Today Microsoft announced that they are shutting down Microsoft Analytics, which in its pre-beta days was better known as Gatineau. We have received quite a bit of traffic over the years regarding Gatineau and Ian Thomas but unfortunately it looks like it is all coming to an end effective December 31, 2009. At that point you’ll have to export your data and go with another provider. This is one of the main reasons why I recommend tagging your site with multiple clients. There are several web analytics vendors out there and for your average small to medium sized business owner pulling out data from one vendor and importing it into another is rather ugly.
Microsoft Analytics offered one key implementation feature which was to automatically go through your sites HTML and append the correct tracking code above the </BODY> tag. This was supposed to improve adoption of the tool, but unfortunately it came years after Google Analytics, and except for web analytics professionals who wanted to see what Microsoft offered it never gained momentum. It’s integration with Microsoft adCenter was also great, but when you only have around 5% market share it isn’t a lot of statistically significant data.
For the past few weeks we’ve been looking at a blog series entitled, “How To Pick a SEM Agency.” The series is designed to help determine the components that go into The third of five part series will focus on A/B and MVT Experimentation, and how it plays an integral part of Search Engine Marketing (SEM) and should be a major consideration when picking a SEM agency or consultant. The rest of the series will focus on:
A/B and MVT Testing
A/B and MVT Testing in my opinion is one of the most neglected components of online marketing today. Very few individuals, agencies, and companies engage in the practice yet it is relatively simple and cost effective to setup and use. For the sake of this discussion we’ll be discussing testing as it relates to the landing page in which you’re driving visitors to. You can also engage in A/B testing to a certain degree in your ad copy, but we’ll cover that topic on another day. A/B testing is the testing of two variations of a landing page. You can change out any number of variables and variations on the page, but the software directs the visitor to either A or B. As a best practice you will probably want to make a small change of only one variable and one variation to understand what caused the difference in your goal. When do I recommend A/B testing? Simply put if you’re new to testing run an A/B test to get your feet wet. The second use of A/B testing is if you have a small amount of traffic going to this page. Mulitvariate Testing as I’ll discuss in just a minute typically requires large amounts of traffic to see results in a prompt manner. This description is greatly simplifying the concept of testing but in the future we’ll delve deeper into more advanced concepts.
Multivariate Testing is the testing of multiple variations and variables on a single landing page. In an MVT experiment you can change out items like the hero image, call to action, form, colors, etc. and see what the optimum combination is when it comes to achieving your objective. The more variables and variations that you have the greater the amount of traffic that you need. Simply put if you have ten visitors a day coming to your landing page it could take years to see statistically significant results.
Now how is this applicable to SEM? As with web analytics A/B and MVT experiments allow your SEM consultant or agency to further enhance your conversion rate by tweaking the landing pages in which visitors land to find the optimum combination. You may find through more complex MVT testing that visitors from Yahoo or Google perform differently on different pages. Similar results have been found down to the keyword level. Often times MVT applications can cost $50 – 150k a year or more but for businesses that may not have the budget necessary to make such a large expenditure Google Website Optimizer is a free tool and offers basic levels of A/B and MVT experimentation. If in the future you require more advanced testing options you can look into Optimost, Omniture Test & Target and Site Spect among others.
I’ve personally seen tremendous results and lifts in conversion rates from 100 – 600% increase depending upon the site and the client. Testing is something that your SEM vendor should be aware of and should offer as a professional service. Ensure that as you question any potential consultant or agency that you see if they have experience in A/B and MVT experimentation and what results that they have seen in the past. The concept of A/B and MVT experimentation deserves far more attention, but the concept with regard to this series is to understand the basics so that when you do quiz a potential SEM vendor you know enough to make an informed decision. For more on the concept see Jonathan Mendez’s blog as he is one of the foremost experts on the subject. If you have any questions about this post or any other blog posts please feel free to contact me.
Google Logo
I often times get asked from friends and clients how they can run Search Engine Marketing (SEM) campaigns without having large enough marketing budgets to hire a consultant or agency. Although it is not publicly advertised both Google and Yahoo do offer account managers that can set up and manage basic campaigns for you. Google continues to control at least 70% of all market share and I highly recommend utilizing Adwords for online advertising via SEM. Google has a program called Jumpstart in which they will setup an account, do some basic keyword research, write some ad copy, launch and monitor your campaign for approximately 90 days. I asked one of my Google account managers why they don’t have anything publicly available on the web describing the program and was told:
Sorry, but there isn’t a site or information about Jumpstart on the web since it’s a special service we offer to high-value agencies. Thanks for asking!
So not terribly helpful, but I would recommend Jumpstart as a better than nothing approach when it comes to handling SEM. Keep in mind that Google’s objective is for you to spend money through Adword and to ensure that your goal is achieved so that you can spend more money with them. They are helpful though in setting up text ads, local business ads, etc. I’ve also found them to be very knowledgeable on their product which you would expect, but never the less it was reassuring that they were well informed. If you are interested in seeing if Jumpstart may be a viable option to start advertising with Google give them a call or contact me and I’ll try to put you in touch with some contacts.
This is first and foremost a site dedicated to Online Marketing but one thing that I would like to mention is Stanford’s Folding@Home program. Similar to what you may have read or head about SETI and using clusters of computers to distribute work Folding@Home works by spreading work onto hundreds of thousands of computers to help in part find a cure for some of the world’s worst diseases. Officially Stanford has a stated goal “to understand protein folding, misfolding, and related diseases”. A better definition is available on their science page but to quote from it:
What happens if proteins don’t fold correctly? Diseases such as Alzheimer’s disease, cystic fibrosis, BSE (Mad Cow disease), an inherited form of emphysema, and even many cancers are believed to result from protein misfolding. When proteins misfold, they can clump together (“aggregate”). These clumps can often gather in the brain, where they are believed to cause the symptoms of Mad Cow or Alzheimer’s disease.
How can you help? Essentially you download a small program and while your computer is idle Folding@Home uses it to process work units that are then uploaded back to Stanford. It works for PS3, Mac OS X, Windows, and even high end graphics cards. I have a small army of machines folding 24/7 from my graphics card in my PC to my netbook to my PS3 to my laptop. Where this is applicable is that as Online Marketers we use SEM, Social Media, SEO, etc. to promote products or services, and anything I can do to create some buzz for a very worthy program I will. Folding@Home allows you to either start folding on your own, you can join an existing team or create your own. If there is enough interest in starting an Online Marketing team I’d be happy to set one up. If there are other programs that you would like to see promoted please feel free to contact me.
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