Improving Landing Page Conversion Rates Through Testing
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Are you unhappy with the conversion rate of your landing pages? You can just make some changes and hope they improve things, or you can go about the task in a more scientific manner. Testing your changes will help you see what works and what doesn't. This is the second part of a two-part article.
Our lives are full of tests. We use products that were consistently tested before hitting the shelves. We drive cars that were test crashed in order to find construction flaws and improve safety. We use scientific advancements that were nothing more than hypotheses tested by their creators.
You test stuff yourself. You go into several restaurants, try their food and pick the one that gives the best bang for the buck. You test a company's service and if they deliver on their promises, you order more; if not, you move on to the next one.
Testing is a natural part of our lives. We call it "let's give it a try," "let's try," "lets see how it goes," etc, but we constantly test everything. Once we find something that passes the test and delivers in line with our criteria, we use it. This is common sense.
Why not do it on the web? Why do we create a design, throw in some content and let it stick, and then complain about the horrible 1.3 percent conversion rate? Well, there's no magic to increasing it - only well-planned tests, backed up by strong theory (hypothesis).
In the last article I brought up the topic of testing, its role in conversion and how it works together with search engine optimization. In this article we will go deeper into testing and explore A/B tests, mulitivariate tests, and how to know when you're ready for testing.
Am I Ready to Test?
You are ready to start testing if:
You consistently get a satisfactory amount of traffic (by your standards) from search engines/PPC/referrals with a low conversion rate (the Internet benchmark is ~2.5%, however through constant improvement we can raise that number to 7% - 15%).
Despite your previous efforts to improve your conversion rate -- changes in marketing strategies, copy writing, messages, website design, website flow, landing pages, etc - you still cannot increase the conversion rate or get desirable results.
Your competitors are getting more customers from online channels, even though you invest as much or more than they do.
Your investment in search engine optimization brings you traffic, but not profits. (Be careful, since this can mean that you are optimized for the wrong or too broad phrases).
If you drive traffic to your website, but still struggle to make a good profit, it is time for you to do some heavy conversion testing.
Next: Types of Tests >>
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