I just came across this interesting new testing approach on the YouTube home page that allows website visitors to opt into a test and also explains what's being tested instead of just randomly allocating people into test groups using the standard a/b/n approach. 

Giving choice to people is usually a good thing but in a testing situation that's kind of new and I'm not sure how I feel about this, what are your thoughts? Using an opt-in approach and explaining the test should generate more buy-in and maybe even unprompted feedback but I wonder what the non-random allocation of test subjects does to the significance of the test results.

(download)

Click here to download:

interesting_youtube_testing_ap.zip (963 KB)

ACMA just released a report, Australia in the digital economy: Consumer engagement with ecommerce, which explores Australian household internet user experiences with ecommerce including commentary on consumer purchasing behaviour. Finally some Australian based research (thanks ACMA and thanks Mark for spotting this).

The research examines who is buying online, how much, how often and what, here are some of the key findings but make sure you read the full report.

• 88% of households performed ecommerce activities in last six month
• Banking, shopping and paying bills are most popular activities
• 69% have transacted at least one item in the last six months
• Travel, events and household goods are most popular purchases
• eCommerce decreases with age, increases with household income
• Respondents with higher level of education more likely to transact
• Males more likely to buy online and purchases differ by gender

Looks to me as if ecommerce is very much alive in Australia, people spend online and not just occasionally so we can only hope that the government will continue to invest in the an improved national broadband infrastructure to boost this even further.

Click here to download:

aust_in_digital_economy-consumer_engagement_with_e-commerce.pdf (795 KB)

(download)

Click here to download:

aust_in_digital_economy-consumer_engagement_with_e-commerce.pdf (795 KB)

KissMetrics have published some really cool research on how colour affects consumers purchase behaviour, below are two extracts but you can see the full size info-graohic on the KissMetrics blog.

According to the below, visual appearance overall and colour in particular are major factors for consumers when making purchase decisions and given the easy of which we can change both in an online environment this would lend itself to some great tests.

Colour psychology has been around for a while but the below opens up a whole new world of real-time online targeting based on colour response patterns. There would obviously be some serious limitations and difference between brands but what if we could segment anonymous visitors based on their colour affinity and then show them different offers and messages? Worthwhile investigating I think. 

With the support of Edentify (thanks guys, super fast turn-around on your end) we did a little live poll this morning at the ADMA Data Day 2009 asking a couple of hundred Australian direct marketers the following two questions:

Poll 1: Thinking of yourself as a consumer which of the following channels would you prefer companies to use when communicating with you (select only one)?

Poll 2: Putting your direct marketer head back on, which is the most effective direct marketing channel for your company (select only one)?

The below results are only very top-line and would most likely differ by industry and product (i.e. price) but it's comforting to see that a great majority of people would like to be communicated with via email and that marketers also think email is a very effective channel that works for them (same goes for DM). More of a concern is that is seems that no-one really wants a phone call but quite a few marketers consider phone calls an effective direct marketing channel.

If all this sounds like a familiar challenge to you and you'd like to know how data and analytics can help to select the most suitable channel at the right point in time or just want to contribute to industry best practice then please join the new ADMA Data & Analytics council by emailing councils@adma.com.au.

Check out the Edentify Bubble Toolbox yourself here 
http://www.edentify.com.au/

According to a recent eMarketer article people are using social media in all sorts of situations but what's the weirdest place you've used Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn or any other social site before (and we want to see some crazy 'other' responses)?

Take our poll now (and be honest):
http://answers.polldaddy.com/poll/2197682/

Read the original eMarketer article here:
http://www.emarketer.com/Article.aspx?R=1007352