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Taming The HiPPO
1. Google Website Optimiser Taming the HiPPO Jon Day Google Analytics Specialist Australia & New Zealand
2. Let’s Make the Most of Our 15 Mins. Together Tips and Best Practices 3 Why Landing Page Testing is Crucial 1 Stress-free testing with Google 2
3. Where does Website Optimiser fit in? Website Optimiser Web Analytics Process
4. Pre-Click vs. Post-Click Optimisation 0-3 seconds; 3% of pixels, no commitment 0-20 seconds, 100% of pixels, demonstrated commitment 2-3 minutes, 100% of pixels, significant commitment Pre-Click (SEM, SEO, etc.) Post-Click (Landing Page Optimization)
5. Testing can help Increase ROI and Decrease CPA What other ways can you increase sales by 2.25X with only a 50% increase in ad spend? Do Nothing Raise Spend by 50% Also Raise Conv. Rate by 50% Clicks 5,000 7,500 7,500 CPC $0.10 $0.10 $0.10 Cost $500 $750 $750 Conv. Rate 2% 2% 3% Sales 100 150 225 Increase in Cost - 50% 50% Sales Impact - 1.5x 2.25x
6. How do you decide what people see after they click? HiPPO: “ I went to business school, add these 10 bullets and this 2X2 matrix to the page.” Creative Genius: I went to design school, remove all those bullets and numbers and just leave the YouTube video Your customers: <BACK>
7. Website Optimiser makes Testing Quick and Easy Test different variations of a page to see which is most effective at achieving results 1/3 visitors 1/3 visitors 1/3 visitors Winning Combo 8% Add to Cart 14% Add to Cart 25% Add to Cart Visitors arrive at your site You test different variations of a particular webpage See what variation Is most effective at getting results
8. Combinations 5 and 7 are the winners Bars represent relative improvement Original is highlighted here See Intuitive Reports of your Results
10. Traffic Known Problems with Content Low High High Landing Pages Home Pages Step 1 of Funnels Previously Optimized Pages Final Steps of Funnels Ancillary Detail Pages Terms of Use Pages Contact Us Pages Some Pages Are Better Than Others
15. A/B Split Testing Website Optimiser makes it easy for you to start testing quickly with our A/B experiment creation tool Version A Version B Ideal for: - First Time Testers - Lower Traffic Pages - High Traffic Pages VS
25. Case Study: 3 areas of focus + 4 simple hypothesis … Hypothesis #1: It is always better to describe user benefits than product features Hypothesis #2: Links receive more clicks than buttons Hypothesis #3: “ Free” offers are more desirable than “trial” offers Hypothesis #4: If you have an attractive product, flaunt it
26. Case Study: Three simple experiments OR? OR? OR? Find, organize and share your photos. Original (A) The easy way to share and manage your photos. No Picture New (B)
28. Case Study: Assumptions were wrong Hypothesis #1: It is always better to describe user benefits than product features Hypothesis #2: Links receive more clicks than buttons Hypothesis #3: “ Free” offers are more desirable than “trial” offers Hypothesis #4: If you have an attractive product, flaunt it ☒ ☒ ☒ ☒
29. Case Study: Simple test increased downloads by 30% New Picasa download page New page increased conversions by 30%
31. Evolve Faster than your Competition with Testing Images courtesy of Sean D’Souza, Chief Brain Auditor – Psychotactics.com
32. Iterate, Iterate, Iterate! Time Conversion Rate Your current conversion rate Sales with out testing 12% increase 9% increase 13% increase 19% increase Sales After Testing 64% increase
Website Optimiser fits seamlessly into the web analytics process.
Today, marketers spend a dissperportionant investment of time on preclick efforts, which include SEO and SEM. Ultimately, this is a flawed approach for 2 reasons: -First, spending $K’s on SEM doesn’t always make sense when you’re early in the marketing process. Ad creatives might take up 3% of a user’s screen, and the user has no commitment to your brand during their initial searches. However, once they get to your site, not only have they shown some level of commitment to your brand, but you now own most of their screen real estate. This is where you’ll have the impact.
Lets look at this investment with numbers. If I hire Rafe as my SEM specialist, and I tell him to grow my sales, Rafe can: -Do nothing. Maybe he receives 5K clicks, a low CPC, and a 2% conversion rate. Is that as good as it gets? -Well, lets raise the spend 50% and see what happens. Great, we get 2500 more clicks, same CPC, same conversion rate (because we didn’t change anything except investment), and 50 more sales. -Lets also test our site. This raises the conversion rate 1%, resulting in over 2 times the sales impact.
This isn’t rocket science, so why haven’t we been doing this all along? Well, if you go to a boardroom, the highest paid person wins and has the best idea for fixing things up. Then, the creative types also have their artsy ideas. You probably listen to the highest paid person, because they sign your checks. However, it’s the customer that everyone should care about, because they actually pay your checks.
Before Google Website Optimiser, testing was complicated. You had to be a statistical genius and have a lot of time on your hands. Now, it’s simple. Here are 3 tests for a visitor arriving at your site. You lead them to 3 different landing pages, and in this case, the goal is a sale, and you measure which entry had the highest conversion rate. However, website optimiser is flexible, and you can test virtually any success metrics—from sales to leads, to time on site.
Once your test kicks off, the reporting makes decisions really easy. Again, you don’t need to sit and crunch the numbers, as our system makes it very clear. Since we do the math, you just look at the colors. Green is good, yellow is a bit of caution, and red is bad and needs some work.
Getting started is easy, just pick a page to test.
When picking this test page, aim for something that has high traffic and may have known issues with content. This way, you’re choosing a page that can really have a large impact on your customers.
And, if you need help, why not use Analytics. For example, look at top content reports to find top landing pages, and look at any top landing pages that have high bounce rates.
Alternatively, look at your funnel visualisation for your goals, and if you have goals with high abandonment, why not test these funnel pages to improve conversions?
You can test virtually anything from headlines to calls to action. If you’re really struggling for ideas, why not stage an office showdown. Pick an idea from your CEO, and an idea from your uni intern, and let the data show who’s the winner. Hopefully you reward the intern if they prove successful!
Here’s where it all kicks off.
Start simple, for example, an A/B experiment lets you compare different layouts. It’s very simple, and it can take 5 minutes to launch.
Next, enter your test pages, and your conversion page—which will be dependent on your exact goal.
Then, it’s as simple as pasting the code. To some of you, this may look scary, but it’s as simple as a copy and paste.
Then, preview, launch, sit back, and relax. This is a good time for a 2 week holiday.
Here’s an example of an A/B experiment from Ann Holland’s which test won site, which is sponsored by one of our partners, Wider Funnel. Here’s version A, with a very graphic design, and a simple form.
Now, here’s version B. Not as graphical, shorter form, and clearer call to action. It’s the winner, but the testing shouldn’t stop here.
Getting more advanced that A/B testing, you can also test multiple elements on the same page at the same time.
Such as, the graphics.
And the headlines. 2 headlines, 3 images, and now you have 6 combinations to run with.
Whether you know it or not, you may have been part of our experiments. We use website optimiser on our sites as well. Lets take our Picasa example. For those of you not familiar with this product, this is a photo organising and sharing product, which I highly recommend. Here’s the original page to download the product.
So, we developed 4 hypotheses: -It’s best to describe user benefits more than product features -Links receive more clicks than buttons -”Free” offers are more desirable than “trial” offers -If you have an attractive product, flaunt it!
Next, they came up with one variation for each of their three page elements . They decided to experiment with a more benefit-oriented headline, a button with the word “Try” instead of “Free”, and the removal of the picture.
Mention that 1024 combinations ended up being test, 2 variations of Sign Up, 16 banners, 4 column boxes with 8 benefit statements
In the end, it was a humbling and insightful experience, as all of the original hypotheses proved to be incorrect. In fact, the winning page increased sign-ups by 30%. A 30% increase for minimal marketing work and best of all for free. Other Google teams have followed the Picasa team’s footsteps, and major products such as Gmail, AdWords, and Google Docs have all used Website Optimizer to increase conversion rates – this is how Google optimizes. We even recently used this for Youtube, using 1024 combinations!
-In Australia, you can outpace your competition, because testing is still not common practice. -Try big changes, because these are the ones that can have an impact. Test a button instead of a font type, for example. -Don’t rush it! We recommend letting a test run at least 2 weeks to get enough traffic to be statistically significant. -Start slow, such as using and A/B experiment.
Iterate—constant testing keeps building on a base. We can go from 12% to 9% to 13% to 19%, all leading to a 64% increase in conversion.
Here are a few great resources, found on our sites, with our consultants, our blogs, and our user forums.