If you run a website or advertise online and aren’t practicing conversion rate optimisation (CRO), you are losing money - it’s as simple as that.
Most marketers, myself included, didn’t bother with CRO. Suspecting that I’d see little gains and would have to endure an exhausting learning curve, I put it on the back burner. The name itself – ‘conversion rate optimisation’ is intimidating enough.
But eventually, marketer friends convinced me to give it a shot. Thanks to platforms such as optimizely.com, I had my first tests running in less than 30 minutes. Fast forward two years and I now consider myself an optimisation machine and my businesses have been transformed by simply testing what really works as opposed to guessing what I think will work.
Through the years, I’ve narrowed down the hundreds of tests you can run to 3 core tests that are suitable to almost any website.
You have to give these a shot:
1) Images
The first thing the eye is drawn to on a page are the images. I recommend testing completely different images to begin with and then refining it down depending on how your visitors respond.
For example, if you run a personal training website, you could test images of your satisfied clients, you working out or even the classic before and after pictures. Once you have a winning image (a win being defined as increased client bookings), refine the image by adjusting the contrast, adding borders, placing a call to action button on the image, etc.
Even subtle changes like this can make a big difference. Heck, marketing company HubSpot saw a 55% increase in leads by simply adding images to tweets.
2) Headline text
Body text is important, but headline text has a much bigger impact so this is the first part of your copy that you should optimise.
Lets look at a real life example. Award-winning author Amanda Stevens tested opt-ins on her new books sales page. Her original headline was: “New Book Reveals Rescue Remedies for Retailers”.
That was then changed to a headline explicitly directed at the reader: “If you’re a retailer in need of fresh ideas and proven growth strategies, this new book if for you!”
The result? A 307% boost in conversions with a 99.98% probability that the awesome new headline was not due to chance.
3) Call-to-actions
The content and colour of those alluring buttons asking your visitors to do something has a very powerful effect on whether they actually do it. And call-to-actions are really easy to test.
Fundraising website GoGetFunding.com tested changing the text on their donate button from 'Contribute Now' to 'Donate Now'. Changing to ‘Donate Now’ led to a 6% increase in clicks and 3.5% increase in donations. A huge win when you consider how easy that change is to make and the impact that this can have on a campaign.
For example, a £10,000 campaign would typically raise an extra £350 just because of this little tweak.
I hope that gives you some inspiration on how split testing can significantly improve your marketing efforts. And most importantly, specific tests that you can easily run right now to get you going in the right direction.
Remember, beyond this, just about everything can and should be tested. From page structure, to trust symbols, payment processors, email templates and more. Before you know it, you’ll be a conversion optimisation machine!
By Sandip Singh, TrustedAgents.
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