Webtrends Optimization

It’s been a fun journey here at Widemile and although Widemile, the name, is disappearing, our mission to bring optimization to the forefront of online marketing has not ended.  I will be moving this blog over to the Webtrends domain very soon, for now, please see my post on the Webtrends blog for my thoughts on the acquisition.

Thanks for being a loyal reader of my blog, I will be posting a lot more once I switch over to Webtrends, so don’t forget to check it out.

-Billy

Webtrends is hosting a completely transparent marketing campaign, called The Open Campaign.  In the campaign, Webtrends and a few partners, including Widemile, are conducting their various specialties and sharing the results with the public.  The idea is to let you all learn about all the great marketing technologies out there and how it ties together with Webtrends, as well as seeing the performance of the campaign itself.

Check out the Site Optimization section where I will be discussing the test we designed for The Open Campaign and the results.  See for yourself exactly what its like to do optimization with Widemile Optimize and how my brain works throughout the process.

If you’re going to SES San Jose and want to really learn about optimization, check out the Landing Page Utopia: Expert Roundtable. My boss and Director of Optimization, Frans Keylard, will be on the panel. Everything I know was taught to me by Frans, so if you’re serious about talking to an optimization expert here’s your chance. He has a wealth of testing experience and is a fun guy in general.

In addition, Jonathan Mendez will be on the same panel. If you don’t know him, he used to run OTTO Digital, a former division of Offermatica. He is on top of the optimization game as well. It should be a great panel!

I just got news that Google Web Optimizer is out of beta. In addition, it doesn’t even require an AdWords account to use it anymore. This is great news for the testing industry and for all online marketers. Check it out here. In addition, there now is a dedicated Official Google Web Optimizer blog.

I’ll see if I can get some tests running just to see what the isolated tool looks like versus the integrated one. They also upgraded the setup of multivariate tests for all versions.

On another note, it’s good to see that Google saying things like “it’s hard to find a serious advertiser who doesn’t at least plan to do content testing this year.” They even mention some best practices that I’ve talked about at this blog:

• “don’t be shy: big changes generally yield big differences in performance”
• “We recommend letting your experiments run for at least two weeks, no matter how much traffic you get and how strong the results initially appear, just so the data has enough time to normalize.” – I recommended the same things in my Multivariate Testing Primer.

Also there’s a forum for Google Web Optimizer users, which isn’t new, but expect it to grow quickly with this latest announcement.

If you’re waiting for the last post in my 3 part series about difficult test results, I apologize. I’ve been sick all week and wanted to go over my last post with Vladimir Brayman, Widemile’s chief scientist, before I posted it for the world to see. It’s a very important topic and a challenging one too. I’ll try to get it out next week for sure.

Jupiter Research released a new report, Compelling Benefits of Multivariate Web Site Testing But Adoption Remains Low. I guess the title says it all but here are some charts I put together to summarize:

Note that this includes A/B testing, meaning only a fraction of marketers are doing multivariate testing.

The large majority of early adopters have received gains from testing, but only 68% of testing users have raised conversions. That number should be much higher!

But I guess if it was, I wouldn’t have as much to write about.