Landing Page Optimization: How to Identify Testing Opportunities

If landing page optimization and conversion funnel testing are not on the list of items that you're currently focusing on, then you're not getting the most out of the visitors that are coming to your site. This is true for all types of websites, whether you want your visitors to make a purchase or donate so you can increase revenue, download a white paper so they can learn more about a specific topic, watch a video, spend more time engaging with the content on your site, etc. etc.

During the Landing Page Optimization session at SES New York 2013, Justin Cutroni (@justincutroni), Analytics Advocate at Google, discussed:

Why testing is important for your business. How to identify opportunities for testing through data. The different elements on a page you want to consider testing. What types of tests are available. Some tools you can use. The basic elements of setting up a test.Learn Your Audience, Improve Your Results

Cutroni started off by talking about how to approach testing from a high level and putting it into perspective.

Start by thinking about your typical conversion funnel (i.e., the common steps that it takes for someone to complete an action on your website). The purpose of conversion funnel testing is to optimize that process - you're trying to figure out how to get more people through the funnel more effectively by making it easier for them to take each next step through to the end.

To help you understand what's going on in the conversion funnel, you have access to more data than ever before, e.g., you have click path data, micro conversion data, macro conversions, etc. And you can optimize around all these different data points.

What's great about testing, Cutroni said, is that you can automatically increase the return on a lot of things you're doing today. If you can improve the efficiency of your website through landing page testing, conversion funnel testing, etc. then you should do it.

If you can increase the amount of purchases, donations, signups, subscriptions, downloads, etc. (all of the different processes) on your site then you're going to get a much higher return on investment at the upper part of the marketing funnel, whether you're running display or search ads, focusing on search engine optimization (SEO) or content marketing.

This is why every business should be testing, but not enough do. The concept of figuring out and identifying what works best for your company, rather than just going along with the common recommendations or best practices, has been embedded in marketing for a very long time and is nothing new. You can see this in direct mail, product catalogs, store coupons, etc. just like you can with email marketing, content marketing, pay-per-click (PPC) advertising, and so on.

How to Identify Testing Opportunities

Start by looking at your data.

You have tons of data, but there are some common places that people start to get an idea of how their pages are performing for their visitors. One of those is with bounce rate.

Cutroni recommended that you identify your top landing pages on your site and look for the ones that have a really high bounce rate. So

A/B Testing: You have one landing page which is version A, or the control, and then you came up with multiple variations of that page to test against that control. This is probably the best way to get into testing, since the implementation is simple, and you have a little more free-reign over the creative.Multivariate Testing (MVT): Cutroni likes to compare MVT to using a scalpel – it's an opportunity to really fine-tune the pages and the content on your site once you start testing. MVT is different than A/B testing, since rather than just doing a bulk change and testing different variations of full pages with A/B testing, you can carve up the page in different sections and you can test in real-time different combinations of these different sections with MVT. This can include headlines, text or content on the page, forms, buttons, etc. So you come up with two or three different variations for each of these elements or sections and then your testing platform will put them in a magic blender, shake it up and show the different combinations in real-time to your website visitors.How to Set up a Test

When you running a test, there's usually not a lot of information that you need to give each tool. Here are three things you need to consider according to Cutroni:

What are you testing for – what's your conversion event? Conversion events can include selling products, generating a lead, scheduling an appointment, etc. It really depends on your business model. But you want to test against something pretty specific. For example, don't just say, "here's a page that has a high bounce rate and I want to drive more conversions." Rather, start small with reducing the bounce rate first, and once you make progress there, you might discover there are other issues with the site that you need to fix before you can actually start to increase conversions.If you need to convince stakeholders internally to run tests on your site, one tactic you can use to reduce anxiety is limiting the amount of people that are thrown into the tests. Something great that most testing tools allow you to do is create a threshold of how many people you want to include in the test. You might have employees that feel like testing is going to end their world - $X in revenue comes through the site every single day, and "why try and fix what's not broken." If that's the case, one thing you can do in addition to giving them your estimates as to what difference you can make, is showing them you can start small – you don't have to throw 100 percent of your traffic into the same test. Show them you can start with 50% or maybe even 25 percent of your overall web traffic. Most testing tools allow you to have some control in that area.You'll need to code all of the pages included in the tests. Almost all the tools out there require you to put some type of Javascript on the page. And this is really where the magic happens - where your website talks to your testing tool, and your testing tools says I want this person to see this variation. So it magically sends the different combinations in the multivariate test, or the right page in an A/B test. And it actually will display that test in real-time to the user. The cool thing is it does all the heavy lifting: it knows there are two variations, it knows how many conversions happened based on those variations, it does all the complicated math in the background to make sure the tests are significantly significant, etc. So make sure you get the code on the page so your website can respond accordingly.

So then once you start running the test, and your data builds, you'll end up with really pretty graphs that typically include the following:

How many people are flowing through your tests.How your different variations are doing from day-to-day or week-to-week.Do the different variations actually have a chance at beating your original.What's a Good Length of a Test?

Sometimes people aren't really sure how long they should let us a test run to get to statistical significance, and they're just eager to just let a test run for 8 months. Not only does that make you impatient, but if devices are changing and the environments are changing then the test isn't really valid if it's stretched out over such a long period of time.

You really need to go just a couple or a few weeks for a test – nothing longer than two months according to Cutroni.

How Can You Test Pages on Other People's Websites (e.g., Third Party Sites?

This can come into play when you're using different vendors and third-party domains for your conversion events. This issue is that unless you can get your Javascript code on their page, you can't really test on it.

That said, if they're going to let you put code on the site, then you can set up your tool to test different variations and versions. But that's really the only way.

Can You Apply These Testing Principle to Ads?

Yes, surprisingly 90 percent of advertisers are hitting pause, starting new ads, stopping them – a lot of activity is going on, and if you were to just check your ads to see if there was 95 percent statistical significance in their tests, often times you'll find there's enough to determine if there's a winner or loser.

Do Long Forms on a Page Suck in Terms of Driving Performance?

Cutroni agrees, yes, 99 percent of the time long forms suck. That said, as marketers some of the data that we base our assumptions off of is good, but it's not always great. And the only way you can really understand what's going on with long forms on your site is to track every step along the way.

It's unbelievable what you start to learn once you dive into the data; you'd be surprised what people will do if they're really interested in your site or what you're offering. So you always need to test something for your own particular situation before making any conclusions.

 Learn More: TestingHow to Turn Your Failed Tests into Winners!A/B or Multivariate? How to Choose the Right Type of TestWhat to do When Your Split Test Fails8 Rules of A/B Testing – The Art in Marketing Science23 Tips on How to A/B Test Like a BadassA 4 Step Multivariate Testing Process That Works

Harnessing the $9+ Billion Social and Mobile Ad Potential
In partnership with Moontoast, ClickZ presents the "Ultimate Guide to Social Rich Media Advertising". Social rich media advertising offers a one-of-a-kind opportunity for brands and agencies to target consumers with interests that match the virtues and values of their products. Download your free guide today!