Everyone pay attention to me, as this is the most important lesson I can teach you aside from never wearing socks with sandals.  Testing is not a way to keep your head in the clouds pondering; it’s a way to constantly improve as you laugh all the way to the bank.  Sure you can expand the keywords you are ranking for and double your traffic, but doing some testing to double your conversion rate is a smarter, easier, and cheaper way to increase the productivity of your website.  But, make sure you are testing the most efficient way possible.  Below are some quick tips to help keep you on the right track.

1)    Have faith in your tools. Thanks to easy multivariate testing sites like Optimizely, we don’t have to worry about “how to test” accurately because their user interface can handle it.  Instead, we can focus on the “what to test.”

2)    Test hypotheses, not your own opinions. To be a great web marketing strategist, you have to break away from the concept that we always know best.  A great website is not an extension of you, but rather an extension of the users that interact with the website.

3)    It’s best to approach a test from all angles. Make sure you not only measure the quantitative data from the GA and your testing interface, but that you also set up a user feedback survey or poll question within your social media profiles to get qualitative data as well.

4)    Go big first. The initial take from a user’s first impression is important since people process images faster than words.  Make sure the layout and images are good first since they have a higher impact that the content.  Big then small is the way to go.  Make sure you nail down the layout, color scheme, and font first.  Then go for the small details of button size, headline, etc.

5)    Make sure to focus on one change at a time.  If you change the button’s color and location, and the headline from ad to ad, how can you be sure what really has the big effect?  Go for one item at a time and do quick tests based on the number of users that visit the pages.

Last week Google made one of the most awesome upgrades to Google Website Optimizer! If you’ve used GWO much at all, you’ll agree that this upgrade will make your life much easier. I’ve outlined the primary changes below. If you want to read more about the upgrade directly from Google, visit the Official Google Website Optimizer Blog site.

There are 3 major changes in the upgrade that have me jumping up and down with joy:

1. You can now validate an A/B experiment by uploading a local file (this was needed badly), enough said;
2. You can disable a combination in an active experiment; and
3. Better color representation of a combination’s performance confidence.

The image in Figure 1 below is from the new GWO report. Click on the image to view a larger version. The biggest thing to note about the changes is that now you can disable a variation that is performing badly and concentrate on the variations that are doing very well. Just click on the checkbox (item 1) then on the disable button (item 2). This option will allow GWO to produce more definitive results much quicker and without having to stop, copy, and re-start the experiment. That is so awesome that I’m almost plum giddy!

The final major improvement to the report is the color representation of how well a combination is performing (item 3). Although Combination 2 is performing much better than 1 or the original, the graph will not turn green until it is truly a high confidence winner.

Go ahead and give it a try for yourself!

The number one question that seems to be asked is “What should I test on my site”. Ultimately, that depends on the type of site you have (i.e. eCommerce, brochure, etc.) and the goals of your site. When I’m analyzing a site for website optimization strategies, the first thing that I ask is “What is the primary goal of the site?” (i.e. lead generation, purchase a product, sign up for a newsletter, etc.) I believe that this is the most important question to know the answer to because it dictates all subsequent actions that you should take. Let’s look at one example answer to this question and how it affects the testing that should be done: “I want to generate qualified leads that I can use in email marketing campaigns.” From this statement, you can deduce that the best place to generate these leads is through some type of sign-up form.

A Sample Contact Form Analysis

Let’s assume that Google Analytics (GA) is already installed on the site. Let’s also assume that a “Contact Form” goal has been established. The image on the right is a sample funnel visualization for the contact form. Click on the image to enlarge it and see the detail. Notice that 201 visitors landed on the contact page and only 13% completed the first step in the funnel and moved on to the contact us form. This generally means that you have lost 77% of the potential new leads. Scary isn’t it? Now notice that of the 13% that completed the first step, only 40% actually completed the form. Overall, only 7.9% of all visitors that entered the funnel actually completed it. Now what?

Since 77% of visitors are abandoning the funnel from the Contact Page, that’s the first place to look to perform testing. The image below shows our fictitious contact page. Notice that the contact page also includes a phone number and mailing address. It’s very difficult (if not impossible) to identify how many of the 174 visitors that didn’t continue into the funnel actually called or send a snail mail in lieu of filling out the form. Or if any of them contacted the company at all.

There are many tests that could be performed on this page such as moving the form here with and without the phone numbers and addresses below the form; putting the form on this page and providing a link to the additional information, especially if the primary goal is to get visitors to fill out the form; or this page could contain 2 links, one to the contact form and the other to the additional information.

Use your imagination and see how many variations you can come up with. Share them here as an online exercise. Happy Testing!