Thread: Day 27: Introduction to Offer+Lander Testing (Voluum)

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ACTION & EXPLANATION


A Word on Testing & Optimization Strategy



There is NOT a single correct way to test offers and landers, or to optimize a campaign.

Every campaign is different. There are so many variables that I can't possibly give you a one-size-fits-all testing and optimization strategy that will work every time (and it's not due to lack of trying on my part).

What I WILL strive to do, is provide a general testing and optimization strategy that is simple enough for a brand new affiliate to execute, and yet effective enough to help you find your first profits.

Then, once you're familiar with this general strategy, you can read other good threads on pop campaigns - follow-alongs, case-studies, etc. - to pick up additional tips and tricks that you can build into the general strategy.

Moreover, as you gain experience, your strategy will naturally evolve from my general strategy anyway. And the more experience you have, the earlier you can tell whether a campaign is worth pursuing or not, the earlier you will stop unpromising campaigns, and the fewer promising campaigns you'll abandon prematurely by mistake.

Overall, the more experience you have, the better decisions you'll make when faced with different situations. Nothing can replace actual experience, but I will do my best to shorten that learning curve in the remaining lessons in this tutorial.



General Offer+Lander Testing Strategy

Here I'm going to elaborate on what I said in a previous lesson - the "Intro to Testing and Optimization".

In the beginning, when you're setting up a campaign for a new geo+vertical for the first time, you're basically flying blind because you don't have any previous stats to compare to.



Remember the 3 pillars of the pop campaign that I've mentioned before? i.e. Offer, Lander, and Traffic. All 3 factors need to at least be of decent quality in order to get a reasonably good conversion rate.

If even ONE of these factors is of bad quality, it will create a bottleneck, such that no matter how good the other 2 factors are, conversions will be limited.

The really tricky part is that, when your new campaign doesn't generate conversions, it would be difficult to tell whether it's the OFFERs, LANDERs, or TRAFFIC QUALITY who is "at fault". This is why, in the beginning, you need to do your best to ensure the quality of all 3 factors. This is how you do it, in a nutshell:


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TRAFFIC - Choose a traffic source that has good-quality traffic. Bid average or slightly higher to make sure the traffic source isn't sending you traffic that nobody else is bidding for (i.e. traffic from placements that don't convert).

OFFER - Start with offers that have some type of track-record, e.g. ones that are suggested by AMs as having converted well for at least a few other affiliates, or offers that seem to be doing well based on spy tool stats (e.g. in Adplexity, exhibiting an uptrend over a few days/weeks), etc.

Also, try to test more than one offer in the campaign wherever possible - testing a few offers rather than just one can increase the campaign's chances of profitability.

LANDER - Test 3-5 landers - again, testing a few rather than just one will increase your chances of reaching profits. Make sure they've received a lot of traffic (in Adplexity, sorted by "Received most traffic") over at least a few days (chances are, few people would send high traffic to a non-converting lander for long).

Make sure you identify all the different major lander styles for that vertical, and include in the split-test at least one lander in each popular style. Choose landers that look very different from each other if possible in order to cast a bigger net - you can always test similar landers (aka "lander versions") later on.

Make sure you take time to optimize the landers: So that they display well in/on various devices and browsers, function correctly, and load fast.

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In previous lessons, you should already have chosen some offers and prepared some landers for your first campaign. In this lesson, we'll go over how to set up a campaign in Voluum to split-test those offers and landing pages. In the next few lessons, you'll see how the General Offer+Lander Testing Strategy is executed.



How to Set Up a Multi-Offer Multi-Lander Campaign in Voluum


Step 1: Add Offers to Voluum

We've gone over how to do this in previous lessons. Remember you can't just copy affiliate links from affiliate networks and just paste them into Voluum directly - you need to replace some tokens first (including clickid, traffic source id, and any other parameters you're wanting to pass to the affiliate networks).

Add all the offers you're planning on split-testing for the new campaign we're about to create.


Step 2: Add Landers to Voluum

-Log into Voluum -> click on "Landers" tab at the top -> click on "+ Create" and then "Lander".



-For "Country tag", if only one geo speaks the language your lander is written in, then specify that geo. If more than one geos speak that language, leave at "Global". Specifying a geo here will only help you find this lander more easily when you're creating a campaign in that specific geo.

-Fill in the lander name. Feel free to follow the naming convention in the screenshot:



-Leave the "Tags" field empty unless you have reason to use it. It's only for helping you categorize landers for easier search.

-Fill in the lander URL. Do go through your lander code to see whether tracking parameters are displayed depending on each visitor's situation, such as their device brand/model, OS, browser, and/or their location etc. I've mentioned this in the first section of the "Modifying Lander Code" post:

https://stmforum.com/forum/showthrea...ng-Lander-Code

Basically, if you see the following function in your lander code, chances are it DOES display tracking parameters:

<script>
function getURLParameter(name) {
return decodeURI(
(RegExp(name + '=' + '(.+?)(&|$)').exec(location.search)||[,null])[1] || ''
);
}
</script>

Note that the function in your lander code may not look exactly like the snippet above, but if you see something similar, look through your lander code for places where the "getURLParameter" function is called - for example:

Dear <script>document.write(getURLParameter('model')) </script></strong> user from <script>document.write(getURLParameter('city'))</script>: You have been selected for our iPhone12 contest!

...and note the parameters that are called - which, in this case, are "model" and "city".

You'll then need to add the corresponding Voluum tokens to the end of your lander url.

For this example, we'll need to input the corresponding tokens in the "Lander URL" field as follows:



IMPORTANT NOTE: The parameter names used in the landers and in Voluum just happen to be the same in my example - i.e. model={model} and city={city}, but this is not always the case. The lander can use any parameter it wants really, but the parameter name in the curly brackets will NEED to be chosen from the "Available URL tokens:" section in the screenshot above.

Another example: Let's say the lander code includes these getURLParameter function calls:

Dear <script>document.write(getURLParameter('operatings ystem'))</script></strong> user from <script>document.write(getURLParameter('hometown') )</script>: You have been selected for our iPhone12 contest!

Then the lander url will need to look like this:



If you're still confused and want more information, Caurmen has covered the use of tracking parameters in detail here:

https://stmforum.com/forum/showthrea...ing-Parameters

-For "Number of CTAs", leave at the default "1" if the lander will only be used to promote one offer at a time.





Take this lander for example. Right now only one of the items is clickable, i.e. NOT greyed out. When the visitor clicks on the "Claim Now", they'll be redirected to ONE offer (which you'll specify when creating a campaign in Voluum).

Now, let's say more than one prizes in the lander above were clickable. For example let's say all 3 available prizes are available for the visitor to choose from. You can easily edit the lander code to make this happen. In this case, each of the three links will redirect the visitor to a DIFFERENT offer or sets of offers, i.e. the iphone 12 link will redirect to an iphone 12 offer (and there may be multiple iphone 12 offers in rotation / split-test), the ipad pro link will redirect to one or more ipad pro offers etc. In this case, in Voluum you would specify the "Number of offers" as "3".

When we actually create the campaign to add the offers later, you'll see more clearly how this works.

-Click "Save" at the bottom to save lander settings.

-Repeat all the steps above to add each additional lander you're wanting to split-test in this new campaign we're about to create.


Step 3: Create Campaign in Voluum

-In Voluum go to "Campaign" -> "+ Create" -> "Campaign Simple".



-Specify the "Traffic source" - for this campaign. For now I would advise to use PropellerAds for testing offers and landers, as it has more traffic volume and arguably better-quality traffic than PopAds.

In the future you can choose whichever good-quality traffic source you wish - keeping in mind to always use a proven traffic source with quality traffic to avoid the "don't know who's at fault" situation I mentioned above.

-For "Country tag" choose your target geo.

-For "Name" specify the campaign name (you can use any format or just follow the format I have in the screenshot).

-Leave "Cost model" at "Auto (CPC/CPM)" if you're running the campaign on PropellerAds or PopAds (because we've set up tokens for both of them to automatically pass costs back to the tracker).

-For "Transition between ad and campaign funnel", leave at the default "Redirect" because we're wanting to test both landers and offers. (Next time, if you're wanting to test direct-linking to offers only, without using landers, select "Direct" here.)

-In the "Campaign destination" section, leave everything at default.

i.e. "Path" (the "Flow" option is outside of the scope of this newbie tutorial, but you can find out more about it here), "Path Destination" = "Landers & Offers", and "Transition to offer" = "302".



-In the "Landers" section, specify all the landers you're wanting to split-test, clicking "Add lander" to add additional landers after the first.



-In the "Offers" section, specify all the offers you're wanting to split-test, clicking "Add offer" to add additional offers after the first.



-Click "Save" to save campaign settings.

(By the way - the offers listed above are DUMMY OFFERS I've created for illustration only. They are NOT actual offers - so please don't go to Clickdealer and ask them for offer (12345)!)


And you've just created your first multi-offer multi-lander Voluum campaign!

Wait - we're not done yet - please continue to the post below!




Amy

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ADDITIONAL EXPLANATIONS

There are several other things I want to elaborate on, that will help you.



How Many Offers to Test?

Preferably 2-5.

However, if you can only find one offer for a given geo+offer type combination (e.g. geo+prize when running sweeps), then feel free to just test the one..

Or, in the opposite situation where you have more than 5 offers for a given geo+offer type, feel free to test some or all of them at the same time. Basically the more offers you include, the greater the chance of finding a good one, but the more stats you'll need to collect to know which offers are better/best.

You can test them all at the same time, or test them in batches, with each batch would be the start of a new split-test.

Example: Say you have 10 offers and you want to test them in batches of 3-4. You would split-test offers 1-3 first - let's say offer 3 wins out. Then you'd start a new split-test with the winner PLUS the next batch of offers, i.e. offer 3 plus offers 4-6. Let's say in this split-test offer 5 wins. Then you'd start another split-test with offer 5 plus offers 7-10 to arrive at the final winner.

You are encouraged to test different approaches to see which one suits you.



How to Handle Offers that Accept Different Traffic?

If all the offers you've chosen for the geo+vertical (and if it's a sweepstakes offer, then also +prize) accept the same carriers, OSs, browsers etc., then it would be straight forward - just add them all to the campaign as we did above. And then at the traffic source, just select the same carriers, OSs, browsers etc.

But what if each offer accepts different carriers, OSs, devices, browsers etc.? We can only target ONE set of carriers, OSs, browsers etc. at the traffic source. How would we set that up so that traffic from different carriers etc. go to different offers, so that the right traffic goes to the right offers?

There are a number of options. I'll show you what's possible first, then show you my "lazy" way of handling this.

First of all, to simplify things, here's Rule 1:

Set up each campaign to target either a single carrier, or wifi. Add to each campaign the offers that accept traffic from that carrier/wifi.

Example: Offer1 accepts CarrierX & CarrierZ; Offer2 accepts CarrierY & CarrierZ; Offer3 accepts CarrierX. We would:

-Set up Campaign1 to run Offer1, and Offer3 and target CarrierX at the traffic source, and

-Set up Campaign2 to run Offer2, and target CarrierY at the traffic source, and

-Set up Campaign3 to run Offer1 and Offer2, targeting CarrierZ at the traffic source.

Note that this isn't a hard rule - if you're wanting to run a quick test by targeting all accepted carriers + wifi in a single campaign, just to see which carriers/wifi convert well-enough to warrant further testing, that would be a good approach as well.

However, I would suggest sticking to this rule at the start to keep things simple. Targeting a single carrier/wifi per campaign has the following advantages:

-It would eliminate the need to drill down into Voluum's carrier stats (as you know the entire campaign is targeting a certain carrier, or wifi). As Voluum allows drilling of only up to 3 levels deep, freeing up a slot will allow you to drill down into something else as needed.

-Carrier traffic is more expensive than wifi traffic, and even traffic from different carriers will cost different. This means each carrier/wifi will have a different average bid. By targeting them in separate campaigns, you'll be able to bid appropriately for each carrier/wifi. Targeting multiple carriers/wifi in the same camp will result in overbidding of some and underbidding of others.

I'll elaborate on the carrier vs. wifi topic at the end of this lesson - for now let's keep things simple. Moving on...

So we've covered carriers. But what if you have offers that accept different OSs, device types, and browsers? This is where we need to do some planning.

In order to send the right traffic to the right offers, we have 2 tools: 1)Voluum rules, and 2)Targeting at the traffic source.



Voluum Rules Explained

I'm going to introduce you to Voluum rules. Follow these steps to get some practice:

-In Voluum, create a new campaign, but instead of choosing "Campaign Simple, choose "Campaign Advanced":



(Note: The "Campaign Simple" option will not give you the option of setting up Voluum Rules. However, if you wish to add rules to an existing campaign, you'll always be presented with the rules option, no matter whether you created the campaign originally using Simple or Advanced.)

-No need to fill out the info in the first window because we're not actually setting up a campaign - I just want to show you what options are available for Voluum rules. Just click "Next" or click on the "Destination" tab.

-Leave "Campaign destination" at "Path". Find the "Rule-based paths" section below that, and click on "+ Add rule" to start a new rule.



-For "Rule name" put "Android OS & Chrome Browser". Click on on "+ Add condition", then in the dropdown select "Operating system".

-Under "Operating system and version" click "Add condition". Notice how, of the "Is" and "Is not" options, "Is" is highlighted by default. In the left-most search box, search for and checkmark "Android". Notice all versions of Android are selected by default. (In future if you have offers that only accept certain OS versions, you can select them here.)

Click "Apply" to save this rule.



-Click on on "+ Add condition" and this time select "Browser". Search for "chrome" and checkmark "Chrome" and "Chrome Mobile". Click "Apply" to save.



-Then, back in the left hand side of the window, click on "New path" under your new rule:



-On the right side is where you can specify the landers and offers you're wanting to run for Android+Chrome traffic - you can select random landers and offers as this is just a test. You don't even need to name this path (i.e. leave the "Path name" as "New path"). Click "Save".



-What you just did was set up a rule that said "if the visitor is using Android OS and Chrome Browser, run these offers and landers".

-Now, for practice, set up another rule yourself that says "if the visitor is using IOS OS and Android Browser...". (Start by clicking on "Add rule".) Again, specify some random landers and offers.

-Lastly, for the default path at the bottom, specify some random landers and offers.



If you were to run this campaign now, the top rule will get executed first, then the one below it. After all the rules are executed, the "Default paths" section at the very bottom will get executed last.


This is how Voluum rules are executed:

-Say we were to send traffic to this campaign now. Every visitor that comes along, would be compared to the top rule first, which is "if the visitor is using Android OS and Chrome Browser, send them to one of these offers and landers."

-If the visitor does not meet both criteria, they would be compared to the next rule, which is "if the visitor is using IOS OS and Android Browser, send them to one this other set of landers and offers".

-And if the visitor still does not meet both of these criteria, they would be sent to the "Default Paths" at the bottom - to one of the offers and landers listed in that path.

Although I've used 2 conditions for every rule in the example above, I very rarely use more than 1 condition, as I'll explain below. The above is just to give you an idea of what's possible.

So the point is, whenever you're trying to split-test a bunch of offers that have different targeting requirements - OSs, Browsers, and Device Types being the common ones - you'll need to somehow use Voluum rules + targeting options at the traffic source to send the right traffic to the right offers.

Below I'll provide more examples on Voluum Rules. NOTE: You don't HAVE to figure out how these examples work - I'm merely showing you what is possible with Voluum Rules. If you don't want to bother, just skip the two Voluum Rule Examples below.



Voluum Rule Example 1



Let's say this batch of offers only have different requirements for OSs (but accept all browsers and device types). How would you set up Voluum rules and choose traffic source targeting to run them in the same campaign? Spend a few minutes to think about this, then scroll down to see my suggestion below.
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I would set up Voluum rules for the major OSs Android and IOS, as follows:

IF Operating system and version = Android, run Offers 1, 2, 3, 4

IF Operating system and version = IOS, run Offers 1, 4, 5

IF Operating system and version = Windows Phone, run Offers 1, 3, 4

IF Operating system and version = RIM, run Offer 3

Default Paths > Path 1. run Offers 3, 4

And how would you target at the traffic source? You'd simply target all traffic segments that are accepted by at least ONE of the offers. So in this case, you'd target all mobile OSs available at the traffic source (assuming all the offers are mobile). For mobile carrier, you can target ETISALAT for this campaign, then consider setting up a separate campaign to target the DU carrier and only test Offer2 in that campaign.



Voluum Rule Example 2

In the last example, the offers were only different in ONE type of targeting, i.e. OSs. What if they were different in TWO types of targeting? For example, let's take the last example and add a DEVICE TYPE restriction:



We need to take the rules from the previous example, and duplicate them, so that we'll have a set of OS rules for EACH device type - Phones, and Tablets.

IF Operating system and version = Android AND Device Type = Tablet, run Offers 1, 2, 4

IF Operating system and version = IOS AND Device Type = Tablet, run Offers 1, 4, 5

IF Operating system and version = Windows Phone AND Device Type = Tablet, run Offers 1, 4

IF Operating system and version = RIM AND Device Type = Tablet, run Afflow

IF Operating system and version = Android AND Device Type = Phone, run Offers 1, 3, 4

IF Operating system and version = IOS AND Device Type = Phone, run Offers 1, 4, 5

IF Operating system and version = Windows Phone AND Device Type = Phone, run Offers 1, 3, 4

IF Operating system and version = RIM AND Device Type = Phone, run Offer 3

IF Device Type = Phone, run Offer 3

Default Paths > Path 1. run Offer 4

If you can't figure out this mess, don't bother. I mainly just want to illustrate 1)how creative you can get with Voluum rules, and 2)how messy things can get once you try to take care of more than one targeting type.



Voluum Rules Simplified - How I Do It

So you've noticed that having to set up conditions for 2 parameters - in our example OS and Device Type - can result in having many rules. Now imagine if the offers had restrictions in additional parameters - such as Browser requirements. It could get REALLY messy!

To avoid all the trouble, I usually either use rules ONLY for OSs, or none at all. This is what I do:

-For tier 3 and 4 geos, Android is the main OS that's responsible for most of the traffic anyways, so I would either just target Android OS at the traffic source when doing initial testing, or just target all OSs anyways even if certain offers don't accept a particular OS - not much traffic would be wasted anyway. In this case I wouldn't even set up Voluum rules.

-For tier 1 and 2 geos, if the offers accept different OSs, I would sometimes go through the trouble of setting up Voluum rules for OSs, like in Example 1 above.

-But having rules for OSs is as far as I will go. For Device Types: If some offers don't accept tablets, I would just target phones at the traffic source - there isn't much tablet traffic in comparison anyways. For Browsers: If some offers don't accept certain browsers, and if they are small browsers (e.g. Opera Mini), I would just not target it at the traffic source. If there are offers that have browser restrictions for big browsers, I would either just send the unaccepted traffic anyways (rather waste some traffic than messing around with rules) or just start a separate camp to test them.

-Once a winning offer is found, I could then just set up targeting at the traffic source to cater to it. So for example if the offer also accepts IOS but I was just sending Android traffic to all offers before for sake of simplicity, and it turned out to be a winner, I would also add IOS traffic to it later.


So to recap, when testing a bunch of offers, I would:

1)Generally only target one geo and carrier in each camp when testing offers.

2)I would set up Voluum rules for OSs for bigger geos, and tier 1/2 geos that have lots of traffic from OSs other than Android. But that's as much trouble as I'd be willing to take.

3)For OS restrictions in tier 3/4 geos, or for other target parameters for all geos such as device types and browsers and whatnot, I wouldn't bother setting up Voluum rules. I'd either send unaccepted traffic to certain offers, or just exclude from targeting at the traffic source. (Sometimes the advertiser will complain about the unaccepted traffic - in which case I'd just pause that offer and test it later.)

You can choose to do this any way you like - this is just my lazy way for your reference.



A More Efficient Way to Test Offers that Accept WIFI+CARRIER Traffic

Remember I suggested to set up one campaign to target each carrier? There's actually a more efficient way that I use, to minimize test budget, but it only applies to offers that accept both wifi and carrier.

1)If the conversion flow for both wifi and carrier are the same - let's say both are pin submits - then I would just set up a campaign to test wifi traffic first, and not set up camps to test carriers yet. This is because wifi traffic is cheaper, and if the offer doesn't perform well on wifi traffic, then chances are it won't perform significantly better on carrier traffic either (because conversion flow is the same).

Of course, if the offer converts well on wifi traffic, you should set up a campaign to test it on carrier traffic as well.

2)If the conversion flow for wifi and carrier are different, e.g. 1-click flow for carrier but pin submit for wifi, then I would test carriers first. My reasoning is that if the offer doesn't convert reasonably well for the simpler conversion flow, then chances are it would only convert worse on the more-complicated flow.

You can set up one campaign per carrier. Or, if you want to save time, target all accepted carriers in a single campaign, but this is just to get an initial idea on which carrier has the most potential - once you see one or more carriers looking hopeful, you would want to set up separate campaigns to target each carrier anyway. Traffic from different carriers cost different so it would be best to target one at a time. Another reason would be that Voluum only allows drilling down to 3 levels, so if you're only targeting one carrier, you don't need to drill down into "carrier", which would free up that slot for drilling down into other data.

Of course, if the offer converts well on carrier traffic, you should set up a campaign to test it on wifi traffic as well.



LAST STEP: Launch this New Campaign on PropellerAds!

Above we've set up the campaign on Voluum. The last step would be to create the campaign at the traffic source!

You already have experience with this so I won't do a step-by-step here.



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Now that the campaign is launched: In the next lesson, we'll talk about how to split-test landers and offers - i.e. how to CUT under-performing landers and offers, and when to do what.




Amy

Originally Posted by luciddream

Hi @vortex,

I tried to set up an offer with landing page that I ripped from Adplexity into Landerlab. Something concerning happened after I went through the process.

I replaced the outgoing links in LanderLab editor with my 'Click URL' from Voluum.

I'm using Voluum, and created a campaign combining the landing page and offer I wanted to test.

After I set up this campaign in Voluum I wanted to test it was working correctly so I pasted the Campaign URL into my browser and it seemed to be working except for the 'Alert Box'. When I pressed the back button in the browser it took me to random survey site.

I thought perhaps I missed a redirect link in the coding for the landing page but could not find anything.

Then I pasted my Voluum 'Click URL' into my browser and the same 'survey' site appeared.

It seems the 'survey' site has been linked to my Click URL. I tried deleting the landing page in Landerlab and archiving the campaign in Voluum but my 'Click URL' is still directing traffic to that same site.

Have I been victim to some malicious code in the ripped lander and have somehow hijacked my Click URL? Is this even possible?

I'm totally out of my depth here and any insight would be greatly appreciated!

Haha no need to worry - I don't think you got hijacked. 2 issues here.

1)Your click url being "linked to" the survey site: Try clearing your browser cache! I believe that should fix it. Voluum's click url is NOT associated with any offers on its own - it only works when you browse to the Voluum campaign url to go to the lander and THEN click on the lander links. Putting the click url in the browser should not take you anywhere - and if it does, the only possibility I could think of is your browser is serving up a cached page.

2)The back button leading to a survey site: Which link are you redirecting visitors to when they click the backbutton?



Amy

Originally Posted by luciddream

Ah thank you. That makes sense haha. The back button is linked to the Click URL. (So that it goes to the same offer).

Also I figured out that because the offer is GEO sensitive it doesn't go to the correct offer if traffic is from another GEO. When I turned my VPN to match the offer it worked fine.

I'll stop panicking now lol.

Yup - geo redirect - that was what I thought.

When you don't see the intended offer, 99% of the time, that would be the reason.

Have you tried clearing browser cache to confirm that page caching was indeed the issue?

I'm 99.99% certain - but you never know!

This is the chrome plugin I use to clear the cache with one click:

https://chrome.google.com/webstore/d...hkfmdidgjefleg

This plugin saves several clicks every time I need to clear the cache - which I do a lot especially when fixing up landing pages.



Amy