Tips and Ideas for Landing Pages and Sites

What is Marketing Optimization? Testing, Targeting, and Behavior

It is the Year of Optimization.  The recent acquisition of TouchClarity by Omniture is yet another confirmation of an intense surge in interest in technologies that make computers sell better to people. 

But what in the world *is* optimization?

As a matter of disclosure I am not a PhD.  My ADD is a strong inoculation against advanced scholarly pursuits.

However, I have the unique viewpoint of experience.  I co-ran a company, Fort Point Partners, that was responsible for deploying a dazzling range of technology for companies like Nike, Best Buy, and about 50 other firms.  We launched rules-based systems (ATG Scenario Server, e.Piphany), search systems (EasyAsk and Endeca) and more advanced segmentation and modeling software (LikeMinds, Personify, netPerceptions to name a few).  We also ran a lot of tests.

Our goal was simple - make the computer capable as a salesperson. For us, optimization is a fancy word for making a selling process more relevant and engaging for your customer so that they make you more money. And the best optimization tool was one where a marketer could adapt and learn, but the machine did the work.

I see four major approaches to optimization that each have critical value for the marketer (I will use this space over the next week or so to go into more detail on each approach):

1. Experimentation - testing approaches including A/B, multivariate, Taguchi, optimal design and others. Showing different experiences to different control groups to determine a "winner" or "best recipe" based on conversion rate, revenue, or other outcome. Read more here.
2. Targeting - also referred to as "rules-based optimization".  Defining explicit segments and rules for delivering content experience. These can be simple definitions like "show the iPod when our customer searches for "iPod" on Yahoo or very sophisticated behavioral segments.
3. Behavioral - applying AI or linear regression to prior data to determine predictive factors from data to drive the display of content.
4. Social - offloading the work of relevance to the community through ratings, reviews, tagging, or other forms of participation.

Take Google, for example.  They are algorithm guys, right? They use a predictive model that is finely tuned to determine the elusive grail of "relevance" and their results are unbelievable. Yet they also use targeting and testing. True, they outsource the work of specifying the rules to us through keyword selection, bidding, and match type, but this is targeting at its finest.  And they test regularly - evaluating different treatments of the SERPs.

So what is the best optimization approach? Optimization is just marketing with math. If your user base ratings improve the relevance of your search results, then do it!  If testing helps to eliminate your CEO's bias towards acres of copy, do it! The marketing "mix" for optimization is going to take time to get right, but will yield tasty morsels of revenue improvement every step of the way.

We started Offermatica not because we discovered the magic algorithm that turned a computer into a selling machine, but because we found out that the keys to selling online were speed and control. Speed - because marketers had no time, so the machine was going to have to do the work.  And Control, because the marketer still needed to be "in the loop", either driving new ideas or removing crazy outcomes.

And remember this: Marketing is done by marketers. Machines just help us listen and aim better.

Landing Pages - The Consumer Just Won't Behave

Would you like to know the single biggest reason why online campaigns are not strong?  The consumer just won't behave. 

No, this is not another screed about user-generated media.  I love the mentos and diet coke guys as much as anyone.  The problem isn't that users are making more interesting ads.  Instead, it is that they are not consuming our media correctly.  We are working hard to make beautiful display ads.  We are making ever more luscious site experiences, and we are becoming sensitive impresarios of email.  But they are not following the rules.

No, they have the gall to want to click from an ad to a page that is relevant, and even to continue engaging in relevant content click after click until its satisfying conclusion.  How dare they.

In the old days, it was different.  You hired a small army of people, you made a 30 or 60-second spot, and the consumer consumed it.  They didn't ask us to make our stores match our ads.  They were disciplined back then.  They knew how to consume media in the exact chunks that we produced it.  And it was good.

It was simple. Start watching from the beginning of a show, and end at the end.  Start at the first minute, end at :30. But now that is over.  The new online generation will never have the stolid discipline of old. 

As marketers, we do ourselves a disservice when we still think about media as discrete units of production (an ad, a layout, a site).  The consumer isn't buying it.  Just because we have a different agency and subspecialty for site, display ad, PPC ad, email, etc., does not change the fact that every single action of every person on the web is defined as part of a group of actions. Very rarely does a person go online, type a URL into a browser, visit that single site, accomplish a task, and leave the web completely.

More often, we search, we dither, we explore, we lose track, we gain focus, we complete an action, we get bored, we get called for dinner, we log off.

In other words, a unit of consumption online is a Family Circus-like wandering from  point of engagement through completion, or -- often -- from point of engagement through boredom.

Only when we begin to consider the whole process, from first point of engagement and including every other step along the way, will we truly engage with our prospects.

Let me illustrate.

I was recently searching for a chiminea -- one of those outdoor fireplaces in which you can burn wood, toast marshmallows with the kids, and pretend you're camping (must be some primitive quest-for-fire drive).

So I typed in the word "chiminea" (I know, it's a stupid word) on Google, and came up with a long list of possibilities.

The first paid search listing was for FirePitShop.com. I clicked. Too many choices. While the landing page was designed well, showing a featured chiminea and some other, "popular" chimineas, it was still too generic.

FirePitShop did a good job landing me on a chiminea page, but for such a generic search term, the site might have fared better with me by providing some basic information.

The third paid search listing, BlueRooster.com, did better. (Why didn't I click on the second paid search listing? I have no idea -- it just didn't appeal. I think I didn't like the name of the URL - Yardiac.com. See the whims of your customers you have to contend with?)

While TheBlueRooster.com landing page didn't look as spiffy as FirePitShop.com, it offered me a list of tips on how to buy a chiminea. First off, I learned some definitions. Good news: the product I was looking for is actually called a fire pit (a bowl or 360 degree open fireplace without a chimney) rather than a chiminea (a fireplace that has a chimney to efficiently fuel fire with fresh air), which means that, thankfully, I can stop typing that silly word.

The tips were nice, but the layout was lousy (lots of strangely centered text marching down the page) and I navigated away. Still, I think it was a good choice on the part of the retailer to land me on a tips page rather than a product or category page.

Now lets explore an alternative - This time, one done by our marketing folks:

Search on "Landing Page Optimization" and click on our ad (which is relevant).  Here is what you will see:

The goal is to connect the search to the experience.  What matters?  For one, be relevant to the search.  Secondly, offer some value - landing page articles that offer tips and suggestions.  Finally, give them something to do.

What is it not?  It is not a "Home Page" or "Product Page" that was built by the site group and linked to by the search marketer.  It is not a stranded landing page that is built by the PPC folks and divorced from the site.

It is a site page that fits in the site but is part and parcel with the PPC ad and relevant to the keyword. It carries the user into the the site in a way that is not jarring.

The user can't be trained to act in a way that is convenient for us. So lets meet them half way.

Update: Check out this post from Jon Mendez at Optimize and Prophesize on Tips for Better Landing pages.  Jon is one of the top landing page guys out there today.

S-E-O, S-E-M, M-O-U-S-E

If you are in the interactive business, and you still position yourself as an expert in SEM, SEO, display ads, rich media ads, usability or any of the myriad subspecialties of our world, lets make a New Year's resolution:

I (state your name) promise that I will expand my art past my niche.  That I will commit to understanding what is getting shown for the bid that I have masterfully optimized. That I will not buy an ad without knowing where it is taking my customer.  That I will not create a page on the site without thinking about where the visitor is coming from.

Because we can all be better marketers.  And if you are still producing PPC campaigns where you are buying a brand keyword for a product like, say, Spirograph, that you don't even sell, then can we at least avoid showing a "no results" search result page for that term on the site.

Think I am kidding, check out this Blog posting on SEO Speedwagon.

Ad:Tech Memories - it is about Lead Gen

Just finished up Ad:Tech and observed an interesting phenomenon. It seems that you either have an impressively constrained role in the marketing-cosm, or you are in lead-gen.

The roles in the interactive marketing firmament have hardened severely and unproductively - you are either SEO or SEM, ad creative or media, site or brand, etc. Sad, because consumers really don't consume media that way anymore.

Unfortunately, that is how it is fed to them.

The net result? An explosion of "Lead-gen" firms. I do not exaggerate. You couldn't swing a cat at Ad:Tech without hitting one. But what are they? And why are there so many? And why are they so profitable?

Perhaps Lead-gen is the Hedge fund phenomenon of the Interactive marketing industry. Groups of people that create arbitrage through math that normal folk would cring at. Perhaps they have technology that more precisely targets, prices, and aggregates leads.

Or, more likely, the only arbitrage is organization and staffing.

From an organizational perspective, a good lead-gen firm will not likely say "I can't control the landing page". They won't say "SEO is someone elses problem". They will look to find good leads and convert them into acquisition. They will learn how marketing is consumed to understand how consumers can be marketed to.

From a staffing perspective, they will hire people who are sick of being in a little box. They will hire marketers who "get it" and won't work in an environment of little boxes. These are people that brands, banks and retailers will not be able to retain.

This is an observation. It may be the right answer. Interactive Marketing may have become so niche-oriented that a modern corporate structure must outsource some or all to lead-gen firms. But agencies should certainly pay mind to it. You cannot out-market someone when you live by rules that they ignore.

Comments?

SEO and Home Page Testing

I read a very thoughtful post from Stephan Spencer's Scatterings that raises an incredibly important point and suggests even more insights.  The money quote:

The problem I have with conversion optimization services [all company names deleted] is less that they could be misconstrued as spam, but rather the fact that they don’t take the potential SEO impact into account. So, for example, a conversion optimization test of the home page might show a clear winner as far as the the best converting variation. However, when that variation is then implemented as the new permanent home page, the rankings and search traffic may tank. The likelihood for unforseen consequences is great because [they] do not understand SEO deeply at all.

I can only speak for my company, but I assure you that we have only the deepest respect for SEO specialists and firmly believe that any company that is not investing in SEO should strongly examine their commitment to online marketing.  It is not an elective.

Offermatica was the pioneer in using Web2.0 techniques for optimization starting in 2003, and the primary reason for our choice of approach is that we were committed to "do no harm" to SEO.  Believe me, there are other architecture options for optimization.

But Stephan has opened an interesting discussion, so lets see what we can find.

Lets assume that SEO is valuable, and I know that optimizing the experience to benefit the visitor is critical.  What now?

Here are a few things to think about:
1. Offermatica is not touching four of the 5 most important SEO elements
    1. inbound links
    2. title tags
    3. description tags
    4. URL
We only alter content on the page and links off the page.

3. A Web2.0 approach gives you a big range to learn before you "commit" the change to the default content.  BTW, we have spoken with Google on a number of occasions and they have confirmed our approach. If you find a manifestly better version, you should look to understand why. Is it the product? The offer? Simplicity? Copy?

3. Allowing your home page to calcify because you are terrified to make changes will kill you.   Even Google has changed elements on their home page and, trust me, it is far more likely that your business (and mine) is not like Google than that it is.  For a publisher, changes are the difference between engagement and dismissal.  For a retailer, change may be the only constant.

4. Some of your "home pages" are actually product pages, articles, or reviews that are essential to optimize for natural search.  Showing up high on personal finance words is very valuable.  But testing layout, product shots, navigation, and other elements can have massive impacts on revenue with minimal impact on search ranking.

5. In many, many cases, optimization is an ongoing process, not a search for a "perfect page". 

Think of optimization as buying a very low-cost option.  You gain information at a shockingly low cost, and you are then in a better position to make a decision that could have very positive return.

The basic advice I would offer to companies that are testing pages that are highly tuned for SEO is this: nUnderstand what helps your visitor using optimization then consult with your SEO team or specialist to understand the impact and potential.  If you are using testing correctly, you should be gaining insights that can be shaped by expert SEO to maximize benefit both for your listing and for your visitor.

It’s important to keep the end goal in mind – marketers should be trying to find the optimal mix of programs and initiatives to: 1) maximize profit and 2) improve brand perception among their target market to increase sales.  Some combination of SEO best practices and site optimization is likely necessary to meet marketing objectives.

Yahoo Search Head on Testing

I attended a session yesterday at Search Engine Strategies where Yahoo's Director of Search Engine Marketing, David Roth, told the audience that "Landing page optimization is as important as bid optimization".

In short, what you say is as important as what you pay.

Makes a heck of a lot of sense.

I applaud Yahoo! for a simple, clear statement that clearly opens up the discussion of testing and optimization to all marketers.  The idea was always with us, but the landing page seemed esoteric.  Setting a bid was everything.

Well, folks, its time to move past the click.

"Free" Search - Best Clicks, Worst Pages

As you may know, I have been ruminating on the subject of landing pages and the concept of a single corporate entity bestowing their "Quality" imprimateur onto its advertisers.  But Google's approach of throwing math at the problem of serving its users may be backfiring.

While searching recently, I noticed an interesting phenomenon:  In many cases, the landing pages for corporate sites are now much more user-friendly and effective than the paid search results. 

I searched for "DVD" on Google, and here were two leading unsponsored links:
Impossible To Read page from DVD Price Search
Even Harder from DVD demystified

Now compare this to a nice landing page from a well-known brand in the paid results:

NetFlix

A conundrum.  Optimising for natural search (otherwise known as SEO) can result in truly horrific user experiences.  Excessive text, poor layout, and no adherence to usability standards.  However, landing pages that are thoughtfully conceived for paid search (SEM) are often superior.

Worse than that, companies become religious about not touching a page that has been "optimized" for search ranking.  Forget about listening to your customer, just listen to the Google SERP algorithm.

I admit this is a small statistical set.  In fact, if you had a scientific interest in Amino Acids, the natural search results, while inelegant, would be more relevant than the countless supplement ads in the paid area. (Click to search) 

But it is significant.

We work with search marketers every day.  And as the weeks go by I see more and more sophistication in how to remove barriers to success for consumers who click on display ads and PPC ads.  The marketers are genuinely interested in optimizing the experience, and better performance seems to correlate with simplification, trust, and usability.

It is worth thinking about.

Landing Pages and Relevance

So, a few days ago I wrote about landing pages and offered some very basic landing page tips. But what I'm really hoping for is that marketers get beyond those basics -- there's so much more out there that we can do if we push ourselves. The web is changing, and the way consumers use the web is changing, and I believe marketers are in the slow lane on this one.

Let's talk about relevance. This much is obvious: the more relevant the landing page, the more relevant the user's experience. And obviously, the more relevant the experience for your visitor, the better the conversions.

I'm convinced that relevance is key to where the web is going, and that's what I want to explore. I'm not talking about being relevant in a broad sense, where someone searches for the phrase "running shoes" so I land them on the sneaker category page.

I'm talking about serious relevance, relevance that gets to the heart of your potential customer's goal, their very intention. I'm talking about testing a variety of landing page templates designed so that, depending on the origination of the visitor, they get immediately to what they want, not simply in the broad visitor sense, but visitor by visitor.

But how do you create custom landing pages when you buy thousands or tens of thousands of keywords?

Obviously, you can’t create a custom page for every keyword, or even every keyword bucket. But by crafting a comprehensive keyword strategy, you can consolidate your landing pages into a sensible (and manageable group) without much trouble. Then you can customize them down to a granular level.

First, you have to look at keyword groups by intention (notice I italicized that word again -- it's an important one), not by "bucket." Then, break out your categories of landing pages and create templates. Then test each template for overall effectiveness.

Finally, once the templates have become relatively successful, you can begin testing the variables within the landing page templates to further improve conversions.

This doesn’t have to be a gigantic task or mean an overhaul of every existing landing page. Consider choosing a single group of your landing pages, deciding which of these categories it fits into, and diving into it until it’s right. Then, move on to the others.

Obviously, there's a lot here to digest, and I'm not going into a ton of detail. If you want more, here's an article that further explains what I mean.

Landing Pages (7 tips)

This feels to me like the summer of the landing pages. It seems all anybody wants to talk about: how can I improve my landing pages, how can I improve conversions from my landing pages, do I need unique landing pages for every group of keywords I buy?

To me, this all feels a bit old hat. Weren't we focusing tons of energy on landing pages last year? We learned that we need to target our landing pages based on keyword, that we need to repeat the keyword in the headline of the landing page. We tested where we should land visitors: on the home page? the product detail page? the category page?

Frankly, I'm sick of landing pages. Unfortunately (for me) I know how important they are, and I know that there's always more work to be done to make them better.

Thinking of all this has reminded me of some tips I learned quite awhile back, from CMP's Director of Marketing,

Michael

Grover. The tips are a couple of years old, but still extremely relevant.

His point at the time was that, when you hanker after keywords you can't afford but know will draw in the masses, you can increase ROI and thus afford those pricier words by testing and improving your landing page. After all, it's not the cost per click that matters, but the cost per acquisition.

These were his thoughts:

1. Visitors might not think your keywords are so key

Track the effectiveness of your keywords and focus your landing page tests on the words that are getting the most clicks. An enormous number of terms that people would like to buy don't actually get any hits.

When "on demand computing" was particularly hot in the tech field, for example, several advertisers wanted to buy the phrase, but nobody was searching for those words.

2. Group keywords together

Non product-specific keywords can be tricky. If someone clicks on the phrase "Panasonic 42-inch plasma screen TV," they should really see a specific landing page for that TV family, Grover says, rather than a general page listing every TV a company sells.

But that kind of specificity might not be realistic if you have hundreds of keywords. While your most important keywords may indeed warrant separate landing pages, you should also test ways to group less important keywords together. Does it make more sense to have a landing page just for plasma screen TVs, or to have a page with plasma and flat-screen TVs?

3. Lose the "nav" bar

The landing page should be primarily about what you're selling. But many companies use their standard Web page template, with the same navigation bar and other elements that distract visitors who potentially have a specific purchase in mind.

Test landing pages that have fewer links so you don't "diffuse the message so much that they move on to something else," Grover says.

If that's not possible, test the option of putting necessary links below the fold.

4. Don't Flash

Advertisers love Flash. Consumers hate it. When using keywords, consumers are taking action, creating momentum, and moving forward. Think of Flash as a brick wall. According to Grover, marketers need to avoid anything that slows down the sales process.

If you don't believe us, at least take the time to test your Flash landing page against the same page without Flash.

5. Relevancy

If someone searches for widgets, that's what they want to find. You don't want to show them your support page or home page or another product. You want to show them widgets.

6. Invest in Web analytics and testing

The most critical investment a company can make is a way to know what's happening on its landing pages, said Grover. Look at which ad a visitor clicked from and where they went within your site -- in other words, follow the "advertising clickstream" (a subset of Web analytics as a whole).

Then, you want to figure out why people are behaving the way they are, "and that's where testing and trial and error comes in," Grover says.

7. One final tip from Grover

When it comes to testing colors, blue trumps red, he believes.

 

PPC and Optimization

The PPC marketing world is giving a great bear-hug to optimization. Why? It seems to make a difference.  Check out this PPC primer by Alexander Douzet.  Here it is in PDF format.

This post is really exceptional for its level of detail.  The Ladders.com, Alexander's company, is clearly doing the legwork and it certainly bears notice.