Additional redirects might result in you losing big $$$ (9)
I love doing a lot of split-tests to gain more insights into everything.
You can split-test a lot of basic facts. Different lander size. That's very general thing that's going to profit you years into the future. Different banner size was one of the surprising split-tests being posted here a couple years ago.
What I set out to test a month ago was different redirects.
Traffic source: Mobile pops and redirects
Server: Beyond Hosting dedicated server
Tracking:
Testing setup:An additional file infront of the real lander, doing only the redirect.
Please note that due to my testing setup it's not possible to compare the redirects against each other. Only no redirect vs. JS / PHP redirect in each individual split-test screenshot.
Javascript direct
<body>
<script type="text/javascript">
window.location = "http://tracking-url.com";
</script>
PHP redirect
header("Location: $loc");
die();
?>
The main reason I tested these is that I've been working with several coders on developing the best anti-spy software out there. I'm sick of my landing pages getting ripped.
And there is no solid solution I'm aware off, that's not killing my ROI by adding additional redirects. + they are otherwise not easy to use. What these tests clearly show is that any solution with additional redirects is pretty much worthless for mobile traffic - especially pops and redirects.
Other test I tried to find out if we might be able to do some magic with it:
IFraming my lander.
I had a main page, which would then simply IFrame my real lander. This could easily be adjusted for various options. However the results are not very promising.
<body>
<iframe src="http://my-domain/lander.html" style="border: 0; width: 100%; height: 100%"></iframe>
Conclusions:
- Redirects in general result in noticeable click-loss for mobile traffic
- PHP redirects are much better than Javascript redirects (think Double Meta Refresh - TWO Javascript redirects. ouch!)
- IFraming sucks
- We're losing a big part of the people along the way. Just think about all the redirect happening BEFORE and AFTER the user actually enters your funnel. Going direct with the publisher or advertiser also has the benefit of reducing the redirects
- Anti-spy tools should not be adding more redirects if you're running mobile traffic (and I found a solution after weeks of testing
)PS. I'm aware that the iFrame one has a pretty small data size. The performance might shift if I would have run it for longer. Feel free to test any of these yourself and post the results!
What about testing a file with a metarefresh tag (set to 0) loaded on a CDN?
Originally Posted by dynamicsoul
<meta http-equiv="refresh" content="0; url=http://tracking-url.com">
I just added a different type of redirect in the body, in case it would be faster. So the fastest Javascript redirect would redirect first. Bottomline - you get the fastest JS redirect.
The file was not hosted on a CDN - but I doubt switching from the dedicated server to CDN would make a major difference to the overall testing results.
Ok I see. Sorry, I just seen javascript redirect.. Didn't notice the header..
Great case study, @Kepe!
This is the reason I stress over my server speeds so much.
The same way a simple redirect can affect conversions so significantly, the same could be said about an increased latency between your traffic and your server when advertising in far-away geos.
A lot of people don't think about it, but the further away your visitor is from your tracker and landing pages, the more hops and peering points that click has to go through to reach its destination. And each one ads a bit more latency to the mix.
This is especially important on INTL mobile traffic where the connections need to be made to mobile carriers. In some regions like LATAM this is made much worse, as the connections and infrastructure are already bad and many carriers have less than ideal routing, so the click has to bounce around from more than a few places to reach its destination.
So in a nutshell, if you do large volume of international mobile advertising, invest in local servers. One example I'll use is LATAM. If you run a lot there, look for a server in Miami (Ideally in the NAP of The Americas--Google it) as the direct connection with LATAM runs right through there.
Wow!
I apologize for the noob question - not a very technically-inclined person - but does this mean it's a bad idea to choose the "Double meta refresh" option when setting up campaigns in
Amy
Originally Posted by vortex
But if you want to protect your campaigns from being completely visible to the networks or offer owners, it'll be impossible without slowing things down one way or another.
However sometimes if you want to hide your referrer there is simply not other option. Having a very good relationship with the network (not easy to get a trustworthy one, cuz usually all their AMs can see your lander) and being able to run via PHP redirect will certainly add a very nice extra to the ROI.
REALLY good case study.
Page loading speeds are the only factor - literally the only one I know of - that you can always expect reliable improvements in CVR and CTR from on your campaigns.
If you change anything else on a campaign, at best you're looking at "probably". It'll "probably" improve things.
But if you make your campaigns load faster, it'll almost certainly improve things - something that studies from Google, Amazon, and a bunch of other places back up.
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