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Why aren’t you using Google Website Optimizer?

I’ve been using Google Website Optimizer (GWO) in one form or another for over a year now, and I am quite impressed.  I wish everyone would take a look at this technology.

The short version of this post is: if you have a website that gets some traffic, and actions that you want a user to take, such as buying something, you should use GWO.

OK?

Let’s talk about GWO a bit more for everyone who didn’t leave after the executive summary.

First, what is GWO? 

It is a free add in to your website that lets you test the effect of content changes on desired user actions.  For example, you can test the impact of different headlines (‘Sign up for more information’ or ‘Free Newsletter!’, etc) on a newsletter signup page to see how it affects how many users sign up.

I could try to write about it more, but instead, here’s a video that explains how to set up a test; you can watch the first 45 seconds to get a good overview of what GWO helps you test, but the whole video is worth viewing.

It’s important to note that GWO is javascript based (as opposed to some other tools like SiteSpect, which uses DNS proxying, according to a conversation I had with someone who worked there).  There are other tools out there which may be better fits for your needs.

Now, how should GWO be used? 

This tool should be used to optimize a specific action that you want the user to take, and that action should be something on the web.  Examples of actions that GWO can help optimize include:

  • sign up for a newsletter
  • visit a specific page
  • order something
  • give you their contact info
  • watch a video
  • download a file

GWO is capable of handling more complicated scenarios too.  You can, with a bit of javascript hackery, test button click conversions, or any other javascript event.  I’ve worked on systems that tested various form elements (requiring different fields to register, for example).  The requirement for that is a flexible back end, and a javascript front end that can handle re-filling form elements on error.

Next, why would you avoid GWO?  There are a number of scenarios where using this tool just doesn’t make sense.

No actions that you want the user to take on the web

This is the biggest set of sites for which GWO does not make sense, and my blog falls into it.  My end goal is really to talk to someone, on the phone or over coffee, to ascertain whether or not I can help them with my services.  That’s a hard conversion to track.  If you really want to get people talking on the phone, that is a conversion that GWO doesn’t help track either (though it’s possible you could do something with VOIP or different phone numbers and cobble some kind of conversion tracking together).

That’s not to say that sites in this category can’t use GWO.  For instance, I wrote an article long ago about a java technology called JAAS, and it’s still pretty popular.  I’ve been doing some testing on that page to try to drive traffic to this blog, where a big chunk of my current writing is happening.  I was able to increase conversion about 2.5 times (granted, from a small base–0.7% to 1.73%).  I could definitely try to do some optimizations around ad placement or contact calls to action.  The main reason I haven’t is that I still believe my best chance at conversion is referral or word of mouth, not better text on a website.

Javascript free site

If you need a javascript free site, or focus on users who don’t have javascript capabilities (those who use screen readers, for example) or browsers that don’t support javascript, then GWO isn’t a good fit.  That doesn’t mean you should give up on optimization, it just means that GWO isn’t the solution.

Google trust issues

For providing this valuable service, Google could get a look at a lot of interesting data including how many websites optimize, what site admins are tracking, and what URLs those admins consider important.  I have no idea what Google actually does with the data–the company may not track the data at all.  I did a bit of looking on the GWO forum, but didn’t find anything useful.  However, if you don’t want Google having access to this data, then you shouldn’t use GWO.  I don’t use Google Analytics for this very reason.

Speed is essential

Since this is a javascript download, it will affect page load time.  From Firebug, I see that it is a small download (7KB total, over 3 requests–for the test page).  This is not significant, but if you’re aiming for the fastest website, or you’re aiming at users on a slow connection, you might steer away from GWO.

Not enough traffic to your site

If you don’t have much traffic, your effort will be better spent driving more people to your website.  Whether you use search engine optimization, TV advertising, pay per click campaigns, or my favorite, regularly posted organic content, traffic is a prerequisite to using GWO effectively.  How much traffic?  Well, I was able to get conclusive results in my JAAS experiment with 3466 views and 48 conversions in just about 3 months.  That’s about 40 views a day.  I was not testing a ton of variations in my content (only 3).

Your site doesn’t let you put custom javascript on pages

This is the case with wordpress.com blogs (wordpress.com doesn’t allow any custom javascript, due to WordPressMU’s architecture), and I’m sure is common among other ‘build a website easily’ systems.  Not much to say about this, other than that if you’re really using the web as a channel, and not just an online brochure, it might be worth moving to a more flexible site.

Not enough time

I don’t believe this is a valid excuse–spend 7 minutes and watch the video; I believe you’ll see that this is worth a bit of investigating if the above scenarios don’t apply to you.

I can’t think of any other reasons not to use GWO.  Feel free to leave a comment if you feel I missed something.

What are your next steps?

Well, if I’ve convinced you that GWO is worth looking at, you might want to do a bit of further research. Here’s the website optimizer homepage.  Here’s the official GWO blog.  Here’s a great article full of tips for GWO.  There’s a book called Always Be Testing that seems pretty well received that you might want to check out.  I have not read it.

Disclaimer: I’d love to help you out with this (if interested, contact me), but firmly believe that almost anyone can take 30-45 minutes and implement this on their website.  I think GWO is great, cool, useful technology and want to see it used more to make the web a better place.

Business Technology and Society Web Applications | moore |

Open Source Ad Server Roundup

I found this vlog post about a social network building their own advertising infrastructure to be interesting.  Basically, Dogster founder Ted Rheingold (whose lapdog gives him a Bond-villian-like presence during the interview) argues that building your own ad pipeline is harder than using an ad network, but is far more profitable and sustainable.  Ad networks are easy to slap in and give a startup instant revenue, but automated content targeting leaves something to be desired.  In addition, there’s no relationship built between the content purveyor and the advertiser, which leaves the content purveyor more vulnerable to advertising cutbacks.  Advertising salespeople are the easiest to hire, and the easiest to fire, as they should pay for themselves.  (As an aside, here’s an interesting article by Jakob Nielsen talking about how “paid search confiscates too much of a website’s value.”)

I passed it along to a friend who is building a directory site around local Colorado farmers and food and he mentioned some interest in it.  On my own, I took a look around to see what was available for self managed website advertising, and was surpised at the paucity of good open source ad serving software out there.  After all, advertising is one of the great business models (of the web, and of all time); I expected to see a bit more code out there.  But perhaps ad network software isn’t anyone’s itch.  Or maybe there’s no demand for it–sites are either small enough to use Adsense, or they are big enough to pay for a commercial ad server.  Regardless, here’s what I found:

There were a number of projects on source forge that seemed appropriate, but nothing that was actively maintained and useful (lots of projects started in 2001, and dormant).  Adsapient seemed the most useful, but they say on their website: “AdSapient Ad Server is an open source ad server that can be used as a platform for building your own ad serving technology. We recommend using it for educational purposes though.”  Not exactly a ringing endorsement.  Update, 4/27/2009: Someone who worked on Adsapient has started a new ad server.  More information below.

For some reason, this didn’t show up on my search of Sourceforge, but OASIS is definitely an ad serving and management solution.  Last release was 2007.
There is a company that offers hosted OASIS and OpenX ad serving solutions, but they’re rather pricey.  Another (closed source) option is Google’s ad management solution.

The best solution I could find was OpenX.  They have a demo site that works, they are continuing development as you read this, they have a free hosted solution good for up to 25 million impressions a month, and at that time, you can choose to either pay them a monthly fee, or download, install and configure the software and run the ad server on your own box.

Now, I haven’t spent enough time with the OpenX UI to know if there are dealbreakers in there, but based on pricing, ongoing development effort and freedom, I would definitely recommend OpenX.  Here’s an interesting discussion comparing the hosted OpenX solution and Google Ad Manager.

[tags]google ad manager,openx, oasis, ad serving, hosted ad solutions[/tags]

Business Technology Web Applications | moore |

Learn Chinese Characters on the web

I don’t know the first thing about ideograms, but here is a very cool flash application that helps you learn to write Chinese characters.  It’s free for now (no private beta, just beta). According to my friend who posted the link:

It is simple to use and it teaches people how to write characters using spaced-repetition learning system which seems to be quite similiar to the method that Peter Pimsleur used to develop a system to learn to speak foreign languages easily (see Simon & Schuster for spoken language learning).

If that is your thing, it’s worth a look.

Technology and Society Web Applications | moore |

Google Apps For Your Domain Site Launch

One of the fascinating things about business is how ecosystems are created around big technologies. Think of car manufacturers. One of the big reasons that there is fear regarding letting GM go bankrupt right now is the knock on effect–all the suppliers, big and small, that would not get paid while the bankruptcy judge was reorganizing the business. They wouldn’t be able to pay their employees, and that would affect the employees’ ability to buy goods and services from others in the area, which would cause other business to have issues, etc. The point I’m making above is not an argument in favor of bailing out the big auto companies, but rather a bemused look at how complex business ecosystems get.

Software is no different–every big company (HP, Sun, IBM, Microsoft) has multiple channels for getting its technology products out in the market. Independent Software Vendors (ISVs) are crucial for platforms. Consultants, both those employed by the company and those outside it familiar with its technolooges, serve as wells of expertise that can be drawn on by clients for the short or long term. Value Added Resellers (VARs) are important for re-selling company products and technology.

A few months ago I had a conversation with a fellow who was building a VAR for the Google suite of products. It looks like it went live in October. I have not used it, but certainly the idea has power. It is similar to the Office Suite, including outlook, but brings in chat, calendaring, and HTML authoring, all with the simplicity of remote hosting on Google’s infrastructure. Check out Google Apps for Your Domain if you think it might be a good fit for you.

Technology Technology and Society Web Applications | moore |

Colorado Tech News Roundup Site

Via Kevin Cawley (who also has an interesting post on the changing nature of blogging), I found Rocky Radar, which claims to be “Colorado’s Technology Record”. We’ll see how long the folks behind it keep it up–I certainly hope they do.

The Radar started in Sep of 2008 and covers info tech, clean tech, life science and CU news. They do have a nice calendar of Colorado Tech events, even if there’s no ical format exposed.

Hey Rocky Radar founders, here’s an idea I’ve been toying with. CU has a ton of mailing lists announcing free talks across a number of academic interests. Why not

  1. aggregate them all in one massive list, or
  2. provide some kind of calendar interface to them
New Tech Meetup Technology | moore |

The Gift Of Negative Feedback

“Success is a lousy teacher. It seduces smart people into thinking they can’t lose.” – Bill Gates

One of the hardest things to do as a consultant is to admit I screwed up. After all, I’m brought in to solve problems that the client could not or would not address. I’m paid a lot of money (compared to employees, not hedgies). I have a reputation to uphold–that’s how I sell myself.

But, of course, I’m human, and make mistakes. One of the greatest gifts a client can give me is honest feedback on how I erred. It’s a gift because

  • I learn something
  • it takes the client’s time
  • it takes the client’s emotional energy
  • it would be so much easier for the client to just say nothing and not use me again

Did you catch that? Instead of the usual transaction which is trading my knowledge and time to the client for money, the client is giving me knowledge.

It’s precious.

But don’t think it’s easy!

I screwed up recently and was given the gift of negative feedback. My first instinct was to reach for the requirements, or review emails, or figure out some other way to prove to the client that I was not in the wrong.

But the simple fact is that, if the client isn’t satisfied, a consultant is not in the right (I’m leaving aside clients that you should fire). It’s easy for me to think I’m selling hours and knowledge, but what I’m really selling is satisfaction. I don’t want to take a red cent from someone who isn’t satisfied with my work.

So, I had to sit and breath, walk and think, and just generally process this gift. After having done so, I communicated with my client, re-iterated my goal of his satisfaction, and proposed a compromise on my invoice. He was happy with that and we went on to do another project. I’m hoping he’ll consider me for more work in the future, but even if he doesn’t, the lessons I learned were well worth the cost of the compromise.

Business Consulting | moore |

Oracle AMIs for EC2

Many years ago, I did an internship with the database group at the company where I was working. I still have the printout on installing Oracle, and I remember it being at least 40 pages. There was a lot of voodoo with user accounts and kernel settings.

While I’ve worked with Oracle since, I haven’t been responsible for installing it; things may have become easier. But now, they definitely are easier. From the Amazon Developer Newsletter:

Oracle has produced four publicly-available Amazon EC2 AMIs with pre-installed and configured software for Enterprise, Standard or Express editions. In a matter of minutes, developers can have a fully configured Oracle Database computing environment running on Amazon EC2 that includes the web-based management tool Enterprise Manager Database Control and the web-based rapid development tool Applications Express (APEX).

[tags]ec2,oracle,the cloud[/tags]

Cloud Computing Oracle | moore |