Entries Tagged 'Website Design' ↓

Until recently it cost thousands of dollars a month to subscribe to sophisticated testing services that would let you gather empirical data about proposed website design changes.

Now there’s Google’s Website Optimizer. This free, powerful, simple tool lets even the most analysis-phobic website owners test and evaluate proposed changes to their websites.

I attended a presentation at Google tonight (gotta love living in Fremont) by Tom Leung, the product manager for Website Optimizer. As always, I listened with an ear for tidbits useful to independent professionals and solopreneurs.

What Website Optimizer Does

Website Optimizer lets you test changes to your website. For example, say you want to change your newsletter sign-up box and you and your webmaster have different ideas about how it should look. Instead of discussing the change ad infinitum, just test it. With Website Optimizer, you add a little Javascript to your page and Google then shows half of your visitors one version and half the other version. Website Optimizer then measures which version results in more newsletter sign-ups. Simple as that.

Google uses this tool all the time to fine-tune their websites. If it’s good enough for Google, it’s good enough for you.

Google Website Optimizer for Independent Professionals

Website Optimizer lets you do simple A/B testing (like the newsletter sign-up example above), or you can do sophisticated multivariate testing on a bunch of webpage elements at once. I don’t recommend the latter for independent professionals since accurate multivariate testing requires more website traffic than our websites are likely to get.

Tom offered a couple of rules of thumb for testing. You need at least 100 “conversions” (website visitors taking the action you want) in order to have your test be statistically valid. He also said that for small sites, you want to make sure you have at least 500 page views a month before you even think about doing any testing.

Some Lessons Learned

Tom and his crew have been working with this tool for a few years now and identified a few take-home points:

• Website testing is a continuous process. You’re never really finished. There’s always something else you could/should be testing.
• You need compelling content, enough website traffic, and the discipline to make tough decisions about what is worth testing and what isn’t.
• Keep your testing simple. This is particularly important for small, low-budget sites.
• Finally, and most importantly, realize that this is an arms race. Whoever has the best-converting website will be able to pay more for leads acquisition from AdWords and similar programs. This excellent article, Google Website Optimizer 101, shows how to leverage your gains from your improved conversion rate.

On a personal note, I’ve got to say that I love this tool. I’ve been trying for years to genuinely divorce myself from attachment to my crackpot idea du jour, and this is just the ticket for that.

I went to a web-design talk presented by Refresh Seattle last night. I had heard good things about their previous events and was looking forward to seeing what the presenter had to say.

Kevin Tamura of Blue Flavor gave a good talk on the design process, using a case study of his redesign of the Refresh Seattle website. Kevin seems like a nice guy and certainly knows his stuff when it comes to HTML, CSS, the graphic design process, typography, color, design tools like Photoshop, and web-page layout. But I’ve got to admit that I was put off by the lack of a strategic vision and/or an explicit business rationale for the redesign.

As a business strategist, I was put off by the lack of a clearly stated business intention for the site and its redesign. Granted, this is a small site for a small audience and was done pro bono. Still, I think it’s worthwhile to think through your business intentions (announce events? promote events? showcase prior speakers? link to presenters’ websites? link to related content? demonstrate content-area expertise? articulate the organization’s mission?) before undertaking any design project.

As a content strategist, I was put off by the fact that the redesign called for a one-page site. How about archiving info on old events so that folks know what you’re about and so that search engines have more content to index so that they can infer what your organization does?

As a web usability advocate, I was put off by the lack of consideration for sight-impaired users. Web usability best practices call for fonts that the user can resize, but the design he showed uses fixed-pixel-size text sizes. It also uses unconventional “navigation” (if one can navigate a one-page site), including a confusing, albeit clever, block of text that flips back and forth between presentation info and the presenter’s bio.

Anyhow, this event got me thinking about the importance of taking a strategic approach to internet marketing. I’ll write more about this soon because I’m tired of seeing friends and colleagues waste their hard-earned money on sites that show off the skills of the designer or programmer that built them rather than helping them achieve their business goals. I want to make it clear that I don’t think that folks like Kevin are malicious or poorly motivated; they are simply ignorant of, or indifferent to, internet marketing best practices, which is what this blog is all about.

So what can you as a bodywork professional do with this information? Well, I strongly suggest that you always keep your business objectives at the forefront when you undertake any design or technical project. It’s very easy to succumb to the esthetic vision of a designer or the leading-edge technical prowess of a programmer, but always ensure that those whiz-bang factors take a back seat to your business priorities.