Improve Your Website With These Split Testing Tips
When I first started split testing things on my landing pages to get more sales, I wasn’t sure where to begin. I often tested things that didn’t make much difference. Here are some ideas with an indication of how important it is to test each one.
1. Adding An Audio Greeting: Audio greetings are like video. They can help or hurt depending on the quality of the audio. Audio greetings aren’t as popular anymore, now that video has become so prevalent, but it’s still often a nice touch. Something to test is whether to have the audio start immediately, or wait until the user presses “play”. You can get some users angry if you start the message automatically, so you might use that approach only if it converts significantly better. If it only wins by a little bit, I’d advise you to wait for the visitor to start the audio. (important)
2. The Background Color: Some marketers swear that a deep blue background converts best. I’m not so sure. I’ve had light grey beat deep blue. But you can try all kinds of things. Leave it white? Black? Red? Use a watermark? In my split testing experience this factor doesn’t make as much difference as you might think, though, so don’t stress out too much about this one. (medium importance)
3. The Layout: Do you have one column or three? Do you have a long sales letter, or a short fact sheet. The general approach you take on your page can make a big difference. This might even be the most important choice to make. Unfortunately, when using multivariate testing software, it’s often difficult to test this factor with other factors, because it pervades so much of the page. You can either test this factor separately, or run your multivariate test from a spreadsheet. Or, with a server-side PHP-based software program, you can test it with other factors with some clever work, though it will probably be much easier just to run a simple split test for this factor alone. (important).
4. Your Offer: Do you give them 10% off, or a $100 rebate? Do you offer a free eBook as a bonus? Should you offer three bonuses, or just one? More is not always better. Should you do an upsell before purchase? Or should you do a “One Time Offer” after purchase? These things are extremely important. (important)
5. Risk Reversal or Guarantee: Should you offer a 100% money-back guarantee for 30 days? 60 days? 90 days? Lifetime? Many marketers will tell you the longer the better. Ironically, the longer your refund period, the fewer the refunds you’ll issue. Many times this isn’t in your control. Your payment processor will have a set policy. (60 days is very common). If you have more control, you can test all kinds of things. How about a “double your money back ” guarantee? That’s bold, but you’ll have to make sure you can make it work. (important)
6. Referring To Where They Came From: So the visitor clicks on a Google ad, and they come to your site, and it says: “Congratulations for clicking on my Google ad. You have just taken the first step toward . . .” This can have a powerful influence on the user, because it keeps them in their flow of consciousness that started at Google. You can try all kinds of things along this line. (important)
Those are just 6 ideas of many. Please test everything you can think of, but keep track of which things make the most difference for you.
