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About: Trevor Claiborne

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Custom Reports in the new Google Analytics

Apr 27, 2011

This is part of our series of posts highlighting the new Google Analytics. The new version of Google Analytics is currently available in beta to all Analytics users. And follow Google Analytics on Twitter for the latest updates. This week we’ll be di…

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The New Google Analytics Available to Everyone

Apr 20, 2011

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Good luck to Jeff Gillis

Apr 15, 2011

If you have been a reader of the Google Analytics blog for any amount of time, you’ve likely seen the work of Jeff Gillis. In fact, if you go all the way back to the very first post on this blog from June 2006 you’ll see Jeff as the author.Jeff has…

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Case Study: Universal Technical Institute Increases Application Requests Eight-fold With Website Optimizer

Mar 9, 2011

UTI revved up their conversion rate with Google Website Optimizer. By conducting rigorous testing, making design improvements to their landing pages, and increasing AdWords investment to capitalize on their higher conversion rates, UTI cut their cost-per-application request in half and increased their request volume by more than 700% in in marketing campaigns that used the new landing pages. Read more to learn how they did it!

Since 1965, Universal Technical Institute has helped automotive enthusiasts turn their passions into careers. Offering programs in Automotive, Diesel, Collision, and Motorcycle Repair, as well as courses to become a Marine or NASCAR technician, UTI has trained more than 140,000 professionals in the automotive industry. Today, UTI operates 11 campuses, and currently has more than 15,000 students that are working with their hands to learn career skills that will last a lifetime.

The Goal: Improve Conversion Rates Through Website Optimization

UTI has been an AdWords advertiser since 2004. After years of fine-tuning their search campaigns, and successful investments in Display, Mobile, and YouTube, UTI was looking for their next big avenue of growth. After doing some research – they realized the opportunity was right in front of them, on their own site! With the help of Website Optimizer, UTI tested different calls-to-action, images, videos, buttons, and button placements. After many different landing page combinations, they ultimately settled on a winner.

The Results: A Great-looking Landing Page and a 300% Increase in Conversion Rate

UTI’s new landing page was a dramatic departure from their previous landing page. Most notable is their use of “gradual engagement” – asking for user’s information in several steps rather than showing an intimidating 15-field sign-up form.

Original landing page (click to see full size)

New landing page (click to see full size)

“Prospective Students responded extremely well to our new landing pages,” said Loring Kohrt, Online Marketing Manager for UTI, “not only did we triple our conversion rate, we reduced our exit rate and saw a boost in site engagement metrics across the board.”

More Good News: The Effect on Advertising

The jump in conversion volume was substantial and immediate, but UTI didn’t stop there. Realizing that their increased conversion rates had dramatically lowered their cost-per-lead, UTI decided that they had room to bid much more aggressively on Google’s Search and Display Networks. By doing so, they increased their average position, and brought in eight times the conversions at about half the CPA!

Improving conversion rate amplified all other marketing activities

Reflecting on his experience, Mr. Kohrt said “We are tremendously happy with the results of our redesign. We were able to dramatically improve the profitability of our advertising, increase our enrollments, and deliver a better experience to potential students.”

Posted by Trevor Claiborne, Website Optimizer team

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New Year, New Asynchronous Tags for GWO

Jan 5, 2011

Happy New Year fellow testers! We’ve just made a change to the Website Optimizer tags that will help your pages load faster, improve data accuracy, and eliminate tracking errors when tags are not fully loaded.

The next time you go to create an experiment, you’ll be given the new tags, which use asynchronous JavaScript. Asynchronous tagging, which is already a standard for Google Analytics, allows the Website Optimizer tracking and conversion scripts to run in parallel to your site loading. For Website Optimizer veterans, these new tags appear in Step 2 of the setup wizard — be sure to read the instructions as the installation is slightly different.

Here’s five things you should know about the new tags:

The traditional (non-async) snippets will continue to work if you want to use them. And there’s no need to retag experiments.
We’ve combined the Control Script and Tracking Script into one snippet of code. Be sure not to double tag your pages.
Async tags go immediately after the opening tag on your test and conversion pages, not at the bottom of the page like the old tags.
If you customize your Control Scripts (for experiments with cross-domain experiments and the like), the Control Script still uses urchin.js-style methods.
Articles in the Help Center have been updated to reflect the new tags though we still have articles with the traditional tag for your reference.

Here’s to winning experiments in the new year.

Posted by Trevor Claiborne, Website Optimizer team

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New Year, New Asynchronous Tags for GWO

Jan 5, 2011

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Welcome, Google Apps users!

Dec 9, 2010

Google Apps recently launched an improvement that made dozens of exciting Google services available to Google Apps users for the first time. As part of this launch, Google Website Optimizer is now available to our Google Apps users for free with their Apps accounts.

Google Apps is Google’s suite of cloud-based messaging and collaboration apps, including Gmail, calendar, documents, spreadsheets, and more, specifically optimized for use in organizations. These services, which run entirely in the cloud, are used by more than 30 million users in small and large businesses, educational institutions, government agencies, and non-profit organizations around the world. You can learn more about how Google Apps can lower IT costs and improve productivity and collaboration at your organization at google.com/apps.

For those users who have a Google Apps account, if your administrator has already transitioned your organization to the new infrastructure, you can get started using Google Website Optimizer at google.com/websiteoptimizer with your existing Apps account.

For more details, read the complete post on the Google Enterprise blog and follow all the updates on other newly available services for Google Apps users.

Posted by Trevor Claiborne, Website Optimizer team

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Update your Website Optimizer scripts to secure your site

Dec 7, 2010

Earlier this week we notified affected Website Optimizer users of a potential security issue with the Website Optimizer Control Script. If a website or browser has already been compromised by a separate attack, a hacker might also be able to execute ma…

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Update your Website Optimizer scripts to secure your site

Dec 7, 2010

We have not seen any evidence indicating that sites using Website Optimizer have been targeted through this bug, but wanted to proactively reach out to site owners. While the probability of this attack is very low, we are urging Website Optimizer users to take action by updating their Control Scripts. We have taken action, so all new experiments created after December 3 are not susceptible.

Any experiments you are currently running need to be updated to fix the issue on your site. Additionally, if you have any Website Optimizer scripts from paused or stopped experiments created before December 3, you should remove or update that code as well.

There are two ways to update your code:

Stop current experiments, remove the old scripts, and create a new experiment.
Update the code on your site directly. We strongly recommend creating a new experiment as it is the simpler method.

Instructions for both methods are available here at the Website Optimizer Help Center.

We’re committed to keeping Website Optimizer secure, and we will proactively work to prevent any future vulnerabilities.

Posted by Trevor Claiborne, Website Optimizer team

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Instant Preview issue resolved

Nov 22, 2010

Since Instant Preview launched in early November, some Analytics users have noticed increased pageviews in their accounts.We’ve now fixed this issue, and visits from Google Instant Preview will no longer show up in your Analytics account. We will not…

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System Update for November 2nd

Nov 3, 2010

On November 2nd, Google Analytics experienced technical difficulties, which lasted for a few hours. No data was lost, but users saw lower visits than expected during this time.We deployed a fix as as soon as we were alerted and Analytics is now back to…

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Introducing In-Page Analytics: Visual context for your Analytics data

Oct 15, 2010

When looking at Google Analytics reports, sometimes it’s difficult to visualize how visitors navigate on a given website page. To make this visualization easier, some users keep the website open in another browser tab so they can reference it while l…

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New Google Website Optimizer Online Video Training Released!

Oct 12, 2010

A new online video training course is now available from lynda.com to help you get the most out of using Google Website Optimizer. It’s called Google Website Optimizer: Essential Training, and it’s created by David Booth of WebShare, one of our Webs…

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New Google Website Optimizer Online Video Training Released!

Oct 12, 2010

A new online video training course is now available from lynda.com to help you get the most out of using Google Website Optimizer. It’s called Google Website Optimizer: Essential Training, and it’s created by David Booth of WebShare, one of our Website Optimizer Certified Partners and Seminars for Success Leaders.

The course itself is available both online and on DVD and contains almost 4 full hours of step by step instruction around how to identify test pages, plan and implement your experiments, and read and interpret the reports. Advanced topics like sample size calculation, Google Analytics integrations and dynamic page testing are also covered among a wide variety of conversion optimization and testing topics.

I sat down with David and asked him to share with us what he likes best about this new course, and here’s what he had to say:

A video course is great for a few reasons: First, it lets you accomplish things you can’t necessarily do in other formats. As an example, in this course we have start to finish screen captured demonstrations of how to create a new test, tag your pages with Javascript, and then launch both A/B and Multivariate tests. Someone watching this course can actually see it happening and not have to rely on instructions or a help file.

I also like the variety of learning styles that can be accommodated by what the lynda.com team has put together. If you’re a visual learner, you’ll love this – there’s a nice mix of presentation styles, screen captures and visual aides throughout the whole course. If you learn by doing, you’ll enjoy the step by step, narrated demonstrations you can follow along with.

And it’s all broken up into videos that are just a few minutes long. If you want to block off a morning and watch it straight through you can, but if you want to catch a couple of videos when you’ve got 15 minutes of down time you can get through it that way too. Or if you just have a question on a specific topic, such as when to use A/B vs Multivariate, you can jump directly to that video and have your answer a few minutes later.

Take a look at the trailer below:

Well, we like things that make it even easier to use Google Website Optimizer in even more effective ways, so thanks Dave. You can find the course at lynda.com!

Posted by Trevor Claiborne, Website Optimizer team

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Join Website Optimizer at eMetrics & Conversion Conference in Washington DC

Sep 24, 2010

In less than two weeks, Conversion Conference East will take place in Washington DC. Google Website Optimizer will be there along with Google Analytics.

Conversion rate optimization is still a young discipline in the world of interactive marketing. The event was founded by Tim Ash, president of Site Tuners (a Website Optimizer Certified Partner). What’s exciting about Conversion Conference is that the entire program is dedicated to the discipline. Experts in the field, as well as those who are just learning the art and science of conversion optimization, now have a forum to share best practices, network, and learn from each other.

If you are anywhere near Washington DC October 4-5, we hope you’ll join us there. We have a coupon for $250 off for Website Optimizer blog readers. Enter the code CCE631 when registering at the Conversion Conference site.

Here’s a taste of some of the presentations at Conversion Conference:

Monday, October 4th

The Four Pillars of Building Instant Trust Online (Tim Ash)

The Power of Split Testing (Brooks Bell and Lance Loveday)

Pay Per Click Landing Page Continuity (Lauren Vaccarello and William Leake)

Tuesday, October 5th

Getting Started with Google Website Optimizer (I’ll be giving this one)

Multivariate Testing (Eric Hansen and Chris Duskin)

The Science of Pursuasion (John Whalen)

Be sure to stop by the Google booth and say “Hi” and grab a squishy HiPPO. Looking forward to seeing you.

Posted by Trevor Claiborne, Website Optimizer team

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About: Trevor Claiborne

Profile:

Website

Contact:

Posts by Trevor Claiborne

Custom Reports in the new Google Analytics

The New Google Analytics Available to Everyone

Good luck to Jeff Gillis

Case Study: Universal Technical Institute Increases Application Requests Eight-fold With Website Optimizer

New Year, New Asynchronous Tags for GWO

New Year, New Asynchronous Tags for GWO

Welcome, Google Apps users!

Update your Website Optimizer scripts to secure your site

Update your Website Optimizer scripts to secure your site

Instant Preview issue resolved

System Update for November 2nd

Introducing In-Page Analytics: Visual context for your Analytics data

New Google Website Optimizer Online Video Training Released!

New Google Website Optimizer Online Video Training Released!

Join Website Optimizer at eMetrics & Conversion Conference in Washington DC

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