Test&Target is a very powerful testing tool, with many great features to help test, optimize and personalize your website. There are quite a few areas of the tool in particular that can really help you gain even more ROI from it and help you squeeze even more conversion juice out of your tests — some of which you may have forgotten about or not realized the importance of. Therefore, I have put together a list of the top 5 power user tips to help refresh your memory on some important very useful features of the tool.
- Use the ‘Ideas List’ to submit and organize your test ideas
One of the most important things for creating effective tests is to generate great test ideas, and to organize and prioritize these many ideas. To help you do this, there is a great feature in Test&Target called that Ideas List that helps you submit test ideas and key information needed, like hypothesis and likely value, and then to help you organize and prioritize these ideas. Having someone dedicated to managing and prioritizing these submitted ideas will make sure you put them to good use.You can even download the Ideas browser button from this section of the tool (found under the Ideas menu item) that will allow you to add an idea more easily — great for when you find a great test idea while browsing other websites. Very useful!
- Use the ‘Notes’ feature to improve test communication and learnings
Another one of the very useful but less well known parts of the tool are notes, which show up in the news feed in the tool. These allow you and others to keep up to date with what is happening regarding the tests that you are currently running. In its simplest form, an automated note is added every time a test is launched, changed or ended. But to make better use out of it, notes should be added whenever something of interest is noticed regarding test results (e.g. noting any conversion spikes associated with traffic source changes), and should also be used to add suggestions for test iteration and improvements.Notes can be entered on any test’s spotlight page, and are stored on this page too for easy reading and tracking (in addition to the being shown on your launch pad when first logging in). This brings us nicely on to the subject of the spotlight page!
- Make better use of the ‘Spotlight’ feature
You will probably have seen the spotlight page without realizing the importance or useful of it. Anytime you click on a test to learn more, this is the first page that you will see. It stores key information and results about each test. To get better use out of this, you should complete all the important aspects of it, like the ‘objective’ and ‘result’ section, add relevant notes, and upload snapshots of each variation.Then once you have completed these key details, you should use the ‘email’ button to send this spotlight to your testing peers and senior execs — it forms a great visual summary of the test result. It also allows anyone else you send this to view it without having to create a Test&Target account first.
- Use the segment feature in the reports to find better winners
When you are analyzing your test results, don’t forget to use the ‘segment’ feature to look for visitor groups that may have much higher conversion rates for particular variations of your test — don’t just pushing one test winner live to all your visitors. Doing this segmentation is a simple way to really boost your website conversion rates. For example, you may find that your repeat visitors engage and convert better with one test variation, or your paid search visitors might convert better for a different version. There is even a button to help you push live multiple winners in the reports page next to each test variation.And don’t forget add some high value segments in advance for each test when you are creating tests (and get creative with these and don’t forget use the high value ones you already have in SiteCatalyst). If you forget to set some up, unfortunately you won’t be able to perform segmentation on your resuts (look for improvements soon though!)
- Use the Profiles feature to create more powerful targets
The targeting aspect of Test&Target is an incredibly great way to increase your conversion rates by showing more relevant content to your visitor groups. There are some built in segments that you can target easily in the tool, like by source or by repeat/first time visitor. However, there are even more powerful options to create customized segments to target, called the ‘profiles’ feature in the tool. These profiles are used to collect information and data about visitors that you can then use to target, for example what pages or products a visitor has seen, or whether they are a registered user.You set these up in the ‘profiles’ part of the ‘targeting’ menu, and then use them as targets when you are a setting up a test, just like you would for a normal target (shown under ‘visitor behavior’ targets). They require some custom coding help to create the profile, but I definitely suggest you use these to help target and personalize your website better. We have even pre-setup a very powerful profile for you in the tool, called Category Affinity, that tracks which content your visitors see most often, and often performs very well for clients that use it as a profile to target.
So there we have the top 5 Test&Target power user tips — hope you find this post useful and a great refresher!
