Online Traction

In a few weeks Google plan to launch a new service called ‘Website Optimizer‘. Its associated with Google Adwords and focuses on how to test the effectiveness of the landing pages of your ads. In other words it quickly helps you determine which landing page yields the most conversions, visitors to customers.

This is a really important, and frequently overlooked, aspect of both your online ads and your website generally. When someone lands on your site or your landing page they decide in roughly 3 seconds whether to stay or leave. If there is no compelling content they leave.

Website Optimizer promises to do away with what used to be an arduous (and costly) process of creating multiple landing pages and testing them over time. The key question is what is the optimal composition and configuration of content to make the right visitor stay and become a customer. The most important factors in a landing page:

• Use an appropriate headline: short, sharp, actionable
• Images and graphics must support the text
• Simple promotional text
• A call to action

Googles Website Optimizer requires some coding to your pages but once in place carries out automatic multi-variate tests (ie. ‘what if I used this image here and that text there’). All data is then crunched and produced in good looking and useful reports.

Right now you can sign up to participate in the beta; selection criteria are based on your volume of traffic through Adwords. The number of beta testers is limited. Website Optimizer will be free when launched and of course is relevant to your other advertising campaigns (eg. Yahoo and MSN sponsored listings).

Unsurprisingly, Seth Godin thought of it before. More information about Web Optimizer and beta signup direct from Google here.