Small Business Marketing & Business Acceleration | FrontlineMarketingSystems.com

Is Pinterest Traffic Worthless?

Posted on 04. Apr, 2012 by Tony Clark in Blog, Featured, Metrics, Small Business Internet Marketing, Small Business Marketing, social media marketing

You’ve seen tons of articles raving about it.

How it’s driving more traffic than anything in the known universe. How you need to be “pinning” and have “pinnable stuff” or you’re going to fail at this magical new social network. How it’s the greatest thing since, well, the last greatest thing.

And you want someone to be straight with you. So here’s the truth …

Pinterest traffic is worthless.

But so is all traffic — unless you do something with it.

Seeing patterns that aren’t there

The problem with most of what’s being written about Pinterest traffic is that it’s pointing out the wrong things. What passes for “reporting” is someone opening Google Analytics, seeing a spike in referrals from Pinterest, and writing an “OMG! Lots of Traffic” post.

Very few are taking the time to do any due diligence on the larger picture.

Are people clicking through, or is the “traffic” just a remote call to the pinned image? Where are your visitors going? What are they doing? Does the traffic convert?

You have to ask real questions, and look for real answers, not patterns based on what others think they’re seeing.

And the wonderful thing about running a business online is that almost everything is testable, trackable, and adjustable.

What’s really going on with Pinterest traffic?

Data doesn’t lie (at least when you’re using it correctly).

Understanding your data — traffic, patterns, and conversions — is critical to your content marketing strategy. Especially when it comes to a new traffic source.

At Copyblogger Media, much of what we do is guided by data — traffic patterns, market analysis, feedback, customer input, and conversion scenarios.

And the increased Pinterest traffic we receive is treated no differently.

We watch, track, analyze, and correlate to figure out how best to capitalize on this new traffic source. Here are a few things we’ve discovered …

Traffic:

• In the last three months (Jan 1-Mar 28), Pinterest helped traffic grow on each of our sites.
• For Copyblogger, Pinterest was the #3 referring website, bested only by Facebook and Twitter.
• Between January 1st and March 5th, when the 15 Grammar Goofs That Make You Look Silly infographic was posted, Pinterest sent close to 15,000 visits. Based on the number of times it was pinned, this told us that fewer than half of the people who pinned the image actually clicked through.
• In the week following that infographic, Pinterest sent 2.7 times as much traffic as the three months before.
• Individual post activity seems to hold a long shelf life when it’s popular on Pinterest. Often, a tweet is lifeless within a day, where a pin can continue pulling traffic for weeks after being published.
• During this same three-month period, Pinterest was the #29 referring site for StudioPress.
• While the amount of raw Pinterest traffic — the number of visits — is smaller for StudioPress than for Copyblogger, visitors to StudioPress stay much longer and visit more pages on average. For example, the average visit duration for a Pinterest-referred visitor on Copyblogger is 0:00:32, compared to an average of 0:05:28 on StudioPress.
• Pinterest visitors check out 1.16 pages on average after clicking through to Copyblogger, compared to 6.34 pages on StudioPress.
• The bounce rate for Pinterest visitors on Copyblogger averages out to 91.7%, StudioPress is 49.9% on average. This is much higher than our site averages, and higher than most other traffic sources.

Visitor Flow:

• Infographic pins have exceptionally high bounce rates and very short visits, usually less than a minute. However, other pins (such as the 56 Ways to Market Your Business on Pinterest post) that led to straight copy had much longer visits and lower bounce rates.
• On that Pinterest marketing post, the majority went on to the main page, followed by the Internet Marketing for Smart People, Genesis, and SEO site quality pages.
• On days when Pinterest activity was particularly high, traffic increased to each of our product sites from Copyblogger.
• 89.6% of Pinterest-referred visitors to Copyblogger were new to the site. Only 44.4% of Pinterest referrals on StudioPress brought new visitors.
• The StudioPress top Pinterest-pulling post included an infographic about How Developers are Driving the Business Adoption of WordPress.
• The vast majority of other StudioPress popular pins were all themes or showcase websites. These pins, on average, showed very low bounce and exit rates, with most continuing on to the themes page, the showcase, the blog, or the features page.
• On average, they also showed fewer new visitors, which historically correlates with low bounce rates on our properties.

OK, so what does all of this mean for you?

In short, it means:

For example, we’ve optimized certain pages on Copyblogger to drive visitors to our list and product pages. We’ve found that the traffic from Pinterest can be also driven to those sources, if a clear call to action is present.

On StudioPress, optimizing showcase pages to drive traffic to the related themes has shown an increase of on-page time and conversions — especially for repeat visitors.

So, even though the traffic from Pinterest for StudioPress was much lower than for Copyblogger, the overall bounce rate was also lower, on-page time was higher, and conversions were better because the path was more predictable.

Armed with that data, we can better utilize the traffic on all of our sites through tracking and testing.

And so can you.

Our analysis shows us a number of best practices for converting Pinterest traffic:

• Infographics and smaller images command more click-throughs because they’re unreadable from the Pinterest site.
• Infographic headlines are key to getting people to click through.
• Compelling subjects covered with too-small-for-Pinterest font choices are ideal.
• People who do move around your site upon arrival will likely follow a predictable path (for example: a showcase theme pin leads to a page path that is more likely to start with the themes gallery than the blog).
• You can control how traffic responds by making a specific call to action on your pin’s landing page.
• Longer visits on pins that bring repeat traffic is an important metric, since on commerce-driven sites you may need to get someone to your page a few times before they buy.
• Pinterest doesn’t sell stuff — you do. By funneling the traffic properly, you can convert visitors into customers.

Traffic from any source is only worthwhile if you have specific goals for it. You can use Pinterest for customer engagement, personal branding, or as an entry point to your conversion funnel.

But you need to understand what your traffic is doing in order to accomplish those goals. That’s where your data comes in. (And if you’re looking for a place to start, try Avinash Kaushik’s Web Analytics: An Hour A Day).

So is Pinterest traffic worthless? That’s up to you to find out.

Major props to Jessica Commins for her valued assistance with the data recon.

About the Author: Tony D. Clark is the COO of Copyblogger Media. You can follow him @nestguy on Twitter if you’re into the whole brevity thing.

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Introducing The Lede: A Copywriting and Online Marketing Sheet

Posted on 29. Oct, 2011 by Robert Bruce in Blog, Blog Psychology, content marketing, conversion, Copywriting, Email Marketing, Entrepreneurship, Headlines, Keyword Research, Landing Pages, List Building, Metrics, persuasion, productivity, selling, Small Business Internet Marketing, Small Business Marketing, social media marketing, Traditional Media, Traffic

Welcome to The Lede.

Every week I’ll be digging up and linking to stories, news, and opinion relevant to online marketing and copywriting.

Email, social media, innovation, SEO, productivity, mobile, conversion, publishing, and everything in between.

No commentary, just a fast, single page of headlines that you can grab, scan, and squeeze for all they may (or may not) be worth.

All right then, on with it …

About the Author: Robert Bruce is Copyblogger Media’s copywriter and resident recluse.

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Comments

• Hi Robert. Very valuable information is posted. I have really … by Henry Louis
• Since most people have little or no clue what “lede” means, … by Don Bates
• [...] post: Introducing The Lede: A Copywriting and Online … by Introducing The Lede: A Copywriting and Online Marketing Sheet … | The Way Of Making Money Online
• This is a fabulous list! To those that are overwhelmed by the … by Tracy Schutz
• Hey,Really Great Post, I am looking forward for more post … by Peter Zmijewski
• Plus 5 more…

Further Reading

• The Art of Finding Ideas
• What Bestselling Fiction Can Teach You About Writing Better Landing Pages
• 23 Reasons Your Blog Isn’t Making Any Money (And What To Do About It!)

The Four “Productivity” Personality Types and How to Write for Each One

Posted on 03. Aug, 2011 by Kirsten Simmons in Blog, Blog Psychology, content marketing, conversion, Copywriting, Email Marketing, Entrepreneurship, Headlines, Landing Pages, List Building, Metrics, persuasion, productivity, selling, Small Business Internet Marketing, Small Business Marketing, social media marketing, Traffic

If you’re a diligent researcher, you might think you know everything there is to possibly know about your prospect.

Deepest fears, pain points, income, business, marital status, family status. You might even know their hair and eye color.

If you’re writing to that person (and you really have those details correct), your copy will likely convert well.

What you might not know about is a secret weapon you can add into the mix that, if used correctly, can skyrocket your conversions through the roof.

Do you know your prospect’s productivity personality? No? That’s all right, not many do. And that’s precisely why this knowledge can give you an unfair advantage as a marketer.

There are four basic personality types that profoundly affect human preferences regarding organization, time management, and productivity strategies.

If you know the personality type of your ideal customer, you can make your copy speak to them on every possible level, from the problems you’ll solve to how you’ll go about solving them.

Let’s take a look at all four, and how to write for each of them …

1. The Fantastical type

The Fantastical personality type is energized by wrestling with problems and coming up with creative solutions.

They learn best by doing, and they have a tendency to lose track of time when they’re caught up in an interesting project.

The most distinctive mark of a Fantastical, though, is that they need to have all the pieces of a project in front of them, otherwise they’ll forget it exists.

My Fantastical business partner goes so far as to refuse to use the produce drawers in her refrigerator because otherwise she’ll forget she bought the fruits and vegetables!

Fantasticals want more than just a plug and play product.

When writing to Fantasticals, make sure you assure them that they’ll get full explanations of all the actions suggested in your product, and then tell them how they’ll solve their problems and learn by doing.

Once you’ve closed the sale, keep up the Fantastical copy by making sure your product dishes out the background theory and information, because your Fantastical customers will want to know all the details.

2. The Structural type

Structural types are natural organizers (and, not coincidentally, are the authors of 99% of the productivity books on the market).

A Structural thrives in a calm, structured environment and doesn’t do well with uncertainty or surprise.

The Structural is the one everyone turns to when there’s an event to be planned, a schedule to be created or a pile of files to be organized.

They can typically pull off feats of organization that amaze lesser mortals, but take away their planner and to-do list and they’re lost.

Therefore, your copy needs to tell a Structural prospect exactly what to expect and what format you’ll be presenting it in.

You also need to explain why your product is better to solve their problem than any other product out there.

And don’t forget to provide testimonials, because a Structural will be reluctant to try it without some evidence that it actually works.

Including clear steps and checklists in your product (and your pre-launch content) will help Structurals to implement your ideas, and trust your word.

3. The Environmental type

Environmentals are all about connections and people.

They care that everyone around them is happy, healthy, comfortable and has what they need.

The Environmental type thrives on human interaction, and has been known to miss meetings and appointments because they were deep in conversation with a friend or coworker who needed a hand.

A strong Environmental type will even go so far as to save anything that might be of use to someone someday — like my grandmother, who ran the string that bound the Thanksgiving turkey through the dishwasher each year and tucked it safely away into a drawer (we did actually find a use for them one year, thus vindicating Oma for everything she’d ever saved).

So, in your copy, make sure you emphasize the personal attention Environmentals will receive as they go through your product.

If you’ve included forums, tell them all about the great interaction you’re expecting and the support networks of peers that they’ll have a chance to contribute to.

The icing on the cake would be to mention all the people the Environmental customer would be able to help after they finish your product — thereby selling the outcome rather than the tool.

4. The Analytical type

Analyticals are success-driven, goal-oriented individuals.

They work well with summaries and numbers, and they don’t have patience for anything that appears unnecessarily elaborate or potentially ineffective.

An Analytical is gifted with the ability to see the big picture and plan accordingly, but their ability to track the smaller details isn’t particularly strong.

It’s not that they aren’t capable of doing so. They just don’t view the financial paperwork or files to be essential to the big picture in their head.

Copy for Analyticals needs to be precise.

Don’t beat around the bush; condense your benefits into concise points and tell your prospect exactly what you’re solving and how you’ll go about doing it.

Extra bonus points if you can fit it into a chart or graph that can be understood in seconds — Analyticals are all about understanding valuable information quickly and effectively.

Many Analyticals have assistants or informal helpers, so structure your product with the understanding that your Analytical customer may not be the one handling the minor aspects.

If you can communicate all this succinctly in your sales copy, you’ll have a great shot at winning the business of your Analytical customer.

Why write for personality types?

By writing to your prospect’s personality, you can connect with them on a level that everyone in the marketplace ignores.

You can also structure your product offering to suit the style of the primary type in your audience, thus increasing the chances that they’ll be able to implement it effectively.

Writing to your audience’s personality allows you to accurately cater to them from pitch to result, giving you more money in your pocket and a cadre of fans raving about how awesome your product is.

There’s no marketing strategy that’s more effective than that!

About the Author: Kirsten Simmons is an author, a coach, and the creator of the Personalized Productivity program that uses your personality to create your ideal productivity system. She’s a Fantastical (in case you were wondering), and she’s also a full time grad student studying mathematical models of epidemics. Come take the personality quiz to discover your type, or connect on twitter @kirstenasimmons.

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5 Reasons Why All Freelance Writers Should Learn To Write a Sales Letter

Posted on 28. Jul, 2011 by Sean Platt in Blog, Blog Psychology, content marketing, conversion, Copywriting, editing, Email Marketing, Entrepreneurship, Headlines, Keyword Research, Landing Pages, List Building, Metrics, Online Product Launches, persuasion, RSS Marketing, selling, Small Business Internet Marketing, Small Business Marketing, social media marketing, Traffic

When was the last time you wrote something with the intent to specifically motivate your readers to take action?

Admit it or not, we’re all in the same game.

Whether you want someone to buy your product, join your email list, retweet or +1 your post, you’re doing one thing — leading your audience down a path at the end of which lies the action they’ll take.

You want them to do something.

In other words, you’re selling.

Unfortunately, many content creators don’t know the first thing about selling.

A few years ago, neither did I. Well, not online, anyway. Not until I developed one skill that changed everything.

I’d had plenty of experience selling at the flower shop I owned. But selling through the written word was an entirely new skill.

To learn this ancient skill, I turned to the experts — those who make millions every year because of their ability to write great sales letters.

Sales letters are roads paved with words which lead buyers to solutions, sellers to profit, and writers closer to their happily ever afters.

Yet, most freelance writers and professional bloggers never consider learning to write sales letters.

Writers often feel as though that particular skill is above their pay grade, while many bloggers prefer to hire a professional when it comes time to creating their sales copy.

That’s probably because neither these writers or bloggers have any idea how life-changing learning to write a sales letter can actually be.

Let’s take a look at five reasons you should learn to write a great sales letter …

1. Never create crap content again

Some clients want nothing more than keyword-stuffed filler content for their sites, and they’re willing to pay you very little for the privilege. They don’t want to hear anything about how Google’s Panda update has made this approach silly, they just want mountains of low-quality content, stat.

Writing crappy content in bulk sucks. Do it for too long, and you’ll wonder why you thought writing online was a good idea in the first place.

Worse than being paid by the pound is the feeling of indentured servitude that comes with being a breath or two beyond running in circles, but nowhere near where you need to be to break away.

Knowing how to write a sales letter elevates your skill set, meaning you can make more money for every word you write, virtually overnight, whether or not you’re a wordsmith for hire.

2. You’ll only need a few clients a month

Managing low-paying copy usually means juggling a long list of clients because you’re stitching one job into the next, quilting your ends until they hopefully meet.

With the much higher earning average of longer form sales copy, just one or two jobs per month can fund the rest of your writing business.

Every sales letter you write makes you a better writer than you were before.

Constantly write, continuously improve, and quickly build a long list of people willing to pay you top dollar for your time.

When you deliver a sales letter that converts, you’re never hired only once.

3. You can develop streams of passive income

Once you know how to write an effective sales letter, you can become your own best client.

Write an eBook, put together a training course, offer a special suite of services, then write a letter to sell it.

You’re doing it for others. Why not do it for yourself?

If you’re a writer, you have the unique ability to synthesize and simplify information.

It’s the next logical step to package what you know and put it online.

4. More time for what you truly want to do

You can always make more money, but you’ll never make another minute.

By being able to charge more money for the hours you work, you will have more time to write the things you love.

You didn’t become a writer to write crap content, or to get lost in the daily blizzard of disposable blog posts, did you?

Earning more per billable hour will give you the time required to build the bank of assets that will elevate your legacy, along with your bottom line.

5. You’ll be better a much better writer

Even if you only write one sales letter in your life, knowing how you did it will make you a better writer.

Sales letters are paint-by-number persuasion, connecting dots we all have in common. You can’t sell if you don’t understand your reader.

Yet, once you know how to slip inside their mind, you can channel their desire.

On a sales page, that means clicking the BUY button.

Offline, it can mean creating word-of-mouth about your latest book, inspiring the reader to tell friends, and maybe even review your product on Amazon.com.

Selling vs. selling out

When I first started online, I wanted nothing more than to write blogs posts and fiction.

Selling seemed like an anti-art, lacking in purity, or just plain “selling out.”

But when you think about what writing is — getting people to feel something, spreading ideas, or connecting with people across great divides — it’s not all that different from selling.

Whether you’re selling a product or selling yourself, learning how to write a good sales letter is one of the best investments you’ll ever make in your writing.

About the Author: Sean Platt is the author of Writing Online and How to Write a Sales Letter that Works (Without Wasting Your Time!). Get his free report, The 9 Mistakes Most Writers Make That Are Keeping Them Poor. Follow him on Twitter.

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Why Split-Testing is Like Sex in High School

Posted on 25. Jul, 2011 by Danny Iny in Blog, Blog Psychology, content marketing, conversion, Copywriting, Email Marketing, Entrepreneurship, Headlines, Keyword Research, Landing Pages, Metrics, selling, Small Business Internet Marketing, Small Business Marketing, social media marketing, Traffic

Everybody’s talking about it.

Most of it is rumor, hearsay, and innuendo …

We idolize the exploits of the people we look up to, and try to skirt the mention of our own experiences (and shortcomings).

No, I’m not talking about sex — I’m talking about split-testing.

What does split-testing have to do with sex?

Actually, quite a lot…

Let me explain.

Everybody says they’re doing it …

Just like sex in high-school, split-testing is all the rage.

Everyone likes to pretend they’re an expert. Buzzwords and rumors abound … stories about increasing conversion rates by an order of magnitude by changing the color of a checkout button (but nobody shares the magic color!).

Most importantly, nobody wants to admit that they don’t really know what they’re doing, or (gasp!) have never done it themselves. Many join the conversation without wanting to let on that they don’t even know what split testing is!

Let’s start with a simple definition.

Split-testing, also known as “A/B testing”, is an invaluable strategy that compares two versions of a web page, with one difference between them — say, for example, a different headline.

Then you measure how many people take the desired action (like buying a product) on each page, to see which variation works better.

Now that we’ve explained it, let’s be honest.

You don’t split-test, do you? Maybe you did something once — a small, unsatisfying and inconclusive experiment, but you’re not testing on a regular basis … right?

Most people don’t want to admit this, because they feel like they’re the only ones not doing it. Everybody knows that split-testing is absolutely critical to effective marketing online — so who wants to admit that they’re the only ones who aren’t doing it?

Well, relax.

It turns out that “most people” can’t be the “only one” — funny thing, right?

Hardly anyone is really doing it…

Everybody’s talking about it, but that doesn’t mean everybody’s actually doing it.

The truth is that many of the exploits that you hear about are fueled by a vivid imagination, rather than experience; only a very small proportion of the talkers are actually doing the things that they describe.

And that’s okay … maybe you aren’t ready.

To do split testing right, you don’t just need to test different variations of a page, you need to measure results, and the differences between the results generated by each variation.

This is challenging, and often impossible for websites that are just starting out and don’t have much traffic.

Let’s explain why with a short example:

Variation 1: One page page received 974 visits, and 5 people converted
Variation 2: The modified version of the page received 961 visits, and 7 people converted

You’d think that Variation 2 is the clear winner, right?

Wrong.

Crunching the numbers, we find that there is only a 45.27% chance that over time, Variation 2 will continue to outperform Variation 1.

In other words, there’s a 54.73% chance that the difference between their success rates was the result of random chance.

Okay … where did I get these numbers?

Split testing is all about finding results that you can be confident in based on statistical significance. This isn’t a touchy-feely kind of confidence — it’s calculated mathematically, and you want it to be at least 90%, and ideally 95% or more to choose a winner.

You don’t have to worry about calculating the numbers yourself; there are free tools out there that can calculate the statistical significance of your results for you (you just plug in the number of impressions and actions for each variation, and the rest is done for you), and split-testing tools like Google Website Optimizer will do the calculation for you as well (and plugs right into Premise).

If you don’t want to calculate the actual significance of your test, here’s a rule of thumb that you can use (borrowed from Tim Ash’s book Landing Page Optimization):

• If there are 100 impressions in your sample, you need to see a 20% difference between variations to be sure that they actually mean something.
• If there are 1,000 impressions, you need a 6.3% difference.
• If there are 10,000 impressions, you need a 2% difference.
• If there are 100,000 impressions, you need a 0.063% difference.

Do you notice the trend here?

To detect small differences in improvements (which are what most split-tests are likely to reveal), you need a pretty large sample size.

The moral of the story is that if you don’t have much traffic, then maybe you need a solid growth strategy instead of better split-testing.

But what if you do have the traffic?

After all, most sites and blogs have at least a bit of traffic, which is enough to test the more important things, like headlines and opt-in placement.

Most aren’t doing it very well …

Like sex in high school, split-testing is something at which even those who are doing it don’t have much experience, and their actions are often controlled by impulses and urges, rather than skilled intent.

Let’s take a quiz, and see if you’re making any of the mistakes of most would-be split-testers:

Do you test one thing at a time? Most wannabe split-testers don’t; they change half-a-dozen things at a time, based on the latest and greatest ideas to have entered their minds. The trouble with this is that when things work (or don’t work), you don’t know which changes are responsible. To effectively split test, you need to isolate variables, which means testing one thing at a time!

(Okay, yes, it is technically possible to test multiple things at once — it’s called multivariate testing. In practice, though, doing it requires huge traffic numbers, and a much more complex setup — if you’re not already doing it, then it’s probably not for you.)

Are you measuring results? I mean actually measuring, with numbers? This is also a rarity — more often, it’s an anecdotal “I feel like we’re getting more sign-ups” kind of ‘measurement’. Be careful with this, because as humans beings we all suffer from a confirmation bias, which means that we’re much more likely to favor evidence that supports what we want to believe. Measuring with actual numbers is critical to effective split testing!

Do you let your experiments run until you’ve reached a 95% confidence level? This is where the greatest number of mistakes are made; an experiment is setup and allowed to run, until the experimenter feels that “this one is working better”. This occurs before reaching the point at which the numbers actually prove what you’re trying to prove, which means that the results are really inconclusive, and can’t be trusted. And what’s the point of doing experiment after experiment if none of the results can be trusted? You absolutely have to let experiments run until you reach a statistical confidence in the results!

Are you tracking your experiments? Rather than flittering from experiment to experiment, keep a journal that documents each experiment, and the lessons that you learned from them. This will prevent you from running repeated experiments that test more or less the same thing, without ever learning your lessons. Setup your experiments as hypothesis tests — each experiment is meant to test a guess about something that you think will influence your audience!

Do you focus your experiments on your conversion goals? There’s no point in experimenting just for the sake of experimenting, and yet it’s more common than you might believe. There’s no point testing something unless you think it will contribute to the conversion goals that you have for your site. So rather than setting up test after test, consider first what your objectives are, and what you might be able to test that will contribute to reaching that objective!

You’ve probably answered “no” to at least some of these questions, but that’s fine — the important thing is to learn and adjust your practices, so that the experiments that you run tomorrow will be more effective and fruitful than the experiments that you ran yesterday.

Now that you’ve got the processes worked out, let’s talk about some of the things that you might want to experiment with.

Do you feel like experimenting?

Experimentation can be great, but if you’re a professional blogger or business owner, you’re not just in it for the fun — you need to focus on the experimentation that will be most gratifying to your bottom line.

Here are some of the most important things that you should be sure to split-test:

The headline. This is the single most important thing that you can split-test, because the headline is the first “gateway” that your readers have to pass through. You will lose more people at the headline than anywhere else on the page, so test the headline first.

Opt-in placement, text, and colors. Try different placements of the opt-in box on your site, different calls to action, and different box and button colors. Since you probably get more sign-ups than sales, this is a much better place to start your testing.

The order button text and colors. Experiment with changing the text of the order button (options include “Get It Now”, “I Want Access”, “Buy Now”, “Add to Cart”, “Proceed to Checkout”, and more), and with the color of the buttons (yellow, red, blue and green are good places to start). This applies to your email opt-in box as well.

The format of the offer. This is a little more work to test, but if you have the option to do it, you might find that a lot more customers are willing to buy one format than another. Experiment with your offer as an ebook, report, video series, podcast training program, infographic and so forth.

The price. This isn’t always possible to test, but if it is, you might find that you’re leaving a lot of money on the table; it’s possible that increasing the price will not affect sales, and it’s even possible that increasing the price will increase sales as well!

The style of the introduction. After the headline, the first thing that your audience will read is the opening paragraph. Experiment with different styles — try making bold statements, vs. telling a story about their problem, vs. describing the ideal outcome. See what works best for your audience.

The product imagery. Try different versions of your product picture — you’d be surprised how much of an effect this sort of thing can have.

Trust seal choice and placement. Different audiences will respond to different trust seals, and will want to see them in different places. Good places to test are near the description of your guarantee, and of course near your order button.

Email subject line. This is just as important as the headline of your sales page, particularly if you’re using confirmed opt-in, in which abandon rates of 20-30% are common. Split-test the email subject line of your email confirmation messages to make sure that as many subscribers as possible actually get on your list.

There are lots of other things that you could test — for more ideas than you’ll ever be able to test, check out the Landing Page tutorials here on Copyblogger.

Getting started with split testing…

If this is the first time you’re hearing about split-testing, then your head is probably spinning right now.

That’s okay — it’s a lot of information to take in.

Even if you’ve been thinking about split testing for a while (and have even tried a few experiments), you might be wondering about one thing: how to actually get the experiments going.

That’s where Premise comes in — it’s a drop-dead simple and complete landing page package that plugs right into WordPress, and you can use to:

1. Generate all kind of landing pages, including templates for Sales Pages, Content (SEO) Pages, Pricing Table Pages, Email Opt-In Forms, Video Pages, Tab Scroller Pages, and Thank You Pages.
2. Add all kinds of standard elements into your landing pages with the click of a mouse.
3. Run split tests to make sure that you’re incrementally advancing towards your conversion goals!

So enough fence-sitting … if you want to get serious about split-testing, go get Premise and get started!

Okay, over to you …

Have you experimented with split-testing? What has your experience been? Where did you get stuck?

Do you have a Premise success story to share?

About the Author: Danny Iny is an author, strategist, serial entrepreneur, and proud co-founder of Firepole Marketing, the definitive marketing training program for small businesses, entrepreneurs, and non-marketers. Visit his site today to download a free split test checker, or follow him on Twitter @DannyIny.

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