I ran my first conversion test back in 2007 and was instantly hooked with the idea of it. Since then I’ve gone through plenty of trial & error testing ideas while learning from some of the industries best like Bryan Eisenberg and Tim Ash. Along the way I’ve used a wide range of conversion testing platforms from Vertster, Optimost, SiteSpect, Google WebSite Optimizer with a dash of Test & Target.

It wasn’t until August 2010 I stumbled upon Optimizely thanks to Sacca. I noticed it was a company he had invested in and that was enough to want to give Optimizely a closer look.

High Five #1. This is a testing platform you’ll actually use.

For both first time testers and advanced conversion testers, I can honestly say you’ll use this platform. Especially if you’re not too savvy on the technical side of things. I think the biggest selling point of Optimizely is really anyone can do it.

When you first start your experiment, you can LITERALLY start taking elements from your site and drag and drop them where you want. It’s like you take complete control of your site from a visual standpoint and instead of editing the code, you move elements as you see fit while they take care of the backend styling and coding. Here’s a quick look at the interface you’ll use when setting up a test.

Click to view larger…

Although, if you need more control you can easily edit the code straight up. It’s truly the best of both worlds.

When I setup our first test for MOJO Themes, I literally had my first test setup within 20-30 minutes inside Optimizely, then Willzum added a tiny script to the head tag of our site and we were ready to roll.

High Five #2. Analytics in Real Time.

Unlike other conversion testing platforms, Optimizely has real time analytics tracking the moment you start your tests. I feel like this is a huge feature they offer and shouldn’t be taken for granted.

I must admit though, I am obsessed with analytics and combing through my sites metrics to see how things are being effected by one another. It’s something I do on a daily basis and while others could care less as long as their traffic is growing I spend hours digging through all types of metrics seeing where we can improve.

Again, analytics are important and allow you to make the correct decisions. Optimizely understands that and that’s reason in and of itself to use them for your conversion testing.

High Five #3. Track Multiple Conversion Goals.

In my opinion, 2010 was FINALLY a breakout year for conversion testing among mainstream users and it sucks I didn’t find Optimizely until now. Quite a few tools were being released last year, and more and more people were getting familiar with newer tools like Google Website Optimizer.

With that being said, I think Optimziely really did a good job on a number fronts. Easily one of my most favorite parts of Optimizely, is the ability to add multiple conversion goals. You can start your test and add conversion goals to track sales, multiple conversion funnels, etc.

Let me explain why this is important.

QUICK EXAMPLE: Say you have a test that starts on your homepage but there’s several steps a customer has to take to complete a sale. They follow a number of paths on the way to checking out. Rather than ONLY analyzing the final conversion goal (most likely the Thank You page) you can see how each variation affects the user along the way. From the homepage, how is variation #1, #2 and #3 converting the next step in the conversion funnel? Optimizely makes it’s easy to track this and gives you the best data to make educated decisions with your tests.

High Five #4. Real Results.
(So many high fives your hand should be hurting).

Here’s a quick Optimizely Case Study which is from my very first test. Oh and the results of this test are just unheard of.

If you don’t know by now, I’m the co-founder of MOJO-Themes. In short, it’s a leading buy and sell marketplace for themes and templates. Designers can upload themes for platforms like WordPress and sell them across the marketplace. We’ve been growing like a weed and there’s NO slowing down for us especially since we started using Optimizely.

Seeing that our marketplace has to cater to two audiences (Buyers & Sellers) it’s damn hard to test variations and even harder to choose how we layout clear calls to action. This is what we tested.

Since we launched the marketplace in April 2010, we’ve tried to always focus heavily on conversion testing in an effort to raise our conversion rate and keep our exponential growth rate climbing each month. Thanks to testing with Optimizely we’ve been able to grow even faster than we expected.

20 Minute Setup + 20,000 Visitors = 136% Lift. The results of this test further prove the power of conversion testing.

After setting up our first test and letting it run for quite a long time we found a big ass winner. Yep, our marketplace saw a 136% lift overall. In other words, nearly doubling our revenue for the month.

Final High Five. Good game, now hit the showers Optimizely.

I recommend Optimizely with 100% confidence. You should ABSOLUTELY use Optimizely for your conversion testing. They found a way to cater to beginner and advanced users and they’ve made conversion testing fun and exciting for me.

If your conversion rate is suffering, stop wasting time and go sign up.

You’ll come back and thank me later.

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Welcome to my quick 2 minute version of “Landing Pages for Dummies.”

Landing pages play a huge role in the success of your online marketing efforts. Specifically your paid search campaigns.

I’ve had several clients or business owners seeking advice on whether they should close down their paid search accounts because their campaigns aren’t performing.

My first question is usually:

What’s your current conversion rate?

The answer back is usually:

“I don’t know”.

Whether your spending money via paid search or putting in hours of time writing quality content to get traffic to your site, you should know this simple metric. Rather than investing more money into your paid search budget, why not invest in your landing page instead?

Let’s start off by having me show you the “world’s greatest landing page”. Anyone want to take a guess? Well if you cheated and looked, which I’m sure you did, it’s Google.

All joking aside, Googles landing page is fantastic. It’s straight to the point, clean and it’s gotten the job done for the past 10+ years.

What’s makes a landing page convert?

When you ask it that way there are so many elements that come into play. Here are just a few to consider:

• Design - Is your site design user-friendly?
• Copy – Does your copy do a good job of promoting your offer to your visitors?
• Layout – When I get to your landing page is the layout clean and concise?
• CTA (Call to Action) - Are you telling your visitors what to do?
• Leaks – Do you have extra links that will leak out your visitors?

If you have a current landing page, are you covering these areas? If so, where do you see improvement?

TIP: Rather than guessing what areas to improve on or to test, use your site analytics to determine where the bottlenecks are.

In my opinion, it’s not JUST having the sexiest design or the most persuasive copy. Remember to tie every element together. Also, having consistency from your paid search ad to your even your thank you page will never leave a bad taste in your customers mouth.

How hard is your current landing page working for you?

Ultimately, it also depends on what the goal of your landing page is.

• Are generating leads or selling a products?
• Is your lead gen page a simple lead form or do you require a credit card?
• If you’re selling products, do you have a low price point or high price point?

When you consider these types of things, you begin to understand your potential customer. Put yourself in their shoes. Would you fill out your lead form? What differentiates yourself from your competitors?

My Formula to Highly Converting Landing Page

Here’s a quick landing page “check list” of things you should consider with your landing page.

1. Competitive Analysis — Research your competition. See if there are any gaps currently not being filled. Find out what they’re offering.  Bottom line though, research your competitors BUT don’t let your competition dictate what you do.

2. What’s your Offer? — From FREE Trials, FREE Shipping to Buy 1 Get 1 FREE, know what your offer is and stick to it. Don’t have a landing page that has multiple offers. It’s just straight up confusing.

3. Design/Creative — Let’s face it, we’re all not as talented as we’d like to think when it comes to pushing pixels. Just accept it and hire a freelancer to do it. Or if you have your in-house creative team let them tell you what looks best. There are 101 different landing page layouts. Avoid the design by committee and let the designer lay it out with what they think looks best. After you start collecting enough data you can test new layouts.

4. Development – Keep it simple stupid… for the user of course. Quick example, if you’re selling a product, be clear & concise. Your product should be displayed professionally with high-res images, wth a clear description and smooth checkout process.

5. Testing – Yes of course test your page for any bugs, but the testing I’m referring to is conversion testing. Consistent testing is crucial. From an entirely different layout to the color of your call to action button, testing will help you achieve a highr converting page.

[download]I want to put an emphasis on testing because I feel like conversion testing is just an after-thought to most. It’s completely under-utilized by most companies. C’mon people this is 2010 (close enough) and with all of the conversion testing tools at our fingertips, what are you doing?[/download]

6. Consistency – From start to finish. Same message. Same look and feel. Same offer. You get the point.

7. Miscellaneous Items – Here’s a few other random things in no particular order.

• Privacy Policy: You’d be surprised how many landing pages don’t let their visitors know what they do with their information and if it’s safe.
• Phone Number: I understand this can sometimes be a leak or you don’t have the luxury of a phone number but this allows your visitors the option of filling out your form or picking up the phone.
• Guarantee: 30 Day or Money-Back. Can you give your visitors a guarantee with your offer?

So there you have it. Short and sweet. If you’ve read this far I’m hoping it was valuable. If you have any additional ways to improve landings or anything worthy I can add to this post, let me know by leaving a comment.

As always, be sure to Subscribe to my RSS Feed or Follow @jrfarr on Twitter and I’ll catch you on the flip side.

So… lets move on.

It’s all about Headlines

Today’s tutorial is focusing on headlines on your web page and how to use best practices for A/B testing or multivariate testing.

The headline on a site is one of the single most important pieces.  It can make or break whether the visitor stays on the page or hits the back button.  Today I want to expand on why it’s so important and what strategies you can use to create persuasive headlines.

First, what is A/B & Multivariate Testing?

In internet marketing, multivariate testing is a process by which more than one component of a website may be tested in a live environment. It can be thought of in simple terms as numerous split tests or A/B tests performed on one page at the same time.

Split tests and A/B tests are usually performed to determine the better of two content variations, multivariate testing can theoretically test the effectiveness of limitless combinations. The only limits on the number of combinations and the number of variables in a multivariate test are the amount of time it will take to get a statistically valid sample of visitors and computational power.

Tips & Secrets on creating highly persuasive headlines?

You know what I’m talking about right.  Those attention grabbing headlines, that suck you right in.  Well you would be surprised just how much simple changes can affect the performance of a headline.

Let’s just take a look at a few examples.

1. Test asking a question:

• Do you make an impact in your company?
• Can you make an impact in your company?
• Will you make an impact in your company?
• How do you make an impact in your company?

2. Test numbers (fractions & percentages)

• 9/10 Dentists Recommend Sparkling White Toothpaste.
• Nine out of Ten Dentists Recommend Sparkling White Toothpaste.
• 90% of Dentists Recommend Sparkling White Toothpaste.

3. Test the formatting (Bold, Italic, Capitalization, Colors, Fonts, etc.)

• How do you Make an Impact in your Company?
• How do you make an impact in your company
• HOW DO YOU MAKE AN IMPACT IN YOUR COMPANY?
• How do you Make an Impact in your Company?
• How do you Make an Impact in your Company?

Before reading on, I must give some credit for this post.  The above examples were something I found in easily one of the best Website Testing books.  The book is called Always Be Testing, written by Bryan Eisenberg.  I have mentioned this book in a previous post, but this is more of thanks for all of the help and insight he provided with someone already pretty knowledgeable with MVT testing.  Even all of the things I have experienced with MVT testing, Bryan opened up new ideas that I would have never thought of.  Thanks Bryan, your book was awesome and anyone looking to get into website testing & optimization should absolutely BUY this book.

So Get on the Testing Wagon

In just a few bullet points I have given you some great testing ideas to implement on your website.  The scary thing this is just for the headline!  Think about all of the different variables you can test on a website.

When you get involved with huge marketing budgets and your spending thousands or even millions on paid search, every percentage and conversion matters.  That’s why testing your websites and landing pages are so important and should never be swept under the rug.

So I dare you.  If you are trying to optimize your landing page or boost product sales this holiday season.  Give testing a try.   The investment will come back to you over and over again.

More to come…

—

P.S. – Follow Me on TWITTER

I just signed up for the Always Be Testing Webinar, added it to my iCal and I can’t wait!  Why?  Read on my friends.

If you haven’t heard of Always Be Testing, it’s a book that was just released by Bryan Eisenberg of Future Now.  This is coming from someone who has read his book and attended his SES sessions.

Normally, I would just keep this to myself but the author of this book has just been awesome.  So I have to share it.  He sat down after his session at SES, gave away 500 copies of Always Be Testing and signed each one.  After the session I wrote about it on Twitter.  In about an hour or so, he some how saw it and replied to me.  I was shocked!  Now he’s following me on Twitter.  How’s that for being just a cool dude?

So if you’re wondering why I have been talking about this so much, well that’s why.  Just feel like I got a lot of value from him and the GrokDotCom blog and I’m just trying to return the favor.  I have already had a few buddies of mine purchase this book.  If you haven’t already done so yourself, then do it already!

Anyway, I am only asking you to do 3 things now after listening to my ramblings.

1. Check out the GrokDotCom blog – Subscribe via RSS
   
2. SIgn up for the free Always Be Testing Webinar
3. Kick yourself in the ass for not doing it sooner!

When you get done with all of that, come back and tell me thanks!