Archive for Optimization
Creating a Unique Value Proposition (UVP) for Your Business
Posted by: | CommentsA Unique Value Proposition (UVP) is essential for your business, not only to help you precisely define your business to your customers and yourself but also incredibly necessary in helping to fine tune your marketing strategies and optimization program. If you don’t know your UVP or it’s below par, you don’t know your business-and if you don’t know your business, your seriously harming it’s potential.
First, repeat these words to yourself and focus on what each word means; Unique…Value…Proposition.
Unique- being the only one, being without a like or equal (Merriam-Webster Online, http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/unique)
Value- relative worth, utility, or importance (Merriam-Webster Online, http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/value)
Proposition – something offered for consideration or acceptance (Merriam-Webster Online, http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/proposition)
What does your business offer of relative worth, utility or importance to its customers without a like or equal from others (your competitors do not/cannot).
A UVP clearly states the reason why customers should do business with you. Most likely there are other businesses (those who you consider your competitors or not) who offer the same product, a similar service, the same information, the same or similar whatever, and therefore your unique value proposition separates you from the herd of “sames” and “similars”. It explains why customers should do business with you and not the “them”. Furthering the “without-a-doubt” reason that the customer must give you the money in exchange for what you are offering rather than someone else.
But be careful, because a Unique Value Proposition isn’t:
- What you hope your business will be (i.e., We are going to be the best xyz in the world)
- What you wish it to be (i.e., Our goal is to be the #1 xyz, or the most referenced xyz, etc.)
- What you say you are (i.e., We are the #1 xyz in the state),
Instead, a UVP clearly states what your business is, and what your business does – what you are truly offering to your customers.
Marketing Experiments suggests in their In Search of a Value Proposition article to:
“Ask yourself why someone should buy from you instead of a competitor. If your answer is “best selection,” “best customer service,” or “fast shipping,” you potential success may be quite limited. These qualities do not make a business unique.”
Here are a few examples of how you can improve your Unique Value Proposition:
- Original UVP: We install widget weasels that save you money.
Improved UVP: As the only licensed widget weasel implementation provider in the tri-state area, we have saved our clients on average over $125,000 on maintenance problems due to faulty implementations. - Original UVP: We offer the smallest time travel unit in the world.
Improved UVP: We are the only pocket-sized time-travel unit provider in the world for those who want to time travel but don’t have the room or budget for a full-sized machine.
You’ll want to include your company’s Unique Value Proposition throughout your website and test the most effective way to present it. According to FutureNow/GrokDotCom’s Landing Pages & the Value of First Impressions blog post, “The UVP is your site’s first chance to begin a dialogue with its visitors.” Enough said.
Want to learn more about writing Unique Value Propositions? Check out:
- Marketing Experiments $100,000 UVP Challenge – In Search of a Value Proposition
- Bruce Mayhew Consulting’s Your Unique Value Proposition (UVP)
- Your Unique Value Proposition at Summit Insight Blog
- Landing Pages & the Value of First Impressions by FutureNow/Grokdotcom
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
