Testing and Tracking to improve your conversions
by John Taylor
Published
on this site: March 20th, 2004
Creating an effective sales letter page is an essential part of
your online success. However, unless you're testing and tracking
each critical element in your sales content and your sales process,
you may be losing a great deal of time and money.
You can dramatically increase your sales conversions simply by
taking the time to test and track your results. Not only will testing
and tracking enable you to determine what's working and what's not,
but it will also help you to focus your energy on the techniques
that produce results.
When testing, keep in mind that, a technique that produces results
for one person or one web site may not produce results for you or
for your web site. There is no one size fits all technique that
works for everyone. You must develop your own style and technique
and test your results to determine what works for you.
So, what are we measuring? Well, you may think that I am over simplifying
matters here but I believe that there is only one real measure and
that is simply the outcome of your visitors decision when
faced with a choice. Whatever your most wanted response is your
visitor will either say yes or no. Every decision, or call to action,
that you want a prospect to take must be tracked.
The result of that tracking will be a yes or a no. When you know
that a specific number of visitors took the desired action, and
the remainder did not, you can analyse your results. If you take
the total number of unique yes calls to action, and you divide them
by the total number of unique visitors to the web page you will
know your conversion rate. For example, if 1,000 people visit a
web page where you have an ezine opt-in form, and 30 people opt-in,
your conversion ratio for that opt-in form is 3% (30/1000).
So what parts of your web page should you try to improve? Here
is a list of web page elements that you should focus your attention
on:
- Headline
- First few paragraphs
- Follow up
- Deadline
- Scarcity
- Delayed payment option
- Price
- Upgrade
- Downgrade
- Good until cancelled
- Guarantee
- Immediate back end sale
- Bonus items
- Reposition your offer
- Alternative colours and graphics
- Readability
- Complementary product endorsements
- Header graphic
- Order page
- Payment process
- Navigation links
- Everything else!
When you are testing and tracking make sure that you only work
on one element at a time. If you change two variables and you see
an improvement in conversion ratios you will not be able to identify
which one factor made the contribution.
You should also bear in mind that some changes may result in poorer
performance; you may get less sign ups to your ezine or less people
buying your product. This is not a failure it simply means that
you have discovered a tactic that doesnt work for your audience
or your product. One final point, be patient.
The expert statisticians will tell you that you need at least 25
actions for a test to be statistically valid. That means 25 new
ezine subscribers or 25 sales. Anything less than that and your
test results will not really be accurate enough. In fact the more
results the better, you should consider 25 to be the absolute minimum
and aim to get 30 to 40 if you can.
John Taylor is the author of "Learn over Twenty ways
To Improve Your Conversion Rate and Multiply Your Profits"
- A Special Report that contains a wealth of information on professional
testing and tracking techniques that can boost your conversion rate
and generate increased profits. To learn how testing and tracking
can boost your profits click this link now:
http://www.test-and-track.com.
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