Google Website Optimizer Tips – Day 15

Having your website up and running is only the first step to having a successful website. Sorry to break it to you everyone but there is fine tuning that needs to take place first. My Google Website Optimizer Tips will teach you how to make sure your website is at its best ability possible, guaranteed.  Google’s Website Optimizer tool (which is free) will turn your website into ruthless converting masterpiece in no time!

What does Google Optimizer Do?

Google Website Optimizer allows for something called split or A/B testing. What is that exactly? Well lets assume that you were trying to figure out which headline on your landing page was converting better then another. With Google Optimizer you are able to set up A/B testing which will allow for

• half of your visitors to be shown headline A

and

• half of your visitors to be shown headline B

Then using the software it can help you determine which headline brought in the most conversions! Now here is the real kick.

Google Website Optimizer allows you to have MULTIPLE tests running at once!

Yea, thats really bad ass if you ask me. You are able to run multiple simultaneous tests allowing Google’s software to do all the work for you and let you sit back and watch which are producing the best results.

What type of elements are you allowed to test? The options are pretty much endless, you could test things like text, images, buttons, offers, sound, all at the same time. Allowing for each incoming visitor to view a ‘different’ view of your website. This will allow you to obtain the highest converting webpage possible.

When I first heard about this software I was blown away, I really couldn’t believe that it existed and I wasn’t aware of it. So obviously not everyone is aware of this very helpful utility and I feel that it needs to be advertised better.

What is conversion rate?

The term conversion rate stands for the percentage of visitors that end up reaching your proposed goal during the time period in question. Simply put, if the goal of your website is to have people submit their emails for your newsletter then this will be what you are testing for conversion rates. If you have 1/10 people enter their email upon entering your website than your conversion rate would be 10% (which is fantastic and probably means you can only improve slightly). The average conversion rate is around 1%, thats why we need a utility like Google Website Optimizer to help us increase that.

Why do you need to increase your conversion rate?

1. Loads of improvement. By maintaining a conversion ratio of 1% imagine all the sales you are losing if you could easily achieve a conversion rate of 5%!
2. Competitive PPC Campaigns If you are running a PPC campaign and haven’t done split testing, then you are crazy! You are literally wasting money. PPC is all about testing, testing and more testing to be successful. Start split testing and earning what you are capable of.
3. Google Website Optimizer is no joke…Seriously guys, get on the ball and start using this fantastic utility

What does this mean for me, I’m still not interested?

Fine! Lose out on money, time and effort. As I’ve expressed bum marketing techniques throughout my blog and created a COST efficient way to market yourself on the internet, why not take it to the next level? Their is a cost per acquisition regardless of whether or not you are spending a nickle. If you are dedicating time to building your website, then you are allocating time that could be used working at a paying job. So don’t consider your time free.

By increasing your conversion rate you are lowering your cost per acquisition in half. Whether it be your time, or money bringing traffic to your website.  By playing with split testing you can now track, analyze and convert prospects more efficiently.

What Do I Test?

Each website/blog/landing page is different and thus I can’t give a single website advice. I’ll give everyone some ideas about what they could test on their websites.

Test everything, seriously. Test everything you can without getting overwhelmed. I mean think about the endless possibilities and how you can really stretch that conversion rate on your website.  First and foremost identify which products have brought you the best overall profit, whether this be a sign up or an actual sale. Then put these items on a prime position on your webpage, prime indicates above the fold (before you have to scroll down) and preferably on the left hand side of the page.

Headlines are the first and foremost thing to test. If your visitor doesn’t like your headline, then they won’t read any further. This is a very simple yet straight forward approach towards A/B testing but is the first variable that I think you should test.

Make sure your headline has the following features: benefit to the customer, suggests that the person will get results with ease, and is believable (testimonials?).

On the internet, what you say, is more important then how you say it. By changing the headline which is the core of your message, you can have some really fantastic results right away. If you are still having trouble creating your headline then head over to Google News, CNN, or any other major news website. Use some similar pattern to how they have created headlines. That’s especially why I suggest Google News, Google news is designed to post news that people consider newsworthy. They use a complex algorithm which uses clicks, views and other variables to display the most captivating news articles. And it really comes down to the headlines in these articles, honestly.

Test Pricing try testing high prices, and low prices. Imagine if you could sell more products at a HIGHER price. Seems crazy huh? Well it may be true, perceived cost has a funny way of playing games with our emotions.

Test odd-pricing, I’m sure you have seen those prices, $37 or $29. Well they are priced like this for a reason. People are more inclined to buy something when they see the “right price”.

The one time offer or special offers. What do I mean?

• one free month trial
• one time price for only 15 minutes
• automatic renewal
• buy now pay later
• pay in installments

Can you offer a one time offer or benefit? DO IT! Especially the one time offer, I will create a post on this in the future because I feel that it is extremely important.

Test standard/premium editions of contents or memberships. You’d be surprised, people are inclined to purchase memberships online now a days for content they appreciate. Try offering this service.

Be creative! I’ll post additional ideas in the future, but the idea is to be creative! I can’t express how important that is. Each website is different and will require different testing. What can you change on your website? If you can change it, then run a test with a different version. Keep fine tuning the machine. The higher your conversions the better your success will be, without a doubt.

[tags]google website optimizer, google website optimizer tips, website optimizer tips, google split testing[/tags]