Whether you have been testing for years or you are just getting started, building a successful optimization program depends on careful planning, implementation, and measurement.

This is the first in a three-part series of articles that looks at the steps involved in creating a successful optimization program. In it, we'll look at three critical elements in optimization planning:

1. Forming a great testing team
2. Getting your stakeholders on board
3. Writing a formal test plan

Forming a Great Testing Team

In Web analytics, one good analyst can provide great insights, but not so in testing. The testing process is typically too political and requires too many resources to be executed by just one person.

Consider what is often involved in making a change to a website:

• Someone decides that a change is warranted.
• Management needs to review the change request.
• If the changed is approved, management initiates the change management process.
• Depending on the change, developers, designers, marketers, and copywriters may be required.
• Information Technology needs to deploy the change.
• Quality Assurance needs to test the change.
• Analytics needs to validate the change.

Now, compare that to a situation where a testing program is already in place. Instead of someone deciding a change needs to be made, marketers regularly ask themselves, "What would happen if we changed X, Y, or Z, or even all of them?" And although the best testing solutions help to minimize the need for some of the resources required—most commonly developers and IT—there is still a need for a cohesive group to create and run tests and analyze their results.

Address that need by forming a testing team of appropriate resources within your organization, then give that team a mandate for making improvements and allow it to incrementally prove its value and earn the right to test increasingly large projects.

Assign your internal superstars to the team to couple their insights with technology and process to allow them to measurably demonstrate their brilliance. Give the team access to other internal resources, at least as long as they continue to produce results.

The two most important roles on your testing team are the project manager and the executive sponsor.

The project manager needs to be someone who combines incredible organizational skills with a shocking enthusiasm for change. That person's role is to ensure that defined testing processes are followed to the letter, thereby increasing the likelihood of successful tests. That person does not have to be a jack-of-all-trades, but he or she does have to know Jack (or Jill) to get the job done:

• The skills to produce a sound statistical design are not required, but the ability to understand basic statistical principles is.
• The skills to create brilliant design are not required, but the ability to think from the perspective of an end user is, because visitors do not interact with your site the way you think they do.
• The technical skills to write JavaScript, HTML, or ActionScript are not required, but the ability to keep all resources—technical or otherwise—on task and on time is.
• Seamlessly juggling people, process, and technology are the hallmarks of an effective project manager.

The role of the executive sponsor is obvious: Without an internal champion for change on the management team, most testing projects are dead in the water. Fortunately, a new class of digitally minded executives are actively signing up to manage testing projects. These soon-to-be "rock stars" clearly see the opportunity available and want their names associated with the financial gains that testing so commonly produces. They also recognize the value of using testing to prevent mistakes from happening, and they are just as happy to report saving the company millions as they are reporting incremental revenue.

Finally, make sure to socialize the testing team's efforts throughout the company. Doing so—essentially announcing to the world your commitment to optimization and demonstrating that commitment by assigning some of your most valuable resources—has a two-fold effect.

1. It clarifies to other internal resources why their content is changing in a seemingly random way.
2. It creates an expectation for the team to produce and gives them a platform to talk about their successes and failures.

Obviously, building and socializing a team requires senior management's support.

Getting Your Stakeholders on Board

Management's support for testing projects is absolutely critical. Having buy-in from members of the senior management team is a make-or-break condition of testing efforts.