The Widemile Blog

Not to be cliche, but all good things must come to an end. July 30, 2009 marks a significant day in the history of Widemile as the day that we were acquired by Webtrends, a global analytics leader with world class data collection and analysis solutions.

Below is a group shot of the Widemile team. A few folks were missing but the photo captures those who were in the office on Thursday morning.

Last Widemile group shot as we're now Webtrends.

I speak for the Widemile team in sharing our excitement for the future of the Widemile Optimize solution under Webtrends as we’ll be able to share our next-generation testing and targeting technology with a great customer base. This event also marks my return to Webtrends – before joining Widemile I was with Webtrends for more than 3 years. We are excited to be joining the Webtrends team and for our future together.

Anyone involved in online marketing today is probably feeling stretched and time constrained. Out of respect for your limited time, I wanted to share a top 10 multivariate testing and optimization tips list that the Widemile Optimization team shares our clients and partners. I’m interested to get your input on our list as we’re always striving to test, refine and perfect what we do as it’s in our DNA.

 Widemile’s Top 10 Multivariate Testing and Optimization Tips

1.     Offer Clarity

> Make sure the offer is clear, relevant, and compelling
> Keep your pages simple, clear, and appealing

2.     Path to Conversion

> Make sure the path to conversion is simple and straightforward
> Keep conversion paths efficient, focused, uncluttered

3.     Performance

> Prospects will not tolerate slow pages or links
> Google penalizes slow page loads

4.     Test Design and User Experience

> Avoid confusing landing page design is confusing or difficult to read text
> Make transitions seamless and keep the consistency high (both messaging and look & feel)

5.     Seasonality

> Seasonally optimize your pages and PPC campaign
> Leverage historical SEM in planning current and future campaigns

6.     Target Audience

> Optimize your content based on audience insight
> Capture contact information early to better inform your marketing

7.     Offers and Goals

> Create offers that have a high perceived value but a low cost to fulfill
> Force your page to have only one goal and link ads to landing pages

8.     Consistency

> Build consistency and relevancy between PPC campaigns and where you send your traffic
> Reinforce the call to action/offer on order and lead forms

9.     Audience

> Optimize for distinct audiences to convert
> Segment your traffic and see if unique landing pages perform better

10.   Competition

> Look at what your competition is doing, but also what they are not doing
> Differentiation can often help, so test new approaches, offers, and incentives

For additional insights on testing and optimization, I strongly encourage you to check out Billy’s Blog: Multivariate Testing & Optimization.

I am excited that Widemile is participating in one of the most original and innovative online marketing campaigns that I have seen in recent memory.  Why is the campaign so compelling? Because it is completely transparent, hence The Open Campaign.

“We’re going behind the scenes of an actual marketing campaign to show
in real time how these elements come together to generate profound
customer insight and digital marketing success.” – Webtrends

Webtrends is collaborating with key Open Exchange Partners: ACR Analytics, ExactTarget, ForeSee Results,  Mullen, Voce Communications and Widemile. Each partner, as well as Webtrends, will be sharing the behind the scenes tactics and strategies associated with their involvement in the campaign via frequest blog posts and a weekly feature. In addition to showing what happens in the back office, you have an opportunity to engage in the conversation about the campaign with the people who are driving the execution.

The Webtrends marketing team is leveraging the Widemile Optimize  on-demand platform to test and optimize the number of subscribers who express interest in being contacted by Webtrends or a partner. Check out the Site Optimization blog post by Billy Shih, Widemile Optimization Analyst.

Today’s industry journals, news sites and blogs are dominated with headlines highlighting the recession and the reduction in consumer spending. Cutbacks are impacting corporate marketing budgets and forcing retailers to rethink their multi-channel marketing investments.

This “do more with less” operating environment playing out across marketing departments has elevated the priority of maximizing return on marketing investment (ROMI) for all acquisition, conversion and retention activities. As highlighted in industry and business articles on almost a daily basis, traditional qualitative marketing activities (e.g. offline advertising, sponsorships) that cannot be directly measured are being slashed – and increased emphasis and budget is being shifted towards digital marketing (e.g. search, social media) as the medium delivers measurable activities. Multivariate testing, i.e. testing different versions of page elements simultaneously, and executing tests against key audience segments generates is quickly growing in adoption as it delivers marketers with the ability to achieve greater ROMI without impacting their overall investment in marketing.

For multichannel retailers, online testing is a cost effective way to quickly refine messaging, test price points, and discover and target customer segments. Insights from testing and optimization can and should inform other marketing channels in order to maximize their effectiveness.  For example, one of our clients assumed their audience was mainly male, SMB. As a result of testing they learned the majority of their market was female, SOHO. This insight improved their conversion rate by over 500% and radically changed their creative to better serve their true market.

In a time of declining marketing budgets, how much should be invested in testing? If 5% is spent on testing and increases the effectiveness of a remaining budget by 10%, a measurable gain has already been achieved. Now apply that logic to an annual marketing budget of $10,000,000. The budget is now performing as though $10,500,000 had been invested. At a 40% lift in conversion rates, the marketing will perform as though over $13,333,000 had been invested in your 2009 marketing.  That translates to a 33% boost in marketing results, without increasing budget. And that’s just for online.

Testing your content allows you to answer not only what works best, but why it worked and what mattered to your customers.

Here’s an article that was published in DM News in April,2008 that is still relevant today:

Think back to the last time you grilled steaks. Did you make an effort to cook those T-bones to the liking of each of your guests? Of course you did. Good hosts always make an effort to know the preferences of their invited guests and strive to meet their expectations. Suzy likes her steak medium rare; Joe only eats his charred. No hoofed meat for Amy, but finned is ok.

The search traffic you deliver to landing pages are a lot like dinner guests — they each have preferences and will be happiest if you meet their expectations once they click through to your landing page or microsite. Search engine marketing professionals should think like a great dinner party host: invite choice guests, know their preferences and serve their steak exactly how they like it.

With the latest advances in landing page testing and optimization, knowing your traffic’s preferences and satisfying its needs is as easy as firing up the Weber. First, be sure you are working with a landing page optimization provider or using a toolset that is capable of providing baseline, A/B split, and advanced multivariate testing. Confirm you can do detailed audience segment testing. Don’t settle for just part of the solution — you’ll need all the tools to do it right and deliver the optimal experience.

Secondly, study the landing pages where your traffic arrives after clicking on your text ad “invitations.” Does your company use a one-size-fits-all approach — serving everyone their steak well-done and dry regardless of preference?

With landing page testing and targeting optimization you learn what your audience prefers by quickly testing many different page configurations with a variety of copy and images.  You can also test what different audience segments prefer, and serve exactly the experience that is most likely to elicit the response you want.

Unlike your dinner guests, you don’t need to ask in advance for dietary preferences. With a Web audience many preferences are broadcast along with search actions. Leverage knowledge about what keyword was typed and which text ad was clicked to tailor the landing page and sales funnel experience for higher conversion rates and improved returns on ad spend.

Keep your dinner guests and Web audience happy and craving a return visit by knowing preferences and satisfying expectations. Cook those $15 Niman Ranch rib-eyes just how your guests prefer and make sure each landing page is tested and optimized for the traffic you generate. Everyone will be pleased and most will return for seconds.

Here’s a shorter version of an article that was published by Electronic Retailer Magazine in their Online Strategies Summer 2008 that we feel is worth sharing:

 Increase Search Ad Returns with Multivariate Testing and Optimization

Smart advertisers don’t guess – they test.   David Ogilvy famously said “The most important word in the vocabulary of advertising is TEST.”  Today, that message should resonate even more for two key reasons.

1. Testing is easier now with the growing shift of media spending to online forms from more traditional, harder-to-measure media types, along with significant advances in testing and optimization technology.

2. As our economy slows and all budgets come under increasing scrutiny, especially marketing budgets, we need to become hyper-diligent regarding accountability and returns on ad spend.  How often are you now being asked “what’s the return on that ad spend?

Listen to your Customers

Every second of every day, your online customers are telling you what they like and don’t like.  All you have to do is listen and act.  The advances in testing technology and methodologies make this much easier and permit continuous testing for ongoing campaign performance improvements.

The discipline of “test and know” is especially critical for paid search, since it’s possible to track the entire sales funnel, from key word to conversion event.  If you want to protect and grow your online ad budget, you would be well served to test and optimize the entire process.

Test Where It Delivers

Most marketers have become adept at advanced search engine marketing tactics, such as optimizing key word buys and text ads.  However, many still ignore or pay only passing attention to the actual web pages upon which search traffic lands .   A recent survey of 540 search marketers by Search Marketing Now and Widemile revealed that only 40% were doing any landing page testing at all, most of which was manual simplistic A/B testing.

While search engine marketing tactics are an important first step, they are only part of the answer.  Beyond SEM lies the real payoff – the conversion event.  By going beyond traditional SEM tactics and turning your attention to the next critical step in optimizing the user experience, you can optimize your whole sales funnel, for improved returns on your search budget. 

It’s Easier with Multivariate Testing

Optimizing ad campaigns and the linked landing pages for peak performance is now much easier and efficient with the advances in multivariate testing, which provides a scientific approach to testing hundreds or thousands of possible page variations very quickly to determine what optimal combination of factors is most likely to generate customer conversions.

Multivariate testing enables you to modify key areas of a web page – experimenting with multiple versions of an offer, image and copy, call to action button, for example – to determine the best-performing combination under actual user conditions.  You can even test different landing page combinations in conjunction with specific traffic sources, including search engines, key words, and text ads.  Testing also increases the “relevance” of landing pages, which can have a positive impact on your Google quality score and search engine results page (SERP) ranking.

Testing Delivers Higher Ad Returns

Multivariate testing and landing page optimization is still a relatively new discipline, but is rapidly becoming an essential part of top performing search campaigns.  Like SmartSheet, which realized a 100% increase in the number of new customers generated by its PPC campaign, marketers who leverage multivariate testing generate higher ad returns and can justify larger key word budgets.

David Ogilvy would be pleased.   Heed his advice: “Never stop testing and your advertising will never stop improving.”

Today, we officially announced the release of Widemile Optimize – Enterprise Edition.  The new enterprise edition includes advanced features which were previous only available to internal testing teams, including an advanced rules–based segmentation wizard, a single tag approach which supports all major test types and requires no changes to the page being tested, and a comprehensive online training resource, including best practices available in the Widemile Resource Center.

In honor of this release, Widemile Optimize is available for purchase under special promotional pricing (up to 50% off) on a minimum 6-month subscription limited to the first 20 customers.  Click here for more promotional details.

Improve your 2009 Marketing Performance with Testing

On February 18th, 2009 Widemile and the IAB presented the first ever member hosted webinar titled “Less Budget. Better Results. Improve your 2009 Marketing Performance with Testing” for all IAB members.

View this webinar on demand here.

I appreciate your continuing interest in Widemile. We are in the business of helping companies make more money online – something of particular importance in this difficult economy. Widemile’s technology enables digital marketers and their agencies to maximize revenue and ad campaign performance by quickly determining and publishing the web content that delivers the highest returns.

The Year in Review. At this time last year, the Dow Jones Industrial Average hovered above 13,000, and I certainly was not thinking about FDIC bank seizures, corporate bailouts nor Bernie Madoff. A lot has changed in our world since then and, unfortunately, much of it for the worse. However, we must not lose sight of the good things for which we have reason to be grateful. For me, that includes wonderful family and friends and the gifted people with whom I work. I’ll dispense with my traditional, more detailed year in review, since most of us would prefer to just move forward. However, I can’t resist pointing out, despite dramatic spending cutbacks most everywhere, online advertising still increased more than 17% in 2008. Marketers continued to shift spending to digital at the expense of more traditional media and marketing tactics.

What to expect in 2009. Here’s my view of the next 12 months, as it relates to digital advertising and online sales.

Business Results. Tangible business results matter now more than ever. Gone are the days a marketer can focus only on building brand awareness and generating website traffic, while ignoring customer conversions and measurable value creation. Show me a marketing professional who is not working hard to demonstrate real return on their investments, and I’ll show you a person whose job is in jeopardy. Any budget that fails to demonstrate measurable business results and value creation will be cut.

Full Funnel Responsibility. Expect to see a growing trend toward greater assumption of oversight responsibility for the entire online sales funnel (i.e. acquisition, conversion, retention), especially the conversion point, by those responsible for online media budgets, since their job performance is increasingly linked to measures like return on ad spend (“ROAS”) and return on marketing investment (“ROMI”). For instance, those responsible for managing key word budgets need to exert greater influence over the pages where that traffic converts (or not) into paying customers.

Spend Where (You Know) It Delivers Results. Since the measurable business results generated by each marketing dollar are more important now, it’s likely we will see more money spent where it is most easily measured – meaning digital and especially search. Performance metrics have been the long-time promise of digital advertising. However, during better economic times, increased accountability may actually have throttled growth of digital advertising, since the returns may not have “appeared” as rich as everyone assumed other media delivered.

Our troubled economy may finally usher in broader embrace of greater marketing accountability, which is likely to influence budgets as well. Randall Rothenberg, CEO of the IAB, in his holiday blog post reminded us that “below the line” transactional marketing increases during recessionary times. In the past, that meant more coupons and point-of-sale promotions because they are tactics closely linked to measurable results. This year, expect to see less money devoted to brand building, including banner display, and more budget allocated to online selling, especially in areas where the returns are easily quantifiable and can justify the spend.

Widemile. In light of the steady march of sobering economic news, one must remain cautious about business expectations in this New Year. However, since Widemile is in the business of helping online marketers generate revenue more efficiently, I am optimistic about our ability to continue contributing to the success and growth of our industry.

There is no question a well-tested and optimized web page targeted to specific customer segments delivers a better user experience, more conversions and increased revenue. Is there any business owner that doesn’t want to offer customers and prospects a better online experience or would say “no” to more conversions and increased revenue?

Thank you for your continuing interest in our industry and Widemile, in particular. As always, if I can be a resource to you at any time, please don’t hesitate to ask. Best wishes for a healthy, happy and prosperous 2009.