That’s right; we like to turn them into guinea pigs.

We like to see if our blog readers, knowing the basic circumstance surrounding a recent test, can predict the outcome. How good is their online marketing radar? Can they spot a good webpage when they see one? How is marketing intuition performing these days?

But honestly, what really matters is the cheese they will be racing for today – one good-ole slice of free online certification course cheese with a little Twitter-love wine to wash it down.

Leave a comment below to enter and let the games begin.

The Experiment

The Research Partner we were working with provides online consumer brokerage services through a subscription-based model. This page, in particular, was aimed at visitors interested in signing up for the foreign exchange trading (FOREX) solutions.

The Control (click to zoom)

After analyzing the current landing page, we concluded that there were some significant factors contributing to confusion on this page. For one, there were  many competing graphical elements and objectives. In almost all cases, this type of layout negatively impacts conversion. We also believed that the value of this offer could be communicated with a little bit more oomph.

So we tested three designs against the control to address some of these issues.

Treatment 1 (click to zoom)

The first treatment is probably the closest to the control. However, there are some strategic changes.

First, we added a headline that better communicated the value of the offer. The copy also has been reorganized in a clearer, easier to read fashion.

And finally, we added a call-to-action button in the main section of copy.

Treatment 2 (click to zoom)

The next treatment used a more long copy approach than the control. It also incorporated a stronger headline and clearer copy layout similar to that of the first treatment.

It is important to note that some of the visual elements from the control have been removed from the bottom of the page. However, the left-hand column remained the same as the previous two designs.

Treatment 3 (click to zoom)

This version of the page is almost identical to treatment 2’s long copy layout.

The one big change for this version was that the elements in the left-hand column were changed into a simple navigation.

(Update) The Results

If you are reading this post now, the contest mentioned above is over. Congrats to @terryrydzynski, a marketer who’s intuition got him a free seat in one of our online certification courses. If I were you, I’d follow this brilliant guy’s twitter account.

Which one was the winner you ask? All of the treatments outperformed the control, but Treatment 3 had the highest conversion rate with a validated 31% increase over the control. Now the results were not too surprising if you read some of the reasoning behind our designs above. Treatment 3 significantly reduced the amount of friction over the control by removing the competing graphical elements and focusing the visitor on one objective.

So what can we learn from this experiment?

If there’s one thing that we can all take away from this case study, it is that many times we are trying to accomplish way too much with our pages, and if we could just simplify our message and make options clear for our visitors, we would potentially see an increase in response.

But this is just scratching the surface, if you would like more information about this case study and some of it’s implications, you can find a more detailed explanation in the replay of yesterday’s web clinic, which will be available next week. To be notified when the replay is available, feel free to sign up for free research updates from MarketingExperiments.

Does your marketing strategy resemble a large group of 5 year olds playing soccer?

When 5 year olds play soccer, you really are just watching 12 kids chase a ball while two goalies pick their nose. The cohesiveness and teamwork displayed on the field is reminiscent of crash test dummies. No one understands the concept of “playing position” or “passing the ball” to each other. Its a glorious mess that keeps the parents either wincing at the gaggle of kids launching their feet towards each other and occasionally kicking the ball or laughing at the reactions of the kids when they actually connect and the ball goes soaring.

As an adult trying to market your business on the internet, its important to remember to make each effort integrate and work with a bigger picture. “Playing position” is important in making each piece maximize its utility.

Way back when I was actually on the field (yes, they had soccer back then) I played “sweeper” position (not even sure that exists anymore). My job was to support the back line wherever needed. My role was NOT to score a goal. I was never supposed to cross the center line.

Each online marketing channel has a purpose and a role that it is best suited for. When you log into Facebook and your only intention is to close a sale, you are playing the wrong position. When your entire marketing plan consists of logging into the system of choice (Google ads, Twitter, YouTube, Guest Blogs, etc.) and closing the sale, you are really just mimicking “Gaggle Ball” for your marketing plan.

The idea here is to use each marketing channel in its strong suit. Twitter allows you to connect with a huge number of people. Don’t shut the door on someone by throwing used car salesmen tactics at them the moment they show interest. Use the venue correctly, by showing them who you are and why they should trust something you say.

Rather than making Google Ads, Twitter or YouTube all try and do the same thing, find out why each one is different and how to use each one to integrate into your big marketing picture. If you do this, you’ll discover that your marketing can be organized, integrated, and become more than just the sum of its parts. All you have to do is play your position.

Toff Ward
OpenSourceMarketer.com

Learn how to build and market your business online using open source tools.

I remember being a scrawny high school kid, band geek, 97 lbs, and hearing over and over that I would never make it through boot camp. By the time I got there, I actually started to believe it myself. But, nine weeks later, I had finished all the trials, gained 25 lbs, and was marching with the rest of my class in the pass-in-review ceremony. I had done it, and (to borrow a popular phrase from that year) thought I was the king of the world.

What does being in boot camp have to do with online marketing?

Well, let me say that when you first get to boot camp, your mind does wander to thoughts of quitting and getting back home to a comfortable life where all you really had to worry about was next Friday’s math test. However, you can’t just quit when you get to boot camp; no, they make you persevere. And by the time it’s done, you’re very glad you stuck through the tough times and accomplished something remarkable.

I think that my experience at boot camp can be a lot like the experience we marketers go through when starting to test online, except it’s MUCH easier to quit testing than it is boot camp. There is a large temptation to think that it will just be too much work – first figuring out what to test, designing alternative creative, selecting a testing tool, getting your boss to sign off, then moving mountains to get the IT work prioritized. It’s easy for a marketer to just stick to the status quo and quit the fight before it’s even begun.

Why the mountains are worth moving

I’m not going to deny that testing, like boot camp, has challenges we must persevere through and overcome. But just like boot camp, testing also has significant rewards that we might miss out on if we are jumping ship in fear. Rewards like the incredible feeling of accomplishment when you actually get that first test done, and one of your treatments won! Rewards like knowing you’ve discovered how to stop the leaks in your funnel and contribute directly to your company’s bottom line.

At MarketingExperiments we’re lucky because we get to feel this all the time with our research partners. We get to see our partners grow and establish the culture of testing in their own organizations, which really breathes new life into the old marketing routine that many of us know all too well – “Hey guys, St. Patrick’s day is coming up, let’s trot out all our old shamrock creative and talk about finding a pot of savings at the end of the rainbow.” You won’t ever have that conversation again.

So my message to you is this: don’t give up

The good news is that if a 97lb band geek can experience the reward of surviving boot camp, then there is much hope for the marketer out there starting to online test. You can survive; you can make it.  Just hang in there, don’t give up, and know that the rewards will far outweigh the struggles.

If you are like me and are going to be at the Omniture Summit this year (currently sold-out), consider spending a day with the MarketingExperiments team learning how to optimize your online marketing campaigns. We will be teaching our Landing Page Optimization Workshop during the Omniture University training day in Salt Lake City this year. I’ll be there with the MarketingExperiments team helping your fellow peers learn how they can apply a decade of marketing discoveries to their own campaigns.

Photo provided by: http://www.flickr.com/photos/78428166@N00/ / CC BY 2.0

Valentine’s Day is fast approaching and love is in the air all throughout the MarketingExperiments lab. In honor of this well-marketed holiday, we sent a few virtual Valentines to our favorite advertising and marketing industry news sources.

Cuddle up with your favorite blog and watch the love flow…

Now here’s a little recap (for some link love)…

• Research Analyst, Adam Lapp, made like Pepé Le Pew with Vandelay Design Blog
• Yours truly got all weak in the knees about AdBusters
• Director of Marketing, Pamela Markey, said “You had me at click here” to Creativity
• Senior Manager of Research Partnerships, Andy Mott, composed a sonnet about CNNMoney
• Senior Manager of Research and Strategy, Boris Grinkot, was our irrepressible Don Juan who refused to be locked into just one site…but he did confess to cruising Twitter in search of something appealing
• While we couldn’t drag our director, Austin McCraw, in front of the camera, the man behind the magic told us that his muse was Smashing Magazine

Nothing is harder than confessing to a (possibly) unrequited love. Now that we’ve walked the line, we want to hear from you.

What advertising or marketing industry news source do you really love? What blog or website just completes you? Send us your virtual Valentine via email, LinkedIn or as a comment to this post. We’ll publish our favorites in a future post right here on the blog…so be creative.

But in our fervor for the new opportunities cropping up at a micro level in our own hometown, let’s not overlook the macro possibilities. So today I’d like to take our focus off of local and discuss, well, the entire world.

After all, you are reading the MarketingExperiments Blog International Edition. Sounds fancy, and I loved seeing the International Edition of American publications when I was in Montréal (très chic!). But, of course, everything on the Internet is essentially an International Edition. After all, our readers include Stephanie from Canada, Meraj from Singapore, Inna from Germany, Gabriela from Argentina, and Gavin from the UK.

How well do you know your audience? For Americans at least, sometimes I worry we have a view of the world similar to Saul Steinberg’s famous cover for The New Yorker. But let’s not forget that this is the World Wide Web. Your customers are, or at least have the potential to come from, anywhere in the world.

So here are some thoughts to consider and ideas to test when appealing to an international audience:

Where in the world?

Now that the world is your oyster, where should you begin? Most analytics software, such as Google Analytics, will break down your traffic by country of origin (and drill down even deeper than that). Understanding where your current audience comes from can help you shape your message.

But don’t just limit yourself to where your audience is coming from today, consider where they could be coming from and think about how you can target content to that potential audience. In addition, if you have an ecommerce or even lead generation site, look at how your traffic compares to actual orders and leads. If you get a big chunk of traffic from a certain nation, yet they very rarely order or become a lead, what in your conversion process is stopping them?

Understand when it pays to habla Español

While you don’t necessarily need an entire website for every possible language, it is always a good idea to delve into proper segmentation of your current and possible audience. And if you find a big enough potential market, that commonality of language may significantly help your conversion rate.
You don’t even necessarily need to look beyond your borders to find that opportunity. For example, according to the U.S. Census, the buying power of Americans of Hispanic origin is projected to exceed $1.2 trillion by 2014. If that segment could generate a significant amount of business for you, you should probably consider testing custom Spanish-language landing pages to see if they are worth the investment.

Shalom means hello…and goodbye

If you do choose to test custom foreign-language pages, keep the word custom in mind. Don’t just settle for poor translations of your current pages, but truly put the time and investment into understanding that segment and its motivations…as you would with any other segment.

Marketing history is littered with funny (and costly) cross-cultural blunders – such as the introduction of the Chevy Nova in Central and South America. It doesn’t take a major blunder. Even simple bad translations can turn away potential customers. I probably would not shop in the “Exciting Dressy Fashion zone” or want to eat “Desktop bacteria rice.”

It’s easy to laugh at these snafus, but if we do not truly understand the cultures of global and bilingual markets we seek to enter, we may be making these same mistakes. We can’t be transparent marketers if our audience doesn’t understand what we’re talking about. And far from welcoming new customers, we may be turning them off to our message.

You can still spreek het English…

While custom foreign-language landing pages are worth testing if the segmentation is right for your organization, don’t feel like you necessarily need to invest resources to customize your site for every possible language. As French is la langue de l’amour, English is currently the international language of business and the Web (after all, ICANN is still an American organization).

Also, services like Google Translate and Babel Fish enable your non-English-speaking visitors to instantly translate your page into almost any language for free. So here are a few other ideas to test in your native language…

Ciao bello world!

As I said above, there is an entire world out there. Just make a right at the Atlantic or a left at the Pacific and you’ll likely find untapped markets. So acknowledge it…as I did in the intro to this post when I mentioned our readers from across the globe or as Boris Grinkot did in a recent post where he simply mentioned regulations to consider in India.

The first step to profiting from an international audience is recognizing that you have one. Test how often to mention different cultures and which cultures to mention and see how that affects your traffic.

6,809 ways to say “customer service”

Even better than acknowledging the existence of other cultures, show them that you truly cater to their needs. If you’re looking for some good examples, Israeli websites tend cater to a global audience well (a combination of state subsidies that makes international shipping cheap and the global interest of a nation that holds importance to three major religions).

One good example from that country is TheGreatShofar.com. This site clearly illustrates how it serves other parts of the world by, for example, having an American phone number and a testimonial from someone in America right on its homepage (leading us to believe that either America is one of its most important, sought after segments or this is a landing page optimized for Americans).

Also, the site clearly spells out in its FAQ that it ships around the world:

I live in Timbuktu.  Will you ship to me?

Yes.  We ship to Timbuktu as well as Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, China and pretty much anywhere that has a postal service.

To find out how much it will cost to ship to your location, just add your desired products to the shopping cart and our shipping estimator will display your shipping costs.

One way we try to cater to our international audience is through live training and speaking engagements around the world. Dr. Flint McGlaughlin will next be teaching and speaking about email response optimization at Email Marketing Germany 2010 in Munich from March 8-9, 2010. Register (in English) today. Or, if you prefer, register (in German) today.

So I crept into the lab, distracted Dr. Optimize (a.k.a. Adam Lapp) from his current experimentation, and convinced him to apply his complex genius to this page. Here’s what he had to say…

It’s great to hear a fellow marketer realize the power of testing. Congratulations Troy! Without testing, how will you ever know if your landing page or website is performing the best that it could?

Never stop testing

Let’s all take a lesson from Amazon.com. No matter how much money or market share Amazon creates, they have never stopped testing. They are constantly proving and disproving new ideas and concepts. I have no doubt they have eliminated thousands of page designs that did not work. But that’s indicative of a true testing culture.

If we compare the laboratories of our online marketing colleagues to that of scientists finding cures to common ailments, there are many similarities. How many concoctions do you think doctors will rule out before they find the cure to baldness? I’m sure that number will dwarf the number of landing pages the average marketer will rule out before they find the one that works the best.

That’s the number one optimization recommendation I can give to anyone…keep on testing. And I’m glad to see the team at Response Capture working (and succeeding) by following that creed.

What to test next

Of course, it’s one thing to know the importance of continuous testing. Sometimes, the biggest challenge is deciding what to test next. Let’s take a look at the successful landing page:

My advice is two-fold:

1. Test several more radical redesigns

Then when you think you have a design that can’t be beat by other new treatments…

2. Begin fine tuning (multivariate tests work really well for this)

Radical Test Ideas

The current page does a lot of things right, but there is still room for improvement. The first thing I would test would be the tone.

Currently the look and feel of the page can only be described as “slick.” You look at and say “Wow!” It’s dark and sleek. The bright blue pops out at you. And the overall feels is that this page has been designed by a professional design firm with a very high proficiency with Photoshop.

As great as it is, is this the best tone to go with? At MarketingExperiments, we’ve spoken about the concept that “Ugly converts.” That concept really doesn’t necessarily mean that ugly pages perform better than pretty pages. Rather, we want to remind you that strategy is more important than design.

So what different tones can Response Capture test? Here are a few ideas:

TEST IDEA #1: Simple, plain layout

This page does not have a complex objective – just enter your email to receive a free whitepaper. Assuming most visitors are very qualified (i.e. they know what a PDN is and are your ideal customer), you don’t really have to do much selling.

We see a common mistake across many industries where a landing page is composed of elements that just over-complicate the objective.

For example, if you only want to know if a newspaper is delivered in your area, then your landing page only needs a headline, ZIP Code field, and button. Bulky copy, testimonials, demos, videos, images, and other fancy page elements are just not necessary.

The Washington Post is an excellent example of a simple ZIP Code entry:

Compare this to the New York Post:

I just want to find out if you deliver to my area. I don’t need to know about the top columnist or the Page Six gossip section.

This applies for companies that provide free quotes for insurance or a similar service. A visitor just wants to enter a few pieces of information and see a number. Putting layers of clutter in their way just creates friction.

To summarize, I would test a page that has the following:

• A non-descript background
• Simple headline: “Download your free report on PDN Simulation”
• Sub-headline: “Tell us where to send the report”
• Email field
• Button

Just make it as simple as possible.

TEST IDEA #2: Report style

So if someone clicks through, we know we have their interest. They are ready to read about PDN Simulation (must be a page turner!). Then give them what they want right away.

Upon landing, visitors could see a page that looks like a report. Here’s one I found quickly from Google Research:

They clicked through with the expectation of seeing a report, and that’s what you have given them with this treatment. Get them engaged right away. Provide an abstract or first couple of paragraphs, then place a call to action to “download the full report.”

Just make sure that you clearly communicate that the whitepaper is free because this treatment strategy communicates much more value than the others. The report style has more of a high-brow, university type of tone – which isn’t always free. It may work or it may not, but the idea is to test.

Those two test ideas should give you a good start, but if you can think of more, test them and let us know how they work out.

Fine Tuning Ideas

Once you’ve found a primary strategy that works, then it’s time to fine tune. Nothing is off limits here. Let’s assume that the current design has stood the test of time…it has defeated several other radical redesigns you have thrown at it. What do you test?

1. Headline

• Test variations that quantify what’s in the report
• Create urgency (i.e. “available for a limited time” or “you have to know this now”)
• Think of several benefits from reading the report, then test each one in the headline
• Pull out several one-liners from the report that announce an exciting finding
• Test a few provocative questions

2. Rotate bullets and add new bullets

3. Choose three or four different images to test

• Other images of the report
• Photographs of people that may connect with the target audience
• Charts and graphs
• Other items related to PDN (I have to admit, I’m not your target customer so I’m not quite sure what they would be)

4. Button copy – it’s pretty good now, but you could definitely stumble upon something better

5. Color scheme

• Test several different background/font combinations
• Will a light background with dark font work better?

6. Placement of gift card incentive

• In the headline
• As one of the main bullets
• Before the button
• To the right of the button

Now we put this challenge in front of you, the MarketingExperiments community. Use the comments field to post your suggestions for this landing page, agree/disagree with this assessment by Dr. Optimize, and let the page owner know what you would do differently.

Response Capture’s B2B client wanted to find a scalable alternative to telephone-based opt-in collection and improve an established benchmark landing page conversion rate as well. This Beaverton, Oregon-based performance marketing company decided to test for the ideal opt-in incentive while experimenting with the landing page.

Control White Paper Landing Page: Friction at work

Potential customers were driven to a landing page by email. The conversion goal was to have visitors download a white paper from a respected industry author.
Response Capture quickly focused on a few areas that would be ripe for optimization. They sought to reduce distractions such as navigation, search, and account creation. They also wanted to present an image of the white paper offer, bank on the white paper author’s creditability, and reduce the friction generated by the amount of form fields.

Test #1: A wealth of information…and results

After removing distractions, presenting an image of the offer, and reducing the form field requirement to just email address (and even then, pre-populating the email text box for all known visitors), Response Capture achieved a 25% opt-in rate gain (from the check box option) and 36.4% conversion rate gain (of white paper downloads).

To gain the additional information that was lost when the form was reduced to just email, they created a second-step after the white paper download. This page used Amazon.com gift cards as an incentive to provide additional profile information. We’ll get to these results in a bit, but first let’s focus on this impressive landing page optimization.

“Adequacy is the Enemy of Excellence.” – Peter Drucker

These were significant gains that produced incremental opt-ins for the client. And if Response Capture had stopped here, this would be a very successful case study and an excellent example of how you can test key principles on your own sites. But, since we are profiling Response Capture on the MarketingExperiments blog, we all know that they did not stop there. Our story now takes us to the Emerald City.

Troy O’Bryan, the Co-Founder and Chief Response Officer of Response Capture, attended a Live Optimization Workshop taught by Dr. Flint McGlaughlin in Seattle. That changed everything.

“Troy was the first to take MarketingExperiments training program and he led the charge of implementing the learnings into the campaign that was referenced in the blog.” said Bill Kent, Response Strategist at Response Capture.

Before we continue with our story, I want to pause and ask you a simple request. Brag. I know what you’re thinking. In an age of Transparent Marketing, bragging is a totally inappropriate behavior. And I would agree. But I’m not asking you to brag to your customers; rather I want you to brag to your peers.
You see, we love hearing directly from our more than 2,000 alumni and learning about the success they’re creating in the real world. We only discovered Response Capture’s success from a Twitter comment about Bill’s blog post.

Alumni are often hesitant to tell us about their success directly because they worry we’ll poke holes in their methodology or suggest even bigger improvements they can gain. Don’t be shy. Tell us about your success in the comments section.

Test #2: After the Landing-Page-Optimization Certification Course

While Response Capture had already driven an impressive gain for the client, Troy noticed several areas they could further optimize after returning from the Live Optimization Workshop in Seattle. He learned that he needed to improve message consistency and created a new headline promoting the offer versus the generic “wealth of knowledge” headline from the previous test. He clearly supported the value proposition message by changing the copy to a bulleted list of white paper benefits. And he decreased the resistance to respond with a new, benefit-oriented button that says “Get the Free Report Now.”

Results: A 258% Conversion Rate Increase for the Client and additional projects for the Agency

The new landing page delivered a 162.5% conversion rate increase over the previously optimized page and a 258% conversion rate increase over the original page. The new opt-in rate for the continuation offer increased 201% over the original page and 141% over the previously optimized page. And these results came at a reduced cost per collected opt-in.

What’s In It for Me?

In addition, Response Capture tested the incentive that would generate the highest amount of profile completions. Remember, this was a two-part process. The landing page converted white paper downloads and allowed opt-ins but only asked for the email address. And then the continuation offer captured more information from the prospect.

They tested a sweepstakes offering 20 Amazon gift cards worth $25…

…against a sweepstakes offering 10 $50 gift cards…

The sweepstakes that offered less, more valuable gift cards (10 $50 gift cards) gained 31% more conversions. The total cost of the incentive was the same ($500), but by testing and discovering that prospects preferred quality over quantity they were able to increase profile completion.

These are excellent results any agency would be proud of. It’s always fulfilling to deliver for our clients, but let’s talk about what these numbers really mean for Response Capture. After the success of these projects, they were referred to additional divisions and there is now an ongoing relationship between Response Capture and its client. And it all started with one class…

“After attending the live course, I had one of our Response Strategists take the self-guided, on-demand Landing Page Optimization Course online. And we have another Response Strategist who is scheduled to take the course next quarter as well,” Troy said. “We are big fans of the MarketingExperiments curriculum. We learned not just how to optimize a page, but how to optimize the thought process of visitors. By applying these learning’s, our clients have realized stronger results and our organization has benefited from happy clients.”

Our story doesn’t end here. With every page, there is always room for our improvement. Troy asked our researchers to take a look at his most recently optimized page, and propose further ideas to test. Come back to the blog on Monday and see that advice.

Objective: Response Capture’s B2B client sought to improve landing page conversion rates while generating optins for ongoing communications

Goal: To gather profile information

Primary research question: Which incentive will generate the most conversions?

Approach: A/B single-factorial split test

“… a chance to win one of twenty “… a chance to win one of ten
$25 Amazon gift cards…”                          $50 Amazon gift cards…”

The Results:

As we teach in our Landing Page Optimization course, the objective of Incentive is to “tip the balance” of emotional forces from the negative, in this case represented by the Friction of filling in several fields of profile information as well as by the Anxiety of submitting personal information.

There is an “ideal incentive.” Incentives must be tested to find that ideal. And that is the challenge Troy took on with the above test.

But, dear reader, we post a different challenge to you…can you use your marketing intuition to guess which incentive performed best? Remember, the cost of these offers was the same, yet the formulation of the incentive produced a conversion rate increase for Troy’s client.

Which do you think performed best?

Take a good look at these incentives and let us know which one you think performed best in the comments section. Also, let us know by how much you think it improved conversion. The marketer that chooses the correct incentive with the closest conversion rate gain guess wins…the jealousy and admiration of his or her peers.

Come back on Friday to find the conversion gain winner along with the full story behind this successful test so you can drive similar improvements with your own pages.

Affiliate Marketing Regulation

One of the most interesting topics this year was around government actions which are threatening many who have profited from this space for many years. The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is cracking down on Internet sites that profit from promoting other’s products or services without disclosing within that promotion that they received some sort of compensation from the company.

Compensation in this instance is not limited to cash. Let me give you an example that I heard at the show:

Let’s say a stay-at-home mom begins a blog to help other stay-at-home moms. A diaper manufacturer sees that blog and decides to send her a box of diapers with the hope that she would try them on her children and then blog about how well they performed.

That mom must disclose that this was a gift from the manufacturer and she must disclose that this blog post is partial to them for that reason, even if she would have blogged about “the diapers making it through the night without leaking” anyway and was in no way influenced by the fact that the diapers were a gift. In other words, even mommy bloggers could be held liable for product reviews.

This may be an extreme example, but thanks to some who may have been taking advantage of consumers through use of exaggerated claims and fake reviews and testimonials, it has become a necessary part of affiliate marketing.

Google Adwords frustration

Another hot topic surrounding this event was affiliate frustration with the Google Adwords program. Over the last year, many affiliates who used Google Adwords to advertise their site(s) were notified that they were no longer welcome to use the Google advertising platform.

OK, so “notified” may be a bit of a stretch, typically the way they found this out was without any sort of notification at all but rather by noticing that sales are lower or perhaps non-existent and logging into their Adwords account to troubleshoot.

After looking around for a bit, they probably found that everything seemed to be in order. On the surface at least. They then may have scrolled over a status column which, when hovered over, opens a small box showing a users Quality Score. To the affiliate’s surprise, the Quality Score ranking that once read 7/10, 8/10 or even 10/10 now says 1/10.

A 1/10 Quality Score ranking in Google Adwords is about as effective at removing advertisements as deleting the campaign altogether. Worse yet, starting over with a new campaign will not help. An advertiser’s Quality Score remains with their domain.

I have heard, but this has not been confirmed by Google, that the only way to receive a 1/10 Quality Score across an entire account is for a Google Policy Team Member to manually place this on the account…meaning that this does not naturally occur. Perhaps this is why affiliates have affectionately labeled this occurrence a “Google Slap.”

Can you imagine being in business one day and out the next? That is what is happening to some of these affiliates. So why would Google do this? After all, affiliates are paying them, right? Well, Google, like the FTC, is probably reacting to the bad apples. Google is fanatical about protecting its customers (i.e. search users) and if it takes hurting some legitimate affiliate’s business to protect customers from the bad apples, it looks like Google is okay with this concession.

What this may mean for 2010

It will be interesting to see how both of these situations play out over this year. I counted 46 businesses from the advertising and marketing industry that made last year’s Inc 500 list of the fastest-growing companies, private companies.

Many of these businesses have deep roots in the affiliate marketing business. Their growth rates have skyrocketed on the backs of affiliates using Google Adwords to advertise, and in some instances have grown off of sites that now must alter their pages to abide by the new FTC guidelines.

Will these companies be able to adjust their business models and continue these impressive growth rates in the face of these new obstacles? Share your thoughts in the comments section of this post or start a conversation with your peers in the MarketingExperiments Optimization group.

(’’)

If Franklin Roosevelt 2.0 was giving advice about Internet marketing, he would probably change “brief” to “clear” (and perhaps “seated” to “testing”). While marketers invest the majority of their time and budgets on complex areas deeper down in the funnel, MarketingExperiments research has found that most of the gain from optimizing a website occurs in clarifying the first seven seconds of users’ experience.

Much of the complex analysis and formulaic methodologies used by our scientists to create optimized pages with triple-digit conversion improvements can be summed up in this truism…

Clarity Trumps Persuasion

The first seven seconds, and perhaps just those first three, are vital to clearly guiding your visitor into an inevitable conclusion to engage in a transaction with you. Below is a quick excerpt from a recent live web clinic in which Dr. Flint McGlaughlin, the Director of MECLABS (our parent organization), discusses how your visitors interact with your website in those first few moments they land on your page…

Yet Difficulty Trumps Clarity?

Of course, so many websites produced by experienced, professional marketers don’t follow this simple principle because, in reality, it can be quite difficult to truly be clear. Put another way, what is clear to an insider (a marketer that lives, breathes, and eats his product every day) can be meaningless and confusing to your visitor. And even when you have every intention to be clear, how many monkeywrenches get thrown your way (Sales wants one thing, Operations another, and don’t even get me started on Legal)?

To help you on your journey along the road to clarity and prosperity, you can view a replay of the clinic or read the latest issue of MarketingExperiments Journal. Our next live web clinic, Maximizing your Agency ROI: How adding science to the creative process reveals a 26% gain, will be taught on January 13th from 4 to 5 p.m. EST.