Even Omniture Get It Wrong Sometimes…
May 6th, 2008 by Rich Page
Welcome back! Don't forget to read my daily website optimization tips via Twitter - simply follow me on Twitter for daily tips to improve your website & increase conversion rates.
Omniture. They are the leaders in web analytics and testing tools. They do have some amazing products (which I use daily), but it looks like even they could be practicing what they preach a little more. But why?
Well, yesterday I did a search on Google for ‘omniture site search’, and a sponsored ad for Omniture appeared at the top of the search results. Now, companies who don’t deliver a seamless flow from a paid search engine click, to their sites or landing pages really bugs me - what a waste of a clicks. I see landing pages go wrong far too often. So, I thought I would see how Omniture fared.
What did I see? Well, click on the image to the right -lets put it this way, it didnt fare to well. I got a pretty generic landing page, with a generic Site Catalyst image, with a contact form. This contains three major marketing/analytical mistakes, that could be fixed by using their own ‘Test and Target’ product.
Problem 1: They are automatically inserting whatever your search query is into the landing page text - often out of context. I typed ‘omniture site catalyst’ and it showed up in the following context: ‘Learn how Omniture SiteCatalyst, our Web Analytics solution, will help improve your Omniture Site Search and Marketing ROI, and ultimately increase your bottom line’. That sentence doesn’t make a lot of sense does it? And who says I was interested in Site Catalyst anyway? Which leads me to my next problem…
Problem 2: The landing page has very little relevance to my search term. Other than the auto-inserted search keyword mentioned in problem 1, there is no mention of their site search tool, and its benefits and features, or a picture of the tool. This immediately decreases the chances of me filling in their contact form. I know you are Omniture, and I’m sure you make a great site search product, but why not tell me about it before I complete the form?
Problem 3: Okay, so lets say I wanted to roll the dice and trust Omniture by filling in the form, hoping Omniture contact me, and demonstrate to me a good site search product. There are two further painful barriers preventing me from wanting to fill this form in - basically, the contact form does its worst to make me want to fill it in! Firstly, it is asking for way to many detailed answers from me! It had 6 fields and 7 drop down menus! 
Why should I take the time to enter all those details, when Omniture haven’t taken the time to even tell me anything about their Site Search product? Do they really need to immediately know things like my ‘department’ and ‘relationship to Omniture’? Surely they could get detailed info like that when they call or email me. Secondly, they use some scary language just above the form: ‘Please note: Cookies must be enabled to proceed‘. Wow. What a strange off-putting thing to say on a form. This may make potential customers think twice whether they do have cookies enabled, or simply enough, why exactly Omniture wants them to have them turned on so bad.
Sorry Omniture. But if I was a serious prospect, I would have abandoned this failed landing page. I would have just probably either gone straight to a site search competitor, or if I really was still very interested in their tool and wanted to work even more to find more info, I would have gone to their omniture.com site, and tried to find their site search product to get more information that way.
The solution: And this would have been an easy fix. They could have used their own ‘Test and Target’ product and tested the copy on this landing page to mention their site search benefits, tested using a picture of their site search product, and tested the amount of fields on the form that resulted in the most conversions (forms completed). And test removing the weird cookies line. Call me crazy, but I would be surprised if testing those changes didn’t result in a huge increase in leads from this landing page. And lots more fellow happy Omniture customers!
Again, I don’t mean to bash Omniture, as they make great products. But everyone needs a little help now and again from friends, don’t they? Hopefully someone at Omniture is listening 
Hi Rich,
Thanks for this thoughtful post. As a critic myself, I found this awkwardly amusing to be on the receiving end of your post. We are always listening to great feedback and strive to continuously improve our own marketing. Let me respond to your points below - you got us on two of them (BTW - we’ll be looking for a great analyst in the near future - you should call me!):
#1 and #2 are really the same issue: The benefits of dynamic keyword insert from site search far outreach the issues (we’ll continue to refine and improve this) - we’ve tested this extensively and found significant lift. #2 Touche - you got us! We don’t talk about our site search product on this landing page; it’s a new product line that we haven’t completely updated for this page - thanks for pointing this out!
#3 We’ve tested adding each field to a 95% confidence interval with very little conversion rate degradation for true prospects - the benefits of gathering these fields for remarketing purposes far out reach the few points of conversion decrease.
You do make a good point for our search landing page “cookie” language which we universally have on the form due to some users being upset when attempting to download offers and not having cookies enabled (becoming a more standard notice for downloading) - since there is nothing to download, we could remove this for search landing pages.
BTW - thanks for your great plug for Omniture Test&Target!
I’ll comment on your insightful feedback on an upcoming post in my blog (http://blogs.omniture.com/author/mchertudi/).
Thanks for keeping us on our toes!
Mikel Chertudi
Senior Director of Demand & Online Marketing Omniture
Mikel,
Wonderful to hear from you, and I am glad you found my post helpful - its great to know you are listening and acting on your users reactions!
Your answer to #3 is very interesting. So you are saying that the quality of leads that you receive is better, allowing you to re-market better, even though you get less leads? I would be curious if your conversion rate still stays the same with that many fields after putting more relevant site search content. Maybe just people aren’t submitting their data regardless of how many fields there are, because they aren’t finding what they are looking for. And do you somehow link a ’sale’ as a conversion, instead of just a ’signup’? That would be great to measure as a success metric.
Thanks again for listening!
Rich Page
Rich,
Great questions:
You got it - in spite of a small conversion decrease due to additional form fields, we have a much greater ability to re-market to them in a more relevant fashion according to their industry, type of site, etc. - these fields also trigger lead scoring mechanisms with pre-defined thresholds that route leads into automated campaigns. As you pointed out, as a byproduct of having the additional fields, they are also more qualified. I’ll let you know the results when we add relevant content to the site search-specific landing page (again - thanks for pointing this out to us). Your last question is great regarding linking a sale as a conversion - Omniture is the only company with an enterprise web analytics solution that is correctly linking marketing campaigns from ad impressions all the way through to a closed sale months or even years later (and all the metrics in between including page visits, leads, sales-ready opportunities, revenue, campaign costs, etc). This solution, Omniture Closed Loop Marketing for Salesforce (an integration with Salesforce.com), was born out of an internal need and build on our team which became so successful that we “productized” and made available to our external customers. We talk about it in a four-part series of blog posts - take a look of you’re interested at http://blogs.omniture.com/author/mchertudi/
Look forward to more insightful posts from you Rich.
Thanks,
Mikel Chertudi
Sr. Director, Demand & Online Marketing