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With the Emmy Awards still fresh in many people's minds, here's a good trivia question: Who holds the record for the most Emmy's won by the host of a television show? Johnny Carson? Nope. Katie Couric? Nope. Walter Cronkite? Un-uh.

The correct answer is good ol' Bob Barker, the host of The Price Is Right, the longest running game show in U.S. history. This is well deserved, because I've always believed that in the pantheon of game shows, The Price is Right is king. Showcase showdowns! The announcer screaming, "Come on down!" Over 70 pricing games - each requiring a different skill set. How can you beat it?

One of the pricing games that I always loved was The Race Game. The rules were simple. Four great prizes were displayed on stage, and the contestant was given four price tags. The contestant was given 45 seconds to try to match each price tag with the prize corresponding to that price. This involved running across the stage, placing a price tag next to each prize, and pulling a giant lever to learn how many prices had been matched correctly. The catch was that while you might learn that you had matched two correctly, you weren't told which two were correct. So you would run back across the stage, move some price tags around and hope to match all four correctly, and in turn, win all four prizes.

I recently happened to catch an episode of The Price Is Right and to my great pleasure, the Race Game was on. Then I watched the following horror unfold: in the first run, the contestant placed the four price tags down, pulled the lever, and found out that nothing matched correctly. Quickly, the contestant did the second run down the stage, rearranged all the prices, pulled the lever, and was shocked to find that zero matched again! In the final 20 seconds, the contestant, now in a panic, did several more runs down the stage, sometimes matching one, sometimes matching none, and ultimately pulled the lever as time expired to discover that, once again, nothing matched correctly.

So the contestant walked away with nothing, except of course some fine parting gifts of the Turtle Wax / Rice-A-Roni variety. It seemed to me there had to be a better strategy here then just randomly rearranging the prices with no apparent methodology at all.

After pondering it a bit, I discovered that in the Race Game, if you take a more systematic approach and get zero correct on your first run as well as your second run, you actually may want to celebrate rather than cry! Because if you've done it right, you've now guaranteed yourself at least 2 prizes if you can take 2 more runs, and guaranteed yourself all 4 prizes if you can take 3 more runs. If you use the right methodology, the zero in the second run combined with the zero from the first run together give you some important learnings on what the winning combination actually is (if you're a budding Price Is Right contestant and want to know how this is, please email me at ).

At this point, you're probably wondering: what does this have to do with anything? Well, it struck me that this Race Game phenomenon is very analogous to what we see happen in many companies with their approach to webpage testing. They take an existing webpage (run 1), rearrange a whole bunch of elements in a non-systematic way (run 2), "pull the lever", and hope for the best. Oftentimes, the response rates don't change, and they come away believing the test was a failure.

The shame of this approach is that not only does the company end up with the same response rates, but even worse they end up with no learnings. This is tragic because in the redesigned version, the company in all likelihood made some good decisions, along with some bad decisions, but they have no way of telling which was which.

The good news is, as with the Race Game, there is a way to avoid this mistake. The solution is to use a more systematic approach like multivariable testing. Multivariable testing involves changing many different variables simultaneously, but doing it in a completely systematic way. When done correctly, you not only greatly increase the likelihood of improving your response rates, but you also gain tremendous insight into what caused the changes.

With multivariable testing, a test version of a page with a 0% lift can actually be a cause for celebration. As in the Race Game, you'll often find that baked into the seemingly disappointing results are invaluable learnings, that when applied in the next wave of the multivariable test, will greatly increase the likelihood of a higher response rate.

So whether you're playing the Race Game or optimizing a website, it's all about being systematic in your approach. If you're just shooting from the hip, sometimes you'll get lucky, but more often than not you'll just end up with Turtle Wax. While a multivariable methodology won't guarantee higher response rates, it will increase your likelihood of success immeasurably. And furthermore, it will guarantee better learnings, which will almost always reap benefits in the future.

Lillian Vernon is one of America's leading mail order and online retailers. Today, more than 50% of their orders are placed through their website (http://www.lillianvernon.com). At the top of the pages on their website is a "Universal Page Header" which contains a wide array of elements including various icons, buttons, and font treatments. Realizing that these elements have a significant impact on the behavior of their web visitors, Lillian Vernon brought in Optimost to help them optimize the Header. Specifically, they wanted to increase the number of web visitors who added at least one product to their shopping cart, and then went on to complete a purchase transaction.

Universal Header

Working together, Lillian Vernon and a dedicated Optimost project team developed a test plan which included 6 variables and 24 different values (versions of the variables). Based on this test plan, the Optimost solution engine quickly identified and generated over 2,000 different permutations of the Universal Page Header. Using its advanced methodology, Optimost was able to conduct a multivariable test on a subset of the possible permutations of the Header.

As a result of the test, Lillian Vernon learned that making changes to items such as the location of the shopping cart logo, the size of the Lillian Vernon logo, and the appearance of the search button all made a significant impact on conversion. Most importantly, by optimizing the Header, Lillian Vernon is now on pace for an increase in annual online sales revenue of over $1 million.

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

Smart marketers are looking to solve the "X times Y" equation, where X is getting the maximum number of visitors to your site for least amount of marketing dollars, and Y is maximizing the percentage of those visitors who become customers. Optimost clients are maximizing the conversion rates on their websites (the "Y" part of that equation), and Optimost partners with a number of companies that focus on "X", getting those visitors to your site in the first place. Obviously one of the ways to accomplish this is through a comprehensive search marketing program.

LookSmart is an Optimost partner that provides a unique search advertising platform. LookSmart advertisers have access to demographically segmented customers in their 180+ vertical search sites and through their partner network, connecting those advertisers with millions of potential customers at the exact moment they're searching for what the advertiser is selling.

The LookSmart Advertiser Solution set includes:

• PPC (Pay-per-click) advertising
• LookSmart AdCenter, Web-based reporting and campaign management tools
• Banners and other keyword-targeted products
• Dedicated customer support, including campaign optimization and webinars

Savvy search marketers use LookSmart as a powerful way to round out their mix of search advertising, and combined with Optimost's powerful website optimization platform, they can truly maximize the total ROI of their online presence.

For more information about LookSmart's solutions, please go to http://res.looksmart.com/opti or contact Yossi Goldlust, , (415) 348-7684

Click here for a complete listing of Optimost Partners.

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