The Marketing Optimization Blog
Turning More Visitors Into Customers
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Play the Landing Page Optimization Case Study Game
Learning doesn’t have to be boring. WiderFunnel has just launched a new (free!) online game for marketers to allow you and your colleagues to test your conversion optimization skills. You by guessing on the results of real landing page experiments. Continue Reading
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Last Day to Register for OMS Conference – and book a 1:1 lab
Do you wait until the last minute to plan your travel details? You’ve been hoping to go to Online Marketing Summit in San Diego next week, but just haven’t had the time to get your tickets.
Or maybe you’re one of the smart ones who realize that ticket prices can only go down as the event approaches.
Well, wait no more. Here’s your code to save 30% on your OMS pass: SPEAKER30 Continue Reading
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The Long-Term Impact of a High Landing Page Bounce Rate – It Could Hurt Your AdWords Quality Score
In the past I’ve given reasons why bounce rate should not be your Conversion Optimization goal. That is still true from a conversion optimization perspective. Your bounce rate does not directly represent revenue and is only an indicator of a potential problem. Your bounce rate should not be the goal you track in your conversion optimization tests. (Read the article linked above for more about what you should optimize for instead.)However, if you advertise with Google AdWords, bounce rate is important. Since (by definition) you’ve paid for each visitor from paid search, each lost visitor costs you dearly. Continue Reading
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WiderFunnel is Growing and I’m Thankful
On this day when our American friends are celebrating Thanksgiving, we have a reminder to take a few moments to reflect on what we have to be thankful for.What are you thankful for? Continue Reading
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NEW Google AdWords Bid Per Call Strategy for Lead Generation
Have you heard about Google’s new bid-per-call feature in AdWords? Do you have a strategy for using it?
Google has long understood the value of phone call conversions. As early as 2007 my conversations with Google executives inevitably ended up in discussions of their plans to capture multi-channel conversions, specifically from phone calls.
Google has made many well-known moves in the phone space, including the launch of Google Talk, Google Voice and the most prominent acquisition: Motorola. Of course, we all know about their success with Android (and we’ve heard recently how badly Steve Jobs wanted to kill it).
Bid Per Call Now in AdWords
With Google’s announcement last week of new phone call bidding in AdWords, the company will be adding an important layer to their phone capability and to your lead generation toolset. Continue Reading
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Book a Meeting with Chris Goward at PubCon Vegas
Do you have challenges with your website that need expert attention? Will you be at PubCon Vegas on Nov 9 & 10? If so, you’re in luck, but you’ll have to act fast.
I have led the strategy for all of our clients since we founded WiderFunnel in 2007. From the in-house playbook we’ve developed, based on learning from thousands of tests and hundreds of clients, I can tell you what really works. Not just what consultants think might work.
To connect with me at the PubCon Conference and talk about your website conversion challenges, just email “pubcon2011@widerfunnel.com” and ask to schedule a 1:1 session. Continue Reading
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Rotating Offers – the Scourge of Home Page Design
As Conversion Optimization Professionals, our job is to identify components of websites that are hurting the company’s conversion rates and revenue.
In some cases, where the site has already been tested or happens to be well-planned, we have to dig deep in our bag of tricks to develop the test plan.
Other times, the site gives us a gift with components that are common conversion killers. One of the most common of these gifts is the rotating home page offer banner.
We love offer banners! They give us lots of great opportunities to easily beat the Control page with our newly designed test Variations.
Should I use a rotating home page offer banner?
That’s a question I’m often asked when I present at conferences and webinars. Unfortunately for the questioner, they are addressing a common cause of Relevance, Clarity and Distraction problems. (Note: For more information on these and the other three Conversion Rate Factors, read up on the LIFT Framework that we use to analyze landing pages)
I decided to visit an arbitrary sampling of home pages today and found nearly all of them featuring some form of a gallery rotator. Continue Reading
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New Case Study Just Posted: Why this Conversion Optimization Test Delivered +17.4% Downloads but Surprised the Experts
Someone recently Tweeted that WiderFunnel had the largest collection of Conversion Optimization case studies anywhere on the web (even I didn’t realized that!) and today we added one more: the PluralEyes Software case study.
Our 30th posted Case Study tells how testing PluralEyes Software increased its Free Trial Download rate by over 17%. This, of course, in and of itself was a major success but the story has an interested wrinkle: we were all surprised with the results. Continue Reading
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You Are Invited to Play the Conversion Optimization Skills Game Beta (and we need your help)
Readers of this blog will remember that last month we announced the Alpha version of the ConversionSkills.com game — and today I am excited to announce the imminent launch of the Beta, and invite you to sign up to play the Game.
If you are passionate about Conversion Optimization testing, you’ll love this game! Continue Reading
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Gut Marketing vs Gut Hypothesizing
A lot has been said in recent years about how using one’s gut/intuition/opinion is not the way to be successful in online marketing. From Avinash Kaushik’s “HiPPO” concept (marketing/design decisions often get made via the Highest income Paid Person’s Opinion), to a weekly quiz that shows us how our gut feeling is wrong at least some of the time, there is a growing understanding that marketing from one’s gut is a losing proposition. Data-driven marketing decision-making is the way to go. Continue Reading
