Split testing is a necessary evil. It’s tedious and time consuming, however it’s one of the quickest ways to achieve online success. Using this strategy can add immediate value to your website if conducted properly. You’ll need to take the time to make the necessary preparations to get your site split test ready. But once you’re set there will be no stopping you.
This article will guide you specifically through the process of preparing for a split test. Your website shall soar to new heights if you follow just a few simple rules that I’ll lay out for you now. Let me help you make split tests work for you!
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The Importance of Traffic
Traffic is an essential component of an effective split test. The sign of a successful website is when visitors follow action steps you have laid out ahead of time. Whether the action step involves subscribing to a weekly newsletter or buying a product, the successful completion of these action steps is the yardstick by which you are measuring your efforts.
It stands to reason that in order to measure the results of data you must have statistics with which to draw your conclusions. To acquire data, you’ll need substantial traffic to your website. It’s really only valuable to run split tests in periods of adequate traffic for this will be considered your baseline.
Traffic is really the population that is going into the funnel you are testing. You need to be specific when gathering data. If you’re testing your home page than your results must reflect this information in order to be useful when making accommodations and amendments. Each page of your website must be tested separately to get an accurate picture of your actual site traffic numbers. This will naturally bring you to the next question.
Necessary steps to take help ascertain the correct level of traffic:
- Determine your typical business cycle. You’ll need to establish whether your cycle will span over a week, month or year.
- How do your visitors behave at various times over the course of the cycle? Do you notice any substantial differences in their browsing patterns?
- Through the use of a sample size calculator it will be necessary to determine your desired confidence level and interval. The traffic you need to generate will be in proportion to how much confidence you have in your website and the desired goal you have set forth.
- The sample size value that’s generated by the calculator will need to be multiplied by two. Now you know the level of browsers you must acquire through your chosen funnel to run your A/B test in accordance with the confidence requirements you have chosen.
Accurate results call for accurate data. Pay attention to the business cycle you have established. It’s important to stay within these parameters as cutting off your results mid-cycle will lead to false conclusions and set you up to make unnecessary adjustments.
That being said, you need to determine whether or not your funnel has enough traffic to meet the requirements of population as well as sample size. You want to avoid running tests indefinitely as this will impact the validity of your results.
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Have An Awesome Giveaway
Promotional offers with free giveaways have the power to draw in substantial traffic and are therefore excellent strategies to generate interest in your website. What you really want to do is to harness the power of desire. What does your target audience really want? You must truly have your hand on the pulse of your customer in order to determine a product which will appeal to them. Free giveaways work wonders when the product delivered is of immeasurable value to the consumer.
This sentiment rings true for product sales as well. Split testing can only do so much to generate traffic. Ultimately the quality and desirability of the product must stand on its own. Products must be validated in order to hold water with the general public at large. Check out this article to give you tips on how to validate a product idea.
Essentially your free product giveaway is an opportunity for your customer to get to know you and build trust with your organization. Later on down the road you can introduce alternative product sales but initially you want to keep it fairly straightforward. Everyone loves free giveaways and by initializing this tactic you will develop trust and have your customers coming back for more somewhere in the future.
Use An Enticing Giveaway
EBooks make phenomenal giveaway products. Tap into the mind of your readers and determine an area of great interest and then create ways to make the subject matter work for you. How to manuals that solve problems in a unique manner garnish a vast amount of attention from visitors. For example, a book that highlights ways to stop your dog from chewing things may be of much greater value than an eBook listing ways to get your dog to sit.
Perhaps it may take a bit of detective work to uncover the exact area of interest that you want to delve into but the time is worth its weight in gold when your site traffic begins to multiply. Hopefully my now, you know your audience, and can build an eBook which you know they’ll love to read. If you can tap into the desire of your audience, then you’ll have an easier time having people opt-into your form or landing page.
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Understand Your Target Market
Understanding your target market is fundamental to running effective split tests, determining effective giveaway promotions and improving your conversion rates. The main objective is to create products/services which address the needs of your visitors. In order to do this, you must completely understand the psychology behind their actions. You’ll need to become familiar with their hopes, wants and fears in order to create a persuasive copy.
Getting to know your target market involves immersing yourself in their world, talking with them and frequenting spots where they typically hang out. It would be extremely useful to read books and forums which appeal to your demographic. You need to get into their psyche and understand what motivates them and the emotions that drive their actions. In order to do this, you’ll need to put yourself in their shoes and determine what types of changes would drastically improve the quality of their lives.
Your service may provide a solution to a problem that you, yourself, had encountered at one point throughout your life. Take yourself back to that time and place and search for the emotions and concerns which plagued your mind. Now you have an idea as to how your target market perceives the world. Record all of your observations. Allow them to direct your words as you create an amazing and persuasive copy that truly takes into account the struggles of your target market.
The big key word here is empathy. In order to provide quality and responsive service you must be able to relate to the individuals whose lives you hope to positively influence.
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Keep Setting Your Goals
Running a split test is meant to help you make adjustments that will lead to the overall success of your website. As in everything your objective must be clear and concise. Setting definite goals for your split tests maximizes their efficiency.
The goal of a split test can cover a wide range of topics but generally it’s beneficial to begin with low-hanging fruit first. Focus in on those areas that are readily achievable and don’t require a large output of effort. For example, you might choose to center in on boosting email subscribers. Here it is advantageous to look at the opt-in box copy and location as well as the efficiency of giveaways. These are fundamental features that directly impact the subscriber rate to your website. Choose a goal and back it up with split tests that support your overall objective.
Ensure that you have covered the low-hanging fruit first before embarking on tactics you might come across while traveling across the web. You may discover a new and cool tool and wish to implement it immediately. However, be sure that you have covered the basics first. Large companies who have already tested the low-hanging fruit may have chosen to follow an up and coming trend but they did so only after ensuring the essentials were taken care of.
Detailed in this article are a few low-hanging fruit ideas that you might want to hone in on and implement for your own site. Split testing can improve your conversion rate significantly but you must be willing to initiate radical changes to facilitate growth. The results you get from split testing can allow you to accelerate the pace by which your company thrives. If you can feel the fear and do it anyways, the changes you make will make lasting change and success for your business!
Final Thoughts
Split testing is the backbone of an effective blog, and collecting email subscribers. If you can build an enormous list, then you’ll be able to re-market your content, and products more effectively. Think about it, you’ll reach your audience faster, and will be able to convert them helping your bottom-line. However, again this all starts with a solid split testing campaign, and being about to test out what you have implemented on your blog with solid data. Start by utilizing the strategies which I’ve listed above, and see how they help convert your audience. Once you find a strategy which works, and helps your bottom line, you can continue to optimize it going forward.
I’m sure you have heard this numerous times from others. No matter what your niche, it’s important to make sure you test everything because you’re probably in a very competitive niche. The more you optimize, the better chance you have of outperforming your competition. In the end, this is what matters when building a successful business, and brand.