A Recommitment to Testing
Yesterday, January 1st 2009, was the day you sat down, examined your
life, and determined the "one thing" that needed radical change; maybe
it was your commitment to exercise, or your over-commitment to food, or
maybe a recommitment to helping your community. But what about your
professional life, as an Internet Marketer, what is the “one thing” you
need to radically change to improve your performance in 2009?
As
I reflected on the common pitfalls and traps Internet Marketers
succumbed to during 2008, one really emerged that I would like to take
a closer look at…
Unfortunately too many marketers got fat and sassy in 2008. Over the past few years they committed themselves to testing everything from landing pages to day parts. Then the radical wins began to diminish. No longer did a landing page test yield a 134% increase in conversion rate, nor did a new banner ad improve CTR by 89%. The wins started to become smaller and harder to find. Eventually, many Internet Marketers turned their attention elsewhere as the excitement of testing was fading fast.
As an agency that can be fairly classified as an obsessive compulsive when it comes to testing, we appreciate the passive approach to testing by many of our counterparts. While 2008 did not yield us the 3 digit increases in conversion rates or 50% savings in media cost through day parts or bid management; it was a year of incremental certainly added up. Here are a few notable WebMetro examples...
Landing Page Test for a Financial Services Company: We discovered that adding video to the search landing pages increased conversion rates 18%. The landscape had become cluttered and seemingly commoditized. While this view of the landscape was not accurate, it was the perception of the consumer. Through video we provided clarity to the market on exactly what our client’s differentiation was. Although the conversion rate didn’t double, the 18% provided a needed competitive advantage.
A/B Testing for Creative in Software Provider’s Content Campaign: I know for many of you your Google campaign is primarily a search campaign with a few dollars allocated to the contextual network. For many of our clients, contextual is becoming a significant portion of their media allocation due to the strong returns and increasing amount of available sales volume that can be tapped when using the networks. We tested two banners with similar positioning strategies but unique positioning methods for the free download the software company offered. The winning call to action gave us a 14% increase in conversions.
Creative Impact on Average Order Value: An often overlooked element of the creative used in Google, Yahoo and MSN, is the impact the creative has on the average order value of a client. Should the title tag use FREE Shipping to get the popular “free” word in the prominent part of the ad creative? How about using thresholds in the D1, i.e. “Free Shipping Over $50”? In a recent test for an e-Commerce client the AOV actually increased by 3% adding the threshold amount and even though it was somewhat counter-intuitive the CTR increased by just under 30%.
Testing Impact of Plurals and Singular Search Terms: Did you know that for the majority of advertisers the plural form of a search term converts higher than the singular form of the same search term? If you did, consider yourself in the “exclusive club.” Most campaigns our agency audited this year did NOT bid separately for plural and singular variations. In a recent test for a home furnishings e-Commerce client we found the conversion rate was 31% higher for the plural, while the bid price for position #2 was actually lower. <----- Now that’s evidence there are not enough Internet Marketers testing (better conversion rate at a lower CPC!).
Testing is nothing new. If you are a successful Internet Marketer, you have already reaped the benefits of testing and have no doubt about its power. But the question of the day is…
Am I still committed to testing like I was a few years back, have I become complacent?
For many of you the answer might indeed be yes, and hopefully a few of these tests that provided our agency incremental wins inspired you to dust of the stats software, login into your multivariate testing platforms and get down to work. Just imagine how nice it would be to kick off the New Year with a few incremental wins. Don’t mean to cut this short, but I have a gym membership to sign up for.
Until next time…