Here’s a talking head video featuring me and my scary lighting showing you how to really crank up your conversions by creating web pages that optimize themselves.
In case you don’t like watching videos, here’s a transcript of the video:
Hello, Jack Keifer here with a tip on beefing your conversion rates on your web sites with self-optimizing webpages.
So how does a web page optimize itself?
With a testing techique called Multi-Variate testing.
Multi-variate testing is done with software designed to allow you to automatically test different versions of various sections of your webpage.
Let me clarify this a little using one of my websites as an example.
Here at AmazingCloaker.com you’re looking at the headline portion of my web page.
Your headline is that critical element to get your visitors to stay beyond that 3 second event horizon.
Usually a visitor will hit their back button within 3 seconds if you don’t peak their interest somehow.
See why the headline is so important?
Anyway,
The sales page is made of of different components like the Headline, sub heading, bullet list, main body, guarantee, call to action and buy button, to name a few.
Scrolling down, we move through the different sections of the sales letter.
With multi-variate software, we can create different versions of each of these sections and test which combinations of these versions give the best conversion rates.
Everytime one version of a section scores higher conversions, it is tested against other sections of the web page more often.
Every time you make a sale, your web page is constantly refining and improving itself.
I’m going to clear my cookies here and refresh my web page. This will cause a slightly different version to load.
Ok, here we have a new version of the page.
The headline stayed the same.
Scrolling down the page there are various paragraphs that are slightly changed.
Not too big a difference here.
Let’s refresh this page again and see if we get more dramatic results.
First, I’ll clear my cookies, and then we’ll just hit the refresh button again.
Ok, looks like we still have the same headline.
That could mean that this particular headline is creating better conversions.
Interesting… here we are now seeing extra graphics relating to the AmazingCloaker.
Testing these graphics against nothingness is also a variable.
Sometimes less is more in a sales page,
so always consider testing something against having nothing in its place as well.
Ok, let’s do this one more time.
Clear the cookies again…
Ok, this time the headline has changed.
This headline was scoring pretty high in the beginning of my testing.
Scrolling down, there are additional changes that you would note in various sections of the page.
Looks like the extra graphics are gone again in this version, so its possible that the extra graphics are actually scoring lower and that “nothingness” is winning out.
Ok, so the next question you’re going to ask is
“What software did you use and how much did it cost you?”
Well, that’s a great question.
So how does FREE sound?
That’s right, I simply used a free tool compliments of Google called “Google Web Optimizer”.
Just go out to www.google.com/analytics
and log in using your Adwords credentials.
If you don’t already have a google account, you can sign up here as well.
Ok, let’s get logged in.
In Google web optimizer, you create what are called “experiments”, which are the multivariate tests that you setup for your website.
As you can see here I have a few experiments showing, but only one is active.
The other two are abandoned first attempts while I figured out how to use it.
Here are the current stats for each section of my web page that I have set up for testing.
Each section here shows what percentage of the time they were used when a sale was made.
Pretty useful when you want a quick overview of what is working and what isn’t.
This way you can continue giving the non producing areas additional tweaking to get every thing up to peak performance.
There’s literally thousands of combinations that your website will display automatically when visitors come to your site.
Ok, Now let’s take a look at my conversion stats for the month of July.
I started this around July 5th so my conversion rates are showing for just over a month.
To track your sales, you set up what are called “goals” and then paste some javascript into your thank you page.
I forgot to add in my Goal Values, so they are showing zero… d’oh!
Normally you would put in your net profit here and then it will calculate your visitor value if I understand it correctly.
Let’s take a closer look at the stats so far.
As you can see, I didn’t put much effort into traffic generation this month, but my converation rates are pretty decent.
My average conversion rate for the month is calculating at 4.37%
Let’s click on the more detailed chart.
Here you can see that I started july at 4.50% and the multivariate testing has cranked my current standing to 9%.
Not too shabby if I don’t say so myself.
With an impressive 9% conversion rate, I could confidently employ paid traffic strategies, if I chose to do so.
Just as an FYI, there are premium multivariate software packages packed with other great features as well for getting even greater accuracy.
For example, I’ve used for quite some time, a product called KaizenTrack.
It’s a little pricey… around $500 that last time I checked, but well worth it.
Another excellent multivariate software is “MuVar“, created by James Brausch.
Right now, MuVar is only selling for $100! This is because MuVar 2008 is about to be discontinued.
From what I’ve read, MuVar is a kick-butt multivariate software, and it will even calculate your visitor value for you as well.
Well, now there’s no excuse for not tracking your results.
Testing and refining are vital components to getting the most out of your internet business.
If you ignore this step, you’re leaving thousands on the table in lost income.
Besides that, how would any potential JV partner take you seriously if you didn’t even know your own conversion rates for your products?
Also remember, that you don’t have to have your own product line to use this.
If you’re an affiliate marketer, you should be testing your affiliate landing pages as well.
So if you’re not testing your pages, what are you waiting for?
Jump out to google.com/analytics and get started now.