I recently received what appeared to be a fantastic marketing campaign from Delivery.com. However, the great idea failed in execution due to some very simple fundamentals – lack of targeting.

Consider the timing of this offer?

The temperature in Washington DC is suppose to be 2 degrees this weekend, which is exceptionally cold for DC. Delivery.com is going to give me bonus points for every degree under 25 if I order from them this weekend.

Sound Perfect. Who wants to go out in freezing temperatures to pick-up food?

I’ve ordered from delivery.com before. They have my name, zip code, location of nearest metropolitan area, etc. Enough information to make a truly personal offer.

This great idea failed in execution due to 2 simple mistakes:

Here’s a screenshot of the email:

Failed Reason 1 – Offer Targets Incorrect City

The promotion is based upon the temperature in Central Park (New York City). Why do I care about the temperature in NYC? I live in DC. Just because it’s cold in NYC doesn’t mean it’ll be cold where I live. What do people in Miami think about a cold weather alert email?

If this promotion would have instead shown the upcoming temperature’s in DC and based the rewards points on the temperature in DC – it would have been locally relevant, and the offer would have been personal. Instead, it just says it’ll be cold in some city where I won’t be this weekend.

Failed Reason 2 – Poor User Experience After the Offer

There is an easy to see call to action to browse the restaurants in my area. Delivery.com knows my zip code. Clicking that link should take me to restaurants that deliver to my area. Instead, it takes me to the home page. Search 101 says take someone to the most relevant page for your ad copy. The same goes for email.

The link should have taken me to a page that:

• Reinforced the offer (same images at the top of the page)
• Displayed the restaurants that actually deliver to me
• Had an option for ordering this weekend
• Showcased the discount code (reminded me that not only do I want to order because of the temperature, but that I also will get bonus points for doing so)

Never Forget to Connect with Your Customers

If you have information about your customers; use it to target properly.

If you don’t have information, at least make a landing page (for the ad or email) that blends the look of the initial message so that someone is continuing along the same messaging lines.

Reinforce the offer on the landing page.

The premise of this campaign was fantastic. It was a good idea.

The execution was bad due to a simple mistakes.

Take a look at your offers. Are you connecting with your consumers?

These two sites are pretty self-explanatory. Everything you shouldn’t do in a website in two easy to see examples.

Usability? Readibility or Navigation?

Please turn the sound on, this site had me laughing for quite some time.

On page landing page testing has been well discussed and talked about this part year. From blogs like GrokDotCom to programs such as Google Website Optimizer.

However, talking about on page optimization can only be tested if you’re sure that the traffic is going to the correct page in the first place. It is easy to get caught up in conventional wisdom of where to send traffic (usually the most logical page that is furthest in the buying cycle) without testing if that was the correct page to begin with.

One good example of this is for informational queries. A query such as ‘Candle burning times’ is often linked to from a PPC ad to a candle product page. However, that is not the question the searcher asked. If one thinks about a consumer making that query, they are probably buying candles for an event. They do not want to see a candle taper product page, the searcher is looking for a page that discusses the different candle types and how long each one will burn.

This is where you can combine information giving with eCommerce. If you sent the traffic to a page listing your candles and how long they burned; and then linked those candles to your product pages suddenly you can monetize those informational queries.

This step can be repeated with several different query types.

Local business queries

For a query such as ‘Chicago kitchen remodeling’. Conventional wisdom says to send traffic to the ‘before and after’ picture page of a kitchen. However, it is not unusual for a small business to see that when someone visited the ‘about us page’ where we discuss our 25 years in business, our 10 testimonials, and our Better Business Bureau involvement that suddenly the conversion rates increases. Test sending them to the conventional wisdom page along with the about us page.

Narrow Theme Sites

I’ll never forget working on a site where the homepage had double the conversion rate of the most appropriate page of the site for the query. It was a site that connected families with nannies. The most specific page for a search such as ‘Chicago Nanny Services’ would be a page about Chicago with actual nanny resumes. However, the front page of the site conveyed trust that the site worked with both nannies and families thus ensuring your data wasn’t being sold or random nannies were being assigned to the families. While conventional wisdom says the home page is never the best page, their home page’s cost per conversion definitely said otherwise.

Ambiguous Queries

Generally the search ‘merchant account’s’ will send you into a form that will help you apply for a merchant account. After committing to 3 pages of form fill out there’s a question that stops the user in their tracks – ‘what type of merchant account do you want?’. It turns out the query ‘merchant accounts’ wasn’t so specific after all. In cases where the searcher needs more information to take action, take them to a segmentation page where they can learn more information before choosing their route. This is also useful for larger forms where measuring where someone is abandoning the form can help you pinpoint issues to either rephrase the question, change the landing page, or put informational text around the question.

Thank You Pages

While the Thank You Page is the most underutilized page on the web, it is also worth testing. What types of pages lead to longer Lifetime Visitor Values? Should your page have a newsletter signup, a whitepaper download, or related products? It should not be a page that says ‘Thank you for contacting us, now go away’; it should say ‘Thank you for contacting us, we’ll get back to you shortly; but while you wait – here’s some other information that may interest you’. It is much more expensive to gain the first customer than to keep a customer. Use trust pages (of which the thank you page is one as someone trusted you with either their contact information or their credit card). Test these pages to see which leads to most involved customers.

Final Thoughts

On page testing is important. Changing pictures, forms, layout, color, etc can lead to higher conversion rates. However, if you don’t pick the correct page to send traffic to in the first place, on-page testing is a waste of time. Take a step back, examine the conventional wisdom of where you should send traffic, and then test a few different pages before taking the time to optimize the on page experience.

Many websites exist in multiple languages. However, the way you institute language switching (or country detection and language selection) can make a large impact on your visitor’s ability to interact with your website.

I was recently in Italy. When I visited Google Reader, I was forced to interact with the page in Italian. There was no way I could find to change the language back to English. Google reader exists in many different languages; however, they had taken my language choice away from me and forced me to read the site in Italian (which I don’t speak).

As a comparison, this was also an issue with Google Analytics first launched. However, now on the homepage of the site is an easy to find drop down box that allows you to select the language to view the website.

Having your site in multiple languages can be very useful – if you don’t forget about the visitor.

As a reminder, if you allow someone to switch languages, please reload the exact same page in the new language. Too many sites bring you back to the homepage again, and force you to find the exact same page again in the new language.

If you are working on SEO efforts, you should not be changing the site’s language based upon user location – please have separate, spiederable pages for each page and language combination.