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Lifting the Fog to Improve Conversion Rates

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Categories: Search Marketing

Posted by on Oct 03 2007

I just attended the Optimization Summit in San Francisco.  There are several “take-aways” from this event to share…

First, I’ll state the obvious.  We do search engine optimization or pay per click advertising to drive traffic to our websites so that visitors will take action (convert). Duh!

The biggest take away from this conference is that optimizing for conversion should NOT be a guessing game.  In fact, there was much story telling at this conference about seasoned execs (at some large companies) whose opinions about which page design/copy, call to action, etc. would yield the best conversions on their websites.  And, they were mostly wrong after testing results came in!

The theme of the conference was multivariate optimization (MVO).  It involves testing several variables on a webpage.  They can include headlines, copy, layout, button names, navigation style (radio buttons vs. pull downs) and of course call to action.

MVO involves taking the emotion (opinion) out of optimization through testing.  It involves defining your objective, e.g., lead generation from a form submission, selecting the pages to test, defining the variables to test, running the tests and measuring the results.

I’m providing an intentionally simplified explanation of MVO.  The idea is to optimize the conversion potential of a website (or landing pages).  In short multivariate testing takes a quantitative and analytical approach to optimizing conversion rates.  The testing numbers are telling, especially when they point to tangible ROI through improved conversion rates.

That said the software and services to do MVO is not cheap.  But, if the lift in conversions is dramatic, the ROI can make it worthwhile.

2 Comments to Lifting the Fog to Improve Conversion Rates

  1. by Emerson Hartley

    On October 5, 2007 at 11:07 am

    Nice blog. Did you feel that this summit was worthwhile and will they have it again next year? We evaluated Optimost at our financial services firm. Why does Optimost have to do three waves of testing to get one result? Why is their first test so inaccurate? Our firm selected Memetrics (yet still a high price) and found their results to be surprising as well. What you feel will win, is rarely the optimal result.

  2. by Bernie

    On October 5, 2007 at 2:21 pm

    Thanks…I did feel this summit was worthwhile. I'm sure they'll do it again. You might want to sign up for their newsletter to stay informed.

    There were good SMEs from different industries. What I got out of it is that MVO takes a lot of planning and measurement. You need to have clear goals to measure ROI. Regardless of what software you use, the results can be surprising but that's why you do it. You learn from the results and hopefully take appropriate action.

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