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Split Test
March 20, 2012
Here’s your warning – today’s Biz Tip is about a fairly technical subject. But if you are selling anything online in your business, you need to know about it. Our subject is Split-Testing which is also called A/B testing and it is essential to getting the most out of your websites. Split testing is best described as using a software program to split the traffic to your website between two slightly different variations of your web page. This allows you to experiment with which version gets the most people to take the desired action on the web page (called conversion).
If you have a sales page, a newsletter signup page, a squeeze page or a registration page of any kind, split testing will help you get the most results possible. For example, you may have a sales page for a new product and have two identical pages built except that they have 2 different headlines. You set up Google Website Optimizer which is a free service to split your traffic between the two versions. Over time, you compare the numbers of visitors to each version with the number of purchasers (conversions) from that page.
One of the keys to good split testing is to only change one thing at a time. After you have tested your headline and know which is better, you can go on to test something else. The most commonly tested elements of a web page include headings, sub-headings, the opening paragraph, the images, the call to action and the offer itself. You may try changing the size, color, placement and content of elements.
The tricky part of split testing is interpreting the results. To have very reliable results, you need to have very large traffic numbers to make the results statistically significant. In the real world of a solopreneur business, you are likely to have much smaller traffic numbers to your website. It is most useful to use these guidelines from the book, Landing Page Optimization, by Tim Ash.
• If there are 100 visitors to each website, you need to see a 20% difference between variations to be sure that they actually mean something.
• If there are 1,000 visitors, you need to see a 6.3% difference.
The next time you create a new sales page for your business, create the split test page at the same time and start testing. Your biz will benefit!
Don't forget to "Mind your own Biz".
Warmly,
Janet
PS - I had lots of thank yous for last week’s Biz Tip about Timeline for Facebook business pages. If you are interested in social media marketing, you may want to be a part of my Social Media News Flash program. It’s a simple way to get extra information about social media marketing, have a forum to get YOUR questions answered and to stay up to date on the latest changes in Facebook, Twitter and the rest.
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Janet Slack
janet@lifeadventurecoaching.com
714 Oakland Street
Hendersonville, NC 28791
828-691-4655
http://www.lifeadventurecoaching.com
http://www.solopreneur.biz