Google’s Website Optimizer

The first thing you should know about Google’s Website Optimizer is that it’s another quality tool from Google. It was originally designed to help Google’s Adwords advertisers maximize their conversions so that they could get more bang for their Adwords buck.

As good as the tool is, what you’ll discover is that the one thing that Google’s Website Optimizer does best is to maximize how much you spend on Adwords.

GWO has two separate ways it can run a test for you. The first is a simple split test mode, or what they call A/B split testing. With A/B split testing you are going to test one page against another page.

Basically, you’ll test two different pages. The first page is your current page — the one you’re already sending traffic to. The second one is Read more

Faster Split Testing with Split Test Accelerator

One of the more advanced split testing tools ever created is called Split Test Accelerator. And while Google’s Website Optimizer is a competent testing tool (and free, too!), it’s not really very “optimized” on its own.

In other words, if you want to run a multivariate test with 4 factors, each with 3 options, GWO will dynamically create about 81 different web pages to test — and send enough traffic to all of them in order to fully test them all.

Let’s say you were going to take Google’s general advice that you need 100 actions to a winning web page in order to declare a winner. And let’s say you were testing a sales page with a conversion rate of about a half percent, and were hoping to double your conversion rate to one percent.

That means you’re going to need 10,000 visitors to each page in order to find a winner. With 81 total pages to test, that 810,000 visitors.

Now…

How long will it take you to get Read more

Crowdsourcing by Jeff Howe

Why does Procter & Gamble repeatedly call on enthusiastic amateurs to solve scientific and technical challenges? How can companies as diverse as iStockphoto and Threadless employ just a handful of people, yet generate millions of dollars in revenue every year?

“Crowdsourcing” is how the power of the many can be leveraged to accomplish feats that were once the responsibility of a specialized few. Jeff Howe, the author of CrowdSourcing, reveals that the crowd is more than wise–it’s talented, creative, and stunningly productive. It’s also a perfect meritocracy, where age, gender, race, education, and job history no longer matter; the quality of the work is all that counts. If you can perform the service, design the product, or solve the problem, you’ve got the job.

But crowdsourcing has also triggered a dramatic shift in the way work is organized, talent is employed, research is conducted, and products are made and marketed. As the crowd comes to supplant traditional forms of labor, pain and disruption are Read more

Breakthrough Business Results with MVT

The book “Breakthrough Business Results with MVT” by Charles W. Holland makes the case for multivariate testing on web pages, too. And if you’ve ever heard about Taguchi Testing, it’s a specific form of Multivariate testing — that also just happens to be a much faster method of multivariate testing.

This book is highly recommended if you’d like to geek out a bit and learn more about Taguchi and Multivariate testing. The review is a reprint from Amazon.com.

“Every executive in the world wants the same thing—improved results: more profit, less cost, better quality, and higher customer satisfaction. But what business improvement ideas will produce these results, and how can you be sure that plans that look good on paper will actually work in the real world?

Testing ideas one at a time is too slow and too expensive. Only one revolutionary method offers a powerful, fast, and inexpensive way to prove with certainty what Read more

Optimize Your Site Now

It’s pretty simple, really.

You’re handicapped.

But don’t take that personally. I’m handicapped, too. And so is everyone else, when it comes to optimizing their websites.

Look, the truth is that whether you’re an expert or a novice internet marketer, your website can perform better than it’s performing right now. And the other important truth is that you can’t possibly think of every way to make it perform better.

So you need help.

And that’s what the OptimizersClub is all about.

It’s a website designed to get you more new, fresh ideas for how to improve your website than has ever been possible before.

You’ll also get access to Mark Widawer’s Simple Split Testing course, where you’ll discover how to set up and run your own split test — even if you’ve never run one before.

Plus you’ll have access to other important optimization articles, teleseminars and webinars.

And all of this…is absolutely FREE to you during our beta testing period.

Join now by entering in your name, email address and website URL you want to improve in the form on this page.

More success, and a better website, start just minutes from now.

Join Now!

Are You Too Smart To Optimize?

I’ll go out on a limb here and make a bold statement: YOU ARE SMART.

And I’ve got a few facts to back it up.

1) First, you’re an internet marketer. While that alone doesn’t mean you’re smart, it does mean that you’re working with your mind and learning how to do something new. Congratulations.

2) You also probably split test — after all, that’s what the Optimizers Club is all about. You came here with the knowledge that there’s no time and no reason to rest on your laurels: you can ALWAYS make your site perform better. Congratulations on that, too.

3) You’re actually READING something on this site, rather than popping into this site for a quick fix, and leaving when you realized that there’s no magic potion here. You’re one of the good ones! Congratulations again!

So we KNOW you’re smart.

But are you TOO SMART?

Some people are.

At least, they <!–more–>THINK they’re super-smart…so smart that if their site can be improved, then they know how to do it. Yes, they know about split testing. So, they figure they’ll just do what they’ve always done, a little bit more, and they’ll have a better site.

But the sad fact is that, more often than not, split testing is not enough.

That’s because the people who think they’re so smart also often think they know all the possible things — we call them “factors” — to test.

Like a headline. Or the price. Or the colors on the page. Or the hero shot. Or any one of a few dozen other things that are most often tested.

But they’re wrong. There are, in fact, hundreds of factors you can test. You just don’t know about them, yet.

But perhaps the biggest problem is that, once you choose a factor to test, the “options” you decide to test — options are the different variations of the factors you test, such as the different headlines you write — are often way too similar to have any real effect on the performance of your page.

That’s because all of the options you choose, all come from the same brain, and that brain — as truly brilliant as it might be — is still JUST ONE BRAIN. It’s just impossible for one person to come up with the diversity of ideas that truly great split testing requires.

And that’s what the Optimizers Club is all about.

The heart of the Optimizers Club is the Optimization Engine, a system designed to extract the most creative feedback about YOUR website from hundreds, and perhaps thousands of other people.

The good news is that none of our members, except you, ARE YOU. And that means that, no matter how smart or un-smart any one member might be, no matter what their occupation, no matter their age, no matter their background , their perspective is different than yours.

And that virtually guarantees you access to more creative thinking that you could possibly muster on your own.

Some people say that the Optimization Engine is like a “big split testing brain”.

But I think it’s something far better than that.

I think it’s more like hundreds and thousands of regular sized brains, all working together to solve one problem: How to make YOUR WEBSITE perform better tomorrow than it’s performing today.

If you’re not yet a member of the Optimizers Club, join today.

During our Beta testing period, membership is free. You’ll get feedback on your site within 24 hours, and probably a lot faster.

And while you’re here, you’ll have a chance to help other members improve their sites, too.

If you’re not too smart for your own good, join the Optimizers Club today.