"You look like someone I can trust…"

We are more likely to respond positively to — and be persuaded by — people we like. And guess who we tend to like best: People who are similar to us!

There are a number of ways in which people can be similar to us, including:

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For decades companies have been keeping an eye on their rivals. Large corporations dedicate funds every year into finding out what the competition is doing. They do this to try and stay ahead and make sure that they're offering the best products and services on the market. If your company relies on its online presence then it's a good idea to also be on top of what's going on with the sites you're competing with. Take a look at their SEO strategy and evaluate how it compares with what your own site is doing.

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In January of 2009, YouTube approached VKI Studios to develop a test using Google's own Website Optimizer. Working together, VKI Studios and YouTube implemented one of the largest Google Website Optimizer (GWO) experiments in history, with a whopping 1024 combinations and more traffic than any reasonable site should have to maintain. The results: a 15.6% increase in YouTube sign-ups.

Last month, we interviewed Neal McGann and Michael Straker, the team behind the experiment, to ask what goes into creating such a massive test. This was originally released exclusively to subscribers to the VKI Studios newsletter, but today we're making it available to our blog readers.

As always, if you're interested in GWO or other landing page testing, be sure to talk to us.

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I have to start looking for a new image again? Oh jeeze…

Big roundup today. What, 12 stories? But then its been a pretty big week in tech news, with two releases from Google, and the follow through from last weeks conferences.

This week we have advice on selecting analytics tools, motion charts, lots of sidewiki, chrome frame, and all sorts of marketing research.

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What does an urchin and website analytics have in common?
No idea.

As (currently) the only Urchin Authorized Consultants in Canada, we’re frequently asked about the difference between Google Analytics and Google Urchin. When people call they seem to think about the relationship as a standard freemium model, with Google Analytics being a limited “demo” and Urchin being the “premium” product.

This is not the case.

Google Analytics (GA) IS the full fledged product, the difference lies in Urchin’s role as an in-house analytics tool with log file analysis. Urchin is a hybrid solution that can use both javascript tagging and server log files, adding richer details to its reporting, and it stores all information on your servers—great for companies who can’t risk allowing information into the hands of outside sources, while GA is an externally hosted solution, withoutlog analysis, but with additional features. One is not necessarily a better version of the other, instead they serve two different roles.

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New improved baitless trap: Lower maintenance!

We recently concluded some interesting A/B/n tests for an online driving school's landing page. I thought I'd share the results, as it's a great example of the distinction between usable design and persuasive design.

We restricted our test to the main content area of the page, shown below:

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The new NFL season just started and it’s time to enjoy the game and cheer on your favorite teams. And for us it is time to take a look at the e-commerce website of The National Football League - http://www.nflshop.com/.

This website had sales of $90M in 2007 according to Internet Retailer and, unlike most of our SEO Mistakes picks, no brick and mortar stores. We can assume that any increase in the website’s traffic would generate significant additional revenue for them.

Search engine traffic is coming to this site from both paid and natural search sources, so let’s take a look at the website’s SEO to find some missed opportunities to improve on-page optimization and bring more traffic/revenue:

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Solutions for the Metrically Challenged

So you’ve finally decided to publish a newsletter or regularly send updates about the latest and greatest deals on your ecommerce site. You’ve got your list built out and your email design is looking fantastic. From here on out it should be a cakewalk, right? Well I hate to break it to you but your work has just begun. For your email campaign to reach it’s true potential you’ll need to be constantly tweaking and improving it. This is definitely not a set and forget project!

For you to get the best ROI out of your mailing you’re going to need to pay special attention to a few important metrics and make constant tweaks till you see those numbers improve.

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Don't know if its IMA and a bunch of different conference occurring right now, energy from recent internet marketing related news, or the planets aligning in perfect symmetry with the alien pyramids on Mars (ok, probably not the latter) but this has been a huge week for SEO and internet marketing related blog posts.

This week we have Google tracking you more than ever, SEO on your phone, Google and social search, audience segmentation models, net neutrality and more…

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It's nice to see our friends at GWO are listening. Just in the past week or two, they've made three notable improvements.

1. Experimenter Notes

The Settings page now includes a text field in which you can add your own annotations. This is very handy for quickly jotting down hypotheses, noting external factors that might affect an ongoing test, or debriefing a completed experiment. It's also an easy way for team members to keep each other apprised as to where a project stands. It's especially handy for those of us who usually have several experiments running at the same time.

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