The Widemile Blog

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.”