Dan Darnell's Blog

An expert in enterprise software product marketing, Dan is the Director of Optimost Product Marketing at Autonomy Interwoven. Dan’s blog is geared towards interactive marketers and covers a slew of topics, including Website optimization, analytics, multivariable testing, behavioral targeting, and more. Prior to jumping into the “real” world, Dan taught physics at a secondary school in Tanzania, East Africa, as a member of the U.S. Peace Corps. Dan received his BA from the University of Colorado at Boulder and his MBA from Carnegie Mellon University’s Tepper School of Business. Connect with Dan on LinkedIn

Tough Times Call for Testing Measures

February 18, 2009 @ 3:15 pm by Dan Darnell

In thinking about the approach that one must take to marketing in this tough economy, I recall an analogy that a professor once told me about students.  He said, freshman don’t know that they don’t know, sophomores know that they don’t know, juniors don’t know that they know, and seniors know what they know. I find this is a good way to look at a lot of changing situations in life. The first step is to realize that you don’t know exactly how to respond while the second step is to figure out how you are going to get back to having some certainty again about what you do know. At this point in this economic crisis, I think that many marketers are freshman again just trying to figure out how to find the cafeteria. Unfortunately, many of us are used to acting like seniors with all the answers.

Obviously we are not all going back to “website design school,” but we are going to have to rethink our traditional approaches. Much of what we thought we knew about our customers and the content, products, and offers that resonated with them is changing. In addition, with our budgets under increased scrutiny, we need to make sure that anything we do is going to provide proven measurable results and a superior return on investment.

Now that we know that we don’t know, let’s step back for a second. One of the many virtues of website testing and optimization is that it allows the marketer to present site visitors with multiple options for content, pricing, messages, images, page layout, etc, and lets the visitors choose the best version that drives them to take action. Website testing and optimization integrates the voice of the customer into your marketing in an unbiased way, regardless of the economic climate.

Besides the content, the profile of the people who are coming to your website may be changing. This makes the ability to understand audience segments based on their content preferences – and how they are evolving – critically important as well. Both an understanding of content and audience segment targeting are vital to a robust website testing and optimization program.

So, with the knowledge that website testing and optimization can help put us back on a path to actually knowing what our site visitors want, we can once again begin to take control over our websites despite the changing environment. Even better, with a system in place to sense and respond to changes in our website environment, we become more resilient and able to change with the changing times. So, when customer behavior starts to change for the better, websites with active testing and optimization programs will be in a better position to capitalize on the change, and their marketers won’t have to go back to school to figure out how to graduate to a truly dynamic and relevant web presence.

No Comments | Category: Multivariable Optimization | Online Marketing

There are Some Things We Can Agree On

December 11, 2008 @ 4:08 pm by Dan Darnell

I attended SES Chicago this week. The Wednesday keynote was by Josh James, the CEO of Omniture. Now, for reasons that are probably obvious to some, I don’t always see eye to eye with Omniture’s positions or representations. In this case, however, I actually liked a few of the messages that I heard. The first thing I liked was the concept of putting interactive marketers in the quarterback role, the second idea was that CFOs are not going to approve projects unless they “print money’, and third the idea that we will all be doing more with less and therefore will have to make the most of the traffic we have.

I agree that interactive marketers, search marketers and web analytics experts are in the driver’s seat for the time being. We need to make the most of this opportunity to help drive our marketing organizations to streamline and optimize processes. All the while, those areas that we can optimize or measure are likely to come under our control or at least heavily under our influence. This is chance to align our marketing teams with a metrics driven and optimized agenda and build our careers in the process.

The second point is that, given the economic conditions, CFOs are not going to approve any projects unless they print money. I am happy to say that website optimization, e.g., Optimost, is clearly in that category. One of my customers recently told me that testing and optimization is like finding money. This makes sense because you are taking people who are already coming to your website and getting them to take action. This same customer told me that while they had gone through layoffs and restructuring already the determined that their Optimost project was so valuable they could not afford to stop doing it. So, as you look for those projects that you think might get funded in 2009, take a look at website optimization.

This brings me to the third point. We are all going to have to more with less. As your marketing budget and search budget go down, the results you are expected to achieve are likely to stay the same or go up. One way you can make this happen is to invest in website optimization to make sure you are making the most of every customer who comes to your website. Just take a minute the think about what a 10% or 25% improvement in conversion rates would mean to your revenue and profits.

So, to net this out, times are changing. As an interactive marketers and someone who generates measurable results, you need to take the lead in your department. This is a real opportunity to build your career. Now is the time to get funding for your website optimization project because you can show that it will have a measurable impact on your top line revenues and profits. Don’t sit on the sidelines and wait to see where this economy takes you; be the one who grabs the bull by the horns and save the day for your business. When we come out of this funk, not only will your business be optimized for performance but you will probably have made a name for yourself in your marketing department.

1 comment | Category: Multivariable Optimization | Online Marketing | Search Engine Optimization

Let Your Creative People be Creative

November 4, 2008 @ 10:42 am by Dan Darnell

Is it possible that the rise of metrics driven marketing will drive creative people out of marketing? I think it is quite the opposite. I believe that analytical, metrics driven marketing will free creative marketers to use their creative powers. At this point, you are probably thinking about your web analytics tools and wondering how they are going to help. Unfortunately, they are not the kind of tools you need to break your chains. What you need is website testing and optimization. When you can test everything from little changes to radical ideas on your website without driving your business into the ground, you open up a world of possibilities for your creative marketing talent. Here’s how:

Gaining Time – First, the ability to test different design concepts can drastically reduce the amount of time that creative people have to spend in design review meetings with people who don’t understand the first thing about what they do or why. Not having to sit in the room with these people is a plus and probably stimulates creativity, but the real benefit is that the creative people have more time to be creative without the roadblocks and bottlenecks that creative review meetings can cause.

Gaining Freedom – Second, the ability to test allows people to really innovate. If you want, you can throw your style guide out the window and let creative people really try something radical without hurting your business in the process. You don’t have to worry about coming up with some crazy idea that might revolutionize your website or sink it. Either way, you will know which one it is by testing the idea with only a small amount of traffic. If the idea is great, you can quickly roll it out to everyone or use the idea throughout your site. Testing gives your creative people some room to test inside and outside the style guide to see if there are really better ideas out there.

Removing the HiPPO – Finally, you can prove which creative options are the best, not just the one that the boss thought of. How depressing is it to go into a meeting with a great idea, only to find that your boss does not like it or does not care. This is the HiPPO (Highest Paid Person’s Opinion) effect. Nothing will stifle a creative intellect like a HiPPO. Sometimes, people in positions of authority actually have good ideas and with testing in place, you can add their ideas to the mix without hurting their ego or risking damage to your career.

So, let metrics driven marketing come. We welcome it. Let the creative people be free to be creative.

No Comments | Category: Multivariable Optimization | Online Marketing

Site Redesign is Dead – Long Live Site Redesign

September 26, 2008 @ 2:06 pm by Dan Darnell

For the sake of discussion, I would like to posit that traditional site redesign is a thing of the past. The web has evolved into a place that facilitates a two-way dialog with customers including social networking, user generated content, and rich internet applications. The speed that websites, customer opinions and segments are evolving does not align with even a yearly redesign process. With this new perspective, has to come a new paradigm on site redesign. So what are you going to do? From where I am sitting, the next big thing is site redesign is continuous website optimization.

Before I get to the wonder that is continuous website optimization, let me answer some of the questions that you are likely to have at this point – Yes, you still need a creative agency or a creative group. Who do you think is going to turn your really creative ideas in to reality? (I would much rather have a mediocre idea well executed than a great idea poorly executed.) Yes, you still need a web content management system. How else are you going to keep up with the changes you need to make at internet speed? Yes, I realize you don’t have infinite resources to work on all kinds of little projects (probably because you are in the middle of a site redesign). You are going to change your mindset a bit. With that said, let me explain continuous website optimization is and how it works.

Continuous website optimization is the process of testing and learning about changes through experimentation and rapid targeted deployment of winning concepts. This is accomplished by creating different creative alternatives for key areas of your website and then testing them against each other to see what your site visitors respond to. You should consider all types of changes in this process from small changes like the color of a button to large concept level changes like a complete creative overhaul of a page or multiple pages like a shopping cart. Each of these will bring different points of view and learning. Once an optimization experiment has delivered some good results, you can leave the experiment running in the background with a small sample of your traffic. This will allow you to sense if your new winning content starts to lose its effectiveness. With this approach, you will make continuous improvements to your site that are results driven, e.g., your site will be getting better at whatever it is supposed to be doing, such as generating leads, selling products, etc.

If you accept that a complete overhaul of your website every few years does not meet your business goals (or your personal ones) then you have already taken the first step. The next step is to realize that you can do it now and may not need any new resources to make this possible. The first thing you need is creative people who have ideas about how to improve your website over time. You probably have creative people in your marketing department who have been stomped down after years of creating marketing plans. You need to find these people and revitalize them. If you don’t have creative people in your marketing department, then get a very good interactive agency (see our partner list for ideas). And yes, you will need to have a great multivariable testing solution to help you experiment and drive continuous results. With this approach, think of all the pain and suffering you will avert by continually updating your site to keep up with the times instead of trying to do an overhaul which will be out of date by the time you launch.

No Comments | Category: Multivariable Optimization | Online Marketing | Targeting & Engagement

Man vs. Machine

August 26, 2008 @ 5:00 am by Dan Darnell

This year at the Interwoven GearUp conference in San Francisco, there was a unique opportunity to gain some insight into human nature. I am not talking about some wild after-hours party or crazy behavior; I am thinking in particular about a game that we played.

The game was simple, we showed the entire audience of 700 plus in the enterprise web solutions session a webpage and we asked them to pick the design elements of the page that would yield the best conversion. In this case, the goal of the landing page was to have people subscribe to a monthly eNewsletter for a travel website. We showed everyone the original page and then walked through each of the possible sets of changes that were being considered. In a sense, we turned the entire audience in to a content committee for this landing page. Not surprisingly the content committee did not do very well in determining the optimal design.

After getting a tally of all the results, we came back to the group a few days later to announce the results of the contest. For the first element, which was the submit button, only 18% of people correctly identified the button which was ultimately preferred by actual site visitors. For the email entry field, only 21% were correct while 36% selected one of the underperforming concepts. The next item was some offer copy and only 13% of people selected the correct answer, followed by the pictures at the top of the page where only 11% of the people were correct. Finally, there was the background color of the page. Amazingly 41% of the people actually got that one right and said that black or neon green is not better than white.

Even more interesting than the results for each element on the page was the combined results for the group. More than 40% of people in the audience did not get a single answer correct and another 40% only got one answer right. In the end the winner got 3 of the 5 correct.

I guess this only shows what many of us already know and many more are beginning to find out – design by committee probably does not work and letting your customers assist in your design process most certainly does.

No Comments | Category: Multivariable Optimization | Online Marketing | Targeting & Engagement | Web Content Management