The Chinese website is an adaptation of the general market site that we created last year to promote LA Urban Homes’ four neighborhoods within the Azusa master-planned community of Rosedale.

In order to completely engage the buyer profile, mainly first generation Chinese or buyers of Chinese descent, LA Urban Homes marketing director, Jil Blumberg Froman, charged us with creating a Chinese language website. Made total sense. After all, beyond having sales professionals who could converse in the proper Chinese dialect,  it was truly the best way to connect with this target.

Prior to translating the English language website’s copy into Chinese, we worked with Chinese marketing strategists to revise the content so it would resonate more with the target. For example, on the English language site, the Local Area section highlights stores and conveniences in the immediate area. For the Chinese site, we modified the focus of that section to provide information on nearby vacation destinations that we knew were popular with the target, such as Mt. Baldy and Lake Arrowhead. In addition to showcasing the local public services, we also made a point of highlighting the neighborhoods’ close proximately  to public services in neighboring cities that would be of key interest to Chinese buyers.

Once the copy was reworked, it was translated and incorporated into the site design. We were very selective with the team members we put on this assignment. For the process to work smoothly, they had to be proficient in both Chinese and English. They were. The site launched on Saturday, January 21, just days before the Chinese New Year.

To  direct prospects to the site most relevant to them, the  English language site features a graphic in Chinese directing viewers to the Chinese language site. Similarly, the Chinese language site features a graphic in English directing views to the English language site.

As far as we know, this is the first Chinese language website for a US developer.

In addition to the new website, red rocket LA has been supporting LA Urban Homes’ Rosedale neighborhoods with ads in Chinese newspapers. We also intend to communicate with the target via other Chinese language online tools, such as email, for those prospects who select it as their preferred language.

At red rocket LA, we believe this is just the first of many Chinese language websites that we will either adapt from existing sites, or create from the ground up. It’s simply too large a market for home builders to ignore.

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Case in point: I have a friend who can’t spell his way out of a paper bag. One day he asked me to check his spelling on something and I came across the word “braw.” When I told him he spelled “bra” wrong, he replied, “Oh, did I leave off the ‘w’?”

He’s not the only one out there, which is why we need to anticipate how they might misspell our company names when doing a Google search.

For example, if your company is named Lemon Anchovies, we’ll assume your URL is LemonAnchovies.com. But you might also consider registering LemonAnchovees.com and maybe even LeminAnchovies.com.  The cost of registering additional domains is little in comparison to the business potential of grabbing new customers. And really, just because they can’t spell, that doesn’t mean they can’t spend.

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We’re all aware that email marketing is one of the most cost efficient and effective ways to reach your target audience. But if you’re not conducting A/B tests, you could be short changing your open rates, click-through rates and conversions. Creating two different versions (A and B) of your email and sending each to a different half of your database allows you to easily see what resonates with your target and what doesn’t.

Treat it like science
A/B testing provides an objective way of evaluating message effectiveness in what is traditionally an intuitive creative process. As such, it’s important to approach your tests like a true science experiment. First, send out a well executed eblast that will serve as your benchmark, against which you’ll measure the results of your A/B test.

The next step is to optimize/modify two new versions of the eblast to see how the change impacts the results. For example, you may want to experiment with two different subject lines, the placement of a button, the call to action, or simply the background color. What’s important to remember here is that for a true A/B test, you should only test one change at a time. That way you can clearly determine which change is influencing the target’s behavior.

See what pulls
Once you have these two new and different versions, deploy each to one half of your database and see how the results compare to your benchmark figures. Look at how many people opened each email, clicked through and converted across the call to action. This analysis will help you identify fallout points which influence where and what you should focus on for subsequent A/B tests. From there, you can continue to modify the message or design in your quest for even better results. But remember, only one change at a time.

Broader application
A/B testing isn’t just for eblasts. You can apply the same techniques to landing pages, web banners, paid search ads and more.

The bottom line
A/B testing makes sense for a number of reasons. It allows you to prove a point that may not have been supported by empirical data in the past, e.g. this headline will pull better than that one. Plus, it adds a level of accountability to the process which may, eventually, help you build a bigger interactive marketing budget. And who couldn’t use that?

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