Why you MUST become fanatical at testing and tracking
By Brian Terry on February 24th, 2008You may want to subscribe to my RSS feed if you're new here. Thanks for visiting!
It should be obvious to any person with some marketing experience online that there is no magic pill to success.
To be honest with you I’ve grown tired of reading email after email filled with claims on how easy it is to sell online.
Whilst this can be true, what many fail to tell you is there’s more to it than just putting up a website and driving traffic to it.
Are you ready for the “real” truth behind successful online marketing?
Here it is…
“Fanatically test and track everything!”
Let me say it again, it’s that important…
“Fanatically test and track everything!”
Before you get started with your testing and tracking you need to know what your website conversion rate is right now. This gives you a yardstick to measure future improvements to. In scientific terms this is called your “control”.
Knowing your conversion rate before making, say a change in your headline, is the only way to know for certain if the change made has a positive or negative impact.
And by split testing one headline against another you’ll soon find a winner that beats your control.
Here’s a word of warning… never make a steadfast change to your copy based on some other marketers advice.
This is critical and it’s where so many people fall over…
What works for them may not work for you too.
Plus, how do you know they’re not merely repeating some “mantra” they read or heard elsewhere?
A classic example of this is to make your headline a bright red color. Whilst in some markets this might be the “winning” headline color, in other markets it could fall flat on it’s face and reduce sales conversions massively. Can you see the importance of testing?
Whilst it’s true you can increase sales by increasing the traffic to your site, it’s not the easiest way to do it.
Let’s face it, increasing your traffic is either going to cost you more money or a lot of time and effort (certainly more than split testing and tracking everything to improve your existing sales conversions).
However, just throwing more traffic at your website without knowing your baseline conversion metrics means you’re leaving money on the table because you do not yet know the full potential of your sales process.
Let’s play with the numbers for a moment to give you a good example of what I mean…
Say you have a 1.5% conversion rate and 1000 visitors each week.
That’s equal to 15 sales a week. Not bad.
And each sale is worth $20 in profit.
1.5% x 1000 = 15 X $20 = $300 profit each week Now, increase traffic 50%… 1.5% X 1500 = 22.5 x $20 = $450 profit
Let’s step things up a bit…
Now you increase your conversions to 2.5% and send more traffic, let’s see what happens next…
2.5% x 1000 = 25 x $500 profit. That’s $200 more than in the example above and $50 more than sending more traffic.
Let’s send more traffic to our 2.5% converting site and see what happens with a 50% increase.
2.5% x 1500 = 37.5 sales x $20 = $750 profit each week. Replicate this over 4 weeks and your financial picture changes dramatically.
Always keep this in mind…
Only when you’ve got your sales conversion percentages as high as possible should you begin to consider increasing traffic. This ensures you get the very most return on your investment (ROI) in any marketing campaigns you run that send you more traffic.
Becoming fanatical at testing and tracking is the true path to online wealth.
To help you get started here are the testing and tracking tools I use and recommend you use too…
Google Analytics: www.google.com/analytics/
Google Analytics tells you exactly where your organic traffic is coming from, what pages people visit, how long they stay for and even how well it converts.
Google Website Optimizer: services.google.com/websiteoptimizer/
This other service by Google is integrated with Google AdWords, but don’t let this hold you back because you can use it by itself on any website you own and costs nothing to use. Google Website Optimizer enables you to run “split tests” where you test one website component against another automatically.
To access both these superb tools for free all you need is a Google Account.
Increase your website sales by 275% or more...
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Oh, I am fanatical about testing and tracking
Incidentally, other things can be tested besides sales. For example, I’m currently running a split test on the multi-page site in my name. I’m basically measuring how many people click from Page 1 to Page 2, and so on.
I’m currently testing a short version of Page 1 versus a long page, to see how many people click on to Page 2.
I thought the shorter page would increase click-thrus - but so far it’s lowering them from 36% to 12% - just as well I didn’t go with my “gut feelings”!
I call this “flow testing”, and the great thing about this technique is it allows me to test with fairly low traffic. The idea is, once I’ve found a good set of pages which gets as many people reading from Page 1 to the end as possible, that’s when I’ll roll out an advertising campaign.
Also, one other quick thing - I’m not a fan of using Google Website Optimizer - not that there’s anything wrong with it, it’s just I’m wary of giving my conversion data to the same people who set my Adwords prices
Authors website | February 26th, 2008[…]Brian Terry presents Why you MUST become fanatical at testing and tracking[…]
Authors website | February 28th, 2008Well I guess it’s time that I start getting fanatical. I have to be the worst at testing. I just sit and write and post.
thanks for the valuable information
I am blogging about one of my hobbies and sometimes I am just sharing my experiences and don’t think about my titles so much.
I will do better.
Authors website | March 6th, 2008