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Archive for January 2008
From the desk of Roy Furr, January 24th, 2008
Here’s an email I received recently from someone who watched these Google Website Optimizer videos:
Just watched the 2nd video posted on Multivariate Testing for Google Optimizer.
Thanks again for the information. Again, the video was integral in allowing me to set up the experiment in a little time as possible.
In fact, I successfully installed all code all tracking code the first time. I now have a home page with 83 variations! I guess I went nuts.
Very efficient!
I felt bad for the guy because he’d put in a lot of work. But because his website is not super high-traffic, I had to burst his bubble. (It’ll save him some pain down the road.)
Here’s my reply:
Glad the video was helpful! But…
83 variations is a lot if you don’t have tons of traffic. You’re going to need between 100 and 1000 people per variation in order for you to get good results. That means as many as 83,000 visitors (maybe even more than that!) will have to see your website before you know the results of your test.
Unless you do get that type of traffic (or plan to spend enough to start getting it) you’ll probably want to look at what’s really important to test, and re-start your test focusing on the top 2 or 3 things you want to test, with no more than 3 variations each.
What I often do when I use their multivariate tool is test 3 headlines and 2 each of 2 other variables. That gives you 12 total variations and gets you results quick enough you can move on. Much more than that and you want to start getting into the advanced stuff like Design Of Experiments (DOE) and Taguchi to really maximize the improvements you can get from the same amount of traffic — but that goes beyond what Google Website Optimizer does natively (Bob Bly will be releasing an ebook I wrote soon that shows you how to do it with Google Website Optimizer).
Sorry if this throws a wrench in your cogs… I just don’t want you to be bummed a few months from now when you haven’t gotten conclusive results on your tests yet!
Let me know if you have questions, or if there’s anything else I can do for you.
This is a common mistake. With Google Website Optimizer’s multivariate testing, you can create and test over 4,000 combinations of elements on a web page. But… since each combination will need between 100 and 1,000 visitors (or more) before you can really learn anything from it, you’re going to need a lot of traffic to make this successful — as many as 4,000,000 visitors!
You’d be better off testing 6 headlines against each other (and probably get better results quicker). This way you have 6 total web pages to test, and in 6,000 visitors or less you’ll know which is the most effective! Then you can test other elements in the page.
Another alternative that gives you 6 options is 3 headlines and 2 of another element. That’s a good test as well. There are a lot of options that keep your total number of tests around 15 or below, which is a good number for most websites. This gets results quickly, with a smaller amount of traffic.
Much more than that and you may want to call me for Taguchi testing. (I can help with the smaller split tests and multivariate tests too, if you’d like.) 541-543-1438
Let me know what I can do for you!
- R
P.S. - Click here for more Google Website Optimizer Information and How-To Instructions
Tags: Google Website Optimizer videos, Multivariate Testing, Google Optimizer, experiment, home page, website, visitors, traffic, multivariate tool, Design Of Experiments, DOE, Taguchi, Google Website Optimizer, Bob Bly, ebook, headlines, Taguchi testing, split tests, multivariate tests
Posted in Google Website Optimizer | No Comments »
From the desk of Roy Furr, January 18th, 2008
From what I’ve seen, there’s only two strategies to use when you design web pages.
- Design for looks.
- Design for function.
When you create web pages, you probably choose one or the other. The strategy you don’t choose may follow… but only limping along.
Unfortunately (in my opinion) the first choice of many businesses is to design their website and web pages to look good, and they often sacrifice the function of persuading customers to take action.
If you want your website to function well — to get customers to take action, to make sales, to generate leads, to educate — you have to plan that from the beginning. You define the goal for the page or website, then design it to fulfill that function.
After you’ve developed the website or web page to fulfill the function you have planned for it, you can clean it up and make sure that it looks good.
When it comes to web design, form follows function. That’s how you create effective web pages.
What do you think?
- R
Tags: design web pages, create web pages, website, web pages, persuading customers, make sales, generate leads, web design, effective web pages
Posted in Marketing, Persuasion, Website Design | No Comments »
From the desk of Roy Furr, January 15th, 2008
Here’s my short list of tools every internet business should be using. From day one.
1. Google Analytics
Take a look inside everything that happens on your site. This free service lets you track where website traffic comes from, where it goes, and how long it stays. If you do nothing else I suggest, use this free service!
Tracking your traffic is one of the first steps you have to take if you want to have success online. Google’s made it easy with a free tool that someone with even mere hours of web development experience could install. Do it!
2. Google AdWords
Pay for how much traffic you want. If you want a flood of traffic to your website and can afford it, you can get it very quickly. If you want to test a new idea cheaply, you can do it. AdWords lets you pay per visitor, for a price you set (you compete with other people bidding on the same traffic). (This is called pay per click, or PPC.)
All online advertising experiments should start with an AdWords campaign. It should be one pillar of your overall marketing strategy. Google just has too big a share of the search market to ignore. This is how you can capitalize on their traffic and make it yours.
3. Google Website Optimizer
Once you have traffic to your website, you need to get visitors to do what you want. You can guess, or you can know with scientific certainty how well different parts of your ad influence the conversions. Google Website Optimizer (another free tool!) lets you know with scientific certainty.
Use this tool to improve conversions and profits from your website. It’s easy. It’s powerful. And it pays off in spades.
Conclusions
Are these the only three tools I use? No.
Are they the three best? Maybe.
Are they essential? Yes!
Try them out. And if you can’t quite figure out how to use them, you have two options:
1. I’ll provide more how to info soon — register on the right to get it.
2. I offer consulting on each of these tools — call me: 541-543-1438.
Good luck!
- R
Tags: internet business, Google Analytics, website traffic, Tracking, Google AdWords, pay per click, PPC, online advertising, AdWords campaign, marketing strategy, Google, search market, Google Website Optimizer, conversions
Posted in Google Website Optimizer, Marketing, Marketing Testing | No Comments »
From the desk of Roy Furr, January 7th, 2008
Do you ever spend so much time in the day-to-day of your business, that you don’t have any time to think about taking to the next level? It seems like there’s always problems cropping up, critical issues (issues everyone else thinks are critical, at least) — always interruptions!
Nobody respects your time — and nobody besides you will take any responsibility and make their own decisions!
Well let’s take aim at the root cause of that, and blast it out of your business once and for all.
You know your employees, vendors, and clients are part of the problem — and yes, believe it or not, you’re part of the problem too… (Sorry!)
But that’s no problem at all — in fact, you’re not really at fault. It’s can be difficult to see how to change this — especially when you’re neck deep in running your business. It takes an outside voice to come in and help you out. And that’s what I’m going to do right now. So take a deep breath and relax.
First, let’s look at what goes into running a successful business. And for this, we turn to Rich Schefren, of Strategic Profits.
According to Rich, a successful business has these four things:
- Core competencies
- Competitive advantage
- Critical non-essential success factors
- Clutter
Core competencies: These are the things you need to do well to be in the business you’re in. They’re the foundation of the product or service you deliver.
Competitive advantage: This is linked to your Unique Selling Proposition. It’s what you do that brings more value to your clients than any of your competitors. It’s why clients choose you.
Critical non-essential success factors: This is everything else you need to do to keep your business running. Bookkeeping, product manufacturing, etc. These are things that someone else could do for you and you’d still provide the same value to your clients.
Clutter: This is everything else that eats up your time and makes you non-productive.
So what do you do with this information?
First, you need to define what part of your business fits into each of these categories.
Second, you need to make sure you have the right person working on each. This includes outsourcing if necessary.
Third, you need to create rules for everyone to empower them to solve issues that arise, within a set of instructions you feel comfortable with.
The first part is up to you.
Make a list of everything you do in your business — and everything anyone else does. Then look… What is a core competency? What creates your competitive advantage? What are the critical non-essential success factors? And what’s going on that’s just clutter?
Now decide which work can be done by others — and which needs to be done by you and your team.
As a general rule, your competitive advantage should always stay in house. The core competencies should be performed by you and your employees — or a group of outsourced employees that are with you for the long term. Critical non-essential success factors can usually be outsourced — fulfillment to a fulfillment house, product manufacturing to a capable manufacturer, distribution to a freight company, etc. And clutter — eliminate it!
Next — create rules related to each job task that make it easy for people to solve problems as they come up.
Let’s say you outsourced fulfillment and returns to a fulfillment house. Give them a rule that says, “Make the customer happy, as long as it costs less than $100.” This allows them to give better service because there’s no chain of command that problems have to go up and come back down — they can solve problems on the spot. Clients will be happier and there will be more repeat business. And running your business will be easier and less stressful for you.
Finally — destroy the clutter!
Now that you’ve defined it, it’s easy to identify clutter when it comes up. Let others know that you don’t want them working on it, because it’s not contributing value to the company or your clients. Post rules if you have to. Make sure people understand that they’re getting rid of clutter for the common good.
This will eliminate a huge amount of the problems and issues that come up.
It’s a simple way to blast away many of your business headaches that come from lack of focus and wasting time on unneccessary tasks.
The important thing to remember is to empower your employees and contractors to do the job they’ve been assigned. They’re certainly capable of doing it, if you let them. You don’t hire superstars for nothing, right?
Got it? Good. Now go out there and do it — because it doesn’t matter how much you know until you apply it.
Good luck!
- R
Tags: business, interruptions, employees, vendors, clients, successful business, Rich Schefren, Strategic Profits, Core competencies, Competitive advantage, success factors, Clutter, outsourcing, better service, solve problems, superstars
Posted in Business | No Comments »
From the desk of Roy Furr, January 4th, 2008
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Download this free report by registering on the right.
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I’m back again after the holidays and have discovered something very interesting.
I don’t know if you’re into understanding persuasion — it’s a little hobby of mine. I suppose it comes from being a Psychology major in college… being fascinated by human motivation… the workings of the mind… how language impacts our thoughts… (a little fascination with magic and hypnosis, too)… and then ending up in the world of advertising and marketing.
I don’t suggest using persuasion to lie, cheat, or steal — but if you bring value to the lives of your customers it’s nice to understand how to say it effectively. That’s how I approach using the powerful — and sometimes scary — principles of persuasion in your marketing and advertising.
But here’s a problem — something you may have noticed too.
There’s so much gibber-jabber surrounding persuasion that it’s hard to understand what the true secrets of persuasion are. What really works. What core principles are used in effective persuasion.
Fortunately, Blair Warren has broken through the clutter — and summarized the secrets of effective persuasion in just 27 words (and, of course, surrounded those 27 words with 13 pages that help you understand them fully).
His special report, titled “The One-Sentence Persuasion Course: 27 Words to Make the World Do Your Bidding” is extremely valuable — and to the point — and will give you incredible fire-power for writing effective advertisements into the future.
If you’d like to read this report, I’ve set it up so you can get it for free — just register on the right, and you’ll get a link to my Special Reports page. It’s on there under the headline “27 words to make the world do your bidding.” You can also get it from his website, linked above.
Enjoy!
- R
Tags: free report, persuasion, Psychology, human motivation, workings of the mind, language, magic, hypnosis, advertising, marketing, value, principles of persuasion, secrets of persuasion, effective persuasion, Blair Warren, The One-Sentence Persuasion Course, 27 Words to Make the World Do Your Bidding, effective advertisements, Special Reports
Posted in Copywriting, Marketing, Persuasion | No Comments »
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