3 ms·

I do a lot of content based marketing in different market/industries. The type of testing you describe is best used in addition to click-through rates. Due to h

I do a lot of content based marketing in different market/industries. The type of testing you describe is best used in addition to click-through rates. Due to how presentation and content can be both right, and still get you bad results. How come? The offer stinks. If the offer stinks, then the click-through rates will show. And that's the most important metric of this group that you should pay attention to: how interesting is my offer to the market.

Smerity 13y ago
Agreed but that's only applicable when you have a product. I should have specified that I was coming at this from the point of view that someone's writing a single page article or blog post with no conversion target other than to have it read. If you're actually aiming to achieve anything concrete with a web page, then the only way to improve that is exactly as you said: directly track conversion to your goal.
- orangethirty 13y ago
  I do think one should always have an offer of sone kind. Even if its an email subscription to a blog. That way you can develop a redership for possible future offerrings. Specially useful if you see startup in the near future.
  - robryan 13y ago
    This is measuring something different though. I could have a bad article that heavily pushes an offer and a very good article that doesn't. The time on page can give you a relative statistic to compare your articles and develop a more engaged readership over the long term, not just optimize to try and sell them something right now. An example would be something like patio11's posts, some of them are pushing for a conversion but I don't think that each would be best measured in terms of a conversion made right now.
    - orangethirty 13y ago
      There are three factors you have to keep in mind when writing content: Message (the content), Media (how you distribute it (a blog)), Market (who reads it). The better way of adjusting for those three (optimizing) is to measure conversions on the Message. Otherwise, you are tracking fluff. Of course, my opinion based on experience.

Smerity 13y ago

Agreed but that's only applicable when you have a product. I should have specified that I was coming at this from the point of view that someone's writing a single page article or blog post with no conversion target other than to have it read. If you're actually aiming to achieve anything concrete with a web page, then the only way to improve that is exactly as you said: directly track conversion to your goal.

orangethirty 13y ago
I do think one should always have an offer of sone kind. Even if its an email subscription to a blog. That way you can develop a redership for possible future offerrings. Specially useful if you see startup in the near future.
- robryan 13y ago
  This is measuring something different though. I could have a bad article that heavily pushes an offer and a very good article that doesn't. The time on page can give you a relative statistic to compare your articles and develop a more engaged readership over the long term, not just optimize to try and sell them something right now. An example would be something like patio11's posts, some of them are pushing for a conversion but I don't think that each would be best measured in terms of a conversion made right now.
  - orangethirty 13y ago
    There are three factors you have to keep in mind when writing content: Message (the content), Media (how you distribute it (a blog)), Market (who reads it). The better way of adjusting for those three (optimizing) is to measure conversions on the Message. Otherwise, you are tracking fluff. Of course, my opinion based on experience.