I would love to see a test of this and find out how much this second option actually reduced list unsubscriptions.

The companies making it through the economic crisis are going to be more efficient and more streamlined as they have learned to do more with much less, to squeeze more out of areas that they did not focus on before. Corporate resources are called upon to deliver more and work harder.

Budgets have been cut back and marketing spend has been reduced, so savvy companies are learning that their websites need to deliver the goods. It used to be that if you wanted more leads or sales, you just turn up the dial on the adspend and get more.

Now there are ways to increase leads and sales from your website even amidst the budget crunch and ad spend cutbacks.

1. A/B and Multivariate Testing – If you have not done this, then you are not putting your best foot forward or at least you are not putting your best website forward. Why settle for a poor performing website when you can tweak it for maximum performance.

2. Segment optimization- Not every visitor to your site is the same. There are questions you should be asking yourself about your visitors. Where do they come from? What keyword brought them in? What time of day do they visit the site? Are they coming from your advertising? Once you know this information, you can take action that will increase the performance of your website. Find the right combinations that work for everyone coming from Google for example. Closely related to Personalization below.

3.Personalization- Almost all websites are showing one message for every visitor. But what if you could show the right message for every visitor? Blue widgets for the people who found the site through a blue widget keyword, red widgets for the red, North American widgets for those who came in from Seattle and glow in the dark widgets for those who came to the site in the middle of the night. Well you can and you should, this increases conversion rates above and beyond what testing can do.

Living through the furnace of economic trials will make stronger companies who are smarter with what they have. Don’t be surprised if your competition has a website that doesn’t seem to rank well or they don’t spend much to promote it, but it seems to be kicking your butt. They’ve probably figured out how to make the site work for them.

If one thing was made apparent by the WhichTestWon testing awards this year, its that most web marketers are toting around a shutgun, rather than a sniper rifle when it comes to testing. Very few of the entries provided meaningful learnings, beyond “one page is better than the other.”  If we had asked people WHY Recipe C beat the control, not many would have had a definitive answer.

So I implore you to stop testing lots of things at the same time (shotgun approach) and instead, pick and isolate variables carefully and deliberately (sniper rifle.)  When the test is done, you’ll be able to proudly say, Recipe C beat the control, and the reason WHY is that a medium button that is red and includes the word FREE gets more clicks.

Why does this matter?  Because you can take this learning and apply to your next test-

2. Test, Learn, Change, Test, Learn, Change, Test Learn… Iterate More!

Iteration is the secret to delivering the best possible product.  Picture what it would be like if car manufacturers did not iterate on their designs?  We would all be driving around in clunkers that were no more reliable than they were in the early 1900s.  Luckily, this is not the case!

The same is true with testing your sites, landing pages, and other online creative.  Rather than using the shotgun approach by testing repeated wildly differing designs- put on your white lab coat and treat your web optimization campaign like a real scientific experiment.  Run focused, controlled, carefully designed experiments- varying only one thing for an AB test or a handful of things in a multivariate test.

This approach may not be quite as exciting as the former, but in the end, you will learn more, and have a better likelihood of success.  Once you have completed one test, be immediately ready to run the next, iterating (or building) on what you have learned.

3. Add the word OFAT to Your Testing Vocabulary

Just because OFAT sounds horrible (old and fat?) it is neither bad, old nor fat.  OFAT stands for One Factor At a Time- in other words one variable at a time.  Google erroneously took the term ‘AB test’ and popularized it to mean testing wildly differing designs (in fact different web addresses.)  AB testing was originally synonymous with OFAT- meaning in a split test, you isolate one variable and change it to measure the effect of the change.

4. Take a Class or Read a Book

In my job, I get to observe the testing practices of a great number of marketers and agencies. I can say with a degree of certainty that many of them (including those “certified by Google”) would benefit by taking the time to study testing best practices.  Even though they are technical and not specifically geared towards web testing reading up on experimental design and design of experiments can help you create better tests with more reliable results.  A side benefit is that they will possibly require less traffic to get statistical validity as well.  There are a set of well understood principals from offline testing which can be ported over to the online world with great success!

6. Learn from example

Lately,  a number of inspiring sites have popped up with examples of real test results, expert commentary, and other resources.  One of my favorites is Anne Hollands “WhichTestWon” which hosts a weekly blog asking their namesake question.  Marketers submit two versions of a prior test, and visitors to the site are given the opportunity to pick which they thought won!  These sites can help you in two ways- 1.) You get a view into the mind of other marketers and how they chose to design experiments, and 2.) They can be a great source of ideas for testing on your own site!

7. Take a walk offline

Some businesses count as many as 70% or more of their conversions from offline sources (telephone orders.)  The simple fact is you cannot afford to ignore these when you are running a test.  Would you drive a car with the windshield 70% obscured??  Sadly, many many marketers do the equivalent testing online.  If you get a lot of orders by phone, you need to hook some phone conversion tracking capabilities to your test.  I am not sure how many testing vendors support phone tracking integration, but I know at least one that does (wink).

As for the phone tracking vendors, a search of Google will illuminate many- varying widely in cost.  Most will work for testing purposes.  The important thing is to make sure that each unique recipe tested is correctly assigned to a unique phone number.  Then when a call comes in, the phone system needs to be told to report a conversion for that page version.  It sounds confusing because it is.  Luckily, all of this complexity happens in the background.

8. Pay Attention to Segments to Maximize Testing Satisfaction

Ask yourself what would happen if Santa Clause delivered the same present to every child, regardless of age, nationality, or gender.  Would most kids be happy with their gifts?  I doubt it!  Instead, Santa segments his audience, making sure little boys get toy cars, action figures, and the like, and little girls get dolls, stuffed animals, jewelry, etc.

Don’t make a mistake by assuming all of your website visitors are going to respond to test options in the same way.  Many marketers are running tests with darkened glasses on here, blindly ignoring the nuances that commonly exist amongst different traffic segments.  Make a goal in 2010 to invest in a testing platform that can show you how visitors from Google performed compared to visitors from Facebook, and which version of the test won for each group.

I’m co-presenting the live webinar awards with Anne Holland.  Our fellow judges are Avinash Kaushik and Bob Bly. Plan to attend next week, on Tues Dec 8th, 2:30pm ET/11:30am PT

Reserve Your Seat Now(space is limited, so don’t wait)

What will you learn?

You’ll get to see samples — winning and losing test panels — plus data from the best tests of 2009 including:

• Homepage tests
• PPC landing page tests
• Ecommerce tests
• B2B lead generation tests
• Email opt-in form tests
• Advanced online tests

Space is limited, reserve your seat now!

If you love testing, this should be one of the most inspirational events of the year. The webinar is Next week, Tuesday Dec 8 at 2:30 PM EST.

Reserve your Seat Now

1. The search box itself:

The primary goal of optimizing the search box itself is to make certain visitors on the site can find it and understand what it does. Typical tests would revolve around the placement of the search box, size of the text field, color, and the appearance and text on the button.

2. The search results page:

Once people complete a search, they arrive to a results page which displays matching products or content.  The goal of the results page is for people be able to quickly see the results and then link to the content found.  Certainly, the effectiveness of this page will be highly dependent on the relevance of the results, but on-page factors (which can be optimized) play an important role as well.

We have seen simple changes and optimization increase search result page engagement by over 40%, which is a very big lift for something most people would think has little to do with testing.

The results page offers up many more areas of testing and optimization.  Here are a few to consider:

• How many results do you display?
• Do you use a regular site template or a scaled down page design which makes it easier for the user to focus on results?
• What visual cues do you provide within the results (such as highlighted matching text.)
• Do you allow people to purchase or add to cart directly from the search results?
• Do you show prices in the results?
• Do you show a “related searches” section to help the user refine their search (this has potential to distract them from the main results though.)

When you test these, you should make sure to track both result page engagement (did people click on the search results) as well as revenue per visit.  Subtle changes in the search system can make a big difference in revenue for many e-commerce sites, so never rely on engagment metrics only!

Before you ever start testing, you should have an idea of what you plan to get out of it.  You should not be testing just to join the “cool kids.”  Going into your testing program you should have a written goal.  It may be broad, but having that goal will change how you proceed through each of the steps of creating and launching your test.

2. Assemble your Team, Communicate what you are doing internally

Identify who will be involved with the test, and make sure each person understands their specific role.  If you will need custom creative assets developed, identify the stakeholders and get some time carved out in their schedule.  Let other groups in your organization know you will be performing testing on the site so they do not get surprised be an unexpected change to the site.

3. Research problem pages on your site with analytics

Use web analytics tools to spot trouble areas in your site. Things like high drop off or bounce rates, low conversion rates, and poorly performing landing pages should stick out like a sore thumb and could be ideal places to focus your testing campaign.  Also look for pages that get a significant amount of traffic, as these may be prime candidates for testing as well.

4. Choose the page on your site to test

The next thing to do is determine what page or pages you want to include in your test.  In many cases, this will be obvious- most people start with either specific landing pages, or (eek) their home page.  Home pages are notoriously difficult to test because of competing goals and noisy traffic but if you analyze specific traffic segments you can still get good learnings.  Regardless, use your analytics research to help choose where to focus your efforts.

5. Decide what variables to test

This is incredibly obvious, but of course you have to decide what things to test.  We have devoted a number of past blog posts to this topic, but it is worth repeating: focus on stuff that appears “above the fold” like headlines, images, page layouts, inclusion of navigation, special offers, promotions, scarcity elements, and risk reversal. Below the fold focus on order and buy buttons, forms, and more risk reversal (near the buttons.)

Image by Getty Images via Daylife

6. Create radical options

This has also been written up before, but if you are going to run a test, run a TEST.  Don’t be shy!  Minimal changes will result in minimal differences in performance- leading to drawn out test times and the possibility of a NULL test result (no clear winner no matter how much traffic you get.)  Don’t test 10 different shades of blue for that order button- test 10 different colors from across the spectrum!

7. Identify external factors and plan to block them

There are many external factors which can sway test results.  An easy to understand example is “day of week.”  People tend to behave differently on weekdays vs. weekends.  This can show up in a test with different results on weekends than on weekdays.  To block this data from affecting your overall results- make sure you run the test for at least a full week or two full weeks.  Alternatively you can analyze your results for just weekday visitors or just weekend visitors although not all testing software supports this.

8. Develop a Hypothesis

Just like you did in science class growing up, you should form a hypothesis of what you think will happen.  This statement summarizes what you are testing, why you are testing it, and what you suspect will happen.

9. Decide whether to run a multivariate, split or URL test

Multivariate tests have the advantage of speed and understanding: you’ll get more testing done in less time- particularly with a fractional factorial MVT.  You’ll also get the advantage of seeing how various changes work when combined together.  The downside is that management has less understanding and getting buy-in may be tougher.  Split tests let you focus on one or more variables on a page test alternative treatments… think headlines, buttons, hero shots, etc.  If you wish to test really big ideas, like completely different page layouts- try testing multiple different URLs!

10. Make sure your site is “modular”

The best way to run any type of experiment is to focus on something called “variable isolation.”  This means that each thing you are testing should be tested in an independent manner- thus making certain that any performance lift (or loss) you observe are directly tied to the changes you have made.  The easiest way to get to variable isolation is to design your web pages in a “modular” fashion, which makes it easy to target specific things- like the headline, images, or info box.

11. Consider upgrading your HTML

Modern XHTML is better for testing than table based layouts.  Coding your page with XHTML and CSS will give you cleaner code which renders much more quickly in modern browsers than older table based layouts.  It has the advantage of being easy to test with CSS style tweaks (as opposed to submitting entire blocks of html) and also will help your SEO.

12. Identify the success metric and proper value to judge the winner

Looking back at #1, you should be able to extrapolate from your goal to pinpoint the specific metrics you need to base the test on.  Although many people talk about “conversion rate” as the best metric to judge a result- this is often not the case.  If you are selling products or run an e-commerce site, metrics like Revenue Per Visitor (RPV) or Average Order Value (AOV) will provide a much clearer view of the test winner.  Trying to increase ad clicks means that you should be using outbound click tracking, and if your goal is to just increase site stickiness- then track engagement or bounce rate.

13. Make sure your Adgroups and other traffic sources are passing identifying parameters

If you want to be able to segment your test results by adgroup (yes you do) you’ll need to make certain your Adwords account is set up to pass an identifying parameter in the URL.  You probably already do this for your standard analytics- but if not, make sure you do it for testing purposes.  Often you will see visitors from different adgroups responding to your tests differently.

http://www.yoursite.com/landing.html?adgrp=blue_widgets

14. Implement a Testing Solution

Select a testing software solution to implement the test on your site.  Different solutions integrate differently (this could be an entire post.)  Some require you to inject javascript calls throughout your HTML, while others are far less intrusive.

Image by Runs With Scissors via Flickr

15. Test the Test: Make sure everything is working before you launch

Before you launch or auto schedule the launch of a test, make certain everything works as you expect, including the tracking.  There are plenty of examples out on the web of people who have launched tests only to find out later that there was a major problem with the tracking or a variable not displaying correctly.  Here again, different software providers offer different capabilities for checking thing.  Also, some providers update results in real time, making it easy to spot problems quickly.

1. Private Label – Skin the software to have your colors, your CSS, your logo, even your own domain.

2. Flexible Pricing - Do you have a lot of clients? Or just a project from time to time? Either way, the pricing structure lets you work within your business model.

3. Support and Resources - Need help setting up a test? Need help in selling a client? Need whitepapers or collateral? We have it and we can private label that as well!

4. Client Ready Graphical Reporting - Run reports for your clients showing their conversion lift, conversion rate, and winning versions as well as many other important KPI’s.

5. Increase Your Revenue - With our pricing model it’s easy to monetize the service. Also you will be providing a valuable service that clients will be willing to pay for. Get ready to open up a whole new revenue stream!

6. Login Control - Want to give your customers access to the reporting capabilities of Vertster? No problem- we’ll keep them from breaking things and doing other unauthorized things that could hurt their results.

If you are from an online marketing agency or an interactive media agency and want to learn more call us at 801-571-8200. We would love to show you a demo of the new features designed specifically for you.

This interesting article popped up recently about a test done in Scotland for lost wallets. What variables combine to entice the finder of the wallet to return it?

The variable was a picture and the options were, an elderly couple, a family, a baby and a puppy.

The picture was supposed to elicit an “Ah that’s cute!” moment and “Somebody is going to want that back!” feeling. The desired action? Return the wallet!

Which picture do you think got the most returned wallets? Keep in mind that each wallet was completely void of cash and didn’t contain any credit cards, only typical wallet items. But the picture was prominently displayed.

If you guessed the baby, you guessed right. Here are the return rates.

80% of the baby

53% of the puppy

48% of the family

28% of the elderly couple

A wallet with a charity donation receipt was also tested and had a 20% return rate and wallets with no special items(The Control) had a 15% return rate.

It just goes to show that when you want someone to take a desired action, whether it be on a website or on the street, you need to play to their emotions. Emotions play a huge role in marketing and if you can hit the right triggers, you can elicit big responses from your multivariate tests!

I’d like to try the wallet test again, but this time let’s add some money to the mix!

1. Firefox with the Web Developer toolbar: First of all, this is definitely the easiest way to clear cookies for the Firefox browser.  If you do not have the Web Developer Toolbar installed, head over to the Firefox Add Ons site and grab it.

To use it, click on the Cookies menu on the left, and select “Delete Domain Cookies”.  Pow.  All the cookies for the site you are currently on will be removed!

2. Clearing a Specific Cookie on Safari: Safari makes you do a little more mousework to get to the listing of cookies in the system, and you have to specify which you want to remove.  To get started, go to the preferences menu, and open the “Security” Options.  Partway down the page is a button labeled “Show Cookies.”  Click this.

Once you have clicked the “Show Cookies” button, you will be shown a listing of all of the cookies your browser has stored, along with a handy search box.  Type the current domain name into this search to see a listing of cookies set by the current site.  From here, you can select and delete the cookies.

3. Clearing a Cookie on IE 8: Internet Explorer before version 8 made it a real hassle to delete cookies for a given domain, but now version 8 includes a component called Developer tools which is modeled after the Firefox Web Developer toolbar.  This makes the process dramatically easier.  To begin, select to tools menu and choose “Developer Tools.”  This can also be opened by pressing F12.

Once the developer tools window opens, choose the “Cache” menu option on the top and you will the the choice to “Clear Cookies for Domain.”  Click this and pow, the cookies will be eliminated for the current domain you are visiting.  Super easy!

4. Clearing a Specific Cookie on Chrome: Chrome makes it fairly easy to clear cookies for a single domain, and works similarly to Safari.  To start out with, click on the wrench icon on the right side of the address bar.  This will drop down a number of choices.

Choosing “Options” brings up another dialogue and if you scroll down a bit, you will see a button for “Show Cookies.”  From here there is a convenient search function for quickly locating cookies you wish to remove.  Enter the hostname you are looking for and then select the cookies from the list and choose “Remove.”  Simple.

Conclusion: It has gotten easier to delete cookies for a specific domain over the years- and now is a relatively painless process.  It used to be that many people would delete all of their cookies at once, which is not ideal given that you may loose autologins, personal choices, and other site functionality.

Chances are you need to test your web applications and sites in each of these four most popular browsers, so refer back to this guide in the future to remember how easy it really is to remove specific cookies.

Some people like to click on text links and others like to click on images.

Oftentimes I see websites that are missing opportunities to drive people to a conversion by offering only one way to get there. If you are measuring movement from one page to another as a conversion action, then you don’t want to limit the visitors’ pathways to get from page 1 to page 2.

If you have only one link that takes you to the next page, then I bet your conversion from page 1 to page 2 is rather small. However, if you offer a handful of ways to get there, you increase your chances of having people dig deeper into your site. Common sense, right? I see so many websites that don’t do this.

The trick is to make everything clickable. Offer a text link explaining where it goes, but offer an icon as well that takes your there and maybe an image that goes to the same place also.

Another trick is to have clickable text links in paragraphs, headers and bullet points. This also helps your internal linking for SEO.

In Japan there is a saying, “There are many paths to the top of Mount Fuji”.  Your website should be the same. Create many paths to your conversion pages, not just one. Make everything clickable and you’ll find more people funneling to your important pages.

There is a truism in conversion testing- the more radical your tests, the more you stand to gain.  Testing radically means testing widely varying options, and exceedingly different ideas.  Think about testing colors for a moment as color testing is an easy to understand example that most people grasp quickly.  The conservative approach might be to test 5 differing shades of blue, whereas the radical approach would be to test blue against red yellow and black!

Small changes to your site often mean small incremental changes in performance.  This is fine, but if you have a ton of traffic you have a competitive advantage, in that is is easier to test HUGE changes.  So don’t squander this opportunity.

Why a lot of traffic gives you a distinct advantage at being radical:

With a lot of traffic you can learn and fail fast, sometimes very fast.  Furthermore- you can protect your existing revenue by testing with just a percentage of your total traffic- a real advantage that makes failures much more palatable.

Troubleshooting Tools:

1. Firebug

Firebug is an extension for the Firefox web browser which helps you design and debug CSS rules, HTML and javascript.  It lets you make edits to a page that is live on the web (although you cannot save them.)  This means you can try things out in Firebug, seeing how they will look on your site.  When you are ready, just cut and paste the edited HTML into your testing application.

In addition, if you are seeing layout problems, these same capabilities may be helpful in figuring out the problem.

2. Web Developer Toolbar

The web developer toolbar is another essential Firefox extension.  It contains many of the same capabilities as Firefox, but has a useful option to “View Generated Source.”  This works just like the regular “view source” except it will show the source code of the page after it has been rendered- which may be different than the “actual” source if a test is running.

3.  FireCookie

Firecookie is an add on for Firebug, that makes it easy to view, edit, and delete cookies. In addition, cookie activity shows up in the Firebug console.

4. Add and Edit Cookies

This is another Firefox extension for editing and deleting cookies on your system.

5. MVT Vendor Detector

The Vendor Detector is a Greasemonkey script for firefox that will show you which (if any) vendor a given website is using for testing on their site.  It works well at detecting Google optimizer, but is unable to determine the variable location of tests run with some other tools.

Design Tools for Creating Test Options

1. Fireworks

Fireworks, from Adobe, is the perfect software for building alternate buttons, badges, and other assets for your tests.  It includes many of the same capabilities as bigger brother Photoshop, but is optimized specifically for building website images.

2. Dreamweaver

You can use Dreamweaver to develop HTML layouts and snippets, then include them in your tests.  It is tightly integrated with Fireworks, and using the two applications together you’ll be able to quickly develop complex HTML layouts.

3. CssEdit (Mac Only)

You will most likely want a visual tool for creating new style rules for existing web pages.  Although there are many editors on the market, and Dreamweaver also does CSS, if you have a Mac you are in luck.  CssEdit is, in my opinion, the best CSS editor out there.  It works by allowing you to “override” the native styles of any web page, and edit them in a WYSIWYG environment with live updates on the actual site you are editing.

Copywriting Tools

1. Thesaurus.com

When you are writing alternative sales copy for your site, you’ll definitely want to keep a thesaurus handy.  Thesaurus.com lets you quickly find alternative words and ways to say things.

2. Digg.com

One of the best ways to learn copy writing is through example, and Digg is a literal treasure trove of good and bad examples.  Often the most well written headlines help the story make it to Digg’s front page- and the lesser examples flounder in anonymity.

To get started, run some searches on Digg using your business niche as the search word.  The results of your search will contain a wide selection of examples, which you can then order by number of Diggs received to find the best.

Tools for Planning and Keeping Track of your Tests

1. Microsoft Excel or Google Spreadsheets

Keeping good records of your testing activities is important, so you will want a spreadsheet.  Both Excel and Google Spreadsheets will meet your needs here. Google Spreadsheets is great because it’s online, but is still buggy in places.  For mass acceptance, Excel is the way to go.

2. Fleck

We have convered Fleck in the past, and it continues to be a useful tool for unobtrusively annotating web pages and test designs.  It is particularly useful if you need to send some ideas to a client or partner, and want to be able to share it via a URL (say through IM).

What did we miss?

Is your favorite resource missing from this list?  Why not add it in the comments below, and we may do a following on post covering your suggestions!

Let them all have a try.

Here is a strategy to move forward and dial in on the best conversion rates.

FIRST – Create two or three landing pages. Try different layouts, different messages, different imagery and different calls to action. Then put the pages up to your audience, through SEO, PPC or whatever means you use to drive traffic.

Start with a high level split test, alternating complete pages and URLs to your audience. Watch the results and wait until you get a clear winner and move to stage two.

SECOND – Take the winning landing page and begin a multivariate test, testing all the variables that influence conversions and give them different options. Good things to test are; the headline, the images, the copy, bullet points, the buttons, the button location, the button text, different calls to action, different offerings, etc.

Once your multivariate test reaches statistical validity you have a winning recipe. Implement the winning recipe and move onto stage three.

THIRD – Once you have a winning recipe, your software should tell you what variables on the page or in that recipe are the most influential. Begin a split test with that variable, if it’s the button, just split test different options with the button, the button text, or the button size and color. If it’s the headline, just split test different headlines, etc.

With this three stage approach you can have a sure-fire strategy to dial in to your optimal conversion rate. The good news, Vertster’s software can handle all of that.

Don’t guess that you have the right message, run a test and validate it. And if you make big gains in conversions, congratulations! But don’t stop, always be testing!

Apparently the new Yahoo home page was the result of testing 141 different versions!  The goal of the testing was to find out which design resulted in the greatest site stickiness.  This makes sense, considering that Yahoo primarily makes money when people view and click on search results and ads.

http://twitter.com/optimizeit – This is the twitter account of Scott Miller (me).

http://twitter.com/vertster – This is the official twitter account for Vertster, and contains important system announcements and things like that.

It boils down to one reason- Google designs by testing, not by what one (or several) design guru’s say looks good.  I can appreciate both sides of this story- certainly great design cannot be created by machines- design still has, and always will have it’s place. That being said, Google is not known as a design oriented organization, and their style is very geeky, plain, and barebones.

As a testing and data junkie, I can say that if you have the shear volume of traffic that Google has, there is little reason not to test everything.  Given the extreme simplicity of Google’s designs, it is not only possible to test 41 different shades of blue, but it is fairly easy.  For most sites, this is simply not feasible- due to more complex page layouts and far less traffic.

So where does this leave design?  In my opinion, rely on designers to get started with a new look or direction, and then use testing to refine and perfect the design.  I always tell designers that the best thing about testing is that you get to try several great ideas, instead of just providing one final deliverable.  Tests cannot design the design, only perfect it from a profitability perspective.

One of the challenges of designing multivariate tests is getting everyone in your organization on the same page. Thats where Fleck comes in. This browser extension lets you add “sticky notes” to annotate any web page.

We just started use it to mark up pages and indicate where variables are and even provide guidance on proposed variable options. This vision can be shared around with multiple people in multiple organizations before the test assets are actually built and the optimization is running.

Here is an example of a test design for my ebook site TheConversionLab.com:

http://extension.fleck.com/?sh=788d04e7f5d3dad9de1c4bf0b9315f16f3fad065

Note: Fleck is currently in beta, and appears to choke on the CSS layout of this page slightly. It goes to figure that this is the only site I have ever seen Fleck have an issue with.

Warm Regards,

Scott Miller, CEO

Author of “The ConversionLab.com,” The worlds first “How to” guide to testing and optimization. Visit http://www.conversionlab.com/ for a special offer!

1. Headline: We normally test different versions of text for the headline, but you could go so far as to include additional modifying variables like: font size, text color, typeface, alignment, horizontal position, vertical position…

2. Bulleted List of Benefits: When most people look at bulleted lists, they see a text list with little tick marks. We see possibilities. Obviously you could test different sets of bullets. You could also test which bullet comes first (since the first is often the only one read,) how many bullets to include, whether including a bold leader helps, bullet style (image, square or circle), plus the normal formatting stuff….

3. Hero Shot (Image): The hero shot is the main image of your product or offer. Its usually quite important. Lots to do here too: testing the subject of the image of course is a biggie, size of the image, horizontal or vertical orientation, left or right (center?) aligned with your text, drop shadow or not, blend background with page or not, link image or not…

So there you have it, in a quickie blog post I have identified 25 different testable things, and this is just a start.

But what about us who live hundreds or thousands of miles away?

The press coverage has been more than constant- its been downright transfixing. Anyone who knows someone living near New Orleans or who has been through a hurricane probably spent a little extra time watching the news today… and a little less time surfing the web or “taking care of business.” Not to mention the pervasive online news coverage and blogs pulling eyeballs and dollars away from our sites.

To make matters worse, the threat of spiking gas prices has many people hitting the brakes on purchase decisions. We noted a significantly lower conversion rate today on at least a couple of our “key indicator” tests. It seemed more like a Saturday than a Monday.

We use the term noise to refer to any uncontrollable factor that can affect the outcome of our tests, whether it is a positive or negative change. Split testing helps to disperse the effect equally within the test battery, but it doesn’t always eliminate an uncontrolled bias from entering the test results.

Take for example, a site that sells flood insurance. If this was you, today was probably a great day for sales, perhaps even record breaking. Would today be a good day to get repeatable test results? I think not. The winning creative today probably would be the one with the shortest and easiest order form. Today, many people wouldn’t need much convincing. Normally, the best pulling message might be a completely different appeal altogether. Basing your test results on today’s data, even if statistically significant, would lead you to erroneous assumptions.

“TRT sayeth thou shalt remove all navigation from thy landing page.”

Okay good idea- in fact I decided to follow it when I first read it. I built landing page after landing page, sans navigation. I mean, it made sense… until I tested it. What I found was that my landing page with my navigation bar intact outperformed the TRT version by 30%!

Now don’t think for a second I am trying to refute the rule of thumb or create a new one. Chances are most landing pages do perform better without extraneous navigation. But my point is, how will you know if your page works better with or without it?

This is where testing comes in. Without split testing your landing page head to head, there is no way to know. So go on… give it a try!