03
April
2007
|
13:59 PM
America/Los_Angeles

UPDATE:GOOG wants your website to do better

Have you ever wondered if different web site design would earn you a few extra bucks from Google AdSense? Well, now you can try out different designs and the Google Website Optimizer™ will let you know which ones result in more clicks on ads.

Google is very keen on improving your web site. After all, it wants the ad conversions as badly as you do.

Google Website Optimizer is designed to help website owners increase conversions such as sales, sign-ups or downloads. This multivariate landing page optimization tool enables marketers to test different ideas for web page content such as different headlines, promotional copy, or images. The application provides easy-to-read reports that enable advertisers to see which variation resonated best with their site visitor. It is a self-service application that enables website owners to set-up and run multivariate landing page experiments.

Google Website Optimizer is a beta application that is integrated with the Google AdWords™ program and free to AdWords advertisers. Advertisers can sign up immediately at www.google.com/websiteoptimizer.

The only shame about this tool is that Google advertising pays so poorly. Unless it's a web site with very high traffic, it pays peanuts.

It's probably not worth it for many web sites to put the time and effort into optimizing their web sites for Google advertising. Optimize for readers is a better bet. Then, when there is a decent business model for pageviews, you'll be golden.


UPDATE: Tom Leung, the product manager for GWO writes:


just a clarification, you can define conversion for an optimization in any way you want so the tool is well suited for a variety of scenarios. e.g., ecommerce sites (conversion being purchase), lead gen (conversion being filling out a contact form), or even pure awareness (conversion as watching a flash demo or some such).

net, net, we think any page can be optimized for whatever the site owner's goal happens to be.