Online Marketing in Uncertain Times

Friday, May 23, 2008 5/23/2008 04:15:00 PM

Posted by Tom Leung and Tamara Micner, Website Optimizer Blog Team

We're all concerned these days about the bottom line: economic uncertainty is still around, marketing budgets are getting more scrutiny, and tolerance for "spend and hope" marketing investments are understandably under attack.

When revenue is uncertain and ROI is even more important than usual, any advertising that can precisely measure and track results is especially valuable. Online, that's very doable. You can see where your money's going, what you should invest in and what you should change.

In fact, companies that invest intelligently in growing their business, even in softer markets, will be able to leapfrog their competition, who might be much less efficient with their ad spend or turn it off altogether.

SEM campaigns have always been attractive, since they give you crystal-clear metrics on how much you're spending for how many eyeballs and clicks on specific keywords and creatives. And Google Website Optimizer shows you exactly which changes will improve (or reduce) your online conversions—however you define them.

Here's an example: StairSupplies, a customer of ours that produces custom orders for stair remodeling and new home construction. About a year ago, they started testing their homepage with LunaMetrics, one of our Authorized Consultants. Can you guess which screenshot below was the original homepage, and which was the winning redesign?



The winner was #2: all it took was deleting the image of the model and hiding the drop-down menu on the left side. Surprisingly, the page with the extra image did worse, when best practices dictate the opposite. Even best practices can be wrong, and you don't know when unless you test.

Although the changes to the homepage seemed trivial to Len Morris, StairSupplies' CEO, they made a huge difference to users. StairSupplies' online conversion rate increased by 144%, and average order size increased by 18%.

At the end of the day, as Avinash Kaushik says, your ads shouldn't write checks that your website can't cash. So as your marketing checks get smaller, let us help you make the most of your traffic and your budget.

Pick Websites Like Mutual Funds

Friday, May 16, 2008 5/16/2008 10:23:00 PM

Posted by Tom Leung, Website Optimizer Team

When you think about it, websites are like mutual funds. You spend money buying them, and you expect them to bring in as much money as they can each year. But unfortunately, people seem to be more rational when selecting funds than when picking websites.

Let's say you're picking a retirement-savings mutual fund. Chances are you'll investigate the current and historical performance of each fund. It would be pretty unusual for you to take money out of an existing fund and put it into a new one without comparing how the two perform, right? In fact, if you took all your money out of one fund and put it into another one based only on gut feel or opinion, people would call you crazy.

Now let's look at how we do website redesigns today. We typically invite local agencies to razzle and dazzle us with their portfolios. We choose things that look nice and make us feel good about spending tens of thousands of dollars (if not more) on a redesign. We get enchanted by talk of Web 2.0, widgets, gadgets, video, surveys and interactive movies. If we're using a really good agency, they'll ask for or already know our current web-analytics metrics so there's a baseline against which to measure. And after months of brainstorming and discussions, we see initial concept mocks, and the new site is unveiled—perhaps a press release is issued.

The irony is, that launch day should really be the first day of a test, to see if the new site really does perform better than the old one. Sure, you think it looks better and your gut tells you it must perform better (especially since you've become emotionally invested in it). But the reality is you don't know. Even if you compare baseline web stats, you won't know if improvements are seasonal (almost any redesign in the fall outperforms a summer predecessor) or due to another external factor (like a new ad campaign).

The good news is, with Google Website Optimizer you can now pick a website as you would a mutual fund. You can run an A/B test and have half of your visitors land on your old site and half on your new site. (Here's more info on setting up a simple site bake-off. Here's a video tutorial for setting up general A/B tests in under 5 minutes.) Then you can measure which version does best. And if the new site really does do better, time to hire that agency for more work. ;-)

Our Optimal User Community

Monday, May 12, 2008 5/12/2008 02:02:00 PM

Posted by Tom Leung, Website Optimizer Team

Ever since we launched Website Optimizer as an invitation-only beta a year ago, we created a Google Group for our users to exchange advice and discuss how to get the most out of the product. This small group has steadily grown from a few dozen members in 2007 to over 1,700 of our most active users today. And to make the community's content accessible to anyone, we've started indexing the Group posts in our Help Center search results.

The Group has become an invaluable resource for some of our newest users, and a favorite resource for advanced beginners. For that, we have to thank a number of our hard-core users and their tips, tricks, and tales of trial-and-error.

These folks volunteer to answer questions and share their learnings out of their passion for the power of web experimentation in general and for Website Optimizer in particular. Our most active user so far is Ophir Prusak, with an incredible 239 posts and an average post rating by other members of 5 stars! Honorable mentions go to other power posters such as CoffeeGuy, Robbin Steif, Chris Goward, ShoreTel, and Limepickle. You can see all of them and over 1,700 others in action here in the Google Group.

We offer support via our Help Center articles, webinars and video tutorials, email customer support, testing tips, and network of Authorized Consultants. The community on our Google Group, however, has been instrumental in helping people see great success from website optimization.

If you have a question about Website Optimizer, feel free to visit the Google Website Optimizer Group: chances are someone has already asked it, and someone else has answered.

Testing Best Practices from eMetrics

Tuesday, May 06, 2008 5/06/2008 11:29:00 AM

Posted by Tamara Micner

It's been an enlightening day at eMetrics San Francisco. Our Multivariate Testing Panel raised key points about the good, the bad and the ugly of website testing, with one we like to stress: before you start testing, get consensus on your measures of success.

It's crucial to make sure your team agrees on goals for your tests. There's no point trying to increase downloads if everyone else (or your boss) would prefer more sign-ups. Once you know what you're aiming for, you can launch the most relevant tests for your site, and your results will be even more valuable.

For more best practices, see our earlier post about key testing concepts and our Helpful Hints on our website.

Test Your High Value Pages

Wednesday, April 30, 2008 4/30/2008 09:45:00 AM

Posted by Jon Stona, Website Optimizer Team and Laura Melahn, Google Analytics Team

Trying to optimize a large website for conversion can be a daunting task if you don't have a plan. The most important pages to test are those that have the biggest impact on your site's success. By using Google Analytics and Google Website Optimizer together, you can identify these high value pages and set up experiments that will eliminate the guesswork from their design.

Your high value landing pages

In his talk on the Web Analytics panel at SES, Avinash Kaushik recounted his experience searching for a new faucet. The top paid ad took him to a page focused on sinks rather than faucets; he was immediately turned off and bounced from the site.

What's the lesson here? Landing pages are key pages to optimize because they are your visitors' first (and often last) impression of your website. If a visitor lands on a page that doesn't provide the information she's looking for, she'll probably leave without clicking any further. For high-traffic landing pages, this can add up to a lot of lost visitors.

That's why it's so important to find, and fix, high-traffic landing pages that lose a high percentage of visitors. Look at the "Top Landing Pages" report within the Content section of Google Analytics. Pages that have both a high Bounce Rate (the percentage of visits that resulted in the visitor immediately leaving the site) and large number of Entrances need to be redesigned.

The Google Analytics Landing Pages report (Content Section) shows a list of top landing pages ordered by the number of entrances on the left. On the right, the Bounce Rate compared to site average is graphically displayed. Pages with a high number of Entrances and a high Bounce Rate (red bar), are good candidates for optimization.

Don't forget about funnel pages

Other high value pages are those that lead visitors to your goal pages. Visitors reach a goal page once they have have made a purchase or completed another desired action, such as a registration or download. In Google Analytics, you can specify up to ten pages in a defined funnel representing the path that you expect visitors to take on their way to the goal page (conversion!). A page that is part of a goal funnel is another great place to focus website optimization efforts.

The "Funnel Visualization" report within the Goals section of Google Analytics shows you how many visitors exit the funnel at each step in the path towards the goal page. In the funnel visualization below, you can see that most visitors in this funnel are lost in the transition from the "View Shopping Cart" step to the "Login" step. Only 7% of visitors move past this step, but of those who do, many go on to make a complete an order! Limiting steps in paths to a goal, like the "View Shopping Cart" step below, is another great place to begin your website optimization experiments.

The Google Analytics Funnel Visualization report (Goals Section) shows the pages where visitors abandon a goal path. Pages that lose a high percentage of traffic on the path towards a website goal are good candidates for optimization.

You know which pages to test...

A little competition can get your team excited about content experimentation. Try asking a couple of your co-workers and perhaps your boss for suggestions on alternate variations of a high value page. Label each of the suggested variations in Website Optimizer with the contributor's name. Then, ask another set of co-workers to predict which variation will emerge victorious. You can monitor the progress each day to see how everyone's suggestions and predictions are stacking up. Keep in mind that it usually takes at least one or two weeks for the definitive winner to emerge. Once Website Optimizer has determined the winning page, you'll not only have a better performing page, but if you're lucky, you'll have bragging rights in your office.

Is a Picture Really Worth a Thousand Words?

Friday, April 25, 2008 4/25/2008 08:30:00 AM

Posted by Tom, Website Optimizer Blog Team

People say pictures are worth a thousand words, and some industry experts even argue that you should always have them — the bigger, the more friendly, the better. But whenever you hear someone say "always," that's your first clue to test that claim (if for no other reason than to become a website-design myth-buster). We came across an interesting case study from WiderFunnel Marketing, one of our Website Optimizer Authorized Consultants, that illustrates this very point.

WiderFunnel's client, Safe Software, wanted to maximize the number of people downloading a trial version of their software application. They sought to make the Trial Version Download Page more effective by getting more visitors to click on the download button. Here was the original version of the page:


The website owner had meant to update this page for some time. Working with Safe Software, WiderFunnel developed two alternate versions of the page which they envisioned to be more modern and visually appealing. One version had a big picture of a smiling model, a number of points outlining the benefits of the software, and a clear call to action. The other version maintained the distinct call to action, but removed the picture and benefits points.

Alternate version 1:


Alternate version 2:


The team at Safe Software wasn't sure which of these versions (original, version 1, or version 2) would lead to the most conversions. If you're an avid reader of online marketing best-practices literature, you might predict that the version with the picture and benefits would outperform the others. After all, aren't pictures and useful information always good things to show to visitors? What's noteworthy is that the winning page was actually version 1: no picture and not as many supporting arguments. Even more surprising is that the original page outperformed version 2!


After the fact, we might hypothesize that the preceding pages did all the selling and that at that point, visitors just wanted to get their hands on the application. Perhaps the image distracted visitors, or perhaps some of the supporting arguments raised more questions than answers.

What's certain, though, is that the winning version led to a 15% increase in conversions. These results go to show you that what you (or 'the industry') think works best often doesn't, and you never know until you test it.

Testing is not just about Technology

Monday, April 21, 2008 4/21/2008 11:46:00 AM

Posted by Tom, Website Optimizer Blog Team

One of the things we've learned is that to be a successful experimenter, you need to master a few key concepts. These concepts include diagnosing problematic pages (Google Analytics is a good tool for this), coming up with ideas on how to improve these pages, and understanding how to use Website Optimizer to instrument tests. Last but not least, you need to have the discipline to wait for your tests to gather enough data before drawing the right conclusions. Let's break down each one.

Diagnose and Develop Ideas:
Look at a page that gets a lot of users. Does it have a high bounce rate? What's wrong with it? What's stopping people from continuing to dig further into your site? What are they expecting to see? Is it there? What's there that isn't important? If you asked visitors what they expect to see before the page loads, is their answer even close to what you're showing them? Figuring out what's best to test can be as much an art as it is a science, but it may be the difference between a 30% improvement in your page performance versus a test which concludes that the various versions of your page performed about the same.

Instrument the Test:
All the ideas in the world won't help you if you don't know how to set up the test. We have a bunch of demos and help articles to show you how to do it, but the best way to learn is simply to start using the tool to set up lots of tests. Before you know it, you'll be trying all kinds of advanced experiments. If it's your first one, we'd recommend a simple A/B test where you give Website Optimizer two or more URLs and we split the traffic among them.

Wait:
Sometimes the hardest part of running a test is not jumping to conclusions. Let the horses run a few laps around the track before declaring a winner. Website Optimizer will tell you the chance to beat your original for each variation. The lower that number is, the more likely the pages are simply not that different. We like to wait a minimum of two weeks and for a 95% 'Chance to beat original' before declaring a solid winner, but it depends on how sure you want to be.

Keep in mind that it's possible your test may never determine a winner or that the winner may even be your original page. This could happen if all your pages perform about the same or your original page is really better than the other ideas you tested. Sometimes those tests are the most valuable since you learn what not to show your visitors.

For ideas on a few top elements to test on any site, check out our recent webinar, 'Website Optimizer, What Should I Test?'.