How Split Testing Can Increase Your Leads

By Author: Mel Joelle
Total Articles: 4304
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Split testing is a strategy ideally implemented to increase conversion rates for a website. It can show how different variations of a website or a specific landing page can improve user behavior and interaction. This is an essential task for every internet marketing campaign and should be adopted as an everlasting step in the ongoing optimization process.

A Call to Action is an identifier in acquiring conversions on a website. It's a must-have and it's the element that optimization using split testing revolves around. The ultimate goal is to increase the conversion rate, which could be a phone call, form submission, newsletter opt-in or a sale. Some of these conversions might have multiple steps such as a checkout for Ecommerce Sites. This makes the split testing process more complicated but also more sophisticated for the serious ecommerce business

We could literally test hundreds of different variables on a site and create thousands of versions of a specific site or a page. This enables us to see the user interaction with the site with the ultimate goal of a conversion. However, some websites (online publishers) ...
... might not seek any conversions. In this case, we analyze site stats such as Average Time on Site, CTR, Pages per Visit and Bounce Rate. These stats show us the increase of user experience for a specific website and are the first forms of analysis.

Since Split Testing revolves around the idea of a conversion, a Call to Action is the most important factor, we spend a lot of time on structuring and optimizing the Call to Action to get the best reaction from the user. For example, Call to Action should always be above the fold and should ideally be the first thing that a user recognizes on a page. Then we build supporting documents around the Call to Action trying to convince the user why she should click a certain button, pick up the phone, or put in her information on a form.

You can see an example of a Call to Action on our site. This is a basic example of a page we could split test. It might not seem like it but there are hundreds of variables here we could change. Some of them are;

- Background color on the Click Here To Get Started Today Button.
- Font on the Click Here To Get Started Today Button.
- Free Website Analysis Report image.

Different users with different demographics might respond differently to certain changes. Women might prefer pink and men might prefer blue. So, the goal here is to identify the target user as best as possible. For example, if we were offering skin care and cosmetics items, we would use elements which target women. You get the picture.

What Do We Do With the Data From Split Testing?

There are a couple of things you could do. If you feel that the data is sufficient and it was acquired during a significant time period (4 weeks is a good range), the results of the split testing will tell you what to do. For example, if 65% conversions were initiated with the RED Button Background, and 35% of conversions were initiated with BLUE Button Background, we go with the red version. Or, we could always keep testing different variables to see if we can get a better conversion rate.

Our philosophy is to test as long as we are not satisfied with the results. This also depends on the industry and what a good conversion rate is. It's always good to use bench marking tools to see how the competition is doing. A 2% conversion rate might be good for a B2B website but might not be good for an Ecommerce Site. Always keep testing and optimizing the site, only positives can come out of optimization if you analyze the data correctly.
Click here to read the rest of Split Testing. If you enjoyed this article, you also might like our other stories about Search Engine Optimization.