I attended the Omniture Summit 2009 in London yesterday, travelling down to the big smoke from Leicester. We paid £178 a head to attend this shindig attended by around 800 other like-minded individuals. Although we dont currently use any Omniture tools (we're strictly Maxymiser right now and frankly dont have that kind of money) we thought we'd see if we could get some optimzation ideas from our fellow analyst & marketeers at the event.
So my takeaway learning's for the day were:
1. You're justified in letting brand design and message go out the window if there's a decent uplift in conversion to be had as identified by your testing.
2. BT segment their customer by IP range. If the customers IP is within the BT ISP range then they're an 'Existing Customer', if they're not they are a potential 'Switcher'.
3. AutoScout24 use Google Adwords to segment they're customers. Those that search by brand and those that don't. If you arrive at they're site via a keyword you're part of their optimization test.
They've learnt that those who search by brand prefer a highly branded landing page, while those that don't use a brand term prefer a lesser branded landing page.
Breakout talk - 'Listen to your audience: Test Your Content & Learn Where to Take Segment-specific Action'. Speakers: Sam Calvert, Head of Online Sales, British Telecom, Sebastian Wetteraurer, Teamleader Web & Data Analytics AutoScout24.
4. What worked well in AB Testing :
Multiple calls to action
Empty pages convert better than fuller pages
Google users display different behaviour to non-Google users (although they didn't specify what behaviour)
Experiments need at least 2 to 3 weeks to run
Breakout talk - 'Why Should A/B Testing Be in My Marketing Strategy for This Year?'. Speakers: Nicolas Meriel, Team Lead Test&Target Consulting Services, Omniture. Gerard Lindeboom, Senior Web Analyst ABN AMRO.
5. Realise that emotion is a big factor in website design.
6. Usability labs are invaluable in understanding your customer experience.
7. Look after your customer. Delight and surprise them and they'll tell the world.
8. Aim to make navigation perpetual or persistent.
9. Familiarise yourself with customer language, i.e. do they search for a 'settee' or a 'sofa'?
10. Male & female search methodologies are different.
11. Relevancy is key so dynamic landing pages are essential.
12. Promote best products and offers in prime areas of your site. Products need to continually prove themselves for home page placement.
13. Optimise for any seasonal or opportunist event.
14. Keep up-to-date with search terms.
15. Abandonment - understand where you are losing customers and use testing to fix.
16. Establish a realistic conversion target.
Breakout talk - 'Flex Your Merchandising Muscles: Using Omniture Merchandising to turn shoppers into buyers. Speakers: Alison Lancaster, Marketing Director Harrods Direct, Chris Moffatt, eMerchandising Consultant, Omniture.
