Another case study of ours was published yesterday on Marketing Sherpa about a Landing Page Optimization project we recently completed.

This case is a great example of how paying attention to the details and providing enough information, but not too much, will maximize conversion rates.

Marketing Sherpa published a Conversion Optimization case study this morning about a project we recently completed for Business Objects, an SAP Company.

The author captured the steps we took with the client, Christine Mykota, and the typical challenges of working within a Fortune 500 company’s graphic standards well.

I also gave the author a sneak-peak of the six factors in WiderFunnel’s LIFT™ Analysis, which we use to evaluate landing pages and develop test hypotheses.

At IMC in Vancouver I will take Conversion Optimization workshop members through the LIFT Analysis tool and will post it to this blog after the conference, so stay tuned.

In the mean time, take a read through the excellent Sherpa article.

BCIT’s Alumni publication, the Ambassador, ran a little profile of me this month with a good explanation of what we’re doing at WiderFunnel. Here’s a link to the pdf version, in case you’re interested.

This is a quick call-out to OneDegree for adding WiderFunnel to their blogroll of Canadian Marketing and Communications Blogs.

Thanks Kate!

The latest Direct Marketing News has a nice little article on page 8 about WiderFunnel becoming the first Canadian Google Website Optimizer Authorized Consultants.

They even included a nice little shot of Tom Leung. I guess they like his picture better than ours. We’re happy to get the word out to direct marketers about the power of Google Website Optimizer’s A/B Split Testing and multivariate testing capability.

This morning’s Business in Vancouver has a nice little article about WiderFunnel. Alan Zisman does an excellent job of highlighting the reasons many web sites fail in converting visitors into prospects or customers. He explains our value clearly when he says “Widerfunnel promises the expertise to enable organizations to know what sort of website content and design changes are worth testing and how to analyze the results.”

You can view a pdf of the article here (PDF, 1Mb).

Note: Alan has also provided a text reprint on his web site.

Canadian marketing firm helps turn more website visitors into customers and subscribers

VANCOUVER, BC (Oct. 18, 2007) – Vancouver, BC-based WiderFunnel Marketing is the first and, to date, the only Canadian authorized consultant for Google Website Optimizer™, a new program that simultaneously tests combinations of website content (text and images) to determine which features yield greater customer satisfaction and ultimately greater sales. It’s a tool web marketers and online retailers, even those with already high traffic volumes, have been waiting for for years.

“Whatever the product is, when you’re selling online, the only measure of success is your conversion rate,” says WiderFunnel Co-founder Raquel Hirsch, one of Canada’s most respected marketers, with over 20 years of senior marketing experience in traditional and electronic marketing. “You can have a million visitors a month, but if they’re not transacting, or clicking where you want them to, you’ve wasted your money getting them to your site.”

While Google Website Optimizer is available free online, the key to maximizing its benefits lies in being able to skillfully analyze its reports and having the marketing and customer relationship management experience to know which site-content changes are worth testing so that customers will use a site the way the business wants them to. That’s where the benefits of using a Google Website Optimizer Authorized Consultant come in.

“We have stringent requirements for our authorized consultants,” said Tom Leung, Business Product Manager for Google Website Optimizer. “They have to have a strong track record in planning, executing and troubleshooting website tests. WiderFunnel is the first Canadian company to meet our admissions requirements, and they share our overall vision for the power of testing and performance marketing.”

WiderFunnel Marketing was founded by Raquel Hirsch and Chris Goward. Together, the pair share over 30 years of senior marketing experience, a Gold CMA award, and a long list of leading clients including Tourism British Columbia and some of the fastest growing high tech, eCommerce and affiliate marketing companies in North America. By giving clients the ability to simultaneously test hundreds of versions of their site, WiderFunnel increases their ROI from online advertising investments while lowering their customer acquisition and online transaction costs.

“Knowing how to change layouts, offers and copy for the better makes all the difference,” says Goward. “We get meaningful test results faster because we know what is worth testing first. As a result, clients get more conversions sooner than if they had decided to guess what’s worth testing themselves and tried to do it with their limited in house resources. We’ve seen conversion improvements ranging from 10% to 242% on a single conversion experiment!”

For more information about WiderFunnel Marketing, visit www.WiderFunnel.com.
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Contacts:

Raquel Hirsch, Co-Founder, WiderFunnel
604.512.0799, Raquel.Hirsch @ widerfunnel

Chris Goward, Co-Founder, WiderFunnel
604.767.1080, Chris.Goward @ widerfunnel

Check out our latest news; a one-on-one interview in DM News with Tom Leung, Google Website Optimizer Product Manager.

Interview with Google’s Tom Leung - page 1
Interview with Google’s Tom Leung - page 2