subject: Testing Using Website Optimizer [print this page] Ive been discussing the proper use of Googles Website Optimizer tool you may find in Adwords. The tool will rotate landing pages for you, the marketer, to conduct proper AB testing to finally arrive at a killer landing page that converts your traffic to actual leads, deals and profit.
My prior article discussed the first step of test very different landing pages against each other. By doing this, you will arrive a particular architecture which works most efficiently with your target audience.
After this first crucial step, you are now ready to begin testing the internals of your landing page, one against the other.
To do this you will only change one important item at a time. If you test various changes your results can be quite confusing, and you may not understand why. So, avoid this problem by starting with the most important items first and move down the proverbial ladder as you go along.
The most important item to test first is your offer. Any strong landing page will have one particular offer that it directs its prospects to accept and it is this offer which you must test. This is actually a reasonably complex thing to test because there are many variables.
The first is the offer itself. You should test various offers to arrive at the one that converts best. From there, you should move into various copy and length of the headline of the offer, and then to the actual size, location and graphics of the offer.
A piece of copywriting advice to consider If you would consider your offer unrefusable to your target audience, it goes a long way to its effectiveness. Granted, most people will refuse your offer, but we are in the business of winning battles.
After your offer is converting as well as it can, you can now move into other less important factors. I like to move into the web form or response channel as the structure of this can have a huge impact on conversions.
Often, a very long web form, in which the prospect is filling out too much information, can have a disastrous effect on conversions. Conversely, too little info can have the same effect. This is something you must test.
And so it goes until you arrive at a monster landing page.
