The AdWords Blog just announced a brand new blog today: Let’s Take it Offline.

Let’s Take it Offline is Google’s traditional media blog. Here is a quick excerpt from the announcement:

“Today, we’re pleased to announce that the TV, Print, and Audio Ads teams have launched Let’s Take it Offline, the official blog to help you get the most out of your offline ad campaigns. Our traditional media blog will keep you up-to-date on the latest feature launches, product updates, tips, and industry findings.”

You can learn more about the traditional media that is available from Google here: TV, Print and Audio.

Traditional media campaigns can be started directly through the AdWords Campaign Summary page - simply scroll to the bottom of the page, underneith all of your regular AdWords campaigns and you will see something that looks like this:

Click on the links to the right of each of the above menu items to start and remember to measure your offline efforts!

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With the announcement yesterday that Google now has improved indexing for Flash websites, the SEO world may see changes in the not so distant future. According to Google Webmaster Central, the new algorithm in place can index “All of the text that users can see as they interact with your Flash file. If your website contains Flash, the textual content in your Flash files can be used when Google generates a snippet for your website. Also, the words that appear in your Flash files can be used to match query terms in Google searches.”

While the algorithm doesn’t read .FLV files, it does read the text and links in .SWF files and adds them to the Google index.

Besides the obvious ramifications for SEO, in which building a site entirely in Flash was previously detrimental, perhaps this will lead to a future integration of the Flash indexing algorithm with the Adwords algorithm.

Google AdWords’ Landing Page Guidelines state that having relevant and original content on landing pages is vital to an acceptable landing page and good quality score (which translates into lower cost per click). At present, if you use Flash for your landing page, in order to achieve a good quality score, “you have to build an underbelly,” as Search Engine Roundtable put it. Otherwise your flash content does not help your ad copy in terms of relevance.

Could this mean that all-Flash landing pages used with Google Adwords ads will soon be readable by the Adwords algorithm? If Google can read the text in Flash, then high quality scores can possibly be achieved on Flash landing pages (once they integrate this algorithm into Adwords). This will let advertisers develop highly creative, interactive landing pages while maintaining low minimum bids/high quality scores.

It remains to be seen what will happen with Flash and the Paid Search industry, but we hope these changes come over to the PPC side quickly and efficiently.

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AdWords announced The Retirement of the Pay-Per-Action beta because of the new Google Affiliate Network:

“The Google Affiliate Network, previously known as DoubleClick Performics Affiliate, has been in operation since 1998. Through the network, advertisers can open their ads to all publishers in the network, or select specific publishers that match their criteria. You can set a CPA for your entire campaign or establish custom payment schedules for specific publishers — such as a higher CPA for a particularly optimal placement. The Google Affiliate Network is currently a separate product from AdWords and AdSense. As with AdSense, publishers must apply and be accepted into the network.”

Google’s Affiliate Network merges two services: DoubleClick’s Performics Affiliate network and Google’s Pay Per Action network.

A few opinions that have been posted about this change:

John of PPC Hero.com fame writes about the inconvenience of the PPA/Performics integration

Aaron Wall Says The Integration Has Been A Bit Haphazard So Far

PepperJam’s CEO Kris Questions Whether Or Not The Other Affiliate Networks Stand A Chance or Could This Move Simply Lend A Hand Of Extra Credibility to the Affiliate Industry?

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This is one of my favorite adwords reports - the daily summary of campaign or ad group performance in visual form…check it out:

1. Log into your AdWords account and click on the Reports tab…then click on Create Report.

2. Choose a Report type - either ‘ad group’ or ‘campaign’ is probably preferred.

3. Set up your settings - set View (Unit of Time) to Daily, select a date range and select your campaigns.

4. Advanced settings - click on ‘Add or Remove Columns’…you can pick and choose your key performance metrics - I like to add ‘Conversions’ and ‘Cost per Conversion’ to this report.

Filter your results if you want - I will separate content vs search in some cases.

5. Name your report, Save it as a trend analysis template so you don’t have to run through every setting each time you want to glance at this report.

6. Create your report!!!

Let’s take a look at what you can find in this report:

While you are viewing your report, look for a drop down located on the right side of the page underneath the date. Click through your key performance metrics and note any trends.

I quickly reviewed conversions in the following image and I drew some red lines to show the trends I can see so far this quarter: (Please click on the image to get a close up view.)

What to do next

Run isolated reports (tighter date range or single day with an hourly summary) similar to the one that we just ran to see if you can identify any problems or solutions…for example, what did we do around May 18 that brought our volume back up substantially? What were the cost differences? Is it worth it? What was my avg position during the downward trend? Etc.

The visualization of trends over time make it easier to find correlations - at what average position did you receive the most conversions? What was the average cpc for that day? Do you see any peaks or valleys that you can isolate or replicate?

We manage one account where we found 4 or 5 days over the four months where conversion volumes were 20-30% higher than normal so we ran reports for those days only and began to replicate, as much as we could, those conditions and we started to see a steady 10-20% gain in volume from that day forward…

When all is said and done, this process - given a decent sized account - could take about an hour. This single hour could give you a week or two of work!

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Webinar: Website Optimizer - What Should I Test?

Host: Tom Leung - Google Website Optimizer

Guest Presenter: Bryan Eisenberg - Future Now (blog is at GrokDotCom)

Slides will be archived and available within a few weeks on the Google Website Optimizer website in the resources section.

Tom Leung’s Presentation:

What is the website Optimizer? (For those not familiar with the product.)

It is part of an entire system of tools that Google provides to website owners that will help improve their website - AdWords and Analytics are a couple of these tools. AdWords brings the traffic in, Analytics monitors that traffic, and the Website Optimizer helps to improve conversion rates from AdWords and results can be measured in Analytics. They can be operated independently but using all three will bring a synergy to the table.

How does the Website Optimizer Work?

It essentially let’s you perform controlled experiments on your website by taking the guess work out of increasing your conversion rate with your website. Website Optimizer basically asks your users to vote with their actions.

Some features are A/B split testing, Multivariate Testing, Follow Up Testing, Works with ALL traffic - not just ppc, Statistical Analysis, Platform Independent, consistent updates, and more. (You do need an AdWords account to access the Website Optimizer…)

Benefits are that it is absolutely FREE, Easy to use, Does NOT impact SEO, Backed by Google, big increases in conversions are not uncommon, there is a variety of support in discussion groups, tutorials, consultant network.

Quick thoughts on Stats and Reporting

Combination reports show the customer’s favorite page combination. Take the debate out of website design and improvement by testing with the Website Optimizer and reviewing the reports/stats.

What To Test

This is a rendition I did a while ago on the graph about which pages to optimize used in this webinar (I think Google designed the original visual?):

Every Page Has an Optimal Recipe

Info Rich vs Short n Sweet

Left Layout vs Right Layout

Fact based vs Aspirations/emotions

Leads vs Sales

There are definitely more combinations and tests to conduct besides those listed above.

There isn’t ever really a set answer for each website. The only way to know which combination will work is to simply conduct tests.

More Ideas for Experimentation

Headline / Image/ Call to action

Layout

Testimonials

Copy

Embedded Widgets

Coupons

RSS button clicks

Colors, Fonts, Sizes

Sales Incentives

Newsletter subscriptions

Form Fields

And many, many more.

Everything depends on your audience, a portion of your audience will react differently to each test. You can find out more about your audience with testing…do they like certain kinds of widgets? Do they like videos? Testimonials? Etc.

At the end of the day, there are an infinite amount of tests you can perform. Focus on the tests that are most likely to give you the results you are looking for.

Best Practices in Marketing Experimentation

Test a small number of variations.

-Rule of thumb is about 100 conversions per combination

Test bold changes

-If you can’t see difference between two combos in 8 seconds, visitors probably won’t either

Consider early indicators if you don’t have enough conversions

-E.g. if you have modest conversion volume, optimize for leading indicators such as request info, view product details, remain on page features page >5 seconds.

Don’t jump to conclusions

-Less than 2 weeks is no good, focus on absolute conversion differences, don’t get too excited by silver or green or red

Bryan Eisenberg Intro

Bryan is co-founder of FutureNow, Charter member of Google Website Optmizer Authorized Consultant network, Blog located at Grokdotcom.com, Pioneer in persuasion architecture.

Bryan Eisenberg’s Presentation:

Case Study of Overstock.com (Multicategory Page)

Overstock was noticing a 90% exit/bounce rate

It’s about understanding people first

Test small variations so you can get the learnings and understand the variables

Secret of Online Conversion…

Dates back to 470 BC when four personality types were written down - the GrokDotCom translation gives us four types/patterns as displayed in this graph (a rendering based on Bryan’s slide/image)

Four types or patterns: Competitive (Fast Logical), Spontaneous (Fast Emotional), Methodical (Slow Logical), Humanistic (Slow Emotional)

*Holy crap Brian talks fast, flips through slides like crazy and bounces around sporadically (probably not Bryan but software/conferencing issues)…very hard to follow while typing so this is going to get choppy…

Eyetracking Slides (summary found on GrokDotCom)

Personality Preferences

Spontaneous people are looking for features

Humanistics care about reviews

Methodicals find by generally sorting

Competitives search by specifics that they have in mind

Went through 4 personality types for Overstock.com - Does it accomplish each type? Found that one single image needed replaced to target Competitives - and that gave them a lift of $25m!

HUGE gain on Overstock website by simply changing one image near a search box and it increased results by 5% or $25 million! The image was excluding competitive types of people due to search functionality/bounce rates on a specific page.

Opportunity Cost

Every day that Overstock did not fill that hole, they were losing $70,000 a day!

Framework & Optimization Process

1. Know your profiles - Personas, Four Perspectives, or simply emotional and logical

2. Define the conversion goals - what action do you want your visitor to take and what is the success page going to be

3. Do the Creative - based on the first two perspectives

Heirarchy of Optimization (detailed blog post can be found here)

Functionality first - Does it work?

Accessibility second - Can everyone access it?

Usability third - Is it “user” friendly?

Intuitive fourth - Does it feel natural and doesn’t “make us think”?

Persuasive final - Do people really want and understand what their buying?

The higher levels take the most time and effort but give you the greatest return.

5 Formulas to Online Success

1. Product Images Tell A Story

2. Test Your Headlines & Copy

-Test fractions vs Percentages

-Test Asking Questions

-Self Focused vs Customer Focused words (I am, we are vs you can)

-Switch Paragraphs (ordering of copy)

-Different words/meanings

-Informal vs formal (Attitude)

-Font sizes

-Wording on call to action

-Wording on images

3. Forms & Point of Action Assurances

-We value your privacy (next to action button)

-Guaranteed Response time

-Return information

-Reviews next to add to cart button

4. Calls to Action - Get Them To Click

-8 variables for cart buttons (wording, shape, size, style, icon, color, legibility, location)

-Emotional vs Logical (learn more vs help me choose)

5. Don’t Make Them Wait

-Fast load speeds

-Optimize image file sizes (58k vs 7k)

Golden rule: he who has the gold, rules. Customers have the pocket books so they rule. Also, another golden rule to online marketing is not like the biblical or religious adage of do unto others as you would have them do unto you…but the golden rule on the web is “Do unto others as they would have done unto themselves.”

Q&A

Q: What if you have a small amount of traffic but you don’t want to wait 6 months for results?

Bryan: Focus on the top half of the hierarchy.

Q: Ecommerce merchants who have long funnels - where do you begin with a multi-step checkout process?

Bryan: First, worry about the point of action assurances. Other things to do would be to add progress indicators and try to reduce the multi-step checkout process as soon as you can. Can you combine one or two pages?

Q: Do you begin at the beginning or the end of the checkout process?

Bryan: It depends on your analytics - target the biggest bottleneck and work from there.

Q: What are some things that you can do after you feel like you have done the basics like Headlines, copy, etc?

Bryan: Start dealing with persuasive and intuitive things like images, words in hyperlinks, words in point of action assurances, and more. Work up the hierarchy if you already have the basics down.

Q: What goes through your head during the first 30 seconds of reviewing a website?

Bryan: If I were a customer and I were spontaneous/methodical/humanistic/competitive, what would I get out of this page? Try to see what questions I have while reviewing the page as a customer.

Summary

-Controlled content experimentation is critical to maximizing your conversion rates

-Google Website Optimizer is a free tool that lets you do unlimited tests on all your traffic on any page

-Personas and scents can dramatically increase the likelihood of improving your conversions

-Almost everything can and should be tested

-More resources at www.Google.com/WebsiteOptimizer

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If you are using the new javascript code for Analytics, you should head over to ROI Revolution and download the latest exact keyword data tracking script so you can enjoy exact search terms that will show up in the user defined field in Analytics. ROI Revolution posted the update yesterday so it’s nice and fresh!
semvironment posts related to this update:

AdWords/Analytics Keyword Data Fix - Thanks Jeff!

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AdWords Site-Targeting, now called Placement Targeting campaigns give us more control than ever before!

The Key changes are:

1. We can now pick and choose the location our ad will display on a specific page within a website. (As opposed to only having the ability to control which site the ad displayed on with VERY limited location control.)

2. We can also choose between paying per click or per 1000 impressions. (As opposed to only having the option to pay per 1000 impressions.)

These are, not surprisingly, some of the most popular requests the site-targeted AdWords team received. Thumbs up to AdWords for these changes!

You can find the official article here.

A trusted voice in the SEO/PPC community has already commented on this release here:

Google AdWords Replaces Site Targeting With Placement Targeting & Offers Bidding Options

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