Testing and tracking – the real money maker
Getting back to the business building series.Today is probably the most important piece of the puzzle and the one that separates the winners from the losers.
Testing and tracking
Hey I’ll be the very first person to tell you that this isn’t fun. It is where the money is though. See I am not smart enough to guess exactly what will work and what won’t. Too many personal prejudices. To easy to think like a customer and not a business person.
You need to be constantly improving your process and updating it. First you need some tools to do that. Here is what I use and what will be mentioned in this post.
- Google Analytics – A free resource
- Google Website Optimizer – A free resource
- Hits Connect – A paid service
- AWeber – A paid service
You can also grab a copy of my report Tracking Your Way To Profits.
For this discussion we will talk about your squeeze page first. After all that is the key to your business.
AWeber will allow you to add a tracking code in your form. Create a different form for each page you are testing and you can see which page got you the results.
Now you need to be sending traffic to your site. Hits Connect will allow you to see which source sent how much traffic and if you add the pixel on your thank you page you can see which source actually converted into a subscriber.
Hits Connect will also allow you to set up a rotator so you can test two pages and use the same link to send half the traffic to each. This also allows you to make changes on the fly at one place and not have to go change each traffic resource. A great time saver.
Now what do we want to test. Start with your headline. That will usually make the most difference. If your headline doesn’t catch people the rest of your copy doesn’t get read.
Keep going until you have a clear winner. Get rid of the loser and create a new test. Each time you keep the winner get rid of the loser.
Once you have a good headline you can test other parts of your page. It is important in this type of testing to only test one thing at a time so you know what made the difference.
In the meantime you are also testing your traffic sources. If you were using 5 traffic exchanges in this example my experience has shown that 2 will probably be head and shoulders above the rest. You can keep to 5 but keep changing your bottom source of traffic to test a new one. Just like the headlines keep the winners and replace the losers.
This can very easily increase your response as you test but this is a never ending process. Traffic sources change and your best source today may stink 6 months from now.
With traffic exchanges you should be able to get your squeeze pages to one signup per hundred page views or better. That should be your goal.
Now you want to be testing the same way in your email series. Take advantage of the stats you get at AWeber and use their tracking to see which offers are getting clicked on.
Also keep track of where people unsubscribe. If you are marketing correctly you will be getting unsubscribes so don’t let that part bother you. Not everyone will like your style not even affable Old Bald Guy’s like me.
What you do want to be tracking is places where the unsubscribe rate jumps. If you are seeing a significant increase in unsubscribes on email #5 and (this is important) it is not converting significantly higher then you need to look at that email.
Sometimes a really strong call to action will generate more unsubscribes but will also convert into more cash too. Look at both sides and remember what my mentor Robert Puddy says “Give them quality but ultimately the purpose of the list is to make you money.”
Likewise if certain calls to action aren’t being clicked then that needs to be addressed too.
If you are using sites like blogs to get organic search traffic or if you are using PPC you need to use Google Analytics to understand which posts are being indexed and which terms people are searching for that send them to you.
For our process we won’t get into Google Website Optimizer but it will allow you to do Taguchi testing on your squeeze pages and sales pages. Once you have gotten comfortable with the A/B testing described here it can be worth your while but there is a learning curve in using it.
Disclaimer: Some of the links mentioned within this post or posts it may lead to are my affiliate links and in such case I will get compensated for recommending those products. However, I will never recommend something that I don't personally believe in and I welcome your questions and feedback.
July 9th, 2008 at 4:41 pm
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