Thoughts on Google's Website Optimizer Tool

Posted June 18th, 2009 by Jonathan ODonnell

Hi All (and hopefully Jeanne Hopkins),

I tweeted a question to Jeanne to get her thoughts on Googles Website Optimizer in general. She put on an excellent presentation.

My reason for asking is exaclty what she was speaking to, time crunched staff with more to do and less to do it with.

I have worked w/GWO and feel it's a very big timesaver, but I do not have a lot of experience or exposure to other actual tools to help in A/B or multivarite testing. A lot of what she was talking about seemed like it was manual.

We (my company) helps support mid sized companies that do not have large marketing dept, so I am always looking for solutions to help them keep pace with demands.

So I will throw it out to the group and any feedback is appreciated.

Kudos to Hubspot for putting all of this on.

Thanks,

Jonathan

Testing is Not Optimization

Mike Volpe 2 years 33 weeks 3 days 23 hours ago

Another thign to remember is that Google Website Optimizer is actually miss-named. it does not optimize your website. It is a tool to test a bunch of different pieces of content and then you still have to go back, remove the Google code and change your website to the optimal combination. Google Website Optimizer should be called Google Website Tester. That being said, which it is pretty complicated, it is also a powerful tool and can be really useful.

Another option of a tool that is simpler and easier to use (but also less powerful) is the new free tool from HubSpot, Action Grader (http://action.grader.com - in Beta as of June 2009). Action Grader allows you to optimize your website automatically over time. What is different about Action Grader from Google Analytics is two things. First, Action Grader only tracks clicks (currently) not conversions, but increasing the clickthrough on an offer is really valuable. Second, (and this is the cool part) Action Grader is an optimization tool (not a testing tool) so as Action Grader figures out which call to action on your website performs best, it AUTOMATICALLY shows that call to action more and more, optimizing your website while you sleep.

So, if you are looking to save some time, you might try Action Grader since you can "set it and forget it" because it will optimize your website automatically without any work after the initial setup.

Thanks for the heads up

Jonathan ODonnell 2 years 33 weeks 2 days 3 hours ago

Hi Mike,

Thank you for the insight! I will take a look and pass on to our SEM team as well.

Best regards,

Jonathan

GWO

Jeanne Hopkins 2 years 33 weeks 5 days 21 hours ago

Hi Jonathan - GWO is terrific tool. What I was really trying to get across is that there is more to a test than simple testing. You need to KNOW WHAT TO TEST. It's not merely analytics...there is a subjective (qualitative) assessment that needs to be made to your landing pages. Obviously, the actual testing is done via our MarketingExperiments Lab (MEL) platform, but our organization runs tests on any platform including GWO. The main point that I had hoped to get across was that marketing depts today have to do more with less and oftentimes don't have the budget/personnel/time to create new LPs. So, why not test your existiing ones and see if you can up the conversions?

If you have more questions: jeanne.h@meclabs.com. Connect with me on LinkedIn: Jeanne Hopkins.

Thanks for the question.

Jeanne

Gratzie Jeanne!

Jonathan ODonnell 2 years 33 weeks 5 days 20 hours ago

Thanks, and understood, good usabilty and real world experience trump tools any day of the week.

We build campains, landing page and consult on best practices often, but many times due to client budgets have a very light touch after that and I am always looking for ways (tools) that allow them to fixate on the strategy/drivers and less on the manual labor (so to speak).

Best, Jonathan

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