We recently engaged with a client to develop and test multiple versions of landing pages for their Google PPC traffic. After running these tests for a little over 2 weeks, we discovered a page that performed over 140% better than their default landing page for an important group of AdWords traffic.

As you might guess we couldn't wait to share these results with the client and thought that they, in turn, would share our enthusiasm. Well… yes and no. They were pleased with the results, but felt the winning page was “ugly."

“Ugly??” we responded. “Doesn’t 140% lift trump ugly?”

It turned out 140% did trump “ugly," and they kept the page, which has affectionately come to be called “Ugly Betty” by members of their team.

Still, the situation begs the question, “Should ‘ugly’ always win?”

To clarify, the client felt the page was ugly because it didn’t completely fit within their brand guidelines. So we must consider what about the page caused it to perform well. After reviewing the page, we’ve come away with 3 key principles that helped this page perform so well:

1) Messaging should grab the visitor’s attention…subtly

This means that while it’s important for the key messaging on your page to stand out, it’s equally important that it doesn’t stand out to the point of being a distraction. With the increasing use of RIAs on sites, this can be a challenge. RIAs can be extremely valuable when used effectively, but we’ve all experienced sites where the overuse of RIAs (like Flash) can be a distraction.

However, burying your important messaging within the other elements on your site can be equally damaging. Make sure your important messages are crisp, clear and easy to see. The page we developed for our client had 3 clear messages of 4 words or less. Together, the messages were one of the most prominent elements on the page.

2) Where’s the call-to-action?

It’s amazing how often a page leaves us unclear on what we're meant to do. The call-to-action is the one thing you cannot allow your visitor to miss.

The page we developed for our client had a large red button with a clear call-to-action that was the most prominent element on the page.

How do you know if your call-to-action is too bold, too obnoxious? See below…

3) Test it

Did we have any idea that “Ugly Betty” was going to perform 140% better than the original? Nope. In fact, we may not have even tried this page if we had decided purely on looks. As marketers, it’s easy to get caught in the traditional way of doing things. “This is how we do it,” and, “This is our branding,” are statements we hear a lot.

We would ask a different question, “How do your customers want you to do it?” Trust us, they’ll tell you. That’s why we test. The winning page was one of 4 versions we tested against the original page. All pages performed well, but only one produced 140% lift.

We’re not telling you to build a page that is completely against your brand. How your brand fits into design is an entirely different topic. We’re simply hoping the principles we saw working from our experience with “Ugly Betty” will help you get more out of your landing pages.

Who knows, maybe you can build your own “ugly” page that performs 140% better than your original.

Would that be so bad?

Posted by Joel Hall

If you’re in the internet content business, you probably still think of your web site as a magazine, with your home page serving as the glossy, attention-getting cover. I hate to break it to you, but it’s likely that less than half of your users will lay eyes on your home page.

In fact, one of the most common mistakes made by media sites is spending too much time on their home page and not enough focus on engaging those users who enter on a content page.

As a product manager at a media web site myself, I always wrote off landing pages as a phenomenon for e-commerce sites. Boy, was I wrong. I now realize that landing pages are just as important for media sites - perhaps even more so.

It's best to think of your content pages as the de facto homepage for most users. After all, that's where most of them start their experience on your web site. So when you have an incredible scoop that you’re promoting on your site’s homepage, consider this: how are your landing page users getting exposed to it?

Here's another question: how are you promoting the value proposition of your site to your landing page users? You've worked hard to create branding and messaging for your site. Is all of that great messaging apparent on your typical content page? Check it out for yourself. You’ll probably be shocked at how little of your site's messaging actually surfaces.

But don’t get discouraged. You don’t need to redesign your landing pages from scratch to make big improvements. Here are three simple things you can do immediately to make every landing page on your site speak for your site’s strengths.

Target new users to educate them about your site
Carve out some real estate near the top of the landing page and "mbox it." That is, create a content slot that allows you to change content easily depending on user-type. Then, target users depending on whether they have visited before. To new users, serve content that lets them know what is special about your site: Can users comment on stories? Does your site have an active community? Don’t let new users leave without telling them what makes you unique.

Recommend next steps
Offermatica offers automated content suggestions (ACS), which can recommend additional content (stories, videos, or whatever!) that will engage your users. Displaying these content suggestions as a next step is one key way to hook a new reader to spend a few more minutes of his or her busy day with you.

Use keyword reinforcement
Repeat the Google keyword the user searched on to get to your site; place it near the top of the landing page. This can be a simple message, like “You searched for ‘automated content suggestions’ on Google.” This lets the user know that you understand what he or she is looking for. Make that keyword clickable to generate an internal search, so the user can see the content your site has to offer on the subject.

It’s hard to accept that so many of our readers don’t enter our sites the way we imagine. As publishers, our hope is to give them the experience of reading our site “cover to cover”. Ironically, the best way to get more users to do just that is to make the landing page the best start page it can be. You have your 2.3 seconds of time with your new users. Make it count.

Posted by John Broady

We've had mixed success encouraging companies to engage in on-site behavioral targeting for 4 months since releasing Offermatica Affinity Targeting. I should clarify. When companies DO affinity targeting they see improvement in their key performance metrics. Yet it remains difficult to motivate companies to engage in behavioral targeting at all.

The difficulty stems from a belief that on site BT is complicated. I hear people say that the effort requires major work and organizational change. To be fair, between no BT and full BT, there is significant work and major change required. Fortunately, getting started requires neither.

Here are 4 things that you can do right now to find quick wins with on site behavioral targeting:

Read on »

Do you remember the story line from the movie “The Breakfast Club?” It was based on a familiar theme: social groups are forced into close proximity and their differences seem insurmountable. In "The Breakfast Club," it was the Jocks, the Freaks and the Popular Kids. They were forced to interact because they shared a (long) Saturday detention. After hours of forced closeness, they realize that they aren’t so different after all, and, with the help of a catchy soundtrack, they join forces against the abusive principal.

We watch this story unfold over and over again and might conclude that it is both possible and highly desirable for everyone to get along. After all, we have to interact, we are more similar than different and together we can do things that we cannot do alone. So why does it never stick?

Read on »

This week, we met with two companies whose online businesses are primarily driven by ad revenues. As we discussed ideas for optimizing their sites, the same argument emerged: can we take the risk of improving user experience with fewer page views, even if that means a short-term hit to our ad revenue? This debate was especially acute around Web 2.0 functionality, like AJAX-driven mouseovers and dropdown menus that could eliminate journey pages.

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“Welcome back Mr. Roche, what can I do for you today? “

“I’m glad you called, I was about to call you. There is a stock that I think you should look at.”

“We just got the silver one with the black leather seats in. Walk with me, I want to show it to you.”

Personalization happens in the real world. It makes us feel like a valued customer. In high-touch service business and retail it is expected. Why do you think that it does not happen on line?

Read on »

As engagement becomes a more valuable - and measurable - metric, optimizing Flash videos and other rich internet applications becomes critical.

We at OTTO Digital and Offermatica have been optimizing flash for some time with clients. Here are some of the things we've learned.

6 Steps in Optimizing Flash Video

Step #1. Theme
The best video is not the one the interactive designer or the brand agency delivers. It's the one that gets the highest percentage of users to perform an action.
For a travel site, for example, do you show the video with the happy family enjoying their time together or do you show fantastic clips from some of the most popular travel destinations? How about a mix of both?

Read on »

Over the last couple of days, USA today covered the new TV lineups for the major networks. Crime and legal dramas are in, comedy is out, sadly for the art of TV, reality TV is still with us.

But do you know what all of the networks’ fall lineups have in common?
None of them, none, show the same program every hour, every day in every market.
They show different content to daytime viewers, primetime, late night. Different content on each day of the week, based on who is watching and what type of program they seem to like on those days.

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Another interesting optimization OTTO Digital ran for Skype UK focused on their top navigation bar. As Skype is extends its focus from free downloads to e-commerce, the company wants to drive more purchases (calls to landlines, voicemail, ringtones, accessories, etc.). The original navigation bar did not use words that properly conveyed the breadth of Skype’s new e-commerce offering.

In particular, “Call phones” did not seem to translate well the fact that Skype users could buy credit to use their Skype software to call landlines or cell phones. And “Shop” did not make you feel that Skype has a full-fledged accessories store. Finally, “Share” meant that a user could invite friends or family to join the Skype network.

We decided to try just three different wordings in a simple A/B test performed by Offermatica to try to increase Revenue per Visitor (RPV). So, we changed “Call phones” to “Skype Credit”, “Shop” to “Accessories” and “Share” to “Invite friends”. The test ran for 10 days and the results were dramatic! The new variation of the top navigation bar showed an increase in RPV of 18.75% with a 99.9% confidence level.

Three small changes within a test that took half a day to implement resulted in a dramatic increase in sales. These results were totally unexpected by Skype. They were aware that their choice of words in the navigation bar was perhaps not the best, but they had no idea how much it was impacting their bottom line. At OTTO, we knew that having more direct call-to-actions and a better adequacy between link names and their click-through pages (especially for products and features that are not strongly promoted throughout the site) can translate into big results.

Posted by Andre Prevot

Your client may not know it, but you certainly do: your designs could be better.

Maybe you're creating a new homepage, or redesigning a checkout flow, or creating a new flash game. Maybe you're even helping your customer rework their business model.

And, hopefully, you've done your research. You've synthesized your client's goals and their customers' goals into a coherent business strategy. Hopefully, you've conducted a competitive review. Maybe you've even done some observational customer research.

Read on »