Internet and Coffee

V-Mail And Google Optimizer

Using Google Website Optimizer to Increase Conversion Rates

V-Mail is the Ultimate Tool for Email Marketing. We will be launching an update to V-Mail next week. The new V-Mail 5.5 will be a free upgrade for existing customers. This is a good time to talk about split testing.

V-Mail 5.5 will include the ability to split test different email campaigns to your list (as well as many other exciting features):

For example, if you have a list segment of 100 contacts you can send one campaign to 33% of your list, another to the next 33% and another to the final 33%. You can then see which had higher open/click rates and send that to your entire list.

Split tests are a great way to test multiple versions of an email and see which one gets the best response. In the above example, I might leave the email content identical in all 3 campaigns but just change the subject line in each to see which gets me the best open rate.

So while we put the finishing touches on version 5.5, I want to talk about another way to do split testing - with your website using the free website optimizer tool from Google.

What is Google Website Optimizer?

Google website optimizer is a free marketing tool that allows you to perform two types of split tests on your website:

1. A/B split testing - Choose 2 pages on your website to split test. 50% of your visitors will see page A. The other 50% will see page B.
2. Multivariate testing - Allows you to break your web page up into blocks and show different content (in different combinations) for each block.

If you’re new to split testing then make sure you watch this presentation for the Google Optimizer. It explains everything you’ll want to know before reading the rest of this newsletter.

For most people A/B split testing is easy to understand - you might keep your current home page (which we’ll call “page A”) and create a new version of it with different header text and colors (which we’ll call “page B”). A program such as Google website optimizer will show page A or page B randomly to visitors on your web site and when they buy from you a conversion will be recorded and it will contain a note about which home page the customer saw (page A or page B).

With A/B split testing the same visitor will always see the same page. For example if I came to your website today and saw page A, when I come back tomorrow I will still see page A. This is accomplished using a cookie to remember which page I saw the first time I came to your website.

Multivariate testing seems to confuse a lot of people but it’s really just a way to test different combinations of content on a page and see which combination brings the most conversions. If you image a website as being nothing more than a group of blocks, it will start to make sense:

Assume each red block above is a piece of content (such as a paragraph of text, an image, a video, or even all 3 combined), using multivariate testing I can define different versions of content for each block. For example in the small red block on the left one version might have an image. Another version might have a paragraph of text with a thumbnail image instead, etc.

If I create different versions of content for each block on the page, I would then use multivariate testing to randomly show different combinations of content for each block and, based on conversions, determine which combination of blocks drove more sales on my website.

After the test period was over (generally anywhere from 1-8 weeks) Google website optimizer would give me a clear winner (through randomly showing different combinations to my website visitors and tracking which lead to sales). I can then stop the website optimizer campaign and show the winning combination on my website all the time.

Why Split Testing?

In marketing, anything that can be tested should. The layout of your website really is marketing - showing certain things about your products/services in certain ways to people that visit your website. Using split testing (either A/B or multivariate) you can maximize the conversion rate of your website which leads to more sales, newsletter subscribers, free trial sign ups, etc.

Consider this: I might think I’ve designed a better looking or better performing website than you, but we put them head-to-head via split testing and yours outperforms mine 10:1. Imagine if I’d just gone ahead and launched the site with my design? I would’ve had only 10% of the sales!

The only way to find out whether you or I designed the best website is with split testing.

Using Google Website Optimizer

Google Website Optimizer is free and is available when you sign up for a Google Adwords account. After signing up you don’t actually have to pay to run any campaigns - just click the “Website Optimizer” link in the “Campaign Management” tab at the top of the page.

You’ll then be able to setup a new split testing campaign. You will need to add some code to your website to run and track the split tests but it’s only basic JavaScript code, so if you know some HTML and are familiar with an FTP program (such as FileZilla - free in IMTrain) then you should be fine.

Recommendations for an A/B split test

If your website only gets a few hundred visitors a day then I’d recommend starting with a simple A/B split test which would involve creating 2 pages on your website - generally you’d use your existing home page (or landing page) and create a new page containing one or more visual changes.

Here are some things you could change for page B:

• Change the color of the main headline on your page. Try changing it from black to red.
• If you have a large promotional-style image across the top of your page, try changing the image from a person to a picture of your product/service, or vice-versa.
• Try replacing a few paragraphs of text with a few bullet points instead. People prefer to skim content instead of reading everything.
• If your web page has a fixed width, try making it fluid (the whole width of the web browser’s window) and vice-versa.
• Change the font you use on your web page from Verdana to Arial or Times New Roman to Helvetica.

Of course these are only a few things you might change, but you get the idea. To make it easy to determine if the changes make a difference, only try changing 2-3 things at a time. Then give the split test time to do its thing (2-3 weeks).

Recommendations for a multivariate split test

Similar to an A/B split test, don’t try testing more than 2-3 things at once. Also try not to create more than 3 variations of any one section of your website, otherwise you’ll end up with hundreds of combinations to test. Try and keep the total number of combinations under 20. So you might test 3 different things, each with 2 variations.

Remember that even the slightest change can make a big difference in conversion rate. Instead of completely changing content, try subtle changes such as font size, style, color and spacing. Try re-arranging paragraphs of text and try testing with/without a prominent image on the page.

Finally keep in mind that having a beautiful website doesn’t necessarily translate into more sales. I’ve tried combinations on certain areas of our website that made me second guess whether or not I should run the split test, and they’ve produced some really good results.

Remember that marketing (and this is marketing) is all about experimenting for the best result so the more tests you do, the higher you should be able to get your conversion rate over time.

Conclusion

I hope this article has helped you understand what split testing is and how you can use it to improve the conversion rate of your website.

Keep an eye on my Internet Marketing Blog (RSS Feed) next week as we announce the release of V-Mail 5.5 which will include new features such as split testing, trigger emails, manual and automatic event logging, Google calendar integration, default custom fields and more!

Of course you can also www.v-mail.com in the meantime to learn about our products, watch videos, read articles (both technical and business focused) and more.

Steve Renner is an Internet Marketing Professional

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The Duplicate Content Mystery

What is Duplicate Content, and how can it effect your Site Rankings in the Search Engines. This is a highly debated topic among Webmasters, Bloggers, and Web Site Owners. So what is Duplicate Content, well most people don’t understand what it is…

Here is an Excellent Article about Duplicate Content
written by the guys at Article Marketer >> Click Here!

Here is Google’s Definition of Duplicate Content

Duplicate content generally refers to substantive blocks of content within or across domains that either completely match other content or are appreciably similar. Mostly, this is not deceptive in origin. Examples of non-malicious duplicate content could include:

* Discussion forums that can generate both regular and stripped-down pages
targeted at mobile devices
* Store items shown or linked via multiple distinct URLs
* Printer-only versions of web pages

However, in some cases, content is deliberately duplicated across domains in an attempt to manipulate search engine rankings or win more traffic. Deceptive practices like this can result in a poor user experience, when a visitor sees substantially the same content repeated within a set of search results.

The search engines want to give the best possible User Experience. They do not want to display the same search results from multiple sites.

The Duplicate Content Penalty

Google maintains there is no such thing as a Duplicate Content Penalty. Although, if you are intentionally trying to manipulate the seach engines by using duplicate content you could have a problem.

In the rare cases in which Google perceives that duplicate content may be shown with intent to manipulate our rankings and deceive our users, we’ll also make appropriate adjustments in the indexing and ranking of the sites involved. As a result, the ranking of the site may suffer, or the site might be removed entirely from the Google index, in which case it will no longer appear in search results.

Google offers some steps you can take to proactively address duplicate content issues, and ensure that visitors see the content you want them to.

• Consider blocking pages from indexing: Rather than letting Google’s algorithms determine the “best” version of a document, you may wish to help guide us to your preferred version. For instance, if you don’t want us to index the printer versions of your site’s articles, disallow those directories or make use of regular expressions in your robots.txt file.
• Use 301s: If you’ve restructured your site, use 301 redirects (”RedirectPermanent”) in your .htaccess file to smartly redirect users, Googlebot, and other spiders. (In Apache, you can do this with an .htaccess file; in IIS, you can do this through the administrative console.)
• Be consistent: Try to keep your internal linking consistent. For example, don’t link to http://www.example.com/page/ and http://www.example.com/page and http://www.example.com/page/index.htm.
• Use top-level domains: To help us serve the most appropriate version of a document, use top-level domains whenever possible to handle country-specific content. We’re more likely to know that www.example.de contains Germany-focused content, for instance, than www.example.com/de or de.example.com.
• Syndicate carefully: If you syndicate your content on other sites, Google will always show the version we think is most appropriate for users in each given search, which may or may not be the version you’d prefer. However, it is helpful to ensure that each site on which your content is syndicated includes a link back to your original article. You can also ask those who use your syndicated material to block the version on their sites with robots.txt.
• Use Webmaster Tools to tell us how you prefer your site to be indexed: You can tell Google your preferred domain (for example, www.example.com or http://example.com).
• Minimize boilerplate repetition: For instance, instead of including lengthy copyright text on the bottom of every page, include a very brief summary and then link to a page with more details.
• Avoid publishing stubs: Users don’t like seeing “empty” pages, so avoid placeholders where possible. For example, don’t publish pages for which you don’t yet have real content. If you do create placeholder pages, use robots.txt to block these from being crawled.
• Understand your content management system: Make sure you’re familiar with how content is displayed on your web site. Blogs, forums, and related systems often show the same content in multiple formats. For example, a blog entry may appear on the home page of a blog, in an archive page, and in a page of other entries with the same label.
• Minimize similar content: If you have many pages that are similar, consider expanding each page or consolidating the pages into one. For instance, if you have a travel site with separate pages for two cities, but the same information on both pages, you could either merge the pages into one page about both cities or you could expand each page to contain unique content about each city.

Here is an Excellent Article about Duplicate Content
written by the guys at Article Marketer >> Click Here!

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Why Most Websites Fail & Five Easy Fixes

 

This article is a guest post by Pattie Simone. Pattie is a speaker, writer and mentor, and owns Write-Communications.com, a communications consultancy. 

 

There are lots of reasons websites tank. Typical non-performance issues include poor layout, disastrous design, ho-hum content, missing meta data and inbound links, confusing navigation, buried info (too many clicks required to find what the browser is looking for), Las Vegas theatrics (think way too much Flash), etc.

The good news? There are LOTS of entrepreneurs who have winning websites churning serious sales, and you can too! The starting point is to understand that your website must be all about 2 things: getting found by more prospects and converting more of those inbound leads into customers. These five easy fixes will help transform your website metrics (and grow your sales)...

Get Organized

Great websites are intuitive. They reflect serious back-end homework and have been strategically developed to engage specific target audiences. If you want your website to work as it should, anticipate what your prospects and customers are looking for at the get-go.

 

Be Clear

Forget fancy jargon and get to the point quickly, using compelling, professionally-written, keyword-enriched text. Remember your competitors are literally a click away, so strong keyword-rich headlines and terrific content will help to convert browsers into buyers. This applies to everything the casual visitor sees when landing on your URL's, as well as the back-end stuff they don't. Your meta data, which is read and ranked by the Search Engine spiders (titles, descriptions, keywords and alt tags) should be crystal clear and unique to each page.

 

Ask for Business

This may seem like a no-brainer, but you'd be surprised how many websites get a "zero" on this one! No matter how obvious you think you might be, your site will fail Marketing 101 if you don't have multiple "asks" or calls to action. Words like" call now", "get more info today", or "contact us for a free quote" are all still very effective interaction motivators.

Give Something Away

Successful marketers couple many of the "asks" with a promise to deliver a valuable freebie (an e-book, white paper, podcast, etc.) Winning websites also make it easier to convert visitors into solid leads, using multiple, short data collection forms on different pages (not just on your Contact Us page) as well as hyperlinked email boxes with specific client-focused Subject lines. Again the concept here is to make it easier for your prospects to get what they want, when they want it. By testing and assessing the results of a variety of different methods, mediums, and offers, you'll define what produces the best results.

Brag Alot

Forget about being coy. Make your site a cash cow with the strategic use of glowing testimonials - not only on a specific "Success Stories" page, but liberally sprinkled around your entire site. Make sure each testimonial highlights specific services/products you want to sell more of, along with engaging copy that details the core benefits that your delighted client got as a result of doing business with you. Showcase different industries and diverse outcomes. Get creative and post pictures of your smiling clients, and use podcasts or videos as much as you can. People respond better to a combination of visuals, audio and tape. 

 

By adopting these simple fixes, you are on your way to making your website the winning sales engine it should be.

 

 

 

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