3 Steps for Split Testing
July 25, 2009 by fladlien
Filed under Uncategorized
I’ve been doing a lot of split testing lately, and it amazes me how
little things make a big difference. If you’re at a point where you’re
driving a lot of traffic and/or you need to try to fix a page that
isn’t converting well, do you know what you test first?
Almost everyone gets this wrong…
You don’t test the headline first… or the price… or the opening
paragraph… or even the design…
You Test The OFFER!
Let’s say you’re selling an ebook for $37 on how build chicken coops.
You want to increase the conversion. The first thing you might consider is… A $1 trial for the first seven days, then they pay the balance.
Same price… just different presentation. What else can you do? Add
more bonuses or change the existing bonuses. Here are some hot tips
for you to increase the power of your bonuses.
First, each bonus should be a different “modality”. I like to do a video, an audio and a worksheet. See how I’m hitting all the different angles people
like to process information. It also makes the offer more exciting, because you’re giving so many different types of things in so many types of different
forms, leaving a bigger impression of value on the reader’s mind.
Second hot tip with bonuses: you should have one bonus be something
that people really, really want, but would probably never pay any
money for. Example – at http://internetmillionairerecipe.com I have a
bonus about wealth attraction. People love that bonus. It’s really
good stuff. But it’s also what’s called “soft content” – meaning it’s
more philosophy than “in the dirt” money making tactics. So I’d have a
very hard time selling it on its own. But as a bonus… it really gets
them excited because it’s something they’ve been interested in, but
never have acquired before.
Nice.
There are other things to test in your offer, and I’ll cover one more
in this blog post – your guarantee. I was recently speaking at Joe
Lavery’s seminar in Atlanta, and I was the ONLY ONE who had a double
your money back guarantee tied to specific results. My guarantee had
the most impact. It absolutely helped increase conversions.
The tip to testing the guarantee is to make it much more powerful, and
then make sure to highlight it in the “deck copy” (copy underneath the
headline but before the opening paragraph).
After you test the offer of your sales page, there are two things you
want to test next. The second thing is your headline. I remember I was
working with a coaching client once, and we split tested two
headlines… all the rest of the copy was the same… and we increased the
conversion from 7% to 17% (I wonder why more people don’t hire me for
coaching? I’m a steal for $250 an hour).
Here’s how you test headlines. Write your best one out the gate. Then,
if that doesn’t work, test it against an “opposite headline”. So let’s
say your headline is “How to grow upside down tomatoes for mere
pennies in only a few minutes a day”. Good headline until you tested
it. So what’s an opposite headline? It’s highlighting the negative instead
of the positive. The new headline might go like this… “Only the
ignorant and naive spend more than a few minutes a day and mere
pennies to grow upside down tomatoes…”
See what I did? Completely flipped the angle of the approach. I test
both sides of the spectrum and then work from there. Other headlines to
test are headlines where proof is the main emphasis, story headlines,
and “incongruent juxtaposition” headlines. Let me show you what those
look like.
Proof headline: “I will show you on this very page how I grow
wonderful, large upside down tomatoes in only 1 minute 32 seconds per
day…”
Story headline: “One eyed Georgia Sharecropper discovers a simple way
to grow large upside down tomatoes in 1 minute 32 seconds per day…”
Incongruent Juxtaposition headline: “Would you believe that cat urine
can help you grow the largest upside down tomatoes you’ve ever seen?”
And so on.
One last trick for you. Design is very critical, especially to cold
traffic you don’t have a previous relationship with. You want to test
this in two instances: after you’ve tweaked the above, or if your “bounce
rate” on your sales letter is high. Bounce rate refers to how quick
the average visitor leaves your page after visiting it. You can
monitor bounce rate with Google Analytics, which is completely free.
Here’s how to start testing design: start with 2 very radically different
designs – i like one that’s “graphics heavy” and another one that’s
“plain jane”. Again, these are your two extremes. Then, work from there.
What do you use to split test? Google Optimizer! Again it’s free -
google it to get set up.
That’s it for today… pretty good stuff, wasn’t it? Please share your
biggest takeaways and your thoughts in the comment section below!
Wow you sure give away a lot of good stuff. You could easily sell this stuff into a ebook and instead you choose to give it away. That’s makes you so good at what you do. It’s very evident. Thank you for who you are!
Edward Munoz
Love, love, LOVE the headline examples you provided! It is so easy to get stuck in your box and not be able to think of different headlines to test. Your approach and examples were stellar and will help me get far more creative. Thanks a million!
Hey Jason,
Thank you for posting such valuable information. I noticed that you originally make the post about a year ago which just goes to show that truly good stuff is not constrained by time.
Heard you just welcomed a new baby girl – what a beautiful day!
Laws
Hope mother and baby are both healthy and doing well.
You have, maybe, 10 years to enjoy her until the
problems start. Good luck! [smile]
bruce
Thanks Jason … have to confess I was probably in the 99% who would have guessed Headline as number one. In fact I know most copywriting courses start with the headline when … it should be the offer!
Thanks!
Thanx Jason for some great ideas. You’re right about “what people test first”, me included. I’m going to try your stuff.
By-the-way CONGRATS ON THE NEW BABY!!
WOW WOW,Jason, thanks for taking the time to put that post for us here. we know now you are a very busy man . well when it comes to split testing. i am a gaga. sorry lady gaga. dude you break it down to baby bites. you are freaking awesome man.
Congratulations on the new little girl.
DW
Ive always wondered how to do split testing.
You have just handed me the golden key.
-Start at the extremes and work your way in towards the center-
That is brilliant! A real world way to systematic testing.
Perfect
Thanks a Million
Jason,
I like the new look blog with the fancy name.
As always you never fail to amuse, inform and hit the nail square on the head. nice delivery too.
Biggest take away is the negativity flip. Most people highlight the benefit and thats usually enough. But you also test and offer an unusual Alternative approach.
The dude bonus offer is very powerful especially with as you say a product that is just not a seller as a stand alone product.
Thanks Jason.
Kevin “the fladlien fan” Baker.
Jason,
Thanks for the great tips. I think it’s so important people improve the offer before doing anything else and you’ve pointed that out so clearly. Almost everyone focuses on improving the headline but for a dull offer it’s hard to find a good headline so you’ve got to focus on improving the offer first or testing the offer.
Rodney
My biggest takeaway on this is the idea of first split testing the offer. Wouldn’t have thought of that. I would have first done the headline, then copy, etc. Probably never would have altered the basic offer. Thanks for the instruction. It does help.
Jason -
I browse around Google’s many web development tools all the time; and while I may have noticed Optimizer somewhere along the line, it wasn’t until you mentioned it here that I’ve had a chance now to really look into it. I think I’ll be using it extensively very soon.
Thanks for all the great tips, clarification and your valuable viewpoints. It’s time to actually craft some offers.
Mitch
Thanks, Jason, for another VERY informative post. I especially liked the examples, and particularly the reverse headline, and the idea of giving them a bonus they wouldn’t normally buy but would love to have. I think I’ll need to go through my hard drive for some killer bonuses that I can add to my offers…
And thanks also for mentioning the Google resource for split testing.
Elisabeth
Oh, wow! I like this convenient reply form.> It’s scary to offer people double their money back when folks are in desperate straits these days. Not quite sure I understand the double testing. I have one site. One main landing page. You’re saying I should change it and watch the analytics? Or is the double testing for people with several squeeze pages? Thanks for the info. Deb
Jason, Thanks for the info.I really wanted to know the resources and the process that you use to split test your pages. Being a newbie this really helps.:)
The thing that surprises me most about you Jason is that you know more about Internet marketing than most of the people who have been doing it forever. You’re the real thing. Thanks for the great tips.
Aloha, Bob Sommers