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I was recently driving through the main shopping area near my home when I saw a giant "Car Stereo Blowout!" sign screaming in front of a local electronics store. It seemed like my lucky day - my car stereo had recently stopped working, and there beckoning me on the roadside sign was everything I needed: "50% off" selected brands, an encyclopedia of models listed, and free installation. So I decided to make a quick detour into the store.

It was when I entered the store that my problems began. After first struggling to locate the car stereo department in this behemoth of a store, I then faced the daunting task of evaluating 75 different brands that were poorly labeled with their features listed in microscopic type. Furthermore, it was very unclear which "selected brands" were in fact 50% off. And of course there was no one there to untangle the mystery. I flagged down someone stocking shelves in another department, and he said that he'd find someone to help me. After about 4 minutes, the shelf-stocker came back and apologized that no one had come yet. He promised me he'd find someone else. After waiting another 5 minutes to no avail, I finally decided that perhaps today was not the day to find my new car stereo.

On my way out of the store, I came across a big display for the "High School Musical" CD that my daughter had been requesting. I thought perhaps I'd pick up a copy for her, but then I saw the mess of a line at checkout. Were there individual lines per register or was there one long line for everyone? Different people appeared to have made different conclusions, but either way, it looked like the wait would be more than what I'd been looking for, so I left the store empty-handed.

As I sat in my car frustrated to be listening again to the gnawing hum of static emanating from my broken stereo (but perhaps relieved that I would be spared incessant listenings of "High School Musical"...for now anyway), it struck me how my near-purchase experience was so similar to what we see happen online everyday. A company spends a lot of time and energy designing the perfect landing page (roadside sign) that gets people into the site, but then undermines the potential sale through a litany of mistakes on the subsequent pages. A lot of focus is placed on the landing page, but the less glamorous, yet equally important subsequent pages - the shopping cart page, the shipping page, the credit card page - are given very little attention.

This is puzzling given that even successful sites might lose 90% of their sales on these subsequent pages. Furthermore, on many sites, every transaction must pass through these pages. So, even small improvements can have a huge impact on overall sales.

This was evident in a recent project we did for Overstock, which is featured below in our Customer Success Story. Optimost helped Overstock optimize its product page through multivariable testing. After just 30 days of testing of a variety of seemingly innocuous variables - the call-to-action copy, the location of the shipping information, the section headers, etc., we were able to generate improvements that will lead to a $24 million increase in sales for Overstock over the coming year (Incidentally, I since discovered that Overstock has a fine selection of car stereos on its website. Reason #1,324,267 to do more shopping online).

This is not to say that landing pages aren't important - they certainly are. Had my electronics store not had the big gleaming sign (their version of a landing page), I would have never entered in the first place. In fact, it almost resulted in me purchasing something that I hadn't considered originally, the High School Musical Soundtrack (which incidentally, is available at Overstock for just $8.99. Reason #1,324,268 to do more shopping online).

Through the myriad of landing page tests we do for our customers, we see every day how improvements on a landing page can move the needle on overall website sales. In one recent case, Dale & Thomas Popcorn increased online sales by 13.4%, just through landing page optimization (you can read their success story).

But the key point is: nothing can kill a great landing page better than a horrible product page or credit card page. The landing page is important, but it is only part of the process. To be truly successful online, equal attention needs to be paid to all subsequent key customer touch points.

Overstock.com is an online "closeout" retailer offering high-quality, brand-name merchandise, including bed-and-bath goods, home décor, kitchenware, watches, jewelry, electronics and computers, sporting goods, apparel and designer accessories among other products at discount prices. Their web site is one of the most popular destinations on the Internet, attracting over 22 million unique visitors per month. Overstock.com brought in Optimost to optimize their product page which they realized could make a significant impact on maximizing the percentage of visitors who complete purchases.

Optimost leveraged its best practices to develop an appropriate test plan for their product page. The plan included 15 variables and 93 different values (versions of the variables) to be tested. The Optimost solution engine quickly identified and generated almost 2 million different permutations of the product page. Optimost conducted multivariable tests on a subset of these possible permutations of the product page. After only 30 days of testing, the winning creative increased the "add to cart" rate by 7.6% and order completion rate by 3.0%, resulting in an annual revenue increase of $24 million.

Through testing, Overstock.com also learned that elements like customer reviews, layouts, and subtle changes to buttons and headers had a significant impact on behavior. The Optimost solution also identified specific opportunities to test by audience segment, including new vs. repeat visitors, paid search vs. other forms of marketing, time of day, etc. The possibilities for future testing are endless!

For more details on this success story and other customer success stories, please see http://www.optimost.com/case_studies.phtml.

In addition to ensuring that their on-line presence is optimized by maximizing their conversion rates on their web sites, on-line businesses are obviously looking to ensure that they maximize the number of qualified prospects who visit their web site in the first place. Ultimately, maximizing your on-line marketing ROI is an "X times Y" equation, where X is getting the maximum number of visitors to your site for least amount of marketing spend, and Y is maximizing the percentage of those visitors who become customers. In this newsletter, Optimost will periodically highlight its partners who help on-line marketers get those visitors to their web site.

Return Path is an Optimost partner focused on optimizing clients' entire e-mail campaigns from start to finish. Return Path helps marketers build relevant relationships with their customers, generating higher response rates and achieving significant returns on investment with their email program. The company provides a number of solutions including:

• Building Targeted E-Mail lists from high quality, opt-in, prospects
• Improving quality and deliverability of e-mail campaigns

Ultimately Return Path's solutions ensure timely delivery of e-mail campaigns to the right target prospects, enabling the customer to maximize traffic to landing pages. These landing pages can then of course be optimized by Optimost!

Return Path's specific products include:

• Postmaster Network: Build your e-mail lists
• E-Mail List Quality Solutions: Improve the quality of your lists
• Sender Score: Ensure the Deliverability of your e-mails

For more information about Return Path's solutions, please go to www.returnpath.com or contact Chad Malchow, chad.malchow@returnpath.net, (916) 941-9257

Click here for a complete listing of Optimost Partners.

If you are an Optimost partner and you are interested in either having your company featured in our Partner spotlight or your upcoming events listed in our newsletter, please contact Kevin Patterson. ( , (650) 432-6073)

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