Susan will be speaking about “Conversion Optimization” at SearchFest 2011, which will take place on February 23rd at the Governor Hotel in Portland, Oregon. Tickets are available now. To purchase, please click the following link.
1) Please give us your background and tell us what you do for a living.
I’m currently the Director of Account Development at ion interactive. ion offers LiveBall, cloud-based software, for the creation, management and testing of web pages. While the software is robust, it requires no help from IT or web development to use because it was created by marketers for marketers who need the freedom to launch integrated campaigns without relying on technical resources.
My day-to-day focus is working with the account development team to help companies and agencies develop their post-click marketing programs, and realize a higher return on investment from their current online marketing spend. I have great clients from all industries (education, software, hardware, healthcare, e-commerce, and more) and an amazing team of driven online marketers who I am blessed to work with every day.
2) When would you suggest a company do “split testing” and how much data is necessary in order to validate the findings?
I’m a huge proponent of strategic A/B or split testing. Whenever an organization starts driving enough traffic to reach statistically significant results is exactly when they should start testing. For lead generation customers, I generally advise waiting until 80-90% confidence is reached. For transactional customers, I suggest waiting until 95-99% confidence is met. The length of time needed will vary, but ideally marketers would A/B test for big picture results that can be discovered quickly. From there marketers can iterate and multivariate test granular items within the winning page(s).
3) What are some of the worst usability “FAILS” that you find on corporate website and what are some good fixes for them?
One of the biggest usability #fails I see with corporate websites has nothing to do with the websites themselves. The problem occurs when campaign traffic is sent to a home page or even a deep link off of the main website. This leaves the burden of the conversion on the visitor, and dilutes conversion rates because the website has to be all things to all people. The best fix for this issue is to take visitors to a landing page outside of the main site where one-to-one message match can be created between the ad and the page. This allows visitors to receive targeted messaging based on their unique needs.
Todd Mintz knows PPC…knows Social Media…knows SEO…knows Blogging…knows Domaining…and knows them all real well. He runs growth marketing for )and is also a Director & Founding Member of SEMpdx: Portland, Oregon’s Search Engine Marketing Association, and he can be found here on Twitter and Facebook.