Archive for October, 2008
MVT Vendor Detector Allows You To Spy on Your Competition’s Testing
Posted by: | CommentsAre you curious if your competition is performing any multivariate testing on their website? How about which vendor they are using and what areas of the page they are testing? Maybe you just want to know what your favorite site is doing as far as testing goes because you are fascinated with optimization just as I am.
Well now you can with the MVT Vendor Detector script for the Firefox Greasemonkey add-on. Both are free and install in seconds. Once installed, just go to any page and you will see a message in the top left-hand side of the screen if they are multivariate testing, what platform they are using, and the areas they are testing will be highlighted.
Here is a partial screenshot of it in action (click for larger version):
MVT vendor detector screenshot for multivariate testing insight
Who Are You Testing for When You Design Your Online Tests
Posted by: | CommentsIt’s much simpler to see large gains in conversions when you are just starting out with testing to improve your website, or even for those who are blindly performing tests on the basics of what already exists on their website such as button colors, headlines, and images to name just a few examples. These gains happen mostly because many companies place these random elements on their webpage’s because they thought they looked good, represented what they thought they should have on their page, or were possibly even told to do so. Simple testing of these elements for the first time often sees some gains because these pages were never tested for optimal performance in the first place when they were launched.
Who really is your customer? Do you really know your customer or do you just think you do.
Some of the biggest gains and major marketing-optimization-wins appear when you optimize with the customer (by customer I also mean potential customer) in mind. Uncovering who they truly are, why they arrived at your website and what they truly desire, and what can be done to make their experience towards your combined win-win goals better. Typically, you won’t have just one consistent answer to these questions, but instead multiple customer profiles, i.e. if you’re a company like TigerDirect where you may have various profiles and then variations on each such as the IT professional, the gadget-geek, the family looking for a computer, and others.
Your goal isn’t to convert more visitors, but instead your goal should be along the lines of optimizing your website to make it less frustrating, a clearer and more defined path, a more appealing presentation of your offer, more educating, less cluttered, or more engaging for your customers- all of which result in more conversions when you perform testing for the right combination. Knowing this enables you to understand what you are testing and how to continue past just changing button colors because you haven’t tried that color yet.
Uncover the necessary information about your customers and develop the customer profiles will help you in researching elements both currently known and not known (what you already have, and what you don’t have) to test on your website.
Advanced Segmentation to be Included into Google Analytics.
Posted by: | CommentsGoogle this past week announced some new enterprise features to Google Analytics to increase its functionality. This means new insight allowing you to take action to move closer to your website’s goals.
These new features will be released in beta to all Google Analytics Accounts in the upcoming weeks.
The new feature that I simply cannot wait for is, get ready……Advanced Segmentation:
Advanced Segmentation will allow you to separate out your data (on-the-fly, nonetheless) so that you can look at smaller sub-sections of your traffic. This will help you to really gain the necessary insight into what your visitors are doing and how they are performing for you (behavior anyone?). Compare this data against your desired actions, and unravel some presently current mysteries. It also includes the ability to see both historical and current data, and then compare it side to side and learn what if anything has been changing over time. Compile this information along with the optimization efforts you have been making for clearer interpretation of what’s going on with each segment of your traffic.
How will this help you?
One way is that you will be able to perform more in-depth and more detailed analysis of your traffic. This will allow you to look at micro-segments instead of grouping all your traffic into one inter-mingled group and be forced to make grand generalizations as a whole. Advanced Segmentation if it was a person, would be one of your best friends.
If that’s not enough reason to be excited about advanced segmentation, how about when Avinash Kaushik makes a statement like this:
“If you want to find actionable insights you need to segment your web analytics data. You need to separate out the various Sources, Behavior and Outcomes” in his Google Analytics Releases Advanced Segmentation: Now Be A Ninja! blog post.
Can you say optimization opportunities are awaiting you just around the corner!
For a complete list and description of new features such as custom reporting, a data export API, and Motion Charts, including demos and links to more detailed FAQ’s, visit the Google Analytics Blog post, More Enterprise-Class Features Added To Google Analytics.
Optimizing the Cart Before the Horse?
Posted by: | CommentsWhen you are launching your website optimization program I can’t blame you for being anxious to jump in and start seeing those high double-digit conversion increases that is proudly displayed in almost every optimization article that you read. It makes me excited too just thinking about it. But wait; don’t put the optimization cart before the testing horse just yet. And if you are already in the midst of your optimization regimen rethinking the basics of site functionality, usability, and accessibility might just help you take your program to the next level.
Make sure that you site is working properly, if not, fix it first.
- If you are optimizing your checkout page and your server is consistently slow as a turtle, fix it.
- If your site times out every other time when the visitor hits the submit button, fix it.
- If the privacy policy link on your newsletter signup page goes to a 404 error, fix it .
These are just a few examples to get your brain moving in the right direction, but you get the point. These are no-brainer optimization “techniques” that need to be done first and will be likely to help you in your quest to achieve those double digit conversion results. What’s the point of optimizing a page or path consisting of errors unless your goal is a fully, and I use the term sarcastically, optimized, non-properly functioning page. This thought probably sounds like it should be followed by a “duh”, but trust me, go through the process a few times of checking your site, have a few others do it too – just to be that extra confident before launching that next test. A few simple fixes can be an automatic gain towards you ultimate goal.
Want to learn about the Hierarchy of Optimization? View the video Hierarchy of Optimization by Bryan Eisenberg of FutureNow and Scott Milrad of MarketMotive discussing Bryan’s theory or watch it below
Use the Impression Share Metric in Adwords to Uncover Opportunity
Posted by: | CommentsUse Google’s Impression Share report to get the metrics to determine if you have room to grow your Google AdWords PPC campaign in your target market. Impression Share reports on the percentage of times your ads were displayed out of the total number of page impressions possible to you in your market. For example, if your report range chosen was last week and your impressions are showing the number 1,000 and your Impression Share is showing 10%, you can infer that there is a possible 9,000 more impressions available to you to go after. Compare impression data over selected time periods to see if you are losing or gaining ground in your available market, or if there is more room for you to grow.
However, make sure you also compare this to your backend data and align with your marketing strategy as there may be available ground to gain in impressions but with less benefits to receive in gaining those additional impressions. Those who are using their PPC campaign ads as part of a branding strategy may want to gain more impression share than others for instance. With a highly profitable keyword or group you may want to test gaining more impression share.
So I bet you are wondering just how to improve your Google AdWords Impression Share? Google gives a few quick tips to improve your impression share such as improving ad quality, increasing you budget or bid, adjusting your keyword match type, and adjusting regional or placement targets.
Want to know how to view the Impression Share metric? View detailed steps in AdWords Impressions Share Reports FAQ .
