Online Marketing – Marketing Don

Web Analytics Testing – A Common Sense Approach

Paid search, referral sites, direct traffic… You know where your traffic is coming from, you know which channels are converting, you know visits, you even know which browsers your users have, but you want more.

A lot of people talk about testing, but that is all it is, talk. Seems like the biggest barrier to testing is that no one knows where to start. Testing is so broad and seems to be so complex, your site just sits there waiting, missing out on possibly significant increases in revenue. I am going to outline your plan of attack. Hopefully I will put it into terms that are easy to understand and get you motivated to start.  

First let me give you a brief history. It’s important and I haven’t seen others write about it, so don’t skip over this section. I have been testing websites, paid search ads, title tags, web copy, landing pages, email subject lines, etc… for years. I am Google Analytics certified and have been to conversion conferences, summits, get togethers, meet ups, etc…. With all of that, I can summarize much of my site testing experience in two words: Visual Distractors. That’s it? Can you believe that crap? You spent all of that time delaying your website testing and it all comes down to two words, visual distractors? Hellz yea! Check this out.

You find a website test someone completed online. They write about changing their button color from red to green and poof, conversion rates sky rocketed 25%. You try it and nothing. As a matter of fact, your conversion rates may have dropped. You feel like you wasted your time or you did something wrong. What gives? The visual distractors.

Each site is different. Just because a test worked on one site, does not mean it will work on yours. It probably worked on that site and not yours because of the color scheme of the site. Let’s say the site they added the green button to had a lot of red in it. Now they add a bright green “Buy” button that sticks out like a sore thumb on the site. The eyes get drawn to the button and it tells your potential customer what to do next. If your site has green tones and you add a green “Buy” button, it will blend, no visual distraction. Green themed site, try light orange. Where do you want your customers eyes to go? Make sense?

Many of you have heard adding a pretty lady to your site may increase conversions. Again, something to test. Depending on your demographics, she may be a visual distractor away from what you want your customer to do. Simply adding the lady to your site is not the end of the test. Add her to your site and wait for the results, then test adding the “Buy” button near the distractor. If the image is on the right side of the page, test moving the buy button to the right closer to the image. That reminds me of another piece of advice for you. Test only one thing at a time otherwise you will commingle your results. Add the image of the lady and then wait. Once you get enough data to say it worked or not, then move the buy button closer and wait for that data.

So should I ignore it when I read about other people completing online tests?

Sites like http://www.whichtestwon.com are awesome. The most important thing is not to look at the actual color changes, text changes, image changes, etc… The most important thing is to look at the test itself to see if it is something worth doing. So you wouldn’t look at the button colors, you would look at the test as a whole and decide if testing button colors is a worthwhile test. Once you figure that out, decide which colors are different from the other colors on your site and stand out. When you read about other tests, you are getting ideas on what to test. I know sites like FreshBooks and ShareFile test all of the time. They started small and now test pretty much daily. Once you understand how to get started and see one of the tests take off, it is almost addicting.

You goal is find a few website tests, prioritize which ones you feel will give you the biggest conversion increase (go with your gut), think about the visual distractor (where do you want your customers eyes to go and what do you want your customer to do), and then implement the test. If you have a development team, they can help or use Google Website Optimizer.

“I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.” Thomas Edison

Feel free to add your ideas or come back and share your results, good or bad. 

Tags: analytics, online testing, testing, web analytics, web testing