation myself to better understand this new AI optimization mindset. I created 15 variants across two separate landing pages using Smart Traffic to discover…

How easy is it to optimize with an AI-powered optimization tool?

Could I quickly set up the tests in Unbounce while still getting those other to-do’s done?

What kind of conversion lift would I see from just a few hours invested?

I took a little bit of my inspiration from Ms. Frizzle on the Magic School Bus. No, not her haircut, her catchphrase: “Take chances, make mistakes, get messy!”

Oh, so that’s where she got all her good ideas.

Creating 15 Variants in Under Two Hours

The beauty of Smart Traffic is there are no limits to how many variants you can create and it automatically starts optimizing in as few as 50 visits. Just hit the “optimize” button and you’re off to the races. Could it really be that simple?

My guinea pigs for this experiment would be two recent campaigns our marketing team had worked on: the ecommerce lookbook and the SaaS optimization guide. The team had created both of these ebook download pages in Unbounce, but we hadn’t been able to return to them and optimize very much in the months since we published.

The original landing pages would serve as my control variants. (Click to see the full pages.)

Before starting, I consulted with Anna Roginska, Growth Marketer at Unbounce, to get her input on how I should create my variants. She advised:

You can take the ‘spaghetti at the wall’ approach, where you create a bunch of variants and just leave them to Smart Traffic to see what happens. It’s that ‘set it and forget it’ mentality. That’s interesting, but when you look at a bowl of spaghetti… There’s a lot of noodles in there. You won’t necessarily get to explain why something is working or not working.

The other approach is to be more strategic and focused. I think there’s a huge benefit to going in with a plan. Create maybe only five variants and give them each a specific purpose. Then, you can see how they perform and create new iterations for different portions of the audience.

I had two landing pages to work with, so I thought I’d give both approaches a try. But with only a few hours scheduled in my calendar to complete all these variants, I needed to move fast.

The “Spaghetti at the Wall” Approach to Variant Creation

On the ecommerce lookbook page, I wanted to spend less time planning and more time creating. Whereas in A/B testing you need a proper test hypothesis and a careful plan for each variant, Smart Traffic lets you get creative and try out new ideas on the fly. Your variants don’t have to be perfect—they just need to be different enough to appeal to new audience segments.

This meant I didn’t have to make any hard or fast choices about which one element to “test” on the landing page. I could create 15 different variants that varied wildly from one another. Some used different colors, some had different headlines, some completely changed up the layout of the page.

This is something you just can’t do in a traditional A/B test where you’re looking to find a “winner” and understand why it “wins.” I had to remind myself I wasn’t looking for that one variant to rule them all (or for that one variant to bring them all and in the darkness bind them). I was looking to increase the chance of conversion for every single visitor. Certain pages were going to work better for certain audiences, and that was totally fine.

I wondered, though: how many variants would be too many? Would the machine learning recognize that some of these were not anything special and just stop sending traffic to them? And how long would it take to get results? With these questions in mind, I checked back on my first set of tests one month later…

Changing up the background color

Usually, color A/B tests are pretty much a waste of time. You need a lot of data to get accurate results, and most marketers don’t actually end up learning anything useful in the end. (Because color by itself means nothing, it always depends on the context of the page.)

That being said, we know there is some legitimate color theory and certain audience segments respond better to certain colors than others. So I thought it might be interesting to switch up the background on this landing page to see what would happen. And color me surprised—these variants are seeing some pretty dramatically different conversion rates:

Pink background – 12.82%

Green background – 21.43%

White background – 21.74%

Black background – 31.71%

One might start to speculate from these conversion rates that darker backgrounds perform better than the lighter backgrounds. But hold your horses, that’s thinking about this as an A/B test again. Here’s why Jordan Dawe, Senior Data Science Developer at Unbounce, says you should be cautious about drawing any conclusions from the conversion rates…

Smart Traffic is not sending visitors randomly—it’s trying to get the best traffic to the best variant. So in this case, it doesn’t mean that a black background will always convert higher than a pink background. There are likely portions of the audience going to each color that would be doing worse on others. Here’s what you can conclude: the color black is preferred by a portion of the traffic that converts highly.

It’s hard to shake that mindset of looking for a “winner” and trying to figure out “why” something is working. But I was starting to accept that different portions of the audience would always respond better to different variants—this was just the first time I’d been able to use AI to automatically serve up the best version.

Making big (and small) changes to the headline

For the next group of variants, I switched up the H1 in both small and big ways to see what effect that would have on the conversion rate. In some cases, this meant just swapping a single adjective (e.g., “jaw-dropping” for “drool-worthy”). In other cases, I went with a completely new line of copy altogether.

Here’s how the variants stacked up against each other:

See 27 Sales-Ready Ecommerce Landing Pages in Our Ultimate Lookbook – 25.81%

See 27 Stunning Ecommerce Landing Pages in Our Ultimate Lookbook – 25.93%

Get Ready to See 27 Jaw-Dropping Ecommerce Landing Page Examples – 28.13%

Get Serious Inspo for Supercharging Your Ecomm Sales – 35%

See 27 Drool-Worthy Ecommerce Landing Pages in Our Ultimate Lookbook – 40%

Again, each variant yielded a different conversion rate. I wondered if I kept testing different variations of the headlines and found one that performed best, could I deactivate all the other headline variants and just go with the “best” one? 

Here’s how Floss Taylor, Data Analyst at Unbounce, responded…

Smart Traffic doesn’t have champion variants. You don’t pick one at the end like you would in an A/B test. Although one variant may appear to be performing poorly, there could be a subset of traffic that it’s ideal for. You’re better off leaving it on long-term so it can work its magic.

Trying out different page layouts and hierarchies

The last set of variants I created messed with the actual structure and hierarchy of the page. I wanted to see if moving things around (or removing sections entirely) would influence the conversion rate. Here’s a sample of some of the experiments…

Removing the Headline – 16.67%

Adding a Double CTA – 21.95%

Moving the Testimonial Up the Page – 27.27%

Nothing too surprising here. And because I had created so many variants, Smart Traffic was taking longer than usual in “Learning Mode” to start giving me a conversion lift. Here’s how Floss Taylor explains it…

Smart Traffic needs approximately 50 visitors to understand which traffic would perform well for each new variant. If you have 15 variants and ~100 visitors per month, you’re going to have a long learning period where Smart Traffic cannot make accurate recommendations. I’d suggest starting off with a lower number of variants, and only adding more once once you have sufficient traffic.

The “Strategic Marketer” Approach

So throwing spaghetti at the wall turned out to be… messy. (New parents beware.) For the SaaS optimization guide page, I wanted to be a bit more strategic. And I actually had a leg up for this one, because Anna Roginska, Growth Marketer at Unbounce, had already started with a Smart Traffic experiment on this page four months ago.

Anna had set up a test between two different variants. One had an image of the ecommerce lookbook as the hero graphic on the page, while the other used the image of conversion expert and author Talia Wolf. Anna says she decided on this second variant because of research she had seen on how photographs of people tend to convert better than products.

I put Talia up front because I knew from other tests I’ve run and research I’ve done. [Photographs of] people tend to convert better. I didn’t know if it would work better in this particular case, but I was able to set up a variant and use Smart Traffic to find out. And it just so happens that the algorithm started sending way more traffic to this variant.

Anna seemed to be onto something, too: her variant was converting at nearly double the rate for a large traffic subset. And while I now know we can’t consider this a “champion” variant like in an A/B test and learn from the results, we could iterate based on her design to target new audience segments.

I created a simple spreadsheet to develop my gameplan. The goal was to create five new versions of the page that would appeal to different visitors based on their attributes:

Reducing the word count to target mobile and “ready to download” visitors

For inspiration on my first variant, I consulted the 2020 Conversion Benchmark Report. The machine learning insights here suggested that SaaS landing pages with lower word counts and easier-to-read copy tend to perform better than their long-winded counterparts.

And while the original version of our download page was easy enough to read, it did have a long, wordy intro with a lot of extra detail. Could I increase our conversion rate for a portion of our audience if just focused on the bare essentials? I was ready to kill some darlings to find out…

Original Long-Form Version – 10%

Low Word Count Version – 21.43%

It seems there’s a segment of our traffic coming to this page who didn’t need to see all that extra info before they decided to fill out the form. I speculated that this variant might also perform better on mobile devices since it would be faster-loading and easier to scroll through. Interesting!

Switching the headline to target different audience segments

Next, I created an additional four page variants to speak to the different pain points and reasons our audience might want to download the guide. (Actually, this is something Talia herself recommends you do in the SaaS optimization guide.) I switched up the headline copy here, as well as some of the supporting text underneath to match. After a month, here’s what the conversion rates look like:

Get Talia’s Guide to Optimize – 19.05%

You Can’t Just Build – 23.08%

Optimization is a Lot of Work – 24%

Not Sure How to Optimize? – 33.33%

Each variant is serving a different segment of the audience, by speaking to the particular reason they want to download the guide most (e.g., maybe they don’t have the time to optimize, or maybe they don’t know how to get started). As Smart Traffic learns more about which variants perform best for which audience segments, we become that much more likely to score a conversion.

What I Learned Running These Smart Traffic Experiments

Smart Traffic absolutely makes optimization easier and faster for marketers who previously never had the time (or experience) to run A/B tests. It took me under two hours to set up and launch these experiments, and we’re already seeing some pretty impressive results just over a month later.

While the ecommerce lookbook page is still optimizing, the SaaS ebook page is showing a 12% lift in conversions compared to evenly splitting traffic among all these variants. And this is after only a month—the algorithm will keep improving to get us even better results over time. (Like a fine wine, or that suspiciously old cheese in my fridge.)

At the same time, I did walk away with a few important lessons learned. If you’re planning to use Smart Traffic to optimize your landing pages, here are some things to keep in mind before you get started:

There are no champion variants – Unlike traditional A/B testing, you won’t be able to point to one landing page variant at the end of your test and call it a winner. The machine learning algorithm automatically routes audiences differently based on their individual attributes, which means you have to be cautious when you’re analyzing the results.

The more variants you create, the longer you’ll wait – While it can be tempting to throw spaghetti at the wall and create dozens of variants for your landing page, this means you’ll also have to wait longer to see what sticks. Try starting out with three to five variations and take a more strategic approach based on research in your industry. (The 2020 Conversion Benchmark Report is a great place to start for some ideas.)

It’s (usually) better to leave low-converting variants active – Because Smart Traffic learns over time and continually improves, you’re typically better off leaving your variants active—even if their conversion rates aren’t all that impressive. The AI takes the risk out of optimization by automatically sending visitors to the page that suits them best. If you turn off variants, you may lose out on some of those conversions altogether.

It can be a lot of fun to get creative with the different page elements and try out new ideas. You just might want to come up with a bit of a plan first and be strategic with your approach. Still, it’s better to experiment and optimize with Smart Traffic (even if you make some mistakes along the way) than to never optimize at all.

(And in case you were worried, yep—I managed to get my to-do list done, too. )

from Marketing https://unbounce.com/marketing-ai/smart-traffic-experiments/ via http://www.rssmix.com/

[roypstickney]

[Experiment] How AI is Changing the Way We Optimize at Unbounce

When I first encountered A/B testing, I immediately wanted to become the type of marketer who tested everything. The idea sounded fun to me. Like being a mad scientist running experiments to prove when my work was actually “working.”

Turns out though, there’s always a long list of other things to do first… blog posts to write, campaigns to launch, and don’t get me started on the meetings! I’m not alone in this, either. A lot of marketers are just too darned busy to follow up and optimize the stuff they’ve already shipped. According to HubSpot, only 17% of marketers use landing page A/B tests to improve conversion rates.

A small glimpse of my ever-growing to-do list. Ain’t nobody got time for A/B tests.

Sure, running a split test with one or two variants always sounds easy enough. But once you take a closer look at the process, you realize just how complex it can actually be. You need to make sure you have… 

The right duration and sample size.

Taken into account any external factors or validity threats.

Learned how to interpret the results correctly, too.

But—while there will always be a time and place for A/B testing—there’s also now an easier and faster way for marketers to optimize. Smart Traffic is a new Unbounce tool that uses the power of AI and machine learning to get you more conversions. Every day, more marketers are using Smart Traffic to “automagically” optimize their landing pages. But whenever we launch anything new, we like to test it out for ourselves to learn alongside you (and keep you up to speed on what to try next).

Here’s what I learned after taking Smart Traffic for a test drive myself…

Shifting Your Mindset to Optimize with AI

I know many marketers are (perhaps) skeptical when it comes to promises of machine learning, artificial intelligence, or magical “easy” buttons that get them better results. But AI is all around us and it’s already changing the way we do marketing. Landing page optimization is just one more area of the job where you no longer need to do everything yourself manually.

Smart Traffic augments your marketing skills and automatically sends visitors to the landing page variant where they’re most likely to convert (based on how similar page visitors have converted before). It makes routing decisions faster than any human ever could (thank you, AI magic), and “learns” which page variant is a perfect match for each different visitor. This ultimately means no more “champion” variants. Instead, you’re free to create multiple different pages to appeal to different groups of visitors and run ‘em all at once.

This is very different from A/B testing and honestly—it can feel kinda weird at first. You’ve got to trust in the machine learning to figure out what works best and what doesn’t. Data scientists call this the “black box” problem: data goes in, decisions come out, but you never really get the full understanding of what happened in between. 

Smart Traffic is fundamentally different from A/B Testing. You can learn more about how it works here.

For marketers using Smart Traffic, this means shifting your mindset and starting to think about optimization differently. Unlike A/B testing, you’re not looking for those “aha” moments to apply to your next campaign, or a one-size-fits-all “winning” variant. Instead, you’re looking to discover what works best for different subsets of your audience. This gives you unlimited creativity to try out new marketing ideas, makes it easier and less risky for you to optimize, and gives you an average conversion lift of 30% compared to splitting the traffic evenly across multiple variants. (Woah.)

My Experiment with Smart Traffic

I know all this because I recently experimented with variant creation myself to better understand this new AI optimization mindset. I created 15 variants across two separate landing pages using Smart Traffic to discover…

How easy is it to optimize with an AI-powered optimization tool?

Could I quickly set up the tests in Unbounce while still getting those other to-do’s done?

What kind of conversion lift would I see from just a few hours invested?

I took a little bit of my inspiration from Ms. Frizzle on the Magic School Bus. No, not her haircut, her catchphrase: “Take chances, make mistakes, get messy!”

Oh, so that’s where she got all her good ideas.

Creating 15 Variants in Under Two Hours

The beauty of Smart Traffic is there are no limits to how many variants you can create and it automatically starts optimizing in as few as 50 visits. Just hit the “optimize” button and you’re off to the races. Could it really be that simple?

My guinea pigs for this experiment would be two recent campaigns our marketing team had worked on: the ecommerce lookbook and the SaaS optimization guide. The team had created both of these ebook download pages in Unbounce, but we hadn’t been able to return to them and optimize very much in the months since we published.

The original landing pages would serve as my control variants. (Click to see the full pages.)

Before starting, I consulted with Anna Roginska, Growth Marketer at Unbounce, to get her input on how I should create my variants. She advised:

You can take the ‘spaghetti at the wall’ approach, where you create a bunch of variants and just leave them to Smart Traffic to see what happens. It’s that ‘set it and forget it’ mentality. That’s interesting, but when you look at a bowl of spaghetti… There’s a lot of noodles in there. You won’t necessarily get to explain why something is working or not working.

The other approach is to be more strategic and focused. I think there’s a huge benefit to going in with a plan. Create maybe only five variants and give them each a specific purpose. Then, you can see how they perform and create new iterations for different portions of the audience.

I had two landing pages to work with, so I thought I’d give both approaches a try. But with only a few hours scheduled in my calendar to complete all these variants, I needed to move fast.

The “Spaghetti at the Wall” Approach to Variant Creation

On the ecommerce lookbook page, I wanted to spend less time planning and more time creating. Whereas in A/B testing you need a proper test hypothesis and a careful plan for each variant, Smart Traffic lets you get creative and try out new ideas on the fly. Your variants don’t have to be perfect—they just need to be different enough to appeal to new audience segments.

This meant I didn’t have to make any hard or fast choices about which one element to “test” on the landing page. I could create 15 different variants that varied wildly from one another. Some used different colors, some had different headlines, some completely changed up the layout of the page.

This is something you just can’t do in a traditional A/B test where you’re looking to find a “winner” and understand why it “wins.” I had to remind myself I wasn’t looking for that one variant to rule them all (or for that one variant to bring them all and in the darkness bind them). I was looking to increase the chance of conversion for every single visitor. Certain pages were going to work better for certain audiences, and that was totally fine.

I wondered, though: how many variants would be too many? Would the machine learning recognize that some of these were not anything special and just stop sending traffic to them? And how long would it take to get results? With these questions in mind, I checked back on my first set of tests one month later…

Changing up the background color

Usually, color A/B tests are pretty much a waste of time. You need a lot of data to get accurate results, and most marketers don’t actually end up learning anything useful in the end. (Because color by itself means nothing, it always depends on the context of the page.)

That being said, we know there is some legitimate color theory and certain audience segments respond better to certain colors than others. So I thought it might be interesting to switch up the background on this landing page to see what would happen. And color me surprised—these variants are seeing some pretty dramatically different conversion rates:

Pink background – 12.82%

Green background – 21.43%

White background – 21.74%

Black background – 31.71%

One might start to speculate from these conversion rates that darker backgrounds perform better than the lighter backgrounds. But hold your horses, that’s thinking about this as an A/B test again. Here’s why Jordan Dawe, Senior Data Science Developer at Unbounce, says you should be cautious about drawing any conclusions from the conversion rates…

Smart Traffic is not sending visitors randomly—it’s trying to get the best traffic to the best variant. So in this case, it doesn’t mean that a black background will always convert higher than a pink background. There are likely portions of the audience going to each color that would be doing worse on others. Here’s what you can conclude: the color black is preferred by a portion of the traffic that converts highly.

It’s hard to shake that mindset of looking for a “winner” and trying to figure out “why” something is working. But I was starting to accept that different portions of the audience would always respond better to different variants—this was just the first time I’d been able to use AI to automatically serve up the best version.

Making big (and small) changes to the headline

For the next group of variants, I switched up the H1 in both small and big ways to see what effect that would have on the conversion rate. In some cases, this meant just swapping a single adjective (e.g., “jaw-dropping” for “drool-worthy”). In other cases, I went with a completely new line of copy altogether.

Here’s how the variants stacked up against each other:

See 27 Sales-Ready Ecommerce Landing Pages in Our Ultimate Lookbook – 25.81%

See 27 Stunning Ecommerce Landing Pages in Our Ultimate Lookbook – 25.93%

Get Ready to See 27 Jaw-Dropping Ecommerce Landing Page Examples – 28.13%

Get Serious Inspo for Supercharging Your Ecomm Sales – 35%

See 27 Drool-Worthy Ecommerce Landing Pages in Our Ultimate Lookbook – 40%

Again, each variant yielded a different conversion rate. I wondered if I kept testing different variations of the headlines and found one that performed best, could I deactivate all the other headline variants and just go with the “best” one? 

Here’s how Floss Taylor, Data Analyst at Unbounce, responded…

Smart Traffic doesn’t have champion variants. You don’t pick one at the end like you would in an A/B test. Although one variant may appear to be performing poorly, there could be a subset of traffic that it’s ideal for. You’re better off leaving it on long-term so it can work its magic.

Trying out different page layouts and hierarchies

The last set of variants I created messed with the actual structure and hierarchy of the page. I wanted to see if moving things around (or removing sections entirely) would influence the conversion rate. Here’s a sample of some of the experiments…

Removing the Headline – 16.67%

Adding a Double CTA – 21.95%

Moving the Testimonial Up the Page – 27.27%

Nothing too surprising here. And because I had created so many variants, Smart Traffic was taking longer than usual in “Learning Mode” to start giving me a conversion lift. Here’s how Floss Taylor explains it…

Smart Traffic needs approximately 50 visitors to understand which traffic would perform well for each new variant. If you have 15 variants and ~100 visitors per month, you’re going to have a long learning period where Smart Traffic cannot make accurate recommendations. I’d suggest starting off with a lower number of variants, and only adding more once once you have sufficient traffic.

The “Strategic Marketer” Approach

So throwing spaghetti at the wall turned out to be… messy. (New parents beware.) For the SaaS optimization guide page, I wanted to be a bit more strategic. And I actually had a leg up for this one, because Anna Roginska, Growth Marketer at Unbounce, had already started with a Smart Traffic experiment on this page four months ago.

Anna had set up a test between two different variants. One had an image of the ecommerce lookbook as the hero graphic on the page, while the other used the image of conversion expert and author Talia Wolf. Anna says she decided on this second variant because of research she had seen on how photographs of people tend to convert better than products.

I put Talia up front because I knew from other tests I’ve run and research I’ve done. [Photographs of] people tend to convert better. I didn’t know if it would work better in this particular case, but I was able to set up a variant and use Smart Traffic to find out. And it just so happens that the algorithm started sending way more traffic to this variant.

Anna seemed to be onto something, too: her variant was converting at nearly double the rate for a large traffic subset. And while I now know we can’t consider this a “champion” variant like in an A/B test and learn from the results, we could iterate based on her design to target new audience segments.

I created a simple spreadsheet to develop my gameplan. The goal was to create five new versions of the page that would appeal to different visitors based on their attributes:

Reducing the word count to target mobile and “ready to download” visitors

For inspiration on my first variant, I consulted the 2020 Conversion Benchmark Report. The machine learning insights here suggested that SaaS landing pages with lower word counts and easier-to-read copy tend to perform better than their long-winded counterparts.

And while the original version of our download page was easy enough to read, it did have a long, wordy intro with a lot of extra detail. Could I increase our conversion rate for a portion of our audience if just focused on the bare essentials? I was ready to kill some darlings to find out…

Original Long-Form Version – 10%

Low Word Count Version – 21.43%

It seems there’s a segment of our traffic coming to this page who didn’t need to see all that extra info before they decided to fill out the form. I speculated that this variant might also perform better on mobile devices since it would be faster-loading and easier to scroll through. Interesting!

Switching the headline to target different audience segments

Next, I created an additional four page variants to speak to the different pain points and reasons our audience might want to download the guide. (Actually, this is something Talia herself recommends you do in the SaaS optimization guide.) I switched up the headline copy here, as well as some of the supporting text underneath to match. After a month, here’s what the conversion rates look like:

Get Talia’s Guide to Optimize – 19.05%

You Can’t Just Build – 23.08%

Optimization is a Lot of Work – 24%

Not Sure How to Optimize? – 33.33%

Each variant is serving a different segment of the audience, by speaking to the particular reason they want to download the guide most (e.g., maybe they don’t have the time to optimize, or maybe they don’t know how to get started). As Smart Traffic learns more about which variants perform best for which audience segments, we become that much more likely to score a conversion.

What I Learned Running These Smart Traffic Experiments

Smart Traffic absolutely makes optimization easier and faster for marketers who previously never had the time (or experience) to run A/B tests. It took me under two hours to set up and launch these experiments, and we’re already seeing some pretty impressive results just over a month later.

While the ecommerce lookbook page is still optimizing, the SaaS ebook page is showing a 12% lift in conversions compared to evenly splitting traffic among all these variants. And this is after only a month—the algorithm will keep improving to get us even better results over time. (Like a fine wine, or that suspiciously old cheese in my fridge.)

At the same time, I did walk away with a few important lessons learned. If you’re planning to use Smart Traffic to optimize your landing pages, here are some things to keep in mind before you get started:

There are no champion variants – Unlike traditional A/B testing, you won’t be able to point to one landing page variant at the end of your test and call it a winner. The machine learning algorithm automatically routes audiences differently based on their individual attributes, which means you have to be cautious when you’re analyzing the results.

The more variants you create, the longer you’ll wait – While it can be tempting to throw spaghetti at the wall and create dozens of variants for your landing page, this means you’ll also have to wait longer to see what sticks. Try starting out with three to five variations and take a more strategic approach based on research in your industry. (The 2020 Conversion Benchmark Report is a great place to start for some ideas.)

It’s (usually) better to leave low-converting variants active – Because Smart Traffic learns over time and continually improves, you’re typically better off leaving your variants active—even if their conversion rates aren’t all that impressive. The AI takes the risk out of optimization by automatically sending visitors to the page that suits them best. If you turn off variants, you may lose out on some of those conversions altogether.

It can be a lot of fun to get creative with the different page elements and try out new ideas. You just might want to come up with a bit of a plan first and be strategic with your approach. Still, it’s better to experiment and optimize with Smart Traffic (even if you make some mistakes along the way) than to never optimize at all.

(And in case you were worried, yep—I managed to get my to-do list done, too. )

[jjonassevilla]

[Experiment] How AI is Changing the Way We Optimize at Unbounce

When I first encountered A/B testing, I immediately wanted to become the type of marketer who tested everything. The idea sounded fun to me. Like being a mad scientist running experiments to prove when my work was actually “working.”

Turns out though, there’s always a long list of other things to do first… blog posts to write, campaigns to launch, and don’t get me started on the meetings! I’m not alone in this, either. A lot of marketers are just too darned busy to follow up and optimize the stuff they’ve already shipped. According to HubSpot, only 17% of marketers use landing page A/B tests to improve conversion rates.

A small glimpse of my ever-growing to-do list. Ain’t nobody got time for A/B tests.

Sure, running a split test with one or two variants always sounds easy enough. But once you take a closer look at the process, you realize just how complex it can actually be. You need to make sure you have… 

The right duration and sample size.

Taken into account any external factors or validity threats.

Learned how to interpret the results correctly, too.

But—while there will always be a time and place for A/B testing—there’s also now an easier and faster way for marketers to optimize. Smart Traffic is a new Unbounce tool that uses the power of AI and machine learning to get you more conversions. Every day, more marketers are using Smart Traffic to “automagically” optimize their landing pages. But whenever we launch anything new, we like to test it out for ourselves to learn alongside you (and keep you up to speed on what to try next).

Here’s what I learned after taking Smart Traffic for a test drive myself…

Shifting Your Mindset to Optimize with AI

I know many marketers are (perhaps) skeptical when it comes to promises of machine learning, artificial intelligence, or magical “easy” buttons that get them better results. But AI is all around us and it’s already changing the way we do marketing. Landing page optimization is just one more area of the job where you no longer need to do everything yourself manually.

Smart Traffic augments your marketing skills and automatically sends visitors to the landing page variant where they’re most likely to convert (based on how similar page visitors have converted before). It makes routing decisions faster than any human ever could (thank you, AI magic), and “learns” which page variant is a perfect match for each different visitor. This ultimately means no more “champion” variants. Instead, you’re free to create multiple different pages to appeal to different groups of visitors and run ‘em all at once.

This is very different from A/B testing and honestly—it can feel kinda weird at first. You’ve got to trust in the machine learning to figure out what works best and what doesn’t. Data scientists call this the “black box” problem: data goes in, decisions come out, but you never really get the full understanding of what happened in between. 

Smart Traffic is fundamentally different from A/B Testing. You can learn more about how it works here.

For marketers using Smart Traffic, this means shifting your mindset and starting to think about optimization differently. Unlike A/B testing, you’re not looking for those “aha” moments to apply to your next campaign, or a one-size-fits-all “winning” variant. Instead, you’re looking to discover what works best for different subsets of your audience. This gives you unlimited creativity to try out new marketing ideas, makes it easier and less risky for you to optimize, and gives you an average conversion lift of 30% compared to splitting the traffic evenly across multiple variants. (Woah.)

My Experiment with Smart Traffic

I know all this because I recently experimented with variant creation myself to better understand this new AI optimization mindset. I created 15 variants across two separate landing pages using Smart Traffic to discover…

How easy is it to optimize with an AI-powered optimization tool?

Could I quickly set up the tests in Unbounce while still getting those other to-do’s done?

What kind of conversion lift would I see from just a few hours invested?

I took a little bit of my inspiration from Ms. Frizzle on the Magic School Bus. No, not her haircut, her catchphrase: “Take chances, make mistakes, get messy!”

Oh, so that’s where she got all her good ideas.

Creating 15 Variants in Under Two Hours

The beauty of Smart Traffic is there are no limits to how many variants you can create and it automatically starts optimizing in as few as 50 visits. Just hit the “optimize” button and you’re off to the races. Could it really be that simple?

My guinea pigs for this experiment would be two recent campaigns our marketing team had worked on: the ecommerce lookbook and the SaaS optimization guide. The team had created both of these ebook download pages in Unbounce, but we hadn’t been able to return to them and optimize very much in the months since we published.

The original landing pages would serve as my control variants. (Click to see the full pages.)

Before starting, I consulted with Anna Roginska, Growth Marketer at Unbounce, to get her input on how I should create my variants. She advised:

You can take the ‘spaghetti at the wall’ approach, where you create a bunch of variants and just leave them to Smart Traffic to see what happens. It’s that ‘set it and forget it’ mentality. That’s interesting, but when you look at a bowl of spaghetti… There’s a lot of noodles in there. You won’t necessarily get to explain why something is working or not working.

The other approach is to be more strategic and focused. I think there’s a huge benefit to going in with a plan. Create maybe only five variants and give them each a specific purpose. Then, you can see how they perform and create new iterations for different portions of the audience.

I had two landing pages to work with, so I thought I’d give both approaches a try. But with only a few hours scheduled in my calendar to complete all these variants, I needed to move fast.

The “Spaghetti at the Wall” Approach to Variant Creation

On the ecommerce lookbook page, I wanted to spend less time planning and more time creating. Whereas in A/B testing you need a proper test hypothesis and a careful plan for each variant, Smart Traffic lets you get creative and try out new ideas on the fly. Your variants don’t have to be perfect—they just need to be different enough to appeal to new audience segments.

This meant I didn’t have to make any hard or fast choices about which one element to “test” on the landing page. I could create 15 different variants that varied wildly from one another. Some used different colors, some had different headlines, some completely changed up the layout of the page.

This is something you just can’t do in a traditional A/B test where you’re looking to find a “winner” and understand why it “wins.” I had to remind myself I wasn’t looking for that one variant to rule them all (or for that one variant to bring them all and in the darkness bind them). I was looking to increase the chance of conversion for every single visitor. Certain pages were going to work better for certain audiences, and that was totally fine.

I wondered, though: how many variants would be too many? Would the machine learning recognize that some of these were not anything special and just stop sending traffic to them? And how long would it take to get results? With these questions in mind, I checked back on my first set of tests one month later…

Changing up the background color

Usually, color A/B tests are pretty much a waste of time. You need a lot of data to get accurate results, and most marketers don’t actually end up learning anything useful in the end. (Because color by itself means nothing, it always depends on the context of the page.)

That being said, we know there is some legitimate color theory and certain audience segments respond better to certain colors than others. So I thought it might be interesting to switch up the background on this landing page to see what would happen. And color me surprised—these variants are seeing some pretty dramatically different conversion rates:

Pink background – 12.82%

Green background – 21.43%

White background – 21.74%

Black background – 31.71%

One might start to speculate from these conversion rates that darker backgrounds perform better than the lighter backgrounds. But hold your horses, that’s thinking about this as an A/B test again. Here’s why Jordan Dawe, Senior Data Science Developer at Unbounce, says you should be cautious about drawing any conclusions from the conversion rates…

Smart Traffic is not sending visitors randomly—it’s trying to get the best traffic to the best variant. So in this case, it doesn’t mean that a black background will always convert higher than a pink background. There are likely portions of the audience going to each color that would be doing worse on others. Here’s what you can conclude: the color black is preferred by a portion of the traffic that converts highly.

It’s hard to shake that mindset of looking for a “winner” and trying to figure out “why” something is working. But I was starting to accept that different portions of the audience would always respond better to different variants—this was just the first time I’d been able to use AI to automatically serve up the best version.

Making big (and small) changes to the headline

For the next group of variants, I switched up the H1 in both small and big ways to see what effect that would have on the conversion rate. In some cases, this meant just swapping a single adjective (e.g., “jaw-dropping” for “drool-worthy”). In other cases, I went with a completely new line of copy altogether.

Here’s how the variants stacked up against each other:

See 27 Sales-Ready Ecommerce Landing Pages in Our Ultimate Lookbook – 25.81%

See 27 Stunning Ecommerce Landing Pages in Our Ultimate Lookbook – 25.93%

Get Ready to See 27 Jaw-Dropping Ecommerce Landing Page Examples – 28.13%

Get Serious Inspo for Supercharging Your Ecomm Sales – 35%

See 27 Drool-Worthy Ecommerce Landing Pages in Our Ultimate Lookbook – 40%

Again, each variant yielded a different conversion rate. I wondered if I kept testing different variations of the headlines and found one that performed best, could I deactivate all the other headline variants and just go with the “best” one? 

Here’s how Floss Taylor, Data Analyst at Unbounce, responded…

Smart Traffic doesn’t have champion variants. You don’t pick one at the end like you would in an A/B test. Although one variant may appear to be performing poorly, there could be a subset of traffic that it’s ideal for. You’re better off leaving it on long-term so it can work its magic.

Trying out different page layouts and hierarchies

The last set of variants I created messed with the actual structure and hierarchy of the page. I wanted to see if moving things around (or removing sections entirely) would influence the conversion rate. Here’s a sample of some of the experiments…

Removing the Headline – 16.67%

Adding a Double CTA – 21.95%

Moving the Testimonial Up the Page – 27.27%

Nothing too surprising here. And because I had created so many variants, Smart Traffic was taking longer than usual in “Learning Mode” to start giving me a conversion lift. Here’s how Floss Taylor explains it…

Smart Traffic needs approximately 50 visitors to understand which traffic would perform well for each new variant. If you have 15 variants and ~100 visitors per month, you’re going to have a long learning period where Smart Traffic cannot make accurate recommendations. I’d suggest starting off with a lower number of variants, and only adding more once once you have sufficient traffic.

The “Strategic Marketer” Approach

So throwing spaghetti at the wall turned out to be… messy. (New parents beware.) For the SaaS optimization guide page, I wanted to be a bit more strategic. And I actually had a leg up for this one, because Anna Roginska, Growth Marketer at Unbounce, had already started with a Smart Traffic experiment on this page four months ago.

Anna had set up a test between two different variants. One had an image of the ecommerce lookbook as the hero graphic on the page, while the other used the image of conversion expert and author Talia Wolf. Anna says she decided on this second variant because of research she had seen on how photographs of people tend to convert better than products.

I put Talia up front because I knew from other tests I’ve run and research I’ve done. [Photographs of] people tend to convert better. I didn’t know if it would work better in this particular case, but I was able to set up a variant and use Smart Traffic to find out. And it just so happens that the algorithm started sending way more traffic to this variant.

Anna seemed to be onto something, too: her variant was converting at nearly double the rate for a large traffic subset. And while I now know we can’t consider this a “champion” variant like in an A/B test and learn from the results, we could iterate based on her design to target new audience segments.

I created a simple spreadsheet to develop my gameplan. The goal was to create five new versions of the page that would appeal to different visitors based on their attributes:

Reducing the word count to target mobile and “ready to download” visitors

For inspiration on my first variant, I consulted the 2020 Conversion Benchmark Report. The machine learning insights here suggested that SaaS landing pages with lower word counts and easier-to-read copy tend to perform better than their long-winded counterparts.

And while the original version of our download page was easy enough to read, it did have a long, wordy intro with a lot of extra detail. Could I increase our conversion rate for a portion of our audience if just focused on the bare essentials? I was ready to kill some darlings to find out…

Original Long-Form Version – 10%

Low Word Count Version – 21.43%

It seems there’s a segment of our traffic coming to this page who didn’t need to see all that extra info before they decided to fill out the form. I speculated that this variant might also perform better on mobile devices since it would be faster-loading and easier to scroll through. Interesting!

Switching the headline to target different audience segments

Next, I created an additional four page variants to speak to the different pain points and reasons our audience might want to download the guide. (Actually, this is something Talia herself recommends you do in the SaaS optimization guide.) I switched up the headline copy here, as well as some of the supporting text underneath to match. After a month, here’s what the conversion rates look like:

Get Talia’s Guide to Optimize – 19.05%

You Can’t Just Build – 23.08%

Optimization is a Lot of Work – 24%

Not Sure How to Optimize? – 33.33%

Each variant is serving a different segment of the audience, by speaking to the particular reason they want to download the guide most (e.g., maybe they don’t have the time to optimize, or maybe they don’t know how to get started). As Smart Traffic learns more about which variants perform best for which audience segments, we become that much more likely to score a conversion.

What I Learned Running These Smart Traffic Experiments

Smart Traffic absolutely makes optimization easier and faster for marketers who previously never had the time (or experience) to run A/B tests. It took me under two hours to set up and launch these experiments, and we’re already seeing some pretty impressive results just over a month later.

While the ecommerce lookbook page is still optimizing, the SaaS ebook page is showing a 12% lift in conversions compared to evenly splitting traffic among all these variants. And this is after only a month—the algorithm will keep improving to get us even better results over time. (Like a fine wine, or that suspiciously old cheese in my fridge.)

At the same time, I did walk away with a few important lessons learned. If you’re planning to use Smart Traffic to optimize your landing pages, here are some things to keep in mind before you get started:

There are no champion variants – Unlike traditional A/B testing, you won’t be able to point to one landing page variant at the end of your test and call it a winner. The machine learning algorithm automatically routes audiences differently based on their individual attributes, which means you have to be cautious when you’re analyzing the results.

The more variants you create, the longer you’ll wait – While it can be tempting to throw spaghetti at the wall and create dozens of variants for your landing page, this means you’ll also have to wait longer to see what sticks. Try starting out with three to five variations and take a more strategic approach based on research in your industry. (The 2020 Conversion Benchmark Report is a great place to start for some ideas.)

It’s (usually) better to leave low-converting variants active – Because Smart Traffic learns over time and continually improves, you’re typically better off leaving your variants active—even if their conversion rates aren’t all that impressive. The AI takes the risk out of optimization by automatically sending visitors to the page that suits them best. If you turn off variants, you may lose out on some of those conversions altogether.

It can be a lot of fun to get creative with the different page elements and try out new ideas. You just might want to come up with a bit of a plan first and be strategic with your approach. Still, it’s better to experiment and optimize with Smart Traffic (even if you make some mistakes along the way) than to never optimize at all.

(And in case you were worried, yep—I managed to get my to-do list done, too. )

from Marketing https://unbounce.com/marketing-ai/smart-traffic-experiments/ via http://www.rssmix.com/

[kennethmontiveros]

[Experiment] How AI is Changing the Way We Optimize at Unbounce

When I first encountered A/B testing, I immediately wanted to become the type of marketer who tested everything. The idea sounded fun to me. Like being a mad scientist running experiments to prove when my work was actually “working.”

Turns out though, there’s always a long list of other things to do first… blog posts to write, campaigns to launch, and don’t get me started on the meetings! I’m not alone in this, either. A lot of marketers are just too darned busy to follow up and optimize the stuff they’ve already shipped. According to HubSpot, only 17% of marketers use landing page A/B tests to improve conversion rates.

A small glimpse of my ever-growing to-do list. Ain’t nobody got time for A/B tests.

Sure, running a split test with one or two variants always sounds easy enough. But once you take a closer look at the process, you realize just how complex it can actually be. You need to make sure you have… 

The right duration and sample size.

Taken into account any external factors or validity threats.

Learned how to interpret the results correctly, too.

But—while there will always be a time and place for A/B testing—there’s also now an easier and faster way for marketers to optimize. Smart Traffic is a new Unbounce tool that uses the power of AI and machine learning to get you more conversions. Every day, more marketers are using Smart Traffic to “automagically” optimize their landing pages. But whenever we launch anything new, we like to test it out for ourselves to learn alongside you (and keep you up to speed on what to try next).

Here’s what I learned after taking Smart Traffic for a test drive myself…

Shifting Your Mindset to Optimize with AI

I know many marketers are (perhaps) skeptical when it comes to promises of machine learning, artificial intelligence, or magical “easy” buttons that get them better results. But AI is all around us and it’s already changing the way we do marketing. Landing page optimization is just one more area of the job where you no longer need to do everything yourself manually.

Smart Traffic augments your marketing skills and automatically sends visitors to the landing page variant where they’re most likely to convert (based on how similar page visitors have converted before). It makes routing decisions faster than any human ever could (thank you, AI magic), and “learns” which page variant is a perfect match for each different visitor. This ultimately means no more “champion” variants. Instead, you’re free to create multiple different pages to appeal to different groups of visitors and run ‘em all at once.

This is very different from A/B testing and honestly—it can feel kinda weird at first. You’ve got to trust in the machine learning to figure out what works best and what doesn’t. Data scientists call this the “black box” problem: data goes in, decisions come out, but you never really get the full understanding of what happened in between. 

Smart Traffic is fundamentally different from A/B Testing. You can learn more about how it works here.

For marketers using Smart Traffic, this means shifting your mindset and starting to think about optimization differently. Unlike A/B testing, you’re not looking for those “aha” moments to apply to your next campaign, or a one-size-fits-all “winning” variant. Instead, you’re looking to discover what works best for different subsets of your audience. This gives you unlimited creativity to try out new marketing ideas, makes it easier and less risky for you to optimize, and gives you an average conversion lift of 30% compared to splitting the traffic evenly across multiple variants. (Woah.)

My Experiment with Smart Traffic

I know all this because I recently experimented with variant creation myself to better understand this new AI optimization mindset. I created 15 variants across two separate landing pages using Smart Traffic to discover…

How easy is it to optimize with an AI-powered optimization tool?

Could I quickly set up the tests in Unbounce while still getting those other to-do’s done?

What kind of conversion lift would I see from just a few hours invested?

I took a little bit of my inspiration from Ms. Frizzle on the Magic School Bus. No, not her haircut, her catchphrase: “Take chances, make mistakes, get messy!”

Oh, so that’s where she got all her good ideas.

Creating 15 Variants in Under Two Hours

The beauty of Smart Traffic is there are no limits to how many variants you can create and it automatically starts optimizing in as few as 50 visits. Just hit the “optimize” button and you’re off to the races. Could it really be that simple?

My guinea pigs for this experiment would be two recent campaigns our marketing team had worked on: the ecommerce lookbook and the SaaS optimization guide. The team had created both of these ebook download pages in Unbounce, but we hadn’t been able to return to them and optimize very much in the months since we published.

The original landing pages would serve as my control variants. (Click to see the full pages.)

Before starting, I consulted with Anna Roginska, Growth Marketer at Unbounce, to get her input on how I should create my variants. She advised:

You can take the ‘spaghetti at the wall’ approach, where you create a bunch of variants and just leave them to Smart Traffic to see what happens. It’s that ‘set it and forget it’ mentality. That’s interesting, but when you look at a bowl of spaghetti… There’s a lot of noodles in there. You won’t necessarily get to explain why something is working or not working.

The other approach is to be more strategic and focused. I think there’s a huge benefit to going in with a plan. Create maybe only five variants and give them each a specific purpose. Then, you can see how they perform and create new iterations for different portions of the audience.

I had two landing pages to work with, so I thought I’d give both approaches a try. But with only a few hours scheduled in my calendar to complete all these variants, I needed to move fast.

The “Spaghetti at the Wall” Approach to Variant Creation

On the ecommerce lookbook page, I wanted to spend less time planning and more time creating. Whereas in A/B testing you need a proper test hypothesis and a careful plan for each variant, Smart Traffic lets you get creative and try out new ideas on the fly. Your variants don’t have to be perfect—they just need to be different enough to appeal to new audience segments.

This meant I didn’t have to make any hard or fast choices about which one element to “test” on the landing page. I could create 15 different variants that varied wildly from one another. Some used different colors, some had different headlines, some completely changed up the layout of the page.

This is something you just can’t do in a traditional A/B test where you’re looking to find a “winner” and understand why it “wins.” I had to remind myself I wasn’t looking for that one variant to rule them all (or for that one variant to bring them all and in the darkness bind them). I was looking to increase the chance of conversion for every single visitor. Certain pages were going to work better for certain audiences, and that was totally fine.

I wondered, though: how many variants would be too many? Would the machine learning recognize that some of these were not anything special and just stop sending traffic to them? And how long would it take to get results? With these questions in mind, I checked back on my first set of tests one month later…

Changing up the background color

Usually, color A/B tests are pretty much a waste of time. You need a lot of data to get accurate results, and most marketers don’t actually end up learning anything useful in the end. (Because color by itself means nothing, it always depends on the context of the page.)

That being said, we know there is some legitimate color theory and certain audience segments respond better to certain colors than others. So I thought it might be interesting to switch up the background on this landing page to see what would happen. And color me surprised—these variants are seeing some pretty dramatically different conversion rates:

Pink background – 12.82%

Green background – 21.43%

White background – 21.74%

Black background – 31.71%

One might start to speculate from these conversion rates that darker backgrounds perform better than the lighter backgrounds. But hold your horses, that’s thinking about this as an A/B test again. Here’s why Jordan Dawe, Senior Data Science Developer at Unbounce, says you should be cautious about drawing any conclusions from the conversion rates…

Smart Traffic is not sending visitors randomly—it’s trying to get the best traffic to the best variant. So in this case, it doesn’t mean that a black background will always convert higher than a pink background. There are likely portions of the audience going to each color that would be doing worse on others. Here’s what you can conclude: the color black is preferred by a portion of the traffic that converts highly.

It’s hard to shake that mindset of looking for a “winner” and trying to figure out “why” something is working. But I was starting to accept that different portions of the audience would always respond better to different variants—this was just the first time I’d been able to use AI to automatically serve up the best version.

Making big (and small) changes to the headline

For the next group of variants, I switched up the H1 in both small and big ways to see what effect that would have on the conversion rate. In some cases, this meant just swapping a single adjective (e.g., “jaw-dropping” for “drool-worthy”). In other cases, I went with a completely new line of copy altogether.

Here’s how the variants stacked up against each other:

See 27 Sales-Ready Ecommerce Landing Pages in Our Ultimate Lookbook – 25.81%

See 27 Stunning Ecommerce Landing Pages in Our Ultimate Lookbook – 25.93%

Get Ready to See 27 Jaw-Dropping Ecommerce Landing Page Examples – 28.13%

Get Serious Inspo for Supercharging Your Ecomm Sales – 35%

See 27 Drool-Worthy Ecommerce Landing Pages in Our Ultimate Lookbook – 40%

Again, each variant yielded a different conversion rate. I wondered if I kept testing different variations of the headlines and found one that performed best, could I deactivate all the other headline variants and just go with the “best” one? 

Here’s how Floss Taylor, Data Analyst at Unbounce, responded…

Smart Traffic doesn’t have champion variants. You don’t pick one at the end like you would in an A/B test. Although one variant may appear to be performing poorly, there could be a subset of traffic that it’s ideal for. You’re better off leaving it on long-term so it can work its magic.

Trying out different page layouts and hierarchies

The last set of variants I created messed with the actual structure and hierarchy of the page. I wanted to see if moving things around (or removing sections entirely) would influence the conversion rate. Here’s a sample of some of the experiments…

Removing the Headline – 16.67%

Adding a Double CTA – 21.95%

Moving the Testimonial Up the Page – 27.27%

Nothing too surprising here. And because I had created so many variants, Smart Traffic was taking longer than usual in “Learning Mode” to start giving me a conversion lift. Here’s how Floss Taylor explains it…

Smart Traffic needs approximately 50 visitors to understand which traffic would perform well for each new variant. If you have 15 variants and ~100 visitors per month, you’re going to have a long learning period where Smart Traffic cannot make accurate recommendations. I’d suggest starting off with a lower number of variants, and only adding more once once you have sufficient traffic.

The “Strategic Marketer” Approach

So throwing spaghetti at the wall turned out to be… messy. (New parents beware.) For the SaaS optimization guide page, I wanted to be a bit more strategic. And I actually had a leg up for this one, because Anna Roginska, Growth Marketer at Unbounce, had already started with a Smart Traffic experiment on this page four months ago.

Anna had set up a test between two different variants. One had an image of the ecommerce lookbook as the hero graphic on the page, while the other used the image of conversion expert and author Talia Wolf. Anna says she decided on this second variant because of research she had seen on how photographs of people tend to convert better than products.

I put Talia up front because I knew from other tests I’ve run and research I’ve done. [Photographs of] people tend to convert better. I didn’t know if it would work better in this particular case, but I was able to set up a variant and use Smart Traffic to find out. And it just so happens that the algorithm started sending way more traffic to this variant.

Anna seemed to be onto something, too: her variant was converting at nearly double the rate for a large traffic subset. And while I now know we can’t consider this a “champion” variant like in an A/B test and learn from the results, we could iterate based on her design to target new audience segments.

I created a simple spreadsheet to develop my gameplan. The goal was to create five new versions of the page that would appeal to different visitors based on their attributes:

Reducing the word count to target mobile and “ready to download” visitors

For inspiration on my first variant, I consulted the 2020 Conversion Benchmark Report. The machine learning insights here suggested that SaaS landing pages with lower word counts and easier-to-read copy tend to perform better than their long-winded counterparts.

And while the original version of our download page was easy enough to read, it did have a long, wordy intro with a lot of extra detail. Could I increase our conversion rate for a portion of our audience if just focused on the bare essentials? I was ready to kill some darlings to find out…

Original Long-Form Version – 10%

Low Word Count Version – 21.43%

It seems there’s a segment of our traffic coming to this page who didn’t need to see all that extra info before they decided to fill out the form. I speculated that this variant might also perform better on mobile devices since it would be faster-loading and easier to scroll through. Interesting!

Switching the headline to target different audience segments

Next, I created an additional four page variants to speak to the different pain points and reasons our audience might want to download the guide. (Actually, this is something Talia herself recommends you do in the SaaS optimization guide.) I switched up the headline copy here, as well as some of the supporting text underneath to match. After a month, here’s what the conversion rates look like:

Get Talia’s Guide to Optimize – 19.05%

You Can’t Just Build – 23.08%

Optimization is a Lot of Work – 24%

Not Sure How to Optimize? – 33.33%

Each variant is serving a different segment of the audience, by speaking to the particular reason they want to download the guide most (e.g., maybe they don’t have the time to optimize, or maybe they don’t know how to get started). As Smart Traffic learns more about which variants perform best for which audience segments, we become that much more likely to score a conversion.

What I Learned Running These Smart Traffic Experiments

Smart Traffic absolutely makes optimization easier and faster for marketers who previously never had the time (or experience) to run A/B tests. It took me under two hours to set up and launch these experiments, and we’re already seeing some pretty impressive results just over a month later.

While the ecommerce lookbook page is still optimizing, the SaaS ebook page is showing a 12% lift in conversions compared to evenly splitting traffic among all these variants. And this is after only a month—the algorithm will keep improving to get us even better results over time. (Like a fine wine, or that suspiciously old cheese in my fridge.)

At the same time, I did walk away with a few important lessons learned. If you’re planning to use Smart Traffic to optimize your landing pages, here are some things to keep in mind before you get started:

There are no champion variants – Unlike traditional A/B testing, you won’t be able to point to one landing page variant at the end of your test and call it a winner. The machine learning algorithm automatically routes audiences differently based on their individual attributes, which means you have to be cautious when you’re analyzing the results.

The more variants you create, the longer you’ll wait – While it can be tempting to throw spaghetti at the wall and create dozens of variants for your landing page, this means you’ll also have to wait longer to see what sticks. Try starting out with three to five variations and take a more strategic approach based on research in your industry. (The 2020 Conversion Benchmark Report is a great place to start for some ideas.)

It’s (usually) better to leave low-converting variants active – Because Smart Traffic learns over time and continually improves, you’re typically better off leaving your variants active—even if their conversion rates aren’t all that impressive. The AI takes the risk out of optimization by automatically sending visitors to the page that suits them best. If you turn off variants, you may lose out on some of those conversions altogether.

It can be a lot of fun to get creative with the different page elements and try out new ideas. You just might want to come up with a bit of a plan first and be strategic with your approach. Still, it’s better to experiment and optimize with Smart Traffic (even if you make some mistakes along the way) than to never optimize at all.

(And in case you were worried, yep—I managed to get my to-do list done, too. )

[Experiment] How AI is Changing the Way We Optimize at Unbounce published first on http://nickpontemktg.blogspot.com/

[josephkchoi]

[Experiment] How AI is Changing the Way We Optimize at Unbounce

When I first encountered A/B testing, I immediately wanted to become the type of marketer who tested everything. The idea sounded fun to me. Like being a mad scientist running experiments to prove when my work was actually “working.”

Turns out though, there’s always a long list of other things to do first… blog posts to write, campaigns to launch, and don’t get me started on the meetings! I’m not alone in this, either. A lot of marketers are just too darned busy to follow up and optimize the stuff they’ve already shipped. According to HubSpot, only 17% of marketers use landing page A/B tests to improve conversion rates.

A small glimpse of my ever-growing to-do list. Ain’t nobody got time for A/B tests.

Sure, running a split test with one or two variants always sounds easy enough. But once you take a closer look at the process, you realize just how complex it can actually be. You need to make sure you have… 

The right duration and sample size.

Taken into account any external factors or validity threats.

Learned how to interpret the results correctly, too.

But—while there will always be a time and place for A/B testing—there’s also now an easier and faster way for marketers to optimize. Smart Traffic is a new Unbounce tool that uses the power of AI and machine learning to get you more conversions. Every day, more marketers are using Smart Traffic to “automagically” optimize their landing pages. But whenever we launch anything new, we like to test it out for ourselves to learn alongside you (and keep you up to speed on what to try next).

Here’s what I learned after taking Smart Traffic for a test drive myself…

Shifting Your Mindset to Optimize with AI

I know many marketers are (perhaps) skeptical when it comes to promises of machine learning, artificial intelligence, or magical “easy” buttons that get them better results. But AI is all around us and it’s already changing the way we do marketing. Landing page optimization is just one more area of the job where you no longer need to do everything yourself manually.

Smart Traffic augments your marketing skills and automatically sends visitors to the landing page variant where they’re most likely to convert (based on how similar page visitors have converted before). It makes routing decisions faster than any human ever could (thank you, AI magic), and “learns” which page variant is a perfect match for each different visitor. This ultimately means no more “champion” variants. Instead, you’re free to create multiple different pages to appeal to different groups of visitors and run ‘em all at once.

This is very different from A/B testing and honestly—it can feel kinda weird at first. You’ve got to trust in the machine learning to figure out what works best and what doesn’t. Data scientists call this the “black box” problem: data goes in, decisions come out, but you never really get the full understanding of what happened in between. 

Smart Traffic is fundamentally different from A/B Testing. You can learn more about how it works here.

For marketers using Smart Traffic, this means shifting your mindset and starting to think about optimization differently. Unlike A/B testing, you’re not looking for those “aha” moments to apply to your next campaign, or a one-size-fits-all “winning” variant. Instead, you’re looking to discover what works best for different subsets of your audience. This gives you unlimited creativity to try out new marketing ideas, makes it easier and less risky for you to optimize, and gives you an average conversion lift of 30% compared to splitting the traffic evenly across multiple variants. (Woah.)

My Experiment with Smart Traffic

I know all this because I recently experimented with variant creation myself to better understand this new AI optimization mindset. I created 15 variants across two separate landing pages using Smart Traffic to discover…

How easy is it to optimize with an AI-powered optimization tool?

Could I quickly set up the tests in Unbounce while still getting those other to-do’s done?

What kind of conversion lift would I see from just a few hours invested?

I took a little bit of my inspiration from Ms. Frizzle on the Magic School Bus. No, not her haircut, her catchphrase: “Take chances, make mistakes, get messy!”

Oh, so that’s where she got all her good ideas.

Creating 15 Variants in Under Two Hours

The beauty of Smart Traffic is there are no limits to how many variants you can create and it automatically starts optimizing in as few as 50 visits. Just hit the “optimize” button and you’re off to the races. Could it really be that simple?

My guinea pigs for this experiment would be two recent campaigns our marketing team had worked on: the ecommerce lookbook and the SaaS optimization guide. The team had created both of these ebook download pages in Unbounce, but we hadn’t been able to return to them and optimize very much in the months since we published.

The original landing pages would serve as my control variants. (Click to see the full pages.)

Before starting, I consulted with Anna Roginska, Growth Marketer at Unbounce, to get her input on how I should create my variants. She advised:

You can take the ‘spaghetti at the wall’ approach, where you create a bunch of variants and just leave them to Smart Traffic to see what happens. It’s that ‘set it and forget it’ mentality. That’s interesting, but when you look at a bowl of spaghetti… There’s a lot of noodles in there. You won’t necessarily get to explain why something is working or not working.

The other approach is to be more strategic and focused. I think there’s a huge benefit to going in with a plan. Create maybe only five variants and give them each a specific purpose. Then, you can see how they perform and create new iterations for different portions of the audience.

I had two landing pages to work with, so I thought I’d give both approaches a try. But with only a few hours scheduled in my calendar to complete all these variants, I needed to move fast.

The “Spaghetti at the Wall” Approach to Variant Creation

On the ecommerce lookbook page, I wanted to spend less time planning and more time creating. Whereas in A/B testing you need a proper test hypothesis and a careful plan for each variant, Smart Traffic lets you get creative and try out new ideas on the fly. Your variants don’t have to be perfect—they just need to be different enough to appeal to new audience segments.

This meant I didn’t have to make any hard or fast choices about which one element to “test” on the landing page. I could create 15 different variants that varied wildly from one another. Some used different colors, some had different headlines, some completely changed up the layout of the page.

This is something you just can’t do in a traditional A/B test where you’re looking to find a “winner” and understand why it “wins.” I had to remind myself I wasn’t looking for that one variant to rule them all (or for that one variant to bring them all and in the darkness bind them). I was looking to increase the chance of conversion for every single visitor. Certain pages were going to work better for certain audiences, and that was totally fine.

I wondered, though: how many variants would be too many? Would the machine learning recognize that some of these were not anything special and just stop sending traffic to them? And how long would it take to get results? With these questions in mind, I checked back on my first set of tests one month later…

Changing up the background color

Usually, color A/B tests are pretty much a waste of time. You need a lot of data to get accurate results, and most marketers don’t actually end up learning anything useful in the end. (Because color by itself means nothing, it always depends on the context of the page.)

That being said, we know there is some legitimate color theory and certain audience segments respond better to certain colors than others. So I thought it might be interesting to switch up the background on this landing page to see what would happen. And color me surprised—these variants are seeing some pretty dramatically different conversion rates:

Pink background – 12.82%

Green background – 21.43%

White background – 21.74%

Black background – 31.71%

One might start to speculate from these conversion rates that darker backgrounds perform better than the lighter backgrounds. But hold your horses, that’s thinking about this as an A/B test again. Here’s why Jordan Dawe, Senior Data Science Developer at Unbounce, says you should be cautious about drawing any conclusions from the conversion rates…

Smart Traffic is not sending visitors randomly—it’s trying to get the best traffic to the best variant. So in this case, it doesn’t mean that a black background will always convert higher than a pink background. There are likely portions of the audience going to each color that would be doing worse on others. Here’s what you can conclude: the color black is preferred by a portion of the traffic that converts highly.

It’s hard to shake that mindset of looking for a “winner” and trying to figure out “why” something is working. But I was starting to accept that different portions of the audience would always respond better to different variants—this was just the first time I’d been able to use AI to automatically serve up the best version.

Making big (and small) changes to the headline

For the next group of variants, I switched up the H1 in both small and big ways to see what effect that would have on the conversion rate. In some cases, this meant just swapping a single adjective (e.g., “jaw-dropping” for “drool-worthy”). In other cases, I went with a completely new line of copy altogether.

Here’s how the variants stacked up against each other:

See 27 Sales-Ready Ecommerce Landing Pages in Our Ultimate Lookbook – 25.81%

See 27 Stunning Ecommerce Landing Pages in Our Ultimate Lookbook – 25.93%

Get Ready to See 27 Jaw-Dropping Ecommerce Landing Page Examples – 28.13%

Get Serious Inspo for Supercharging Your Ecomm Sales – 35%

See 27 Drool-Worthy Ecommerce Landing Pages in Our Ultimate Lookbook – 40%

Again, each variant yielded a different conversion rate. I wondered if I kept testing different variations of the headlines and found one that performed best, could I deactivate all the other headline variants and just go with the “best” one? 

Here’s how Floss Taylor, Data Analyst at Unbounce, responded…

Smart Traffic doesn’t have champion variants. You don’t pick one at the end like you would in an A/B test. Although one variant may appear to be performing poorly, there could be a subset of traffic that it’s ideal for. You’re better off leaving it on long-term so it can work its magic.

Trying out different page layouts and hierarchies

The last set of variants I created messed with the actual structure and hierarchy of the page. I wanted to see if moving things around (or removing sections entirely) would influence the conversion rate. Here’s a sample of some of the experiments…

Removing the Headline – 16.67%

Adding a Double CTA – 21.95%

Moving the Testimonial Up the Page – 27.27%

Nothing too surprising here. And because I had created so many variants, Smart Traffic was taking longer than usual in “Learning Mode” to start giving me a conversion lift. Here’s how Floss Taylor explains it…

Smart Traffic needs approximately 50 visitors to understand which traffic would perform well for each new variant. If you have 15 variants and ~100 visitors per month, you’re going to have a long learning period where Smart Traffic cannot make accurate recommendations. I’d suggest starting off with a lower number of variants, and only adding more once once you have sufficient traffic.

The “Strategic Marketer” Approach

So throwing spaghetti at the wall turned out to be… messy. (New parents beware.) For the SaaS optimization guide page, I wanted to be a bit more strategic. And I actually had a leg up for this one, because Anna Roginska, Growth Marketer at Unbounce, had already started with a Smart Traffic experiment on this page four months ago.

Anna had set up a test between two different variants. One had an image of the ecommerce lookbook as the hero graphic on the page, while the other used the image of conversion expert and author Talia Wolf. Anna says she decided on this second variant because of research she had seen on how photographs of people tend to convert better than products.

I put Talia up front because I knew from other tests I’ve run and research I’ve done. [Photographs of] people tend to convert better. I didn’t know if it would work better in this particular case, but I was able to set up a variant and use Smart Traffic to find out. And it just so happens that the algorithm started sending way more traffic to this variant.

Anna seemed to be onto something, too: her variant was converting at nearly double the rate for a large traffic subset. And while I now know we can’t consider this a “champion” variant like in an A/B test and learn from the results, we could iterate based on her design to target new audience segments.

I created a simple spreadsheet to develop my gameplan. The goal was to create five new versions of the page that would appeal to different visitors based on their attributes:

Reducing the word count to target mobile and “ready to download” visitors

For inspiration on my first variant, I consulted the 2020 Conversion Benchmark Report. The machine learning insights here suggested that SaaS landing pages with lower word counts and easier-to-read copy tend to perform better than their long-winded counterparts.

And while the original version of our download page was easy enough to read, it did have a long, wordy intro with a lot of extra detail. Could I increase our conversion rate for a portion of our audience if just focused on the bare essentials? I was ready to kill some darlings to find out…

Original Long-Form Version – 10%

Low Word Count Version – 21.43%

It seems there’s a segment of our traffic coming to this page who didn’t need to see all that extra info before they decided to fill out the form. I speculated that this variant might also perform better on mobile devices since it would be faster-loading and easier to scroll through. Interesting!

Switching the headline to target different audience segments

Next, I created an additional four page variants to speak to the different pain points and reasons our audience might want to download the guide. (Actually, this is something Talia herself recommends you do in the SaaS optimization guide.) I switched up the headline copy here, as well as some of the supporting text underneath to match. After a month, here’s what the conversion rates look like:

Get Talia’s Guide to Optimize – 19.05%

You Can’t Just Build – 23.08%

Optimization is a Lot of Work – 24%

Not Sure How to Optimize? – 33.33%

Each variant is serving a different segment of the audience, by speaking to the particular reason they want to download the guide most (e.g., maybe they don’t have the time to optimize, or maybe they don’t know how to get started). As Smart Traffic learns more about which variants perform best for which audience segments, we become that much more likely to score a conversion.

What I Learned Running These Smart Traffic Experiments

Smart Traffic absolutely makes optimization easier and faster for marketers who previously never had the time (or experience) to run A/B tests. It took me under two hours to set up and launch these experiments, and we’re already seeing some pretty impressive results just over a month later.

While the ecommerce lookbook page is still optimizing, the SaaS ebook page is showing a 12% lift in conversions compared to evenly splitting traffic among all these variants. And this is after only a month—the algorithm will keep improving to get us even better results over time. (Like a fine wine, or that suspiciously old cheese in my fridge.)

At the same time, I did walk away with a few important lessons learned. If you’re planning to use Smart Traffic to optimize your landing pages, here are some things to keep in mind before you get started:

There are no champion variants – Unlike traditional A/B testing, you won’t be able to point to one landing page variant at the end of your test and call it a winner. The machine learning algorithm automatically routes audiences differently based on their individual attributes, which means you have to be cautious when you’re analyzing the results.

The more variants you create, the longer you’ll wait – While it can be tempting to throw spaghetti at the wall and create dozens of variants for your landing page, this means you’ll also have to wait longer to see what sticks. Try starting out with three to five variations and take a more strategic approach based on research in your industry. (The 2020 Conversion Benchmark Report is a great place to start for some ideas.)

It’s (usually) better to leave low-converting variants active – Because Smart Traffic learns over time and continually improves, you’re typically better off leaving your variants active—even if their conversion rates aren’t all that impressive. The AI takes the risk out of optimization by automatically sending visitors to the page that suits them best. If you turn off variants, you may lose out on some of those conversions altogether.

It can be a lot of fun to get creative with the different page elements and try out new ideas. You just might want to come up with a bit of a plan first and be strategic with your approach. Still, it’s better to experiment and optimize with Smart Traffic (even if you make some mistakes along the way) than to never optimize at all.

(And in case you were worried, yep—I managed to get my to-do list done, too. )

[Experiment] How AI is Changing the Way We Optimize at Unbounce published first on https://nickpontemrktg.wordpress.com/

[reviewandbonuss]

[Experiment] How AI is Changing the Way We Optimize at Unbounce

When I first encountered A/B testing, I immediately wanted to become the type of marketer who tested everything. The idea sounded fun to me. Like being a mad scientist running experiments to prove when my work was actually “working.”

Turns out though, there’s always a long list of other things to do first… blog posts to write, campaigns to launch, and don’t get me started on the meetings! I’m not alone in this, either. A lot of marketers are just too darned busy to follow up and optimize the stuff they’ve already shipped. According to HubSpot, only 17% of marketers use landing page A/B tests to improve conversion rates.

A small glimpse of my ever-growing to-do list. Ain’t nobody got time for A/B tests.

Sure, running a split test with one or two variants always sounds easy enough. But once you take a closer look at the process, you realize just how complex it can actually be. You need to make sure you have… 

The right duration and sample size.

Taken into account any external factors or validity threats.

Learned how to interpret the results correctly, too.

But—while there will always be a time and place for A/B testing—there’s also now an easier and faster way for marketers to optimize. Smart Traffic is a new Unbounce tool that uses the power of AI and machine learning to get you more conversions. Every day, more marketers are using Smart Traffic to “automagically” optimize their landing pages. But whenever we launch anything new, we like to test it out for ourselves to learn alongside you (and keep you up to speed on what to try next).

Here’s what I learned after taking Smart Traffic for a test drive myself…

Shifting Your Mindset to Optimize with AI

I know many marketers are (perhaps) skeptical when it comes to promises of machine learning, artificial intelligence, or magical “easy” buttons that get them better results. But AI is all around us and it’s already changing the way we do marketing. Landing page optimization is just one more area of the job where you no longer need to do everything yourself manually.

Smart Traffic augments your marketing skills and automatically sends visitors to the landing page variant where they’re most likely to convert (based on how similar page visitors have converted before). It makes routing decisions faster than any human ever could (thank you, AI magic), and “learns” which page variant is a perfect match for each different visitor. This ultimately means no more “champion” variants. Instead, you’re free to create multiple different pages to appeal to different groups of visitors and run ‘em all at once.

This is very different from A/B testing and honestly—it can feel kinda weird at first. You’ve got to trust in the machine learning to figure out what works best and what doesn’t. Data scientists call this the “black box” problem: data goes in, decisions come out, but you never really get the full understanding of what happened in between. 

Smart Traffic is fundamentally different from A/B Testing. You can learn more about how it works here.

For marketers using Smart Traffic, this means shifting your mindset and starting to think about optimization differently. Unlike A/B testing, you’re not looking for those “aha” moments to apply to your next campaign, or a one-size-fits-all “winning” variant. Instead, you’re looking to discover what works best for different subsets of your audience. This gives you unlimited creativity to try out new marketing ideas, makes it easier and less risky for you to optimize, and gives you an average conversion lift of 30% compared to splitting the traffic evenly across multiple variants. (Woah.)

My Experiment with Smart Traffic

I know all this because I recently experimented with variant creation myself to better understand this new AI optimization mindset. I created 15 variants across two separate landing pages using Smart Traffic to discover…

How easy is it to optimize with an AI-powered optimization tool?

Could I quickly set up the tests in Unbounce while still getting those other to-do’s done?

What kind of conversion lift would I see from just a few hours invested?

I took a little bit of my inspiration from Ms. Frizzle on the Magic School Bus. No, not her haircut, her catchphrase: “Take chances, make mistakes, get messy!”

Oh, so that’s where she got all her good ideas.

Creating 15 Variants in Under Two Hours

The beauty of Smart Traffic is there are no limits to how many variants you can create and it automatically starts optimizing in as few as 50 visits. Just hit the “optimize” button and you’re off to the races. Could it really be that simple?

My guinea pigs for this experiment would be two recent campaigns our marketing team had worked on: the ecommerce lookbook and the SaaS optimization guide. The team had created both of these ebook download pages in Unbounce, but we hadn’t been able to return to them and optimize very much in the months since we published.

The original landing pages would serve as my control variants. (Click to see the full pages.)

Before starting, I consulted with Anna Roginska, Growth Marketer at Unbounce, to get her input on how I should create my variants. She advised:

You can take the ‘spaghetti at the wall’ approach, where you create a bunch of variants and just leave them to Smart Traffic to see what happens. It’s that ‘set it and forget it’ mentality. That’s interesting, but when you look at a bowl of spaghetti… There’s a lot of noodles in there. You won’t necessarily get to explain why something is working or not working.

The other approach is to be more strategic and focused. I think there’s a huge benefit to going in with a plan. Create maybe only five variants and give them each a specific purpose. Then, you can see how they perform and create new iterations for different portions of the audience.

I had two landing pages to work with, so I thought I’d give both approaches a try. But with only a few hours scheduled in my calendar to complete all these variants, I needed to move fast.

The “Spaghetti at the Wall” Approach to Variant Creation

On the ecommerce lookbook page, I wanted to spend less time planning and more time creating. Whereas in A/B testing you need a proper test hypothesis and a careful plan for each variant, Smart Traffic lets you get creative and try out new ideas on the fly. Your variants don’t have to be perfect—they just need to be different enough to appeal to new audience segments.

This meant I didn’t have to make any hard or fast choices about which one element to “test” on the landing page. I could create 15 different variants that varied wildly from one another. Some used different colors, some had different headlines, some completely changed up the layout of the page.

This is something you just can’t do in a traditional A/B test where you’re looking to find a “winner” and understand why it “wins.” I had to remind myself I wasn’t looking for that one variant to rule them all (or for that one variant to bring them all and in the darkness bind them). I was looking to increase the chance of conversion for every single visitor. Certain pages were going to work better for certain audiences, and that was totally fine.

I wondered, though: how many variants would be too many? Would the machine learning recognize that some of these were not anything special and just stop sending traffic to them? And how long would it take to get results? With these questions in mind, I checked back on my first set of tests one month later…

Changing up the background color

Usually, color A/B tests are pretty much a waste of time. You need a lot of data to get accurate results, and most marketers don’t actually end up learning anything useful in the end. (Because color by itself means nothing, it always depends on the context of the page.)

That being said, we know there is some legitimate color theory and certain audience segments respond better to certain colors than others. So I thought it might be interesting to switch up the background on this landing page to see what would happen. And color me surprised—these variants are seeing some pretty dramatically different conversion rates:

Pink background – 12.82%

Green background – 21.43%

White background – 21.74%

Black background – 31.71%

One might start to speculate from these conversion rates that darker backgrounds perform better than the lighter backgrounds. But hold your horses, that’s thinking about this as an A/B test again. Here’s why Jordan Dawe, Senior Data Science Developer at Unbounce, says you should be cautious about drawing any conclusions from the conversion rates…

Smart Traffic is not sending visitors randomly—it’s trying to get the best traffic to the best variant. So in this case, it doesn’t mean that a black background will always convert higher than a pink background. There are likely portions of the audience going to each color that would be doing worse on others. Here’s what you can conclude: the color black is preferred by a portion of the traffic that converts highly.

It’s hard to shake that mindset of looking for a “winner” and trying to figure out “why” something is working. But I was starting to accept that different portions of the audience would always respond better to different variants—this was just the first time I’d been able to use AI to automatically serve up the best version.

Making big (and small) changes to the headline

For the next group of variants, I switched up the H1 in both small and big ways to see what effect that would have on the conversion rate. In some cases, this meant just swapping a single adjective (e.g., “jaw-dropping” for “drool-worthy”). In other cases, I went with a completely new line of copy altogether.

Here’s how the variants stacked up against each other:

See 27 Sales-Ready Ecommerce Landing Pages in Our Ultimate Lookbook – 25.81%

See 27 Stunning Ecommerce Landing Pages in Our Ultimate Lookbook – 25.93%

Get Ready to See 27 Jaw-Dropping Ecommerce Landing Page Examples – 28.13%

Get Serious Inspo for Supercharging Your Ecomm Sales – 35%

See 27 Drool-Worthy Ecommerce Landing Pages in Our Ultimate Lookbook – 40%

Again, each variant yielded a different conversion rate. I wondered if I kept testing different variations of the headlines and found one that performed best, could I deactivate all the other headline variants and just go with the “best” one? 

Here’s how Floss Taylor, Data Analyst at Unbounce, responded…

Smart Traffic doesn’t have champion variants. You don’t pick one at the end like you would in an A/B test. Although one variant may appear to be performing poorly, there could be a subset of traffic that it’s ideal for. You’re better off leaving it on long-term so it can work its magic.

Trying out different page layouts and hierarchies

The last set of variants I created messed with the actual structure and hierarchy of the page. I wanted to see if moving things around (or removing sections entirely) would influence the conversion rate. Here’s a sample of some of the experiments…

Removing the Headline – 16.67%

Adding a Double CTA – 21.95%

Moving the Testimonial Up the Page – 27.27%

Nothing too surprising here. And because I had created so many variants, Smart Traffic was taking longer than usual in “Learning Mode” to start giving me a conversion lift. Here’s how Floss Taylor explains it…

Smart Traffic needs approximately 50 visitors to understand which traffic would perform well for each new variant. If you have 15 variants and ~100 visitors per month, you’re going to have a long learning period where Smart Traffic cannot make accurate recommendations. I’d suggest starting off with a lower number of variants, and only adding more once once you have sufficient traffic.

The “Strategic Marketer” Approach

So throwing spaghetti at the wall turned out to be… messy. (New parents beware.) For the SaaS optimization guide page, I wanted to be a bit more strategic. And I actually had a leg up for this one, because Anna Roginska, Growth Marketer at Unbounce, had already started with a Smart Traffic experiment on this page four months ago.

Anna had set up a test between two different variants. One had an image of the ecommerce lookbook as the hero graphic on the page, while the other used the image of conversion expert and author Talia Wolf. Anna says she decided on this second variant because of research she had seen on how photographs of people tend to convert better than products.

I put Talia up front because I knew from other tests I’ve run and research I’ve done. [Photographs of] people tend to convert better. I didn’t know if it would work better in this particular case, but I was able to set up a variant and use Smart Traffic to find out. And it just so happens that the algorithm started sending way more traffic to this variant.

Anna seemed to be onto something, too: her variant was converting at nearly double the rate for a large traffic subset. And while I now know we can’t consider this a “champion” variant like in an A/B test and learn from the results, we could iterate based on her design to target new audience segments.

I created a simple spreadsheet to develop my gameplan. The goal was to create five new versions of the page that would appeal to different visitors based on their attributes:

Reducing the word count to target mobile and “ready to download” visitors

For inspiration on my first variant, I consulted the 2020 Conversion Benchmark Report. The machine learning insights here suggested that SaaS landing pages with lower word counts and easier-to-read copy tend to perform better than their long-winded counterparts.

And while the original version of our download page was easy enough to read, it did have a long, wordy intro with a lot of extra detail. Could I increase our conversion rate for a portion of our audience if just focused on the bare essentials? I was ready to kill some darlings to find out…

Original Long-Form Version – 10%

Low Word Count Version – 21.43%

It seems there’s a segment of our traffic coming to this page who didn’t need to see all that extra info before they decided to fill out the form. I speculated that this variant might also perform better on mobile devices since it would be faster-loading and easier to scroll through. Interesting!

Switching the headline to target different audience segments

Next, I created an additional four page variants to speak to the different pain points and reasons our audience might want to download the guide. (Actually, this is something Talia herself recommends you do in the SaaS optimization guide.) I switched up the headline copy here, as well as some of the supporting text underneath to match. After a month, here’s what the conversion rates look like:

Get Talia’s Guide to Optimize – 19.05%

You Can’t Just Build – 23.08%

Optimization is a Lot of Work – 24%

Not Sure How to Optimize? – 33.33%

Each variant is serving a different segment of the audience, by speaking to the particular reason they want to download the guide most (e.g., maybe they don’t have the time to optimize, or maybe they don’t know how to get started). As Smart Traffic learns more about which variants perform best for which audience segments, we become that much more likely to score a conversion.

What I Learned Running These Smart Traffic Experiments

Smart Traffic absolutely makes optimization easier and faster for marketers who previously never had the time (or experience) to run A/B tests. It took me under two hours to set up and launch these experiments, and we’re already seeing some pretty impressive results just over a month later.

While the ecommerce lookbook page is still optimizing, the SaaS ebook page is showing a 12% lift in conversions compared to evenly splitting traffic among all these variants. And this is after only a month—the algorithm will keep improving to get us even better results over time. (Like a fine wine, or that suspiciously old cheese in my fridge.)

At the same time, I did walk away with a few important lessons learned. If you’re planning to use Smart Traffic to optimize your landing pages, here are some things to keep in mind before you get started:

There are no champion variants – Unlike traditional A/B testing, you won’t be able to point to one landing page variant at the end of your test and call it a winner. The machine learning algorithm automatically routes audiences differently based on their individual attributes, which means you have to be cautious when you’re analyzing the results.

The more variants you create, the longer you’ll wait – While it can be tempting to throw spaghetti at the wall and create dozens of variants for your landing page, this means you’ll also have to wait longer to see what sticks. Try starting out with three to five variations and take a more strategic approach based on research in your industry. (The 2020 Conversion Benchmark Report is a great place to start for some ideas.)

It’s (usually) better to leave low-converting variants active – Because Smart Traffic learns over time and continually improves, you’re typically better off leaving your variants active—even if their conversion rates aren’t all that impressive. The AI takes the risk out of optimization by automatically sending visitors to the page that suits them best. If you turn off variants, you may lose out on some of those conversions altogether.

It can be a lot of fun to get creative with the different page elements and try out new ideas. You just might want to come up with a bit of a plan first and be strategic with your approach. Still, it’s better to experiment and optimize with Smart Traffic (even if you make some mistakes along the way) than to never optimize at all.

(And in case you were worried, yep—I managed to get my to-do list done, too. )

https://unbounce.com/marketing-ai/smart-traffic-experiments/

[wishi-wasbetter]

here i am again

in a way, it’s good that nobody here knows me or what my account used to be. nobody can see that not only did i fail, i went so badly wrong that i’m at the highest i’ve ever been.

i used to have a little side blog like this and write about my struggles, but that was before i even knew what struggle was. 

so, i’m going to get a lot off my chest right now, write what’s been happening, where i was before and where i’m at now.

i’m fat, let’s not avoid saying it. i’m not a girl thats 60kg and saying she’s fat because she wants to be 54. i’m more than double that. i’m 127kg today, although the precise amount is debatable because my scale can’t seem to decide exactly (i weigh myself 3 times to make sure, and it’s varying wildly between each, so i might need a new scale).

my previous highest weight was 99kg- i saw that number and i said, i will never get into triple digits. i fasted and restricted until i was down to 79. i entered a relationship, and became comfortable at 85. at this point, we went to europe together (somewhere i visit every time i can because i want to live there so bad) and i felt probably the happiest of my life. i was not skinny, no, but my body was capable, i fit into size 14 clothes so i could shop anywhere really, and i was usually able to overlook my tummy and thighs. photos from that time make me look so normal. i had a sharp jaw, i was not somebody to look at and say “oh my god she’s so fat”, i was just regular and content.

then my boyfriend and i moved in together, and for some reason i started binging when he wasn’t home. i’d wait until he left for work, and then a little longer to give him time to get on the train, and i’d leave immediately for the store. i’d buy food and eat it all before he got home, putting my rubbish in a bin outside. i went from 85 to 95, started feeling awful again. i was depressed, and that started my binging but binging also made it worse, it was a cycle. then my boyfriend left me in a very traumatic and sudden way, and this was the knock that held me down. from 95 to 109, to 112, to 119, to 125, to 128. i told myself 5 years ago i’d never see triple digits, and now i am well into those figures. i have to lose so much weight just to get back to my previous high weight, the last place i was so unhappy i had to change.

what is it about food, about eating, that makes me so out of control? even now, i can last a week just having one meal a day and start to finally feel like i am getting things under control, finally changing, finally going to get my life back, but then for some reason without thought i’ll binge. i dont think, i just do.

i need this to stand as record of where i am. i have ruined my life. i was happy, and i ruined it. now, my calves burn and ache when i walk just 3,000 steps. my whole body hurts. i have no energy, as soon as i wake up i want to go back to sleep. i have to contort to do up my shoes sometimes. regular stockings don’t fit me. i am unable to fit in a single thing i used to love, now i have 5 oversized items i wear and i can’t buy anything more because first, i hate everything plus sized, and second, buying more would be allowing myself to stay this weight.

i stay at home all day- i don’t want to be seen. my ex lives right near me and sometimes i see him, and have to try my hardest to avoid him, but he’s already now seen how fat i am now. i’m so ashamed. i just try to stay inside because i don’t want to be seen. i wear only black, i don’t dress up, i dyed my hair back to a normal colour because i don’t want anyone to look at me now. i have no sharp jaw, i have a real double chin, not just one that’s there when i look down, it’s now always there. stretch marks across my whole torso. on my upper arms. neck too fat to wear some necklaces now. i’ve ruined myself. maybe one day i can lose this weight but i wont be back to my own body, i can never have that again.

i’ve been to europe only once since i got fat. i found it easier to restrict, and i had so much reason to go out. i didnt want to be seen by anyone but i had to be out and exploring, so i did it. walking 17k-23k every single day, having very normal and healthy amounts to eat, i lost 10kg in the month i was there, i got down to 116. and then coming back here to my reality, i gained it all back so fast. here, there feels like no reason to go out, to move, to hope for something, to try.

and a year and a half after my break up, i’m still single. i have dated guys but it never ends well. in italy, i matched with a guy who took me on his vespa and then within 30 minutes made an excuse to drop me back home, then unmatched me straight away. i know this was because of my weight, know he had expected something better. since then, i can’t even bring myself to meet anyone. can’t handle that burning shame of rejection. i match with guys all the time but i can’t ever make myself agree to meeting up, i dont ever want to see disgust in somebody’s eyes again.

so here we go, we’re starting again. 300cal today so far, aiming for an 800cal day. tomorrow i’m buying a fitbit and i’m going to look for places i can walk that wont feel depressing and wont be near my home.

i’m 127 today, and my first goal is 119 by valentines day. that’s just over two weeks to lose 8kg which is difficult but it’s possible. if i’m doing what i am meant to do, i can make it happen. just by fasting for 4 days i can lose 6 of those kg anyway.

second goal is under 100 by may 11. losertown says i could be 97 by then if i eat 500 cal a day and do light exercise 1-3 times a week. i calculated and the most i could eat per day is 700cal to be 99, but i want to make extra sure i’m well under 100 so i’ll do 500.

third goal is back to 85, where i felt content. i don’t know what date i should put on this one, i think 27th july. that feels like a long time to be able to do just 15kg, so maybe by then i can be raising my calories slightly more to let it take just a little longer.

final goal is maybe around 65-70, where i think i will feel finally good about myself. i am pretty tall, so my goal should be a little higher than others, but we’ll see i suppose when i get there. i hope to god that time is before the end of this year, because i can’t stand another year of failure, of going backwards, of letting myself fester in this little self-dug hole that prevents me from having any life, any present or future and only being able to think of the past.

[ourhealthyfoodblog-blog]

New Post has been published on Healthy Food and Remedies

New Post has been published on http://healthyfoodandremedies.com/2017/03/21/leveling-attractive-5-easy-steps/

Leveling Up: How To Be More Attractive In 5 Easy Steps

One of the ongoing debates that crops up when it comes to dating advice for men is: “How important are men’s looks?” Just check the comments section of this blog; whenever I talk about what women find attractive in men, people will inevitably show up and insist that all of this is bullshit and that women are interested in tall dudes with rippling washboard abs, blindingly white teeth, pecs you could bounce rocks off of, an Audi R8 and a 7 figure bank account.

Which is why Dwayne Johnson has been People’s Sexiest Man Alive for seven years running…

Others will insist that looks don’t matter at all and that it’s strictly a matter of one’s character.

So here’s the cold hard truth: good looks matter. But they also don’t.

Confused? It’s understandable. The issue comes down to the differences between how men and women define “attractiveness”. Men tend to have a more uniform definition of what they consider attractive while women’s definitions tend to have more variability. Men tend to assume that women view men with the same metrics that men view women – that is, that women will put greater importance on facial symmetry, height, body fat percentages, penis size and muscle tone.

In reality, being attractive to women is a combination of a host of factors, coming together to build a holistic version of desirability that’s based on more than just whether or not one has Scandinavian cheekbones and piercing blue eyes.

Good looks in men certainly help when it comes to attraction; nobody is denying that. But there’s a difference between being good looking and being attractive. And there are many ways for a man to make himself more attractive.

The Difference Between Good Looks and Attractiveness

There’s no question that good looks help in life. Humans are psychologically predisposed to be more positively inclined toward people who are physically attractive; a cognitive bias known as the “halo effect” influences people’s judgements and impressions about a person based purely on their physical appearance. A person who is blessed with good looks will frequently have a leg up in the world.

However: The definition of what women consider to be “good looking” varies wildly. Men tend to think that all women go for Chris Hemsworth’s god-like build and leonine mane of hair, when women may be far more likely to scream for Joseph Gordon Levitt’s more wiry frame, Chiwetel Ejiofor’s gap-tooth smile or Matt Smith’s unique fivehead.

I mean, some women dig the Easter Island Moai look, y’know?

A person can be good looking… but still be unattractive and have little success with women. A man can be far less than model-gorgeous and still be incredibly attractive to women; in fact, one of the most popular, sex-gettingist men I have known is short and fat, yet attracts women like cheese attracts mice.

The men who are most invested in the idea that women only like guys who look like X often need to believe that attraction is immutable; it takes the pressure off of them to be responsible for their own successes – or lack thereof. It allows them to put the blame on others – on women who have “unfair” standards, on the media for promoting certain looks, on their own genes. After all, short of painful surgeries, there’s not much a man can do about the shape of his face or his height.

Attractiveness, however, is about more than facial symmetry and height. It’s about how a man presents himself – the way he talks,  the way he dresses and his attitude… and it’s surprisingly easy to sabotage one’s own attractiveness by accident.

Step One: Embrace Proper Grooming

This is a no-excuses step. There’s more to grooming and self-care than the usual male ritual of “a couple of spritz under the pits and out the door you go”… if you even get that far.

You wouldn’t think that much of this would be necessary… until you’ve spent some time at a convention; there’s a reason why nerds are associated with stench. If a woman gags when gets within two feet of you… well, you’re not going to get anywhere with her, let’s just put it that way.

Absolute minimum of grooming means brushing your teeth, flossing, mouth wash and a decent deodorant. The 99 cent drugstore special is not going to help you here and most of them are going to leave white residue on your clothes. You’re better off to shell out for something at the level of Anthony’s Logistics for Men than Speed-Stick.

Also: no Axe anything. Ever.

However, most men stop here when it comes to personal grooming. This is a mistake; part of grooming means taking care of your face and skin. After all, 99% of communication means being face to face with people – why wouldn’t you want to keep up the maintenance of the one area that everybody is going to be looking at?

It’s time to embrace proper skin-care. Many men will avoid this for fear of being too “metro” (read: gay) and as a result… they look terrible. Their skin looks old and dull and detracts from their natural looks. Proper skin care will make you look younger, more alert and – importantly – more attractive. Start with going beyond washing your face with bar soap, which will actually dry your skin and make things worse. You want a facial cleanser – preferably one with 2% salicylic acid – in the morning to help wash away dirt, debris and oils that lead to clogged pores and zits.

OH GOD HYGIENE BURNS IT BURNS US PRECIOUSSSSS!

Follow this up with a moisturizer with sun-screen. Sun exposure ages your skin and leaves you at risk for skin cancer; this is why you need the sunscreen. Meanwhile, the moisturizer keeps your skin firm and smooth, minimizes fine lines, and preserves skin’s elasticity.

At least once a week, use an exfoliating scrub. Think of it as sanding away the top layer of paint on an old house; you’re getting rid of the old, damaged, and dead skin and letting your real face shine through.

Also: learn to corral your unwanted hair. Get a decent pair of tweezers and attack your eyebrows and any ear and nose hair. Keeping bushy eyebrows under control (especially if you tend towards a unibrow) will work wonders for improving your look and confidence, and you don’t want anyone getting in close to notice stray nose or ear hairs.

(This, I might add, gets much more important the older you get; when you start losing hair on your head, you start gaining it everywhere else.)

While I’m at it: take care of your damn hands. You don’t have to go out and get a mani/pedi (but I do recommend it) but you want to keep your nails neatly trimmed (not bitten) and filed with care to avoid points or raggedy edges. Women definitely notice your hands… and there are many (ahem) performance reasons why you will want to keep your nails short and clean.

Step Two: Get a Haircut.

Cold hard truth: women hate your hair. Sorry.

Most men have absolutely no idea what to do with their hair. They go to the barber or Supercuts, get the exact same haircut over and over again, and never stop to think just how much a decent hair cut can change how they look. There’s more to a haircut than just trimming off a couple of inches here and there; a proper hair cut can completely transform your face, bring balance to your features and help frame your personality.

Also: No ponytails. Very few men can pull off long hair and unless you are ripcord, rockstar thin, that includes you.

Some of us learned this the hard way.

This means you need to get a decent hair cut.

Find a good stylist. Do not go to SuperCuts or that place in the mall; you want a proper salon or barbershop and that means being willing to pay. Sorry, but this is definitely one of the areas where you get what you pay for. It can be hard to find a new barber or stylist (I hate it, personally) because it can be hard to find a good one, but it’s vitally important. Word of mouth is the best way to find one, but Yelp and Google Reviews can help lead you in the right direction.

Bring a photo. Yup, it’s a chick move, but it helps you communicate exactly what you want to your barber instead of trying to convince him or her to read your mind. Just be willing to be flexible; a good barber will be taking your head and face shape, hair thickness and texture into account and not everybody is going to be able to pull off the same style. If you have curly hair, you’re going to have to learn how to work with it. If you have thinning hair, you need to learn to embrace it and just start cutting things short.

Use some product. Different hair products are suited to different hair styles – wax works better for thicker, coarser hair while clay or pomade works better for thinner or silkier hair. A little bit of hair product can turn a sloppy look into something nice.

While you’re at it: start attacking your facial hair. Some people can pull off facial hair. Some can’t. If you have patches of bare skin in your beard, you need to just accept that you may not be one of them; a patchy, scraggly beard makes you look more like Chester The Molester than the God of Testosterone you think you are.

That being said, a nicely trimmed1 beard can help strengthen and add definition to an otherwise weak jawline. Keep it short and neat and for fuck’s sake don’t let it grow into neckbeard territory. Shave your neck; your beard should stop just under your jaw line – not so close that you look overly groomed but not so far that you look like you spend all your time in your mother’s basement running 25 man raids in World of Warcraft.

 Step Three: Your Clothes Need To Fit

There is nothing that drives me crazier than people who wear clothes that don’t fit properly.

Most men out there do not wear clothes that actually fit them. Many times, it’s that they are so simply out of touch with how clothes are meant to fit; they dress for comfort, under the assumption that clothes are supposed to be roomy. Others are insecure about their bodies and wear larger clothes in an attempt to disguise it.

This never works. In fact, wearing clothes that are too large will serve to draw attention to the fact that you’re trying to camouflage a perceived flaw.

(The less said about “relaxed fit” anything the better.)

At best, wearing clothes that don’t fit looks sloppy and immature, making even the most expensive, stylish clothes look like something you picked up from the Lost and Found. At worst, you look like a kid trying to play dress-up in his daddy’s clothes.

PLEASE stop doing this.

Here’s what you need to know:

A shirt’s shoulder seam should sit at your shoulder joint. If it goes any further, it’s too big. Cuffs on a dress shirt should not reach past your wrist.

A dress shirt’s collar should be loose enough so that you can slip two fingers into the neck without effort.

Blazers, jackets, and sports coats should also have shoulder seams that sit at the shoulder joint. The sleeves should stop around 3/4 of an inch from the back of your hand, allowing just a little cuff to show.

Pants are meant to sit at your natural waist, approximately three finger-widths below your navel. If your pants sag below your waist without a belt holding them up, they’re too big.

Jeans should feel snug; they’ll loosen up as you wear them, so you want a pair that fits slightly tighter in the waist, thighs and seat than you’re used to.

The bottom of your pants leg should sit just at your shoes. Some dress pants will have what is known as a “break”, where the pants crease into a natural fold from resting on the top of the shoes. A “medium” break is traditional – a shallow crease with the back of the pants coming down to midway between the top of the back of the shoe and the sole. A full break is more daring as it creates a very deep crease and brings the back of the pants leg to just above the sole of the shoe. No break is considered to be more retro – think Mad Men – and is often a feature of tailored Italian suits. Jeans should have a very slight break. No pants should have more than one crease; if they do, they are too large.

If you’re the sort of person who has a hard time finding clothes that fit, then a tailor is absolutely your best friend. A skilled tailor can make clothes look absolutely amazing on you. This is why so many celebrities look like a million bucks even when they’ve thrown whatever shit they have to go to the grocery store: they have everything tailored, including t-shirts and jeans. Find clothes that fit over your widest, hardest-to-size feature2 and have the rest adjusted to fit. It costs less than you’d think; just factor the price of tailoring into the cost of the clothing.

The simple act of switching to clothes that fit you properly will completely transform your look and sillouette with minimal effort from you.

Step 4: Straighten Up

This is another simple tip that so many men seem to miss: sit up straight young man!

We’ve become a desk-bound, sedentary society and we’ve been paying the price for it ever since; we hunch over our desks and computers like monks illuminating manuscripts in drafty monasteries and it is absolutely ruining our backs. Good posture can make a night-and-day difference in your appearance. Straightening out your posture will leave you looking taller, stronger and more confident… and you’ll feel infinitely better too.

No jokes here. You’d be amazed at how many back problems result from poor posture.

Look in the mirror, then turn to your side. Look at where your head and chin fall in relation to your chest and shoulders; you want a straight line from the crown of your head to your spine. Your ears, shoulders, arms, knees, and feet should all form a straight line, not hunching forward with a curved back and spine. It helps to imagine a string attached to the top of your head, directly above where your spine meets your skull, pulling you slightly upward. Use that imaginary string to lift yourself up, letting your arms dangle loosely from your side and leaving your knees slightly bent; you want a relaxed, at ease look, not military precision.

While you’re straightening up your back, look at how you’re holding your shoulders. You want to pull your shoulders back so that you have a straight line from the junction of your neck and shoulder to your deltoid; this is where you want to position your shoulders when you’re standing naturally. Years of slouching and computer use will have trained your shoulders to slope forward, so it will take a lot of concentration and practice to make this natural.

Your feet should be shoulder-width apart, with your weight evenly distributed and your toes pointing straight forward or at a slight outward angle.

Learning to adopt proper posture will help lengthen your spine, which will help you stand a little taller. A straight spine and your shoulders held back will also help you project confidence; when you hunch in on yourself, you’re tacitly telling the world that you’re afraid to take up space and you’re curling into a defensive position. Confident people stand up straight and aren’t afraid to take up space; having your arms dangle at your side will make you seem more at ease and add a swagger to your walk.

Incidentally, this is one more area where yoga is absolutely invaluable. Practicing yoga twice a week will make adopting good posture a habit and help build up the muscles you need to maintain it.

Step Five: Clean Up Your Diet

The food we eat is killing us.

We as Westerners eat too much fat, too much high-fructose corn syrup, far too much salt, and entirely too much caffeine… and we’re paying the price for it. The health cost is obvious – plenty of ink has been spilled about the obesity epidemic in this country – but it also is making you less attractive.

Don’t get me wrong: this isn’t about weight; this is about the way food affects the way you look and feel. You are literally what you eat and shitty food is going to make you look like shit – it screws up your skin, your hair and body… not to mention the effects of all that salt and processed food on your internal organs and circulatory system.

I’m not going to advocate any particular diet because, frankly, diets are like putting a bandage over an arterial hemorrhage. They’re a stop-gap solution at best and never last in the long term. Proper health comes from proper nutrition and that means a total lifestyle change, not just “going paleo” to fit into a new pair of jeans.

Now I’ll be the first to tell you: this is an area I struggle with. My addiction to Diet Dr Pepper is legendary and I will eat damn near anything if you deep fat fry it. But even minor changes can produce major results. Start simple and small and build up; trying to go cold-turkey is only going to ruin your efforts and sabotage any progress you make.

Here’s what you want to do:

Drink more water. Just upping your water intake will do amazing things for your skin. Cut out sodas entirely if at all possible, as well as most fruit juices; these are liquid calories, period. If you have to have fruit juice try to stick to freshly squeezed and organic; your morning Tropicana has more chemicals and added sugar than you realize. Diet sodas, by the way, aren’t any better. Aspertame is known to actually make you consume more calories; your body is convinced that it should be getting more calories and tries to make up the difference by tricking you into eating more elsewhere. Coffee and tea are… ok; odds are that you need to cut back on the caffeine as well so try to keep them to a minimum and as little milk and sugar as you can get away with.

Eat more fruits and vegetables. You almost certainly aren’t eating enough; however much you’re eating, you need to increase it. This is where most of your nutrition is going to come from, not to mention fiber that’s going to solve many of your (ahem) gastric problems. Wherever possible eat it fresh and organic – health claims aside (many of which are scientifically dubious at best) organic produce just tastes better. It’s night-and-day different.

If you’re like me, you just recoiled like a vampire from a cross.

Cut the hidden calories: fatty sauces, salad dressings and spreads. All of these are sources of bad fats that you often overlook when you’re considering trying to eat better. It doesn’t help to eat more broccoli if you’re going to drown it in ranch dressing first.

Stick to lean protein: chicken, lean cuts of beef, turkey, fish.

Avoid simple carbs – potatoes, white bread, sugar, white rice. Yes, you need carbs for energy, but these turn to glucose and from there to fat with absolutely no nutritional value to justify eating them. Complex carbs – sprouted grain breads, brown rice, sweet potatoes, green leafy veggies, legumes, apples, pears, mangos – have nutrients and fiber that offset the bump to your glucose levels and they’re far better for you.

Cut out processed foods entirely. If your dinner involves ingredients you can’t pronounce, never mind find on its own at the grocery store, you’re eating crap that should never be put in your body. This includes high-fructose corn syrup: that shit is in everything.

A healthier diet will make you  feel like a new man – you’ll have more energy, you’ll feel more positive, and your immune system will be boosted… and you’ll look better too.

The tricky secret of attraction is that it doesn’t take very much to make it happen. A couple of minor changes have a major impact that can turn your dating life around.

[itsjessicaisreal]

[Experiment] How AI is Changing the Way We Optimize at Unbounce

When I first encountered A/B testing, I immediately wanted to become the type of marketer who tested everything. The idea sounded fun to me. Like being a mad scientist running experiments to prove when my work was actually “working.”

Turns out though, there’s always a long list of other things to do first… blog posts to write, campaigns to launch, and don’t get me started on the meetings! I’m not alone in this, either. A lot of marketers are just too darned busy to follow up and optimize the stuff they’ve already shipped. According to HubSpot, only 17% of marketers use landing page A/B tests to improve conversion rates.

A small glimpse of my ever-growing to-do list. Ain’t nobody got time for A/B tests.

Sure, running a split test with one or two variants always sounds easy enough. But once you take a closer look at the process, you realize just how complex it can actually be. You need to make sure you have… 

The right duration and sample size.

Taken into account any external factors or validity threats.

Learned how to interpret the results correctly, too.

But—while there will always be a time and place for A/B testing—there’s also now an easier and faster way for marketers to optimize. Smart Traffic is a new Unbounce tool that uses the power of AI and machine learning to get you more conversions. Every day, more marketers are using Smart Traffic to “automagically” optimize their landing pages. But whenever we launch anything new, we like to test it out for ourselves to learn alongside you (and keep you up to speed on what to try next).

Here’s what I learned after taking Smart Traffic for a test drive myself…

Shifting Your Mindset to Optimize with AI

I know many marketers are (perhaps) skeptical when it comes to promises of machine learning, artificial intelligence, or magical “easy” buttons that get them better results. But AI is all around us and it’s already changing the way we do marketing. Landing page optimization is just one more area of the job where you no longer need to do everything yourself manually.

Smart Traffic augments your marketing skills and automatically sends visitors to the landing page variant where they’re most likely to convert (based on how similar page visitors have converted before). It makes routing decisions faster than any human ever could (thank you, AI magic), and “learns” which page variant is a perfect match for each different visitor. This ultimately means no more “champion” variants. Instead, you’re free to create multiple different pages to appeal to different groups of visitors and run ‘em all at once.

This is very different from A/B testing and honestly—it can feel kinda weird at first. You’ve got to trust in the machine learning to figure out what works best and what doesn’t. Data scientists call this the “black box” problem: data goes in, decisions come out, but you never really get the full understanding of what happened in between. 

Smart Traffic is fundamentally different from A/B Testing. You can learn more about how it works here.

For marketers using Smart Traffic, this means shifting your mindset and starting to think about optimization differently. Unlike A/B testing, you’re not looking for those “aha” moments to apply to your next campaign, or a one-size-fits-all “winning” variant. Instead, you’re looking to discover what works best for different subsets of your audience. This gives you unlimited creativity to try out new marketing ideas, makes it easier and less risky for you to optimize, and gives you an average conversion lift of 30% compared to splitting the traffic evenly across multiple variants. (Woah.)

My Experiment with Smart Traffic

I know all this because I recently experimented with variant creation myself to better understand this new AI optimization mindset. I created 15 variants across two separate landing pages using Smart Traffic to discover…

How easy is it to optimize with an AI-powered optimization tool?

Could I quickly set up the tests in Unbounce while still getting those other to-do’s done?

What kind of conversion lift would I see from just a few hours invested?

I took a little bit of my inspiration from Ms. Frizzle on the Magic School Bus. No, not her haircut, her catchphrase: “Take chances, make mistakes, get messy!”

Oh, so that’s where she got all her good ideas.

Creating 15 Variants in Under Two Hours

The beauty of Smart Traffic is there are no limits to how many variants you can create and it automatically starts optimizing in as few as 50 visits. Just hit the “optimize” button and you’re off to the races. Could it really be that simple?

My guinea pigs for this experiment would be two recent campaigns our marketing team had worked on: the ecommerce lookbook and the SaaS optimization guide. The team had created both of these ebook download pages in Unbounce, but we hadn’t been able to return to them and optimize very much in the months since we published.

The original landing pages would serve as my control variants. (Click to see the full pages.)

Before starting, I consulted with Anna Roginska, Growth Marketer at Unbounce, to get her input on how I should create my variants. She advised:

You can take the ‘spaghetti at the wall’ approach, where you create a bunch of variants and just leave them to Smart Traffic to see what happens. It’s that ‘set it and forget it’ mentality. That’s interesting, but when you look at a bowl of spaghetti… There’s a lot of noodles in there. You won’t necessarily get to explain why something is working or not working.

The other approach is to be more strategic and focused. I think there’s a huge benefit to going in with a plan. Create maybe only five variants and give them each a specific purpose. Then, you can see how they perform and create new iterations for different portions of the audience.

I had two landing pages to work with, so I thought I’d give both approaches a try. But with only a few hours scheduled in my calendar to complete all these variants, I needed to move fast.

The “Spaghetti at the Wall” Approach to Variant Creation

On the ecommerce lookbook page, I wanted to spend less time planning and more time creating. Whereas in A/B testing you need a proper test hypothesis and a careful plan for each variant, Smart Traffic lets you get creative and try out new ideas on the fly. Your variants don’t have to be perfect—they just need to be different enough to appeal to new audience segments.

This meant I didn’t have to make any hard or fast choices about which one element to “test” on the landing page. I could create 15 different variants that varied wildly from one another. Some used different colors, some had different headlines, some completely changed up the layout of the page.

This is something you just can’t do in a traditional A/B test where you’re looking to find a “winner” and understand why it “wins.” I had to remind myself I wasn’t looking for that one variant to rule them all (or for that one variant to bring them all and in the darkness bind them). I was looking to increase the chance of conversion for every single visitor. Certain pages were going to work better for certain audiences, and that was totally fine.

I wondered, though: how many variants would be too many? Would the machine learning recognize that some of these were not anything special and just stop sending traffic to them? And how long would it take to get results? With these questions in mind, I checked back on my first set of tests one month later…

Changing up the background color

Usually, color A/B tests are pretty much a waste of time. You need a lot of data to get accurate results, and most marketers don’t actually end up learning anything useful in the end. (Because color by itself means nothing, it always depends on the context of the page.)

That being said, we know there is some legitimate color theory and certain audience segments respond better to certain colors than others. So I thought it might be interesting to switch up the background on this landing page to see what would happen. And color me surprised—these variants are seeing some pretty dramatically different conversion rates:

Pink background – 12.82%

Green background – 21.43%

White background – 21.74%

Black background – 31.71%

One might start to speculate from these conversion rates that darker backgrounds perform better than the lighter backgrounds. But hold your horses, that’s thinking about this as an A/B test again. Here’s why Jordan Dawe, Senior Data Science Developer at Unbounce, says you should be cautious about drawing any conclusions from the conversion rates…

Smart Traffic is not sending visitors randomly—it’s trying to get the best traffic to the best variant. So in this case, it doesn’t mean that a black background will always convert higher than a pink background. There are likely portions of the audience going to each color that would be doing worse on others. Here’s what you can conclude: the color black is preferred by a portion of the traffic that converts highly.

It’s hard to shake that mindset of looking for a “winner” and trying to figure out “why” something is working. But I was starting to accept that different portions of the audience would always respond better to different variants—this was just the first time I’d been able to use AI to automatically serve up the best version.

Making big (and small) changes to the headline

For the next group of variants, I switched up the H1 in both small and big ways to see what effect that would have on the conversion rate. In some cases, this meant just swapping a single adjective (e.g., “jaw-dropping” for “drool-worthy”). In other cases, I went with a completely new line of copy altogether.

Here’s how the variants stacked up against each other:

See 27 Sales-Ready Ecommerce Landing Pages in Our Ultimate Lookbook – 25.81%

See 27 Stunning Ecommerce Landing Pages in Our Ultimate Lookbook – 25.93%

Get Ready to See 27 Jaw-Dropping Ecommerce Landing Page Examples – 28.13%

Get Serious Inspo for Supercharging Your Ecomm Sales – 35%

See 27 Drool-Worthy Ecommerce Landing Pages in Our Ultimate Lookbook – 40%

Again, each variant yielded a different conversion rate. I wondered if I kept testing different variations of the headlines and found one that performed best, could I deactivate all the other headline variants and just go with the “best” one? 

Here’s how Floss Taylor, Data Analyst at Unbounce, responded…

Smart Traffic doesn’t have champion variants. You don’t pick one at the end like you would in an A/B test. Although one variant may appear to be performing poorly, there could be a subset of traffic that it’s ideal for. You’re better off leaving it on long-term so it can work its magic.

Trying out different page layouts and hierarchies

The last set of variants I created messed with the actual structure and hierarchy of the page. I wanted to see if moving things around (or removing sections entirely) would influence the conversion rate. Here’s a sample of some of the experiments…

Removing the Headline – 16.67%

Adding a Double CTA – 21.95%

Moving the Testimonial Up the Page – 27.27%

Nothing too surprising here. And because I had created so many variants, Smart Traffic was taking longer than usual in “Learning Mode” to start giving me a conversion lift. Here’s how Floss Taylor explains it…

Smart Traffic needs approximately 50 visitors to understand which traffic would perform well for each new variant. If you have 15 variants and ~100 visitors per month, you’re going to have a long learning period where Smart Traffic cannot make accurate recommendations. I’d suggest starting off with a lower number of variants, and only adding more once you have sufficient traffic.

The “Strategic Marketer” Approach

So throwing spaghetti at the wall turned out to be… messy. (New parents beware.) For the SaaS optimization guide page, I wanted to be a bit more strategic. And I actually had a leg up for this one, because Anna Roginska, Growth Marketer at Unbounce, had already started with a Smart Traffic experiment on this page four months ago.

Anna had set up a test between two different variants. One had an image of the ecommerce lookbook as the hero graphic on the page, while the other used the image of conversion expert and author Talia Wolf. Anna says she decided on this second variant because of research she had seen on how photographs of people tend to convert better than products.

I put Talia up front because I knew from other tests I’ve run and research I’ve done. [Photographs of] people tend to convert better. I didn’t know if it would work better in this particular case, but I was able to set up a variant and use Smart Traffic to find out. And it just so happens that the algorithm started sending way more traffic to this variant.

Anna seemed to be onto something, too: her variant was converting at nearly double the rate for a large traffic subset. And while I now know we can’t consider this a “champion” variant like in an A/B test and learn from the results, we could iterate based on her design to target new audience segments.

I created a simple spreadsheet to develop my gameplan. The goal was to create five new versions of the page that would appeal to different visitors based on their attributes:

Reducing the word count to target mobile and “ready to download” visitors

For inspiration on my first variant, I consulted the 2020 Conversion Benchmark Report. The machine learning insights here suggested that SaaS landing pages with lower word counts and easier-to-read copy tend to perform better than their long-winded counterparts.

And while the original version of our download page was easy enough to read, it did have a long, wordy intro with a lot of extra detail. Could I increase our conversion rate for a portion of our audience if just focused on the bare essentials? I was ready to kill some darlings to find out…

Original Long-Form Version – 10%

Low Word Count Version – 21.43%

It seems there’s a segment of our traffic coming to this page who didn’t need to see all that extra info before they decided to fill out the form. I speculated that this variant might also perform better on mobile devices since it would be faster-loading and easier to scroll through. Interesting!

Switching the headline to target different audience segments

Next, I created an additional four page variants to speak to the different pain points and reasons our audience might want to download the guide. (Actually, this is something Talia herself recommends you do in the SaaS optimization guide.) I switched up the headline copy here, as well as some of the supporting text underneath to match. After a month, here’s what the conversion rates look like:

Get Talia’s Guide to Optimize – 19.05%

You Can’t Just Build – 23.08%

Optimization is a Lot of Work – 24%

Not Sure How to Optimize? – 33.33%

Each variant is serving a different segment of the audience, by speaking to the particular reason they want to download the guide most (e.g., maybe they don’t have the time to optimize, or maybe they don’t know how to get started). As Smart Traffic learns more about which variants perform best for which audience segments, we become that much more likely to score a conversion.

What I Learned Running These Smart Traffic Experiments

Smart Traffic absolutely makes optimization easier and faster for marketers who previously never had the time (or experience) to run A/B tests. It took me under two hours to set up and launch these experiments, and we’re already seeing some pretty impressive results just over a month later.

While the ecommerce lookbook page is still optimizing, the SaaS ebook page is showing a 12% lift in conversions compared to evenly splitting traffic among all these variants. And this is after only a month—the algorithm will keep improving to get us even better results over time. (Like a fine wine, or that suspiciously old cheese in my fridge.)

At the same time, I did walk away with a few important lessons learned. If you’re planning to use Smart Traffic to optimize your landing pages, here are some things to keep in mind before you get started:

There are no champion variants – Unlike traditional A/B testing, you won’t be able to point to one landing page variant at the end of your test and call it a winner. The machine learning algorithm automatically routes audiences differently based on their individual attributes, which means you have to be cautious when you’re analyzing the results.

The more variants you create, the longer you’ll wait – While it can be tempting to throw spaghetti at the wall and create dozens of variants for your landing page, this means you’ll also have to wait longer to see what sticks. Try starting out with three to five variations and take a more strategic approach based on research in your industry. (The 2020 Conversion Benchmark Report is a great place to start for some ideas.)

It’s (usually) better to leave low-converting variants active – Because Smart Traffic learns over time and continually improves, you’re typically better off leaving your variants active—even if their conversion rates aren’t all that impressive. The AI takes the risk out of optimization by automatically sending visitors to the page that suits them best. If you turn off variants, you may lose out on some of those conversions altogether.

It can be a lot of fun to get creative with the different page elements and try out new ideas. You just might want to come up with a bit of a plan first and be strategic with your approach. Still, it’s better to experiment and optimize with Smart Traffic (even if you make some mistakes along the way) than to never optimize at all.

(And in case you were worried, yep—I managed to get my to-do list done, too. )

from Marketing https://unbounce.com/marketing-ai/smart-traffic-experiments/ via http://www.rssmix.com/

[annaxkeating]

[Experiment] How AI is Changing the Way We Optimize at Unbounce

When I first encountered A/B testing, I immediately wanted to become the type of marketer who tested everything. The idea sounded fun to me. Like being a mad scientist running experiments to prove when my work was actually “working.”

Turns out though, there’s always a long list of other things to do first… blog posts to write, campaigns to launch, and don’t get me started on the meetings! I’m not alone in this, either. A lot of marketers are just too darned busy to follow up and optimize the stuff they’ve already shipped. According to HubSpot, only 17% of marketers use landing page A/B tests to improve conversion rates.

A small glimpse of my ever-growing to-do list. Ain’t nobody got time for A/B tests.

Sure, running a split test with one or two variants always sounds easy enough. But once you take a closer look at the process, you realize just how complex it can actually be. You need to make sure you have… 

The right duration and sample size.

Taken into account any external factors or validity threats.

Learned how to interpret the results correctly, too.

But—while there will always be a time and place for A/B testing—there’s also now an easier and faster way for marketers to optimize. Smart Traffic is a new Unbounce tool that uses the power of AI and machine learning to get you more conversions. Every day, more marketers are using Smart Traffic to “automagically” optimize their landing pages. But whenever we launch anything new, we like to test it out for ourselves to learn alongside you (and keep you up to speed on what to try next).

Here’s what I learned after taking Smart Traffic for a test drive myself…

Shifting Your Mindset to Optimize with AI

I know many marketers are (perhaps) skeptical when it comes to promises of machine learning, artificial intelligence, or magical “easy” buttons that get them better results. But AI is all around us and it’s already changing the way we do marketing. Landing page optimization is just one more area of the job where you no longer need to do everything yourself manually.

Smart Traffic augments your marketing skills and automatically sends visitors to the landing page variant where they’re most likely to convert (based on how similar page visitors have converted before). It makes routing decisions faster than any human ever could (thank you, AI magic), and “learns” which page variant is a perfect match for each different visitor. This ultimately means no more “champion” variants. Instead, you’re free to create multiple different pages to appeal to different groups of visitors and run ‘em all at once.

This is very different from A/B testing and honestly—it can feel kinda weird at first. You’ve got to trust in the machine learning to figure out what works best and what doesn’t. Data scientists call this the “black box” problem: data goes in, decisions come out, but you never really get the full understanding of what happened in between. 

Smart Traffic is fundamentally different from A/B Testing. You can learn more about how it works here.

For marketers using Smart Traffic, this means shifting your mindset and starting to think about optimization differently. Unlike A/B testing, you’re not looking for those “aha” moments to apply to your next campaign, or a one-size-fits-all “winning” variant. Instead, you’re looking to discover what works best for different subsets of your audience. This gives you unlimited creativity to try out new marketing ideas, makes it easier and less risky for you to optimize, and gives you an average conversion lift of 30% compared to splitting the traffic evenly across multiple variants. (Woah.)

My Experiment with Smart Traffic

I know all this because I recently experimented with variant creation myself to better understand this new AI optimization mindset. I created 15 variants across two separate landing pages using Smart Traffic to discover…

How easy is it to optimize with an AI-powered optimization tool?

Could I quickly set up the tests in Unbounce while still getting those other to-do’s done?

What kind of conversion lift would I see from just a few hours invested?

I took a little bit of my inspiration from Ms. Frizzle on the Magic School Bus. No, not her haircut, her catchphrase: “Take chances, make mistakes, get messy!”

Oh, so that’s where she got all her good ideas.

Creating 15 Variants in Under Two Hours

The beauty of Smart Traffic is there are no limits to how many variants you can create and it automatically starts optimizing in as few as 50 visits. Just hit the “optimize” button and you’re off to the races. Could it really be that simple?

My guinea pigs for this experiment would be two recent campaigns our marketing team had worked on: the ecommerce lookbook and the SaaS optimization guide. The team had created both of these ebook download pages in Unbounce, but we hadn’t been able to return to them and optimize very much in the months since we published.

The original landing pages would serve as my control variants. (Click to see the full pages.)

Before starting, I consulted with Anna Roginska, Growth Marketer at Unbounce, to get her input on how I should create my variants. She advised:

You can take the ‘spaghetti at the wall’ approach, where you create a bunch of variants and just leave them to Smart Traffic to see what happens. It’s that ‘set it and forget it’ mentality. That’s interesting, but when you look at a bowl of spaghetti… There’s a lot of noodles in there. You won’t necessarily get to explain why something is working or not working.

The other approach is to be more strategic and focused. I think there’s a huge benefit to going in with a plan. Create maybe only five variants and give them each a specific purpose. Then, you can see how they perform and create new iterations for different portions of the audience.

I had two landing pages to work with, so I thought I’d give both approaches a try. But with only a few hours scheduled in my calendar to complete all these variants, I needed to move fast.

The “Spaghetti at the Wall” Approach to Variant Creation

On the ecommerce lookbook page, I wanted to spend less time planning and more time creating. Whereas in A/B testing you need a proper test hypothesis and a careful plan for each variant, Smart Traffic lets you get creative and try out new ideas on the fly. Your variants don’t have to be perfect—they just need to be different enough to appeal to new audience segments.

This meant I didn’t have to make any hard or fast choices about which one element to “test” on the landing page. I could create 15 different variants that varied wildly from one another. Some used different colors, some had different headlines, some completely changed up the layout of the page.

This is something you just can’t do in a traditional A/B test where you’re looking to find a “winner” and understand why it “wins.” I had to remind myself I wasn’t looking for that one variant to rule them all (or for that one variant to bring them all and in the darkness bind them). I was looking to increase the chance of conversion for every single visitor. Certain pages were going to work better for certain audiences, and that was totally fine.

I wondered, though: how many variants would be too many? Would the machine learning recognize that some of these were not anything special and just stop sending traffic to them? And how long would it take to get results? With these questions in mind, I checked back on my first set of tests one month later…

Changing up the background color

Usually, color A/B tests are pretty much a waste of time. You need a lot of data to get accurate results, and most marketers don’t actually end up learning anything useful in the end. (Because color by itself means nothing, it always depends on the context of the page.)

That being said, we know there is some legitimate color theory and certain audience segments respond better to certain colors than others. So I thought it might be interesting to switch up the background on this landing page to see what would happen. And color me surprised—these variants are seeing some pretty dramatically different conversion rates:

Pink background – 12.82%

Green background – 21.43%

White background – 21.74%

Black background – 31.71%

One might start to speculate from these conversion rates that darker backgrounds perform better than the lighter backgrounds. But hold your horses, that’s thinking about this as an A/B test again. Here’s why Jordan Dawe, Senior Data Science Developer at Unbounce, says you should be cautious about drawing any conclusions from the conversion rates…

Smart Traffic is not sending visitors randomly—it’s trying to get the best traffic to the best variant. So in this case, it doesn’t mean that a black background will always convert higher than a pink background. There are likely portions of the audience going to each color that would be doing worse on others. Here’s what you can conclude: the color black is preferred by a portion of the traffic that converts highly.

It’s hard to shake that mindset of looking for a “winner” and trying to figure out “why” something is working. But I was starting to accept that different portions of the audience would always respond better to different variants—this was just the first time I’d been able to use AI to automatically serve up the best version.

Making big (and small) changes to the headline

For the next group of variants, I switched up the H1 in both small and big ways to see what effect that would have on the conversion rate. In some cases, this meant just swapping a single adjective (e.g., “jaw-dropping” for “drool-worthy”). In other cases, I went with a completely new line of copy altogether.

Here’s how the variants stacked up against each other:

See 27 Sales-Ready Ecommerce Landing Pages in Our Ultimate Lookbook – 25.81%

See 27 Stunning Ecommerce Landing Pages in Our Ultimate Lookbook – 25.93%

Get Ready to See 27 Jaw-Dropping Ecommerce Landing Page Examples – 28.13%

Get Serious Inspo for Supercharging Your Ecomm Sales – 35%

See 27 Drool-Worthy Ecommerce Landing Pages in Our Ultimate Lookbook – 40%

Again, each variant yielded a different conversion rate. I wondered if I kept testing different variations of the headlines and found one that performed best, could I deactivate all the other headline variants and just go with the “best” one? 

Here’s how Floss Taylor, Data Analyst at Unbounce, responded…

Smart Traffic doesn’t have champion variants. You don’t pick one at the end like you would in an A/B test. Although one variant may appear to be performing poorly, there could be a subset of traffic that it’s ideal for. You’re better off leaving it on long-term so it can work its magic.

Trying out different page layouts and hierarchies

The last set of variants I created messed with the actual structure and hierarchy of the page. I wanted to see if moving things around (or removing sections entirely) would influence the conversion rate. Here’s a sample of some of the experiments…

Removing the Headline – 16.67%

Adding a Double CTA – 21.95%

Moving the Testimonial Up the Page – 27.27%

Nothing too surprising here. And because I had created so many variants, Smart Traffic was taking longer than usual in “Learning Mode” to start giving me a conversion lift. Here’s how Floss Taylor explains it…

Smart Traffic needs approximately 50 visitors to understand which traffic would perform well for each new variant. If you have 15 variants and ~100 visitors per month, you’re going to have a long learning period where Smart Traffic cannot make accurate recommendations. I’d suggest starting off with a lower number of variants, and only adding more once once you have sufficient traffic.

The “Strategic Marketer” Approach

So throwing spaghetti at the wall turned out to be… messy. (New parents beware.) For the SaaS optimization guide page, I wanted to be a bit more strategic. And I actually had a leg up for this one, because Anna Roginska, Growth Marketer at Unbounce, had already started with a Smart Traffic experiment on this page four months ago.

Anna had set up a test between two different variants. One had an image of the ecommerce lookbook as the hero graphic on the page, while the other used the image of conversion expert and author Talia Wolf. Anna says she decided on this second variant because of research she had seen on how photographs of people tend to convert better than products.

I put Talia up front because I knew from other tests I’ve run and research I’ve done. [Photographs of] people tend to convert better. I didn’t know if it would work better in this particular case, but I was able to set up a variant and use Smart Traffic to find out. And it just so happens that the algorithm started sending way more traffic to this variant.

Anna seemed to be onto something, too: her variant was converting at nearly double the rate for a large traffic subset. And while I now know we can’t consider this a “champion” variant like in an A/B test and learn from the results, we could iterate based on her design to target new audience segments.

I created a simple spreadsheet to develop my gameplan. The goal was to create five new versions of the page that would appeal to different visitors based on their attributes:

Reducing the word count to target mobile and “ready to download” visitors

For inspiration on my first variant, I consulted the 2020 Conversion Benchmark Report. The machine learning insights here suggested that SaaS landing pages with lower word counts and easier-to-read copy tend to perform better than their long-winded counterparts.

And while the original version of our download page was easy enough to read, it did have a long, wordy intro with a lot of extra detail. Could I increase our conversion rate for a portion of our audience if just focused on the bare essentials? I was ready to kill some darlings to find out…

Original Long-Form Version – 10%

Low Word Count Version – 21.43%

It seems there’s a segment of our traffic coming to this page who didn’t need to see all that extra info before they decided to fill out the form. I speculated that this variant might also perform better on mobile devices since it would be faster-loading and easier to scroll through. Interesting!

Switching the headline to target different audience segments

Next, I created an additional four page variants to speak to the different pain points and reasons our audience might want to download the guide. (Actually, this is something Talia herself recommends you do in the SaaS optimization guide.) I switched up the headline copy here, as well as some of the supporting text underneath to match. After a month, here’s what the conversion rates look like:

Get Talia’s Guide to Optimize – 19.05%

You Can’t Just Build – 23.08%

Optimization is a Lot of Work – 24%

Not Sure How to Optimize? – 33.33%

Each variant is serving a different segment of the audience, by speaking to the particular reason they want to download the guide most (e.g., maybe they don’t have the time to optimize, or maybe they don’t know how to get started). As Smart Traffic learns more about which variants perform best for which audience segments, we become that much more likely to score a conversion.

What I Learned Running These Smart Traffic Experiments

Smart Traffic absolutely makes optimization easier and faster for marketers who previously never had the time (or experience) to run A/B tests. It took me under two hours to set up and launch these experiments, and we’re already seeing some pretty impressive results just over a month later.

While the ecommerce lookbook page is still optimizing, the SaaS ebook page is showing a 12% lift in conversions compared to evenly splitting traffic among all these variants. And this is after only a month—the algorithm will keep improving to get us even better results over time. (Like a fine wine, or that suspiciously old cheese in my fridge.)

At the same time, I did walk away with a few important lessons learned. If you’re planning to use Smart Traffic to optimize your landing pages, here are some things to keep in mind before you get started:

There are no champion variants – Unlike traditional A/B testing, you won’t be able to point to one landing page variant at the end of your test and call it a winner. The machine learning algorithm automatically routes audiences differently based on their individual attributes, which means you have to be cautious when you’re analyzing the results.

The more variants you create, the longer you’ll wait – While it can be tempting to throw spaghetti at the wall and create dozens of variants for your landing page, this means you’ll also have to wait longer to see what sticks. Try starting out with three to five variations and take a more strategic approach based on research in your industry. (The 2020 Conversion Benchmark Report is a great place to start for some ideas.)

It’s (usually) better to leave low-converting variants active – Because Smart Traffic learns over time and continually improves, you’re typically better off leaving your variants active—even if their conversion rates aren’t all that impressive. The AI takes the risk out of optimization by automatically sending visitors to the page that suits them best. If you turn off variants, you may lose out on some of those conversions altogether.

It can be a lot of fun to get creative with the different page elements and try out new ideas. You just might want to come up with a bit of a plan first and be strategic with your approach. Still, it’s better to experiment and optimize with Smart Traffic (even if you make some mistakes along the way) than to never optimize at all.

(And in case you were worried, yep—I managed to get my to-do list done, too. )

from Digital https://unbounce.com/marketing-ai/smart-traffic-experiments/ via http://www.rssmix.com/

[readbookywooks]

“Metterfor,” said Granny calmly. “One of them.” “Did you think it would be easy?” asked Granny. “Did you think you'd walk into their gates waving your staff? Here I am, I want to be a wizard, thank you very much?” “He told me there's no women allowed in the University!” “He's wrong.” “No, I could tell he was telling the truth. You know, Granny, you can tell how -” “Foolish child. All you could tell was that he thought he was telling the truth. The world isn't always as people see it.” “I don't understand,” said Esk. “You'll learn,” said Granny. “Now tell me. This dream. They wouldn't let you into their university, right?” “Yes, and they laughed!” “And then you tried to burn down the doors?” Esk turned her head in Granny's lap and opened a suspicious eye. “How did you know?” Granny smiled, but as a lizard would smile. “I was miles away,” she said. “I was bending my mind towards you, and suddenly you seemed to be everywhere. You shone out like a beacon, so you did. As for the fire - look around.” In the halflight of dawn the plateau was a mass of baked clay. In front of Esk the cliff was glassy and must have flowed like tar under the onslaught; there were great gashes across it which had dripped molten rock and slag. When Esk listened she could hear the faint “pink, pink” of cooling rock. “Oh,” she said, “did I do that?” “So it would appear,” said Granny. “But I was asleep! I was only dreaming!” “It's the magic,” said Granny. “It's trying to find a way out. The witch magic and the wizard magic are, I don't know, sort of feeding off each other. I think.” Esk bit her lip. “What can I do?” she asked. “I dream of all sorts of things!” “Well, for a start we're going straight to the University,” decided Granny. “They must be used to apprentices not being able to control magic and having hot dreams, else the place would have burned down years ago.” She glanced towards the Rim, and then down at the broomstick beside her. We will pass over the running up and down, the tightening of the broomstick's bindings, the muttered curses against dwarves, the brief moments of hope as the magic flickered fitfully, the horrible black feelings as it died, the tightening of the bindings again, the running again, the sudden catching of the spell, the scrambling aboard, the yelling, the takeoff .... Esk clung to Granny with one hand and held her staff in the other as they, frankly, pottered along a few hundred feet above the ground. A few birds flew alongside them, interested in this new flying tree. “Bugger off!” screamed Granny, taking off her hat and flapping it. “We're not going very fast, Granny,” said Esk meekly. “We're going quite fast enough for me!” Esk looked around. Behind them the Rim was a blaze of gold, barred with cloud. “I think we ought to go lower, Granny,” she said urgently. “You said the broomstick won't fly in sunlight.” She glanced down at the landscape below them. It looked sharp and inhospitable. It also looked expectant. “I know what I'm doing, Miss,” snapped Granny, gripping the broomstick hard and trying to make herself as light as possible. It has already been revealed that light on the Discworld travels slowly, the result of its passage through the Disc's vast and ancient magical field. So dawn isn't the sudden affair that it is on other worlds. The new day doesn't erupt, it sort of sloshes gently across the sleeping landscape in the same way that the tide sneaks in across the beach, melting the sandcastles of the night. It tends to flow around mountains. If the trees are close together it comes out of woods cut to ribbons and sliced with shadows. An observer on some suitable high point, let's say for the sake of argument a wisp of cirro-stratus on the edge of space, would remark on how lovingly the light spreads across the land, how it leaps forward on the plains and slows down when it encounters high ground, how beautifully it .... Actually, there are some kinds of observers who, faced with all this beauty, will whine that you can't have heavy light and certainly wouldn't be able to see it, even if you could. To which one can only reply, so how come you're standing on a cloud? So much for cynicism. But down on the Disc itself the broomstick barrelled forward on the cusp of dawn, dropping ever backward in the shadow of night. “Granny!” Day burst upon them. Ahead of the broomstick the rocks seemed to flash into flame as the light washed over them. Granny felt the stick lurch and stared with horrified fascination at the little scudding shadow below them. It was getting closer. “What will happen when we hit the ground?” “That depends if I can find some soft rocks,” said Granny in a preoccupied voice. “The broomstick's going to crash! Can't we do anything?” “Well, I suppose we could get off.” “Granny,” said Esk, in the exasperated and remarkably adult voice children use to berate their wayward elders. “I don't think you quite understand. I don't want to hit the ground. It's never done anything to me.” Granny was trying to think of a suitable spell and regretting that headology didn't work on rocks, and had she detected the diamond edge to Esk's tone perhaps she wouldn't have said: “Tell the broomstick that, then.” And they would indeed have crashed. But she remembered in time to grab her hat and brace herself. The broomstick gave a shudder, tilted - and the landscape blurred. It was really quite a short trip but one that Granny knew she would always remember, generally around three o'clock in the morning after eating rich food. She would remember the rainbow colours that hummed in the rushing air, the horrible heavy feeling, the impression that something very big and heavy was sitting on the universe. She would remember Esk's laughter. She would remember, despite her best efforts, the way the ground sped below them, whole mountain ranges flashing past with nasty zipping noises. Most of all, she would remember catching up with the night. It appeared ahead of her, a ragged line of darkness running ahead of the remorseless morning. She stared in horrified fascination as the line became a blot, a stain, a whole continent of blackness that raced towards them. For an instant they were poised on the crest of the dawn as it broke in silent thunder on the land. No surfer ever rode such a wave, but the broomstick broke through the broil of light and shot smoothly through into the coolness beyond. Granny let herself breathe out. Darkness took some of the terror out of the flight. It also meant that if Esk lost interest the broomstick ought to be able to fly under its own rather rusty magic. “.” Granny said, and cleared her bone-dry throat for a second try. “Esk?” “This is fun, isn't it? I wonder how I make it happen?” “Yes, fun,” said Granny weakly. “But can I fly the stick, please? I don't want us to go over the Edge. Please?” “Is it true that there's a giant waterfall all around the edge of the world, and you can look down and see stars?” said Esk. “Yes. Can we slow down now?” “I'd like to see it.” “No! I mean, no, not now.” The broomstick slowed. The rainbow bubble around it vanished with an audible pop. Without a jolt, without so much as a shudder, Granny found herself flying at a respectable speed again. Granny had built a solid reputation on always knowing the answer to everything. Getting her to admit ignorance, even to herself, was an astonishing achievement. But the worm of curiosity was chewing at the apple of her mind. “How,” she said at last, “did you do that?” There was a thoughtful silence behind her. Then Esk said: “I don't know. I just needed it, and it was in my head. Like when you remember something you've forgotten.” “Yes, but how?” “I - I don't know. I just had a picture of how I wanted things to be, and, and I, sort of - went into the picture.” Granny stared into the night. She had never heard of magic like that, but it sounded awfully powerful and probably lethal. Went into the picture! Of course, all magic changed the world in some way, wizards thought there was no other use for it - they didn't truck with the idea of leaving the world as it was and changing the people -but this sounded more literal. It needed thinking about. On the ground. For the first time in her life Granny wondered whether there might be something important in all these books people were setting such store by these days, although she was opposed to books on strict moral grounds, since she had heard that many of them were written by dead people and therefore it stood to reason reading them would be as bad as necromancy. Among the many things in the infinitely varied universe with which Granny did not hold was talking to dead people, who by all accounts had enough troubles of their own. But not, she was inclined to feel, as many as her. She looked down bemusedly at the dark ground and wondered vaguely why the stars were below her. For a cardiac moment she wondered if they had indeed flown over the edge, and then she realised that the thousands of little pinpoints below her were too yellow, and flickered. Besides, whoever heard of stars arranged in such a neat pattern? “It's very pretty,” said Esk. “Is it a city?” Granny scanned the ground wildly. If it was a city, then it was too big. But now she had time to think about it, it certainly smelled like a lot of people. The air around them reeked of incense and grain and spices and beer, but mainly of the sort of smell that was caused by a high water table, thousands of people, and a robust approach to drainage. She mentally shook herself. The day was hard on their heels. She looked for an area where the torches were dim and widely spaced, reasoning that this would mean a poor district and poor people did not object to witches, and gently pointed the broom handle downwards. She managed to get within five feet of the ground before dawn arrived for the second time. The gates were indeed big and black and looked as if they were made out of solid darkness. Granny and Esk stood among the crowds that thronged the square outside the University and stared up at them. Finally Esk said: “I can't see how people get in.” “Magic, I expect,” said Granny sourly. “That's wizards for you. Anyone else would have bought a doorknocker.” She waved her broomstick in the direction of the tall doors. “You've got to say some hocuspocus word to get in, I shouldn't wonder,” she added. They had been in Ankh-Morpork for three days and Granny was beginning to enjoy herself, much to her surprise. She had found them lodgings in The Shades, an ancient part of the city whose inhabitants were largely nocturnal and never enquired about one another's business because curiosity not only killed the cat but threw it in the river with weights tied to its feet. The lodgings were on the top floor next to the well-guarded premises of a respectable dealer in stolen property because, as Granny had heard, good fences make good neighbors.