1. THE TOP 10 TESTING,
TARGETING AND OPTIMISATION
BEST PRACTICES
a publication from

2. The Top 10 Testing, Targeting And Optimisation Best Practices
THE TOP 10 TESTING, TARGETING AND OPTIMISATION BEST PRACTICES
1. New Versus Returning: Basic Segments, Big Implications
2. Location-based Targeting: Know Where Your Customers Are
3. Product Badging: Highlight Products with Ease and Simplicity
4. Inbound Message Consistency: Don’t Interrupt the Scent Trail
5. Promotion Testing: Find the Right Offer for Each Visitor
6. Shopping Cart Recovery: Revive the Purchase Process
7. Time-Triggers: Remind and Retain Existing Customers
8. Navigation Optimisation: Avoid the IT Queue
9. Threshold Messages: Make Your Offers More Powerful
10. Tablets: Audit and Optimise to Boost Conversions
a publication from monetate | 2

3. The Top 10 Testing, Targeting And Optimisation Best Practices
INTRODUCTION
Deliver the right message, to the right person, at the right time.
A simple statement, but for many companies, the ability to create a relevant online
customer experience remains a challenge.
After thousands of people downloaded the original 'Top 10 Testing, Targeting
and Personalisation Best Practices' eBook, we were convinced that updating this
valuable resource with new ways for you to optimise your website and create
engaging customer experiences would further enhance its usefulness.
Like its predecessor, we created this edition from the countless number of website
testing and optimisation campaigns that have impacted ecommerce businesses
like yours. Quite frankly, these strategies are proven winners.
So, if you want to create online customer relevance, drive revenue, and increase
conversions and average order value, turn the page to discover 10 successful
website testing and optimisation strategies implemented by some of the best-
known brands in the world.
a publication from monetate | 3

4. The Top 10 Testing, Targeting And Optimisation Best Practices
ABOUT MONETATE
Extreme relevance creates extreme revenue.
Monetate delivers a completely new class of online customer experience solutions.
By providing companies with a cloud-based suite of marketing optimisation
products and conversion expertise, you can quickly customise content, creative,
and functionality for innovative testing, merchandising, targeting, and cross-
channel consistency that drives online relevance and revenue.
Major enterprise companies, including Best Buy, QVC, Urban Outfitters, Aeropostale,
The Sports Authority, and PETCO, rely on Monetate to achieve a new level of speed
and control that allows them to run 16 times more website optimisation campaigns
compared to industry averages.
By unlocking the full capabilities of the Monetate Agility Suite, you gain the power
to test and deliver targeted content—changing anything, anywhere, on any web
page, based on what you know about your website visitors.
a publication from monetate | 4

5. The Top 10 Testing, Targeting And Optimisation Best Practices
1. NEW VERSUS RETURNING:
Basic Segments, Big Implications
One of the most effective ways to segment website traffic is to distinguish between
new and returning visitors. While this distinction is both familiar and valuable to
those who measure website traffic acquisition efforts, it continues to be overlooked
as a proven method to increase conversion rates and other key metrics.
While a first-time visitor may need to know the forms of payment you accept, how
your items are shipped, or your return policy, conveying this and other information
takes up valuable page real estate that returning visitors and frequent shoppers
likely don’t need or want to see.
New
Show new customers unique content and callouts, while alerting returning
customers to what has been updated on the website since their last visit. You can
even personalise return visits for customers based on their average shopping cart
value or their lifetime purchase value.
Merchandisers can take advantage of this important customer segment by showing
different product recommendations, such as the most popular products to new
visitors and brand-new products to returning visitors.
Segmenting new versus returning visitors is not only a more efficient use of page
Returning
real estate, but can convert more first-time browsers into buyers and increase the
order size of a returning visitor.
Treat new customers to unique content and callouts, while alerting returning
customers to what has been updated on your website since their last visit.
a publication from monetate | 5

6. The Top 10 Testing, Targeting And Optimisation Best Practices
2. LOCATION-BASED TARGETING:
Know Where Your Customers Are
By using technology that determines the physical location of website visitors, you For example, an outdoor clothing retailer can use weather-based targeting to
can display location-specific messages and offers that help increase conversion. promote rainwear to visitors located in a city where it’s currently raining by displaying
Two location-based best practices are geotargeting and weather-based targeting. a banner that offers a price discount, badging to draw attention to products with
waterproof features, or showing a weather-targeted hero image that reflects the
Geotargeting works exceptionally well to highlight synergies between your online visitor’s physical environment to strengthen the connection to the message.
and physical retail locations. Call out the closest location of a store so the customer
can take advantage of free in-store pickup, or learn about in-store events nearby.
Another way geotargeting can pay dividends in conversion rate lift, higher average
order value, and customer loyalty is to segment international traffic. Start by
checking your website analytics to see how many visitors come from different
countries and how well they convert.
Your international customers will be happy to know that you ship to their respective
country, so tell them with banners, callouts or lightbox treatments. Country-specific
targeting also can be extended to changing website navigation to the native
language of a visitor, as well as converting prices into a different currency.
Cloudy in Chicago? Sunny in Los Angeles? Snowing in Vermont?
While brick-and-mortar retailers can respond rapidly to changing weather conditions,
online merchants have typically been shut out of these sales opportunities. Use
weather-based targeting to overlay the location of the user with real-time weather
data and leverage this insight to deliver a more relevant message. Highlight synergies between your online and retail locations. Call out closest location, ship
to store, easy returns, store events, or even hiring opportunities!
a publication from monetate | 6

7. The Top 10 Testing, Targeting And Optimisation Best Practices
3. PRODUCT BADGING:
Highlight Products with Ease and Simplicity
You’re likely familiar with the merchandising tactic known as product badging and
perhaps have already implemented this strategy on your website’s search results
pages, category pages, home page, or product detail pages. Highlighting specific
items with a product badge can increases sales of that item—as well as the overall
conversion rate—even if you are not discounting the product.
Calling attention to specific products within a group—such as items that are on
sale, newly arrived, or popular with other shoppers—with product badges can be
much simpler and easier to do once you realise that you don’t need creative or IT
resources. Overlay images or use dynamic text on top of existing product images
and free your graphic designer or website developer to focus on other projects.
The specific business rules that you create determine where a badge should be
shown, who should see it, when someone should see it, and the length of time that
the badge should accompany a product image.
Calling attention to selected items within a group of products is one of the oldest selling
strategies in the world-and with good reason, it works. Badging brings this venerable
technique online, where you can test it, tune it, and employ it more effectively than ever.
a publication from monetate | 7

8. The Top 10 Testing, Targeting And Optimisation Best Practices
4. INBOUND MESSAGE CONSISTENCY:
Don’t Interrupt the Scent Trail
How much time, effort, and money do you spend on generating website traffic only
to settle on single-digit conversion rates? Your inbound marketing channels—for
instance, paid search, display advertising, affiliates, email, and social media—are
huge parts of your business. But once visitors get to your website, you shouldn’t
interrupt the 'scent trail' and leave them stranded.
One example of retaining the scent trail is when you synchronise your email
message with the landing page. We call this 'Email Echo.'
The continuity of your inbound marketing efforts is a great way to increase
conversion rates. Suppose the offer in your email is for free shipping on orders over
£100. If you use a blue serif font inside a big yellow button to promote the offer in
your email, make sure that offer using similar or the same creative appears on the
landing page.
Once you start asking your graphic designer for website creative that matches
each email offer, you can display the images without ever again creating a special
landing page for your email campaigns. This 'email echo' campaign carries the same creative theme and message from email to
landing page and throughout the website visit, to keep the offer that prompted the click
As mentioned earlier, retaining inbound message consistency—the 'scent trail'— front and center while customers shop.
is critical to increasing conversion. Maintaining scent and avoiding the 'bait and
switch' isn’t just a matter of having the same messages, or product, in your email
and on your website. It’s also about using the same colours, themes, and fonts. They
all must come through to the landing page and, ideally, to the entire website.
a publication from monetate | 8

9. The Top 10 Testing, Targeting And Optimisation Best Practices
5. PROMOTION TESTING:
Find the Right Offer for Each Visitor
You hopefully now understand the importance of maintaining message consistency
for your different customer segments. Whether from an inbound channel like paid
49 FREE49
search or email, or new visitors and returning visitors, there is a different cost to
convert each website visitor to a customer.
59 FREE59
Because your return on investment is different for each customer segment, you
79 FREE79
shouldn’t settle for the same special discounts or promotions for all of your website
traffic. Change your promotional offer depending on your cost to obtain each
customer. Visitors who come from paid search could require a higher order size
before receiving free shipping compared to a visitor who arrived from an organic
You can set a smaller sample size for your promotion campaign to mitigate exposure risk.
search.
Your affiliate partner gets a specific percentage of every sale, you have a set AdWords
budget, and your contract with your email service provider is pretty straightforward.
Use this knowledge to your advantage and convert a more profitable website visitor
using effective promotion testing.
a publication from monetate | 9

10. The Top 10 Testing, Targeting And Optimisation Best Practices
6. SHOPPING CART RECOVERY:
Revive the Purchase Process
Online shoppers are easily distracted. They are typically convenience-oriented,
actively comparison-shopping, inundated with options, and frequently multitasking.
Because of these and other factors, shopping cart abandonment remains a major
ecommerce concern with about 75% of online cart purchases never getting to an
order confirmation page.
There are numerous best practices around reducing shopping cart abandonment,
including the display of clear reminders that there are items in the cart as the
shopper explores your website, and mouse-over views of cart contents from any
page so shoppers don’t need to go to the cart page to remember what they plan to
purchase. But you will still experience cart abandonment.
Remind returning visitors about the items left in their carts and get them back into
the sales funnel quickly. Try using a lightbox that greets them with a reminder of
their cart items, encouraging them to place their order while supplies last. It might
pay off to add an additional incentive, such as free shipping, to complete the order.
Some of the best personalisation strategies offer immediate and practical benefits to the
customer. What could be more helpful than a reminder of items left in the cart? Plus, a
strong hint to complete the purchase before the items are sold out.
a publication from monetate | 10

11. The Top 10 Testing, Targeting And Optimisation Best Practices
7. TIME-TRIGGERS:
Remind and Retain Existing Customers
Retaining an existing customer is far more profitable than acquiring a new customer.
Remind returning visitors when it is time to reorder a product that frequently needs
to be replenished.
When a returning visitor comes to your website—for example, 90 days after
the purchase of a product that typically lasts three to four months—and your
data supports that the item typically is reordered, re-engage the customer with
messages about buying that same product again. By targeting this dynamic
customer segment, you not only can impact key performance metrics, but will
provide a customer experience often not found online.
Other examples of time-triggered messages include upselling warranty expirations
or other pertinent product messages, such as when a previously desired out-of-
stock item is back in inventory. You also can send valuable post-purchase triggered
messages requesting that frequent shoppers leave a product review or asking them
to provide valuable feedback via a website survey.
Don’t forget to re-order! Remind returning visitors to buy replenishment items at common
usage intervals (e.g., 90 days post purchase).
a publication from monetate | 11

12. The Top 10 Testing, Targeting And Optimisation Best Practices
8. NAVIGATION OPTIMISATION:
Avoid the IT Queue
Making a change to your website’s primary navigation would seem like a
monumental task. Besides convincing others to move forward with even the
simplest change, the time it typically takes to get such a change through the
development queue means you’ve likely moved on to another challenge. There are
definitely risks involved when you alter how visitors interact with your website. And
that’s why testing changes to your navigation before deploying them site-wide has
quickly become a best practice.
ON-SALE
Change the text colour of a 'Sales Items' link to better stand out, or move the
'Clearance' or 'Close-out' links to the top of the navigation for shoppers who have a
lower average order value.
Try swapping categories or brands—even hide them altogether—or highlight
specific navigational items based on known customer segments, such as gender,
location, and most-popular categories or brands. You can even try disabling
navigation hovers to see how they impact the clickstream of your visitors.
Test different messaging in your website navigation before deploying a potential risky
change site-wide. Highlight a specific navigation element to known customer segments
such as gender, location, or most-popular categories.
a publication from monetate | 12

13. The Top 10 Testing, Targeting And Optimisation Best Practices
9. THRESHOLD MESSAGES:
Make Your Offers More Powerful
Free shipping, in most cases, proves to be a silver bullet with consumers. But for
your business, offering free shipping can be a slippery slope. That’s where free
shipping thresholds come in. By requiring customers to meet a defined minimum
total to qualify for free shipping, you can attract sales without hurting profit.
Test a threshold slightly above your website’s average order value (AOV). If you have
products with disparate price ranges, the overall site AOV might be biased high or
low. In this case, consider using multiple shipping thresholds attainable by both
customer segments.
To make free shipping threshold offers more powerful, present real-time calculations
on how close shoppers are to qualifying for the deal. Also consider adding product
recommendations in the target price range (or higher) to these messages.
Use real-time calculations to show visitors how close they are to free shipping thresholds
and other special offers. Test these messages with banners using dynamic text throughout
your website or within the checkout process.
a publication from monetate | 13

14. The Top 10 Testing, Targeting And Optimisation Best Practices
10. TABLETS:
Audit and Optimise to Boost Conversions
As more consumers replace their computers with devices such as an iPad or Kindle Navigation is also important. On a touchscreen, drop-down features will either take
Fire, they expect a website that takes advantages of the products’ features and the visitor to the main top category or won’t stay open, which means visitors are
functionality. stuck and can’t navigate properly. Supporting flyout navigation for “touch click” will
allow your navigation to work as intended on these devices.
Look at your analytics for the top activities visitors are doing on mobile and tablet
devices. You may find that site search, store locators, account log-in, or certain
categories are browsed more on tablets. Use this insight to drive easy modifications
to your tablet experience that call out and move customers more quickly to these
popular areas.
Besides taking a deep dive into your analytics, do a qualitative audit of how your
website performs on the most popular devices to determine whether it’s delivering
the features and functionalities those users need. Optimise your website features
that don’t function the way you want them to on a tablet—think Flash and the
iPad—and serve up static content instead.
a publication from monetate | 14

15. The Top 10 Testing, Targeting And Optimisation Best Practices
Make it easier for visitors to navigate your website on a tablet with bigger buttons
Weather Targeted
to help optimise tablet browsing. Don’t stop there. Try implementing features like Larger Navigation Store Locator Hero Image
predictive search, because fewer keypad strokes result in a better user experience
for tablet browsers.
Clean, streamlined product pages also are critical to improving tablet conversions.
One way to take advantage of this is to think about what you already show in your
product 'Quick Views' and use a similar approach for tablet browsers. Allow visitors
to pick a size and colour, add the product to the basket, and then head to checkout.
Tablet
Accessories
Geotargeting
Overlay Finger-Friendly
Waterproof Badging Swiping
Although tablet shoppers may still drive a small percentage of overall ecommerce, they
can convert at rates higher than consumers shopping via desktop computers. Quantitative
and qualitative analyses of your website on tablet devices can provide ways to improve the
customer experience and increase conversion rates.
a publication from monetate | 15

16. The Top 10 Testing, Targeting And Optimisation Best Practices
Going Further
Are you eager to put these best practices to the test against your business
challenges? And maybe more than a little curious to see just how much potential
conversion rate lift you’ve been missing?
We can relate! At Monetate, we live to move the needle, to blow away KPIs and lift
every metric that matters. That’s why we made it quick and easy to get Monetate
onto your website so you can start implementing these best practices immediately.
As marketers the world over are beginning to see the tremendous value relevance
has in acquiring and retaining customers while increasing share of wallet, there’s
never been a better time to ramp up your testing, targeting and optimisation efforts.
As you may have noticed, most of the illustrations of the best practices you just read
are from existing Monetate clients, companies that are leading the way in building
a better online customer experience... and driving record online revenue in the
process. Why not join them?
GET STARTED TESTING, TARGETING
AND OPTIMISING YOUR WEBSITE TODAY!
Learn more:
www.monetate.com
info@monetate.com
a publication from monetate | 16

17. Expert Optimisation Resources
Valuable case studies, eBooks, white papers, webinars & infographics
monetate.com/resources
Request a Demo
demo.monetate.com
1-877-MONETATE | 484-323-6313 | www.monetate.com
©2012 Monetate Inc. All Rights Reserved