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How do you know if your marketing works if you’re not testing?

Do you casually glance at your website traffic stats, hold a finger in the air and say …yes that headline increased our website sales? Or do you scientifically test one headline against another and synchronize this with the number of orders you get?

To help make sure you’re on the right track here are 6 “hot” tips for successful split testing…

1. Test at least two versions of whatever it is you’re testing, this would be the contol and the variation

The control version is the one that’s getting you the best results so far, the variation is the version you’ve created that you want to have beat the control.

2. Equally test one version against another

You’re looking for each version you’re testing to be exposed to the same environmental factors. In the case of your website this would be making sure each version gets the same amount of website traffic form the same source.

3. Measure the actions of each split test

Now you have equal amounts of traffic going to each version you’re testing how will you determine which is more effective? This is where you need to state clearly the objective you’re aiming for, it might be more subscribers or more sales. Then you need to measure this for each version you’re testing.

4. A big enough sample of results.

It’s no use testing 10 visitors to each versions of you’re testing, I promise this won’t tell you anything of any value. On the other hand if you looked at 300 visitors for each test variation you’ll begin to see a more representative picture as to which version is the winner (which then becomes your control in future tests).

5. You need patience

Testing takes time, if your website doesn’t get much traffic on a regular basis it’ll take longer for you to get the results you’re looking for. On the other hand a high traffic site will get your website testing moving along much quicker, leading you to a high converting website in a fraction of the time.

If traffic is something you need more of recently I launched a traffic course called “Flood Your Site With Traffic” if you don’t have this yet click here to get yourself a copy today.

6. You need to understand the results

This one needs more investigation because sometimes you’ll find yourself in a situation where one version A of a test out performs version B by 5%, yet version B communicates your websites values more effectively. So which version should you choose? Over time you’ll become more experienced at testing and your “gut feeling” will play a significant role in deciding the winners of split test where the results are close.

To get you started with your split testing I recommend you take a close look at using Google’s excellent website optimizer.

Get started with your split testing today:

Google Website Optimizer…
http://services.google.com/websiteoptimizer

Split testing doesn’t stop with regular websites either… you can also split test the headlines and the content of your blog posts using this special WordPress plug-in…
http://websiteoptimizer.contentrobot.com

Here’s a useful online tool that helps you to calculate the effectiveness of your testing…
http://www.splittester.com/index.php

There’s one last thing you’ll come to realize once you’ve been split testing your website for a while… even your best testing is uncertain at best.

Why? Because of Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principal which states that we can’t be certain of anything because the very act of looking changes its nature. This is why as Mark Joyner says in his excellent book Mind Control Marketing… “Drawing broad conclusions from your testing can be hazardous to your financial health”.

Popularity: 84% [?]

Back in January I ran a 7 day test using this interesting new online website visitor tracking service called Crazy Egg. (Here’s the article I originally wrote Don’t boil this crazy egg).

Essentially what this online tracking service does is it tells you which links are the most popular ones on your website. You can then use this information to optimize your websites ability to convert visitors into subscribers or customers.

Here’s the page I tested: BigSellingConversions.com

As soon as you login to your CrazyEgg account you’re shown a really well laid out and easy to navigate dashboard that shows all the tracking campaigns you’re running.

Here’s a screen shot of the page I tested out…

So you can see that during this time I had 25 visits and 17 clicks in total for that page.

To be totally honest with you that figure of 25 visits is something I’ve not been able to verify with my Google Analytics stats that I was getting so I have to question the accuracy of the tracking. I’m going to run another test on another site to see how accurate the tracking really is, right now I’m just not convinced by it.

For the purpose of just showing you what you get when you use this still very interesting online tracking tool here are my other results…

CrazyEgg provides you with a couple of ways to look at the data you get back on the clicks the links on your site has gotten. The first way is a heat map…

Then you can switch to overlay mode and you get something like this…

What’s interesting is how many people clicked on the check box, even though the form would still work without the checkbox being checked. The reason for doing this is to use the idea of commitment and consistency, when you commit to doing something by taking a positive action you’re more likely to follow-it through to the end by being consistent in your actions.

Is CrazyEgg worth using?

Definitely, but with one caveat… make sure you also track your visitors using a service like Google Analytics to compare the visitor numbers.

Based on the what I learned the numbers of clicks were not high enough to get any kind of significant information from them. Ideally you need around 200-300 visits to the page you’re testing to get meaningful results.

Go check out CrazyEgg.com now and see what you can learn about how people are using your website. It costs nothing and takes about 5-10 minutes to set up.

Popularity: 39% [?]

In my last post I showed you the theory behind how people really use and view your website (and it’s not what you think!). If you missed it you can read it here.

When you’re designing your website you need to keep everything I said in mind for the best possible results.

Today I signed up for a unique and “potentially” very powerful online service that’s going to help you a LOT because it follows on from my last post in a very interesting and very useful way.

What this service does is it shows you how people are using your website. Before you only had the theory but now you can get the “actual” stats for your website design, have I got your attention?

Great! because if you’re as serious about creating high converting websites that not only look great but also sell like crazy I highly recommend checking out this service (just as I’m doing).

It’s called “Crazy Egg” and they give you the tools to visualize your visitors (even for free!)

Here’s a screen shot I’ve grabbed from their website so you can see the different types of statistics they’ll give you to help you create websites that convert visitors into buyers or subscribers.

• You get an overlay of the web page you’re testing so you can see the actual percentage clicks on each link and form element you have on you page.

• You get a full summary of raw clicks.

• You also get a visual heatmap of the page so you can see at a glance where your page “hot spots” are (where people are clicking the most).

Here’s the full list of the features Crazy Egg gives you.
Here are the different things you can test for…

• Test a new design
• Test content and discover which version works better
• Test various layouts or placement of key elements such as ads or action buttons.

As I mentioned earlier I signed up for an account. But before taking the plunge with a paid account I’m testing the free version. As soon as I have some results to show you I’ll post them up here.

If you’d like to join me in this testing of Crazy Egg just go to their site here and sign up for a free account. It’ll take about 5 minutes to get started and there’s a single line of code to add to the pages you’re testing.

It’s a really well laid out and easy to use service which looks like it has a great deal of potential to help you build better more profitable websites.

Let me know how you get on won’t you?

Popularity: 34% [?]

So how do you use the web? or more accurately how do you read the websites you visit?

It’s amazing isn’t it when we create our website we think it’s a masterpiece of creation.

We believe that when people arrive at our new website people are going to pore over each word you’ve written and every website graphic you’ve created.

You probably even designed it to be read something like this…

I would even hazard a guess that you think your ideas are obvious and people will “get it” right away and know exactly what link to click on next.

I’m here to tell you that you’re wrong and what people do most of the time is (if you’re lucky) is glance or quickly scan your page. Then click on the first link that catches their eye.

In fact you’d probably be surprised to know that there are huge parts of your page that your website visitor won’t even look at (yes it’s true!).

Here’s the cold hard reality of someone using (or scanning) your website…

The closest analogy I could find to express what happens is this… try reading a billboard at 45 miles per hour, because that’s how your website is seen by your visitor. Don’t believe me?

Go check your Google Analytics stats and look for the “Bounce Rate” and the “Avg. Time on Site” because those numbers will tell you the true story about your website.

Here are my own stats for BigSellingConversions.com during a recent promotional campaign:

What you’re aiming for is a low “Bounce Rate” percentage and a high number for “Avg. Time on Site” …simply because this means that your visitors are probably reading more of your web page.

If you’re not already using Google Analytics to measure what your traffic is doing then you’re missing out on some really valuable statistical data about your website. Analytics costs nothing to use, all you need is a Google account.

Let’s assume you have Analytics… so how can you improve the “stickiness” of your website design so people stay longer?

Here are 7 easy to use ideas you can apply to your websites landing page, squeeze page or any other page you care to squeeze or land on:

1. Keep any links you have to an absolute minimum, you don’t want people leaving your web page to go to another website.

2. Use short paragraphs of text making them easy to scan. Ideally you want your paragraphs of text to be no more than 4 lines deep. This helps make your page easy to scan (very important because we’re all scanners online).

3. Keep your website design simple and easy on the eye, as I’ve said before “simplicity sells!”

4. Make what you want people to on your web page really clear. If you want them to take a certain action on your web page tell them what to do, don’t ever assume they’ll just “get it”.

5. Don’t go overboard with lots of graphics (unless they help people use your web page).

6. Make your navigation simple and obvious so your visitors can make clear decisions about what’s on each page of your website.

7. Use contrast in the design of your website to make it attention grabbing.

How many of these ideas can you put to use on your website today? 

Popularity: 78% [?]

So what’s the answer?

There are 2 things you can do…

1. Increase your conversions
2. Increase your traffic

But which do you think is easier and will bring you the quickest possible results?

If you think it’s traffic you’d be dead wrong because the answer is in fact conversions!

Improving your website conversion is the key because all it can take is one small tweak and you can boost your sales almost overnight - but get this…. with the same amount of traffic.

So what areas should you focus boosting conversions on?

Here’s a short list to get you started…

1. The conversion of your traffic from your squeeze page to your sales page

2. The conversion of your sales page into your upsell offer

3. The conversion of the upsell offer to your thank you page.

Here’s where it gets really interesting because when you focus on making improvements to the conversion of your squeeze page (where your traffic arrives) you automatically see massive improvements in sales.

Why’s this? simply because more people make it from your squeeze page to your sales page. The more people make it to your sales page the more people will ultimately buy from you, and so on through your website.

This is the “exact” thing that I did (and continue to do) with my own products. Focus on improving the conversions of your squeeze page (or optin page) first then work on making improvements in the other areas.

I’m sure by now you can see exactly why you should be doing this.

Recently I created a website to help you increase your conversions… I think you’ll find very interesting because it’s a classic example of everything I teach.

There’s also free report on conversions waiting for you to pick up there, so if you’d like to boost your conversions overnight by making a few small changes to your website then this is just for you…

http://BigSellingConversions.com

If you don’t know how to get started improving your conversions create a Google account for yourself then activate Google Analytics and the Google Website Optimizer.

These tools will show you just how well your website is converting now and from this you’ll be able to measure the effects of any changes you make.

It’s all about testing, tracking and letting the numbers point the way to what “really” make you money online.

You can create a Google account here for free.

Popularity: 32% [?]