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Improve Your Conversion With A/B Testing - DailyBlogTips

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Improve Your Conversion With A/B Testing - DailyBlogTips

Improve Your Conversion With A/B Testing

Posted: 09 Apr 2010 08:01 PM PDT

This is a guest post by Andy Walton. If you want to guest post on this blog, check out the guidelines here.

You’ve authored original blog content, perfected your SEO and written dozens of guest posts. Your blog is getting decent traffic, but is it generating subscribers or advert clicks? Welcome to the profitable world of conversion optimization.

Let’s assume your newsletter gets 1 new subscriber for every 100 readers to your blog. To double the number of new followers you either need to increase your traffic 2-fold, or bump that conversion rate up from 1% to 2%. Now think about how much effort you’ve spent on growing your readership, compared to the amount of time you spent designing the sign-up form.

If the ratio is massively skewed towards traffic that’s understandable – but an inefficient use of your time. There’s a high probability you could increase your conversion rate with a few simple tests. Let’s work through an example of how this could work for you.

So what is A/B testing?

Spend a few minutes looking at your sign-up form and thinking about how you could change it. Maybe you could alter the title, the layout, the wording on the button, the wording of the call to action. Basically you could change as little or as much as you like.

The result is you’ll now have 2 versions of the form – the original that is live on your site, and your new offline version.

To test the new version, you could just upload it and replace the original. Then measure the new results for perhaps a week. However, how can you guarantee the traffic the new version receives is of the same quality as previously? You have no real control over any spikes in traffic your site may receive, and different sources of traffic may have different conversion rates.

Here’s where A/B testing comes in… you basically put both version live at once, and serve the original to half of your traffic and the new version to the other half. This removes the problem of traffic, as they are now both live under the same conditions.

Then you measure which of the versions performed best, and stick with that one. It’s as simple as that – just as solid way of comparing 2 solutions and picking the best performing one.

Once you get the bug you’ll probably think of another change, and start another A/B test. Before you know it, you’ll be evolving your site in a constant survival of the fittest. Throw away the weak designs and keep the strongest.

You’ll be amazed how small incremental improvements at each stage can make a huge difference to your conversion rate and ultimately profit.

Free A/B testing tool

Hopefully you’re thinking this all sounds like a no-brainer. But you’re probably also thinking that it is going to need all sort of programming and statistical skills. Well, in that case may I introduce you to a free tool called Google Website Optimizer, which provides all the functionality and reporting you need along with written and video guides.

Give it a go today, and you could be a good few percent wealthier.

About the Author: Andy Walton is a co-founder of Wikinut, a new publishing platform that pays lifetime royalties for your writing on a massive range of topics. Use promo code “5more” when joining www.wikinut.com today, and get an extra 5% in royalties.

Original Post: Improve Your Conversion With A/B Testing

Screw It, I’ll Learn Programming

Posted: 09 Apr 2010 05:58 AM PDT

I know how to tweak PHP code, but not nearly enough to build complete programs or applications. In fact every time I wanted to build a WordPress plugin in the past I asked some friend to do it for me. Some times it worked fine, other times it didn’t work at all.

The same is true for web applications. I had many ideas for them in the past, but I always had to hire coders to implement them. Even when I managed to find a willing coder there would be time delays, the program would not look exactly how I wanted, upgrading it was a problem and so on.

Recently I came up with another cool idea for a web app, but for the past two weeks I have been looking around for the right coder. In vain.

Guess what? I am pretty tired of not being able to code stuff myself, so I made a resolution for 2010: I’ll learn programming. That is, I want to be able to put together functional web applications by the end of this year.

Now do I think everyone must learn it too? Not at all. If you just want to build websites, you probably don’t need to code to be successful. There are plenty of bloggers and webmasters out there making six figures annually with zero programming knowledge.

That being said, if you plan to work full time on the web for the rest of your life, I believe that knowing how to code can give you a competitive edge over other people. So you mustn’t learn how to code, but perhaps you should.

Thinking about that I figured that it could be cool to launch a new blog about learning how to code. That is, a blog where I would document my journey in learning how to code. I am planning to teach it to myself using books and free resources from the web, so other people could follow the same foot steps.

What do you think? Are you interested in learning to code as well, and would you like to read a blog on the topic?

Original Post: Screw It, I’ll Learn Programming

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Sabtu, 10 April 2010