Alternatively titled - “Why your site should work with FireFox too!”
comScore, one the nation’s leading Internet Measurement Firms has started a new blog, and kicked things off with a great demographic breakdown of IE users vs. FireFox users. (HT: A VC)
Here is the breakdown - FireFox users skew male, they skew in the 18-24 demographic, and they skew towards having higher incomes. However, the overall profile of FireFox users is much higher than it was a couple of years ago, and will only continue to grow.
What does this mean for your business? Cross-Browser Compatibility is become more and more vital for your success. Gone are the days when 98% of users were browsing with IE. The rapid spread of Macs and alternative PC browsers means you’d better test in all browsers, or risk leaving a lot of business on the table.
Google just launched a tool that makes it easier for anyone to figure out what they can do to improve the performance of their landing page(s). This is good news for PPC advertisers. As click costs continue to rise, it’s really important that you convert as much of the traffic that you are paying for as possible. But before you jump head first into launching an experiment, here are a couple of tips to help you get started:
If you’ve never conducted any type of testing before, don’t create a really complicated experiment. Limit your first test to two to three elements on your page (e.g. Title, Call to Action Button, Image).
Make sure you allow enough time for statistically significant results. If your test page gets 10,000 visitors per day you’ll see real results much sooner than someone whose site only gets a couple hundred visitors per day.
Don’t stop with landing page testing. There’s a lot of other “stuff” that isn’t directly on the landing page that has a huge impact on your bottom line as an advertiser. Be sure to evaluate other contributing factors such as campaigns, keyword grouping, offers, and your visitors’ intent.
It may take you several months to become a good strategic tester, but if you can get a highly tuned campaign showing performance improvements measured in multiples (this isn’t uncommon), its well worth your time.
Google has done it again. Free E-Mail. Free Spreadsheet Tool. Free Website Analytics. Now Free Multivariate Testing. To be honest I was, and still am somewhat skeptical. Call me paranoid but I don’t feel entirely comfortable putting so much information about us in the hands of one company. I must admit I have reluctantly signed up for Gmail and have occasions to use Google Analytics. In the case of Google Website Optimizer (beta) tool, I have nothing but gratitude.
Website Optimizer Defined
Google defines their Website Optimizer as a free multivariate testing application that helps online marketers increase visitor conversion rates and overall visitor satisfaction by continually testing different combinations of site content (text and images). Rather than sitting in a room and arguing over what will work better, you can save time and eliminate the guesswork by simply letting your visitors tell you what works best.
Sample Implementation
I will set the stage by describing a fictional company with multiple categories of product offerings. Each product offering fits neatly into ad groups that have significant search volume for the search terms contained within. The challenge is to determine which text/image or a combination of text/images contributes most towards reaching the desired conversion goals.
Lets say in our fictional company’s campaign we created ten landing (Test Pages) pages with various combinations of products, offers, graphics and text. We then use Website Optimizer to track each Page Section or Trackable Item such as a headline, image, or promotional text. Your Conversion Page (e.g. thank you page for online sale, sign-up for newsletter, etc.) is identified and associated with the applicable Page Section.
The result of all this analysis and tagging are Page Section and Analytic reports that tell you which landing page items and combinations are giving you the bang for your buck. Over time you will phase out the ones that don’t work and increase usage of the ones that do.
You could pay a vendor for usage of a tool like this and this is probably recommended if you rely headily upon Multivariate Testing for your campaigns. If you are not in this category go ahead and use Google’s tool. The benefit the tool provides probably out weighs the cost of Google gaining our information…probably?
