Testing and Tracking
Split-Testing : The Secret Weapon of Experienced Online Marketers
Since the early 1900s, the best direct marketers have used some form of split-testing to improve their sales messages. Marketers like John Caples split-tested with coupon codes to tell which of a number of separate ads produced the best response, changing one item at a time until they found a winning formula. Split-testing is how direct marketers continually increase their profits over time.
With the ease of tracking on the Internet and the advent of low-cost or free software programs, split-testing is something that all online business owners should be implementing each month. It is an ongoing process.
What Is Split-Testing?
Split-testing is the process of creating two separate variations of anything that a visitor or a prospect is exposed to which requires them to take an action, such as a web page, a PPC ad or a banner ad. An action required for measuring a split-test can include the click-through-rate on a PPC ad, submitting a form to request a free consultation or purchasing a product online. Splitting traffic between the two variations of the same element shows you which one produces the best response rate.
Google Website Optimizer Open To The Public
The new Google Website Optimizer, which I’ve had the pleasure of using in the past few months, is now available to the public… which means that all Adwords advertisers can now conduct testing with this new Google tool.
The Google Website Optimizer uses a method called multi-variate testing, which allows multiple sections of a web page to be tested at the same time, so that you can identify the combination of factors which produces the highest conversion rate for the site.
Let me explain this further…
Let’s say you have a landing page with various factors including the headline, the sub-headline, the call-to-action, the ’submit’ button and an image.
With multi-variate testing you can test multiple options of each factor… with an example multi-variate test being laid out as follows:
Why Do We Test?
Testing is the cornerstone of successful online marketing. All of the world’s greatest marketers achieve the results they do because they understand the power of testing and they test everything.
Some of the greatest advertising and marketing books, such as ‘Tested Advertising Methods‘ by John Caples and ‘Scientific Advertising‘ by Claude Hopkins, spend much of the book explaining the importance testing plays in achieving maximum response from any advertising spend.
Scientific Advertising was first written in 1923, yet the testing methods described in the book are still not only relevant, but critical to ongoing success in increasingly competitive arenas.
What is testing?
An effective landing page, or web page, is made up of various factors including:
How Tracking Works…
I often talk about the importance of tracking all internet marketing activities, not many people actually understand how tracking works.
It’s really quite simple.
Firstly, you open up an account with a tracking company, who provide you with tracking code.
Second, you add the tracking code to each page.
Then, the tracking company starts compiling information about your visitors, including:
- How many visitors you receive per hour, day, week, month and year
- Where they live
- How they came to your website
- What they did on your website
- How many people bought your product or service
- How many people subscribed to your newsletter
- How long they stayed on your website
- How many times they returned
- Which page they exited your website from
- What type of internet connection they have
- The screen resolution of their computers
- And much, much more…
With this information you can now begin to understand how to improve your website and increase conversions.
Why Testing & Tracking On The Internet Can Save You Thousands
The key to increasing profits and lowering costs over time is continually testing one advertisement against the other… one offer against another… one headline against another… and so on… until you find the best performing piece.
One of the advantages that search engine marketing has over other advertising mediums is the speed of tracking response from marketing tests.
With online marketing you can track the response of your marketing efforts in real-time. This means that you can quickly gauge the success of the marketing test, implement the next changes immediately, and take it live instantly.
So, not only can you quickly implement new changes, but you can do so cost-effectively… because you don’t need to spend thousands of dollars to see the results of a test.
Then, when you’ve found the highest performing offer, sales piece or headline, you can roll it out offline, in magazines, newspapers and any other mediums.
By testing and tracking on the Internet first you ensure you get the highest return on investment for the lowest possible cost.
