Optimize & Prophesize

Category: A/B & MVT Testing

  • How Simplicity, Recognition & “The Perception of Ease” Impact Landing Page Optimization

    If there’s one landing page battle I’ve had to fight consistently with clients during my time as a strategist and consultant it is the fight for simplicity. Why don’t people like simplicity on landing pages? Here’s just a few snippets of what I’ve heard over the years: “It makes us look unprofessional” “It doesn’t represent…

  • Marketing Speak

    I’ve been doing plenty of talking the past couple of weeks and I’ve been repeating a number of ideas. Forsaking humility, I thought that sharing what’s on my mind might make an interesting post. In no particular order: Contextual Relevance: Deliver relevance in the context of the user focus Sub-segments: Segmentation…at a whole other level…

  • Measuring and Optimizing Engagement: The Audible.com Case Study

    https://s3.amazonaws.com:443/slideshare/ssplayer.swf?id=9259&doc=adtech-ny-next-generation-strategies-for-ecommerce-the-audiblecom-case-study-9259-9996 You can measure engagement. More importantly, engagement can be optimized. Yesterday, at ad:tech New York I delivered the presentation above on work we just completed at OTTO Digital for Audible.com on the panel Next Generation Strategies for eCommerce, moderated by David Schatsky, President of JupiterKagan. The case study shows how we used multivariate and…

  • The Death of Best Practices

    Best practice by definition is the best possible way of doing something. Most marketers look at implementing best practices as executing standards to make improvement. Unfortunately, this one-way, one-size fits all standardization mentality is not an effective practice for digital marketers. It’s lazy marketing. Old school. Our world needs to be ruled by looking at…

  • Google’s Website Optimizer: Optimization for the Masses

    I’ve been receiving lots of calls the past 24 hours about Google’s “release” of their multivariate testing tool called Google Website Optimizer. Here are my thoughts: • Since you need to have Google Analytics to use the tool this immediately places the tool as a small to mid-market product. I’ve spoken about analytic platforms with…

  • Choice Kills Conversion

    Too often websites, landing pages and even ads decrease the odds of conversion by presenting considerations to users when they are already past the consideration stage and ready to buy. When confronted with choice user response will slow, users become unsure of themselves and many times they will fall off their task. As soon as…

  • Landing Page Optimization Part 2: Search Ads

    Marketers optimizing landing pages often neglect to look at a key element in that optimization equation. The ad. The Reason: Testing results recently showed a 61% impact on conversion rate In Google for a particular ad with the first description line having the greatest impact on that performance. Display ads are being tested as well.…

  • Landing Page Optimization Part 1 (cont.)

    The Keyword Query and Transactional Landing Pages Picking up where we left off in Part 1 we’re now heading downstream and focusing on experiences where the user lands closer to completing their goal. I refer to these as Transactional Landings. Here the keyword driver can be anything from a general query like “mortgage” to a…

  • The Quality of Web Analytic Data. Or, why you need to be doing High Impact Segmentation

    Avinash Kaushik of Intuit had a great post recently on the poor quality of web analytic data. A side story to me was how much better the amount and quality of data we have for online marketing is over every other measured medium. As we look more and more towards this data and the quality…

  • Testing and Optimization for the Holidays

    It’s over 100 degrees today in New York City however my mind is thinking about freezing cold mall parking lots that don’t have a parking space. What does that mean? It means that now is the time to start optimizing for what will likely be the largest online shopping season ever. So, where and how…

  • Branding & Search – Part 2

    Branding Optimization through Search The words optimization and branding have rarely been seen together in a sentence on search engine marketing. I’m out to change that (in fact I just did). Let’s start this conversation by understanding that Search marketers are finding a number of ways to measure branding impact in search. Myself, and others…

  • Website Optimization Advice

    I had the privilege to spend my day today doing something I love, observational research. I observed ten users spending 45 minutes each on a website. The site was a prototype that a client plans to launch soon. This is a very important launch and one that plenty is riding on. It didn’t go well.…

  • Creative License is Dead. Long Live the Customer

    With all the talk about Advertising moving towards a more measurable and quantifiable future one thing that is almost always overlooked is the impact this has on creative design. The design skills and process necessary to execute great ad creative are changing. So too will be the role designers play in the ultimate success of…

  • Rolling Loaded Dice

    Predictions are risky business. The top gamblers in the world, the ones who actually make a living gambling are only right little more then 50% of the time. Branch Rickey, considered by many the greatest baseball mind that ever lived wrote this scouting report, “There have only been two young pitchers I was certain were…

  • Kairos

    In Greek mythology Kairos was the son of Zeus. Aristotle (the first brilliant marketer) referred to kairos in Rhetoric. In essence, kairos it is about timing. Consider the difficulty of getting a laugh when one muffs the punchline of a joke. Consider the difficulty of getting a click when your ad is for reviews and…