Testing is probably the most effective way to optimize websites. Through testing we can understand what our customers like, which ultimately will help us create a better customer experience for our audience. But “our audience” is usually not a unique type of person; it is important use techniques such as Test Segmentation to understand the differences in the tastes of each cluster of customers.
However, where can you get ideas for tests? How do you choose, for example, if you should use an image of a man, a woman, a couple, a baby or a family? Most of us do not have the privilege of testing the YouTube homepage: traffic is limited for most sites, so it is important to run tests that have a high chance of making a difference. We have to focus our efforts on our best guesses. In this post, we will show a way to use DoubleClick Ad Planner to research for testing ideas that will be tailor made to the segments you are trying to target in your website.
Finding Your Audience on Ad Planner
In a recent blog post on the DoubleClick Advertiser Blog, the DoubleClick Ad Planner mission is described as:
…to provide the deepest, most accurate insight into online audiences possible. This insight helps display advertisers select the best sites for their media plans and drive results for their campaigns.
However, I believe this description is missing an important part, which is not less important to advertisers: to understand your audience tastes and which kind of websites they like. The DoubleClick Ad Planner provides important insights into how to design your campaign landing pages and your website at all.
So, let’s suppose I am working to optimize the eMetrics Summit website for the San Francisco conference in 2011. The Summit targets marketing managers, web analysts and business intelligence experts that are trying to understand how to increase the return on online investments. Here is how to find the tastes and preferences of this audience:
Below is a screenshot from DoubleClick Ad Planner showing all the segmenting options and the audience created above. We can call the list created below “Website Testing Inspiration”
Getting Ideas for Your Test
Once we find the “Website Testing Inspiration” table, which shows the websites where our targeted audience is surfing around, we have the raw material necessary to get ideas for our testing efforts. Continuing our example above, we can visit the websites in the Top 10 websites that match our audience and start analyzing them.
So, here are a few insights from the analysis above for the eMetrics San Francisco home:
Bonus: Instead of looking for your audience and which sites they visit, you can also look into your competitors’ sites and understand which segments they are attracting that you are not. Read more about it on Avinash’s post: Competitive Intelligence Analysis: Google / DoubleClick Ad Planner.