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Let the Computer Decide
By Jim Sterne
President of the Web Analytics Association |
In my book “Web Metrics” (John Wiley & Sons, 2002) I advocate the Try It, Measure It, Tweak It method of Web site design. While TIMITI will never catch on as an acronym, the idea is simple and can have a profound impact on the success of your site.
The premise may be simple, but the implementation is challenging. Still, there's some new technology making the whole thing a lot more intriguing.
Let's say you buy a pay-per-click keyword on a search engine. You direct people who click to a specific landing page. That page has an astonishingly large number of variables including:
Window size
Load time
Background color
Font styles
Font sizes
Over all layout
Subsection layout
Headlines
Tone of copy
Length of copy
Call to action
The list goes on and yes, I'm getting bored, too
The TIMITI method suggests coming up with a combination of all of the above that you feel is the best possible. So try it. Put it online and measure the bejeepers out of it. Measure clickthroughs, pageviews, revenues and any other reviews you choose to pursue.
Then tweak it. Pick one (and only one) variable and change it (and only it). Then put your new landing page online and try it again ... and measure the bejeepers out of it again.
The hard part is keeping your hands, and the hands of your creative agency, the Ajax programmers in the back room, the receptionist, the CEO and every other Tom, Dick and Harriet's hands off all the other variables. Change only the background color and nothing else. Or just the font and nothing else. That way, over time, you'll find out which variable makes the biggest difference.
However, until modern science gets on the ball with genetic research and cloning, none of us will live long enough to make this method work to best advantage. What to do? Make the machine do the heavy lifting.
Companies like Offermatica, Optimost and Touch Clarity have created systems to do just that for you, all at once. You identify a variety of creative elements (three headlines, four body copy alternatives, three photos and a variety of calls to action), drop them into the top of the system and it generates all the permutations.
These systems do not need to test every possible combination. Instead, they use their mathematical wizardry to determine which variables barely move the needle, which variables matter and which variable values are improvements. The more people touch down on your landing page, the faster these systems can show which combination of text, graphics and layouts is getting the most people to do what you want them to do.
In conversations with companies as diverse as Amazon and Intuit, I've been told enough times to be convinced of my belief that marketing managers and web designers are not omniscient when it comes to speculating what customers are going to want and what will make them click. Smart people with great ideas cannot out guess reality. A designer might use years of experience and their finely honed intuition to envision this size button or that shade of blue will drive more traffic and more conversions, but a multivariate testing system can tell which actually has the right impact.
Now comes the change management predicament. Designers have egos (don't we all?). So instead of showing these sensitive, creative people the door, pink slip clutched in their first, we should encourage them to pursue the creativity of designing experiments. Which four headlines should we test? Which different photos might have the mot impact? When they switch from designing landing pages to designing experiments, the testing tools can ensure continuous, incremental improvement.
Now that banner ads are running with embedded RSS feeds, the experiments can start before the landing page. Advertisers can feed multiple permutations of ads into the banner on the fly, measure the clickthrough rate through to the conversion rate and see which combinations of keywords (par–per–click) ads, landing pages and calls to action bring in the most leads, subscriptions, registrations, downloads or sales.
Turns out we still live in interesting times.
Jim Sterne is an international consultant and speaker who focuses on measuring the value of the Web as a medium for creating and strengthening customer relationships. Sterne has written eight books on using the Internet for marketing, produces the Emetrics Summit www.emetrics.org and is the Founding President of the Web Analytics Association www.webanalyticsassociation.org
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