Archive for March, 2010
Tuesday, March 30th, 2010
If you have a website and you are not constantly testing it, you are missing out on potential business. You are losing money. It’s as simple as that. With the advent of the easy-to-use and perhaps more importantly FREE testing tool Google Website Optimizer, there really is no excuse for not setting up split A/B or multivariate tests on your webpages in order to constantly improve conversion rates and ultimately increase your bottom line.
With GWO, you have the ability to test anything you could possibly think of (and I strongly encourage that you do). Even if you “just know” that the stock photograph of the attractive saleswoman will generate more leads than the overweight middle-aged man, you might be surprised that the data suggests otherwise. If the design and marketing departments are at each other’s throats about which color background to use, put it to the test and let the data speak for itself.
One recent A/B split test we set up for one of our lead generation clients produced some pretty eye-opening results. Since the original page was already converting at a solid 7.49%, we were only expecting a minor improvement, if at all. Especially since the only difference between the two pages was the text used on the submit button of the contact form. The original page had the generic text of “Submit” and the test page had “Get Quote Now.” That’s it.
After running the test for a month and a half, the original version had 854 visitors with 64 conversions for a conversion rate of 7.49% and the test version had 842 visitors with 86 conversions for a conversion rate of 10.2%, an increase of 36.3%! This is pretty significant. If each lead generates an average of $100 per lead, this comes out to $6,400 from the original version and $8,600 from the new version. If we had just decided to be satisfied with the 7.49% conversion rate, we would have been missing out on an extra $2,200. So the moral of the story, is to test, test, test!
Wednesday, March 10th, 2010
One of the most effective ways to boost conversion rates for Google AdWords campaigns is to make sure to include the exact keyword that the user searched for to get to your site on the landing page. Not a slight variation of the keyword they searched, but the exact keyword they searched! The easiest way to do so is by utilizing Dynamic Keyword Insertion (DKI).
Let’s say we want to set up an AdWords campaign to advertise musical instruments for sale. Here’s how I would set it up from the beginning.
1. Create a new AdWords campaign called “Musical Instruments”. Configure the campaign settings so that the ads only show up on Google search results.
2. Create an Ad Group called “Guitars”.
3. Bid only on Exact Match keywords, such as [guitar for sale], [buy guitar], [buy American Standard Telecaster guitar], etc. It is critical that the keywords are Exact Match! Otherwise, there runs the possibility that the keyword the user searched for and the keyword you bid on are different, and thus the keyword inserted on the landing page with DKI will not match what the user searched, which may end up confusing and discouraging the user.
4. Create a new text ad. Add the DKI keyword to the end of the Destination URL. For example, if my landing page is www.mymusicstore.com/guitars.php then I would make the Destination URL www.mymusicstore.com/guitars.php?kw={keyword}.
The AdWords campaign is ready, now we just have to add some code to the landing page itself.
5. If you’re using a PHP-enabled page, place the following code at the top of the page to grab the keyword parameter from the URL.
6. Now that you have grabbed the keyword from the URL and stored it as a PHP variable, you need to add it to the content of the page. Here is an example that I have used on several sites with much success:
The code above checks to make sure that a keyword parameter is actually in the URL. If there is, it echos a DIV container which outputs the exact keyword that the user searched for:
This is just a simple yet very effective way to maximize the relevancy of your AdWords landing pages and as a result, boost the conversion rates and ROI of your campaigns.
