Which of these titles is better for your Web page?
By Eric Maziade on Tuesday, March 18 2008, 12:20 - eBook Marketing - Permalink
Have you ever hesitated between two variations of some ad or newsletter that you wrote? Which one should you choose?
When talking about Internet marketing, this is one of the type of questions that often pop up.
It is sometimes hard to decide between two titles, two subtitles, two images, two prices, etc.
The task is to figure out which version will give more conversions - more subscriptions and more sales.
Let us take for example the title of this post. I chose "Which of these titles is better for your Web page?". I was also considering "Which of these titles is better for my Web page?".
A subtle difference. Perhaps. But which of these two would yield the best result? Which one should I choose? Did I choose the right one?
The only answer I have for this kind of question is the basic answer I have for a lot marketing questions:
It's worth testing.
Whether you're writing an email for your mailing list, designing banners, text ads, landing pages or just about anything else...
It's worth testing.
And how can we test for which version is better?
Split Testing
Basically, split testing means that you will build two versions of what you are writing and that you will split your traffic equally between both versions.
Using a properly configured statistics engine, you will be able to see which version performs better.
Once you know which one performs best, you can keep only that version. From there you can increase the traffic you bring to the winning version. You can also build another version and continually work at improving your copy.
The differences between both versions of your material should usually be simple and localized. This is so you can be sure of what changes are causing the differences in results.
The traffic that gets to both versions must be large enough that the statistics mean something. For example, when you're expecting a 1% conversion rate, one hundred visits is not large enough a number to properly decide which version works best as each barely had a chance to work yet. You'll most likely want a few thousand hits before taking a decision.
At this point, you probably have more questions than answers - split testing can go much farther than what was covered in this brief introduction. It definitely pays to master this very powerful marketing technique!
If you are interested in knowing more about split testing in the context of mailings, AWeber is offering a free online seminar Wednesday March 26th. Make sure you attend!
Split Testing Emails and Web Forms
Live Seminar: Split Testing Emails and Web Forms
Wednesday, March 26 at 2:00PM ET
Update: Register now and you will be emailed a link to the video of the seminar once it is online.
Eric Maziade
www.Secure-eBook.com