We often get asked:

How much traffic do I need before I start optimization?

Do I get enough traffic to my site to even consider optimization?

Will my tests take forever to run if I don’t have a lot of traffic?

How fast can I expect to see the results of optimization if my traffic is low?

These are natural questions from folks who haven’t dipped their toes into the optimization waters, but these questions indicate a few myths that I’ll attempt to dispel.

Myth #1: Traffic is the ‘magic metric’ when it comes to optimization

The fact is that the number of conversions is at least as important as traffic levels.  We’ve always said that a minimum threshold to do formal online testing is 5-10 conversions per week, and that this amount of conversions (regardless of traffic) can at least get you results in a matter of weeks instead of months.  A simple tool that illustrates the relationships between site traffic, conversion rate, and test durations is the Google Website Optimizer Duration Calculator.  This free tool lets you play around with data points and estimate test durations before you start your experiment.  I can personally say it has saved me a bunch of grief by warning me away from certain client experiments due to the duration estimates being way too long!  Try changing the page views metric, and see the impact on duration.  Now, try changing the conversion rate metric, and you’ll see it, too, can have a drastic impact on the duration.

Myth #2: Low-traffic sites won’t see results from optimization

The fact is that low-traffic sites can still see improvements from optimization.  Remember that “optimization” doesn’t just mean formal testing using a tool like those provided by Omniture or Google.  Optimization is about getting your company on a program of continuous improvement through hypothesis, change (via formal testing or not), and monitoring of the results of those changes.  Once you have “results,” you feed those learnings right back into the program and keep going.  Lower traffic sites may or may not be good candidates for formal testing methods like split testing or full factorial multivariate testing, but they may be great candidates for optimization!  We often try formal testing on low-traffic sites, and if it’s not productive, we switch our focus to “serial testing,” which means benchmarking the performance of something (an ad, a landing page, etc.), making a change, and then monitoring the impact of that change. Either way, we tend to get results.

Myth #3: Testing and optimization doesn’t really work for low-traffic sites

The fact is that optimization can definitely work, and even formal testing can work if you do it right.  One way to do formal testing on low-traffic sites is to focus on higher-trafficked pages.  Another is to test micro-conversions (e.g. reading product reviews as opposed to buying the product).  Still another is to make a B2C “view cart” page the conversion point instead of the purchase confirmation page.  There are plenty of methods to shortening the duration of a test, but we’ll keep a few of those to ourselves for now

Myth #4: It’s better to defer optimization until site traffic grows

The fact is that the time to optimize is always “now.”  There’s an opportunity cost associated with not doing anything, when you could at least be doing something less-than-optimal.  Your traffic may be less than optimal, but you can still optimize, and when your traffic becomes optimal, you’ll reap the rewards of earlier optimization work.  We’ve always used the metaphor of the “leaky bucket”:  If your conversion funnel is a bucket with a bunch of holes in it, why would you spend marketing money to pour more water (a.k.a. traffic) into that bucket?  Wouldn’t it make more sense to fix the holes, then start pouring more water?

We’re definitely invested in dispelling any other myths about testing and optimization, so feel free to ask questions or contact us if you think you have a unique case and aren’t sure if optimization is right for you.

In fact, the natural advantage of fast loading pages is one reason Google patented the sparse design of their home page.  They know that simplicity, speed and relevance rule the web experience, and that every millisecond counts.

Think about that time you had to connect to a website on your cellular phone or use the wireless network at a busy conference. Slow sites suck!

Click here to view the embedded video.

How do you speed up your pages?

1. Run a speed test on your page.

There are several great tools that will tell you if your pages are loading slow. Here are the main ones we use here at FutureNow:

1. Web Page Analyzer

2. Yahoo! YSlow for Firebug

3. Page Speed by Google – They have also compiled a list of some other great resources and tools to speed up your website.

These tools will identify if your code, javascript, css and or images are overweight. This post will only focus on how to optimize your images once you realize they are too fat.

There are several simple tools online that you can use to optimize your image if you are not familiar with Photoshop or the equivalent to squeeze those image file sizes down.

1. Smush.it

2. Dynamic Drive

3. Web-Resizer

Here is an example of how to do it with Smush.it:

1. Copy and paste the image urls of the images you want to optimize into Smush.it.

2. Click Smush.it

3. See the results of how much your images were smushed.

4. Right click the name of the file you requested to be optimized and save it to your computer.

5. Upload those files to your server to replace the bloated ones.

People expect fast-loading pages and quick response times from websites; it’s part of their internal clock.  It doesn’t matter whether you’re dealing with visitor expectations for:

• expected content/scent,
• answers to buying concerns and questions,
• the look and feel of the site and photos,
• or, for response times

Matching or exceeding those expectations always leads to higher conversion rate.  That’s why the Persuasion Architecture framework is so consistently successful at Website Optimization.

[Editor's note: the author of this post is now blogging at bryaneisenberg.com]

Or are you a lettuce picker? The sort of person that toils for long hours in the field and accomplishes a long day’s back-breaking labor of work that most white collar business execs would consider a less-than-optimal career.

That fact is, when it comes time to harvest, virtually the entire crop must be worked on at the same time. You don’t have time to cherry pick, and anyway the average business isn’t expert enough in how and what to optimize to know which portion of the crop should be cherry picked. Instead, when that crop is ripe, it’s time to get out there in the field and put in a 14-hour day getting it harvested.

Often when we speak wiith prospective clients new to OnTarget™, they have the impression that there is some magical formula that leads to higher improvement rates and that it can be achieved without any hard work or commitment. The reality, however, is that our most successful clients who enjoy on-going regular improvements of 40-80% in their conversion rates year after year are the ones who are implementing change on a regular basis. They’re lettuce pickers, and not so proud as to let hard work get in the way of increased revenue.

Are you a hard-working lettuce picker when it comes to your website? Are you guessing at what changes will improve your site? Or do you work diligently every week, every month, and every quarter to effect continuous improvement?

There was no question that the pages on this site performed exceptionally well. Bounces were under 20 percent and the exit rates were very low. I also knew this company had been testing using Google Website Optimizer.

Clearly, this company was dedicated to continual improvement and working hard to improve its conversion rate. The analytics shouted proof that someone was minding the store.

So why was its overall conversion rate painfully low?

I dug deeper into the analytics, going back and forth between the numbers and the site. Then I knew exactly what was wrong. I was curious if my staff would be able to see exactly what I saw.

As much as I’d like to brag about my staff for being brilliant (they indeed are), I shouldn’t have been surprised. After all, they’re trained to look where others don’t. Without hesitation, they saw exactly what I saw.

All Is Well…on the Surface

The marketing was good and relevant, the site was well designed, the landing pages and product pages were sticky, and traffic seemed to move through the site with ease. Even the checkout process was good. Instead, the site suffered from a severe persuasion scenario problem.

The site attracted interested prospects and gave them enough big call-to-action buttons and shiny products to browse, but made it difficult, even impossible, for prospects to gain any resolve to buy the right product for them. This is a site with a slow drip. Prospects are falling off one by one in hundreds of different places. It’s proof that landing page optimization isn’t enough.

Moving Beyond Best Practices, Usability, and Testing

Joel Spolsky best summed up this site’s dilemma in “User Interface Design for Programmers“:

Usability is not everything. If usability engineers designed a night club it would be clean, quiet, brightly lit, with plenty of places to sit down, plenty of bartenders, menus written in 18-point sans-serif, and easy-to-find bathrooms. But nobody would be there. They would all be down the street at Coyote Ugly pouring beer on each other.

The site is nice, well lit, well run, but not selling. So how do you begin fixing the problem? First, you have to understand it a bit.

We created a simple, one-dimensional persona who was early in her buying process. She knew she needed a certain product but didn’t know where to start. The site sells sporting recreational goods with the average price point in the hundreds of dollars. This isn’t an impulse-buy type of site.

We clicked through the site as this persona and, no matter where we started, we ended up hitting a virtual brick wall, confused and frustrated. The site seems to have good prices but little guidance on what products are best for the beginner. The site even offers packages to make it easier for the customer.

Yet it didn’t help the persona answer the question: which is the right package for me? Even when we were a persona further along in the buying process, we still had a heck of time sorting and finding the right products for our need.

Simple persuasion issues not addressed on product pages and category landing pages are the Lilliputians sucking the lifeblood out of the site’s conversion rate. Proof again that too many sites spend way too much time and money on best practices and page performance to the detriment of site performance.

The Good News

This site will get a makeover that will undoubtedly stop many of the drips. Some solutions are as simple as adding a little copy to category pages, creating several pages specifically addressing the needs of different buyers, and leveraging some great content already on the site.

The site can serve as a lesson to those of you who have come up short on your optimization expectations. It can remind you to optimize not just for better page performance but also for the actual visitor using those pages.

Here are a few steps you can take if you’re suffering from a slow-drip persuasion scenario problem:

1. Start with a simple persona, putting her in a typical buying process for your product or service.
2. Click through the site as that persona, doing your best to pretend that you don’t know where the content she needs is. Is it easy for her to find? Did she get distracted by something else? Does the content do what you intended it to do: does it move users forward through the site and give them greater resolve that they have found or will find the right product for them?
3. Run a usability test. Sometimes it’s hard to see your site with fresh eyes; you may need to bring in some help.
4. Remember that site engagement metrics, like bounce and exit rates, click-throughs, and time spent on site, are important key performance indicators. If your site’s engagement metrics look healthy and your conversion rate remains low or unchanged, you must now focus on selling and persuading the customer, not designing the right button or searching for a better hero image on a landing page or even finding better qualified traffic. You will likely need to create some content that will help visitors find the product they need and want. That’s a persuasion issue, not a usability or best practices issue.

Are you spinning your wheels, looking at your site analytics and running out of things to optimize or test? If you’re willing to share your situation with my ClickZ readers, tell me your story. My staff and I will select one or two sites to look under the hood of and share findings in a future column.

[Editor's note: the author of this post is now blogging at bryaneisenberg.com]

Your objective

Your challenge: You launch a great concept of a campaign, or on your website and weeks or months later you see something similar your competitor is now doing.

Your exercise: Go through all your current campaigns, website and landing pages that use stock images, and make sure your competitors aren’t using anything similar.

Some of you may remember the graph with the curved arrow on our FutureNow homepage. For those of you who don’t here is a screenshot:

When we first launched the new design of our website in June of last year no one was using anything exactly like it and then several websites and campaigns used something similar like this banner on the MarketingExperiments homepage:

I have seen several other similar ones as well. You should expect that a relevant and appropriate will resonate with other businesses as well. So we knew when we updated all the content on the FutureNowInc website this past week that was one of the images that was yanked. There are a couple of other stock photos courtesy of ShutterStock on the website, and hopefully they’ll remain unique to us for a while.

The main takeaway: unlike rotisserie chicken, you can’t “set it and forget it” when it comes to online marketing.

[Editor's note: the author of this post is now blogging at bryaneisenberg.com]

When you break that sentence down, you start to understand how to optimize your conversion rate.

Step 1 – Let’s understand “number of people“

Who are these people? Are they all the same? Do they have different characteristics, needs, questions? Do all these people have the same amount of product/service knowledge that you do? Are they all at the same stage in their buying process? Do they know you already? Or have they never heard of you before?

How are you bringing these “number of people” to your website? Do they all come by directly typing your URL in their browser? Do some search for your brand? Do some search for your category? Or your products? Do some of those people come from organic search? paid search? emails? affiliates? Do these people come from different websites: Google? Bing? Yahoo!? Wikipedia? Twitter? Facebook?

Do you launch new marketing efforts regularly? Are the efforts last week different than this week? last month versus this month? Is there an important calendar event occuring (Christmas if you’re a retailer; Fourth of July if you’re a seller of fireworks; Mother’s Day if you sell flowers: etc.?) all of which may induce a “spike” in traffic that is different than usual.

There is no such thing as an average person. That is why your average conversion rate is a rough indicator but virtually worthless as a way to focus your conversion optimization.

You have lots of segments who come to your website. They differ by demographics, psychographics, behavior, or because they came in through very different marketing efforts. You can calculate a conversion rate for each one of these segments/marketing efforts and you should.

Step 2 – Let’s understand “the action you want them to take”:

If you are in retail, you want them to purchase a product.

If you are in lead generation, you want them to become a lead.

Are there no other actions that are valuable?

In retail, even in they don’t convert now would it at least be more valuable to know if they added an item to your wish list, or subscribed to your newsletter, or looked up your retail store hours, or added items to their cart versus, just bouncing off the site right away? What are you doing to turn that one-time customer into a repeat customer? Do they only need one product you sell or might they need different ones over the course of time?

In lead generation, if they don’t give you all their information and request to be contacted by sales, is it valuable to have them sign up for a whitepaper, or a demo, or your newsletter? Is it better to download specification sheets, engage in calculators, or print or forward pages rather than just bouncing off the website? These are all steps that move people through their buying process.

These are just some of your macro-actions. What happens when someone comes from one of your ads and gets to a landing page? Sometimes the action is one of those listed above, but what if that page is only meant to help your visitors to choose the right product or service and they still need to actually click on the right one for them? What do you do to help them take that action and not bounce away? These are the micro-actions that need to happen from step to step in the potential customer’s visit.

All of these are actions we need to optimize. You can calculate a conversion rate for each one of these macro- and micro-actions, and you should.

Step 3 – Let’s understand “total number of potential people who could have taken that action”

What happened to the majority of visitors who did not convert? Why didn’t they convert?

Did they land on your site incorrectly? For example, they typed in “shingles” into a search engine and they were looking for roof repair and not a skin condition. This is obviously a disqualified visitor. Did they try to purchase from your website and something went wrong? Did they have problems accessing the information? Could they not figure out how to take action on your website? Did they not trust you? Did they leave with questions that were not answered? Did you answer their questions for today, but they aren’t ready to buy now? Did you not instill a sense of urgency or desire in them? Did you not make them a great offer?

You need to optimize your website experience for these potential buyers through the hierarchy of optimization.

Click here to view the embedded video.

There are thousands of potential improvements to choose from. You need to prioritize these based on the level of impact that improvement can have and the resources available to execute them. If you don’t have a copywriter available at the moment, you shouldn’t focus on copy changes even if it would be the most impactful. That’s may sound like just common sense, but it catches many companiyes like a deer in headlights.

Your average conversion rate is the aggregated conversion rate of how well your website performs for each of your customer segments, and each of your marketing efforts for each of the actions you want them to take. You optimize your conversion rate by first focusing in on the elements that impact as many of these as you can, and then you have to work on these “micro-funnels.”

While you work on conversions, market conditions, competitive forces, ad copy, and even your customers’ needs change. This is why you need to continuously optimize your marketing efforts. You can’t afford to have a “set it and forget it” mentality to your marketing.

Those of you who have been reading our blog and books for a while might recognize these steps as the fundamental steps of Persuasion Architecture®.

1. Who do we want to take action? This is the “number of people” from step 1.

2. What action do we want them to take? This is “the action you want them to take” from step 2. Have you defined all of these clearly? Are you measuring them properly?

3. What do they need in order to take that action? This is where we analyze what content/effort went into understanding why the “total number of potential people who could have taken that action” didn’t. This is where experience helps a ton.

If you only focus on improving a few landing pages here and there, testing a few variations here and there, tweaking creative here and there you will never reach your highest potential conversion rate!

Don’t worry, your customers won’t go unsatisfied. I guarantee that sooner or later your competitors will figure out how to satisfy your visitors needs. Hopefully that will motivate you to start getting your conversion goals on target by investing in continuous improvement.

[Editor's note: the author of this post is now blogging at bryaneisenberg.com]

Here are other apps besides OnTarget that are using Google Analytics’ Data Export API.

Here is OnTarget for Google Analytics:

OnTarget provides full optimization, testing, and improvement cycle recommendations on how to improve goals online and increase conversions from marketing campaigns. Clients determine how many resources can be devoted towards optimization each month. FutureNow’s analysts deliver a to-do list of suggested improvements matched to client goals via the OnTarget interface. These changes are tracked using Google Analytics and the impact is fed directly into the next round of ensuing recommendation.

We’ll be announcing lots of cool new features and soon you’ll see specialized OnTarget for Retail and OnTarget for Lead Geneartion products. Just stay tuned…same bat time..same bat channel.

So it’s only fair to ask: can you get sophisticated and wary audiences to buy pseudo-snake oil simply by switching from extolling the virtues of a single miracle product to praising the miraculous combination of two semi-wondrous products?  As in this teeth whitening example:

Well, yes, actually.  The tactic works because having to use two products is a type of downside.

By implying that the promised miracles are too big for just one product and that you’ll need to combine a couple of wonder-products to get the results, the copywriter is tacitly admitting a downside to the strategy: you’ll have to buy two products instead of just one.  And admitting the downside boosts credibility.

Moreover, the “housewife just like you who stumbled into a miracle cure of the decade” bit (the part that’s “enhanced” by the false home town claim) comes off as a lot more credible because more people can see themselves discovering a combination of existing products than discovery a single miracle cure.

But, wait: I can get you a trial sample of both for free!

Ah the copy writer givest a downside, and then the she taketh it away – almost.  If I can get both products for free, it’s not much of a downside that I need to combine the two of them, is it.  Plus, I can see if the combination really works before having to buy.

And then the auto-renewal on your credit card snags ya.

P.S. As a follow up to the Jenny Perfect Skin article, Grok reader Steve Chase snagged this screen shot from Calcutta and it seems that Jenny has a twin sister living there!  And she ALSO figured out this amazing skin combo.  Incredible, huh?

Take a look at the screen shot I took of the landing page.  What do you think most caught my eye?  Here’s a hint: think layout and bolding.

Straight out of The Ogilvy Playbook

Here are two relevant quotes taken from pages 73 and 90 of Ogilvy on Advertising:

“When you advertise in local newspapers, you get better results if you include the name of each city in your headline.  People are mostly interested in what is happening where they live.”

“There is no law which says that advertisements have to look like advertisements.  If you make them look like editorial pages, you will attract more readers.”

Notice how much the landing page has been formatted to look like a blog (the editorial pages of the Web), complete with the “About Me” section at the top of the right-hand column.  And have you noticed that Pensacola, FL has been bolded twice, both in the “About Me” section AND the first sentence of body copy?

Other blog-like touches include a “temporarily closed” comments section and a very chatty / best-friend-name-dropping authorial voice.  But it was the bolded hometown that stood out most.

Now, as a copywriter, I only bold key persuasive points, so that visitors’ eyes will still pick out the important parts of my messaging during a quick scan of the page. Obviously, someone really wanted me to know that this girl was from Pensacola.

And oddly enough, I’m from Pensacola.  What a weird crazy happenstance, huh?

Jenny Has A Lot of Hometowns

So I asked Bryan Eisenberg to go to the same site.  Here’s what he saw:

So, yes, some, uh, creature decided that a hometown girl would be more persuasive than a stranger, and then had absolutely no problem blatantly lying about it.  Makes you proud to be associated with Internet Marketing, doesn’t it?

Still, it’d be a cunning technique, if only it could be de-sleazed first.

Any thoughts on how you might (more ethically) apply this same technique?  If you’re a semi-local supplier, could you get a bunch of enthusiastic customers to “represent” for their hometowns on a templated landing page and then present the testimonial-esque copy based on visitor IP addresses?

What do you think?  And (Michele and Holly, this one’s to you) do you think women are more likely than men to be swayed by a hometown spokesperson?

The spending level for Valentine’s Day gifts this year will be slightly lower than last year – $140 to be spent by men (versus $166 in 2008), and $75 (versus $90) to be spent by women, according to the BrandKeys Valentine’s Day Index, writes RetailerDaily.

Mature consumers prefer single-image advertisements over ads with multi-image collages by a margin of 66% to 34%, and also gravitate to images that show products and lifestyles,  according to a recent image-preference survey by Creating Results according to their “Photo Finish” study of more than 400 Americans age 40+, reports MarketingCharts. This is something to consider as you work on “hero” shots for your website as well.

Paul from WiseGrass attended our Wizard of Web class a while ago. I just came across this great Google Maps Mashup on his website. He showcases his wonderful lawn care work by letting people know where his showcase lawns are.

There are plent of businesses that could leverage something like this. Could yours?

The Google Website Optimizer team launches an official GWO YouTube channel. You’ll find several videos there including several from our Always Be Testing webinar series.

If you missed last week’s webinar I did for the Web Analytics Association with Akin Arikan and Josh Manion you can see the recorded version now. It’s titled Testing, Testing, Testing. Anybody Can Test. So Why Don’t You? Registration is required.

Thanks for all your support. This is the second year in a row that we have won a SEMMY award. Our article Three Reasons Your Visitors Don’t Convert to Leads took the award in the Design & Usability category. Congratulations to all the other winners and runners-up. There are some great articles there.

Recently, I went to MySpace.com to look up a semi-obscure band.  Why did I go there instead of my usual search engine query?  Because every band is on MySpace.  If you are a band, and live in the Milky Way solar system, you are on MySpace, and everyone knows it.  It’s the kind of reputation you could leverage into ad revenue…you know, relevant banner ads, text ads, promotions, etc.

Midway through my brief listening session, the infamous MySpace music player stopped performing its function and overlayed an ad.  To continue listening, I had to dismiss a very intrusive banner.

I won’t waste anyone’s time with why interrupting my favorite song with a banner ad that has to be actively dismissed is a bad idea.  Instead, let’s follow the experience of that one visitor in a million who wants to stop listening to cool music, go off to another site, and take a completely different action.

So let’s look at the persuasion scenario the advertiser, Dominoes Pizza, has paid to funnel us into.

The Creative: It’s professional-looking, but it could at least try to have something to do with music.  The call to action button doesn’t really stand out or contrast, and it’s asking for a lot (go from listening to music to ordering food online).

The Landing Page: Yikes, that doesn’t look very fun.  Where’s the scent of information for me to follow?  Am I in the right place?  They also get bonus points for giving me a promotional price on 3 medium pizzas instead of sandwiches!

The Rest of the Scenario: I clicked into the scenario a bit deeper out of morbid curiosity.  Once again, nothing makes me more persuaded to order sandwiches online than a big picture of a plain cheese pizza.  The whole experience seems geared towards ordering pizza, which makes sense if I am a direct entry visitor.  Couldn’t they pass a parameter so the page defaults to the Sandwiches tab?

Disruptive advertising is risky. I’ve already started a mental list of brands I now hate because they interrupted my music listening (Blockbuster and Insurance.com joined the list).  So, if you’re going to risk a bad “brand exposure,” and a backlash of negative word of mouth (or worse yet, bloggers ), you’d better have your ducks in a row for those who actually click through into your conversion funnel.

What can you say when the owner of a company that had a 4.12% conversion rate improves it by 17% to 4.82%  in less than a quarter and says “we’re sort of disappointed“?

Even when clients can’t commit very much budget or resources to execute our optimization recommendations they may still have very high expectations.

Has FutureNow became a victim of of our own success? Our process has made FutureNow very successful; we have many third-party documented case studies where our clients achieved extraordinary results.

Bryan and I spent part of the weekend discussing this. Bryan wanted to republish a ClickZ column “The 5 Percent Solution” but I wanted to address this issue more directly than we did in “How To Get Buy-in For Conversion Rate Optimization“. We never addressed the real issue: commitment.

What Are Realistic Expectations For Conversion Rate Optimization?

Sales people will dance around this issue but I won’t. It depends on you!

I have never seen a website where with the right amount of time, energy and resources you couldn’t get at least a 30% improvement in conversion, but 10% is a slam dunk even without our advice.

Time, energy and resources!?!

If you are willing to commit yourself, with or without expert advice, you can consistently improve your conversion rates. We hear virtually every day about people who read one of our books and publications and went on to make huge improvements to their business. They make us as happy as client successes do.

Nevertheless, if you are focused only on 100% improvements or better it’s hard to celebrate a 10% gain. How sad.

You need to walk before you can crawl. For every huge success we have there are dozens of other happy stories. That’s why I asked Bryan to give me a list of successes he collected recently from our analysts.

I want to celebrate these successes:

• Increased client’s overall website conversion rate 10.5%, resulting in $250,000 additional revenue annually.
• Optimized a checkout page to increase conversion rate by 6.25%, leading to $150,000 additional revenue annually.
• Increased overall conversion by 27.5% with an A/B test on the product page.
• Doubled the number of sales with a Shop with Confidence assurance test.
• Achieved an 8% lift in sales from redesigned product page.
• Increased overall conversion rate by 51.49% over a 3 month program.
• Redesigned homepage and category pages to increase overall sales by 6%.
• Helped client realize a 108% increase in sign-ups for an e-course.
• Making one change to the flow of a client’s checkout process increased shopping cart conversion by 6.5% leading to an estimated increase of $55,000 monthly revenue.
• As a by-product of our conversion recommendations increased organic traffic visits by 19.91%.
• Improved conversion on a client site by 24% simply by changing product page layout.
• Increased a client’s funnel conversion rate by 24.40%.
• Increased visitor registrations by 12.5% by recommending changes to landing pages and the flow of the sign-up form.
• Increased overall website sales conversion rate from 3% to 7%, that is 133%, over a quarter long engagement for an online jewelry retailer.

Every one of these stories is worth celebrating. I praise our clients for the hard work they’ve done. I want to praise them for their commitment. I want to encourage them and you to continue improving your website and campaigns.

Stop Wishing and Start Doing!

If you get a 10% improvement and add 10% to that and then 10% on top of that you’re well on your way to 100%. Make up your mind and get started. Devote the right amount of time, energy and resources. You’ll learn a lot on the journey and the destination is so worth it.

I hope that helps.

What: “Always Be Testing” Webinar: Google Quality Score – Exposing the Secret Factor to PPC Success

Quality Score is the PageRank of PPC. It’s a number Google assigns to your keywords which determines how much you have to bid, the position in which your ads appear, how often your ads are shown, and due to recent Adwords change it even determines if you can jump to the top of any search results page.

Understanding and managing Quality Score effects how you choose keywords, write text ads, and build landing pages. Knowing how your decisions impact Quality Score, and how Quality Score interacts with all the other controls you have in your accounts, can help you manage to greater PPC success

In this Webinar you’ll learn:
- exactly why the Quality Score in Adwords is so important,
- how Quality Score impacts the amount you spend and the amount you make from your PPC campaigns
- specific things you can do to drive the Quality Score higher for your keywords.

When: Tuesday, November 25, 2008 | 12:00pm EST

Where: Online, register here to receive your invitation

How much: It’s free, but space is limited so sign-up today!

About our Always Be Testing Webinars:

If you would like to view previous webinars please visit the Always Be Testing webinar archive.

For more details and to sign-up to attend, visit futurenowinc.com/abtwebinar.htm

We hope you’ll attend and share this with anyone you know who is looking to begin to test their marketing or to increase their testing effectiveness.

About the Series:
Whether your business has just started testing, is planning to test, or has been testing for years identifying the areas and elements that have impact is often challenging. Each month, Bryan Eisenberg starts off by taking attendees on a dive deep on a specific subject area to test in your marketing and give you ideas on variation you could test.

“Leach is unusual in giving his quarterback the authority to change every play, wherever the line of scrimmage. “He can see more than I’ll ever see,” Leach says. ‘If I call a stupid play, his job is to get me out of it. If he doesn’t get me out of it, I might holler at him. But if you let him react to what he sees, there’s a ton of touchdowns to be had.’ All Leach is really saying to Hodges when he sends in the play is, ‘Line up in Ace, see how they line up against it and call a good play…’

The Texas Tech offense is not just an offense; it’s a mood: optimism. It is designed to maximize the possibility of something good happening rather than to minimize the possibility of something bad happening…”

Unfortunately, most optimization consultants take the opposite mindset from that attributed to the Texas Tech Football Program’s by Michael Lewis in his NYT article I’ve been quoting from in this series of posts.  In short, most Web consultants focus their efforts on minimizing the possibility of something bad happening (of loosing an already convinced customer’s sale) by fixing usability flaws.

Yet if you want to move beyond page-level optimization, you’ll have to begin maximizing the possibility of something good happening – of convincing visitors to convert who may not already be convinced when they arrive.  And you do this by planning visitor interactions on a click-by-click basis, imagining:

• What questions will arise in their minds,
• What tasks they’re looking to accomplish,
• What expectations they had when they clicked the previous link
• What doubts and concerns are keeping them from moving forward

You’ll find that real scoring opportunities most frequently involve:

• Increasing the match-up between visitor click-through expectations and your content, as well as the match-up between their buying tasks and your selling objectives, and
• Adding content or hyperlinks to answer key questions and provide missing substantiation

Both of which are a far cry from simply tweaking buttons and testing navigation schemes.  And both of which require you to go beyond mechanically applying best practices or ‘mindlessly’ running A/B tests.

This kind of optimization requires that you see how visitor behavior lines up against the backdrop of your current content and then to choose a change/test based on your best hypothesis of why visitors are doing what they’re doing instead of what you want them to do.  Kind of like the Texas Tech QB calling a play based on the mismatch between the formation and the defensive response.

Here’s an actual example from LuLu.com*, specifically their page on softcover publishing:

Now, let’s say LuLu’s three desired actions on this page are, in order of priority:

1. Click the “Self-publish” button in the active window
2. Click the “Lulu Demo” button to the right of the tabs
3. Use the “cost calculator” tool located down below the fold

And just so you can see that cost calculator portion of the page, it looks like this:

Now, let’s imagine that the Web analytics are telling you that the majority of traffic is going to:

• The “Services” page as accessed by the top tab
• The Home Page (either from the back button) or main “Publish” page
• “Help” or “FAQs” either from the top tab or Footer Nav Links

And we’ll also imagine that very few page visitors are taking the actions we want.  Plus, those that are clicking on the “Self Publish” button are quickly closing out of the “upload/cart” – they’ve just got a huge abandonment rate.

Step 1: Take your best guess at what’s going on.

First, I’d imagine visitors coming here from the homepage, the Publish page, and maybe even directly from organic and paid search. And that means most of them aren’t quite ready to upload their manuscript just yet – they probably still have some questions.

Given that situation, the current label for the main call-to-action – the “Self Publish” button – will probably feel deceptive to the visitor.  They’ll likely think the button links to a demo or to more info, and then they’re taken to an upload page.  Is it any wonder they rapidly back out of the upload interface?  Do you see how the context of the click/hyperlink on the prior page can dramatically affect the performance of the current page?

I’d also guess that people aren’t seeing the real demo button because it’s outside the active window.  Plus, the page utterly fails to answer questions about the relative pricing, merits, and limitations of LuLu’s paper, book size, and binding options.  So instead of moving forward, visitors are moving backwards to the publish and home pages and navigating to Help and FAQ pages to try to find those answers/information.

Step 2: Test your hypotheses

I’d test an alternative main button label of “Start by uploading your manuscript for free” and I’d put some Point of Action Assurances near the button.  Something like, “No commitment to upload & you retain the copyright.”

This ought to better prepare visitors for where that button will take them, and it will better appeal to spontaneous shoppers, who are most likely to click that kind of call to action.

I’d also test moving the demo button down into the banner area, not too far from the “Upload” button.  This will make it more visually prominent and should grab some of the traffic now going to the “Services,” “Help,” and “FAQ” pages.  Plus I’d make sure the demo ends with a link to bring visitors back to this page; remember, we want to maximize the chances they’ll come back and convert!

Finally, I’d add copy next to the pictures of “Perfect Bound,” “Saddle Stitched,” and “Coil Bound” pictures, as well as creating some “How to publish as economically as possible” bullets next to the cost calculator so visitors don’t have to blindly guess at what size paperbacks are more expensive, what trade-offs are involved in using cheaper paper, etc.

Step 3: Get it done and learn from the test results

Here’s where a lot of companies get stuck.  They get the test ideas queued up and then they don’t get the new buttons or banners or pictures designed.  Or they don’t write the copy, or some such.  A week to a week and a half goes by so that they’re just starting the test by the time they should have actionable results.

At any rate, not every test goes the way you plan, obviously.  But here’s the beauty of testing this way: if relabeling the “Upload” button doesn’t have any success, but the other tests DO increase the time on the page, the use of the cost calculator, and the number of people watching the demo, maybe you need to test a special, “Upload Your Manuscript” landing page, with new assurances and upload info, giving visitors timelines, points of contact, etc.

Believe me, those kind of results aren’t a failure – they’re a first down!  Now you just have to keep driving toward the goal with follow-up tests.  And the cumulative results of this kind of testing creating the kind of customer insight for breakaway success.

So how can you jump-start this process?

Well, in the spirit of the Raider’s fast-tempo offense, I’m offering a fast-turnaround Web Optimization service, emphasizing do-able, quick-to-implement changes capable of driving real world touchdowns:

The 48-hour, $500 e-mail/ad campaign and landing page analysis

If you’re planning or in the middle of a campaign and want to optimize your results, I can personally analyze your e-mail, ad, etc along with the campaign’s intended landing page and provide you with insight-oriented and easily implemented tests/changes for driving results – just like the kind you saw with LuLu.com.

Better yet, I’ll provide you with an interpretation of the actual results – what to look for, how to make sense of what you’re seeing – and follow-on actions.  If we score a game-winning touchdown and you like the feel of that, you can sign-on for ongoing optimization with Future Now.

If you only walk away with additional insight and a better understanding of how to implement your own optimization efforts – hey, that’s more than worth it for $500 and 48 hours. If you’re interested, contact us.

* Note that LuLu.com is not a client and I have not seen their analytics.  Everything about this example is hypothetical.

• Dutiful George Washington for Sensing-Judging / Methodicals
• Philosophical Thomas Jefferson for iNtuitive-Thinking / Competitives
• Rambunctious Teddy Roosevelt for Sensing-Perceiving / Spontaneous
• Idealistic Abraham Lincoln for iNtuitive-Feeling / Humanistics

Unfortunately, the cover story (though excellent) treated temperament from a Nine Characteristics perspective rather than a Four Temperaments perspective in a way similar to this Slate article or some recent blog posts regarding presidential personality type.

Yet at least the Time cover/article got me looking for and reading those posts, because the authors guessed slightly different temperaments from each other, and I found the differences illuminating.

But before discussing the blog authors’ picks, my personal predictions were SP/Spontaneous for fiery, action-oriented McCain, NF/Humanistic for idealistic and emotionally intelligent Obama, and NT+Judging/Competitive for sharp-minded and power-hungry Hillary Clinton.

So here’s how the experts typing matched up with mine:

• Everyone agreed that McCain has a spontaneous temperament.
• Emily Yoffe felt that Hillary was an SJ, but it turns out that Hillary has actually taken an MBTI test and has tested as an NTJ, which matched up with most blog post guesses.
• Some experts believe that Obama was an NT, while others felt he was more likely an NF

And here’s what you can take away from the misperceptions and disagreements surrounding presidential candidate typing:

1. Myers-Briggs Preferences (and Temperaments) are just that: preferences.

People are adaptable and can develop or use weaker sides of their personalities – and may even prefer to use them in a given situation.  Introverts, for instance, all have an auxiliary personality that they use for social situations or work.  Johnny Carson was a legendary introvert, but hardly came off as one during The Late Show.

So too could an NT politician learn to speak empathically about deep emotional issues and learn to champion inclusive policies.  Or conversely, NF’s are more than capable of adopting an NT mindset when the need for tough-minded leadership decisions arises.  Hence the NT/NF disagreement over an emotionally savvy, but also emotionally flat “no drama” Obama.

And it’s also why Future Now analyzes buying behavior in terms of “buying modes,” rather than assuming that buying mode will line up with temperament preference.  No one buys accounting software spontaneously, and even the most hard-headed and practical of us have been known to make spontaneous purchases on vacation.

2.  Knowing how temperament preferences overlap – and where they differ – is important

Why would one person see an SJ/Methodical when another sees an NT/Competitive?  Well because both temperaments have a strong preference for logical decision-making.  And an NT with a strong Judging preference, like Hillary’s INTJ personality type, can come off as an organizer – reliable and sufficiently detail-oriented to fool you into thinking they have a methodical temperament*

So what does this mean for your Website/copy?

Rather than pushing copy or messaging styles onto visitors, it’s best to cover all the temperaments persuasive needs according to the “fast up top and slow down bottom” layout method.  That way you can let visitors self-select the copy and links that most appeals to them without worrying about improperly typing them. You can get a sense of how these temperaments interact with a page by reading Howard’s analysis of Jakob Nielson’s eyetracking study.

Conclusion: Put Copy for Fast Decision Makers Up Top and Slow Decision Makers Down Bottom

So the default copy organization for most pages will include copy, links, and calls to action intended for competitive and spontaneous temperaments (your fast decision makers who are less likely to scroll and spend the time to examine the entire page) up top, and copy more suited for methodical and humanistic temperaments (slower decision makers who will examine the entire page) below that.

For instance, if you have an NT/competitive who follows a link intended for Methodicals, the page he lands on will still have some bottom-line or big picture copy at the top of the page and a call to action appropriate for his temperament.  And if that particular competitive keeps reading, well, he may just be in a more Methodical Buying Mode.  No big deal – as long as your pages are set up properly.

And that’s what I took away from the recent spate of articles and blog posts on Temperament and MBTI.

P.S. If this stuff interests you, I highly recommend that you check out this free audio book.

* For the record, what probably should have pushed Yoffe away from typing Hillary as an SJ, is that she is very much an ideologue.  Her political stances were sharply radical when she adopted them and required something of a philosophical bent to arrive at.  She didn’t enter politics by being an outstanding administrator; she entered politics because of a commitment to her political theories and ideas.  Plus, her career as a lawyer indicated an NT preference over SJ.

View FutureNow’s webinar on layout and design elements to improve your landing pages.

Even if you can’t be there today, register to know immediately when the replay is made available.

What: “Always Be Testing” Webinar: Landing Page Optimization: Layout and Design Elements

When: Monday, September 29, 2008 | 2:00pm EST

Where: Online, register here to receive your invitation

How much: It’s free, but space is limited so sign-up today!

About this session:

July kicked off the series with a webinar on testing trust and confidence building elements on landing pages (view archive ). Our August session covered improving landing pages focusing on testing calls to action and headlines. This month session will cover layout and design elements. Register today! Space is limited.

“Always Be Testing” Webinar Series is a monthly webinar that covers specific testing ideas, how to structure tests, and how to use Google Website Optimizer. The best part is that Google has decided to participate in it first-hand, offering the lastest tips and insights straight from Tom Leung, Google’s Business Product Manager.

“Landing Page Optimization: Layout and Design Elements” will be on September 29th, at 2:00pm EST and last about 30 minutes.

For more details and to sign-up to attend, visit futurenowinc.com/abtwebinar.htm

We hope you’ll attend and share this with anyone you know who is looking to begin to test their marketing or to increase their testing effectiveness.

About the Series:
Whether your business has just started testing, is planning to test, or has been testing for years identifying the areas and elements that have impact is often challenging. Each month, Bryan Eisenberg starts off by taking attendees on a dive deep on a specific subject area to test in your marketing and give you ideas on variation you could test. Along with these ideas each month Tom Leung will bring you useful insider tips and tricks about using Google Website Optimizer to easily test your marketing campaigns and website. Lastly, the two will team up to answer a popular question spotted on the Google Website Optimizer forums or sent in by our readers and listeners.

Register for the event today (limited space available).

Landing page optimization and conversion rate improvements are no longer simply buzzwords. The rising cost of driving online traffic means marketers are paying more for less return on their ad dollars. To keep up, online marketers must roll up their sleeves and dive into conversion optimization. Optimizing your landing pages and your website is a proven means of increasing your conversion rates and realizing improved ROI. Google’s Website Optimizer makes it available to anyone who wants to start testing.

1. Always Be Testing: The Complete Guide to Google Website Optimizer

The easy-to-understand, in-depth information in Always Be Testing: The Complete Guide to Google Web Optimizer, by FutureNow’s Bryan Eisenberg and John Quarto-vonTivadar, will help you understand how to set up website optimization tests and improve your conversion rates. Learn the theory behind the testing, understand Google Web Optimizer click reports, discover the “why” of clicks, and decipher the valuable data.

By the time you finish reading this book, no matter what your skill level, you will have learned how to set up tests and improve crucial page components with the help of real-world case studies and examples.

If you haven’t read the book yet, perhaps you’d enjoy reading a sample chapter (PDF, about 2.5 Mb)

2. FREE *3rd Party* WordPress Plug-in For Google Website Optimizer

Future Now, Inc. worked very closely with blog integration specialists, ContentRobot, to create a WordPress plug-in that integrates Google Website Optimizer into a WordPress blog or blog-powered website. Using the plug-in makes it easy for anyone using WordPress to test headlines, copy or images. To learn more about the plugin, visit the official Website Optimizer Plugin for WordPress page. A direct download is available from ContentRobot and mirrored on GrokDotCom.

3. Getting Started with Multivariate testing?

There are several factors that hold people back before they begin A/B or Multivariate testing. If your organization isn’t testing, hopefully we can help you realize that testing isn’t scary. In fact, what our clients have seen once they do start is that NOT testing is what’s really scary. Read Start Multivariate Testing: 7 Critical Questions.

4. A/B Split Testing on Lower-Traffic Sites

Dr. Ralph Wilson of Web Marketing Today spent a few minutes interviewing FutureNow’s Bryan Eisenberg about testing on sites that have little traffic. You can view the video below. You may also be interested in reading more about the hierarchy of optimization when you are done viewing the video.

Click here to view the embedded video.

A good follow up to this is Top 7 Tips for Optimizing Low-Traffic Websites.

FREE Webinars About Google Website Optimizer

5. Landing Page Optimization: Headlines & Calls to Action

In this webinar, Bryan Eisenberg and Tom Leung, Product Manager for Google Website Optimizer, discuss how to improve your headlines and calls to action, including several case studies. They also discuss how to get testing started in your big organization. View the Landing Page Optimization: Headlines & Calls to Action webinar.

6. Landing Page Optimization: Confidence and Trust Building Elements

In this webinar, Bryan Eisenberg explored how a business might focus on testing confidence and trust building elements, a few good industry examples, a few really bad industry examples, and finished by providing valuable insight into structuring your tests. Tom Leung, from Google, then takes over, walking the audience through how easy it can be to setup a test in Google Website Optimizer. He finished with a hands-on demo of creating a test. View the Landing Page Optimization: Confidence and Trust Building Elements webinar.

7. I Know I Should Be Always Be Testing But…

Join Bryan Eisenberg and Elastic Path co-founder Jason Billingsley for this information packed webinar. You can read the recap or view the video.

8. Phone Webinar – Website Optimizer: What Should I Test?

Click here to view the embedded video.

Whether you are an e-commerce retailer or a business-to-business site, we are sure you will learn great tips for how to improve your landing pages through testing.

9. Podcast: Bryan Eisenberg Interviews Avinash Kaushik

As part of the research for our book, Always Be Testing, I had the pleasure to chat with several people about testing and how testing lives in their corporate culture. This one, with Avinash Kaushik, Analytics Evangelist for Google, blogger at Occam’s Razor and author of the incredibly popular Web Analytics an Hour a Day is not to be missed. Take some time to listen to my interview with Avinash.

Click here to listen to Bryan Eisenberg chat with Avinash Kaushik

(To download the interview for use on your ipod, etc., right-click here and “save as”.)

10. Podcast: Bryan Eisenberg Interviews Bernardo de Albergaria

Take some time to listen to my interview with Bernardo de Albergaria, VP & GM of eCommerce, Citirix Online, as we discuss testing and building out a data-driven/testing culture. He is responsible for selling products and the online experience for products like Gotomeeting and GotoMyPC.

Click here to listen to Bryan Eisenberg interview Bernardo de Albergaria

(To download the interview for use on your ipod, etc., right-click here and “save as”.)

11. Podcast of Interview of Tom Leung, Business Product Manager of Google Website Optimizer

On GrokDotCom.com Tom Leung discusses the ins and outs of Google’s latest product to help websites and advertisers.
Part 1

Click here to listen to Part 1 of Tom Leung, Google and Bryan

Part 2

Click here to listen to Part 2 of Tom Leung, Google and Bryan

To download Part 1 of Google Website Optimizer interview the MP3 click here

To download Part 2 of Google Website Optimizer interview the MP3 click here

12. 64 Tips for Getting Started with Google Website Optimizer

Are you looking for some testing ideas? Anthony Garcia, co-author of Which Sells Best? and Contact Me or Submit? provides you with 64 Tips for Getting Started with Google Website Optimizer.

13. Subscribe to the Conversion Rate Marketing Blog – GrokDotCom

GrokDotCom is a marketing blog that is focused on marketing optimization, improving online conversion rates, search engine marketing, web analytics, word of mouth, persuasive website design, and of course landing page optimization. You have many subscription options; you can get the latest content by email (your choice of daily, weekly or monthly) or by RSS. Choose your subscription options…

Some blog posts about A/B & Multivariate testing include:

How to Prioritize Your Optimization

Testing Add-to-Cart Buttons: Stuck in the Middle With You

Google Website Optimizer: 7 Powerful Tests

Push Your Customers’ Buttons

Hitting the Landing Page Optimization Wall

Does Your Testing Organization Have A Gag Reflex?

Hidden Secrets of the Amazon Shopping Cart

Big Impact, Small Changes on Amazon

Speed! Why Optimization Should Be Sexy

How to Get Buy-in for Conversion Rate Optimization

Why You Can’t Copy From Amazon

14. Subscribe to the Official Google Website Optimizer Blog

The official Google Website Optimizer blog, will keep you up to date product news, and industry insights.

15. Google Website Optimizer website

Website Optimizer, Google’s free website testing and optimization tool, allows you to increase the value of your existing websites and traffic without spending a cent. Using Website Optimizer to test and optimize site content and design, you can quickly and easily increase revenue and ROI whether you’re new to marketing or an expert. Sign up at: Google.com/Websiteoptimizer.

16. What is Continuous Improvement?

Join Dr. Ralph Wilson, Jim Sterne and I, as we explain in this 7 minute video what “continuous incremental improvement” means and how to get started with it.

Click here to view the embedded video.

What other resources have you found useful?

Click here to listen to Bryan Eisenberg chat with Avinash Kaushik

(To download the interview for use on your ipod, etc., right-click here and “save as”.)

In case you missed it, our first podcast in the series is with Bernardo de Albergaria, VP & GM of eCommerce, Citrix Online. We’ve also recorded two  “Always Be Testing” monthly webinars so far, the archived versions are now available.

If you had your copy of Always Be Testing, you’d know all about the “stinky” image in this post.

Click here to listen to Bryan Eisenberg interview Bernardo de Albergaria

(To download the interview for use on your ipod, etc., right-click here and “save as”.)

Stay tuned for a few more interviews in the coming weeks. Of course, you can also register for our upcoming webinar tomorrow (8/27/08) at 12PM EST.

1. Review Your Lead Generation Forms

Typically lead-gen site forms fail in two major areas:

• Many lead-gen sites simply copy forms from a site they like, giving little thought to the nuances and the difference between their business goals and the site they copied. The result can lead to a slew of unqualified leads, or low conversion to lead.
• Some companies make their complex lead scoring requirements the visitor’s job. We worked with a client with a highly complex lead scoring system that, in turn, created an intimidating lead form with a dozen intrusive questions and several drop downs with more than 20 choices. Only the most determined of leads would actually complete the entire form. The obvious result was an offensively high form abandonment rate.

The obvious advantage to collecting information from potential prospects in a lead form is that it can help a business convert more qualified leads. To solve both of the above problems, there’s one successful approach: use a two-part lead form.

On the first page, ask the minimum amount of questions possible for a visitor to become a lead, where each field is a required field. Ask for the contact information and little else.

On the second page, ask several more optional questions that will help the company better qualify the lead. Above the form, explain that the more information they provide, the better you can prepare for a conversation with them. With this technique, even if little (or no) information is provided on the second page, you at least have contact information that the sales team can follow up on.

2. Develop More Than One Lead Form

Many sites still link to one lead form on the site. Consider placing lead forms in several places on the site. Providing lead forms on each product/service pages and on other key pages allows you to track where the lead form was filled out and provides a helpful nugget of data for the sales team as they contact that lead.

3. Avoid Asking for the Lead Too Early

While recently shopping some demand-gen companies, I did a Google search for Eloqua. The second paid listing for Marketo caught my interest, so I clicked through.

Someone on my staff ended up on a landing a page that successfully enticed them to learn more — specifically this person wanted to see the video demo. Unfortunately, one couldn’t watch the video without filling out the lead form.

Many visitors in this situation aren’t ready to begin the sales process by filling out a lead form with only a promise to watch a demo. My colleague was one of those visitors and bailed. Ironically, another member of my team noticed that the logo on top of the page was a link to the Marketo home page and was able to watch a demo video without filling out a form.

While it may be a “best practice” to limit visitor choices on landing pages, this certainly isn’t a persuasive practice, especially for someone in the early stages of the buying process. My colleague didn’t know what Marketo was, and certainly wasn’t ready to give up personal information at this stage to find out. Marketo is losing conversion opportunities by not providing more actions on this page for visitors who aren’t ready to give out personal info until they know more.

4. How to Do Lead Gen the Right Way

Our partner and marketing to women guru, Michele Miller recently blogged about Jenny Craig’s successful persona-based marketing plan. Whether on purpose or by intuition, Jenny Craig’s celebrity spokeswomen appeal to specific personas and buying types. As we dug further, we were even more impressed. We Googled both Queen Latifah and Valerie Bertinelli and were surprised to find that Jenny Craig had purchased some AdWords ads on those two terms.

Even better, as we clicked through the ads to their landing pages, we noticed that each landing page was crafted and had elements for the persona type that would be attracted to each celebrity.

We extrapolated that Latifah appealed to a more humanistic persona. The page was filled with relational language giving the overall impression to the humanistic persona that becoming a lead for Jenny Craig meant starting a relationship — a key motivator for a humanistic buyer. Take a look at the page and see if you can see the strategy at work.

Bertinelli’s page reflects her methodical style, thereby making it easier for a methodical prospect to get more information. Elements on this page are more information focused and allow for the methodical persona to take action their way. Can you see the difference a persona-based page makes?

5. Aggressively Optimize Your Lead-Gen Process

Many e-commerce sites pour resources and time into improving their checkout process. Lead-gen sites don’t seem to have the same commitment to testing and optimizing their lead generation process. If you’re a lead gen site, your lead-generation process is your checkout process — it’s just as critical to your business as a shopping cart is to an e-commerce site.

What have you done lately to improve your lead-gen efforts? Let me know in the comments below.

*Cross-posted on ClickZ.

What: “Always Be Testing” Webinar: Landing Pages: Headlines and Calls to Action

When: Wednesday, August 27, 2008 | 12:00pm EST

Where: Online, register here to receive your invitation

How much: It’s free, but space is limited so sign-up today!

About this session:

Last month kicked off the series with a webinar on testing trust and confidence building elements on landing pages (view archive ). Our August session will continue to explore landing pages focusing on testing calls to action and headlines. register today! Space is limited.

“Always Be Testing” Webinar Series is a monthly webinar that covers specific testing ideas, how to structure tests, and how to use Google Website Optimizer. The best part is that Google has decided to participate in it first-hand, offering the lastest tips and insights straight from Tom Leung, Google’s Business Product Manager.

“Landing Pages: Headlines and Calls to Action Webinar” will be on August 27th, at 12:00pm EST and last 30 minutes.

For more details and to sign-up to attend, visit futurenowinc.com/abtwebinar.htm

We hope you’ll attend and share this with anyone you know who is looking to begin to test their marketing or to increase their testing effectiveness.

About the Series:
Whether your business has just started testing, is planning to test, or has been testing for years identifying the areas and elements that have impact is often challenging. Each month, Bryan Eisenberg starts off by taking attendees on a dive deep on a specific subject area to test in your marketing and give you ideas on variation you could test. Along with these ideas each month Tom Leung will bring you useful insider tips and tricks about using Google Website Optimizer to easily test your marketing campaigns and website. Lastly, the two will team up to answer a popular question spotted on the Google Website Optimizer forums or sent in by our readers and listeners.

It won’t be easy. Being good at something never is.

A few weeks ago I gave a keynote at the Shop.org online merchandising workshop and had an opportunity to chat with several online retailers of all sizes. Each shared the challenges it faces as it tries to adopt a culture of optimization.

Last week, I shared with you what I learned from Raul Vazquez, CEO of Walmart.com from his keynote at the conference. Unlike many retailers, Walmart.com has a culture of optimization and embraces a process for continuous improvement. Even with its process in place, however, it doesn’t do any A/B or multivariate testing.

An executive from another multibillion dollar online retailer told me an all-too common tale of how it began testing with the help of a vendor. After seeing no lift and investing all the resources, the retailer cut the vendor loose and let testing fall by the wayside. Like so many others in these tight times, it axed testing as a budget item. Can anyone afford to stop optimizing?

The fact that optimization and testing challenges are rampant shouldn’t surprise anyone. In its “Guide to Retail and Web Site Design,” Internet Retailer’s research unwrapped the fact that over 76 percent of online retailers don’t test.

It’s not that online markets have a violent opposition to testing. It’s a combination of things. Many don’t know where to start; others may have started and had limited or no success. Here are some other common challenges that online retailers and online marketers face:

• Simple slice-and-replace testing/optimization. This is the process of Web teams slicing and replacing an element, a page, or a portion of the visitor experience and finding little or no lift in the numbers. So they move on and try another. This is a challenge because this method has no way of determining if the original hypothesis was incorrect (the reason they made the change) or if it was an execution issues.
• Resources. Testing well is hard work and uses resources: time, effort, and cash. And because teams are unsure, they resist or don’t give their best effort.
• Platforms. Some site platforms make it difficult to test. Ultimately, you must determine what costs the company less: lost opportunities, platform upgrades, or changes to allow for easier and more efficient testing.
• Lack of a process. Most retailers test randomly, just selecting something in the conversion funnel or their least favorite page. Others perform large-scale tests and may break or fix many things along the way. In both cases, they have no method for gleaning insight so they can successfully repeat the process.
• Persuasion or brand perception issues. Often time the issues that keep visitors from converting aren’t as simple as a button color, an element’s position, or a form improvement. We recently worked with a big-name financial institution that wasn’t committed to taking the time to test these subtle issues. Instead, they went with another vendor that tested more simplistic conversion issues. Needless to say those efforts didn’t move the needle.

Most of these challenges are related to companies not setting a solid (i.e., more scientific) testing process in place. None of these challenges is a reason to give in.

If you have testing challenges, you should know two things before you throw your hands up. First, you aren’t alone. Second, don’t stop testing — instead stop testing badly by adopting a cycle of optimization and a smart process for doing so.

I will be launching (and signing) my new book, “Always Be Testing,” at Search Engine Strategies San Jose on August 18. The book is based on my 10-plus years of experience helping companies that struggle with testing and giving them practical guidance and tools to deal with these challenges. If you plan on attending, let me know. I’d love to meet up with you and talk about your challenges.

*Cross-posted on ClickZ. 

Click here to view the embedded video.

Bryan and I have co-authored a new book all about testing and helping you figure out what to test. It’s called Always Be Testing: The Complete Guide to Google Webiste Optimizer (published by Sysbex/Wiley) and we’re expecting it out next month; you can pre-order it now on Amazon.