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A/B testing and MVT are a great way to help you drive more conversion on your website. A/B testing and MVT help you decide the best layout, headlines, images, message copy etc. that motivates the visitors to complete a transaction. However, A/B testing and MVT will only get you so far. If a visitor does not complete a transaction during later steps of the funnel then there are generally other reasons than those that can be simply fixed by changing the page layout, copy, images etc. . Don’t get me wrong, I am not saying that you can’t improve conversions by optimizing later steps of the funnel. You can, but you will get to a point of diminishing return and you will need something else to drive more conversions. Moreover, the learning from A/B and MVT will only help you going forward but you will lose many customers while you are doing the tests. Keep in mind that as a visitor moves down the conversion funnel his/her commitment to complete the transaction (convert) increases. If you ...

Due to organizational structure, many marketers/analysts get a partial view of the customers’ conversion process data.  This result in them optimizing the wrong steps of the conversion funnel /channel. Read below about a shopping experience I recently had, it will make it clear how this narrow view can come in the way of an organization's ability to effectively optimize the right step/channel in the conversion path.  I was recently in the market to buy a laptop. I had a Lenovo laptop in past, which I really liked, so I decided to buy another Lenovo laptop. I went to their site, configured the laptop and chose various options. When I got to the last step, I decided to contact a live person because I was not sure of all the options that I had picked. I clicked on the little chat button on their site and connected with a sales guy. The person asked me to save my order (create an account etc.) so that he can find the order and help me with it. I did what he told me to but to my di...

Sometimes there are things that you know are not right and need to be fixed immediately rather than testing and waiting for the result. Such was a case that I recently encountered and the results were amazing. Recently, I was working with a client who sells people expertise (I am purposely vague here because I don’t want to reveal the name of the client). The “Expert” search is the start of the process and then “Expert Search result” page is a second step in the process. On the expert search page, each expert is listed with a small blurb and the name of the expert was linked to the next step of the “checkout process”. When analyzing the “checkout” process we noticed that there were 2 things missing The name of Expert was not underlined – it was linked to the next step in the “checkout” funnel but not underlined. Also, that was the only call to action on that page i.e. to click on the experts name to go to the next step. The picture of the Expert was static and had no link whatsoever...

Forms are everywhere on the internet, some convert great while other don’t. There are several factors such as call to action, images, copy etc. that all contribute to the success of a form. However, even a well designed form might not convert well if some fundamental things are not taken care of. In this post I am listing 5 fundamental things that could be preventing the visitors from converting. Consistency in Call to Actions – Consistency in call to action is critical for conversions. You cannot underline few links and not the other within the same context. Be consistent with your formatting. Making some links underlined while other not underlined makes user think harder than he/she should and increases the chances of bailout. See below; do you see the inconsistency in the links? I almost gave up on finding that “Register Now” link (yes it is obvious now because I have highlighted it). Captcha – Captcha is meant to stop automated computer programs (spiders) from filling th...

Do you know what the best time to tweet is? Recently a client asked me this question and I am sure there are a lot of you wondering the same thing. When you tweet you want to make sure it reaches a lot of people (can I say that you want to get the biggest chirp for the tweet?). So I did some research to find out what other have to say and here is what I found According to Gary McCaffry , based on the traffic to his site from twitter, the best time to tweet is anywhere between 9 AM – 3 PM PST. Another blogger, Malcolm Coles , who surveyed 120 twitter users to find out the best time time to tweet,, says that the best time to tweet is 4:01 PM. Social Media Guide says that best time to tweet is 9:00 AM PST, this will allow you to hit people across the globe Fasctompany says that the best time to get Retweeted is 4:00 PM EST. Fast company also lists many other factors that can help in Retweets. According to techandlife.com , if you have a large international following then you shoul...

Retargeting or Remarketing is way to put your ad in front of the people who have been to your site before and are likely to respond to you ads and offers. Retargeting via Google Adwords Retargeting is not new, I have been writing about it since 2006 and working in this area since 2003 . Recently, Google Remarketing, via adwords, has brought retargeting to the masses . Though, in my opinion, Google has not done a good job in educating advertiser on how to effectively engage in retargeting. To start with, Google says, you should retarget every visitor who came to your site. That is a wrong approach and I highly discourage it. As you read through this post , you will know my reasoning behind it. You have to understand remarketing to effectively use it. I am listing 5 questions that you should ask before you put that JavaScript code to start remarketing. 5 questions to ask before starting a Retargeting Campaign What is the purpose of this retargeting campaign? This is first question you s...

How do you convey the value of Web Analytics to an organization that has never used web analytics or has used it but at a very elementary level? This is one of the questions that I constantly get from students of my UBC Web Analytics classes, where I am an online tutor. My answer to them is they should start the conversation with something like, “Web Analytics is Money” or “Web Analytics helps companies make more money” etc. When you say those words, you are very likely to get audience who want to know more. Money invokes curiosity. You should not tell the CEO how web analytics can help the company understand customer behavior, find bottlenecks in the site, improve bounce rates etc. You should show him/her the impact in terms of dollars (or Euros, Rupees etc.). Every web site analysis can lead to actions that have an impact on the money. You can tie web analytics to: Additional revenue Cost Savings Profit Doing more with less money (particularly for non-profits) Example: Let’s take ...

Email sign-ups are a very common ways for businesses to capture a potential lead. Visitors who are interested in your product or services will likely take a step towards providing their email address to you. Your job as a marketer in not complete when a visitor gives you’re your email address. You need to make sure that you provide proper scent (links, messages etc.) for them to engage with your site/content/brand etc. Almost every contact with a potential customer provides a conversion opportunity i.e. an opportunity to engage them to view more content, products and /or sell. If you do not take advantage of that opportunity then you might miss out on many conversions that you could have had. Email sign-up confirmation page is one such opportunity that is so often forgotten by the marketers. The main reason for that seems to be the use of 3rd party to manage your email subscription list. Often the small details are missed in a hurry to get the system live. I hope you are not making t...

You are running an A/B test (or multivariate test) but are in a hurry to make a decision to pick the winning page. Should you pick a winner based on initial few days of the data before your tool has actually declared a clear winner? This question comes up quite often during the conversations with the clients. I always warn against such an approach and advice to be patient and get statistically significant results before pulling a plug on an underperforming variation o declaring a winner. I wanted to share few graphs with you to illustrate my point. The following example is from a test that I am currently running. First Two Weeks : If you make a decision without completely getting through the test, you will pick “Yellow” as the winner while declaring “Blue” a loser. Month Later : There does not seem to be a clear winner. Few More Days Later : Seems like “Blue” is trending higher. Should you pick “Blue” now? Finally : We don’t have a clear winner yet. As you can see, picking a w...

Form validations are a great way to ensure that the data you collect from your users is clean and in the right format. However form validations can also frequently lead to lost conversions. CAPTCHA is one such type of validation . Some validation put unnecessary formatting burden on your customer/visitor leading them to abandon your forms and go to your competitors. A lot of data formatting can be done via client side JavaScript or backend processing without putting the customer through a lot of pain. I am not suggesting to remove all required data and data formatting requirement, all I am saying is that be if you can handled formatting with scripts/code then do not make your customer do it. Let the users finish the form. Your analytics tool will show you the abandonment rate of your forms. What it won’t tell you is how many of those abandonments were a result of form validations. Most of the analyst/optimization specialist will suggest reducing the number of fields and/or conducting A...

I hope you have heard the famous words of John Wanamaker "I know half of my advertising is wasted, I just don't know which half." Today the phrase should be something like “Half my Advertising is wasted because I do not advertise responsibly” or “Half of my advertising is wasted; I can stop that but I fail to use the data”. Yes that is correct. We have an abundance of data today to help us save the wastage. There is no shortage of tools that will collect all sorts of data. Yet many marketers fail to act responsibly and use this data to stop advertising waste and also save customers from unwanted ads. Here are some examples that will show you what I mean Newsletter – Nordstrom - In my blog post on email and relevance , I showed an example of an email from Nordstrom that had irrelevant offers. As result of this, not only did Nordstrom waste time, effort and money but also lost a subscriber. Advertising was wasted. Newsletter – Drugstors.com – Same as Nordstrom. Not only d...

CAPTCHA acronym for “Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart” is a way for sites to block spam. According to Wikipedia it is “A CAPTCHA or Captcha (pronounced /ˈkæptʃə/) is a type of challenge-response test used in computing to ensure that the response is not generated by a computer. The process usually involves one computer (a server) asking a user to complete a simple test which the computer is able to generate and grade. Because other computers are unable to solve the CAPTCHA, any user entering a correct solution is presumed to be human. Thus, it is sometimes described as a reverse Turing test, because it is administered by a machine and targeted to a human, in contrast to the standard Turing test that is typically administered by a human and targeted to a machine. A common type of CAPTCHA requires that the user type letters or digits from a distorted image that appears on the screen.” Below is an example of a CAPTCHA on craigslist. Though CAPTCHA ...

In my post titled “ A/B and Multivariate Testing Landscape ”, I reported on a variety of tools that marketers and analytics professionals were using for A/B and multivariate testing. As I’ve predicted the interest in testing and targeting/segmentation continues to grow. This was also validated by the Web Analytics Association’s “Outlook 2009: Survey Report”. I just got through a good discussion and demo of the newest release of Widemile Optimize with Bob Garcia, VP Business Development for Widemile. I’m impressed with the new release of Widemile Optimization product that he demoed; this is the first Widemile release for corporate users. Widemile had released an Agency Edition of the solution last fall and the new release includes advanced segmentation and a refined user interface. You might be wondering who Widemile is as they don’t have the same brand recognition as Optimost or Omniture Test&Target. Widemile has been around for several years and was one of the vendors listed in ...

When most marketers and analyst talk about conversion rate they seem to quote around 2 to 3% as the average conversion rate. Bryan Eisenberg wrote a great article on this subject titled The Average Conversion Rate: Is It a Myth? In this article he writes: “The sites that should convert 2 to 3 percent of their traffic are the exception, not the rule. I've long stated that sites that convert less than 10 percent should be concerned. Consider this along with the rising cost of online traffic, and the concern becomes a nightmare. Too many online marketers are spending too much money and time throwing too much unqualified traffic at their sites, then tweaking their traffic quality trying to reach the 2 to 3 percent mythical conversion rate. If more online marketers focused their efforts on studying visitor intent and site optimization, instead of just driving traffic, their average conversion rates would be much, much higher.” To inspire you or to make you depressed (the choice is yours...