Google will soon begin offering AdWords advertisers a new tool to experiment with a variety of different landing page layouts in order determine which one gains the most conversions from site visitors. Google Analytics Senior Manager Brett Crosby unveiled the tool, called Google Website Optimizer, this morning at the eMetrics summit in Washington D.C. If you find web site traffic heat maps like CrazyEgg, ClickDensity or Google Analytics’ own heat map interesting, this looks like the next generation of that kind of tool. If Google’s Website Optimizer can score high on usability, I expect it to be a big hit with small and medium size website publishers.
Site publishers will be provided code to drop into their landing page, tagging layout elements and content for tracking by the Optimizer. The tool will then allow publishers to create multiple versions of that landing page that are served up randomly to visitors entering the site via AdWords promotions. As visitors interact with the different versions of the page, publishers are given detailed reports on visitor activity organized by version and page section. You’ll be able to see which sections are most important relative to others, which versions of the page see the highest increase in conversions and make changes to layout accordingly.
Once you determine a layout and design that works best, you’ll be able to stop the experiment and have that version served to all visitors incoming from AdWords. New experiments can be begun at any time as long as the Website Optimizer code is left in your page code.
Yahoo! was just catching up with the AdWords model with the first release yesterday of their next generation advertising platform, code named Panama. Microsoft’s Ad Center has slowly begun inviting advertisers into a similar platform of its own this summer. Today’s offering from Google could help AdWords maintain its lead in the innovation department. I’ve thought for some time that there is plenty of room for Yahoo! and Microsoft to take market share from AdWords by offering a better price cut, better customer service or some type of solution to click-fraud. While that’s still true, if WebSite Optimizer works as advertised I think it will be a very compelling service for small publishers. Better conversion rates are good news for everyone involved and this is a very logical way to make that happen.
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Is today Google day on TechCrunch?
Every day is Google day, everywhere.
Did you not get the memo?
Maybe this is off topic , but where to find more info about yahoo’s new generation advertising platform?
I don’t see that covered in TC.
When the hell is Google going to actually (gasp) charge some money for these “fabulous” products? They go out and buy Urchin for $30M and turn around and make it free as Google Analytics. Obviously it helps them sell more ads, but what about people who have found that Google’s AdWords is riddled with click-fraud who might just want a good analytics package?
Google shareholders should be shaking their heads…
In a few years you’ll drive your Google to the Google to buy some Googles for your Google
Faisal, look for a post on that here this afternoon.
I have been using the free Google Analytics tool on my site and it works great. The addition of Website Optimizer will be very useful and powerful for web publishers.
Mike,
Everything is free. Dont you know? Music, Maps and MORE… even TC!
This is the business model that propelled ‘99… Except now THE $ for CPMS is UP- WAY UP!!! LETS ALL PARTY LIKE ROCK STARS!
I have been working with a similar tool for a few month now. My feedback is that there is no such thing as best page as each customer has different preferences. I think it’s a great step in the right direction but it shouldn’t be a one time thing but an ongoing process of checking the various options and their impact on conversion
That is one lucky webmaster. I am jealous of those conversion rates.
Speaking of overdosing on Google, I wonder what Powerset Inc is up to and when they will be revealing their “Google killer” search engine.
Anyone know if the advertiser will need to be running Google Analytics, or just have an AdWords campaign?
Here in Google we say everything as Google
Amazing. It is only going to get hard for Google’s foes to catch up.
Vince - the website doesn’t need to be running Google Analytics - you just need a adwords account.
Mike — Google’s 30m for Urchin represents 1.2% of their quarterly earnings. Considering the vast majority of their earnings are from advertising, Urchin only needs to boost earnings a fraction of a percentage per quarter to pay for itself in a year. A pretty good deal for Google whether or not they’re charging for the service.
Michael,
I think you meant this might get play to small and midsize advertisers. This tool enables them to optimize conversions to their landing page.
This could ulitmately benefit AdSense publishers if it indeed helps advertisers with conversions and increases their ROI.
H
They wanted my trust and I gave it - I have used GMail in fact my entire office at Socialtext uses GMail instead of using an exchange server - the idea here being we are also part of Office 2.0 and should support others out there that are part of our group - an office with out Microsoft exchange.
I was in love with my Gmail, I set it up to pop serv into my email client on my Mac iBook - is was easy to set up and I was living the email life, it didn’t even feel like I didn’t have an exchange server. This was really working - they had me - a fan forever, and a product champion convincing others to do the same as I had.
And then it all came crashing down - Monday afternoon at 1:15pm my fantasy with google ended - I got error message after error message my password did not match my email client said - I reset everything, I even reinstalled the F*&(%$@ Software - I sent in a bug report detailing what I had done. I read the help pages, I called my friend who works on Macs, I joined a google group to ask for help. NOTHING- I sent another bug report - NOTHING.
It was determined by those smarter than I that it was not my computer, not my email client - it was GOOGLE - and they were not responding - I sent at least 3 bug reports none where responded to. When I worked at Amazon we had a company standard of getting back to people within 24 hrs. I live via my email as I am sure we all do. And to be honest it’s not just the lost email. It’s the fact that I spent all of Tuesday trying to work out how to fix it. Google once again proves the fact that THERE IS NO FREE LUNCH - pay with your duckets or pay with your time. So as of today at 10:30 am on Wednesday I have not heard back from Google - and they want me to trust them with documents - forget it. I will never and I encourage you all to refuse.
There is a great point that is at debate here - we heard about it at my Office 2.0 conference - is Software as a Service a must have? I would rather pay 40 bucks a month to have my gmail work - then to have it not work and to not even receive a reply - I want my Software but I want the service, I want to be able to have someone troubleshoot in a timely fashion when something does not work and I can not fix it.
And if you work at Google and are reading this - please HELP…….
Wow. I wasn’t expecting this from Google. Certainly innovative and much needed. Offermatica and Optimost will need to find a new business model and stop charging $10K-$20K/month for similar tests. This isn’t just A/B testing, but is full throttle multivariate landing page testing. The math was never complicated enough to warrant the cost optimization companies were charging and now Google has empowered designers to make conversion improvements internally. Great work and a very timely offering.
The eventual release of this new service will serve as a good validation that *testing* is an effective and graspable way to systematically improve web site effectiveness.
What’s at risk of being overshadowed here is that there’s more to site-side optimization than the landing page — factors beyond the landing page can (and will) influence visitor behavior. So, for all but simple or extremely linear sites, what is needed is a way to vary any part of the site and measure influence towards any number of desired behaviors. It’s not just about single-metric conversion.
Dave
SiteSpect, Inc.
Heh seems to be alot about Google today
This might be very useful i like the concept of crazy just when used on my websites the functionality is missing
What is it about Google that gets me to play with every single new toy they come out with? Can’t wait to try this one. Thanks for the scoop.
How do you spell “reletive”?
I am fascinated with Google’s continuous offerings of new products. I only use a few of Google’s products, but I have looked at many of them and see their value for the average consumer.
Interestingly, we launched A/B Testing in clickdensity (http://www.clickdensity.com) on the same day they announced this! Why won’t Google leave us alone!?
Anyhoo, we’ll be adding in multivariate reporting soon too, so go give it a go - you don’t need an Adwords account to try it…
I’ve taken a quick look at your postings, which are very interesting. Lots of material and ideas! Congrats on being so focused!
I like to have google e-mail address and the Phone Number if it possible.
Furthermore, i will be very, much excited if my request will be listen to. e.g. How to removed a particular text from the programme.
Thanks.
Prince.
Ad-words? Who buys from those advertising? I don’t know nobody who buys from them, and google spend billions buying and buying.