Note: I had been trying to get back to posting on my blog for a long time, but never got round to it. But this Google Website Optimizer Tool definitely had what it took to get me posting again.
Whether you are doing PPC Advertising for affiliate products or your own products, you can't overlook the importance of testing your landing pages.
From my experiments, testing different components on your landing page can lead to conversion rates the are 2x, 3x and sometimes even 4x+ higher than the original.
There's no doubt that conversion testing experiments are important to you bottom line, but running these experiments are not always easy or cheap. This is especially true for the beginner to intermediate PPC advertiser/website owner.
I've gone through a series of my own ways of testing, from tools, to home grown solutions. All of them were based on Traditional A/B testing, and not the multivariate testing method which generally lets you test multiple components in one go. You therefore usually get results faster than running a series of A/B tests.
I have been looking to start using multi-variate testing for my ppc landing pages, however the solutions I've found have been cumbersome or expensive, and this has caused me to put it off longer than I had planned.
So imagine my excitement when I saw that Google is now accepting beta testers for their new website optimizer tool. I've watched the demo videos and read through most of the technical documentation. So far it looks like it will be a very easy tool to use and it's tied right into your adwords and analytics account.
The sample report generated from the optimization experiments you set up are very easy to read. I like the way they use the simple bars and color cues to represent how different change with increase or decrease conversions.
Right now using this tool will not affect your adwords quality score, however it's easy to see how data from this tool can be used in the future to reward advertisers who optimize their landing pages.
The way I see it, a quality landing page benefits, Google, the searcher and You (the advertiser)
I definitely recommend you check out this new tool, apply for a beta account. You won't get accepted right away because it looks like they are manually approving people into this round of beta tests.
I'm still waiting for my account, and assuming there are not NDA agreements, I'll be able to provide a full report of this new tool once I'm accepted.
