Are you doing any testing on your web site? You ought to be. The testing, in fact, can be outside of your side whether through email marketing, social media or a variety of other options.
I subscribe to Which Test Won (www.whichtestwon.com) and I learn something new each week. This week I was sure I had it nailed. They ran an email campaign for an ecommerce store and I was sure the “On Sale Now” heading would draw attention and close the deal.
Nope. Wrong again. The subtle approach wins. But here is what the folks running the test did that I want to talk about: The contents of the email were identical except for this one part (the call to action). So they were pretty confident in the results.
Because the “subtle” approach took less space, this also pulled up the video link beneath it which may have made the whole thing more visual and drawn attention first to the video link and then to the call to action.
And the other key thing is that the company is testing to see what is more effective. If you aren’t testing, you’re not learning what works. Simple A / B testing can be done on your web site very easily through Google Website Optimizer. Most email marketing programs have this built in as well.
So what can you test?
- Sales Copy
- Images
- Buttons
- Colors
- Button colors
- Image colors
- Calls to action
- Position of elements on the page / email
- Heading
- Subject line
- Bulleted text vs. free flowing sentences
What do you need to get started? Simply an understanding of how much traffic you have to the page or email and one item to test.
Been testing? Don’t stop. Once you figure out what “the winner” is, keep that and test some other aspect.
Need help? Let us know.