Split Test Your Website - Google Website Optimizer

It use to be EASY. Create a website, create unique content, get organically listed, put some ads on a page and make money! Well it’s not so easy anymore. Web surfers are getting intelligent. OVer 50% of surfers know when they are click on an ad. For this reason, it is extremely important to split [...]

It use to be EASY. Create a website, create unique content, get organically listed, put some ads on a page and make money! Well it’s not so easy anymore. Web surfers are getting intelligent. OVer 50% of surfers know when they are click on an ad. For this reason, it is extremely important to split test your website content so that you can understand visitor patterns. Webmasters should test EVERYTHING.
Here are a few things we’ve tested for our website:
1) Headline - Find best performing headline
2) Templates - Test different website templates
3) Colors - Change background colors, image colors, layout colors, font colors

Split testing can get very complicated but Google makes it fairly easy. Google has a feature in Adwords that allows you to split test - it’s called Website Optimizer.

Website Optimizer allows you to install code on your landing/conversion page, and then measures different components of the landing page. For example, you can test your headline, or you can test different colored “Download” buttons.

I find that multi-varient testing works the best for me. Here’s how it works:
I tested three headlines and two download buttons. This gives a possibility of 6 combinations. Since I`ve created 3 headlines and 2 download buttons, Google will track each combination and show you the conversion rates for each combination. To use Google Website Optimizer, you MUST have a Google Adwords account. To learn more about Google Webiste Optimizer, visit
http://services.google.com/websiteoptimizer