Web 2.0 & Social Media

If you could change a headline, graphic, or promotional text on your website and increase click-through or conversion rates, would you do it? Of course you would. However, knowing what to change can be a challenge. Even more challenging is tracking which changes have the most effect. This was a daunting task, until now. Google’s Website Optimizer gives you the ability to make changes that create alternative layouts on your site. You are then able to track site visitor’s actions from one page to another based on the different scenarios you created. For instance, if you wanted to see if changing a certain graphic increased conversion rates, you could set the Optimizer to change from the original graphic to the new graphic and then track the different layouts to see which one has the better success.

1. First; Sign-up. Google has prepared a great tutorial to help you get started. Once you sign up, you can use the tutorials to guide you through the set-up.
2. The next step in the set-up involves identifying your landing page and your destination page (where you want users to click to). This is done by simply filling in the blanks with the specified URLs.
3. Next, you will copy the tags that the optimizer generates, and add them to your landing page HTML. Then, you will create the different variations or combinations that you would like to track. This involves copying and pasting the HTML from each tracked item to the optimizer.
4. Now, you can easily change a font, change text, or change a graphics source from inside the optimizer. Finally, you are asked to review your different variations and make changes before going live.
5. The best thing about the Google Website Optimizer is the reports. From a graphical interface, you can view all of your different variations in one spot. There are two types of reports, page section reports and combination reports. Page section reports let you see how each headline, graphic, or promotional text change fared in comparison to the original. The combination reports let you see how each combination or section variation fared against one another. You can easily see which combinations or section changes you should be using for better conversion.

If you want to improve your click-through rates on your website, try Google’s Website Optimizer.