200-Proof Marketing

I’ve been working with Google’s new Website Optimizer and I’m impressed. Multivariate Testing is much more powerful than A/B Split Testing, but it does take longer for reliable results. Still it’s faster than it seems since you are testing so many things.

The first test I set up was on my most profitable product’s sales page. Why? Because the more visitors and conversions a site gets, the quicker and easier it is to increase it’s profits. In all I am testing the maximum of 8 sections (I originally tried to test 10).

Here’s what I’m testing:

1. Two new background colors, a new shade of blue, and a purple-blue.
2. Headline quotes vs no quotes. (no quotes almost always wins)
3. Headline color - black (consistent winner), blue, and red
4. Using the word Discover instead of Learn (supposed to be better)
5. Size of an important image - big vs small
6. Background color of testimonial box - blue vs beige
7. Active or inactive link leading to another website of mine that helps build trust
8. Contact information vs no contact information (contact should win)

It’s still to early to say on any of those but I could make some pretty good guesses. The best part of testing for me is seeing the results. I love checking the reports to see which variables are doing the best. You may want to test new headlines, sections of copy, different guarantee’s, etc. I didn’t because I’ve already tested the crap out of this site and wanted to test these first.

It looks like it may be awhile for valid results but when I get them, I will let you know what they are.

There’s no excuse for anyone to buy testing software anymore. I haven’t tried them all but I doubt any can beat Google’s ease of use and reporting features. If you’re thinking of buying some testing software, do your self a favor and try Google’s Website Optimizer first.

Funny, I sound like a Google advertisement. I don’t like everything they do (that page quality score thing cost me a good bit of money), but I have to praise them for making such a great tool available to their advertisers.

Now stop reading and go set up some tests. The easiest way to make more money is often to improve what you’re already doing.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, April 24th, 2007 at 5:39 am and is filed under Internet Marketing, Testing & Tracking. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.