Case Study: Universal Technical Institute Increases Application Requests Eight-fold With Website Optimizer

Wednesday, March 09, 2011 3/09/2011 02:28:00 PM

UTI revved up their conversion rate with Google Website Optimizer. By conducting rigorous testing, making design improvements to their landing pages, and increasing AdWords investment to capitalize on their higher conversion rates, UTI cut their cost-per-application request in half and increased their request volume by more than 700% in in marketing campaigns that used the new landing pages. Read more to learn how they did it!

Since 1965, Universal Technical Institute has helped automotive enthusiasts turn their passions into careers. Offering programs in Automotive, Diesel, Collision, and Motorcycle Repair, as well as courses to become a Marine or NASCAR technician, UTI has trained more than 140,000 professionals in the automotive industry. Today, UTI operates 11 campuses, and currently has more than 15,000 students that are working with their hands to learn career skills that will last a lifetime.

The Goal: Improve Conversion Rates Through Website Optimization

UTI has been an AdWords advertiser since 2004. After years of fine-tuning their search campaigns, and successful investments in Display, Mobile, and YouTube, UTI was looking for their next big avenue of growth. After doing some research - they realized the opportunity was right in front of them, on their own site! With the help of Website Optimizer, UTI tested different calls-to-action, images, videos, buttons, and button placements. After many different landing page combinations, they ultimately settled on a winner.

The Results: A Great-looking Landing Page and a 300% Increase in Conversion Rate

UTI's new landing page was a dramatic departure from their previous landing page. Most notable is their use of “gradual engagement” - asking for user’s information in several steps rather than showing an intimidating 15-field sign-up form.

Original landing page (click to see full size)

New landing page (click to see full size)

“Prospective Students responded extremely well to our new landing pages,” said Loring Kohrt, Online Marketing Manager for UTI, “not only did we triple our conversion rate, we reduced our exit rate and saw a boost in site engagement metrics across the board.”

More Good News: The Effect on Advertising

The jump in conversion volume was substantial and immediate, but UTI didn’t stop there. Realizing that their increased conversion rates had dramatically lowered their cost-per-lead, UTI decided that they had room to bid much more aggressively on Google’s Search and Display Networks. By doing so, they increased their average position, and brought in eight times the conversions at about half the CPA!

Improving conversion rate amplified all other marketing activities

Reflecting on his experience, Mr. Kohrt said “We are tremendously happy with the results of our redesign. We were able to dramatically improve the profitability of our advertising, increase our enrollments, and deliver a better experience to potential students.”

Posted by Trevor Claiborne, Website Optimizer team

New Year, New Asynchronous Tags for GWO

Wednesday, January 05, 2011 1/05/2011 12:27:00 PM

Happy New Year fellow testers! We’ve just made a change to the Website Optimizer tags that will help your pages load faster, improve data accuracy, and eliminate tracking errors when tags are not fully loaded.

The next time you go to create an experiment, you’ll be given the new tags, which use asynchronous JavaScript. Asynchronous tagging, which is already a standard for Google Analytics, allows the Website Optimizer tracking and conversion scripts to run in parallel to your site loading. For Website Optimizer veterans, these new tags appear in Step 2 of the setup wizard -- be sure to read the instructions as the installation is slightly different.

Here’s five things you should know about the new tags:

1. The traditional (non-async) snippets will continue to work if you want to use them. And there’s no need to retag experiments.
2. We’ve combined the Control Script and Tracking Script into one snippet of code. Be sure not to double tag your pages.
3. Async tags go immediately after the opening <head> tag on your test and conversion pages, not at the bottom of the page like the old tags.
4. If you customize your Control Scripts (for experiments with cross-domain experiments and the like), the Control Script still uses urchin.js-style methods.
5. Articles in the Help Center have been updated to reflect the new tags though we still have articles with the traditional tag for your reference.

Here’s to winning experiments in the new year.

Posted by Trevor Claiborne, Website Optimizer team

Welcome, Google Apps users!

Thursday, December 09, 2010 12/09/2010 02:39:00 PM

Google Apps recently launched an improvement that made dozens of exciting Google services available to Google Apps users for the first time. As part of this launch, Google Website Optimizer is now available to our Google Apps users for free with their Apps accounts.

Google Apps is Google’s suite of cloud-based messaging and collaboration apps, including Gmail, calendar, documents, spreadsheets, and more, specifically optimized for use in organizations. These services, which run entirely in the cloud, are used by more than 30 million users in small and large businesses, educational institutions, government agencies, and non-profit organizations around the world. You can learn more about how Google Apps can lower IT costs and improve productivity and collaboration at your organization at google.com/apps.

For those users who have a Google Apps account, if your administrator has already transitioned your organization to the new infrastructure, you can get started using Google Website Optimizer at google.com/websiteoptimizer with your existing Apps account.

For more details, read the complete post on the Google Enterprise blog and follow all the updates on other newly available services for Google Apps users.

Posted by Trevor Claiborne, Website Optimizer team

Update your Website Optimizer scripts to secure your site

Tuesday, December 07, 2010 12/07/2010 10:14:00 AM

Earlier this week we notified affected Website Optimizer users of a potential security issue with the Website Optimizer Control Script. If a website or browser has already been compromised by a separate attack, a hacker might also be able to execute malicious code by exploiting a bug in the Website Optimizer Control Script.

We have not seen any evidence indicating that sites using Website Optimizer have been targeted through this bug, but wanted to proactively reach out to site owners. While the probability of this attack is very low, we are urging Website Optimizer users to take action by updating their Control Scripts. We have taken action, so all new experiments created after December 3 are not susceptible.

Any experiments you are currently running need to be updated to fix the issue on your site. Additionally, if you have any Website Optimizer scripts from paused or stopped experiments created before December 3, you should remove or update that code as well.

There are two ways to update your code:

1. Stop current experiments, remove the old scripts, and create a new experiment.
2. Update the code on your site directly. We strongly recommend creating a new experiment as it is the simpler method.

Instructions for both methods are available here at the Website Optimizer Help Center.

We’re committed to keeping Website Optimizer secure, and we will proactively work to prevent any future vulnerabilities.

Posted by Trevor Claiborne, Website Optimizer team

New Google Website Optimizer Online Video Training Released!

Tuesday, October 12, 2010 10/12/2010 08:43:00 PM

A new online video training course is now available from lynda.com to help you get the most out of using Google Website Optimizer. It’s called Google Website Optimizer: Essential Training, and it's created by David Booth of WebShare, one of our Website Optimizer Certified Partners and Seminars for Success Leaders.

The course itself is available both online and on DVD and contains almost 4 full hours of step by step instruction around how to identify test pages, plan and implement your experiments, and read and interpret the reports. Advanced topics like sample size calculation, Google Analytics integrations and dynamic page testing are also covered among a wide variety of conversion optimization and testing topics.

I sat down with David and asked him to share with us what he likes best about this new course, and here’s what he had to say:

A video course is great for a few reasons: First, it lets you accomplish things you can’t necessarily do in other formats. As an example, in this course we have start to finish screen captured demonstrations of how to create a new test, tag your pages with Javascript, and then launch both A/B and Multivariate tests. Someone watching this course can actually see it happening and not have to rely on instructions or a help file.

I also like the variety of learning styles that can be accommodated by what the lynda.com team has put together. If you’re a visual learner, you’ll love this - there’s a nice mix of presentation styles, screen captures and visual aides throughout the whole course. If you learn by doing, you’ll enjoy the step by step, narrated demonstrations you can follow along with.

And it’s all broken up into videos that are just a few minutes long. If you want to block off a morning and watch it straight through you can, but if you want to catch a couple of videos when you’ve got 15 minutes of down time you can get through it that way too. Or if you just have a question on a specific topic, such as when to use A/B vs Multivariate, you can jump directly to that video and have your answer a few minutes later.

Take a look at the trailer below:

Well, we like things that make it even easier to use Google Website Optimizer in even more effective ways, so thanks Dave. You can find the course at lynda.com!

Posted by Trevor Claiborne, Website Optimizer team

Join Website Optimizer at eMetrics & Conversion Conference in Washington DC

Friday, September 24, 2010 9/24/2010 09:59:00 AM

In less than two weeks, Conversion Conference East will take place in Washington DC. Google Website Optimizer will be there along with Google Analytics.

Conversion rate optimization is still a young discipline in the world of interactive marketing. The event was founded by Tim Ash, president of Site Tuners (a Website Optimizer Certified Partner). What's exciting about Conversion Conference is that the entire program is dedicated to the discipline. Experts in the field, as well as those who are just learning the art and science of conversion optimization, now have a forum to share best practices, network, and learn from each other.

If you are anywhere near Washington DC October 4-5, we hope you'll join us there. We have a coupon for $250 off for Website Optimizer blog readers. Enter the code CCE631 when registering at the Conversion Conference site.

Here’s a taste of some of the presentations at Conversion Conference:

Monday, October 4th

The Four Pillars of Building Instant Trust Online (Tim Ash)

The Power of Split Testing (Brooks Bell and Lance Loveday)

Pay Per Click Landing Page Continuity (Lauren Vaccarello and William Leake)

Tuesday, October 5th

Getting Started with Google Website Optimizer (I'll be giving this one)

Multivariate Testing (Eric Hansen and Chris Duskin)

The Science of Pursuasion (John Whalen)

Be sure to stop by the Google booth and say "Hi" and grab a squishy HiPPO. Looking forward to seeing you.

Posted by Trevor Claiborne, Website Optimizer team

Creating Targeted Tests using DoubleClick Ad Planner and Website Optimizer

Monday, August 02, 2010 8/02/2010 01:09:00 PM

This guest post was contributed by Daniel Waisberg, the Founder and Editor of Online Behavior, a Marketing Measurement & Optimization website. Daniel looks at how you can use DoubleClick Ad Planner to find ideas for testing.

Testing is probably the most effective way to optimize websites. Through testing we can understand what our customers like, which ultimately will help us create a better customer experience for our audience. But "our audience" is usually not a unique type of person; it is important use techniques such as Test Segmentation to understand the differences in the tastes of each cluster of customers.

However, where can you get ideas for tests? How do you choose, for example, if you should use an image of a man, a woman, a couple, a baby or a family? Most of us do not have the privilege of testing the YouTube homepage: traffic is limited for most sites, so it is important to run tests that have a high chance of making a difference. We have to focus our efforts on our best guesses. In this post, we will show a way to use DoubleClick Ad Planner to research for testing ideas that will be tailor made to the segments you are trying to target in your website.

Finding Your Audience on Ad Planner

In a recent blog post on the DoubleClick Advertiser Blog, the DoubleClick Ad Planner mission is described as:

...to provide the deepest, most accurate insight into online audiences possible. This insight helps display advertisers select the best sites for their media plans and drive results for their campaigns.

However, I believe this description is missing an important part, which is not less important to advertisers: to understand your audience tastes and which kind of websites they like. The DoubleClick Ad Planner provides important insights into how to design your campaign landing pages and your website at all.

So, let's suppose I am working to optimize the eMetrics Summit website for the San Francisco conference in 2011. The Summit targets marketing managers, web analysts and business intelligence experts that are trying to understand how to increase the return on online investments. Here is how to find the tastes and preferences of this audience:

1. Sign in to DoubleClick Ad Planner and create a new Media plan;
2. Go to Research tab, choose the Research by Audience secondary tab;
3. Choose among the various segmentation options in order to narrow the audience and the websites they visit. Below are the segments chosen for eMetrics San Francisco audience:

• Geography: chose country USA and refined it to include only West Coast states. That's the main target for this show since eMetrics also hosts a Washington DC conference
• Demographics: included both males and females, between 25 and 44 years old, with at least a bachelor degree, with a household income above $75K. I think this segment is very close to the audience of the conference (but I have no inside information)
• Online Activity: chose a large website that the audience is likely to visit: Google Analytics
• Interests: chose everything under 'Business' and 'Computers & Electronics'
• Ranking Method: chose the ranking method to be 'Best Match' since we are not doing this analysis in order to find a place to advertise (in which case we might sort the websites by reach), but to find a place that our target likes to visit

Below is a screenshot from DoubleClick Ad Planner showing all the segmenting options and the audience created above. We can call the list created below "Website Testing Inspiration"

Click for full-size image

Getting Ideas for Your Test

Once we find the "Website Testing Inspiration" table, which shows the websites where our targeted audience is surfing around, we have the raw material necessary to get ideas for our testing efforts. Continuing our example above, we can visit the websites in the Top 10 websites that match our audience and start analyzing them.

So, here are a few insights from the analysis above for the eMetrics San Francisco home:

• First of all, looks like Jim Sterne chose the right color, blue is very prominent in all the websites;
• Idea #1: it could be worth a try to add some geeky machines to the page, such as in the Pitney Bowes, Kaiser Permanente and Frys websites;
• Idea #2: call these companies and have someone present at eMetrics and feature it at the conference homepage;
• Idea #3: submit a post to both TechCrunch and Gizmodo, which would certainly be happy to feature interesting content about social media metrics. The posts would be useful in order to promote the conference and, in terms of testing, the eMetrics homepage could try featuring in a prominent place that the conference is being quoted in these websites (something like "In the news");
• Idea #4: interesting to see that Stack Overflow is number 5 on the list, a website for "professional and enthusiast programmers". It looks like many technical people are inside this audience. Maybe it could be worthwhile to try showing a classification on the site targeting different types of people: "Programmers only talks", "Business Minded talks", "Marketers, Statisticians and liars"...

These are initial ideas that should be discussed and improved based on the website and the target being studied. As the analysis gets deeper, the insights will become more valuable.

Bonus: Instead of looking for your audience and which sites they visit, you can also look into your competitors' sites and understand which segments they are attracting that you are not. Read more about it on Avinash's post: Competitive Intelligence Analysis: Google / DoubleClick Ad Planner.