Google Website Optimizer ~ Experiment with Your Ad Dollars in a Controlled Environment
Although not the most recent of news, but I just found out about Google Website Optimizer, which is what I’m sure lots of marketers have been looking for to optimize landing pages for their ad campaigns. This is a great little tool that allows you to set up an “original” campaign landing page and set variables to test against, such as: copy block 1, copy block 2, headline 1, headline 2, image 1, and image 2. These are then thrown together randomly into combinations 1, 2, 3, and so on and provide metrics for you to judge against. Maybe you had your campaign ideally optimized using your original combination or maybe something will come out of left field that you completely overlooked. The Website Optimizer will provide metrics for each campaign and how it compare to your “original” test campaign.
One cautionary word when using the website optimizer, make sure to set limits on each campaign so you have standard data across each and also to make the budget small enough so as to not waste ad dollars, but large enough to ensure a valid test sample. My recommendation is to set aside 5-10% of the total budget for testing purposes.
Enjoy!
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That is an interesting article. In our experience website owners find it difficult to understand visitor behaviour even with good systems such as Google Analytics.
We have recently come across an excellent piece of software that not only allows them to monitor individual user behaviour in real time, but also facilitates direct engagement between visitor and user. This has been increasing conversions by an average of 15% in the websites we have implemented it in.
It seems that the individualised data gives a more enlightening perspective.