Tips and Ideas for Landing Pages and Sites

The NFL vs. the Mob

You know what else is cool about what the NFL did with its Super Bowl ad contest? (If you're not familiar with it, read my previous post, here.) They were smart enough to know that they shouldn't be the only ones choosing the winner of the ad. The NFL fans were the ones pitching ideas. It should be the NFL fans who helped to choose the winner.

But they were also smart enough to not leave the final decision solely in the hands of the fans.

Fans helped vote to narrow down the entries. But of the finalists, winner Gino Bona's pitch was actually the second choice.

Why is this important? It highlights an ongoing discussion among web merchandisers that I like to call "The Merchant vs. the Mob."

Web merchants try numerous tricks to see what will help sell the most product. They offer cross-sell suggestions that they come up with themselves or with a program that derives the suggestions based upon a variety of factors (the "merchant"). Or, they offer suggestions based on what other consumers have bought or searched for (the "mob").

Unfortunately, neither of these approaches are fool-proof. Allowing the mob to choose preferences is like saying that everyone else's knowledge of your visitors is greater than your own knowledge. On the other hand, allowing only your own preferences to influence the way you merchandise (even when your own preferences are informed by data and statistics and research and expert opinions) is like saying that your own knowledge is greater than that of all visitors, combined. Neither, in fact, is true.

Every website, whether it's an ecommerce site, a publisher site, or something else altogether, needs to balance the wishes of the consumer with the knowledge of their own self (or staff).

Check out my post on The New York Times for more on this topic. Or, read this article titled The Merchant vs. the Machine.

Gino Bona and His NFL Ad Show Why Testing Is Vital

By now most people in the ad industry have heard of Gino Bona and his pitch that won the NFL Super Bowl ad contest that invited consumers to pitch their own idea for an NFL ad to be run during the Super Bowl.

Gino, who works with an ad agency in New Hampshire as a writer, will have the opportunity to see his pitch made into a commercial that will air during the Super Bowl. His pitch, which can be seen here, is brilliant. Of course, who knows how the actual ad will turn out, but based on the pitch, it will be a damn good one. And the NFL, unless it had had the foresight to seek ideas from its adoring public, would never have stumbled across that exact idea.

Interestingly, though, I've heard complaints from friends, and even those in the industry, that the ad contest shouldn't have been won by an ad guy.

"It should be banned to people in the industry," I've heard. "This is the chance for the public to make their own statement."

I disagree. In fact, I think this is a terrific illustration of something I've been talking about for a long time.

Here's what I mean: aside from the fact that the contest was a great marketing ploy, someone in the NFL's ad department had the foresight to realize that, in order to get the "best idea ever," it would be a good idea to let everyone try their hand at it. That meant not just internal departments, not just the ad agency, but everyone at all who has a stake in the NFL or cares about its teams - that is, the fans.

So Gino, just a regular guy, and obviously a football fan, had the opportunity to pitch his idea, along with thousands of others. The gang from the NFL, combined with the power of consumers voting online, decided that his was the best pitch out there.

The situation parallels what I have been saying about online testing for years.

Online testing can open the doors to all ideas. Marketing teams do not have to be limited by conference table testing. That is, they don't have to decide by sitting around a table, which idea they plan to run with. Instead, they can test any and every idea, becuase the cost and time concerned are negligible.

By doing so, their ideas don't have to be limited to the ideas of the department. Anyone can show their brilliance. Any idea can have validity, until it is tested. The guy in the mailroom, or the guy down the street, or the president of the company - all of their ideas are equally valid. Until proven otherwise.

Testing Engagement Rather than Preferences

I've recently been thinking about what testing really means, at its core. I think it means listening, really listening, to consumers.

Mostly, we tend to test things online: colors of buttons, wording of language, copy in a headline, position of the navigation bar, number of fields in a form, size of images, or placement of merchandise.

When we test elements, we often learn interesting factors - a hard sell in the call to action may perform better, indicating that consumers of a given company may need a good, hard push toward the purchase.  That in itself is important knowledge. But it leaves out significant information about the way the consumer engages with the company.

What if, instead, we begin to test the underlying assumptions about how we engage with our customers, and how our customers engage with us? Should you do more suggesting, or more effective responding to searches? Should you give a lot of results or just a few?  Should you create a shipping club or just offer reasonable shipping rates?

This sounds simple, but it marks a fundamental difference in the way we have been thinking about testing and optimization.

Think of it this way: You want to buy a sweater for someone you don't know very well. You might ask, "What's your favorite color?" She says red, and you know a tiny bit about her. Her answer might help you make a decision - but there are an awful lot of red sweaters available.

Now imagine that, instead, you ask, "What's your favorite thing to do on a cold weekend day in January?"

If she answers that she loves ice fishing in 20-below weather, that gives you a very different feel for how she engages in the world (and thus what type of sweater to buy) than if she answers that she likes to sit in front of a fireplace with a good book.

Both answers are equally revealing. And both, I would argue, give a better idea of what kind of sweater to purchase than simply knowing her favorite color is red.

So keep seeking elements that change results, but seek to be bolder.

Rambles on How Advertisers Benefit from Testing

Here's the challenge I face today: how do we market a complex product that can solve the various problems of multiple types of marketers?

I'm working on a B2B testing guide for a MarketingSherpa event, and I understand more than ever the challenges our sales reps face every day. Our product - a testing and optimization engine that can help online companies improve conversions - can be used by general marketers, direct response marketers, ecommerce folks and advertisers. Each of those groups faces different challenges in the course of their daily tasks.

Tonight I'm thinking about advertisers and their agencies.

Agencies would love to be able to test their creative to see which, of several different but perhaps similar ideas, moves customers to action. Often, there's an element of an ad which they'd like to tweak. Maybe they have two conflicting ideas for the call to action, or maybe they want to play around with the headline to see if they can improve conversions.

But generally, they must resort to creating an ad for a single venue, or for a group of venues (a network buy), and then they simply run the ad. If it doesn't work "well enough" (a relative term), they then try a different ad.

If they do test an ad, the test is usually done in one of two ways: they create two different ads and run them simultaneously on two different, but similar, sites, for purposes of comparison. Or, they create two different ads and run them on the same site but at different times, running ad A for a week, then ad B for a week.

Neither is particularly effective, because in neither case are they comparing apples to apples.

With Offermatica's AdBox, advertisers can test 2 (or several) different creative executions to see which works best -- in real time, and on a single site or across an entire network.

If an advertiser wants to run an ad campaign across an ad network, but isn't sure which variations of two or three creative treatments will be most effective, the AdBox allows them to test it.

It works as a sort of "content slot," and the content that gets plugged into the slot is the ad. Using the AdBox technology, one ad can be plugged in and served to 50 percent of visitors to - say - CNET's home page (if that's where your ad was running), while the other 50 percent of visitors would see your other ad.

In the past, advertisers have been stuck with few options to really discover how to improve an ad. With the AdBox, the slot where the ad runs rotates the ad on its own. Visitors who are served ad A will see ad A every time they return, while visitors who see ad B will continue to see ad B. Both ad A and B are served to visitors of a single page, and advertisers (and their agencies) can determine which creative treatment generates the most clicks.

"Only the Holes Taste the Same"

Branding may have more to gain from online testing than any other branch of marketing. Sure, some will claim that testing’s sweet spot is in offer or copy optimization. But branding will literally be set free by testing.

How?

First, let’s acknowledge that there is a real distinction online between a “sales–y,” direct approach and the quest for long–term brand value: online is more measurable, more trackable, and more similar (so far) to print and direct than to broadcast. But that doesn’t mean that online branding is an oxymoron.

Rather, the online medium can be a forum for floating interesting ideas that would otherwise be drowned in the process of brand management.

If you're interested in learning more about branding by testing -- and reading the Cheerios story I call "Only the Holes Taste the Same" -- check out Offermatica's most recent newsletter.

For a video of Ji Lee's story (worth watching), go to the Gel Conference page and scroll down to Ji Lee's presentation.

Sometimes, Just Testing Is Enough

It's late. I'm tired. But it's been a few days and I wanted to get some thoughts down. I've been thinking about testing and optimization. The basic stuff. The simple stuff. The things that it seemed marketers should know intuitively, but they just didn't. Turned out sometimes, the things they thought would work, didn't. And the things that shouldn't have worked, did.

Even after testing and optimization began to be par for the course for many companies, I found myself banging my head against the wall in frustration when I'd hear, at conferences, "we don't need to test. We know what our customers want." Or, "We don't need to test. Doing it this way just makes sense. It's intuitive." Or, my favorite, "We don't have time to test."

Now, testing on websites, whether it be simple A/B tests of one call to action versus another or a more complex test that shows different content throughout the site to different visitor segments, has become common. I'm reading case studies everywhere. I love it.

Of course, it's no longer enough. Not for me, and I believe not for most marketers. Testing and optimization should are important, after all, only so far as they improve a visitor's experience, right? (And, thus, our bottom line.) We should strive to make their experience ever more relevant. How can we do that? How can we take our myriad offerings and pare them down in such a way that each and every individual sees only what they want, when they want it?

It's like mind reading. And I know we can do it. But right now, it's making my brain hurt. So I'm going to post some really basic thoughts on testing, from an article I wrote nearly two years ago. The ideas are fun to implement, and profitable, yet simple to wrap my brain around tonight. Read on, if you're interested.

Is Multivariate Testing Right For You?

You can increase sales or conversions by 400%, according to a recent MarketingSherpa finding, by testing and optimizing your landing pages. Use multivariate testing rather than A/B testing, and you can reap those increased conversions much more quickly.

Multivariate testing is a mouthful, but worthwhile to be aware of. Think of multivariate testing as running thousands of A/B tests all at once. It uses a mathematical algorithm to rank multiple elements within a single test.

For example, imagine you want to test these types of elements:

 

•		order and wording of registration fields
•		hang-tag with a special offer
•		"free trial" starburst
•		dense copy vs. bullet points
•		photos with people vs. product photos
•		incentives (free shipping or dollars off?)
•		navigation bar: green vs. blue
•		stylized links vs. simple buttons

Multivariate testing allows you to test all of these elements (and more) at the same time. It works with test cells as small as a few hundred, so you don't need hundreds of thousands of users for accurate results. And it ranks each element alone and in relation to each other, something A/B testing cannot do.

A/B tests still have validity. If you've never dipped your toe into the testing stream, A/B testing allows you to start slowly, tweaking a single element at a time. At a global level -- say you're trying to decide whether to sell apples or oranges -- A/B testing is a simple, straightforward approach to determine the better of the two options.

But if you want to get more revenue from fewer visitors and you're not sure what elements have the most impact on conversions, multivariate testing works best. Here are three things to think about if you're considering running a multivariate test:

1. What pages should you test?
The Web pages that have the highest value are prime for testing. Look at the two or three hardest-selling pages. Are they pushing as hard as they can?

Other opportunities to apply multivariate testing include landing pages for email, ad, or search campaigns.

2. What elements on those pages make customers take action?
Every retailer has an idea of who the customer is, what they care about, and what the site needs to do to meet their needs.

Look at your assumptions of customers: Do they care more about price? Quality products? Being part of a community? Getting information before anyone else?

3. Test your assumptions

Anything that you think drives conversions should be thrown into the blender.

Should a big brand put a really average product in the hot real estate to push it harder? Or should you put a hotter product in the key real estate? Both have merit, but which works better?

Multivariate testing is the difference between fishing with a net and fishing with a line. The upshot? You get better results more quickly, an important factor when you consider that most things you test won't have a significant affect on conversions. And you have the added excitement of finding hidden elements that improve conversions (hidden, because they likely won't be the elements that you expected).

Add those elements together for an optimized page that increases conversions and lowers acquisition costs.

Fail Faster

I was at lunch with an excellent interaction architect/designer today.  She was recounting months of focus groups and persona design that is going into her next web launch.  She was suggesting that they supplement these groups with testing, and got resistance.

One caveat at this point - I do not advocate for eliminating focus groups.  Now that we have that out of the way..

People, the truth is out there, not behind the two-way mirror.  Do you want to know how good your personas are?  TEST THEM.  Do you want to know how people really respond, at a subconscious level, to your new navigation?  Put it in front of them.  The truth is a cruel mistress, but it is the truth.

The fact is, truly, that you're rarely if ever going to achieve dramatic vision for the direction of your company from a focus group. So why do we insist on using them so obsessively?

Probably because we're afraid to fail. It's not that we're fearful by nature. It's just that we have to account for ourselves. We have to meet the numbers. So coming up with dramatic ideas and implementing them is formidable, because the cost of failure can be too high.

But failure doesn't have to be expensive. It doesn't even have to mean that you've truly failed. It can simply mean that you've tried something and learned something -- whether it worked or not.

How, though, can you keep the cost of failure reasonable?

The best way is to begin thinking about reducing the cost of failure. How can you try new ideas, quickly, and change direction when and if they don't work? Begin making it part of your corporate culture.

The point is not to impress everyone with the sophistication and complexity of your ideas. The point is to demonstrate how quickly you can get an idea realized and learn something from it. When you can do it fast, you can begin to expand the pool from which you draw your ideas. You can begin allowing some associates inside your marketing division to see their ideas reach the light of day. You may find that the marketing manager, who seldom speaks up, has brilliant and innovative ideas when the risk of stepping forward has been reduced.

Testing and optimization isn't a luxury. It's a must, and companies that do it (either inhouse or with automated testing tools) move ahead.

Others, the companies that fear failure, become obsolete.

Cinderella and the Myth of the Perfect Test

Cinderella sought the perfect prince by going to a single ball, and pinned all her hopes on one glass slipper. Reminds me of analysts and marketers who focus single-mindedly on conducting the "perfect" test. They want to find the one big thing to test that will raise their ROI to the moon, and they want it all to happen with 100% confidence.

Democratize Marketing!

We get lots of questions about what works in testing and optimization.

The short answer is that, if there were a specific list of things that work, we wouldn't really need testing.  We would just bestow wisdom and everyone would sell better.

Ok, we have learned a bunch that tends to work.  But there is one absolutely sure way to find ideas that work.  Democratize your marketing.  Reach out further for ideas.  Ask everyone in the organization.  Try things that would never make it past the conference table.

Why? 

Sure, there are ideas that are clearly bad, off-brand, and ill-advised - Wells Fargo should not advertise on gambling sites. But there are plenty of ideas that are worth a try, and the marketing meeting kills them before they have a chance.

This is a mistake.  If you have massive production costs, sophisiticated online/offline planning considerations, or overwhelming compliance constraints, then the conference table rules.  You gotta make choices, and the boss is the boss.

But when you can put something up, a crazy idea, in a few days and know if it works in a few weeks, then why leave it on the cutting room floor? 

We ran a quiz in a newsletter last year that asked marketers to test their marketing intuition. The quiz showed four versions of a promotion that a client had tested, and asked marketers to vote on which promotion and creative treatment they thought would increase gross margin the most.

Only 26% of marketers who took the quiz chose the correct treatment. In other words, 74% of these experienced marketers looked at four great ideas and chose the wrong one.

My point? Even the most experienced marketers - the ones generally in charge of decision-making - can't always trust their gut instinct. They have great ideas, but those ideas don't always work.

The fact is that marketing is getting democratized all over the web. Consumer generated media is proliferating, along with the idea that there is equally valid truth to be found through the participation of a variety of voices rather than the authority of a single voice (for example, blogs written by media-savvy writers compared to the Wall Street Journal).

I believe the same truth could be found within a company: there exist a handful (or dozens, or hundreds) of differing viewpoints within a single company which may have as much validity as the viewpoint of the Chief Marketing Officer. In the past, it has been necessary for that CMO to be the voice of the company's marketing programs simply because of the amount of time, money and risk entailed when differing opinions get involved.

But now, companies have the ability to test and optimize ideas with a minimum of risk and very little time. It's easy to find gems of ideas from a variety of employees when the "time to truth" is so vastly reduced.