Mission: Take a Web site with multiple domain names, channels, and products, and make it sleek, sexy, and ready for boffo business (in other words, optimized).
The twist? This major optimization project has to be completed and live in mere weeks–when the site will get a tidal wave of traffic from its promotion on an upcoming TV series.
At today’s Training and Solutions Session (TSS), analysts and managers from the MarketingExperiments science and journal teams learned several techniques to help us deconstruct and solve online marketing challenges like these.
The question posed by Dr. Flint McGlaughlin: “What is the most effective way to help [the company] capture the highest yield from the TV opportunity?”
Put another way: What can we, or should we, change or test–with only four weeks until showtime? We can’t test everything that needs to change.
As most marketing researchers know, to achieve confidence in your findings, a test must have run a certain number of cycles. Four weeks isn’t much time to complete valid tests. Within these constraints, Flint asked, what is the best that we can accomplish?
After hearing which elements the group would change first, Flint recommended a simple, linear “ultimately optimizable” approach:
• Pare down the number of confusing, competing URLs;
• Sequence the offers, highlighting the product being advertised during primetime;
• Create a moderately-priced subscription offer to complement the main product; and
• Capture email addresses at every opportunity along the transaction path.
The thinking behind that approach: Maximize simplicity and revenue. And focus on the areas with the biggest potential impact given the time crunch.
Which of these changes will be implemented? How well will they meet the objectives? Will these ideas continue to drive revenue long after the series ends its run? That’s why they call it a cliffhanger.
Tune into our summer or fall Web Clinics for the answers…
