Experiments in Business

For this blog post, I had to read two articles on experiments and how they should be conducted in a business setting. I also watched a brief video explaining the benefits and disadvantages of a scientific study, more specifically it discussed the differences between randomized clinical trial and an epidemiological study. Essentially, a randomized clinical trial is not always possible due to many factors, such as potential dangers to people's health, so epidemiological studies are conducted to search for correlation between two things, such as smoking and cancer.

The first reading, "Finally, A Majority of Executives Embrace Experimentation" (2010) by H. James Wilson and Kevin Desousa, discussed differences between experimentation styles: prototyping, simulation and test groups & A/B testing. It was interesting to consider what types of experiments would be the most useful for different business ideas. I found it interesting that there is a difference between prototyping and simulation, and that prototyping could be done quickly without wasting much time on trying to come up with features that might not work. The second reading, "How to Design Smart Business Experiments" (2009) by Thomas H. Davenport, explained a general way to conduct an experiment for a business idea, starting with how, what, when and why to do experimentation.

I learned that simulation works best with big projects, such as cars, and it enables many people to participate in data gathering. Prototyping works best when there is the possibility to recreate the product again after certain tests, and it is fairly easy to modify. I also learned the steps that should be included in an experiment: creating a hypothesis, designing the test, conducting the test, analyzing the test and acting according to the results.

My question is that why so many companies have not engaged more in experimentation? The piece by Wilson & Desousa claims that in 2010, around 51% of surveyed executives claim experiments are their preferred research method. I find that percentage to be quite low, even though I understand that some business ideas are harder to experiment with. I personally find experiments a great way to study how people see different products and how they work in different situations.

For the Google Online Marketing Challenge, an experiment I would conduct is to see whether our client gets more click-throughs from an ad using the words "gift registry", rather than "wish list". This would be a sort of a A/B test, and it would benefit our client by establishing an AdWords ad that provides a better click-through rate, and which could be showed more often to potential visitors.

On-Site SEO

Since I will be missing class on Friday, the 23th of January, I am writing this blog post on the third chapter of the Internet Marketing Essentials online book, "On-Site Search Engine Optimization". The number one thing I learned was that one should optimize all keyword phrases according to the website they have, and how big their website is. Also, all keywords should point to specific webpages, instead of just the homepage, from where the visitor would have to click onwards, as the map illustrates.

Source: Internet Marketing Essentials

Other important aspects of on-site SEO are relevance of the webpage content and its quality. Relevance is measured by how well the keyword is related to the page. For example, if the keyword appears in the webpage's URL, it gets a lot of relevance points. Quality, on the other hand is measured by the click-through rate from SERP (Search Engine Results Page), low bounce rate from landing page or overall good quality of the content of the webpage.

What I learned from this chapter is the basis of on-site SEO. As of right now, I feel that I could assist my group's client for the Google Online Marketing Challenge a little bit better, when it comes to attracting more visitors through SEO. I also learned more about relevance and why it is so important to be very descriptive about the website's content and link appropriate keywords to each webpage.

I still have little knowledge when it comes to the internet, but I feel I'm getting a better understanding of it every class. However, as I was reading the chapter, I could not understand a header tag. What is it and what exactly does it do? I also thought about how the chapter describes the usage of long tail keyword phrases, and how small websites benefit more from that than bigger ones. What if not that many people search for longer than one- or two-word phrases? Wouldn't that make it harder for a small website to gain a higher ranking on search results? I certainly try to keep my search words to a minimum, but I guess I can't know what other people are doing, at least not until I learn more about Google and how it works.