Categories

Authors

Pages

Recent posts

Recent comments

Archives

Lily Chiu

Optimize: Tales of Execution

Day 1: I Just Got a Testing Platform. Now What?

Wednesday, 11 March 2009 @ 19:25, by Lily Chiu

Take a deep breath. Before you start thinking about the implementation and what you can or cannot do with the platform, begin with your data. Look for pages with the highest bounce rate, steps in your funnel with the greatest fallout, landing pages with the lowest conversion rate. These should be red flags … Read more »

Testing Social Media Traffic

Tuesday, 10 February 2009 @ 18:06, by Lily Chiu

I have a confession to make: I’m not a Twitterholic. Not even close. I could shut TweetDeck down for a few days and continue stumbling blindly through my life without the tweets of friends and strangers streaming by out of the corner of my eye. But I digress.
Twitter has taught me there is a serious … Read more »

My 2009 Optimization Wish List

Tuesday, 30 December 2008 @ 9:54, by Lily Chiu

With 2009 predictions whizzing around the web, I decided to write instead about what I’m wishing for in 2009. I’m hoping for an “if you build it, he will come” moment. Without further ado…
1) Agencies Get On Board
Aside from the handful of agencies that specialize in testing and conversion optimization, I’ve seen far less progress … Read more »

Who Owns Optimization?

Tuesday, 9 December 2008 @ 16:00, by Lily Chiu

I’ve been struggling with this question a lot lately as I talk to companies trying to figure out how to organize internally for testing. Some companies want to own testing and start running from day one, while others want to ramp up slowly with a few resources working part-time on it. Some are … Read more »

It Takes a Testing Village

Thursday, 4 December 2008 @ 10:17, by Lily Chiu

Testing is inherently collaborative. It feeds off the behaviors of your visitors, but it also requires coordination among multiple groups for successful execution, including marketing, creative, and development. Those who begin testing for the first time can truly benefit from the experiences of those who went before them. So it begs the … Read more »

Highlights from Pubcon: People are Testing, They’re Really Testing!

Monday, 17 November 2008 @ 14:19, by Lily Chiu

I spoke on a Landing Page Optimization panel at PubCon in Las Vegas last week, and the big learning I came away with is that more people are testing! It was pretty exciting to poll the audience on who’s currently testing and see well over 50% of the room raise their hands. Of … Read more »

Election 2008: Who’s Working on Relevancy and Engagement?

Thursday, 23 October 2008 @ 12:24, by Lily Chiu

There’s been a lot of talk about what the Obama and McCain campaigns are doing in both paid and organic search optimization, but not as much on what they do with that traffic once visitors land on the site. Campaign sites pose a unique challenge because they have multiple goals for visitors who land … Read more »

Building a Business Case for Optimization

Friday, 17 October 2008 @ 15:40, by Lily Chiu

We have to go back to the basics. I gave a seminar on Tuesday about optimization to a group of marketers in Los Angeles, and it really opened my eyes to the current state of online site marketing today. While it was a great, interactive session, the slide that got the most nodding … Read more »

Optimization Is Greater Than the Sum of Its Parts

Thursday, 9 October 2008 @ 15:00, by Lily Chiu

Optimization is a fuzzy word. It’s been used to describe everything from decreasing page load time to improving user experience. I’m guilty of using it as a catch-all as well, but today I want to focus on two key components when it comes to optimizing your site for conversion:
1) Testing - the process … Read more »

Fractional-Factorial vs. Full-Factorial: An Ideological War?

Wednesday, 27 August 2008 @ 9:27, by Lily Chiu

There’s been quite a storm brewing around the best methodology to use for multivariate testing: fractional-factorial vs. full-factorial. (For a quick primer, definitions of both are included at the bottom of this post.) I have to say that some of the arguments I’ve heard border on ideological in both their passion and rigor. Are there … Read more »