Your Google® Game Plan for Success: Increasing Your Web Presence with Google AdWords, Analytics, and Website Optimizer

Chapter 11. Welcome to Google Website Optimizer

The fourth part of Your Google Game Plan for Success talks about Google Website Optimizer. You've read Chapter 1 and thought about what the purpose of your website is. You've learned about Google AdWords and cost-per-click advertising to drive traffic to your site, and you've digested the concept of Google Analytics and how to analyze your website traffic. Now, how do you optimize your site for conversions in an intelligent, statistically confident way? You do this with Google Website Optimizer, of course!

In this chapter you'll learn all about Google Website Optimizer, creating an experiment, and interpreting the results. You'll also see two terms quite frequently in this chapter: conversions and landing pages. These are what Google Website Optimizer is all about.

What Is Google Website Optimizer?

Let's take a step back for a minute so that everyone is on the same page as to exactly what Google Website Optimizer is. As I mentioned in Chapter 1, there's a sort of "ego" present in some organizations and how they approach their online business. In the offline world, a powerful, name-brand product or service that's been around since your grandparents' early years is very tough to go up against from a competitive standpoint. Joe, the local businessman, cannot compete with a big organization because it has millions of dollars allocated to its advertising budget, and Joe does not. Because it's such a dominant player, the big company isn't pressed ...