Testing Your Way To Internet Success!

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Testing Your Way To Internet Success!

What You Split Test And Track is Important to Your Online Success...

by
Jim Bruce

Testing your website pages, especially landing pages, squeeze pages and sales pages is one of the most profitable things you can do to tweak your pages and gain higher conversions. On top of that, you can learn more about copywriting though split tests and other means of testing your web pages than any other way.

Back in the days of mail order marketing, testing sales letters and catalogs gathered more real information about new concepts and ideas than through most other methods of research at that time. In these days of the internet, the bell even rings louder.

You can test whole concepts of your pages to find out what emotional triggers and core desires your market truly respond to. Simply test two or three versions of your sales page that each focus on a separate theme or slant on the product or service. The page that pulls the most conversions will give you the answers you are looking for.

In this day of fierce online competition, testing is something you should, no MUST do to gain the highest conversions from your website and pages. If you're not actively testing your pages, your competition will soon pass you by.

What Exactly Should You Be Testing?

The simple answer is: Everything! Everything on your pages and in your sales message is a contributing factor to your conversion rate. This includes your headline, opening paragraphs, body copy, your offer, post scripts, background color, font, font colors, images and every imaginable component of your page in between.

Volumes of information have been written about what to test and how to test your web pages. This work is extensive, so I'll focus on three areas that have the most impact on your sales page, the headline, the first three (or four) opening paragraphs, and your offer.

Testing Headlines

Headline changes can have the most impact on your conversion rate and response of these three components. 75 - 80% of your visitors will never read past the headline. It doesn't matter how wonderful you have written your sales page, if the headline doesn't work correctly and do its job of getting people to read on, your page will be a failure.

In order for your headline to be effective, you have to discover the biggest core desires within your market that they feed into and you can elicit a response from. The best headline tests are based around the different core desires and motivating reasons why people would be interested in your product or service.

Testing different headlines around different concepts will tell you which one is more appealing to your market audience. Once you have the key concepts and desires tested and you have discovered which one works best, you then go to work tweaking your headline in more alluring and persuasive ways.

Split testing is generally used to test headlines. In the beginning, you will probably want to use simple A/B split testing but if you are dealing with high volume traffic and high price sales, you may want to consider speeding up the process with multi-variate testing. You can find out more about these tests by going to: What Is Split Testing?.

What Type of Headline Format Do You Test?

There are some classic headline formats that have been shown to be effective over time that you can begin with. There's the "If/Then" headline, "Amazing Secrets of ..." headline, the "Who Else Wants to ..." headline, and of course the classic " How to ..." headline.

Test as many headlines as you can think up for your web page. In fact, you should never stop testing different headlines on your page. A simple 10% increase in your conversions could result in hundreds to tens of thousands of dollar or more. Testing your headlines could bring an increase of 50%, 100%, or even 200% or more in the response your web page brings.

Testing Different Openings

Next to your headline, the first two to four opening paragraphs can have an explosive impact on your conversion rates and profits. Of the many means to "open" your sales page, landing page or squeeze page is by telling a story that frames your message right off the bat.

People Love Stories! If you begin with a good story, it should be relevant to the subject at hand. Stories draw the reader into your copy, captivate people's imagination, and keep the visitor's attention focused on your content in order to find out what happens next.

The power of stories should be obvious. The are captivating, seductive, and people juse have to read on to find out what happens. If they have curiosity-evoking elemants and promise a solusion to the reader's problem, they will be a huge success.

The trick to story openers is to write them in a manner that the reader can easily see him/herself being the main character. This will make the story hit home harder. A story opener is always a winner if done correctly.

Another good page opener that you can test is the "Startling Fact" opener. Begin you first paragraph by introducing a pertinent, startling fact that the reader can relate to. "Did you know that ..." Your next few paragraphs can then elaborate on that fact. Soon the reader relates to what you are saying and you start to give them the benefits and solutions that your product or service provides to solve this problem.

The "benefit/bait" opener is another good way to start off your sales page. Start off your page by offering the major benefit(s) to your reader that your product or service supplies. This type of opener is bait after bait after bait. This can be quite effective if the visitor already knows what they're after.

Those are just three types of openers out of hundreds. Keep testing your openers and you will find which will increase your response and conversion rates for your situation.

Testing Different Offers

It's a shame when you have a well written sales page that relates well to the reader and then they click away because you messed up on your offer.

The way you structure your offer has a huge impact on the response of your page and your conversion rate. There are many elements of your offer that you can test. Here are three that I suggest:

Test Various Price Points - People can be very sensitive to your price. One reason for this is that the price is often perceived as an indicator of the quality of your product/service. Once you have set a price, consider doubling the cost of your product and testing it against your regular price. Believe it or not, many a marketer has found that the higher price sells better. Research has shown that a price point ending in the number 7 generally generate more sales. Try using $37, $57, or $497.
Test Various Order Options - Test multi-option offers where you can get a choice between a cheaper (standard) versus a more expensive (pro) versions of your product/service. These versions can be tested against a single option offer where the visitor gets one option at a set price. You can also test offering a one-time payment versus lesser payments over three monts.
Test Various Premiums - Bonuses often make or break your sales. Offer free reports because these give aways can be inexpensive for you, but could be positioned to hold tremendous value in the mind of your visitors. Often times, people will buy your product just to get the reports. Dest different ones to see which pull better than others. It's quite eye opening to see what buyers perceive as the reports with the most value.

These are just three things to test with your offer. There are plenty more that you will probably think of. Try testing different strategies of risk reversal, having your offer in a "Johnson's Box", and others.

Remember This About Testing:

Testing is the cornerstone of successful marketing online. Everything that has been proven to work with online marketing has come as a result of someone testing it. If you want to multiply your profits, grow your business, and create outstanding response with your web pages, don't just trust what the marketers before you found worked in their markets - become a prolific tester and find out what works well for you.