how long do I split test for?

In my opinion, you should never stop split testing and you should keep detailed records of what you've tested and what the results were.

From what you've written, it sounds like you're using PPC to drive traffic to a sales page of some description? If so, then you should be split testing on 2 different levels.

1) Split test your PPC ads.

The purpose of the ad is simply to get someone to click on it - that's it. You need to be careful though that you give just enough information in the ad to only get qualified clicks (so no time wasters) but that you get a good volume of qualified clicks.

2) Split test the elements of your landing page. Ultimately, it's the landing page that should convert the click into a client. You can test a huge amount of things here, such as:

• Squeeze page vs Sales Page
• Different headlines
• Different copy
  • Opening paragraph
  • Call's to action
  • Long vs short
  • Different hooks
• Video vs all text
• Audio vs video
• Color
• Font
• Graphics
• Price
• etc.

Assuming you're getting good quality, targeted traffic to your site, these tweaks will potentially have more impact on your conversions than your ad, unless your ad was vague or mis-leading.

When you test, try to only test one thing at a time (i.e. headline), although you could be split testing your ad at the same time as split testing your on-page elements. Run your test until you're happy that you've had a good volume of traffic through it to give a representative sample.

Once you have something that's clearly out-performing something else, it becomes the "control" item and you swap out the under-performing item for a new test. As you do this continually, your results will get better and better over time as you continually improve CTR and conversions.

Hope this helps!

Kind regards,
-John.

thanks for that.