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

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.)

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.

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

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.

We published a brief on this topic back in 2004 and decided it was time to run a new series of tests to find out what kind of ROI you can expect to achieve with the smaller PPC engines. That is to say, not Google, Yahoo Search Marketing or MSN.

We felt that with increasing competition for top keywords in the major engines, there might be some new opportunities available through their smaller competitors.

We tested seven different engines with four different research partners and generated some very interesting, and surprising data.

If you would like to know exactly what we discovered, sign up for our September 6th webinar on Small PPC Engines Revised. As always, there is no charge.

Here’s a test of your online marketing skills…

The topic of our free webinar this Wednesday is “Optimizing Free Trial Offers”.

We thought it might be interesting to give you a preview of two of the pages. One page is before optimization, and the other is after.

Can you tell which page performed best? Can you estimate by how much? And can you list eight reasons why?

You can see the pages and complete the survey here.

Be sure to register for Wednesday’s webinar…and all will be revealed.