etting traffic to your “You’re looking at how many
website is just one part of people are hitting particular
your marketing effort. Once pages, how long they’re staying,
your visitors arrive there, you where they’re leaving, and so
must still convert them to on.” Tracking basically shows you
buyers, or you’ve just wasted where your marketing dollars are
your advertising dollars. In paying off, and where you need to
order to recognize how you can begin making changes.
improve your conversion rates,
A Difference You Can
you have to figure out why Spend
the unresponsive segment of your
Testing is the process of
visitors aren’t purchasing. implementing those changes and
That’s where testing and tracking analyzing the results. There
come in – they identify areas are several different kinds of
needing improvement and reveal testing you can use:
which “improvements” actually
• Split testing
produce a better response. involves comparing one element of
You Can’t Test What You Can’t your site versus another, against
See…
a stream of traffic. For example,
Tracking is the beginning, you might create two identical
according to successful internet PPC ads, each leading to a
marketer David Bullock, of href="http://DavidBullock.com" web site, but with one page
title="http://DavidBullock.com" slightly different than the
target="_blank">color="#001000" to test sales copy, headings,
size="-2">http://DavidBullock.com images, placement, even pricing –
. “Tracking means anything you can see on a page
observing what’s happening on can be tested.
your site,” explains Bullock.
• Multivariate testing
involves comparing multiple items made Urchin software available
and combinations of items. You’re for free, and numerous tools like
looking to see how consumers will ClickTracks, Optimos, and
respond to a particular page Vertster are capable of giving
rendered in a particular way. your eBiz a new level of
• The Taguchi method of transparency. This is great news
testing is a complex, but highly for your online business – you
accurate form of multivariate can now see exactly how
testing. It involves using 18 different creatives are impacting
different landing pages, or your profits.
creative elements, to simulate
Putting Your Knowledge to
4,000 different tests. The Good Use
background math tells you, not
The effectiveness of testing
only which combination works has been proven in every area of
best, but also which elements on eBiz – from web design to SEO and
the page are most influential, so PPC efforts to page sequencing.
you know where to concentrate It allows you to break down the
your efforts.
sales process and pinpoint how
However, it’s important to customers are reacting to the
understand that testing is not a individual elements. You can even
magic bullet – to get the best test how traffic arriving from
results, you must input good one marketing channel behaves
content and design to start versus traffic from another
with.
channel, so you can optimize your
In the last few years, landing pages for your individual
tracking and testing have gone marketing campaigns.
from being limited in scope and
However, as Bullock cautions,
cost-prohibitive to being all that potential does you no
thorough, accurate, and readily good if you don’t put it to use.
accessible. Google Analytics has The first step to improving your
conversion rates and
profitability is to get some sort google_alternate_ad_url =
of tracking mechanism on your web "http://www.isnare.com/adsense-al
site. Once you understand how t-728x90.php";
people are moving through your
site, you can begin to see areas google_ad_width = 728;
where you can improve and start
testing. Advises Bullock, “Let google_ad_height = 90;
your customers tell you what
they want to see – the google_ad_format =
results will pay for "728x90_as";
themselves.”
google_ad_type = "text";
border-color: #FFFFFF;
background-color: #F5F7FB; google_color_border =
border-left: #BAC9FF 1px solid; "F5F7FB";
border-right: #BAC9FF 1px solid;
margin-top: 5px; margin-bottom: google_color_bg = "F5F7FB";
10px;" valign="top"
align="center"> google_color_link =
"0000FF";
type="text/javascript">
type="text/javascript"
src="http://pagead2.googlesyndica tion.com/pagead/show_ads.js">
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Article Tags: testing, page, tracking
