MarketingExperiments Blog: Research-driven optimization, testing, and marketing ideas

In a recent article over at Adotas, they take a hard look at how changes in algorithms at Google can have a painful impact on sites that depend on the giant search engine for organic search results.

And if you think this applies just to small companies, consider this passage from the Adotas article:

“Now that Google has changed its algorithm, many sites are seeing a backlash that cannot be ignored. Answers.com has reported traffic to have gone down about 28% and ascribes this to the changed Algorithm of the search giant. Having an average of 3 million visitors in June, the loss has been significant.”

We have seen a number of algorithm changes at Google over the last few years, and each time thousands of businesses online feel the pain.

A sudden loss in ranking can be particularly frustrating for companies which invest significantly in professional SEO help, only to find that investment flushed away by the next tweak over at Google.

The problem can be compounded for those companies which depend not only on Google for organic search listings, but also use AdWords to drive additional traffic.

As we have noticed through our own research, promoting a site through AdWords can also be vulnerable to changes in competition and gradual increases in cost per click.

An alien MBA might reasonable ask, “Are you nuts? Why put your business success in the hands of one or two channels over which you have no control?”

Good question. And there is no doubt that any company which depends too much on traffic through Google is putting itself in a very vulnerable position.

The rational answer always has to be that one should develop additional marketing channels and promotional strategies. You have to expand your sources of traffic and reduce your risks.

In a sense, the lure of “free” organic traffic through Google has made too many companies lazy.

It’s also likely that some online businesses have succeeded to date without any real marketing strategy as all. Some will have either lucked out or worked hard to get a substantial and regular flow of traffic through Google, and have simply never bothered to explore other channels.

These companies are the most vulnerable and, if they crash and burn, they will really have nobody to blame but themselves.

But for every company, large and small, it makes sense to do a traffic audit and determine whether or not their revenues are too dependent on Google, or on any other single channel.

If the answer is yes, then it’s time to think like an alien MBA and put things back into balance.

Marketing Insights

Sounds a little scary.

The point is that any online sales page, or sequence of pages, includes some friction.

That is to say, there are elements on every page that will slow down your visitors, make them pause, or maybe even result in a buyer abandoning the process altogether.

Here are a few examples of friction points that need to be addressed in order to optimize conversions:

1. Too many pages in a sales or subscription process.

2. Too many fields in a sales or sign-up form.

3. Too many choices to be made while buying or registering.

4. Too many graphics that are not directly related to the sales process.

5. Too many columns and links that attract attention away from the core sales message.

6. Too much copy (“You had me at Introducing…”)

7. Too little copy (“What am I buying exactly?”)

And so on. When you find friction points, you need to either cut them out (the scissors) or reduce the friction (grease them).

An example of greasing a friction point would be when the subscription term is long, you add a 110% Money Back Guarantee. The term commitment creates friction. The guarantee provides the grease.

Ultimately, every sales page will have some friction. The process of having someone complete and submit a form cannot be achieved with zero friction.

But you can increase conversion rates by being brutal with the scissors and grease, and making every sales message run as smoothly as possible.

For more on this, and the data we collected to support our findings, listen to our latest clinic presentation – Big Conversion Gains From a Little Scissors & Grease?

Marketing Insights

If you sell a product online, you already know how shoppers can check out your prices and the quality of your customer service through sites like PriceGrabber, Shopzilla and Google Product Search.

But if you think it’s tough having your pricing so immediately transparent to every shopper online, things are now getting even tougher.

Now there are niche price comparison services which dig deeper into specific product and service areas.

For some time TripAdvisor has been pooling the experience of millions of travelers. So if you have some service problems with your hotel or resort, you can bet people are talking about it.

But what if you sell something very specific, like contact lenses? You’re not safe. Check out FindContactLenses.com.

You sell gas? Take a look at GasBuddy.com

How about strollers? You can’t get much more specific than that. It’s all there at FindStrollers.com

And to compare health insurance quotes, try Vimo.com

Each month more of these sites appear, giving consumers an extraordinary level of knowledge before they decide where they’re going to spend their money.

But what about when people go to the mall? Until now physical store owners may have enjoyed a measure of protection, simply because their customers are not sitting in front of their computers.

That’s changing too. If you see someone using a cell phone in your store, maybe he or she is logging into Text4Price.com, a mobile price comparison service.

As more and more comparison services begin to serve tighter and tighter niches, you have only two choice: offer the lowest price, or deliver a value that justifies a higher price.

The latter option is where the real business potential lies.

To survive absolute price transparency, you need to create a unique value around your product or service that justifies a higher price.

Marketing Insights

The short answer appears to be — Yes.

In a recent set of tests, in which we distributed 28 short, entertaining video clips through YouTube and Google Video, we converted almost 1.5% of viewers into subscribers.

That may not sound like a huge conversion rate. However, all of these video clips were non-commercial. They were simply entertaining, with no sales message included.

In other words, the video clip was simply part one in a three-step process.

1. Watch the video.

2. Go to the site url featured at the end of the video clip.

3. Sign up for the site’s newsletter.

The use of online video in this way, to drive site traffic and convert visitors to subscribers or buyers, is still in its infancy.

If you would like to know more, and study the full set of data from our recent tests, register for our free webinar, this Wednesday, at 4:00PM EST — Can viral video clips drive targeted traffic to your web site?

Video

That is to say, if you create a video clip to run on TV, will it be received just as well on the web or on a mobile device?

Marketers everywhere might hope that the answer to this question is yes. It would certainly cut down on budgets if a single video could be run across all media with equal success.

But common sense says no. As does this article in MarketingVOX, citing results from a recent survey sponsored by the Cablevision Advertising Bureau.

Here is a short excerpt:

More than 60 percent said they prefer watching video on TV rather than a computer or iPod. Only 12 percent of those with video-enabled phones said they used it for video. Only 30 percent said they had an additional screen device (beyond a TV and computer) used for watching video.

So while marketers dream of teens and those in their early twenties being glued to their iPods and cell phones, eager to watch another commercial video, the truth seems a little different. And you have only to look at some of the short amateur video clips that have burst onto the scene through services like YouTube to see that while they were immensely popular on the web, they would likely not go down as well on TV.

In other words, each medium, or screen, suits different approaches to video, and they are not necessarily interchangeable.

As we have mentioned before in this blog, we are undertaking a significant study ourselves on the potential of video as a marketing tool online. The question of the right video for the right screen will doubtless be an issue that merits exploring.

Video

Web page designers and writers often struggle between loading a page with plenty of information and choices, or keeping it clean and simple.

Which approach works best and gives you the best conversion rates and highest revenues?

Should you present readers with plenty of options, to best suit their own preferences?

Should you let them choose, for example, between a number of different subscription options?

Should you provide links to related or more detailed information?

Should you use multiple columns to provide space for related images, links and supporting information?

Or should you aim instead to keep your pages as simple as possible? Should you reduce the number of choices available to your readers to the absolute minimum?

We will be answering these questions, and sharing recent test data to support our findings, in our free webinar this Wednesday.

You can sign up here: Choice vs. Simplicity

Internet Marketing Strategy

This is a big question with serious implications for online retailers in the months before the holiday buying season.

A recent article at Clickz throws some light on this topic.

Here is an excerpt:

The [WebSideStory ]study looks at traffic and conversion data from 20 business-to-consumer e-commerce sites during the first eight months of 2006. Paid search had a median order conversion rate of 3.4 percent, while organic search results produced a conversion rate of 3.13 percent. The data set included more than 57 million search engine visits.

There are arguments to support both sides, Rand Schulman, WebSideStory’s CMO, told ClickZ.

“On the one hand, because you control the message of paid search, you’d expect higher conversions. On the other side, because people value the ‘editorial integrity’ of organic, you’d expect higher conversions,” he said. “Ultimately you need to do both. I think the eye-opener here is that neither side has a significant edge.”

It would have been interesting to get some more details on the variables within the study.

For instance, were they comparing organic vs. paid, regardless of the position of either link on the page? In other words, did they compare an organic listing in position two with a paid listing also in position two? Or was the comparison between the two listings, on the same page, but regardless of position?

And did they compare paid and organic links which pointed to the exact same page? Paid links almost always point to an optimized offer page. But that often isn’t the case with organic links.

And were those 20 companies in the study of similar sizes? And did they represent a fair spread of industry categories?

However, putting aside those questions, and assuming the basic validity of the test, there is a big lesson to be learned here.

Keep your PPC campaigns going…but also pay attention to your organic search positions.

Remember, organic search traffic costs you nothing per click. So if you get the same conversion rate from organic listings, your net revenue could make a nice jump upwards. (Assuming you don’t spend an arm and a leg on search engine optimization.)

Paid Search Marketing (PPC), Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

If you sell products online and are looking for information on which products to feature on the home page of your own site, spend some time on Amazon.com.

Amazon is becoming a remarkable and free research resource for other online marketers.

First, within each of their 35 product categories, there is a “Top Sellers” tab.

If, for instance, you sell garden furniture, you can quickly find out which items, and which kinds of items are best sellers on Amazon.

While this doesn’t mean you no longer have to test and research which products sell best on your own site to your own, unique audience, the Amazon top 100 for each category can give you a very solid starting point.

Beyond that, Amazon also provides some extraordinary data on related purchases. Once again, this is freely available to anyone.

If you sell books on personal growth and development, consider the value of this information.

Right down to the exact percentage points, Amazon is providing an extraordinary insight into which books you might want to feature together on one page.

A few years ago this kind of information would cost you thousands of dollars to access, and now it’s free.

Internet Marketing Strategy

Most marketers understand the importance of online testing. But how can one best convince senior management?

While online marketers in large and medium-sized companies and organizations know from case studies and other published data that a testing program can yield dramatic increases in revenues, they often find it hard to sell the need for testing internally within their own companies.

What is the best way to present the benefits of testing to your manager or senior management team?

In our next brief we will provide a guide, with examples and tools, to help you build your case.

The examples we use will help you show just how much additional revenues can be generated by improving key page conversion rates.

And the tools, both in PPT and Excel, will help you build a compelling custom presentation, based on proven data, methodologies and formulae.

In other words, we will give you the tools, templates and guidance to build a solid case for investing time and money in an online testing program.

As always, there is no charge to attend the webinar, but you do need to register.

Register to take part in The MEC Guide to Presenting Your Case for Testing

General

A recent article in BrandWeek goes over some research from Jupiter Research in which the data suggests that people have a very low level of trust in information they find in blogs, forums and social networks.

This comes as something of a surprise, as many marketers believe that blogs and forums at least are more credible than corporate web sites.

Not so, according to this research.

The figures are interesting, but in a way they miss the point.

What is important is not the channel…whether it be a site, a blog, a forum or a page on MySpace.

What is important is your credibility and reputation. We have written extensively about this under the topic of Transparent Marketing.

And as we see an increase in advertising in blogs, forums and social networks – as well as on web sites – the issue of trust and credibility will become increasingly important.

In the rush to “be there” and “be seen”, too many marketers forget that trust is something that is built up over time. And it builds only if you are honest and transparent with your readers.

Ultimately it doesn’t matter about the channel through which you present your message. Every and any channel will work, so long as your reputation for honesty precedes you.

General