Once the traffic hits your landing page that you have optimized a bit, split testing is one of the single most important parts of any campaign.
You may have the best ideas in the world as far as what’s going to work on your landing page and ads. You may even have data that shows what has worked in the past. But that doesn’t mean its going to work today or forever! And it certainly doesn’t mean that you have found the best way and most profitable way to do it.
There is always something else to split test. There are literally so many factors that go into the decision making process people have wrote hundreds of page books on the process and still are barely scratching the surface.
The bottom line as Dan Ariely proves in his book Predictably Irrational, is that behavior is NOT always Rational (even when our MONEY is on the line!) And that sometimes even the silliest changes can yield more profits. Sometimes it’s literally the one idea that you say “nah, that’s too simple that wouldn’t work… would it?” sometimes those ideas the ones u dismiss right away in your mind (the sometimes irrational ones) can be the ones that work so well.
Here’s some other factors in landing pages that are usually overlooked or not given enough attention.
Colors alone play a major role, the wrong “non sales” color can turn people off who may have bought otherwise. A creative google search will link you to many studies on this.
You can have the best sales page in the world but if you leave out the trust building process then you are skipping a major step! Read the book Trust Agents or listen to any of the new Frank Kern List Control stuff.
Make sure to have a control in your split test so you have something to compare to. Base all of your additional testing pages off of the control page so that you can say that 1 simple factor showed improvement, rather than trying to guess which modification yield better results.
The landing page is not the only thing you should be split testing, you should be split testing your ads, keywords, demographic targeting and sources of traffic as well.
Whenever possible get them to opt-in to an email list on your sales pages so that you have additional chances to build a relationship with them and ultimately get them to buy something.
Questions to ask yourself to help improve your landing page:
What is the “Call to Action” on this page? In other words, what is the most important thing that I want them to do on the page. If you have more than 1 page make sure that each page has a clear Call to Action and then focus your efforts around getting them to take that action. Always favor the shortest simplest process that you can. I’m not saying to write a short sales page but always favor short over long if you can make the sale quickly rather than prolong it. (Sometimes it takes a long sales page to make a conversion depending on various factors).
“SO What?” Ask yourself this question after READING your landing page. This is a question to ask based on the particular offer on the page. Say “So what?” and keep answering your own question by re-writing your landing page until its extremely powerful, simple and motivates you to do something (this question can also work well for ad writing too).
Surveys can be very useful and are rarely used by Internet Marketers for the purposes of improving their own sales process. When you build a list, segment it into a few parts then ask them to reply to your email with what they think of the product/what they would like to see added on/what they dislike/ etc. People will generally be pretty honest, especially when saying what they dislike about your sales offer. You can then put this information in your future ads, future emails and future sales/landing pages for the particular product or campaign. It’s a very commonly overlooked part of the process and surveying is a great way to really be able to get to know your list/customers. Then, if you’re able to squash all the common questions or dislikes about your product before sending them to the actual sales page, then you are way ahead of the game and your conversion rates are going to sky-rocket. You could even make jokes about the common misunderstandings people have of your product, to put them at ease about it. You might be asking yourself what if you don’t have a list? Well, if you have customers buying products of yours and you aren’t capturing their email even on the checkout process then you need to take a close look at your business model for these kinds of gaps. You should at minimum be capturing on the checkout process to upsell and keep them a long term customer for future products.
If you are an affiliate marketer running offers, this also still applies to you. You should be building that list of ultra highly qualified customers before they buy anything. Then you can keep selling them over and over on related products BY building a relationship with them through email! The better the relationship you build with them by telling them stories that involve you and the products (amongst other things) the better they are going to convert for you time and time again. Being an affiliate is no excuse not to be split testing, building lists or surveying.
Always be split testing. There’s always something to test. Don’t let yourself go crazy with it, make sure that you can properly analyze all of your split tests. Do them small at first and work yourself up to running several split tests for a single campaign. Always be aware that several factors go into the decision making process and that you may never figure them all out. The best way to figure something out in Internet Marketing is to give your visitors these slight variations and let them tell you both by surveying and by their actions on your split test pages.
–Brian
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