Webtrends Optimization

A beginner’s mistake is to test every idea with every test. This is the most obvious way of being efficient. If I can test 50 things in a week, why not?

In my experience, efficiency has more to do with careful test design and doing things right the first time, than trying to test everything and rushing the process. By testing a few big ideas quickly and then designing the next test based on those results, you can do a set of small tests and get answers fast without having to risk your page to many bad ideas.

Every test should have specific questions its trying to answer. Not just “What’s the best performing page?” but questions that lead to that. A car salesman doesn’t blindly try every tactic in the book get you to buy a car, a real salesman probes you with a few questions and changes their technique accordingly.

That’s how you should design your tests.

Here’s an example test plan that works for most clients:

• Step 1 (Split Test) – Find an optimal template/design: What template and/or design effectively gets visitors to stick, click and convert? At this stage, you aren’t testing messaging yet, you’re merely re-skinning and moving elements around to find a good design. Some techniques to use are simplifying the page by de-emphasizing unimportant content (shrink company logo, move ads to the bottom of the page) and emphasizing core content (moving 3rd party validation near the call to action) and adding more whitespace to the page to enhance readability. These are in addition to a well done creative design. This test usually has the greatest impact, however it all depends on your current page and the audience. (Read more on template testing)
• Step 2 (Multivariate Test) – Find the biggest converting segment: This test focuses on finding the correct messaging by appealing to different segments that you know and hypothesize visit your page. If your product was Google Apps, you might test appealing to business users and freelancers. Or if you are selling a cell phone, you might test features against benefits.
• Step 3 (Multivariate Test) – Find the perfect way to communicate to the segment: Step 2 points you in the right direction, but this step helps you find the exact place you should be with your page. Use what you learned (freelance messaging won) and try variations on that winning theme to really grab your audience and give them what they want. Also, step 2 may have revealed 2 or more segments that are worth targeting. If you can segment them out, run multiple tests that are customized for each segment, and you’ll raise conversions even higher.

The alternative is to test 50 ideas of which many of the ideas overlap. Why test any ideas that are remotely similar until you know that they work in general? If I go to a dealership wanting a sports car and the dealer offers me 5 colors of minivans, I’m still not going to buy a minivan. Show me 4 types of cars, let me pick the one I like and then we might talk about color.

Let your visitors lead you!

This really is a simple process, but it drives results. Be methodical to be efficient. By course correcting in each test, you get closer and closer to what you need and don’t spend a lot of time testing losing elements. Follow a test plan like this and you’ll get results and learn a lot about your core converting visitors.

I just received a link to an amazing resource from MarketingExperiments, it’s a compilation of great webinar summaries and case studies that they have done. They cover topics from landing page optimization to price testing to PPC and more. While not everything is about testing specifically, all their advice and ideas can be tested, which is why I think you all will find it valuable.

All testing should be carefully designed; it should be focused on best practices and tactics that are predicted to connect with the audience. You should take risks when testing, but they should be calculated risks.

Check it out and soak up some knowledge on optimization and get ideas to test on your site.

Note: This is the second post of a 3 part series, each focusing on one type of test result that is tough to deal with. Read the first article on highly mixed data.

As an optimization analyst, this is probably the hardest result to bring to a client. Oddly enough, it actually is favorable to part 1’s highly mixed data and part 3. I am talking about optimization that determines that the original page is better than the tested variations.

How does this happen?
Sometimes a page just gets it right. How would you change Google? I looked for a few variations and came across one by Andy Rutledge and another by Valacar. They both are beautiful designs and a lot of thought were put into them, but at the same time, would they really make Google more profitable? It’s definitely a tough sell and there is a big challenge in improving this type of page.

The goal is for users to search. Yes, they want users to click on ads eventually, but there’s not a whole lot they can do for ad clicks on the homepage. The best they can do is get users to search as fast as possible. So would a redesign make it more usable and readable? Maybe. To a level that it would increase their revenues? That’s tough to say.

The more simple the goals of the page, the less information and messaging the users needs, the more likely that the page will be difficult to optimize.

What can you do to prevent this?
Be careful when choosing a page to test. Find a page where the user will take some time to look at what is going on. This is another reason why most landing pages are great places to optimize, because users naturally need to be introduced to the product and sold on why to convert.

The logical thing to do would be to simply refrain from testing pages that seem to be performing well, but this is rarely a good rule. Unless it is performing well because of a lot of testing, then you don’t really know if a page is performing well or not (see my post on conversion rates.) Testing always brings surprises and personal judgment is no replacement for a test; a good looking page can perform poorly and a page with subpar creative can perform great.

What can you do if this happens?

Because of the above reasons, you may actually plan for this scenario to occur. Many people believe redesigning an old page will provide improvement, but what if it is old and performing well? In that case, you may plan to try to improve but not expect to beat the old version.

In any case, if your original page wins, then you have confirmation of your page’s success. It is unlikely that all possible improvements were tested in one test run though, so it may take a few more runs to really confirm its solidarity, but the page has won against the initial best ideas and that is an achievement.

This lesson tells you that you can move on and that is progress in itself.

Moving forward, I would try drastically different approaches, either in layout or design and testing around offers. Otherwise, I would apply the successful original page to tests for other areas of your site.

I have to be honest when I say that this rarely ever happens. Almost every page has room for improvement at every step of the conversion funnel.

Whew, I will try to get the third and toughest optimization result next week.

CC photo credit: philosophygeek

Edit: I fixed all the links in this post.  Copy and pasting is getting the best of me!

I recently came across a few great posts that I enjoyed and wanted to pass onto you all. The first is from Tim Ash, who has written a great book on Landing Page Optimization. One of his more recent entries discusses how to write effective copy to increase conversions.

One of my favorite bloggers, Avinash Kaushik tells marketers to embarrass their managers in order to succeed at their campaigns. Testing tops that list of course, but his other techniques are great methods at “working the system.”

Lastly, Lenny de Rooy, wrote a guest post at SEO Scoop about 5 misconceptions of Google Web Optimizer. It goes slightly beyond just GWO itself and into testing methodology

Quality PPC and LPO campaigns are key to great conversion rates. If either of them are optimized, you might get good results, but with both of them optimized, your gains are exponential. There are a few pitfalls in optimizing them both though, even with good intentions you may end up confusing your results rather than getting results.

Here are 3 methods to effectively optimize your PPC and landing pages:

1. Do one at a time: Test out your new PPC strategy, but wait until your landing page testing is done. Changing your PPC means you’re changing the audience, both in demographics and expectations. This will impact your landing page testing. Once you find a winning PPC campaign, test the same messaging on your landing page. This is the easiest way to optimize both, but the next two are better ways to go.
2. Do them simultaneously: If you are testing 2 PPC strategies, create 2 separate landing page tests to match the respective campaigns and drive traffic solely to the matching test. This avoids biasing the PPC that better matches your landing page.
3. Segment all the way through: For segments you know you’re going to have, make them go to different landing pages. Test your pages and separately track how each segment performs. Sometimes all your segments respond best to the same landing page, but often times your segments want something different and it’ll show in your testing results. Also, if you’re doing #2 and realize that the ROI is good enough for both campaigns, break it out and optimize them separately.

These are basic, but very effective methods to maximize testing both your PPC and landing pages. If you want to get actual and sustainable results, you have to control as many variables as possible. Only when you can trust your data, will it perform how you expect. Follow any of these methods and you’ll be on your way to higher conversions.

After 4 months, I finally received certification via the *breath in* Marketing Experiments Certification Course on Landing Page Optimization – Subscription Path Track.

If you already follow Marketing Experiments, much of the material they put out for free is discussed in the class (although in greater depth.) Flint McClaughlin, who runs Marketing Experiments, knows testing and optimization very well, but the class could be stronger. Taking the class, training at Widemile and working with clients simultaneously has taught me a lot, very quickly, so as the class went on, I wasn’t learning as much. Those of you who don’t have the benefit of being surrounded by testing pros, probably will get a lot more out of it.

In addition, sometimes the number of conversions for their case studies are quite low, which leads me to question some of the testing numbers. I’m sure they got lifts, but their numbers are a little outrageous at times and, as my boss Frans brings up, seem to not account for seasonality.

Despite all that, I’d definitely recommend it to anyone who wants to get into or needs to learn how to make better landing pages. They offer many other certification classes and while I can’t really say how good the other classes are, I have a strong feeling that they are worthwhile too.

Regardless if you do or don’t want to take the class, you should take the time to learn their conversion index formula. It’s the overarching idea of the class and really helps you think in a systematic way about what should be improved on your pages and funnels. The conversion index formula is:

C is the probability of conversion, so this formula deals with variables that cause visitors to convert or not convert. Here’s the quick rundown of each letter:

• m – motivation of the visitor
• v – your value proposition
• i – incentive to convert
• f – friction of the process
• a – anxiety about converting

I don’t want to go into too much depth, but I will mention that my favorites are incentive and friction. They are together in the equation because they counteract each other. You use incentives to overcome the friction of the page. So offering your visitors a white paper helps them deal with giving up their name and e-mail address to you. Visitors know they are going to get a call or e-mail when they give you info, but you have to give them reasons to give it to you.

An example of this that most of you have probably experienced as an internet user is when you find a great deal on a badly designed website. Even if it’s tough to get through the checkout process (friction), you’re likely to finish it since it is a great deal (incentive).

One of things I’ve learned is that making website changes is rarely a streamlined and easy process. The best situation would obviously be to have good incentives and low friction, but you can’t always improve everything because of office politics, technical reasons, lack of resources or numerous other things. So by using this formula and keeping these things in mind, you have multiple ways to attack problems either offensively (increase incentives, value proposition, focus on user motivation) or defensively (decrease friction and anxiety).

MarketingSherpa is giving us a lot of love recently with The Weather Channel case study and now one on Smartsheet. If you were too shy to sign up for our case study on the Widemile website, then please check out the one at MarketingSherpa.

I especially like the last 4 points in the story:

#1. Don’t sit pat on your conversion rates. Colacurcio didn’t know that her original 5%-7% was above the industry average going in and is glad she didn’t. “If I would have said, ‘My conversion rate is pretty good’ and done nothing, I would have totally missed the opportunity to double it.”

#2. Conducting just a few multivariate test and applying them to a greater number of landing pages works. Simply put, you don’t have to test each landing page individually. “Sometimes it seems overwhelming when you think of multivariate testing, but you can cut corners. There are a lot of things that are low-hanging fruit — things that can be applied across landing pages.”

#3. Redesigning shouldn’t stop with your team’s new ideas. “You really have to get your organization into the mindset: ‘We are testing. We are not just going to spit out the next five Web pages.’ ”

#4. Even if your higher-ups are impressed with the initial results, Colacurcio says, marketers should expect to face organizational barriers when they start their second round of testing.

Don’t forget to check out the before and after in the creative samples.

If none of that catches your eye, Janet Meiners at MarketingPilgrim wrote a great summary on the case study.  She also makes a great point that, “I’ve been in heated debates about the best course of action but testing works best – assuming you’re humble enough to go with the data over your ego.”

Trust your data and watch your numbers build your ego.

Now this is a blog about testing right? So why test nothing? Because nothing is powerful.

I don’t mean don’t test at all, I mean test having less on your page. Those awesome sub headlines your copywriter created? Or those testimonials? Your audience might not care or even look at them.

Best practices say to use trust logos, reviews, awards and a whole lot of other content, but you never know if it really helps. In fact, one of the biggest lifts ever at Widemile, came from removing everything but the core material on the page. One hero shot, one headline, one description and one button.

It was plain and simple.

To me and everyone else, it was an empty page filled with white space, but it converted at an extremely high rate compared to the previous page. Everyone at my office and at our client’s couldn’t believe it was the optimal page, but we couldn’t argue with the data.

While this might be an extreme example, it also is an example of the opportunities you may be missing if you don’t test turning off (hiding) elements on your page. So don’t just test something, test nothing too.

One of our good clients The Weather Channel were invited by MarketingSherpa to do a case study on a landing page optimization campaign we did with them.   This was a really interesting page with a lot of great learnings and obviously with that high of a lift, it was very successful. Check out the case study here and make sure you look at the creative samples.

One of the biggest things was that the flash banner out performed the static banner, which best practices typically argue against using flash banners. Not only did it out perform the static banner, but it was one of the most influential items on the page.

Sometimes people ask me why landing pages are such popular targets for optimization and testing. Why not optimize a home page? A product page?

Actually, we can optimize those kinds of pages, but almost all businesses come to us with a landing page that needs help. Beyond the demand for landing page testing though, is the fact that landing pages inherently are fit for testing. Let me explain.

One of Widemile’s landing pages

The strength of multivariate and split testing is in pulling out the best page possible for what you want to do. With a homepage you have multiple things you want to do (e.g. show your products, company history, customer service, get people to spend X minutes browsing) and with a product page you are typically working with a CMS template for your whole site. Those factors complicate things a bit since you have to figure out what counts as improvement for the homepage and for the product page, you have to work with a CMS system and make changes that improve the majority of products pages using that template.

These things are not impossible to do or even difficult in many situations, but a landing page is usually totally independent of everything and has only one goal.

In a technical sense, a landing page is more simple to deal with. In a measurement sense you only need to improve one metric, the conversion. With a landing page, we don’t have to make copy and creative that works okay for all situations, we simply make copy and creative that is optimal for one situation.

This makes testing really fun and easy, since you can test and find out who your audience really is and what causes them to convert.

Now that I’ve answered this question, in the future I’ll move onto a more interesting post: Why you should optimize everything else too.