Website Optimization – Split Testing – The Best Way to Reduce Costs and Increase Conversions

As a serious internet marketer it is essential that you keep your costs low and your profits high, in fact this is a fundamental principle of any business. A more specific way to look at this from an internet marketing point of view is to increase your conversions and reduce the amount used to advertise.

If you are using paid advertising, such as pay per click (Google AdWords, MSN Ad Center, etc.), your goal is to increase click through rate (CTR), and in turn conversions, while lowering your cost per click. (CPC). Therefore, this produces a higher return on investment and therefore makes more money.

One of the most effective ways to optimize your website or ad campaign is to do split testing. Split testing is a form of continuous optimization and monetization, it involves creating two or more variations of your ad copy or website/landing page.

Here is a practical example; If we were running an AdWords campaign and decided to split the test using two variations of the same ad text. However, there would be a slight difference between the two, it may just be the headline that is different (or they could both be very different). AdWords gives you the option to rotate your ads evenly so that they all get roughly the same traffic exposure. With this method, we can let the two variations run for a week or so. Once the week is over, it’s time to check the results. Most of the time you will see that one ad variation has outperformed the other. This is obvious when you compare which one has a higher click-through rate (CTR). Based on this solid evidence, we can now drop the underperforming ad and replace it with a different one that hasn’t been tested yet. This can be done continuously to improve CTR, lower CPC, and in turn lower costs.

The same can also be done for a website/landing page using Google’s Website Optimizer software. This software allows you to display different versions of your home/landing page to visitors. You can customize the text, images, layout, colors they see, and much more. After creating two variations, you can simply check your analytics software to see which one has a lower bounce rate (the one that increases conversions or keeps visitors there longer). I personally use Google Analytics for this part of the optimization. Some of you may be thinking, ‘well, most of my traffic is free natural traffic.’ It’s not really free, is it? You’re paying for your domain costs, your hosting costs, your server costs, and maybe a lot more. Time is money, and the better your conversions, the more money you’ll save (and earn).

Optimization is ongoing and much needed, so be sure to optimize everything you do with regards to internet marketing. And split testing is the first step to lower costs and increase profits.