For our customers, working with Sitebrand is pretty exciting.  Frankly, any site specific optimization initiative is exciting, because most marketers have historically been blocked out of the website by technical/political barriers, and optimization allows them much greater control over their conversion rates and sales.  Because of this excitement (and the associated results) there has been rapid growth in visibility and adoption of optimization as an online marketing practice.

In my last post I referenced a few points on Online Optimization, specifically goal setting and the difference between optimizing the look of the store and the dialog with the visitor.

Because of discussions I have had about this particular post, I thought I would add another ‘best practice’ point that is critical to the longterm success of any optimization initiative.

Don’t boil the ocean.

While this is a straightforward and somewhat obvious statement, it can get lost in the initial excitement of optimization. (Note: if you work in eMarketing and don’t think site optimization is exciting, you will soon)

Per point one in my last post, you need a defined goal to start an optimization initiative.  Alongside that goal, you need to start with a tightly defined plan to achieve that goal.  So for example if you want to minimize the bounce rate of California visitors on your homepage, you can run a targeted piece of content to 50% of your Cali. Visitors for a one month period, and compare the two bounce rates.

Will an entire California page work better?  Maybe, even probably, but how can you really prove which message on the page had the most impact?  This will be important when you are showing your results to the top of the org chart and asking for additional optimization budget.

Shane Atchison of ZAAZ speaks directly to this concept in his great “Web Analytics intervention” series on ClickZ.  Look at Point 5 in part 2 of the series. (Click here for column)

Lily Chiu at Omniture speaks to this issue as well in a recent post.  As a real estate optimization vendor, Omniture knows the importance of transparent results and encourages starting with small changes that show clear impact, like changing a green button to a red one.

As a vendor that optimizes dialog with a targeted visitor segment, Sitebrand makes similar recommendations.  If you say fifty different targeted messages to fifty different segments, some of which overlap mid-session, how will you know which ones work well?  Moreoever, how will you know which ones work well together?

The purpose of starting small in the initial short term is not to minimize your results, it is to provide the required clarity in a murky web metrics world to ensure that you can grow your optimization plans in the long term.  The upside is that your initial requirements are smaller, and your long term payoff is larger.

Cheers,

Jim