Factors to consider when split-testing?

There are a thousand and one things you can split test. There are two guidelines I follow:

1. Start at the beginning of the process and optimize one thing at a time.

Notice I said optimize, not maximize. They're often two different things, thanks to the law of diminishing returns.

In this case, start with the landing page and optimize your opt-in rate. Try to track individual traffic sources (solo ads, banners, FB ads, search traffic, etc.). You may find that you need to direct different traffic sources to different landing pages.

Once your opt-in is optimized, move to the next stage, and so on.

2. Start by testing the big things and don't worry about the small details until you have the big stuff sorted out.

So what are the big things?

For a landing page, the biggest thing is the actual offer you make. What is the big benefit you promise in exchange for the email address?

Next would be your headline.

Then the bullets or copy. Video, video plus text or just text?

Don't get bogged down with little crap like which color to use for the subscribe button or which font to use in the privacy statement until you get the big stuff sorted out.

Hi ethan,

Paid traffic is the way to go here. Dont wait for the traffic to come, buy it.

Use tracking tools like zentester, visual website optimizer, adtrackz gold, crazyegg, kissmetrics..

There are thousand things you can test.

Many factors involved. Most common are:

- The offer. Why a prospect should take up your offer?

Also test the format. What works wonders for me are pdfs and videos.

- the headline is definitely one of the things you wanna test. Its the first impression you make on your reader and if its not compelling/provocative they wont go any further. This also applies to sales letters, your emails/subject lines. In regard to this, id test negativity in subject lines, works well for me.

- test different benefits/bullet points

- call to action, needs to stand out and be prominent

- the button, changing wording and colours can make a big difference.

- ecovers, done professionally, boost conversions

In general;

build 2 different squeeze pages, each one with a different design, 2 big headlines with different fonts, colors etc.. and run split tests to see which one converts better. Or create 2 identical sales pages and start with different headlines.

Think about a video on the top, videos convert incredibly well and boosts the effectiveness of your marketing, plus they build INSTANT trust with your visitors cause they see you are real.

Then buy some traffic. Test and test. Make all the possible tweaks and see which one converts better over a course of 300/600 clicks, depending on how much money you can spend on traffic.

Just remember to only change ONE thing when split testing, cause if you change more than one you wont know what led to the difference in your results. So test a different headline, video or not video, traffic source, layout, ecover or not etc..

Believe it or not little things make a big difference.