February 2, 2009

SEW Experts: Is Your Landing Page Relevant?

Your landing page is the first impression by which search engines and users alike will judge your site. And when a searcher first lands on your Web site, you have but mere seconds to establish credibility. In today's SEM agency issues column, "Is Your Landing Page Relevant?," William Flaiz explains that Web sites must rise to the occasion and create landing pages that rank for important keywords while engaging the reader.

» Full story

Posted by Kevin Newcomb at 12:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

January 21, 2009

SEW Experts: Writing Sales Copy For Conversions, Part 2

Once visitors end up on your landing page, you're no longer competing for their attention with other Web sites, so change the focus to the task they're trying to accomplish. In today's By the Numbers column, "Writing Sales Copy For Conversions, Part 2," Tim Ash explains that you're missing an enormous opportunity by not creating a hype-free zone on your landing page.

» Full story

Posted by Kevin Newcomb at 12:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

January 12, 2009

SEW Experts: Search Ad Quality Score 101, Part 2

Getting a good quality score requires that you create relevance and continuity from beginning to end of the search experience. Then you need to test, test, test. In today's SEM 101 column, "Search Ad Quality Score 101, Part 2," Ron Jones shows you how to create landing pages that will lead to conversions, which is the ultimate goal.

» Full story

Posted by Kevin Newcomb at 12:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

January 7, 2009

SEW Experts: Writing Sales Copy for Conversions

One of the most common components you can test is sales copy. In today's By the Numbers column, "Writing Sales Copy for Conversions," Tim Ash explains that changing your approach to writing can often lead to a double-digit increase in conversion rates.

» Full story

Posted by Kevin Newcomb at 12:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

December 10, 2008

SEW Experts: Assembling Your Landing Page Optimization Dream Team, Part 3

We've already described some key roles necessary for a successful landing page optimization program. In today's By the Numbers column, "Assembling Your Landing Page Optimization Dream Team, Part 3," Tim Ash examines three more roles: the copywriter, marketing manager, and user experience expert.

» Full story

Posted by Kevin Newcomb at 12:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

November 26, 2008

SEW Experts: Assembling Your Landing Page Optimization Dream Team, Part 2

The success of your testing program relies heavily on the cooperation of many people in your organization. In today's By the Numbers column, "Assembling Your Landing Page Optimization Dream Team, Part 2," Tim Ash continues with a look at more key roles needed for a successful landing page optimization program.

» Full story

Posted by Kevin Newcomb at 12:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

November 12, 2008

SEW Experts: Assembling Your Landing Page Optimization Dream Team

The success of your testing program relies heavily on the cooperation of many people in your organization. In today's By the Numbers column, "Assembling Your Landing Page Optimization Dream Team, Part 1," Tim Ash outlines some key roles that you'll need to fill with the right kinds of people, or your ideas will never see the light of day.

» Full story

Posted by Kevin Newcomb at 12:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

October 29, 2008

SEW Experts: Landing Pages and the Decision-Making Process

Landing page optimization and testing is a complex activity that requires knowledge of many fields, including usability, copywriting, math, and Web design. In today's By the Numbers column, "Landing Pages and the Decision-Making Process," Tim Ash reminds us that at its core, we're still trying to influence the behavior of people, and human nature hasn't changed.

» Full story

Posted by Kevin Newcomb at 12:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

October 15, 2008

SEW Experts: Landing Page Optimization: Guessing vs. Testing

Even the most experienced experts will be wrong much of the time because no one person can envision the diverse needs of all visitors who find your page. Even if the expert knew everything about every visitor, they would find that their needs often are contradictory. In today's By the Numbers column, "Landing Page Optimization: Guessing vs. Testing," Tim Ash explains that the real experts on the design of your landing pages are your Web site visitors.

» Full story

Posted by Kevin Newcomb at 12:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

October 13, 2008

Landing Page Testing for Higher Profits - Online Workshop - October 28th - 12 P.M. EDT

Search Engine Strategies and Market Motive are teaming up for a new online workshop series. The next workshop will be an action-packed one on "Landing Page Testing for Higher Profits" hosted by SiteTuners.com CEO and author of Amazon's e-commerce bestseller "Landing Page Optimization: The Definitive Guide to Testing and Tuning for Conversions" Tim Ash (yes me). This will be an interactive session with audience participation. If you would like additional information, please visit the event page.

Short summary:

Are you turning away your website visitors? Instead of guessing at your website visitor's needs, you can ask them what they prefer. Landing page testing allows your visitors to design a more satisfying experience for themselves, and put more money in your pocket. Know what works -- no hand-waving or techie talk in this session.

Learn how to quickly diagnose potential conversion problems, test, and uncover better performing versions of your landing page.

Posted by Tim Ash at 4:30 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

September 17, 2008

SEW Experts: Landing Page Optimization -- Insource or Outsource? Part 2

Deciding whether to outsource your landing page optimization and testing program is not an easy decision. There are advantages to each. In today's By the Numbers column, "Landing Page Optimization -- Insource or Outsource? Part 2," Tim Ash shares three more important considerations before you choose to outsource your testing program or "insource" it by doing everything in-house.

» Full story

Posted by Kevin Newcomb at 12:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

August 6, 2008

SEW Experts: How Long Should My Landing Page Test Run?

What's the right length for a landing page optimization test? In today's By the Numbers column, "How Long Should My Landing Page Test Run?," Tim Ash notes that that's a bit like asking 'how long is a piece of string?' But there are some guidelines to follow to help you know when enough is enough.

» Full story

Posted by Kevin Newcomb at 12:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

July 9, 2008

SEW Experts: Coherency in Landing Page Testing

Coherency is an overall sense of your design hanging together. It's a congruity and harmonious consistency in the relation of all parts to the whole. And it's largely ignored by landing page testers. In today's By the Numbers column, "Coherency in Landing Page Testing," Tim Ash shows how this can lead visitors to respond to incoherent pages with a variety of gut reactions, and none of them are flattering.

» Full story

Posted by Kevin Newcomb at 12:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

June 25, 2008

SEW Experts: Uncovering Site Problems for Landing Page Optimization, Part 2

Web analytics on your Web site can help you uncover and prioritize potential site problems. In today's By the Numbers column, "Uncovering Site Problems for Landing Page Optimization, Part 2," Tim Ash offers some additional techniques to discover conversion issues on your landing pages, including mining onsite search, or conducting usability testing, focus groups, and surveys.

» Full story

Posted by Kevin Newcomb at 12:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

May 15, 2008

Taguchi Sucks for Landing Page Testing

I recently spoke on the multivariate testing panel at eMetrics in San Francisco. You would think that I dropped a hand grenade into the room when I opined that the Taguchi Method was a bad fit for landing page testing. This is a well understood fact to anyone with a solid understanding of basic statistics. Unfortunately this seems to leave out most landing page testers...

In the world of landing page testing there are two common mathematical approaches: A-B Split testing, and parametric Multivariate testing. A subset of Multivariate testing is known as "Design of Experiments" (DoE) and is also called "fractional factorial". A common fractional factorial approach is called the "Taguchi Method".

Some online marketers consider A-B Split testing to be kind of wimpy, and endow fractional factorial methods with an almost mythical quality.

I spend way too much of my time explaining to people that at least when applied to landing page optimization fractional factorial methods are a really bad idea. Despite this, the illusion persists that this kind of testing is somehow state-of-the-art, when in fact, nothing could be further from the truth.

For a lot more detail (30 pages worth), download the whitepaper - "The Truth About Taguchi".

Testing is composed of two important activities:

- Deciding what to test and coming up with good ideas - Finding the best solution among your tested alternatives

People claim to get really good results with fractional factorial multivariate testing, and they credit this to the method that they use to analyze the data.

In reality, the improved conversion rates are the results of the great ideas for new landing page elements that go into the test. If all of your alternative landing pages designs are better then the original, it does not really matter what method you use to confirm that. Fractional factorial approaches may actually miss the best version of the landing page in your test and often lead you to a sub-optimal answer.

There is a huge mismatch between the original environment in which fractional factorial testing was developed and how it is usually applied to landing page optimization. It was basically transplanted to online marketing because it is relatively easy for a non-mathematical audience to understand, and not because of its appropriateness or fitness for the task.

The principal drawbacks of fractional factorial methods are:

  • Very small test sizes
  • Restrictive & inflexible test designs
  • Less accurate estimation of individual variable contributions
  • Drawing the wrong conclusions
  • Inability to consider context and variable interactions
Despite misinformation to the contrary, fractional factorial methods do not offer any speed advantage over full factorial data-collection approaches (such as those available in the free Google Website Optimizer tool) if you are simply planning to understand the impact of the individual variables in the test (a so-called "main effects" analysis).

If you plan on using parametric (i.e. "model building" )approaches for landing page testing you should always use full factorial data collection regardless of the subsequent analysis you plan to do. It greatly simplifies your test design, and produces better estimates of the main effects.

All parametric methods (including fractional factorial) are also outclassed by newer non-parametric testing methods such as the SiteTuners TuningEngine, which can be licensed to run your own tests in-house and have the following advantages:

  • Very large test sizes (1,000-10,000 times larger with the same data rate)
  • Much faster data collection (on the same data rate)
  • More accurate results (consider variable interactions)
  • Flexible test construction
  • No knowledge of statistics required
Hopefully this will set the record straight. If you still have an issue with this, and insist on proclaiming the superiority of fractional factorial methods, tell your statistician to call us and I will have my Chief Scientist beat them up properly.

Posted by Tim Ash at 8:23 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

May 14, 2008

SEW Experts: Emotional Motivators in Landing Page Optimization

Visitors will arrive at your Web site with their own needs, perspectives, and emotions. In today's By the Numbers column, "Emotional Motivators in Landing Page Optimization," Tim Ash explains that since you don't know much about them individually, you can influence them collectively with the design of your site.

Posted by Kevin Newcomb at 12:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

See More Posts From:

This Week | This Month

  var gaJsHost = (("https:" == document.location.protocol) ? "https://ssl." : "http://www."); document.write(unescape("%3Cscript src='" + gaJsHost + "google-analytics.com/ga.js' type='text/javascript'%3E%3C/script%3E")); var pageTracker = _gat._getTracker("UA-564586-7"); pageTracker._setDomainName(".searchenginewatch.com"); pageTracker._trackPageview(); window.collarity_appid = "incmedia"; //> //>
0