SES NY 2008 Day 2 Winner: Landing Page Testing & Tuning
Some people have commented that I’m a bit behind in the game, that I’ve waited a while to post my thoughts and reflections on the conference, while other bloggers give up to the minute news and reaction. For me, it’s not about reporting the story, but reporting the take home messages, and the trends in this industry. I like to sleep on things I hear, to think about whether they are applicable and timely. Tim Ash of SiteTuners.com gets the game, and is a highly intelligent presenter.
Some may think he’s crazy.
Tim Ash was actually handing out $20 bills to the audience for answering questions posed during his presentation. Talk about getting the attention of a crowd that already’s sat through endless hours of dull presenters and topics that may or may not be relevant to their jobs.
But he’s hammering home a point. Understanding what he has to say will pay dividends in your search campaigns and overall site conversion. Something everyone in the room at the Hilton New York was very interested in learning how to do. The overall theme of his talk was quite simple: even small increases in conversion can catapult your revenue and profitability for a given campaign through the roof.
Here are some of the take home messages he talked about:
- IT is comprised of a bunch of monkeys, don’t let them write any part of your landing pages, let your customers decide what they want to see through testing.
- If you’re testing, keep in mind that every substantial change in your landing page will require the multiplication of sample sizes, and landing page versions. Even a few changes and unique pages can require quite a bit of traffic to determine a winner.
- Sometimes your winner isn’t a winner over the long term. Testing for seasonality can be extremely important.
- Don’t bother with your losing campaigns, optimize your winning “bread and butter” campaigns for the real gains in revenue and profitability. Think your campaigns are optimal? Think again, let the test results decide.
- Facilitate, don’t hinder, the visitor experience. Don’t bother writing pages and pages of information for a simple registration or purchase. You’re going to lose a ton of potential conversions.
I could go on and talk at length about all the aspects of his presentation, but I won’t. If you’re going to buy one book on search marketing, look for his on landing page tuning. It’s brand new, it’s on Amazon.com. Go get it. I just hope he comes to SES Toronto this summer, because I know several companies that could use the practical advice.
